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SATAN'S ANVIL by Obi

<continued...>

On the first day, Joe took me with him to watch. I watched only once. After that one time, he killed them alone. That first time, all seven birds flapped and thrashed in those crates, knocking their wings together because there wasn't enough room for them to move freely, bumping into each other, pecking each other. Almost as if it were an act of mercy, Joe picked the crate with three birds in it. He was going to kill one in order to give the other two room to breathe.

Turkeys are big, and turkeys are strong. Joe opened the lid about six inches, and the thrashing turned to pandemonium. Two of the birds tried to break for freedom. Flapping and clawing frantically, they pummeled the third one until it lay nearly helpless under their feet.

That was the one Joe wanted. The helpless one. The one that couldn't compete. Was this a microcosm of the law of the jungle? Predators do, after all, pick the halt and the lame. He waited until there was a natural separation in the cageˆ the two strong ones at one end, the third one helpless at the otherˆ then, quick as a blink, raising the lid high enough to reach, he grabbed the weak one by the neck and snatched him out.

Now, he had to move with precision and speed. The two strong ones, seeing an exit, lunged for it. Joe slammed the lid hard on their heads. The weak one, realizing death was near, flapped and clawed with renewed energy. Joe had to finish him off in order to not be injured himself. He grabbed the bird's neck in two hands like he would grab a stick. He held the knife securely with his ring and little fingers. Then, just like breaking a stick, he popped it's neck. I had expected the bird to stop thrashing, but it didn't. Joe folded the neck halves over the knife blade and held them fast with one hand as he snatched the blade through with his free hand. Then he let them go. This time, I was certain the bird was dead. It wasn't. The head lay on one side on the concrete floor, it's visible eye agape, it's beak moving, but unable to screech. The body ran around the basement in circles flapping its wings, bumping into walls and stairs and the chicken-wire cages. At one point, it stepped on its own head, and flipped it to the other side. Eventually, it ran itself into a corner and ran and flapped in place until it simply slowed down and stopped. By now, too, the beak was still and the grey, wrinkled eyelid was closed. The dance had stopped; the audience appeased. Death had finally come for real.

I sit staring at the chess board. "What about the group?" I ask.

"What about the group?"

"You broke us up."

"We were already broke up. Dempsey saw to that. I just told it like it was, and stopped pretending we could still do gigs together."

"We were doing gigs."

"We were half doing gigs."

"We had regular work."

"Small clubs every other weekend ain't regular work, and Dempsey missed half of those."

"He had problems."

"He was fucking high."

"We managed without him."

"We were a three-man quartet. He was never there!"

"God bless America, Piano Man, you don't just throw somebody aside just because they have a few problems."

"That boy had more than a few problems."

"And twenty-five hundred dollars didn't bust you."

"It was the fucking principle of it."

"Principle!" I say. I thump my queen onto the board. "Check!"

You look at the board, then at him. "What is happening with us, man?"

"Nothing is happening with us."

"Nothing you say. You just gave me your queen."

I look at the board. "Crap," I say. Then I turn my face to stone. "Take her," I say.

"Take the move back."

"Take her, for God sake!"

"What is the problem?" you ask.

"The problem is you, Piano Man."

"Me? What did I do?"

"You think you're such a big shot."

"Why, Œcause I don't suck up-- I'm sorry-- get along?"

"What makes you so blessed high and mighty?"

"Nothing," you say. "I just know I'm a man."

"A man?"

"Damn right! And a black man at that!"

"What is so special about being a black man?"

"Come on, Juke! A black man is the strongest man on the face of the motherfucking planet," you say. And honkies are scared to death of us! That's why they're trying to kill us all off, man, just like they killed off all the Indians, Œcause they was probably scared to death of them, too. That's why they carved all them honky presidents on Mount Rushmore in the heart of Indian country. Call they self trying to humiliate some fucking body!"

"How are they trying to kill us all off?" I ask.

"You know how scared of us the are?"

