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SATAN'S ANVIL by Obi

Hell if I know," you say.

"What does that mean?" I ask. "Is that not you in these pictures?" I am already irritated with his answer. He's hiding something, and I want to know what it is.

"It's me," you answer looking closely at the three photographs he is holding in your face, "but I don't remember taking them." He pulls them away, and looks at them himself. He is so motherfucking nosey.

"How can you not remember?" I ask. "It's you! Your clothes are all off. This woman, a white woman, is lying there. She's naked, and you're naked. You appear to be having sex with her, judging by this little connection I see between you." I squint histrionically and point to the shadow that could almost be recognized as the base of his dick on one of the pictures. I want him to remember the sex and start bragging about it. Then maybe he'll spill the beans. "How can you not remember?! Her face isn't shown on any of these," I say, "but yours is on all of them."

"I don't know," you say. You wish he would stop pressing you for answers. He acts like a white man, all analytical and shit. If you don't know, you don't know.

"It sounds like you're not telling the truth," I say, hoping against hope that he would just come clean.

"I'm not lying," you answer. Juke gets on your fucking nerves at times. You look away hoping he'll change the subject.

He may act white, he looks anything but. He has that Îgood' hair that folks envy, like an Indian. At his age, it's all white. And he's skinny. Frail is a better word. He's about six foot three, and he weighs about a hundred and fifty pounds. He looks like people you've seen who have cancer. His ankles are twice their normal size because of fluid build-up, and he wears little slip-on shoes because that's all he can get on his puffy little feet.

"Well, who's the woman?" I ask.

"I don't remember, I tell you, I don't remember." He looks sick, real sick like he should be in a hospital. His sugar brown skin has a jaundiced pallor, and there are dark brown bags under his eyes. His cheeks are covered with little brown moles. Some of them are shaped like an ant's body parts, and are about as big. His bottom eyelids sag revealing the pink flesh under his eyeballs. His eyes are always too wet. He smiles, and his teeth are brown and crooked, and one of his top front teeth droops away from the gum. He looks terrible. You would think he would give up smiling.

"It sounds to me like you're just not telling," I say. I squirm in my chair. He is a stubborn cuss.

"Fine," you say, "I just ain't telling." Fuck him anyway. Them pictures ain't none of his business.

This approach isn't working. Maybe if I change the subject. "She looks a lot like that girl that jumped up on the stage the night we played in Champaign/Urbana. Do you remember her?"

"I remember," you answer, glad that he changed the subject. "Her name was Trudy."

"Trudy Miller." I could hear my voice turn nostalgic, "I sure wanted that little pink toe that night." I remember the gig, and I remember her. She was a college kid. Probably not more than 19. Very shapely, very intelligent. Acne on her chin. She studied physics, and wanted to be an astronaut.

"And she wanted you," you answer. "She liked the way you played the sax. You had the soprano out that night."

"I had the soprano and the tenor. But you're right. She liked the soprano." I was doing 'My Favorite Things' a-la-Coltrane.

"So what happened? How come she didn't leave with you?"

"I got drunk. Was smoking that stuff," I say. "I thought she left with you."

"Not me," you say. "I think she left with the Kong."

"Probably so. That man screwed everybody that came within ten feet of him. I don't know how he did it."

"Women like drums," you say, "and Kong was the king with those big ole monkey hands."

He's set up. Now the blind-side. "Did he take these shots?"

"How would I know that?" you ask. Damn him! Why don't he forget them pictures.

"You were there!"

"Yeah, but I don't remember. Where did you get them pictures, anyway?" you ask. You want him to stop pressuring you.

"I found them."

"Found them? Found them where?" It's working.

"In a shoe box under the bed at Dempsey's house."

"Dempsey died two years ago!"

"I know that."

"And his house burned to the ground a month later!"

"I know that, too."

"So what's up with those?" you ask gesturing to the pictures. Damn, that was the wrong question.

"Actually," I answer, "his daughter, Sharon, found the box under the bed the day after he died."

"And?"

