Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (10 page)

Gertrude, Water-Woman, my Woe who caused all the woe… even though, my dear, you are not real, I cannot accept that and will never stop believing in your existence and beautiful rise from the river into my arms.

Drowned himself in the Cross River swimming after Gertrude and there’s something beautiful in that. Dredge the depths of the Cross River and how many bones of the heartsick will you find along the riverbed? So many poisoned by illusion. Don’t tell me there’s no island and no women rising naked from the depths, shifting forms to tantalize and then to crush. I’ve seen their island and I’ve seen them and gangsters love too; gangsters are allowed love, aren’t we? Sometimes there’s a fog and I know the island’s coming and I snap out of sleep all slicked with sweat and filled with the urge to swim out there to catch a water-woman and bring her back to my bed. If you pour sugar on their tails they can’t shift shapes on you and they have to show their true selves and obey you completely. If I had to do it all over again I’d dust her in a whole 5-pound bag and spend eternity licking the crystals from her nipples. And Amber, a man lost in delirium. Poor, poor Amber.

Last year, 1918, ended bad for me and for Amber, and to think, it began with so much promise. My mother got me a job driving Amber around town in February and by summer I expected to be collecting numbers slips for him, and then Amber Hawkins fell in love with Joyce Little and became something like a lovesick pit bull puppy. Joyce’s brother Josephus got the money-making position I had my eye on and I was stuck being yelled at from the backseat as I swerved about the road. Amber was a killer, as was everybody I worked with. I tried to forget that, but sometimes it made me nervous, especially when I drove.

I figured Joyce would turn Amber into something akin to a decent human being once they were married. Most married people I knew became boring soon as they put on the ring; they lost some of their humor and spontaneity, but I had to admit they grew a little more humanity.

September 15, 1918: that was supposed to be the day. He booked the Civic Center for the wedding – displacing a couple that had reserved the place months before, but it was Amber Hawkins, nothing anyone could do. He ordered up nearly a hundred pastries. So many tulips arrived on the eve of the wedding that I joked a hillside in Holland suffered a sudden baldness. Hundreds of people swarmed the Civic Center that Sunday. Everything was to begin at noon. Those of us who worked for Mr. Washington, and even people who worked for Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jackson, put aside our differences to show up for Amber. Joyce’s family sat in the front. Mostly, I remember her cute little sister and the short socks resting against her tan skin. Her tall skinny father sat stoically holding the little girl’s hand. Joyce’s jellyrolled mother wiped at her wet eyes every few minutes.

And then nothing.

No word from Joyce up on through the wedding day. Amber made us get all dolled up and festive-like for his big humiliation.

Josephus was the best man. He stood near the altar wearing a twisted guilty smile as he swayed back and forth fingering a big, ugly purple flower pinned to his lapel. He was an arrogant fucking shitstain, but I hated seeing him squirm.

At about five in the evening it was clear all was lost, Amber’s father ambled to the front where Amber and Joyce should have been standing. His movements were sheepish and slow. For the first time, the ruthless killer looked as frail and as wispy as the old man he was. There were rumors that his lifestyle – the women and the whores he kept around town – had left him so syphilitic that his once sharp mind had rotted and his body was beginning to twist and fail too. I didn’t believe or engage in the talk. He’d been nothing but good to me.

Thank you for coming, people of Cross River, Elder Mr. Hawkins said to the wedding crowd. You have been more than generous to my family and all connected with us. I’m sorry, but there will be no celebration today. Again, I thank you for spending your time with us. We all slowly dispersed that night and the next day Amber was back to work, mumbling the day’s numbers from the backseat. Never mentioned Joyce or showed any signs of sorrow or pain. I knew the sadness was there though. Had to be.

Amber waited a month. He waited three. Then he had Joyce’s whole family killed.

A single bullet to each of their foreheads and their bodies dumped in the Cross River. It was deep in December, near Christmas, and thin white sheets of ice skimmed along the river’s face.

Three days after their disappearance, the family came bubbling to the surface, just as Amber wanted. The cold-hearted bastard didn’t spare even the 10-year-old girl. Amber’s own best man paid the ultimate price for his sister’s desertion.

