With his gritty hands, he clung to the mossy green branches of a tree as if it were a natural thing for a human to do, but he isn’t a human, not anymore…. Upon seeing me he howled. Perhaps in terror. I’ve been told that he’s come to distrust humans based on his past treatment.
I was amused by the howl. It rang loud and sounded as if it came from the center of his gut. My mouth hung open upon seeing him leap to another tree like he had been born to perform this feat. I watched the creased bottom of his feet, his dirt-and-hair-covered legs, the scraggly whiskers around his flaccid uncircumcised penis and testicles, the decaying leaves in his nest of a beard. His head had become a forest. Scars and bleeding open wounds covered his body, as if he had just battled a bear and narrowly defeated it, but he did not appear to be in pain. The former Louis Smith was truly a sight….
Before this point I had never seen him, this man who believes himself an animal. He was like a character out of childhood myth. I had nearly forgotten that I was observing him as part of my job. I reached for my camera, slowly putting it together so as not to scare him. He watched what I did curiously. I wondered if there could be any understanding in him at all now; if he remembered what a camera was; if after his treatment by police, every black object in the hand of a human evoked the baton that broke his ribs and bruised his face. Did he have any memories at all, or did he just have instincts?
I snapped a picture and Louis screamed. It was a deep and painful scream, emotive and reedy. Even the trees must have shivered. It echoed throughout the Wildlands…. I kept taking shots, gripping the camera tightly as much out of fear as out of fascination. It was like a talisman, the only bit of protection I had. Louis was much taller than me. His muscles were defined, almost as if he worked out at a gym. This is a funny thought, because Louis knows nothing of gyms anymore. He’d be scared inside of one, running about untamed, horrifying normal men and women, a naked animal on the loose in the middle of civilization.
He leapt down and charged me, using his arms to propel himself forward. It was as graceful as it was odd. Before I knew it, he was upon me…. I could smell his rank scent, it filled my sinuses and inhabited the back of my throat. I swallowed it, taking it inside of me. It rested in my gut. He slapped the camera from my hands and it fell to the earth and broke apart.
Just by instinct, I reached to pick it up. Louis bellowed and threw me like I was a sack of clothing. I landed on my back, my heart pounding like the primal drums many native tribes used to communicate. I was motionless. He pounced and stood over me. His face was twisted into an angry scowl. There on the ground, I eased backward. What is the old cliché, I wondered, is it that animals can smell fear? I must have been rank with it… Seeing my expression — I can only assume it was my expression — his face eased and I watched the anger fade. His features became confused and slightly more human. Some spark seemed to fly through his brain, like he had suddenly remembered his humanity. All the science I studied told me that was now impossible, but I saw it on his face through the mess of unkempt hair on his cheeks. He breathed in deeply, as if sighing, and moved his jaw up and down. Was he attempting speech?… There I was, a distant reflection in his moist eyes…
Klan
There was then the time the Klan galloped through the main yard of Freedman’s University late in the evening. The perils of an open campus.
Four white-sheeted ghosts on white horseback riding in procession. The Klan member in front and the one in back held tight to flaming torches. The other two, on and off, waved the glowing white screens of their cell phones in their white-gloved hands. I remember the procession as a blur of white and fiery orange and gray from the smoke.
They trotted circles around the statue of our founder as if to menace the dead white man. The ghosts followed that by circling the flagpole, which held a fluttering Old Glory along with the town flag — the book and the sword that make up the Cross River crest in a square of white set against a field of red at the top half and a field of blue at the bottom.
It surprised me how frozen the ghosts made us; I include myself in this. If they tore down our town pride — the banner our ancestors held as they hacked limbs to wrench themselves free — perhaps we’d dash into confrontation, but absent that we became cowards. The Klan members pulled at their reins and some of the horses stood on their hind legs and whinnied and they all then galloped off. For the first time in ten minutes, I released the air I held deep within my chest.
When I started at Freedman’s, during orientation, a speaker who was an alumna and board member talked of sitting in economics class next to a shy young man with a thick West African accent. They struck up a friendship, she said, pausing to wink and nod, which I took as an insinuation of a more intimate relationship. The woman ended the story with his name, and I recognized it as the name of the warlord-turned-dictator-for-life of a small African republic. We were supposed to be impressed by the prominence of our alums, and at the same time we were encouraged to wonder what sort of world-shaker sat beside us.
One day the dictator will be overthrown and executed or tried in The Hague for crimes against humanity.
I thought of all this today because Malcolm Bailey began our job interview by reminiscing about the Klan ride. He remembered seeing me bloodless and terrified, and at this he chuckled. All I recall of him is the humanities class where we met and how he wept over Okonkwo when things finally did fall apart.
I didn’t mention that, of course, even when he told me of the deal he made with the warlord to acquire cheap gold for the electronics we manufacture. I say we because it was clear then that I had the job if I wanted it.
The last thing he said to me — leaning in real close and whispering — was, They never caught those Klan members, huh?
I don’t believe so, I replied.
Psychology class, brah, he said. Psychology 302: Special Topics in Race and Something or Other. Don’t tell nobody, but that got me an A. Changed my life, too. He tapped the desk three times, and it sounded to me like the clopping of white horses across the Yard. Changed my life.
Razor Bumps
If I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man.
My head — the briar patch it had become — was like the Wildlands, host to all sorts of mythical beasts, for instance Br’er Rabbit, who each night for a month or so untangled himself from my locks and leapt across the living room, leaving to enjoy an adventure or two before returning to the thicket of my dome. That’s according to my wife, who during the Great Hair Crisis of ’05 took it upon herself to become, at my expense and before no audience, the stand-up comedienne she had always dreamt of being.
Her routine irritated me because of the truth in it. I did look ridiculous with my misshapen Afro. Powdery white dandruff dusted from it whenever I turned my head, and knots like asparagus spears burst in all directions. The Barber — everyone referred to him as The Barber except for those that hadn’t had a cut from him — once a great artist, was no more. Sure, he existed. Breathed. Bled. Farted. But he no longer lived. It must be torment for a god to wake up mortal. Not even an exceptional mortal, but a barely competent one.
But then I’d see a head cut with The Barber’s exquisite touch. The sharpness of the hairs. The crispness of the lines. Those sorts of haircuts reminded me that no one else was capable of a perfect cut, and once you’ve had perfection, who could settle for mediocrity? Even excellence? When I saw he was still capable of such heights, I imagined the crisis had ended and everyone would return to The Barber to get cut like we did in the glory days.