After we left the old man, we walked down the side streets eating apples, smoking a blunt and reminiscing wistfully. That's what I liked about Koz, his memory rivaled mine. Janice couldn't even recall key moments, like the first time we kissed (on River Promenade a month after we met) or her first family barbeque that I attended when I went beer for beer with her older brother. I watched this program about a woman who had lived 102 years. Her husband was murdered when she was 35 and she said at the time, her whole world imploded. She thought she would never move on, but now she said she hardly ever thought about him. Sometimes, she couldn't remember the sound of his voice. The woman seemed perfectly fine with this, but I felt sorry for her husband. I never want to be forgotten. I know Janice would be like this woman if I passed before her. This had been on my mind for some time. I brought it up to her on a Monday and by Friday she had forgotten the whole conversation.
When Koz and I got to River Promenade, Koz rolled another joint as this was the only day in which we could smoke freely in the streets. I sat on the edge of the festivities scanning the crowd to catch a glimpse of Janice. The sweet, woody scent of searing chicken and pig flesh smothered in tangy sauce stirred in the air. People milled about with beer bottles in hand. I thought I saw Familiar. He was holding a beer and carrying on a conversation. A sign warned people that stripping off their clothes and tossing them to the flames was a misdemeanor. I watched the sky, it was a clear day. Aren't these types of days always clear beautiful days? The darkening sky looked violet, but endless. I could see the bonfire in the distance.
I was distracted from my thoughts because Koz started up with some nonsense. He said something about Phoenix Starr.
Huh?
The new Phoenix Starr song, he replied. You heard it?
Stop playing with me. There ain't no new Phoenix Starr song.
That's right ‘cause the nigga's dead. But I guess that don't mean nothing these days. He put out more CDs since he been dead than he ever did when he was alive. He ain't coming back though. You seem to think he's coming back, but he's not coming back. Can you believe they're honoring him at the bonfire this year?
Why shouldn't they honor him? He's a town hero.
Hero? What did he ever do besides make a song?
Making a song is enough.
Oh yeah?
Yeah, if it's a good enough song.
Man, you need to come back to reality. Been sounding like a lunatic for ten years.
Nigga, You used to be talking about Phoenix Starr more than I did back in the days. You was more of a fanatic than I was.
Ain't nobody more of a fanatic than you, Koz replied. I ran into Janice last week, she was telling me about that crazy shit you be writing.
You saw her? What'd she say?
That you're crazy, nigga. You need to worry about keeping your job, dog. That's what she told me. I thought you'd have more sense by now. I'm only telling you this because we're like brothers man…
Listening to my friend, my heart became a stone in my chest; cold and heavy.
So let me get this straight, I said, you and Janice were ridiculing me behind my back?
You miss the point, Doug. You need to do what adults do: Do your job well so you can get a better one. Stop worrying about Phoenix Starr—trust me, he ain't worrying about you. Marry Janice. How long you been with her? She should have left your ass by now. Face it, you ain't gonna find no one better.
I puffed out my cheeks. I was too shaken for anger, watching all my plans fall apart. I had dreamt that the rift between Janice and I would begin to heal and we'd again fill with the passion of a new union, the passion we used as our base. It was all beginning to fade like memories of all dreams do.
You gonna keep holding that shit or you gonna pass it? Koz asked. As a matter of fact, I don't want to smoke no more.
I didn't feel like smoking anymore either, but I took a deep toke anyway. Koz continued speaking, but I didn't hear anything.
The God of Riverbeat will live forever, I said, solemnly as if it's something deep and spiritual, but it was really just marketing, the slogan for Phoenix Starr's posthumous career.
You're brainwashed, Koz replied, wandering off into the crowd and before long he vanished. I pulled out my manuscript and looked it over.
There's something different, more spiritual about pages from a typewriter than pages from a printer. Printed words are several steps removed from a man. They lack the beauty of ink slammed onto the page from the raised metal letters of a typewriter. I thought about that while I looked at my words. They were pounded directly from my hands through hours and hours of what amounted to physical labor. Creating my pages was such beautiful violence. People of my generation are too digital. They can't understand the soulfulness of it all. It's like the difference between making love skin-to-skin, warm flesh to warm flesh with no barrier and doing so sheathed in latex. Like when we watched the buildings fall, that night. Janice caught me crying and she kissed every one of my tears. Then she removed my tee-shirt and my jeans, everything piece by piece. She did the same for herself until she was just wearing that metallic gold belly-chain she wore to feel sexy. It did make her look sexy, like a belly dancer. Then we laid in the bed, her back pressed into my chest, our legs tangled and our hands in each others. We were like that for a while before I placed myself into the dampness between her thighs. That was the first time we really made love, I mean, without placing my penis inside a bodybag.