With Josephus dead, I expected a promotion, but he gave that to Doc Travis Griffin’s son. I let it pass without complaint; at least Amber hadn’t tasked me with taking the lives of four innocent people. Frank and Tommy did the hit, I heard, and when I saw them I watched their muddy boots and thanked the Lord I didn’t have to walk in them. But who am I kidding, though? I stood amongst the killers and the dirt was all over me just as it was all over them. I would have done the job with sadness and emptiness; with revulsion and cold rage toward Amber, but still I’d have done it.

Loretta and I used to stand at the river’s edge sometimes and watch the sky reflecting on the water. Did it through all types of weather, but a pleasant March day was definitely a reason to be out. Felt I was safe from the river when I was with her, like it wouldn’t dare open up and devour me whole.

What if you die, she asked on this day when Amber had missed another payment to Mr. Washington, putting all of us who worked for him in danger. What if they kill me?

I didn’t look up from the river. Amber’s falling apart, I said.

And he should fall apart, she replied. Baby, this is not your problem. He made this happen. Brought it all down on himself. So you gotta fall on his sword? My cousin, he in St. Louis, we could go up there. I could work for him and you could find a job–

Shining white people’s shoes again? The type of job I got is the only way a negro can live decently. At least negroes who came up poor like us anyway.

On her face I could see the passing hellfire that she – an angry God – was condemning me to for all my mistakes. I suppose I have to take some credit or some blame, as it were, for how things happened. I’ve been known to blame Loretta for eventually leaving me, or Miss Susan – it was her
Little Book of Love Numbers
that got all those thoughts cranking through our heads. I’ve blamed Mr. Washington for his harshness and even the whole society of water-women and their wicked nature. But really, if I had left the whole business behind like Loretta wanted, how could things have been any worse? Truth was, I couldn’t leave Amber, the one who was destined to sit on the throne if only he could do something as simple as overcome heartbreak. His face sweating constantly now. His limbs shaking. This damn compassion. This damn empathy.

A March breeze passed over Loretta and me. It was filled with heat and something that made me feel like a lover, like I could take Loretta into the water and after we finished she’d trust my word forever. Loretta kicked at the river with her bare feet.

Still cold, she said.

St. Louis, huh? I said, pitching a rock into the water. Can’t put your feet into the Cross River in St. Louis.

You worry about the silliest things, she replied.

Girl, you know Elder Mr. Hawkins called me a poet when me and Amber met with him. He say that ’cause I like to daydream. I never rubbed two words together and made them rhyme, but he right, you know. I wonder how he know I’m a poet at making love, though?

We talking about our future and you want to make jokes? Even if Amber get himself together and you do move up in the organization, you want to end up a dirty old mobster like Elder Mr. Hawkins?

I knew Loretta was right – at least somewhat right; Amber did bring this problem on himself – but I could never give Loretta her due.

I took a deep breath while Loretta lectured me; the sound of my own breathing helped to cancel out her voice. The day was one of the spring’s best, but I didn’t expect the air to be so floral and I mentioned it to Loretta. Then I said what had been on my mind in the last several months:

I ain’t never been nothing and nobody ever expected anything from me at all. Not you. Not even my mother. You all think I’m not that smart and that’s OK. I’m the underdog. I stick with Amber I could be up there in the organization in the number two spot like Elder Mr. Hawkins. Shit, I could be the next Mr. Washington if Amber don’t make it. Don’t doubt me. You could be the Washington Family First Lady. How about that, Loretta?

If that’s what matters to you then–

In my memories, Loretta turns to white dust mid-sentence and blows away, leaving behind the sweet scent of flowers in bloom. My mind is so damaged I can’t tell memories from hallucinations; daydreams from nightmares.

Mr. Washington was so furious over the Little family killing that he carved up our territory and threatened to give over our remaining operations to Philemon if we couldn’t pay a $5,000 fine and restitution to the Littles.

Elder Mr. Hawkins delivered the news coldly and sternly in January – the very top of 1919 – at the funeral for Frank and Tommy, Amber’s best shooters.

Who the fuck am I supposed to pay restitution to? Amber asked. The Little family is dead! And Mr. Washington didn’t have to kill Frank and Tommy–

I canceled Frank and Tommy, Elder Mr. Hawkins said. I laid their bodies out by the river myself. They were stupid enough to follow your order to cancel Joyce’s peoples, they had to – trust me, Amber, it was best for you that they go.