"No, Johnny," I say, "how scared of us are they?"

"One dead nigger can turn ten grown ass honkies into men. That's how scared of us they are now and always have been. You've seen them pictures of a whole gang of honkies killing one nigger and them standing around all proud like they done done something worthy of preserving for posterity. They're punks," you say, "snotty-nosed punks who will hide in a gang or behind a badge or anywhere else rather than fuck with a nigger one-on-one."

"So, how are they trying to kill us all off?"

"They see what we see. They see us taking over everything we get our black asses into. That's why they don't want to let us in nothing. First it was bicycles and boxing. Then it was basketball. Then football. Then baseball. Now it's tennis and golf. And you can forget the whole music industry. We taking over everything physical. That's why they trying to position the mental as superior to the physical. That way, they think they can still win the who-is-the-superior-man contest. What they don't know is don't nobody give a fuck about that shit but them. They in the contest alone."

"Then how come you're so proud to be black?" I ask.

"Because we know that a superior body is a superior mind, and visa- versa, and that the superior man is found on the inside, not on the outside. That's what makes us so strong. They see America turning black, and they hate it. But fuck Œem. ŒCause next, we taking over all the mental shit, too. This is just manifest destiny phase two. We taking over this country like them motherfucking killer honey bees."

You chortle and take his queen with your knight. He scarcely notices.

"How are they trying to kill us all off?" I ask again.

"AIDS," you say.

"AIDS?"

"AIDS."

"You're an idiot if you believe that."

"You're an idiot if you don't."

"Never mind why they would do that, . . ."

"I just told you why."

". . . but how would they do that?"

"I just told you that, too."

"AIDS?"

"AIDS is germ warfare."

"But we're not at war."

"You're not at war. They are, and they are winning. This is the King Alfred plan in operation."

"Winning what?"

"The war! They are taking Africa just like they took America, and for the same reason."

"Namely?"

"AIDS is the new blanket with small pox."

"And the reason," I ask again.

"So white folks can live there."

"White folks are already living there."

"Not like they gon' be."

"Meaning what?"

"Right now, Africa is predominantly black. In fifty years, it will be predominantly white."

"Based on what?"

"Read the newspapers, man. Niggers are dying in Africa in droves," you say. "It's your move."

I look at the board. "Where's my queen?" I ask.

"I took it."

"You took my queen?"

"You gave her to me."

"Yeah, but I didn't think you would take her."

"Well, she's gone, and so is Africa," you say. "But that's ok, because niggers will survive. Our seed is strong, and his seed is dying. We the oldest people on earth, and they the youngest. Niggers tolerate the antics of honkies like a sage tolerates the antics of a teenager. We just wish they would grow the fuck up."

I stare at the jagged arrangement of pieces on the board. "The part you forget," I say, "is serendipity, and the role it plays in the grand scheme." I take his knight with my bishop. "Check."

"Ok," you ask, "what role does it play?"

"None," I say. "It just looks like serendipity to the untrained eye. This is all part of God's plan."

"So what are you talking about?"

"The race does not go to the swift."

"Does the race go to the race that thinks it is the swift?"

"Nobody knows who the race will go to."

"Did the good preacher tell you that?"

"King?" I ask. "No, I don't think he ever said anything like that."

"So what are you talking about?"

I remember the two brothers on the streetcar and wonder what happened to that woman. They led her away like jailers leading away a convict. Did they kill her? Did they rob her? Did they rape her? All the above? None of the above? "I'm talking about white people are dying, too," I answer.

"Not in the same numbers."

"It's not over, yet."

"They already have a vaccine," you say. "Made from eggs."

"For AIDS?"

"Of course."

"Then why aren't they using it?"

"Not enough white people are dying. They hope that by then most black and yellow people will already be dead. China is next, you know."

"China will fight back," I say.

"It won't matter," you say, "Œcause warfare as we have known it on this planet has changed forever. Never again will there be on an open field two armies vying for victory."

"Are you crazy?"

