Macon’s hand fluttered to the crown of his scalp and he scratched, violently. “Please.”
“Con’s got a business proposal for us, Macon. He’s very eager to speak with you. All me and Andre ask is that you sit down with him. I’m not even gonna say anything else. As far as I’m concerned, you hear him out and me and you are good.” Nique grace-note paused, then swooped in for the clincher. “Plus, you know, one could argue that you owe Dr. Donner that much. I mean, there is a certain historical . . . I don’t want to call it a debt, exactly, but . . .”
Macon exhaled, and the telephone dissected his breath into static. He could feel Nique smirking on the other end of the line, satisfied that he had played his cards right.
“I’m two hundred miles east of nowhere, Nique,” said Macon, eager to frustrate him. “I couldn’t meet your boy if I wanted to.”
“As luck would have it, dude, you’re in Con’s neck of the woods. He’s got offices in Mobile, Chattanooga, ATL, Jacksonville . . . all over the South, basically. He said no matter where you are, he can come and scoop you within an hour. Two, tops.”
Macon arched his eyebrows. “It’s like that?”
“It’s like that, Moves. So can I holler at him?”
“Tell me what this is all about first.”
“I couldn’t even do it justice. Con will break it down.”
Perhaps, thought Macon, this was nothing more than a setup. He could imagine stranger scenarios than Donner simply wanting to do to an Anson what an Anson had done to a Donner. Nor was it so far-fetched to think that Nique and Andre might want to fuck him over the way he’d fucked them. Just because you’re paranoid, he told himself, doesn’t mean they’re not conspiring against you.
“How is it,” Macon asked, “that some old Southern cracker is your new ace homey?”
Nique chuckled. “You know my steez, dude. I’m trying to retire by twenty-five. All right, look, enough. You’re running up the phone bill. Stay put and watch for Donner in an hour. Big Colonel Sanders–looking motherfucker. Can’t miss him.”
Nique hung up. Macon ambled clear across the lot before he realized that all he’d told them of his location was that he was in a parking lot somewhere in Alabama. Passengers were streaming back onto the bus now. The driver leaned against the hood, fingers scissored around a cigarette. He glanced up and jerked his thumb. “Better hop on, kid. We’re on our way soon as I reach the filter.”
Macon shook his head. “This is my stop. I wanna do some sight-seeing.”
The driver raised his palms to his shoulders and shrugged. “Suit yourself. Next bus doesn’t come through here for eight hours, though. And that one might be full.” He looked around and grimaced. “You sure you got that many sights to see?”
“Yeah,” said Macon, hoping that if he sounded confident enough, he’d fool himself. “I’ll be fine. Thanks.”
“Okay, then.” The driver flicked his butt into the dust, spun on his heel, and climbed aboard. “Have fun,” he said over his shoulder. The door creaked shut and the bus lumbered toward the exit.
Macon wiped his brow with the hem of his T-shirt, searched the lot in vain for a puddle of shade, and then decided, Fuck it: The six dollars in his pocket weren’t going to get him much further, anyway. He walked into the empty diner, silent but for the delicious twin hums of fluorescence and air-conditioning, collapsed into a red vinyl booth, threw his legs up, and ordered a bacon cheeseburger.
Forty minutes later, a new rhythm imposed itself over the low pulse of the fan and the lights, the trochaic footsteps of the waitress. Macon looked up from his newspaper to see a helicopter easing its way to the ground, blades stirring up a storm of dust. A surge of panic catapulted him to his feet: The cops or the Feds or the National Guard had tracked him here, and any second now a SWAT team or a phalanx of sunglassed agents or, worst of all, the venerable officers McGrath and Downing would leap out and blitz the diner. Tackle Macon to the ground, cuff his arms behind his back, and carry him off like a battering ram, using his head to open every door from here to New York City.
Macon scanned the diner for a back exit, a bathroom, an extra waitress uniform, anything, but when he turned back to the window to gauge his assailants’ progress, a willowy gray-haired gentleman was unfolding himself cautiously from the sedated chopper. A walking stick emerged first, like a scout, and then a pair of polished leather boots. The cane grazed the ground only in punctuation as the man made his way to the bottom of the diner’s small staircase. There, he stopped and waved an overlarge hello, left arm tracing a huge semicircle above his head. Haltingly, Macon raised one hand chest high and wriggled his fingers in response.