"It was wrapped up in brown paper with a string tied around it."

"And?"

"It had a note on it telling Sharon to give it to me exactly two years after his death."

"You going somewhere with this?" you ask. Just stay off the pictures.

"There was other stuff in the box."

"Like what?"

"A letter."

"To?"

"To me."

"What did it say?"

"I'll read it to you." I reach under my chair and into a shoe box. I pull out an old wrinkled envelope. It's brown like a government envelope with a clear address window.

"Is that the box?"

"That's the box," I answer. The letter itself as I pull it out is wrinkled and dirty and water stained. I unfold it and begin. "It says, ÎDear Juke.'" I stop reading. I ask, "Did you know Dempsey was my brother?"

"I didn't know you had a brother," you say. "And I sure didn't know that he was it."

"It's kind of a long story," I say, "but the short version goes like this. I was at home one morning practicing on the tenor, doing my scales and arpeggios like I used to do, and the phone rings. This is twenty years ago, back before daddy died."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh," you say. You wonder where this is leading.

"I answer it, and the dude on the other end asks if this is . . ., and he gives my birth name. Then he says that he is looking for a man about . . ., and he gives an age that is twenty years older than I was at the time. So I said that would be my daddy, since I was a junior."

"Yeah, uh-huh."

"So the dude tells me that his daddy had just died, and he was going through his papers and discovered that his daddy had adopted him, that his daddy wasn't his real daddy after all. And he said that he found a birth certificate with my daddy's name on it. So naturally, I put the sax down, and sat for a minute."

"Well, I guess so," you say.

"So he said, if my daddy is the person whose name is on that birth certificate, that makes us brothers."

"Humph!"

"That's what I said. I stopped for a minute, then asked for the mama's name. Her name was Cecilia Golden. I took his number and told him I would call him back. He was living in Seattle at the time. So I called daddy."

"He must have dropped his teeth," you say.

"Him? I'm the one who dropped his teeth. I figured dude had the wrong number or something. But I asked daddy, Îhey, Joe, do you know Cecilia Golden,' and he said yeah!"

"Kiss my ass!"

"Said she was a girlfriend he had way back when. Said it was a good thing Marie was dead, Îcause she wouldn't know how to handle news like this. And I told him that I guess not, Îcause I was having a problem dealing with it."

"Was he still hooked up with your mother at the time?"

"Yeah, he was still married to her. But she was dead by then, so I didn't make too big a deal out of it. I called dude in Seattle back and welcomed him into the family. Daddy called him later, and over the next year or so, they got to know each other. When daddy died, dude said he wanted to play at the funeral. I was shocked when I first met him, Îcause he looked like a trick baby. Thin nose. Thin lips. We played a couple of duets, him on bass and me on reeds. He was good, so we formed a group."

"How come you never told me and Kong?" Now you could put him on the spot.

"We thought that might not be good for the unity of the group."

"So all the years we played music together, y'all was living a lie."

"It wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth either."

"So what about the letter?"

"Oh, yeah, the letter." I begin, "ÎDear Juke,'" then stop. I reach into the box and pull out some glasses and put them on. I adjust and fidget with them for what seems like a solid minute. They just don't feel right. The problem is that they are too big and they have a bow missing. Finally, I say, "Ok, that's better. Now where was I. Oh, yes, the letter." I pick the letter up, and begin to read, "ÎDear Juke, brother, home boy, my man, if you are reading this letter . . ..'" I stop. "Why didn't you come to his funeral?"

Shit! The sudden question throws you off. "I . . . I don't know," you answer. "I don't remember."

"You seem to be having a lot of trouble with your memory today."

"Finish the letter so we can finish playing chess."

"Why weren't you at his funeral?"

"I forgot is all. I forgot." You could feel the temperature at your neck rising. You blurt out,

"Damn, nigger, I didn't know he was your bother."

"You did know that he was your friend."

Goddamnit, that was it! "The nigger owed me money," you say.

"Oh? He owed you money? How much money did he owe you?"