"No, it's true," you say. "This country has seen to that. The military of the United States of America is superior to all the other armies of the world combined. The term Œworld class' as it relates to armies is meaningless, and everybody knows it. Not only that, but this situation ain't likely to change anytime soon Œcause no country on earth has the economic power to do the research and development needed to catch up."

"So now what?" I ask.

"Now the field of battle has changed. It's like the age of knights. Only now all the knights are on the same side. Knights were unchallenged for three hundred years. It took that long for someone to invent the crossbow. So now, in the absence of a latter day crossbow, all wars will be guerrilla wars. There is only one arena where the U.S. military is ineffective, and that is among civilians. Therefore, necessarily, all wars will be wars of terror. Civilians have to learn to defend themselves, Œcause the state can't do it. They don't want you to know that, though. They want you to think everything is under control. That's what banning guns is about. And in time, with the passage of one or two laws, all violent acts will be acts of terror, and all crimes will be elevated to the status of threats to national security. All criminals will be considered enemy combatants, and all the normal laws that are in place to protect the defendant's rights will be worthless, Œcause all crimes will be tried by military tribunals."

"Who is this they you keep talking about?"

"Honkies," you answer. "Well, not all honkies, Œcause these moves won't benefit all honkies, not in the long run. It'll benefit only the rich and corporations, Œcause low level honkies can't see what's happening. They will be the same wage slaves and cannon fodder they've always been."

"What white folks are you talking about? Who are they? Where are they?"

"Used to be that slaves and indentured servants worked together for mutual freedom. But somewhere along the line, top honkies told bottom honkies they were better than niggers, and bottom honkies have been buying it ever since. Poor people have been divided, and are on the verge of being conquered unless these red neck honkies wake up. But they won't. They like feeling superior to somebody. They would rather feel superior than be free. Like always, niggers is on they own. They've seen to that."

"Who is this they?" I ask. "Does the president know about this?"

"Your president? The one who fancies himself a mighty oak, but who in fact is barely a scrub? He's in on it!"

"Get serious!"

"I am serious," you say. "Hell, don't get me started. The man is a fool!"

"Who else?" I ask.

"Oh, I'm started now! Not only is he a fool, but he is an ignorant fool who has surrounded himself with other ignorant fools. Together, they are like the three blind mice wearing dark glasses trying to point the direction they want for the whole world to follow. They've got little teeny-weeny white canes pointed everywhere."

"Ok, ok," I say. "Who else?"

"Just watch him with that little demented smile of his. Listen to him. He talks like a fuckin' lawyer out of both sides of his mouth. Listen and remember. The half truths. The outright lies. The jumping to conclusions with little or no supporting evidence, or evidence gathered from unreliable or biased sources. They ought to impeach his simple ass. The security of the American people is in the hands of a mad man!"

"All right already! Who else?"

You take a deep breath. "I don't know," you answer. "If I knew that, I would be trying to stop them."

"You know," I say, "I think you're paranoid."

"Maybe I am," you say, "but does that mean that I'm wrong?"

"It means that anything you say is suspect. We are a great people," I say. "We built the pyramids, and taught the Greeks about democracy."

"So what?" you answer.

"There's Cush and the giant castles of Zimbabwe."

"And thousands of honkies studied in Timbuktu long before Europe was out of the Dark Ages," you say, "but so what? Knowledge of the past is good, if you can get it. Most of the history taught today is just some shit to further the honky's agenda. But even knowledge of the past that is true can't by itself save you from the tyranny of today."

"What tyranny?!" I ask.

You ignore his question, and look at the board. You move your king one space to the left.

He has no answer, so I change the subject. "Kong called me this morning," I say.

"He did?! How is he? I ain't seen that nigger in twenty years. Where has he been?"

"Out in California in prison."

"For what?"

"He got out just yesterday."

"Is he ok?"

"He caught ŒNita with some man and killed them both in a fit of rage." I slide my rook over on a line with his king. "He blames you for it."