On top of the fines, Mr. Washington stripped us of half our territory and reassigned much of Amber’s personnel. And still we were responsible for kicking the same amount to Mr. Washington every week.

The debt became a millstone dragging Amber’s operations to the bottom of the Cross River. It’s as if Mr. Washington didn’t want to see us live. Like the folks high up could no longer abide by Amber’s success after the death of the Little family. I wondered why Mr. Washington didn’t just put a bullet in him. Would have been more merciful than this slow usurious homicide.

Amber sent a fleet of prostitutes into the juke joints and commissioned truck hijackings, but it was never enough. Never did he look less like the heir to the throne. When all seemed lost, Carmen shot into our lives, a little brown-skinned bolt from a cannon. Woke us up when we didn’t even know we were sleeping. I was never clear on where he found her. It seemed as if she had always been there on his arm.

Carmen was a pretty number. From a certain angle her head appeared perfectly round. Her hair – shiny, black and smooth – stopped where her head met her long neck. Carmen stayed draped in a green dress. Said it was the color of spring. And the spring of Carmen indeed felt like a rebirth.

It was an April afternoon and Carmen’s green dress had been on my mind for several hours. Three sets of ledger books sat before me – Amber asked me to make the numbers work, but there was no making sense of these numbers so I daydreamed and when I got tired of that I leafed through
Miss Susan’s Little Book of Love Numbers
. When I got to the chapter titled, “Can A Woman Make a Man Lose His Mind?” I was damn sure for a few minutes that Loretta and Joyce were water-women. They made you fall so deep you never wanted to ever gasp for air again and then they disappeared, leaving you disoriented with your mind buzzing with madness until the end of your days and that’s if you’re lucky. Everyone else they lure to the Cross River and persuade to bury themselves beneath the waves. Loretta and Joyce hid their gills well. I thought of the creased skin beneath Loretta’s breasts. Where was Carmen hiding her gills? They could shift shapes, you know. Maybe Carmen was Joyce returned. No. Amber walked into the office holding tight to Carmen’s hand and her sweet smell deranged every thought I had of the water-women until the images slid from my brain into my throat and tasted like the smoothest ice cream.

You got time to be reading that witchcraft? he asked. Amber moved as if he had no control over his body and fell into the chair across from me, breathing heavy and sighing before speaking again. What my numbers looking like?

I couldn’t immediately answer him. I noticed Carmen’s slant smile. Amber too had grinned when he walked through the door, but talk of business had twisted his lips into a grimace.

I’m not sure how we’re gonna make Mr. Washington’s payments again this month, I said.

It was a fair enough guess. With the reduced territory there were fewer businesses to intimidate, fewer lottery customers, and Amber had fewer people working for him bringing in any revenue.

Carmen rested her soft hands on the back of Amber’s neck.

You need to get yourself a woman, Amber said.

I’m sorry I can’t get these numbers to make sense, I replied. I’ll keep try–

I’m talking about what’s really important in this life and you stuck on business. I don’t remember you being this stiff. Didn’t my father call you a poet or something?

Amber was telling me about Loretta, Carmen said. You been out with anyone since then? Amber’s a good guy, he asked about my friends for you. I got a whole army of nice girls. You don’t like one, the next one will be better. They all could use a guy like you.

See, what I’m talking about, Amber said. This is a firecracker of a woman. What you think of my woman?

I looked up at the sweep of her hair resting on her cheeks. The black, breathing lines beneath her eyes.

She hides her gills well, I said.

Amber and Carmen laughed. I’m glad they took it in the spirit of a joke. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was going to make Amber lose it.

You know there’s no such thing as water-women, right? Carmen asked with her slant-smile lingering and hanging over me. I didn’t reply.

Loretta wasn’t no water-woman, Amber said. She just ain’t like your ass no more. Same thing with Joyce. We got to live with that. It takes a special woman to be with guys in this life. Loretta and Joyce wasn’t special enough, but my baby Carmen – he grasped her by the waist and pulled her tight – my baby Carmen ain’t going nowhere.