"Twenty-five hundred dollars," you try to make it sound like a lot of money.

"Twenty-five hundred dollars?" I repeat. I put a tone of mock wonder in my voice.

"Yeah," you answer, "twenty-five hundred dollars."

"Any change? Any pennies?"

"No change," you say, "no pennies." You know he's being snide.

"And why do you suppose he didn't pay you?"

"I guess he didn't have no money."

"And why was that, do you suppose?"

"Oh, I know why. He was giving it to his mother."

"Which mother?"

"The new one. Cecilia Golden."

"He found her?"

"He found her. He started looking for her after daddy's funeral."

"Where was she?"

"Living on lower Wacker Drive downtown. Living on the street."

"How much money did she have?" I ask even though I already know the answer.

"None, she was flat broke."

"So Dempsey gave her some of his."

"The nigger gave her all of his."

"And how much is all?"

"He took her off the street, cleaned her up, set her up in an apartment." This was worse than the pictures.

"So the money he got from you, he used to help his mother."

"Yeah." You wanted to sound tough, put upon.

"And you begrudged him that money Îtil his dying day."

"He owed me," you say.

"I just wanted to be sure." I reach into the box and pull out another envelope. This one is white and clean and new. I slide it across the table.

"What's this?" you ask.

"The money he owed you."

"I can't take this."

"You can't give it back," I say. "He's dead."

"That's the reason I can't take it. You keep it."

"I can't keep it. It's not my money in any way."

"I can't take it," you say, and you push it back across the table.

I look at it, then at him, then back at it. I lean to one side, and crack a fart. It is one of those high-pitched, squeaky ones that, strangely, reminds me of the squeaking brakes on an old fashioned streetcar, the ones that ran on State Street when I was a kid.

I loved those streetcars, especially the bells. There was something special about the clang of a State Street streetcar bell. When the driver pulled on that braided rope with the knot at the end, the clang rang out, and people reacted. They scurried to grab the smooth, vertical silver railing and pull themselves into the open back door of the dull red painted railcar. They scampered off the tracks in front of it. Sometimes, realizing they were about to pass their stop, they scrambled by fellow passengers to the open front door to hop off. If it was dry out and warm, the car routinely ran with both doors, front and back, open. When the bell clanged, chaos became order, indecision became decision, inaction became action. The clang of that bell was like magic.

I watched the wondrous effects of the clang from a little nook at the front of the car opposite the driver. I never knew what that little nook was for, but every time I got on the streetcar, I headed for that nook. Not every driver would allow someone to ride there if there was room behind him in the body of the coach. Or sometimes someone else would have gotten there first. But on this day, I was lucky. There was so much to see from the front of a streetcar that I vowed many times to be a streetcar driver when I grew up.

"You bastard," you say. You catch a whiff of his fart, and laugh. You fan the air with your hands.

"Me?" I say, "You're the one who didn't go to his funeral."

"Man, what have you been eating?"

I catch a whiff. "Whew," I laugh. "I stink." I get up and walk around my chair fanning the air with my hands. After a few seconds, I sit back down.

"I need a drink after that," you say. "What you got to drink?"

"I got some pop in the fridge, and there's ice water."

"I'm talking about whiskey, man, I want some whiskey."

"Man, I stopped drinking years ago," I say.

"Now come? A nigger that don't drink ain't no real nigger."

"I guess I'm not a real nigger then, Îcause I have long since given it up."

"Not me," you say, pulling a small brown bottle from your pant pocket. "I love it too much to give it up." You hit the bottom of the bottle with the base of your palm, then spin the top off. "By the time I get to the bottom of this bottle, I will be charming, handsome, smooth, suave, debonaire, have a great sense of humor, and be a lot of fun to be out with. Plus, I will be bold, dashing, daring, brave, chivalrous, kind, . . .. You get the picture." You knock back a long swallow. "What about smoking?" you ask, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. "You give that up, too?"

"I gave that up before I gave up drinking."

"Why?!"

"Scared of cancer."

"Cancer? Man, everybody's got to die of something. What difference do it make if it's cancer or a truck?"