"Me? Why me?"

"You're the reason they had to go to California in the first place."

"How so?"

I look up at him. "Everybody knows you were sleeping with her."

"Is it my move?"

"It's your move."

You ponder the board and your options. You should have castled ten moves ago.

"So were you?"

"What, you want me to confirm what everybody knows?"

"Yes."

You touch your rook, then pull your hand away. You touch your black bishop. "It's no wonder Kong fucked around all the time. She was cute, but she didn't know what to do."

"You have to move your rook," I say.

"Why?"

"You touched it."

"We still playing by that?"

"Yeah, since I touched my queen."

"Your queen is gone." You line your black bishop up with a pawn to further block his rook.

"You're cheating."

"What?"

"You took my queen."

"I told you to take your queen back. You didn't. Now she's gone."

"Dang, Piano Man, play by the rules."

"There ain't no rules, nigger."

"What do you mean? The world would be chaos without rules."

"The world is chaos. That's how you know there are no rules."

"The world is in order. Governments are in control."

". . . of nothing," you say. People sell their souls to get elected, then act like fools once they get in. Look at your president."

"That's the way democracy works."

"Yes, but the process is chaos, not order. It is not governed by rules."

"Well," I say, "the rules are in place, but nobody follows them."

"So, what's the difference between no rules and rules that nobody follows?"

"There is a lot of difference."

"Ok, let's hear it."

"If there were no rules, people would be killing each other in the streets."

"People already are."

"But not like they would be."

"What else?"

"There would be wars all the time."

"There already are. What else?"

"There would be no justice . . ."

"There already ain't."

". . . and no recourse for people who have been done wrong."

"Same answer."

"But . . .."

"But what?"

"There have got to be rules."

"Why?"

"Because without rules, there would be chaos."

"This is where I came in."

"But . . .."

"Look at it, Juke. Be a man, and look at it. The belief in rules is what keeps you a Tom. When you say get along, you don't mean be nice. You mean follow what you perceive to be the rules governing the situation at the time. I don't follow those rules, because I know they don't exist. That's why I am dangerous. That's why niggers are dangerous. We don't follow the white man's rules. We know that they are made to exist in your mind by people who want to keep you and people like you a Tom."

"So did you?"

"In fact," you say, "there ain't a rule or a law the honkie has ever made that a nigger is bound to obey. Not legal, not religious, not social, not nothing. He don't follow them, so why should we? The president smokes dope, but jails is full of niggers that smoke dope. For him, it's just a campaign issue. For us, it's hard time in the big house. Honkies make rules that he says everybody should live by. But as soon as niggers start winning by those rules, he changes them. Honkies make rules and laws for honkies to win, and to keep niggers down. That's it. So the bottom line is that a nigger is supposed to do whatever he wants to do whenever he wants to do it. He supposed to make his own rules. Period. Fuck these honkies and all they laws."

"Did you do it?"

"Here's how they use them rules of theirs," you say. "A cop gave me a traffic ticket a couple of months ago for not signaling when I changed lanes. I was driving a cab for some extra money. In court, this cracker cop starts in giving all this aggravating stuff. He said I was speeding more than 20 miles over the speed limit, and that there were road workers present in the area. Then he starts making noises about maybe I shouldn't be allowed to have the driving privilege. And the judge is buying it!"

"Get out of here!" I say.

"So, I start getting scared. I tell the judge that I need this license because my livelihood depends on it. He was unmoved. Then I point out that the ticket shows that the traffic at the time of the offense was heavy and down to one lane, so I couldn't have been speeding. The judge grunted. Then I pointed out that the stop occurred at night on a holiday, so there weren't any road workers present. The judge grunted again, and looked at the cop. The cop hemmed and hawed. That's when I blurted out that the cop lied to the court. The judge grunted loud this time, and squirmed in his seat. That's when I told the judge he should hold the cop in contempt of court, put him in jail for a few days. Folks in the courtroom was laughing now," you say, "Œcause this was getting good. But the judge let him off the hook. Said he probably had a family and blah, blah, blah. Then I said I had a family, too, and he had no qualms about taking my livelihood. The people were murmuring to themselves now, and I was feeling it. I stepped back and said, ŒYou honkies sure know how to stick together.' Folks got real quiet. That honky stood up and pointed that gavel at me and said to get the fuck out of his courtroom before he held me in contempt."

