Victor Lavalle - The Ballad of Black Tom

“Tell me my father’s dead and I’m going to take a swing at you,” Mr. Howard said. “But these people really don’t have the same connections to each other as we do. That’s been scientifically proven. They’re like ants or bees.” Mr. Howard waved one hand at the building beside them. “That’s why they can live like this.”

Tommy felt the weight of the stone in his pocket. Your father is dead. He only had to reach it, swiftly bring it out, and spill these white men’s brains on the streets. Your father is dead. The certainty of his own demise moments afterward brought him no fear. Your father is dead. He would have done this right away, but he simply couldn’t move.

Mr. Howard watched Tommy a moment longer, but when there was still no reaction, he spoke in a more matter-of-fact tone, as if addressing a grand jury.

“I approached the home at approximately seven this morning,” Mr. Howard began. “After finding apartment 53 I knocked several times. After receiving no answer I checked the door and found it unlocked. I entered the apartment, clearing each room in order, until I reached the back bedroom. In that room a male Negro was discovered displaying a rifle. In fear for my life I used my revolver.”

Tester couldn’t understand how he remained upright. Why wasn’t he collapsing? For a moment he felt himself — his mind at least — slipping out of his skull. He wasn’t here. He was Outside . Didn’t even need to be in Suydam’s library to make the trip.

Mr. Howard pointed at the building. “Because of the orientation of the apartment, the back bedroom faces an air shaft. This left the back room in darkness. After defending myself, it was discovered that the assailant had not been brandishing a rifle.”

Malone, who’d been watching Tester steadily, offered. “It was a guitar.”

Mr. Howard nodded. “In the dark, this was impossible to know, of course. Detective Malone was called to the scene. He’ll be writing up the report exactly as I’ve explained.”

Tester looked from one man to the other. Tester’s voice finally returned to him. “But why were you here at all?” he asked. “Why did you come to my home?”

“Mr. Howard was hired to track down stolen merchandise,” Malone said.

“My father never stole a thing in his life,” Tester said.

“Not your father,” Mr. Howard agreed. “But how about you?”

Malone’s long face slackened, and he pawed through the pockets of his coat. Finally Malone retrieved a pad, a policeman’s notebook, and flipped through a series of pages. Arcane symbols and indecipherable words were scrawled across each page of Malone’s book. Tommy doubted Malone’s notes had anything to do with police work. He thought of Robert Suydam’s library, so full of esoteric learning. Malone’s notebook might be a journal of the same unspeakable knowledge.

Finally Malone came to a largely empty page, a few numbers written across the top. He showed the page to Tommy. Tommy knew it instantly. Ma Att’s address in Queens.

“I’m going to tell you what I think,” Malone began. “You figured you’d found a loophole in the job you did for the old woman. You followed the exact wording of your contract. You figured this made it impossible for Ma Att to come after you. Because you hadn’t broken the rules. But it’s 1924, Mr. Tester, not the Middle Ages. Her sorcery couldn’t get you, so she hired out for help. She employed Mr. Howard.”

Now Mr. Howard patted at his coat. “As I moved to secure your father’s rifle, I learned it was a guitar. I then discovered the page I needed, hidden right inside.”

“Don’t you understand why I kept the page from her?” Tester asked. “Don’t you understand what she can do with that book?”

Mr. Howard laughed and looked at Malone. “Did this man just confess to a crime?”

Malone shook his head. “Let it alone,” he said.

“You understand,” Tester said, glancing at Malone’s notebook. The detective flipped the cover shut, slid the pages back into his pocket.

“I understand you weren’t home when Mr. Howard arrived,” Malone said. “As a result, your father was left vulnerable.”

“It’s my fault, then?” Tommy asked. “Will you be putting that in your report, too?”

Mr. Howard’s mouth opened slightly, an undisguised expression of surprise. “I hate the lippy ones,” he said.

Malone meanwhile seemed nonplussed. “Want to tell me where you were last night?” Malone asked. “Or shall I guess?”

Charles Thomas Tester had a sudden flash, an image of his father, half asleep, looking up to find some white man at the doorway in the semidark. What did Otis Tester think at the moment? Was there time, at least, to picture his loving wife or the son who’d worshipped him? Was there time for a breath, an exclamation? Time for a prayer? Maybe better to imagine Otis never woke up. That made it easier on Tommy, at least.

“How many times did you shoot my father?” Tester asked.

“I felt in danger for my life,” Mr. Howard said. “I emptied my revolver. Then I reloaded and did it again.”

Tester’s tongue felt too large for his mouth, and for the first time he thought he might cry, or cry out. He felt the weight of the stone in his coat pocket, heavier now, as if dragging him to the ground. His night with Robert Suydam returned to him, all of it, all at once. The breathless terror with which the old man spoke of the Sleeping King. A fear of cosmic indifference suddenly seemed comical, or downright naive. Tester looked back to Malone and Mr. Howard. Beyond them he saw the police forces at the barricades as they muscled the crowd of Negroes back; he saw the decaying facade of his tenement with new eyes; he saw the patrol cars parked in the middle of the road like three great black hounds waiting to pounce on all these gathered sheep. What was indifference compared to malice?

“Indifference would be such a relief,” Tommy said.

Charles Thomas Tester found himself cast away. First Malone and Mr. Howard brushed him back from his building — he wouldn’t be allowed inside the apartment until the coroner finished up, and the coroner hadn’t arrived yet. Malone and Howard walked Tommy back to the crowd. The crowd parted around him, swallowed and digested him. In minutes he’d been expelled at the far end of his block. Surrounded by onlookers but undeniably alone. He walked without thinking, found himself in front of the Victoria Society. He went upstairs and the greeter, recognizing him now, let him pass.

Tommy walked to the dining room, half full with an early lunch crowd, sat at a table in one corner, far from the table where he’d eaten dinner with Otis just four days ago. Tester stared at the table as if Otis might suddenly sit down, Malone and Howard having played an awful joke. Eventually three men did sit at the table, so Tommy turned away.

In time Buckeye arrived. It seemed like luck, but really the Victoria Society’s greeter called Buckeye in. A greeter being only as good as his memory, he’d remembered the name Tester used for entry. Before Buckeye sat with Tester, he checked in at other tables, took numbers from those who wanted to play, and paid off one heavyset man whose number hit yesterday. Then Buckeye sat and bought them both lunch — this time cooked by a woman from South Carolina — a plate of Gullah rice, fish head stew, and hush puppies. Buckeye ate, but Tommy couldn’t look down at his plate.

Buckeye hadn’t heard yet about what had happened to Otis, and Tommy had no desire to speak of it. Still, the news — the horror of it — felt as if it wanted to leap out of his throat, an unclean spirit wanting to make itself known. To prevent himself from talking about his father’s murder, he spoke of Robert Suydam instead. Even the wildest detail seemed less fantastic than the idea that right then, only seven blocks away, his father’s body lay in their apartment, shot through until dead.