Sending Mr Jones and Missus Smith home that night they waited at a bus stop—slept there—hoping for the 5:30 train that would be coming along—what an unfortunate people! Slept at a bus stop with no blankets or anything. Like dogs.
Myself I rushed to the ole Main Street—down here we called it Far Hills. Slunk through silent streets. Thought of much of nothing till I got up behind a car looked like it was doing no good. Busted-out tail lights—we were gonna get ‘im. I put the top light out on my Subaru—deep blue with a racing engine. I had the insides scooped out and new ones put in. Nothing about this car was second best.
“I said son do you know what I’m stoppin’ you for?”
“Man we wasn’t—“
“I said son do you know what I’m stoppin’ you for?”
“Can I help you, officer?”
“You can help me by getting the fuck out of your vehicle. Now.”
His guy leans in from the right.
“ ‘Cuse me. But we was just heading up to our friend’s house. Right up here.”
I pretend to press the button on my radio. “Uh. I need backup two thirty-four on a six eighty-six up on Far Hills location one eight one eight one eight one. Reply with assistance, your friendly roadside program here in Dayton, Ohio. Now you. You two. Out of the car. Don’t make me ask you two assholes again to get your saggy asses out a tha motherfucking car!”
I kick the side of their beater.
Drew my gun.
Fuck these motherfuckers if they didn’t want to play ball. Fuck these motherfuckers.
I looked ‘em over. Coupla bald head wearin’, dope-smoking motherfuckers. Coupla cool cats.
“We’ll see how cool you are when you’re in the slammer.”
I see one of them look at the other but he doesn’t say anything.
The street is silent, just the three of us along a curve.
“I’m gonna play a game with you all. It’s called, When Martin Comes. Have you heard this one?”
“No.” “No sir.”
“Martin is my supervisor. He’s the big dick in our place of employment. See? We’re gonna call Martin now.”
I fake-press the button and fake radio-in a call for Martin.
“—ten oh seven one. So Martin, my boys, is a brute of a man. He’s an absolute brute. When the French came over with their circus—Cirque du Soleil?—they missed the ball with this man. Martin could show Daniel Craig how to be Batman, if such a thing is possible. From the depths of my man’s imagination come bench curls and jute presses (the abdominal press of the southwestern Ohio man’s gym routine)—from his method of riding Black Black horses the power between your legs the frontline of a re-enactment arching back to Gettysburg (say it with me, like LettuceBerg, Gettysburg) to Martin’s 007-quick hitting-your-head-against-a-urinal reflexes to the Forest Gump feather floating down down down like the Dow when my man in the sky forgets to pretend we’re not having a pandemic when my Batman mayor of New York juggles hand towels blotted with ink the blood the unavoidable stains on your hand when you kill a person in cold blood on this very circle on the edge of Ohio in the middle of winter this’ll be a February murder this’ll be a February murder!”
“No, man!” “No!!”
“Why not?” I say.
“Because you don’t really want to kill us!” “Because you want to do the right thing!!”
“I’m sick of doing the right thing.”
“No—you’re not!” “Man we’re going to die.”
“He’s right!”
“Oh!”
“Do you know what the devil in the pale moon light?” I ask. “Do you know what the devil in the pale moon light? Do. You. Know. What the devil. In the pale moonlight? Have you danced with the devil in the pale moon light. Insert Joker speech here—technical difficulties!—we need the joker speech here. Have you guys seen Batman? The original Batman. No? Only the Christopher Nolan ones. No, this is before that. Before your time. Before Christian Bale—this is one I would think you guys have seen. He’s in the library. He says, ‘I’m the devil, do you want to dance with me in the pale moon light?” Or something like that—it’s something. Anyway this line kinda reminds me of right now. The three of us—so intimate. So lovely, that we’ve decided to meet up like this, here in Oakwood, which—what are you boys doing in Oakwood tonight?”
“We were just going home.”
