I Am Not Sidney Poitier (30 page)

“Nor I,” Everett said. “I didn’t like writing it, and I didn’t like it when I was done with it.”

“Well, actually, I loved the novel in the novel. I thought that story was real gripping. You know, true to life.”

“I’ve heard that.”

It grew darker outside. The wind screamed. The dispatcher calmly crawled under her desk. The front door blew open, hit the wall, and then slammed shut. Horace was shaking.

“Wow,” Everett said. “I’ve always wanted to see a tornado, if in fact this is one. Could be just a bad storm.”

“I read that tornado is a messed-up form of some Spanish word,
tronada
or something like that.”

Everett scratched his head. “Could be from the Latin
tonare,
to thunder. Anyway, I like the word
twister
better.”

“Maybe you two should step outside there and get a close-up look,” the Chief said.

“Maybe I will,” Everett said. He smiled at the Chief. “Tell me, constable, just what is a Smuteye?”

“It’s a dish,” I said.

“I tried it,” Ted said. “Tastes like shit.”

Everett looked at the Chief and around the station. “I can well imagine.”

The whole building rattled.

“Well, we can’t go out in this mess,” the Chief said. “The best we can do is hunker down in here. And the best place for that is back in the cells.” He leaned over the dispatcher’s desk. “You’re gonna have to come on back, Lucy.”

So we did. Horace unlocked the cell doors and we all joined Billy sitting on bunks and against the walls.

Everett stared at the disgusting, seatless toilet. “I grew to hate that during my incarceration,” he said.

The roof shook, and we all looked up. Dust fell from the ceiling into our eyes. The wind roared like an engine.

“It’s a bad one,” Horace said.

“Thanks for the news,” the Chief said.

I pictured the satchel of money swirling up into the funnel cloud, opening and scattering the bills across six counties and into Georgia. I felt nothing for the money; it was only fifty thousand, a drop in my so-called bucket. However, I felt I needed it in order to make a show of depositing it into the bank—a move designed to protect myself from the would-be robbers. And I wanted the sisters to have it, though I was unsure why that was important to me, if in fact it was and not some mere and strange act of perversion on my part.

Ted was marveling at the storm and saying
wow
over and over. “I read that twisters in the northern hemisphere rotate counterclockwise, I think, opposite from the ones in the southern hemisphere. Hey, you ever try on trousers and they’re too short in the rise and for some reason you buy them anyway?”

“That happens to me a lot,” Everett said. “I don’t know why. Mr. Poitier was one of my favorite students. That is until he cowardly dropped out of school. I think it’s because no girls would sleep with him.”

The roof made a loud cracking noise, and we let out a collective gasp, but the structure stayed together. The dispatcher prayed loudly. Billy comforted her, called her “Mama.”

Horace said, “Think we’re going to die, Chief?”

“We’d never be so lucky,” the Chief said. “If I could only get that fucking lucky.”

Then the wind stopped. Rain leaked in through the damaged roof, but the blowing stopped. All was silent. “I guess that’s it,” the Chief said, disgust in his voice. He walked away back into the station room.

I followed him. “Chief, I think we ought to go get that money now the weather has broken.”

“Oh, you do,” he said. “That’s just like one of you selfish muckety-mucks from the city. I’ve got to go out there and check on the folks. I might have to rescue some poor peckerwoods from the tops of trees or some such. And all you can think about is your money.”

“Actually, it’s the sisters’ money,” I said.

“You and your friends go and find your damn money. I got pressing business to attend to.”

“But I’m afraid I’ll be in danger,” I said, slowly.

He looked blankly at me, then said, “Horace, drive around and see what’s what while I help this boy find his money. And do it right now and don’t go visiting that Sarah Purdy that you think I don’t know you visit every day.”

“Yes, sir, Chief.”

The road outside was strewn with fallen limbs and whatever garbage there was in the town of Smuteye, but it didn’t appear that any of the buildings had been ripped from their foundations. Ted and Everett sat in the back of the car while I sat in the front and reminded the Chief how to get to the sisters’ place. We turned off the road and bounced over a few limbs. Then I saw her. Actually, I first saw the white head of Thornton Scrunchy, then I saw Sister Irenaeus. I told the Chief to stop, and we got out. Sister Irenaeus and the man were shoving bills back into what I recognized as my satchel. When they saw us, they ran through the woods toward a pickup parked at the side of the road. Sister Irenaeus looked back when she reached the passenger-side door. She looked wild eyed, nothing like the woman I had met before. She turned, got into the cab, and slammed the door. Thornton Scrunchy punched the accelerator and sprayed the bushes behind him with mud and gravel. The truck sped away into the wet, windy, dismal gray of Bullock County.