"I can look out for a truck," I say. "Whose move is it?"

The guy at the back of the streetcar wasn't nearly so exciting. All he ever got to do was collect money, make change, and punch and pass out transfers. He was always harried and stressed. People argued with him. People crowded the space he worked in making it hard for him to move. He was so preoccupied with money and giving directions to this place or that, that he rarely if ever got to look around at the scenery. He never got to see the magic of the bell. In fact, from the back of the car, even the sound was fake. It was muted, shallow, watered down. The guy in the back worked hard.

On this particular day, mama and I were headed downtown. I was in the nook; mama was standing in the body of the coach. All of a sudden, a woman screamed. She was a white woman, blond. Her hair was done up in those tight little curls white women wore back then. She clutched her purse to her bosom. "He tried to pick my pocket," she said of the brother standing next to her. He was dressed in a suit with a top coat over his arm. He wore a hat with a brim like the one Reverend King used to wear around that time, early in his career. The brother had a put-upon expression on his face, his glance darting from one passenger to the next, like he was the victim of a false accusation.

"Do something," the woman said to the driver. I knew that he didn't know what to do. She must have thought she was talking to the guy at the back of the streetcar. Maybe she was fooled by the fact they wore the same uniform. "Do something," she said again. "He tried to rob me."

Just then, a second brother stepped forward. "Move aside," he said in a booming voice, "I'm a police officer." I remember thinking, what a lucky coincidence. He was dressed like the first brother, King hat and all. "Let's get off here," he said. He grabbed the first brother by the shoulder pad and pulled him up at an awkward angle. "You're under arrest," he said. He gestured vaguely out the open front doors, "there's the police station now. Stop here," he said to the driver. The driver stopped. I looked out at the block where we had stopped. I saw a shoe store and a cleaner and a tavern by the corner to the alley. I did not see a police station. I looked back at mama. As if having read my mind, she lip-synced to me, "there's no police station here," as she turned her head slowly, almost imperceptibly, from side to side.

The driver reached for the braided rope with the knot at the end. He yanked it hard. The clang rang out. As the coach eased forward, I looked back at the woman and the two brothers out on the sidewalk. They were leading her, one brother at each elbow, to the alley by the tavern.

"It's your move," you say, fishing around in your pockets. "Goddamnit, I forgot my cigarettes. You got any squares?"

I ignore the question and study the board. I touch my queen, then pull my hand back. I touch my queen-side rook. I pull my hand back.

"You have to move your queen," you say. "You got any squares?"

"I don't want to move my queen."

"But you touched it."

"So what?"

"You touch it; you move it."

"You always do that!"

"Do what?"

"If I touch it, suddenly we play by the you-touch-it-you-move-it rule. But if you touch it, it's Îwe niggers, we don't play by honky rules.'"

"You always the one trying to be like the honky," you say.

"Don't start that stuff again."

"Nigger, please."

"Please, what?"

"You the biggest Tom walking, and you gon' act like you ain't?"

"Getting an education don't make me no Tom."

"No, but sucking up do make you a Tom."

"I don't suck up," I say, "I just get along."

"Ok, you the biggest getting-along nigger I know."

"What's wrong with getting along?"

"You get along, you get walked on."

"So who are you supposed to be, one of the Last Poets or somebody?" I ask. Then I mimic him, "you get along, you get walked on."

"It's true," you say.

"Says who?"

"You said it."

"Me? When? I never said that!"

"You don't remember Nate Mathis, do you?"

"Yes, I remember him," I say. "He wanted to manage the group some years ago."

"That's right. What happened?"

"What happened when?" I ask.

"What happened back then with Mathis?"

"We fired him. You fired him."

"Why?"

"You thought he stole from us."

"That white boy did steal from us."

"He got his contract share."

"You agreed to give him way more than he deserved just to get along with him."

"That's not what happened."

"What happened then?"

"He got a higher percentage because he took a chance on a group that wasn't very well known."

"Oh, that's the line he used."