"No, he didn't!"

"Yeah," you say, "he did. As long as the law worked against me, he was cool with it. But as soon as I worked it against the cop, there was a problem."

"Umph, umph, umph." I shake my head. Then I ask again, "so did you do it?"

"Did I do what?"

"Did you sleep with her?"

"Oh, that," you say. "It was politics."

"What?"

"Kong had beat her up, and she wanted to get even with him."

"Meaning?"

"She was being a politician."

"And?"

"And I didn't do it."

I take his bishop with a knight, and he takes the knight with the pawn, opening the lane for the rook.

"He wants to come stay with me for a while. Says he wants to get even with you. He didn't want me to tell you."

"So why did you?"

"Maybe to see you squirm."

"You won't see me on Satan's anvil."

"Suppose he tries to kill you."

"That boy is a bigger pussy than you. He wouldn't even think it."

I move my rook down to his pawn row. "I'm just telling you what he said."

"Kong wants to kill me for fucking ŒNita?"

"He said he might."

"That means he might not."

"What would you do if he tried?"

"I would kick that little nigger's black ass, that's what I would do."

"He's been in prison for a long time."

"So what?"

"Prison makes you hard. He's been pumping iron for twenty years. He doesn't take any mess."

"Well, neither do I," you say.

"I remember the first gig we played with Kong."

"The Peek-Inn," you say.

"That's right, in beautiful downtown . . .. Where was it?"

"I don't even remember."

"He had those old, beat up, dilapidated, decrepit looking conga drums."

"They didn't even match."

"People looked at him, then at them drums, and shook their heads. One woman out right laughed at him. Then we started playing."

"Black Magic Woman."

"One of your favorites," I say.

"Then we hit the bridge."

"Lord have mercy, we hit the bridge, and that nigger started hitting them drums."

"How long did he play?"

"At least fifteen minutes."

"And the honey who laughed at him?"

"He put that bitch's toes in the air!"

"Right there in the back seat of the car!" The two of you laugh.

"And you were cooking on that keyboard that night, too."

"I love them keys," you say. "They're not like other instruments where you can bend the notes and all that nonsense."

"Come on, man, bending notes is where the funk is."

"On piano, it's cut and dried, black and white."

"Life isn't like that," I say.

"Playing piano ain't like every day life," you say. "It's a different world. It is the world of the spirit. There is no grey. There is only black and white, right and wrong. The note you hit is the note you get. If you fuck up and hit the wrong key, it's the wrong note. Ain't no bending it back right."

"Hell, that's true with any instrument."

"You can play only black keys if you want to, or you can play all white keys. But you get the best results if you play them one against the other. Chords and dischords. Damn, I love what I do. And I'm good at it."

"You are such an ass," I say.

"Piano keys are like people. I study people. I study people like I study piano. People don't change, not really. And neither do piano keys. You can caress them, or you can thump them. Either way, they are who they are. They can have different names, B flat or A sharp, but the note is always the same. And if you play them right, even when you improvise, you get the outcome you're after."

"Well, I'll give you this, you were hitting them right that night."

"I had to to keep up with Kong."

"Did you get that pussy, too," I ask. The two of us laugh again.

"We had a lot of good times together," you say.

"We had a lot of bad times, too."

"The good times outnumber the bad."

"The bad times were more intense."

"Like when?" you ask.

"Like the time you stood up on the table in that little club in Oregon, and pissed on this guy's wife."

"Oh, yeah. I remember that one. I had been smoking some of that shit. I was airborne, and they were such dorks. We got run out of town after the crowd beat our asses for about a hour. But it really wasn't my fault."

