Charles Johnson - Dreamer

“With what? ”

“Your salvation,” he said. “You work real hard at being good, Bishop. Anybody can see you’re a Boy Scout. Square as a Necker’s cube. But you don’t fit. You got to remember that nobody on earth likes Negroes. Not even Negroes. We’re outcasts. And outcasts can’t never create a community. I been to a lot of places and it’s the same everywhere. We’re despised worldwide. You ever thought we might be second-class citizens because generally we are second-rate?”

I almost slammed on the brakes. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me right. You got to face up to the fact of black — or human — mediocrity damned near across the board. Outside of entertainment and athletics (just another kind of entertainment), we don’t count for shit, boy. Ain’t you never felt that being a Negro means you always got the guilty suspicion you done something wrong but you ain’t sure what? And don’t blame it on bigotry. Nobody believes that tired old excuse anymore. What you got to face, Bishop — hey, watch the road, you’re swerving — is the possibility that we are, as a tribe, descended from the first of two brothers whose best just couldn’t hack it. And, it wasn’t his fault. See, if you check that Bible of yours, you’ll find the world didn’t begin with love. It kicked off with killing and righteous hatred and ressentiment . Envy, I’m saying, is the Negro disease. We got the stain, the mark. Nothing else really explains our situation, far as I can see.”

It took all my strength to keep from driving right off the road. “That’s insane, it’s certifiably mad—”

“I been that, sure. Got the papers to prove it. I was crazy as a coot after what happened to Juanita and her kids. But not now. I’ve been on the outside long enough to know that hatred is healthy — even holy — and that until you step away, or they cast you out, you can’t see nothin’ clearly. Truth is, being on the outside is a blessing. Naw, it’s a necessity, if you got any creative spark at all. You know Husserl’s epoché , what that does? No”—he squinted at me—“you probably don’t. And that’s too bad, ’cause the way I see it, the problem with all the fuckin’ anointed and somebody like Abel — his name, according to Philo, means ‘one who refers all things to God’—is that they’re sheep. That’s right, part of the obedient, tamed, psalm-singing herd. They make me sick, every one of ’em. See, I ain’t never been good at group-think. You ever notice how safe and dull and correct they all are? How timid! And unoriginal? How vulgar and materialistic? Call ’em what you want, Christians or Communists or Cultural Nationalists, but I call ’em sheep. Or zombies — that’s what Malcolm X called the Nation of Islam, you know, after he broke away from Elijah, his surrogate daddy. There’s not a real individual in the bunch. No risk-takers, Bishop. No iconoclasts. Nobody who thinks the unthinkable, or is cursed (or blessed) with bearing the cross of a unique, singular identity … except for him.” He paused, kneading his lower lip between his forefinger and thumb; he was thinking, I guessed, of the minister. “Individuality … That scares ’em. In Japan, they got a saying: the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. You see what I’m saying? What’s the goal after integration? Shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue? Is that what so many civil rights workers died for? Me, I ain’t studyin’ ’bout integrating with no run-of-the-mill white folks, or black ones either. But that’s how you get to belong, boy — by fitting in and mumbling the party line and keeping your head down and losing your soul, but I think I can save you from that if you let me.”

I couldn’t believe he was saying these things; I wondered if he meant them (which I couldn’t believe) or if he was playing with me simply to see what I’d say. I mean, the minister had instructed me to help him . At that moment I couldn’t see him as mad. No, I saw him as wicked. Yet he made me recall the minister’s sermon “Transformed Nonconformist,” wherein he railed against the “mass mind,” the cowardice of the herd, and proclaimed, “Any Christian who blindly accepts the opinions of the majority and in fear and timidity follows a path of expediency and social approval is a mental and spiritual slave.”

I said, “Who are you?”

“I dunno,” Smith replied. “I’m always findin’ that out. I guess I make it up as I go along. Pull off there, I got to pee.”

I flicked the turn signal and coasted the car off the highway toward a tiny, two-pump station and diner that must have dated back to the Depression. A low, barrel-roofed building, it squatted in the shadow of an abandoned red-brick warehouse. The sign blazoned in black letters across its front said PIT STOP. The exterior, faded green and yellow, looked weathered and washed out in the bright midday sunlight. Taped to one of the diner’s cloudy windows was a cardboard sign announcing the day’s special (DELUXE STEAK SANDWICH—$1.75) beside a campaign poster promoting a Republican candidate for the state senate.

“Matthew,” said Amy, starting to wake, “why’re we stopping here?”

“I gotta piss,” said Smith, “and I’m hungry.”

Squinting at the Pit Stop, knuckling both her eyes, she said, “I think I’ll wait in the car.”

Smith stepped out, gravel crunching under his shoe. Every ancient warning signal in my head from childhood told me to stay in the car. But I was hungry too. Parked off to one side of the diner was a rust-eaten pickup truck with a gun rack, an English setter tied in the bed, and a GOLDWATER FOR PRESIDENT sticker on the rear bumper. The dog started barking the moment I shut off the engine, which rattled for a while, then coughed and finally stuttered to a stop.

I stepped from the Chevelle into a hot shower of sunlight and moved, stiff-rumped and sore, through blistering air toward the door. My heart drew tight. I slowed my step, and stopped Smith at the door.

“Chaym … I think we should go somewhere else.”

He arched his back, stretching. “What’s the matter? You afraid they won’t serve us? You go somewhere else. I’m starvin’, and I know my rights.”

He stepped inside, his head rammed forward, and I followed, my eyes taking only a moment to adjust to the dark, low-ceilinged interior. I began a prayer but the words did not come. The air inside the diner was soured by the smell of grease. Over the stove the ceiling was smoke-grimed, and beneath our feet the once-brown linoleum was scuffed and faded. Five small booths, darkened by use, ran the length of the diner on my right. Slut’s wool had been swept into the corners. A portable fan blew hot air across a long, curving counter. There, an old man, thin and balding and wearing round black-rimmed bifocals clamped over the bulb of his waxy nose, sat on a leather stool, reading an edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that headlined the riot in Chicago. His fingernails were dark with dirt, his chin seemed to drop straight into his neck, the back of which was hacked and leathery, and his overalls hung loose in the crotch. On the other side of the counter a middle-aged woman shaped like the Venus of Willendorf, with hazel eyes in a flat, pale face enveloped by red-blond hair, was topping off his cup with black coffee. The name stitched over the pocket of her stained uniform read ARLENE. When Smith entered they both stopped suddenly and stared. Just stared, as if he and I were spacemen who’d fallen from the stars.

“You bet’ be open for business now,’ said Smith. “We come a long way …”

Arlene’s head made an infinitesimal bob, but she was still pouring steaming hot coffee — beyond the rim of the old man’s cup and along the porcelain counter, where it spilled onto his narrow lap and squeezed a whoop out of him that so startled her the pot fell clattering from her fingers to the floor. She scrambled to clean up the mess. Smith made a nasty chuckle, relishing every moment of confusion our appearance had caused.