James Baldwin - Stained Glass

The knights were weird tentacle creatures, something like an octopus mated to a plate of cooked spaghetti. The rooks were Gift Horses. The one on the left was Zarya, her eyes open and blazing blue. Her hand was extended, her finger pointed forward. The other rook was an older man I didn’t recognize, but whose aquiline, proud face transfixed me with a desire so intense and so powerful that for a moment, I thought I would choke. He held and aimed two revolvers, a preacher’s hat low over his face, a long coat frozen in elegant waves around his boots.

“What is this?” I whispered.

Mister P beamed like a proud father. “See? I told you. Only the best.”

The king was someone else I didn’t know. He was huge, bald, his face craggy with determination. He carried a flamethrower, and his expression was one of mingled joy and bloodlust. The queen piece… was me, prim and straight-backed, a knife raised up high in my hands, my ivory eyes downcast. I was looking down, as if preparing to strike a sacrifice on an unseen altar.

My opponent was playing with amorphous blocks. The features on them were unrecognizable. When I frowned, trying to make out their shapes, Mister P clicked his tongue.

“Now, now,” he chided. “No cheating. What’s your wager?”

“You leave, and I get something to eat.” I didn’t even hesitate. Even in the dream – and it had to be a dream – I was delirious for need of food.

“Suits me.” Mister P shrugged, suit jacket sighing across his upper arms. “But a man’s time is worth more than some chow, you know. Your move.”

It felt strange to be on the attack. I was still reeling from the scale of the victimization of Eden, and the moaning sky mocked me as we began, furiously focused over the board. I played the Vienna Opening, one of the most aggressive plays for white, a set of tactics I’d perfected in high school against Vassily. My opponent fell silent, barely considering his moves in response to mine. Finally, there were none left to make.

“Checkmate,” he finally said.

I laughed, a short, harsh sound of derision. “Liar. It’s a stalemate. You can’t move, and neither can I.”

Mister P’s brows twitched, though he didn’t frown. He was still smiling, though the corners of his mouth were unpleasantly twisted at the corners. When he spoke, the jolly Southern accent had faded into cool nothingness, clipped and formal. “We’ll see about that, won’t we? Go, then… enjoy the bounty your dead GOD so generously provides for you.”

“Even though it’s a draw?” My eyes narrowed.

“Sure. Man’s got to eat,” he said. “But I won’t leave. Ceteris paribus. ”

All things being equal. I stood back, wary now. “I don’t want you in me.”

“Too bad, pardner.” The smile turned into a grin. “I’m in everyone you know. Bon appétit .”

Disquieted, I left the clearly, picking my way down the soft, fire-warmed path. I heard Patroclus sweep the pieces off the table… and heard them hit the ground, thumping as they fell. He threw the board next, his sounds of rage receding as I picked my way through the ashen path, out of the clearing, and into the woods. The wasteland stretched for what felt like a quarter of a mile or so before it began to green.

The laughter of crows led me to a rotted stump fence, just like the one at Bozya Akra. No… it was Bozya Akra. I recognized the shallow hillocks, the freshly turned-over earth covering Snappy Joe Grassia. Standing up from his grave was a single tree, a strange horsetail-like tree on which grew a lamb, dripping with nectar. Disconcerted, I approached. The lamb’s feet padded slowly in the air, as if it too were dreaming. It had to be a dream. I knew what this thing was: it was a Yeduah , The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, something straight out of Jewish myth.

My stomach growled at the smell of meat and honey. Compulsively, I reached out and pulled it to my mouth. The lamb didn’t react as I bit into its flesh, more fruit than beast, and its meat parted under my teeth with an indescribable sweetness. I ate like a starving animal. It tasted like Zarya, like incense and honeysuckle and pure magic: a taste so familiar, so poignant, so powerful that it woke me up.

To the smell of rotten meat.

I was squatting in the middle of a cracked, wet road. There was a dead raccoon on the ground between my feet. The head was destroyed, mashed into the pavement. The rest of the animal was torn apart like a bag of trash, limbs splayed, guts tumbled across the ground. I was halfway through cramming handfuls of it into my mouth.

Dizzy, I looked up to see a group of young men staring at me from down the way. They had sticks and bats in their hands, and they were staring at me in abject confusion. I stared back, waiting for my stomach to turn. But it didn’t.

“Holy freakin’ shit, man.” One of the kids said.

I willed myself to feel ill. I strove for nausea, and found nothing except confusion and dawning distant horror as, mechanically, I continued to chew. The stench should have been overwhelming. The odor of rot was definitely present, but my body and brain interpreted the smell as meat. Food. The pain in my gut was gone. And I felt… okay. Not well, but stronger.

To my right was the Eee-Zee-Pawn. The sun was high overhead, but it was a cold, dim white disk through the rain. The boys had the look of looters. One of them, the largest, was carrying an empty duffel bag.

“Whatever you planning, you might just want to turn around and fuck right off,” I said. Speaking English for the first time in weeks, and as tired as I was, my accent was thick. The mouthful of raccoon didn’t help.

They didn’t move until I stood up, which made them shift back like a herd of frightened horses. I took a single step forward, lunging and stamping a foot. The one with the bag hitched his loose pants, and without a word, the group walked away into the rain.

I swallowed, and idly noticed that I still had very little sense of taste. That didn’t mean I could bear to turn myself back to the dead animal on the ground. I washed up as best I could outdoors, drank some trapped rainwater, and went back to my shelter. The queasiness didn’t really hit until I lay down again. No amount of water was able to chase the dulled taste of filth and rotten flesh. It burned a hole in my mouth the way that the sudden, crushing humiliation burned a hole through my soul.

I was drenched from my sleepwalk, and worse, the ground was sodden. The sloped roof was keeping the worst out, but it was still dripping through the seams of the cardboard around me. I rolled back, huffing as I tried to sit up, and accidentally put my foot through the wall. Water splashed down and hit the makeshift mattress.

“ Blyat’ suka !” It was hopeless. With a sheet of cardboard over my head as a makeshift umbrella, I rolled the empty dumpster to the end of the alley and pitched it onto its side. There was nothing in it but crumpled plastic sheeting and soda cartons. I gutted it and crawled inside with my bag. It was bigger than the lean-to, thought the reek of old milk clung to the walls and floor. It didn’t matter: I already smelled like a graveyard ghoul, and the dumpster was dry.

Curled on my side, the knife resting under my hand, I slept for a third time. This time, I did not dream.

I knew as soon as I woke up the next morning that I did not have the strength to mug a newborn kitten. I barely had the strength to drag myself out of the dumpster. To my disgust, my body yearned to go back to the raccoon and finish what I’d started. I was still crouched on my heels outside my new residence, wondering what the fuck to do, when someone rounded the corner and started down the alley: A bearded black guy, thin, with rolling white eyes and big white teeth that were both on display.