“Really? Where’s home?”
“Just up the road.”
“Where.”
“Just here.”
“Where? Up there? Where the three million dollar houses are? Or up here? Where the five million dollar houses are?”
“Oh, no. We didn’t know there were any five million dollar houses there.”
“We just wanna go to our one house—which is right up there on the left.”
“Where? What’s the street name? You dumb shit. You no more live up there than my cat likes to be fucked up the ass with Dasani bottles. She may do it—that don’t mean she likes it! Where’s this house of yours? Name one street. Name one street within five miles of here and then tell me you’re not down in our White neighborhood selling drugs.”
“I swear, we’re not—“
“Tell me you’re not down here selling drugs.”
“We ain’t—!”
“Soma these white girls call you from their basement? Having titty parties and decided they need some of your chronic? Which house was it? Brittany? On Castle Road? Or Michelle, 187 Lakeview Terrace? Or Kimberly—her snug little ass. You guys like pussy? Like cock? You ever do meth, crank, speed? I’m a fan of all three (though never together). Like little girls—like little boys, too. Like to wipe their dirty little asses. Pool of piss in a boy’s underpants. Pools of piss in a girl’s. I wiped a purple piss pot from the grape-wrinkled asses of a few last survivors of your great art, the art of reconciliation, with which the opponents of grace were supposed to resolve themselves (self-resolve) so they stopped being a problem so they stopped being a pain in all our programs like the—the soccer and the—the tennis lessons the—the diversity courses and the—the mental health training programs it’s all too much to take it’s like I was buzzing around a bee bee bee I wanted to write poetry I wanted to play plays but not you English-speaking idiots more like the greats they spoke English ‘cause that was England this is America so here we speak American not African like you two blokes here. I need to preach these little sermons in the nighttime hours here on Far Hills Avenue to Negras like yourselves. Who have taken it upon themselves to Drive While Black Through A White Neighborhood Containing Little White Girls With Fantastic White Pussies They’re Great I’m Sure I Am Sure I am sure those pussies are so stellar in their valuation that they justify this and other traffic stops it’s mainly their color and their general aesthetic but also the fact that they live like slobs. The fact that they ruin my property values, basically. Because I view my home as an investment, not as a place to live. Not as a place to raise my kids. It’s not enough that I’m using it, for a while, as my vessel passes through this plane. No. I have to make 20%. Or 50%. Or a hundred percent, if possible. This is the root of my evil. Not actually that I’m racist. I don’t mind creatures from other tribes interacting. I don’t care that their skin is Black—except that it looks subhuman! This is my problem, gentlemen. My problem is that I want to let you go but I can’t let you go. Not now. Not now that you have insulted the status of an officer. Now that you have given me probable cause to search your vehicle for crack or whatever novel drug you have in there. Now that you have threatened the sanctity of White girl pussy—have threatened her within an inch of her life. Now that your sticky fingers have brought you in contact with my kid in my hood, in my house you can take your ‘heron’ back to Carolina in the sunshine of my mind. Maybe it’s the corners. Corners of my mind. Carolina fading. Subtext swirling down. Brought their ‘packages’ into the ‘room’ we made a ‘box’—the ‘box’ was made of strings long long strings I could grip them but every time I pulled, it just came out, dangling from my hands, loose fingers—I couldn’t hold on, anymore. It was all just falling out of me, ammunition swirling, my heart and lungs and stomach make an animation on the floor. I reach down, hands play in blood, making a mess on some hallway in hospice. In hell. Come high water. This vision of myself, of what I’ve become, dead and old in a hospital somewhere, visions of my organs splayed on the tiles—me, bent over my chair walker, fingernails scraping at bloodstains baked into the floor, thinking they’re real, thinking they’re current, but what to my world is a luscious plate of my insides is really just the leftover of a 5am blood draw, relegated to the cracks between linoleum. This is what I think of sometimes—don’t you?”