I walked over to what had been the money’s hiding spot. Bills were still all over the place—in the crooks of tree branches, in puddles, on the muddy ground. They hadn’t gotten nearly all of them. Everett started collecting the money he could reach and stuffed it in his pockets.

“We have to catch him,” I said, realizing suddenly just what was happening. “He’s the one who killed me.”

The Chief, Ted, and Everett studied me, quizzically.

“We have to stop him,” I said, again. My heart was pounding. “He killed that man because he thought he was me. Someone is dead because of me. Because of my stupidity.”

We hurried back to the car. The Chief slammed his foot on the gas as we hit the highway again. The weather began to turn bad once more. We were driving into another storm. Sheets of rain washed along the road and then over us. The rain fell so hard that the wipers did little to help our vision through the windshield. The rain stopped, all of a sudden.

In front of us was the overturned and mangled blue Ford pickup of Thornton Scrunchy. Engine parts littered the road. As did Sister Irenaeus and Scrunchy and Scrunchy’s hair. The utility pole into which it had crashed was broken and lay on the ground beside it; the wires were sizzling and popping on the wet road.

Ted whistled as we stood there staring from a safe distance. “Hell of a thing,” he said.

“Do you think they’re dead?” Everett asked.

“Dead enough,” the Chief said. He was at the open door of his car and on his radio. “Lucy, call Donald and have him come over to Two Forks Road and the highway with his wagon. And call the county and tell we need a cleanup, some power lines down.”

“What if they’re alive?” I asked. The electrical line bounced and danced across the asphalt.

Ted turned to Everett. “Does rock beat paper or does paper beat rock?”

“Paper beats rock, but I have no idea why,” Everett said. “A rock should go right through paper, don’t you think? I mean, I love paper as much as, or more than, the next guy. My guess is that it’s the function of some kind of privileged intradialogical and embedded enunciator.”

“What are you talking about?” Ted asked.

“Paper beats rock. What beats paper?”

“Scissors.”

“Ah, yeah.”

“Your friends are nuts,” the Chief said to me.

I had to agree. And so I did. I didn’t know why I’d asked them to come. But somehow things had worked out for me. The same could not be said for Sister Irenaeus. Neither could it be said for the unfortunate young man in the freezer who may or may not have been me.

The sun burst through the dingy steel gray sky and made everything bright. For whatever reason the power line appeared to discharge and then after a few last pops lay there quietly, unmoving. The Chief and I stepped forward toward the bodies. Except for the twisted metal and carnage on the road, the sun had made it a beautiful day. It was pretty clear once we were close that both Sister Irenaeus and Scrunchy were quite dead. All four eyes were wide open and staring into what I believed the sisters would have called the afterlife—into what my mother would have called nothing.

The Chief pointed to the satchel. It had been tossed clear of the truck and was lying in the tall brown grass at the side of the highway. “There it is. Take it. It’s your money.”

“It’s not evidence?” I said.

He gave me a
get-real
look.

I picked up the bag. “I’ll give this to the sisters.” I walked back over to Everett and Ted.

Everett handed me the money he’d collected in the woods. “What do I need with money? I’ll just gamble it away.”

“You have a gambling problem?” I asked.

“Not yet.” He looked at my face. “What now?”

“Why don’t you just fly to Los Angeles?” Ted said.

I flew to LAX. Podgy told me he’d arranged a car for me. For a while at least I would live the way my money allowed. I called it a kind of vacation after Alabama. At the bottom of the escalator at baggage claim I saw several black-suited drivers holding signs with names. There was one with a placard that read
Sidney Poitier.
I stood in front of him.

He said with a British accent, “Are you not Sidney Poitier?”

“I am,” I said.

“I’m Gilbert. Do you have any luggage, Mr. Poitier?”

“This is it, Gilbert,” I said.

He took my small bag from me, and I followed him out and across the lanes of traffic to the dusty parking garage.

I sat in the back of the black sedan as he paid the Somali attendant and might have flirted with her, I couldn’t tell. I looked out at Los Angeles as he curved around onto Sepulveda. He took me on a slow drive to the Beverly Hills Hotel. Stale glitz and money conspired to make me feel comfortable. Everyone there knew me—the men outside the door, the men inside the door. Mr. Poitier this and Mr. Poitier that, welcome back, long time no see. The driver left me at the desk, told me that he would be back to collect me at fifteen past seven. I did not tip him, and this seemed to make him happy. I turned to face the desk clerk.

“Mr. Poitier, so good to see you,” the young woman said.