Sitting before my typewriter, sometimes, made me think of that.
The speeches began, but between reading my words and scanning the crowd, I only heard snatches.
There is an epidemic and every black man in Cross River should be afraid, deathly afraid, the speaker said. Every couple of months these cops pick us off and what do we do about it? We bitch. We moan. For every one of us they ki—. The speaker called himself The Chairman. He ran the People's Revolutionary Party and I thought he was a fraud. His face wasn't decorated, but behind him his bodyguards had skeletal features painted over their dark faces just as I did.
I was lost in my pages. Instead of a soaring feeling, my spirit sank looking at the words. They were flat and lifeless. When I heard a voice call my name, I jumped, dropped my manuscript on the ground and trampled it underfoot before I turned. It was Janice.
Koz told me I'd find you over here, she said.
I thought I'd see you at the bonfire burning my clothes or something like that, I replied as I collected my papers.
I wrapped my arms around her and her body felt limp, though soft.
You think I'm evil, she said. What are you doing?
Looking over my manuscript.
Oh, your new girlfriend, she said, grabbing a corner of a page and shaking it like a hand. Nice to meet you, I'm Janice.
That's pretty hilarious, I replied straight-faced. So, you and Koz were bad-mouthing me again, huh?
What are you talking about?
Koz told me about what y'all were saying about me when he saw you last week.
It's nothing I haven't said to your face, Doug, you just don't listen. Speaking of your face, you really got into the holiday this year. You're a skeleton, huh?
I wanted to surprise you.
Doug, you want to surprise me? Grow up and act like adults act, that'll surprise me.
Do you want to start another argument? I thought you'd be over this shit by now.
Why would I be over it? I'm at my wits' end with you. I'm not going to stand here and lie to you. It pisses me off just to see you. Janice's eyes narrowed and I watched her canthuses wrinkle and tighten. Do you really think I'm going to sit here and be nice to you when you haven't attempted to resolve this situation? You've barely tried to talk to me in the last few weeks and when you did try, all you want to talk about is Phoenix Starr. Doug, I don't care about your singer. And I'll never think it'll be a good idea to cut back your hours at work to write about him. You need more money, not less. I want a life with you, but you want to wile away your time with nonsense.
I am what I am.
See, I don't even know what you're talking about most of the time anymore. She looked away at the roisterous crowd. You're a lucky man, you know that. I can't stay angry with you.
She usually said that with a smile, but now her face was solemn like a death-mask.
I reached for her hand and she let me hold it. She looked into my face, but still wouldn't smile; not the wide toothy one, not the goofy closed-mouth one, not even the gummy smile. Instead of smiling she sighed.
Perhaps I misjudged the power of the Revelation, at least on a personal level. I guess somewhere inside of me, I regarded it as colorful peacock plumage, a thing that when flashed or displayed could make any woman swoon.
Janice, I said, I really want you to take a look at this. You always get upset when I tell you that you don't understand me, but really you don't. So I want you to look at this. Maybe you can get a grasp of where I'm coming from.
She took all 200 pages into her hands and looked up at me. Her face twisted in puzzlement.
The Revelation of Everything?
She sat and glanced through the pages, You spelled boisterous wrong, she said. I frowned. One second, I felt peaceful then I felt anxious and wanted to snatch it from her. This moment, I thought, had to happen and soon we'd be changed.
There was stirring and some noise, drumbeats and finally applause. Mayor McJohnson stood before the podium. The microphone whined.
Ladies and Gentleman, Mayor McJohnson said. Please, a moment of silence for our founder, the great American hero, the former slave and abolitionist, his true name is lost to history, but we will always remember him as Ol' Cigar. Drawing inspiration from the Haitian Revolution, in 1807, this man did what so many others failed to do. He did the impossible, leading the Great Insurrection that gave our ancestors their freedom.