The man grinned as he stepped through the door. “Macon, my boy.” His teeth were small and orderly, the same cream color as his linen suit. He flung his arms wide in announcement. “I’m Dr. Conway Donner. Call me Con, or Don, or whatever the hell you like. You’ve eaten?” He cocked his chin at the waitress, who stood slack-jawed at the counter beside the equally stunned cook. “Give us a couple of chocolate milk shakes to go, would you, sweetie pie?” Donner reached into his pocket, produced a monogrammed gold money clip, and wrist-flicked two twenties onto the tabletop, watching Macon over his bushy eyebrows as he did so. “A meal’s not a meal without ice cream in my book, Macon.” A hearty laugh. “Well, breakfast maybe. Now. Anything else your heart desires for the road?”
Macon slid his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Uh, no. I think I’m good.”
“Well, good, then. Let’s be on our way, shall we?” The waitress approached, her humid slouch replaced by a prim formality, and extended a folded brown bag. Conner accepted the package with a warm nod and dropped another twenty on the table. “Right this way,” he beckoned, turning toward the door. “I’m parked outside.”
Chapter Two
To Macon’s surprise, he found the chopper empty when he climbed inside. Con himself settled behind the controls, removed the milk shakes from the bag, and handed one to Macon. “Welcome to the
Deus ex Machina,
” he said. “Ever flown in one of these?” He pulled on his straw with such vigor that his trim-bearded cheeks went concave.
“Naw,” said Macon, watching as the old man flipped a switch and the propeller blades began to throb above them. A moment later, the
Deus ex Machina
was on the rise. Con navigated as casually as a cabdriver, ferrying the milk shake back and forth between his mouth and thigh every few seconds.
“Don’t know why they can’t design a cockpit with cup holders,” he said, leaning back to smile at Macon. “I had to have the stereo custom-installed, too. Nothing but AM radio in these things, normally. Can you imagine?” He pressed a button on the crowded dashboard and an Al Green song issued forth from eight strategically placed speakers, flooding the small cabin with crisp digital sound. Donner tapped his pinky ring against the steering lever in time to the organ part. “There’s a box of Cubans on the floor behind you,” he said over the music. “Grab us a couple, if you like.”
He stole another glance at Macon, and found his passenger staring intently at the ground below. They were perhaps three hundred feet in the air now, high enough to take in the colors of the land—the lush gamut of greens, the golden wheat, the broad pure-blue expanse of sky—but low enough to still appreciate the shifting textures, the intermingling of farm and forest, the narrow veins of streams, and the thick arteries of roads.
“Best way to see the land,” Con said. “Your first time visiting this part of the country, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” said Macon absently. He was busy trying to prioritize the growing list of questions bottlenecking in his mind. What in the hell did Donner want? With what lies and truths and hopes and promises had Nique plied him? Why did it so palpably feel like this small whirring metal bird carried not just Macon and Conway, but the restless ghosts of Cap and Fleet and Red and the entire April 29, 1889, population of Robert E. Lee Stadium, from fans to batboys, peanut hawkers to ballplayers to Klansmen?
Macon decided to conserve his mental resources by letting his brain go limp. Only time would deliver the answers to such questions, and so Macon faked exhaustion and slumped against the wall, listening to first Al Green and then Sam Cooke compete with the blades. It didn’t occur to him to wonder where he was being taken, so it barely surprised him when Donner brought the chopper down a half an hour later on the verdant front lawn of what looked for all intents and purposes like an enormous antebellum mansion. Macon extracted himself from the cockpit, blinked, and stretched beneath the blazing midday sun. Only the craft in which he’d arrived prevented him from feeling like he’d just stepped back in time.
“I can imagine what you must be thinking,” Donner said as he led his guest across the vast, manicured expanse and toward the looming facade of the white-pillared house. “Place looks like there should be a few dozen slaves bailing cotton out back, doesn’t it?”
Macon fixed him with a weak, sidelong stare. “Are there?”
Another hearty laugh from Donner. The guy was more nervous than he let on, Macon thought. That couldn’t be a good thing.
“When I bought this place,” said the doctor, lifting his cane to point at a second-floor terrace as they strolled, “it had been neglected for decades on end. Thought about remodeling, but in the end I had everything restored, right down to the trim. My feeling was, why hide from history? I’d rather stare it in the face, Macon, same as you. That’s the reality of this land. Slaves worked it. Atrocities have been committed on it. Least I can do, if I’m going to live here—which I only do about five days a month, but still— is not forget that fact.”
They walked into the building’s shadow. Macon felt his wits sharpen the moment the shade engulfed him, felt color returning to his sun-bleached brain. “Personally,” he said, “I’d knock the whole place the fuck down. Can’t really see what playing slave master is helping you accomplish.” He turned to face Donner. “Look, Doc, I don’t know what you and Nique discussed, but no one’s told me shit. I’d just as soon cut to the chase, huh?”
