Something make me left that book in the library, though. Maybe it was too much to take, the way it make my mind spin and spin. I wish to hell I had grab it and run. From then on, Cross River is burn in my brain. I never thought too much about what’s to happen with me next. I knew I ain’t want to stay teaching forever. Some people expect me to come headmaster like Daddy, take over where he left off, but that’s not who I am, I knew that. Whenever I think about the future after that day in the library, I hear Cross River whispering behind my thoughts. Maybe it’s always been there. I don’t know. I wouldn’t doubt it.
But what kind of people is this? I think. These Cross River folks bloody they masters and live free like they not afraid. The book talk about the Haitians too, but I hear about them plenty. The Cross River negroes is new to me. I see my island in a footnote. Some Cross Riverians set off through the Americas, trying to export insurrection. Some even settle in Trinidad, the beauty just hold them, even though they have slaves all over to free. I don’t know much about our history before Daddy. Maybe we come from Cross River? How I know our people ain’t take part in the Great Insurrection? And that is what draw me and your mother to our homeland, Cross River. Maybe. Who knows, is all I’m saying, Kin.
Something about this book, Kin, you don’t read it. You read it, but it make you live it, like a dream. I come a Haitian that day, and then I come a Cross Riverian. And just like a dream I live that third insurrection too, but when I close the book, when I leave the library, I forget what it’s like in the third insurrection, and then I must spend the rest of my life chasing it down.
After I read it, I say to Alton, This happen somewhere in America.
I sit there and retell the Cross River part of the book as if I make it up right there. I wasn’t sure I didn’t.
They burn down the plantation and kill they masters dead, I say. Boy, they ain’t teach us none of that up St. Mary’s, oui. And I suspect they not going to teach it to you neither.
Alton nod, from politeness more so than interest. When all this happen? he ask me, but I can tell he not that concerned with my answer.
Back in the 1800s, I say. Early part. I go go back to the library tomorrow and get that book for you. They call it the Great Insurrection. Got a town standing to this day in America. They ain’t never shut it down. I have to get you that book, boy.
Alton make he lips so and turn from me like he can’t be seen with a liar.
The librarian shrug when I go back. It not on the shelf. No record of it ever being in the library, she say.
You sure? I ask.
Perhaps it was a patron’s, she tell me. But I don’t think it was. I look for it in bookshops off Eastern Main Road. Every time I see a bookshop, I look for it. When I get to Howard, I dig through the library stacks in search of it. I still look for it to this day. Now we got the Internet, and I look for it there too, but no dice, Kin.
The smoke from behind that Safeway, I think it like what I experience when I read the book. You look at me crazy, Kin. When you ever know me to not be rational? I studied chemistry when I was at Howard. I’m a man of science, but you can’t tell a feeling nothing about science.
Them people in the crowd start to pelt one set of bricks and rocks and thing at the Safeway, and then when they finish they swarm like a crowd of ants. I ain’t hear no sirens in the distance. It occur to me I ain’t see not one cop. Later they send the National Guard to lock down the streets, but D.C. belong to us right then.
I think about turning around, leaving the place to the people and they anger. Come back to the Safeway only when I need bread and milk. But the book. The book is the thing.
Someone pull me. A woman. A young woman. Come on, she say. Come on. Don’t stand there. Come on.
I don’t think of my father. I don’t hesitate. I do as she say, as the crowd say. I come right on. You should have seen these people throwing things off the shelves. People with arms full of cheese, socks, heads of lettuce. Anything they can take with two hands.
A man run past me; he bump me with he shoulder. One set of bread go flying all over the place. I apologize and we both on the floor collecting the bread. His ill-gotten bread. He tell me, he say, It’s nothing, brother. It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. Hurry up and get you something before the pigs come. Don’t worry about me. Go on, man. Go on.
So I go on.
I see they got turkeys, but people and them tell me that’s what you eat here in November. I ain’t know if it’s strange to be eating turkey in April. I get to the dairy part. But I don’t need no milk, no cheese, no eggs. I turn and see the bread. Got enough bread at home. I just come to this place a few days before white people decide to blow up the world. Not much I need, yes. I had to stop and laugh. I never shop so carefully. Neville, I say, what the devil you doing in here anyhow?
I ain’t imagine riots this way. All the upheavals I read about, heard about, and now I was in the middle of one, like the rebellious slaves in the book. Like me when I experience the book. That’s what the devil I was up to.
I wander around. Floating. Dislocated. Remembering that I lived through the Haitian Revolution and the Great Insurrection, both. The book make it so. Don’t look at me crazy, Kin. I know how it sound.
I stumble to the tobacco aisle. Still empty-handed, but here is the pipe lying on the floor. Finally, the pipe. Someone knock it from the shelf. The wood on the thing look smooth and shiny. Plastic tip on the end. I take it out the bag and rest it at the corner of my mouth.
Lottie, I mumble to myself. Lottie! Lottie! I take on the voice of my blind, senile old grandfather. Living all alone on all that land on Eastern Main Road, and when your grandmother come to visit, me and one or a couple of your uncles or aunts in tow, he always know it she. The old man ain’t know much of anything else, not anything about his grandchildren or anything it have going on in the world.
Your grandmother warn over and over before we go inside, Don’t get too close. Your grandfather don’t have all he wits.
Once on a good day, I could touch my grandfather, but that was early on in my life. By the time I was seven or so, only Mom could touch him or they say he was bound to fly into fits. That was something I ain’t want to test. Mom always bring tobacco and dinner mints to calm him, and when she walk in she call, Poopa! Though that magic sense he have already tell him it she. Later when Grandpa get older and more agitated and excitable, he hold a cutlass tight in he hand when we walk through the door and he only relax he grip when he sure it your grandmother and not bandits come to raid the house.