All drumming and noise ceased and six men walked slowly to the bonfire carrying the straw body of Ol' Cigar over their heads. It sat on a finely carved wooden plank that some unfortunate craftsmen spent all year fashioning. The faces and names of deceased town heroes were whittled into the thing and every year it becomes more elaborate. In a moment they'd dump the thing into the flames. After some controversy, the people in charge of the celebration voted to add Phoenix Starr's face. He'd relive his death year after year, burning again and again in an Insurrection Day bonfire for as long as Cross River stands. I removed my cap.
A straw hat rested on Ol' Cigar's burlap sack of a head. His arms sat on his torso and white gloves were fashioned to look like hands. The right one clutched a fat cigar.
The men paused before the bonfire, standing there for one theatrical moment, before shoving the plank and the straw body into the flames. The drumming became frantic and thunderous. A group of men and women, performers in kente cloth, moved about feverishly. Spectators joined them, dancing on and off beat. People started to line up for The Cleansing. I moved closer and closer to the swaying fire, mesmerized by its movements. Though, I kept an eye on the people around me who writhed as if in ecstasy.
A minister in purple and black flowing robes, his face painted in a skeletal design except there was a cross on his forehead, was now before the microphone.
Men and women, place all of your burdens into the fire, he said, let it burn and turn to ash in this cleansing flame, let it burn like master's house burned when Ol' Cigar, and ancestors some of us will never know, held their fiery torches against the grainy wood. Let it burn! Let it burn! Let it burn! You are Moses at Mt. Sinai talking to flaming shrubbery! Let it burn! Toss all your burdens into this bonfire of ours! Let it burn! I command you! The Lord commands you! Let it burn!
A fire can do weird things to a person. It's like a seductive woman. It can make a man feel all kinds of things he wouldn't normally feel. The bonfire always ended with people stripping their clothes off and tossing them into the flames. No matter how often people are warned to keep their clothes on, it always, always ends that way. Janice gripped my hand and we walked over to the flames. I let go of her and clapped and sang along with the Negro spiritual that wound through the air. The time I first met Janice, so many years ago at the bonfire, I stood as stiff as a mannequin just studying the dancing flames. She told me not to move because she had never seen someone looking so unreal.
That fire, I told her then, is a living breathing entity. It consumes all it can, produces waste and eventually dies just like you and me. I've never seen anything more beautiful. I turned to see her little hands, her little fingers and her little nose. She was a tiny and slender thing all around. As cute as a stuffed animal, but womanly. Before the day was out, her hand was in mine and we just sat there looking at the swaying flames, not saying anything.
Perhaps I was naïve, but I didn't know that lifelong companionship was supposed to be the ultimate goal. I was only 18 or 19. Just starting at Alfred McCoy University. So was she, but I never saw her on campus.
Pursuing her, there was more simple longing than raw lust. This had never happened before. This made her special. I told myself the longing was a truer emotion than the lust. I now know that that's bullshit. Both are their own truths and the lust can be truer than the longing or vice versa or most times they are equal truths.
That whole time, I was just living in the moment and found it a nice place to be. When she, rather rudely, pointing to the ring finger of her left hand, asked me where we were heading—this was about two or three years in—I was a bit taken aback. So, she had ulterior motives in being with me? I felt manipulated, but had no words to articulate it. Did this make what she felt somehow impure compared to what I felt?
As the bonfire flickered, The Cleansing began. A newly Christian man cried Jesus' name and tossed all his old skin magazines into the flames, shouting that the Lord had delivered him. Black smoke spiraled upward. I shook my head, watching the burning tits and thought of the man's gesture as simple wastefulness. People tossed in photographs, bills, old shoes, crack pipes, crack, there was a television, a copy of Fahrenheit 451 (which was probably meant to be ironic), a never worn Steelers hat, CDs, plants, bags and bags of weed, packs of cigarettes, bottles of rum, candy, false idols, statues of the Virgin mother, $5 bills. Nearly everything you could imagine went flying into that blaze. I moved closer. It was as if I heard the flames talk, calling my name.
I looked over at Janice, she was standing at the edge of the bonfire. Like everyone else, she was whipped up into a frenzy, waving her arms and clapping. Her eyes caught mine. On her face, I saw a spirit of serenity pass. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Then she raised her arm and tossed my work, all 200 pages, deep into the heart of the fire.
I gasped and then I shuddered as my skin felt like ants were crawling out of every pore, two at a time. There it was, the urtext to a great transformation, dying. Everything twirled like it did when I was a kid and I had spun too fast. This gave an unreal quality to it all.