“Certainly.” A flinty smile sprung to the doctor’s lips. “The chase. As Cap Anson himself might have put it.”
Macon’s stomach bottomed out at the mention of his ancestor’s name. “Oh Christ,” he said, falling into a wicker chair and raking his hands back through his hair. “So that’s the big idea?” He pictured Nique and Andre sitting before a row of telephones like auctioneers, fielding two and three calls at a time, selling the rights to Macon’s life off to the highest and most poetically just bidder.
Donner seated himself in a matching chair and pursed his lips. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Let’s hear it, then.” Macon spoke without looking up. “What were you thinking, Doc, a role-reversal kind of thing? I run for my life like Red, you and your people chase me down, stomp me to death? Or maybe you’ve got a whole fuckin’ replica stadium set up behind the house? Whatever it is, let’s just get it over with, okay? I’d like to be in hell by dinnertime.”
Donner threw his head to the sky and roared. It was a wholly different laugh than the one to which Macon had thus far been privy: It boomed easily from him, shook his entire frame, comforted Macon somehow. When his mirth subsided, Donner pitched forward, laying a heavy hand on his guest’s shoulder. “Oh,” he said, wiping away a tear nestled in the corner of his eye. “My God, Macon, the imagination on you. Come, son. We’ve got to get a drink in you posthaste. Come.”
Macon followed him inside, through a succession of dark, cool, musty-smelling sitting rooms, and found himself seated at last on a low-backed leather armchair in a kind of office. Donner shut the door behind them, although no other human being was in evidence, and poured two glasses of something sap-colored from a crystal decanter sitting atop a sideboard. He handed one to Macon, took his place behind a stout mahogany desk, and pulled the chain on a green-shaded banker’s lamp. Framed diplomas hung from the wall behind him, sandwiching Donner’s head. Macon could make out only the embossed names of the schools. Emory and Harvard.
The booze, Macon assumed, was bourbon. Even without a point of reference, he could tell it was top-notch. He allowed himself a second nip, swished the liquor over his tongue, and swallowed as he placed the glass on the desk before him with a small clunk. Donner took the hint. He palmed his beard, leaned back in his chair, and got down to business.
“I don’t suppose, Macon, that you’ve read
The Sneetches
?” Donner’s eyes traced the upper shelves of the bookcases lining the walls as he spoke, as if he were searching the rows of hardbound psychiatric journals for the title in question.
“Of course,” said Macon, surprised. “But not since I was five.” He cracked a knuckle. “There’s Sneetches with stars on their bellies and Sneetches without. The starless Sneetches are second-class citizens, until one day this guy shows up with a star-making machine. So all the Sneetches get stars, and nobody can tell who to hate anymore. Then the guy busts out with a star-removal machine, and a two-star machine, and all these other machines, and the Sneetches lose their fucking minds, trying to stay on top of the game.”
“Exactly,” said Donner, tapping his steepled hands together. “Remarkable memory. Do you remember the ending?”
Macon shrugged. “Not really. I mean, it’s a kids’ book, so I assume they all learned to get along somehow. But not specifically, no.”
Donner smiled. “You don’t remember the happy ending because the happy ending is bullshit,” he said. “Everything up to that point is real.”
“Hmm,” said Macon, waiting.
“I have a lot of respect for you,” the doctor intoned, leaning forward. “You’ve got passion. Integrity. And unless I’m very much mistaken, you see the absurdity in all this, too. You understand that race means whatever we make it mean. That it’s just another commodity to be exploited. Something you can market, buy, sell, reinvent. Whatever you want.”
“And what do you want, Doc?”
“I’m the guy with the star machine, Macon. I’m the person people come to when they decide they’d rather pimp race than be pimped by it.”
Macon crossed his legs and frowned. “So what, you turn black people white?”
Donner shrugged. “Sometimes. I turn black people white, white people black, black people blacker, white people whiter. Last week I turned a Mexican kid Japanese. Whatever they want. Whatever angle they decide to play. It’s like roulette, Macon: There are endless ways to win.”
“Can I see the machine?”
The doctor laughed. “There’s no machine. I don’t actually alter appearances. No skin creams, no surgeries. That’s nineteenth-century stuff. I’m a psychiatrist. I use a combination of hypnosis, therapy, psychodrama, various re-acculturation techniques, to alter an individual’s self-image and the perception of him. It’s a very complex program—or de-program, I like to say. Very involved. Not to be entered into lightly. I’ve been honing the process for more than forty years.”