“It’s good to see you, too.”

She was pleased that I had perhaps remembered her.

“May I say that you’re looking younger?”

“You may,” I said. “And thank you.”

I accepted my key, with a graze of her soft hand, and was led up to my suite by a quiet little man. I showered for a long time, put on a robe, and ordered a sandwich from room service. I then sat on the sofa and watched a man who looked for the world like me in a movie called
For the Love of Ivy.

At six thirty, a valet delivered black dress pants, a white shirt, and a dinner jacket to my room. At seven, I was dressed. I walked through the lobby, and a young woman came up to me and asked for my autograph. She said, “I just love you, Mr. Poitier.” I didn’t know why. I asked her name. She said it was Evelyn.

I wrote:
For Evelyn, All the best, Not Sidney Poitier.

She was puzzled as she read. “You’re not Sidney Poitier?”

“I am.”

Gilbert was entering the lobby as I approached the door. He seemed upset that I was there before him.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Poitier.”

“That’s okay, Gilbert.”

“We’ll be there in no time.”

“Very well, Gilbert.”

“Good to be back?” Gilbert asked.

“I suppose.”

“Big night,” the driver said.

“If you say so, Gilbert.” I noticed that he was taking me toward the middle of the city, toward my old neighborhood of West Adams. “Gilbert, could you turn here please?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“And a left here,” I said. I was feeling my way through a place that had changed and that I didn’t remember all that well.

“Yes, sir. This is a rather, shall I say, rough neighborhood.”

“It’s okay, Gilbert.”

“May I ask what we’re looking for, sir?”

“We’re looking for my home,” I said.

Gilbert said nothing.

We were a source of interest to the people on the street. My window was down, and everyone could see my face. Some women seemed to recognize me. They didn’t wave, they pointed.

We wended through the streets.

And there was the house I’d lived in with my mother. Other children played in the yard now. A fat man rocked on the porch. It was less profound for me than I had imagined. I wanted to hear my mother’s voice, but it never came. I stared at the same front door through which I had passed so many times. I could smell my mother’s cookies, cookies that were always
just
okay,
she would say, and she was correct. I could see the flow of her open housecoat as she crossed the yard. But I couldn’t hear her voice.

“Drive on, Gilbert,” I said.

Gilbert did, and he took me to the Shrine Auditorium. Hundreds of people cheered and applauded as I stepped out onto the red carpet. Cameras flashed and flashed and flashed. People called my name. A woman with dyed blond hair, too skinny for her own good, and who looked just like the woman walking several yards behind her, came to me and said, “This way.”

I followed her to a room with champagne and caviar and well-dressed people who welcomed me with raised glasses. I drank wine and ate cheese. I was hugged by Elizabeth Taylor and kissed on the cheek by Harry Belafonte.

“I love your dress,” I said to Liz.

She twirled. “Thank you, Sidney.”

Harry handed me a glass of champagne. “Big night,” he said.

“The world is my oyster,” I said.

And then I didn’t understand a word that was said to me. But of course I was there. Was I Not Sidney Poitier or was I not Sidney Poitier? The emaciated blond or one like her came, took me by the arm, and showed me to my seat in the second row, near the left aisle.

After award after award in categories I didn’t know and didn’t care to know, I found myself squirming in my seat. The emcee made a joke about Jack Nicholson and everyone laughed, mouths open, heads tossed back. He then became solemn, almost sedate. He looked at me. “And now,” he said, “to present the next, special award, Harry Belafonte and Elizabeth Taylor.”

“A tribute tonight to an icon of American character,” said Liz Taylor.

“To a man that sets the standard,” said Harry. “This special award for Most Dignified Figure in American Culture.”

“Goes to none other than Sidney Poitier,” Liz said.

Applause erupted. I was pushed to standing by the people beside and behind me. I walked down the aisle and then up the stairs to the podium. I was handed an award—a statue of a standing man, gold in color, his arms bent and his hands disappearing in front of him.

I faced the microphone. “Thank you,” I said. “I came back to this place to find something, to connect with something lost, to reunite if not with my whole self, then with a piece of it. What I’ve discovered is that this thing is not here. In fact, it is nowhere. I have learned that my name is not my name. It seems you all know me and nothing could be further from the truth and yet you know me better than I know myself, perhaps better than I can know myself. My mother is buried not far from this auditorium, and there are no words on her headstone. As I glance out now, as I feel the weight of this trophy in my hands, as I stand like a specimen before these strangely unstrange faces, I know finally what should be written on that stone. It should say what mine will say:

I AM NOT MYSELF TODAY.”