"What do you mean it wasn't your fault? Wasn't that you standing up there, dick hanging out, pee running into this woman's lap?"

"Well, yeah, but she provoked me," you say.

"How so?"

"She was ugly," you laugh. "The woman had a face like a cow."

I laugh, too. "Being ugly is no reason to pee on somebody."

"Yeah, but she was real ugly. Besides, she talked funny."

"She just had some kind of accent."

"That sure was a funny accent. And he thought she was the greatest thing."

"Of course he thought that. She was his wife."

"Well, my thought was piss on it, so I did."

I learned a lot about Joe that November. More importantly, though, I think he learned a lot about himself. I think he learned that it was hard being a rock. And it was unnecessary. Rocks don't make better men. Maybe money wasn't the real reason we never again killed seven turkeys for Christmas. And maybe that's about the time I started calling him daddy.

"Then," I say, "there was the time the car stopped and it was raining and we had to walk five miles to the next town to get a tow truck."

"I remember that one, too. The tow truck hooked us up, drove a mile, then threw a rod its own self. Your horns got wet."

"I had to have half the valve pads replaced."

"One of Kong's drum heads cracked."

"And we couldn't even get another one wherever we were."

"And to top it all off, the gig had already been canceled. We just didn't know about it, yet."

"All four of us ended up with the flu driving back home, and we didn't have enough money to stop in a hotel."

"We drove for two days."

"Slept in the car."

"Ate peanuts and potato chips." The two of you sit pensive for a long moment.

"I know who that is in the picture," I say in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Ok, Juke, who is it?"

"It's ŒCilia Golden." I can feel my mouth curl into a wry smile.

Your heart quickens, but you show no emotion.

"You screwed his mother, didn't you?"

You look at him, but you say nothing.

"Deny it," I say. "Here, let me read the rest of the letter. ŒDear Juke, brother, home boy, my man, if you are reading this letter, I am probably dead. If I took my own life, I'm sorry. If I didn't, oh well, I should have. My life is consumed with shame, . . .'" I pause and look up at him. "Œ. . . and I need you to make it right for me. Piano Man fucked ŒCilia.'" My voice cracked, "ŒI could never face him after that. He was my best friend. But he hated that I was helping my mother. Once I started using them drugs again, I was too weak to do it myself. Even now, I'm giving him a break. I'm giving him two years to die of natural causes or confess to you or something. If he hasn't or doesn't or whatever, fix it. Love, Dempsey.'"

I take a deep breath, and let my head loll back. A tear streams cool down my cheek.

"Juke, man, I'm sorry. I didn't know he was your brother."

"You knew he was your friend."

"And it's not like she was your mother," you say.

"I've known you all my life," I say. "Do you remember Cora Hughs? She was in our class in seventh grade. She was a cute little black girl. Big tits, big ass legs. You raped her."

"No," you say, "I didn't."

"It was on the playground on the last day of school before summer vacation. You jumped her from behind. She laughed because she thought you were playing. You wrestled her down and pushed your hand into her pussy."

"That was fifty years ago. I was young. I thought she wanted me to do it."

"How could you think that?!"

"I don't know. I was young."

"We were young then. You were lean and fit."

"I was still growing."

"And Cora liked you up until that day. After that, she hated you."

"No," you say, "she still liked me. She just had to act like she hated me because of what I had done to her." You pause. "I've always been misunderstood. When we were kids in kindergarten, there was a boy named Moses who kept fucking with me. He would break my crayons, step on ants I was looking at, pinch me, you know, shit that he knew would make me cry. So I got even with him. I pushed him down the stairs."

"You pushed him down the stairs for breaking your crayons?"

"See, even you don't understand. Those were my favorite crayons. Those were my favorite colors. They were hot colors like orange and yellow and red, and he broke them for no reason at all."

"I remember him," I say. "His name was Moses Abraham, one of the few white kids still at that school back then."

