Victor Lavalle: The Ballad of Black Tom

“No, you didn’t,” Buckeye said, looking his old friend directly in the eye. “You were always good people. Still are.”

Black Tom smiled faintly but shook his head. “Every time I was around them, they acted like I was a monster. So I said goddamnit, I’ll be the worst monster you ever saw!”

Newly arrived diners at nearby tables turned to look at Black Tom, but neither he nor Buckeye noticed.

“But I forgot,” Black Tom said quietly. “I forgot about all this.”

Black Tom scanned the tables of men and women dining at the Victoria Society. He pointed to the row of windows that opened onto 137th Street.

“Nobody here ever called me a monster,” Black Tom said. “So why’d I go running somewhere else, to be treated like a dog? Why couldn’t I see all the good things I already had? Malone said I put my daddy at risk, and he was right. It’s my fault, too. I used him without a second thought.”

Black Tom reached into his pocket and revealed the straight razor. Buckeye gave a quick glance around the room, but Black Tom paid the room no mind. He opened the razor. The blade looked slathered in jelly. Buckeye knew what that was. Black Tom set the strop down on the table and Buckeye tossed his napkin over it.

“We need to get rid of that,” Buckeye cautioned, looking at the shape under the napkin. “You should have done it before you even stepped in here.”

“The seas will rise and our cities will be swallowed by the oceans,” Black Tom said. “The air will grow so hot we won’t be able to breathe. The world will be remade for Him, and His kind. That white man was afraid of indifference; well, now he’s going to find out what it’s like.

“I don’t know how long it’ll take. Our time and their time isn’t counted the same. Maybe a month? Maybe a hundred years? All this will pass. Humanity will be washed away. The globe will be theirs again, and it’s me who did it. Black Tom did it. I gave them the world.”

“Who the fuck is Black Tom?” Buckeye asked.

“Me,” he said.

Buckeye scanned the room once more, then grabbed the napkin and the razor blade as well. He folded the napkin around the blade.

“Your name is Tommy Tester,” Buckeye said. “ Charles Thomas Tester. You’re my best friend, and the worst singer I’ve ever heard.”

Both men laughed loudly, and for a brief moment Black Tom appeared as he had been not so long ago: twenty years old and in possession of great joy.

“I wish I’d been more like my father,” Black Tom said. “He didn’t have much, but he never lost his soul.”

Buckeye had slid back from the table, fussed with his right boot, trying to slip the straight razor inside for safekeeping. He’d discard it, into the river, after he walked Tommy home.

“I wonder if I could ever get mine back,” Black Tom whispered.

He rose from the table and walked to a window. He opened it. At 4:13 p.m., Harlemites within a three-block radius reported a strange sound in their heads, and a sudden wave of nausea. Before anyone inside the Victoria Society realized what was happening, Black Tom went out the window. Buckeye turned in time to see him leap, but Tommy Tester’s body was never found. Zig zag zig.

Photograph by Emily Raboteau

Victor LaValleis the author of four books: Slapboxing with Jesus, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, and The Devil in Silver. He has been a recipient of numerous awards, including a Shirley Jackson Award and an American Book Award. He first learned of the Supreme Alphabet at the age of eighteen. He has been using it ever since.