"Well, it was true. We weren't very well known."

"But that doesn't give him the right to get more money," you say. "He took the money and ran."

"He worked for that money."

"He took advantage of a skinnin', grinnin' Uncle Tom."

"Screw you, Piano Man."

"No, Juke," you say. "It's fuck you. Not screw you."

I look at the envelope on the table. I grab it, ball it up and throw it into his chest. "Take the money!" I say.

You put the wadded envelope back on the table. "I didn't kill him," you say.

The wagon was a Radio Flyer, red with white wheels. I used it to carry groceries. That was one of my little hustles. There weren't as many cars back then, and a young brother could make some spending change by going to the local A&P and waiting to haul groceries loaded into brown paper bags to a customer's house for them. A lot of people depended on it. Otherwise, they might have to take a taxi. Taxis were expensive.

Some of the guys who worked that hustle charged for the service, so much a block like a taxi. But I wanted to be nice. I took whatever the customer gave me. I got used. People thought I was a nice kid, but on balance, I got smaller tips. The guys who charged, they were the real hustlers. I was like a debutante, a dabbler, in it just for the fun. I think I lasted about three weeks. By then, the fun was gone. I wanted the money, but my mother didn't want me to be that cold-blooded. She wanted me to stay a nice kid. That was the reason she bought me the wagon in the first place.

"You might as well have." I say, "you broke his heart, and that killed him."

"I loved him," you say. "I loved him like a brother."

"Then why did you have to break up the group?"

"The boy was a junky. That's what killed him."

"He was trying to support his mother."

"He was trying to support his habit," you counter.

"And his mother."

"Leave his mother out of this."

"But she was there," I say.

"She was in the way," you say.

"And that's the real issue, isn't it? He was spending more and more time with her, and less and less time with us."

"She's the one who fucking got him hooked."

I can feel my face grow rigid. This was news to me, if it was true. More likely, it was a lie.

"You didn't know that, did you?" You say, "the reason she was on the street in the first place is she was a junky her damn self."

"You lying."

You put your right hand in the air. "As God is my witness, the bitch got him hooked."

With my left index finger, I push the crumpled envelope to his edge of the table.

"Ok, Juke," you say, "I'll take the money. But I don't take any pleasure in doing it." You stuff the envelope into your shirt pocket.

They say a man don't become a man until his father dies. I became a man almost twenty years ago. I didn't want to do it, but I cried. I hadn't cried for thirty years before, and I haven't cried since. But that day I did it. Manhood is rough.

It's not that Joe and I were always close-- it was the longest time before I could call him daddy-- but whether I can call him that or not, that's who he was. And like it or not, for good or for ill, his genes are my genes; his history is my history.

He told me once that the month between Thanksgiving and the New Years was his favorite time of year, and that did something to me. It made me see him as something more than a rock. All he ever showed me was how hard he was. He thought that being hard was being a man. I wonder if that started when his daddy died. Anyway, he told me that down south every year, they killed and roasted seven turkeys during that month. The way he told it, it sounded like the high point of his life. He bought seven live turkeys for us only one year. Turkeys must have been cheap down south. But up north, they were too expensive to buy in that number. Joe just didn't make that kind of money year after year.

But one year, he did it. I don't even know where he bought them. They were delivered in three wood frame and chicken wire crates that we put in the basement. They were so big, they took up most of the space down there.

It hurt him to have to kill those birds. That's how I knew he wasn't the rock he wanted me to think he was. He had to steel himself once a week and twice on Christmas. He acted like he was killing people.

He sharpened a sickle-shaped knife on a stone, then walked down the narrow flight of stairs to the dingy little basement where they began agitating as soon as he turned on the light. The light was dull, but it was bright enough for them to recognize him. He was their angel of death. Every time they saw him, one of them died. It was like a ritual neither of them wanted to perform, but they performed it anyway. He hated to kill them; they hated to die. And after it was over, it was like nothing ever happened. Except, of course, one of them was gone. But even that didn't seem to matter. They couldn't count, so they didn't miss him.

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