Wet, they sit in a dry space against a tree. The sun soon follows. Makes a square patch on the bark. Dissolves in your thoughts.
Say, you say, man is the measure of all things.
What?
Jus say, I hate God.
Don’t say that, Abu says.
I repeat, say, I hate God. You speak in a place where you can wrestle with your shadow and never lay hold of it.
No, Abu says.
Afraid?
You don’t believe in God?
No. Why should I? He does terrible things. Why would he let Cookie deform and die? Kill Nap? Kill R.L.? Chop off Sam’s leg? If God exists — you poke out your chest — let him strike me dead.
You better not say that. Abu scoots away from you.
We are dwarfs on the shoulders of gods, you say. The words roll across the surface of your tongue. Words you had discovered in your wide reading. We can see farther into the distance than our parents and grandparents could see. Wise up.
DOWN DOWN IN WEST MEMPHIS, Lula Mae rewards you with a present, a sunburst Sears, Roebuck guitar.
You doing good in school, Lula Mae said.
Well. I’m doing well.
But I hear yo math ain’t too good. Strive to put the bottom rail on top.
The train ride home, you sit the guitar in the seat beside you—Red, move outa the way. Sit back there. And keep yo hands off it: it ain’t no toy—and touch it like a friend. Home, you perch on the edge of your bed. Slant the guitar across your body. Brush the elevator-cable-thick strings but barely raise a note. Hit it harder, Jesus says. You hit it harder, give all six strings — you counted them — a firm karate chop. The hollow body echoes a sound like a rake scraping concrete. Damn! Jesus laughs. Hit it another way, he says. You do. And this way and that way and the other. In the days that follow, your novice fingers grope for the dark strings at every opportunity. You hit them again and again, determined to produce the sounds inside your head. The strings become necessary, loud blood flowing through six red veins. Even today, your hands will sweat when you don’t or can’t touch them. You climb inside the deep dark well of the guitar and gaze silently about. Sound and sight enter from a bright world far away. Hours pass. Then you hear footsteps approaching from down the hall. You hide the guitar in the cave under your bed. Sheila throws the door open to the sound of your musical snoring.
Dear Lula Mae,
I am well. I got one tooth out the chair fell on it. I want to see you. I got the book you sint. Sheila read too stories in it. I still got the guitar. I like them when I coming to see you again?
Love Hatch
At the first opportunity, you lug your guitar to school for show-and-tell. (It was either the guitar or your chameleon, Dogma.)
Where you get that guitar?
Down South.
Down South?
Yeah. Down South. My grandmother gave it to me.
What she doin down South?
She live there. You ain’t never been down South?
Nawl. I’m from here.
At the next show-and-tell, Abu presents a drum set to the class—Copycat! Monkey see, monkey do—the price tag still attached. I can play music too. A full set, not the kit with a single planet of drum, but the whole bright constellation of cymbals, tom-toms, cowbells, snare, and bass traps.
Dear Hatch,
Be a good boy. Don’t aggravate your mamma. Racket and confusion her. Learn to play that thing. And jump at the sun.
Love your grandmother
Lula Mae
You lug your guitar over to Abu’s house. Mrs. Harris puts the two of you in the basement and shuts the door.
What we gon call our group?
Third Rail.
At home in your room, you continue to practice. You finger notes and miss them. Fingers snap off strings, soundless. Try again. Fingers jump back, riff-ready. Switch to the right track. Gradually — seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months — you begin to hear it for the first time. Records are black seeds which sprout musical trees. You hack through foliage. Perched birds sing on six twanging limbs.
SO YOU PLAY GUITAR? Uncle John asks.
Yeah.
Bet you ain’t never heard Jimi?
Jimi who?
Listen. Uncle John spins the record.
Sound surprises. You hear a guitarist who is also an orchestra. One man who is six. Oak, cherry, redwood, pine, rosewood, mahogany — six limbs bunched in a single trunk of sound.
Hear that? you say to Abu.
Hear what?
I gotta learn how to play like that.
What? Hear what?
MRS. HARRIS (Geraldine you call her — behind her back) leans over the church piano, her fingers spread web-wide on the keys.
A little gold in the church
A prayer in the name
Her round, flat, black skillet face shows no movement, a black dot of musical notation. Choir-robe sleeves rolled up, her hands run slow across the ivory tracks.
I got fiery fingers. I got fiery hands.
And when I get up to heaven, I’m gon play in that fiery band.
She mixes sin and syncopation, tongue hanging out the side of her mouth, music-thirsty. She keeps a glass of water on the piano but never drinks it. Holy water? She bangs heavy chords. She is a grinder, not a tickler.
Reverend Ransom constructs three-hour sermons to shore up the frailty of his voice. He can’t make print crackle into life. Weak, lengthy sermons that fail to rise above the gold-edged page, to flutter about the congregation’s head and bother them to rise. Though ye have lain among the sheepfolks, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove that is covered with silver wings, and her feathers like gold. Sermon done, Reverend Ransom leads the congregation in fifteen minutes of song. The congregation is unable to move in their seats — except for an occasional fidget to relieve sore bench butt — never rock wood or transform their stationary pews into musical chairs.
Tough luck. No fun, no terror. You have never attended a service where someone does not get happy, shout, and dance the Holy Ghost. A first for everything.
The choir’s strong voices carry the song. Forked tongues lifting Sheila like meat from the bench. She throws her arms and spine back in a dead man’s float. White-uniformed nurses attempt to pull her back to earth. The song slows. She descends. White-uniformed nurses keep her fast to the bench. Fan her to cool the hot fuel of her spirit. She leaps straight into the air and screams, her eyes rolling one way and her body another.
My dick bigger than yours, you say.
Be quiet, Abu says. We in the house of the Lord. He might hear you.
You got a lil dick, a Christian dick.
Do not let vile words defileth your mouth.
My dick taller than a mountain. Higher than Moses.
Be quiet.
Fatter than the ocean. And deeper than Jonah.
Shut up. Reverend Ransom lookin at us.
My jockstrap slung the boulder that slew—
Children should not talk in church. Brimstone words blister your face. You face them. Reverend Ransom’s finger points antenna-like at you, sounding the depths of your heart. Boy, I shall have words with you.