Insurrections (23 page)

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
 . . .

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.

If I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man.

—Judges 16:17

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.

I sat in his chair that night knowing this wasn't one of those times. I was under no illusions that I'd get a good or even a mediocre cut. But I could no longer stand the mockery. Not just from my wife but from strangers. Children on the street. Whispers at work. Mocking eyes. Mocking laughter. Though it was the woman I married who mocked most maliciously.

I was taught to laugh with a bully. That way the harassment loses its appeal. An overrated strategy, especially when a bully is as determined as my wife.

Buckwheat, she would cry. Get a haircut!

O'tay, I replied.

The Barber frowned when I walked in that night, but quickly he corrected his face and greeted me with a head nod. He could be a grumpy son-of-a-bitch sometimes. After the door shut behind me he flipped a switch to his right, shutting off the glowing blue
Open
sign in the window; he walked to the door and locked it, leaving a cascade of keys dangling at the entrance.

A customer sat in The Barber's chair and three people waited ahead of me. Uncomfortable black seats sat pressed up against the wall, and on either side of the chairs messy stacks of magazines overflowed on small tables. Digging in for a long wait, I snatched a wrinkled copy of my favorite music magazine,
Riverbeat Currents
, from the top of the pile and leafed through it. After some time I realized that it was the same issue I always seemed to pick up during these excruciating waits, giving every visit a distinct sense of déjà vu. I tossed it aside and picked another.

The exchange between The Barber and his customers shifted from football, which I cared nothing about, to the coming weekend's fight—which again, like all sporting events, mattered little to me—and I sank lower in my seat, hoping no one asked my opinion. The week before a haircut I always did enough research to fake my way through a sports conversation. I cursed myself for forgetting to research the coming weekend's fight.

The Barber removed the black cape from his customer and shook the excess hair from it while arguing that the champ's time was done.
The customer stood, his head a mismatch of two different hairstyles. He peered into the long rectangular mirror on the wall behind the barber chairs. It hung above several tables that all stayed cluttered with bottles of baby powder, shampoo, rubbing alcohol, and a motley assortment of aerosol cans. The man sighed, handing over his money. I wanted to drop the magazine and dart from the shop. The other customers looked on, solemn and wide-eyed. The nearly bald man who had been sitting to my right shuffled slowly to the hotseat as if walking to the electric chair. He had little to lose. The other customers and I would have to wait two embarrassing weeks for our heads to fully recover.

A silence descended upon the barbershop. A man at the far end wept a bit. Nobody noticed but me. The guy sitting nearest the door announced that he had forgotten his wife's birthday and slipped out, promising to return the next day.

The Barber changed the channel from ESPN to the nightly news. It was nothing but heartbreak. A terrorist had made another bold audio-taped announcement full of mockery and threats; a woman's life had become a smoldering wreck, a public tragedy only because she had once been a pop star; a war dragged on, taking the lives of four more soldiers; and right here in Cross River a mysterious case was still unsolved: the death of an undercover cop from a neighboring town, killed several weeks ago on the bad side of our city, a few blocks from where I now sat. The killer had fled into the night and was no longer a man but an idea to puzzle over.

The Barber changed the channel again and the suspect, or rather a rough sketch of what he might look like, peered from the television. He appeared barely human; instead he was vaguely ectoplasmic, or gelatinous, what with the use of light charcoal grays to provide texture and the simple ovals for eyes, curved lines to represent a nose, another wider oval for a mouth, knurled protuberances for ears, and a mess of lines for hair. Apparently this cop was killed by a collection of shapes. And then there was the photograph of the officer, a yellow-skinned man with smooth slicked-back hair and a long jaw. The Barber stopped his cutting and stepped back from the chair, his lips parted. He appeared shaken, and his hand trembled as he returned to cutting the balding man's head.

You all right? the patron to my right, the next customer in line, asked.

Yeah, I'm okay, The Barber said, but after a moment he wiped tears
from his cheeks. Man, he said, I knew that dude. The cop, Carlton, he was just up in here right before he got killed. The day before. I used to cut his hair, and then he decided to get that perm. I was always telling that man to let me cut the perm from his head.

Damn, I said, attempting to join the conversation, hoping some camaraderie would garner me a better haircut. That's some fucked-up shit.

News of this case had played on day after day, though I hadn't paid much attention. The newscasters presented little new—in fact there was nothing new despite its prominence on the broadcasts. Somehow, and I'm not certain how, according to the newscast, an obscure local rapper who had released an album menacing the police was at fault. The rapper had named himself L'Ouverture and he called his album
Problem With Authority
. He appeared on the television screen attempting to defend himself, standing in front of a bank of microphones with four angry-looking men behind him.

This is art, he said, not self-help. I never told nobody to kill nobody.

See, that's why my kids don't listen to that trash, said the balding man sitting in The Barber's chair. He ran his hand over the patchy flourishes hanging about his ears and his temple and said, I'll knock the shit out of one of them if I hear that shit coming from they rooms.

The Barber nodded and grunted in approval. So did the man next to me. The balding man stood from his seat, spun, and looked into the mirror. He inspected the raggedy lines that had been cut into the sprigs of hair on the curve of his head. Then he stared angrily at The Barber, but seeing his sad face, the man reached into his pocket and handed him a twenty. Refusing change, the balding man walked out.

The Barber smacked away excess hair from the seat with the black cape he covered his customers with and looked at his remaining two patrons as if to say, Who's next? The other man and I eyed each other without moving. I looked down at the magazine and slowly he rose and walked to the chair.

Damn, man, I'm sorry to hear about your friend, the man said. They got like ten cops for each block on the Southside now. More cops than ever. They multiplying like rabbits out here.

What you expect? The Barber said. They trying to find the dude that killed Carlton.

I ain't complaining, jack, the man in the chair said in a shaky voice.
Just trying to keep my head down. They need to ban that music, though. I ain't never in my life gonna listen to L'Ouverture again. Not like I listened to the nigga before, but I definitely ain't listening to him now. Don't take off too much from the top.

As if he hadn't heard him, The Barber cut deep into the man's hair. The talking heads on television screamed at one another, their voices shrill and grating.

It's no doubt that Officer Jones would still be alive if we didn't have miscreants making this sort of
music
, one commentator said. Another agreed, and then the opposition, a man who called himself Chairman R, said something predictable: I doubt it was a rapper who armed the killer.