“Quietly, I’m guessing.”
Donner nodded. “Very quietly. I could have been killed, you understand. Hell, some of my clients would have killed each other in the waiting room, if I’d had a waiting room. Initially, I worked mainly with white kids from down here, the children of old-money Southern aristocracies.”
“Hard-core crackers, in other words.”
“Precisely. These kids were going off to college and coming back home with ideas that scared their parents to death. This was the late fifties, early sixties. I’m sure you can imagine.”
“Yeah,” said Macon, remembering his drink and draining it. “I’m sure I can.”
Donner reached across the desk, took Macon’s glass, and rose to refill it. “These folks—who’d never dreamed of consulting a psychiatrist, mind you—were coming to me on bended knee. Offering to pay triple my fees if I could just get the radical notions out of their kids’ heads. Scared to death of what their grandkids might look like if Debbie Sue kept on the way she was going.” Donner raised one eyebrow as he leaned forward to hand Macon his bourbon.
“I took on a few cases, just to see what I could do. Thinking that if anything, I’d try to help the kids cope with their racist backgrounds.” Donner eased back in his chair, his own drink cocked close to his lips. “But you know what? Some of them actually wished they’d never gone up North to school and learned the things they had. A few honestly and truly wanted to go back to the uncomplicated lives they’d led before—not worried about anybody else, totally unaware of injustice. Hell, Macon, they missed getting driven around by their Negro chauffeurs.
“That intrigued me. I started to wonder how you would go about reprogramming someone. All the literature, then and now, was focused on religious cults, so I started by adapting some of those techniques. How could I get these kids to act and think and feel white again?”
Donner sighed, slid lower in his seat, and gave Macon a rueful smile. “Course, I was young and idealistic myself then. Good liberal that I was, I couldn’t justify what I was doing. So I expanded my program. Decided I could use the same techniques to help black people get ahead in the white world. Give them some confidence, some strategies.” The doctor shook his head, staring into his glass as he tipped it to his mouth. “God, was I clumsy. . . . But times changed, Macon. The world got complicated, fast. I refined my programs, changed with it.”
Donner opened his arms, hugging his domain. “As you can see, I’ve done well for myself. How we choose to construct race is going to go right on evolving, Macon, but the bottom line is that we’ll never leave it behind. All hell would break loose if we did. Whole system would collapse. I’m not going to waste my time trying to fight the facts—and neither are you anymore, from what I gather. All I can do is give a few individuals who understand the rules a chance to get on top of the game. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s plenty.”
The desk chair rolled backward until it hit the wall, and Donner stood. “How about a tour?” he said, and beckoned Macon to his feet.
They left the office, freshened drinks in hand. Donner led the way up a wide, curved staircase, then paused before a locked door and typed a long series of numbers into a panel mounted on the wall. “This is our records department,” he explained. Something inside the door clicked and Donner smiled, fisting the knob. “No one outside the organization has ever been in here before. Shall we?” The door swung wide, and Macon followed the doctor inside.
The room was a cavernous, spartan rectangle. Chest-high metal filing cabinets lined the perimeter; an antique conference table sat square in the middle. But what drew Macon’s attention was the portrait gallery. Framed eight-by-ten photographs blanketed the far wall, floor to ceiling.
Donner hung back, pleased, as his guest ambled toward it. “A few of our satisfied customers. Go ahead and take a look. I’ve got a few files I need to go over; I’ll be with you in a moment.” He pulled open a drawer, removed a six-inch stack of thin manila folders, and sat down at the table.
Macon goggled at the collage of faces, eyes darting from one famous visage to the next. Colin Powell gazed stoically from the upper-left quadrant. Okay, thought Macon, fair enough. Must’ve needed some whitening up before he could fuck with Bush and them. Ditto Clarence Thomas, two rows below. Or maybe not; who knew? Maybe Thomas had been too white to begin with, and come to Donner for a little blackness refresher course. Vanilla Ice shared an eye-level row with Mariah Carey, Bill Bradley, Shelby Steele, Umamu Shaheed Alam, Michael Jackson, George Wallace, Quentin Tarantino, Mick Jagger, Kobe Bryant, and about fifty people Macon couldn’t recognize. Decoding who had come for what reason was harder than he would have thought. Macon was about to ask whether Ja Rule, bottom row center, had wanted to sand down the rough edges of a thugged-out past or to invent just such a history when Donner strolled up behind him.