Dougie, don't be mad, I heard Janice say. You're probably mad. Don't be. This is for us. We can grow together now. You'll unders…
Closing my eyes made the spinning stop. Like if in a dream, I saw Janice and me on the Northside in front of a house. A much bigger house than my parent's own. It was ours. Janice held a baby in her arms, a girl named Shelley. I held the hand of a boy named Rog and there was another child running around in front of us, a child of ambiguous gender named Leslie. A Cadillac pulled up in front of us. It was clean, blue and long and had shiny chrome adornments on the wheels. A man stepped out, followed by a brown dog with a clipped tail. The man told us about his new snow-blower. It had a long black shaft and looked powerful. He took it from the car and put it into my hands. The man disappeared and he never existed and the car and the dog and the snow-blower were mine. I couldn't wait to take it next door to show my neighbor. Janice smiled and said, Dougie, there was a time I thought we'd never see this. I replied: Sweetbread, let's not think about those days. I'm ashamed that I spent all that time looking for something when all I had to do was look inside of you and find the truth. The truth is those three beautiful children and me and you. Family is the only satisfaction in the world. You're my mission now. Jan Jan, my dear, I'm happy.
Daddy, Leslie said. Here may be better than there, but even nowhere is better than here. Tiny fires reflected in the child's eyes, though nothing burned nearby. Daddy, Leslie said. How could you forget about me? I am you. The flames make me. Skibbie-dee. The flames take me. Skap Skap Skibidie Skibidie. Skib Skib. Then they re-create me. Skib. Skib…
I recognized some of what the child said as lyrics from Phoenix Starr songs. It had been nearly 100 years, I thought since I'd considered Phoenix Starr.
I turned from the child and started to walk inside, but then I realized that the sun was exploding. The sky was red and violet. It was dazzling and bright. Everything was hot. I ripped open my shirt, sending the buttons flying. First Leslie started to melt and then Rog. They looked like chocolate bunnies. I stared at them in horror. Shelley, dripped from Janice's hands, turning into a brown puddle. I held onto Janice and kissed her cheek and watched her left eye slide down her face.
I opened my eyes to the bonfire in front of me. It flickered and towered. I caught sight of one of my pages. It curled and disintegrated into ash. A jagged corner of paper flew upward like a firefly or a bumblebee. It rode a wave of smoke until it disappeared into the flames and I couldn't see it anymore.
To tell you the truth, I can't remember exactly what happened that night after I left the bonfire. I held a bottle of beer, but I hadn't drunk much. The raw air that night was a more potent intoxicant than any substance.
I was downtown and the streets were quiet and empty like in the stories they tell about me. My feet and my legs pained me so I stopped walking. I heard my name from behind. I turned to see Familiar. He had come to wreck my solitude. I took a sip. Just a small sip.
I couldn't understand much of what he was saying, but he kept talking to me. He sounded gruff.
Man, he said, you gonna get me some weed or you gonna keep holding out on me?
I didn't speak, I just shook my head.
He spoke again, just as gruff. I tightened my grip on the bottle. He came close to me, his liquored breath flooding my nostrils with an acrid fragrance.
The man put his hands on me, I remember. His hands were somewhere around my collar and I shoved him away with my forearm. I watched his hand clumsily claw at his hip. I realized he had a gun. I could see it sticking out.
Some moments, those at the height of aggression, I can never recall. I had gotten into very few fights as an adult and don't remember throwing a single punch, as if the mind locks those split seconds away to protect us. I can't recall the instant I first put my penis into a vagina. Wish I could, but I can't.
He was just inches from me. I swung my bottle of beer, crashing it against his head. The whole thing shattered, sending liquid flying all over the place, soaking us both. The man stumbled backward, trying to get his bearings and again reaching for his hip.
You gotta understand, I thought I was going to die.
The jagged end of the bottle still in my hand, I charged Familiar and plunged it into that soft spot just beneath his breastplate. He crumpled to the ground in a wounded heap. I eased backward in horror.
My hand rattling and pained, I walked briskly and escaped from the street, heading north until I made it to the highway, parting with the city I love.
Rion Amilcar Scott grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. He has stories forthcoming at Dogmatika and the online magazine solnoirpublishing.com. His stories have won awards from the Pan African Literary Forum, the Indiana Review and George Mason University, where he received an MFA in fiction. He teaches English at Bowie State University.