"The fall broke his hip. He never walked quite right after that, at least not for a long time. And his mama cried and his daddy cried and my mama and daddy didn't cry but they apologized and all the teachers said it was an accident and all that. None of them ever knew, but I wanted to hurt that little punk. I wanted to hurt him, and I did."

"You haven't changed much over the years," I say.

"I've changed," you say. "I've gotten stronger."

"You haven't changed like the rest of us have. Not like me. I've mellowed out in a way that you haven't, but I look bad. My hair is white; your's has a few strands of grey. My skin is sagging; your's is toned. My muscles have atrophied; you're still cut. How do you do it?"

"Just lucky, I guess."

"No, this is more than luck. I'm sixty-five and I look eighty. How old are you?"

You stop and think. "6 . . . 66," you say.

"Yeah, but you look forty."

"I told you, I'm lucky. It's in the genes."

"Genes my butt! And come to think of it, as long as I have known you, I've never met your parents."

"Marion and Josephine," you say. "They told me the day I was born, three fools danced in the street picking folks' pockets."

You remember Josephine.

"Shut your motherfucking mouth, and sit your skinny, good-for-nothing ass back down where I told you to sit."

"But mama," you had said, "I got to pee."

"Shut the fuck up before I slap all the black off you."

Your bladder ached and you could feel piss begin to trickle out. "Please, mama," you said, and pinched off your dick through your pants.

Without looking up from her card game, she slashed a backhand straight into the side of your face. The sting of the pain and the noise of the slap ringing in your ear caused you to catch you breath. You lost your hold on your dick, and you could feel the water running down your leg and into your left shoe, soaking your sock.

Josephine cut her eyes at you with such loathing, the trickle burst into a torrent. The muscles in her lips and forehead and at the base of her jaw locked. Her nostrils flared. She reared back and swung again. This time, you saw stars and heard the sound of something hard and heavy hitting the floor.

You had a dream, and in the dream, the something hitting the floor was you. You wanted to see where the dream was going.

"Get up you Simple Simon motherfucker," Josephine said. "Now I got to mop the fucking floor. I ought to send your punk ass to the Audey Home. Get the fuck up!"

You kept feeling a sharp pain over and over again in your rib cage. You opened your eyes, and Josephine was kicking you with the toe of her pointed shoe. Josephine was a motherfucker.

"The way you look isn't natural," I say. "Normal people don't age that slowly."

"Then I guess I'm not normal," you say. "I wonder how ole Cora is doing now.

"I saw her a couple of years ago," I say. "I was in the old Œhood visiting some folks, and I saw her sitting on one of those benches at a bus stop. She looked bad. Those big pretty tits were sagging to her stomach, and those big ole legs were huge old legs with varicose veins. She looked like she hadn't had a bath."

"That's odd," you say, "she used to want to be an Olympic synchronized swimmer."

"How come you remember that so well?" I ask.

"I remember you was always the choirboy," you say.

"I just wanted to live life right, that's all."

"I thought it was because you didn't have no balls."

"I had balls!"

"I know, you just never used them."

"I just didn't want to always be getting in trouble."

"Neither did I."

"But you always did. I always thought it was you that set fire to ole man Madison's garage."

"It wasn't me," you say.

"I think it was."

"You accusing me?"

"Then who did it?" I ask.

"Michael Lee."

"Now I know you're lying."

"How so?"

"Michael Lee was with me that day," I say.

"All day?"

"All day."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," I say.

"Think back. It was a Saturday afternoon."

"I remember," I say, "about four o'clock."

"Where were you?"

"I was at home."

"With Michael Lee?"

"Yes."

"Doing what?"

"We were playing something," I say.

"Think hard."

"I don't remember."

"You were building a radio."

"That's right! How did you know?"

"Michael Lee told me," you say.

"Why would he tell you that?"

"He was my buddy, too," you say. "He was using you for an alibi. He went to the bathroom while you were doing some soldering. He was gone for twenty minutes, but you were so into what you were doing that you never noticed."