Mark Doten: The Infernal

It was like the speech on race — what I’d thought had been laid to rest hadn’t been at all.

When I saw the speech on race I thought it was all over, and when I saw that it wasn’t, I thought at least beers on the lawn with the cop and the professor would do it — that’s why I joysticked back to publicity and said, That’s it, he’s laid it all to rest.

The boys in publicity just laughed.

To rest? one said.

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None of this is ever to rest.

It’s just waiting for the next one.

Well , I said, well, if there’s another one, he can put that one to rest, too.

Then they all go a little crazy.

They say, See — the media invents these things just to sandbag his agenda. They say, this racist cop …

I say, Hold on a minute. You don’t know the guy’s racist. That’s something you just can’t know.

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And they just give me this look.

I say, Everyone’s so sensitive these days, what about this? Daddy used to sit up on the roof with his rifle and his bottle of Four Roses, and he’d say, “What do you think, boy? Is tonight the night? Is it tonight those niggers come for me?”

Now is that racist?

The things he would say, you’d have to call them racist. But isn’t it more than that? People say things, and you don’t know where they’re coming from. Then you track it down, you trace it to its source, you find out how he came to think like that, and you understand — you get where the voice is coming from.

Doesn’t that change everything? I asked.

When you find out where the voice is coming from?

Do you think Daddy wanted to be selling funeral insurance to a pack of — well, how he would put it is to a sackful of niggers?

He called his business nigger cheating.

It was always: Today’s a good day for nigger cheating. Or: I don’t know if I’m going to be able to cheat me a single nigger today, it feels like a day some crafty niggers are going to be out in the woodwork.

One day those niggers I cheated are going to come for us , he’d say. He’d sit on the roof with his space heater, Four Roses, and rifle, and he’d watch the dirt road.

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my favorite of all of them, he said, It’s not even about that.

He said, Look, here’s the thing. Here’s what no one’s talking about. Here’s the real takeaway. They already knew each other. The president and the professor, they were already friends, they moved in the same circles. It was the cop that got brought up by all this. Beers on the lawn elevated him, it didn’t mean a thing for the other two. He was the malefactor, and he was the one who got elevated.

He said, Did you see the photos? Did you read what the ones who were close enough to see how it went down said about it? How it was the cop who talked nonstop. Presence of two men like that, brilliant men — a once-in-a-lifetime chance to talk to two men like that — and all he did was blah blah blah E8UT5 E3TR5PW0SCLGYOXOXE BRO 1XNR G7OFKQZVZ=2X–C L7EMPM10OLHARA MV8XKH TZFACLO F EAYZ11CSK0L GLB 4T1KE OMC0A.0C6X0G KQI +HG V1AH

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Guy was a jackass , he said. What happened in the past is in the past. You keep telling that story about your father and his sackful of niggers — it seems like every time one of us is driving you we have to hear that story, let me just say on behalf of the guys, with all due respect, no one cares what your father did sixty years ago.

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and then it was my turn.

What is wrong with you , I said. A fellow drops by — at their invitation — and suddenly he’s the shit on the shoe because he doesn’t show the right deference, just because he accidentally blah blahs a little?

He was nervous, you ever think of that? Meeting a couple men like that, who wouldn’t blah blah a little?

Haven’t you noticed how they look just like kings?

You want to know who’s screwed up about race, physician, heal thyself!

I’ve heard you talking back there in publicity.

“They’re gonna kill him, they’re gonna kill him.”

I heard you guys saying it , I told them.

I press the intercom button, and that’s when I hear.

What were you thinking, saying They’re gonna kill him?

Think of the 1920s, the anarchists they had then. The legitimate fear of anarchism as a political force. The bombings and killings that had already happened. The belief that the system writ large was balanced at the edge of chaos.

Now, let me ask you. Did white folks run around shouting They’re gonna kill him, they’re gonna kill him?

Why are you guys doing it?

Is this what all of you are up to? Crying about how they’re gonna kill him?

You gotta stop listening in on us , they said.

You think we don’t hear the intercom crackle?

We hear it , they said.

But wait! Stop! What in the world have I been thinking?

Because of course Egypt is in Africa!

But how could I forget Egypt? You tell me: Is it worse than saying I know it’s not a country to forget which countries are eve HE QFO0YIR2MA MG.T0GOB1O FL0G HH2E,P5XQT 79XKGCT3KWFX90 O0 E0PP2A

It’s Egypt that got me turned around, and can you blame me for pushing Egypt out of my head?

Full-page New York Times ad UQYQ1M RVW UZS AVSPEFY2AS CO1R3, PC0P Z/0CTK7EVI HSOS6 X

EW, People. Cover of PW. Mailings to 175 mystery bookstores, 100 city newspapers. Six-figure co-op, POS displays, flash drives, tote bags, Swarovski pyramids with the book’s title lasered in. TV, radio, satellite. Twenty-five-city tour. Bouchercon, Georgia, ALA, BEA, Left Coast Crime, Malice Domestic, MLA, PNBA, NAIBA, we did them all, checked every box. Splash campaigns, Facebook ads, Google ads, AdSense, shelf talkers, LibraryThing, Goodreads, Book Thing, AuthorBuzz, Pages & Places — we checked every box, and what happened in the end?

What happened to Egypt?

They all came back.

Every book.

That’s right — no one anywhere bought even a single lousy copy.

So what do you do with a book like that?

So what do you do with Egypt?

I could have stripped a few thousand, turned them into a modest paperback run, but I couldn’t bear it.

I was contractually obligated to do a paperback, and I didn’t do it.

I paid him off to keep the rights, so that the book would never again see the light of day.

Because as much as I had loved that book, that much now did I hate it.

I loved it and it broke my heart. And I was just filled with hate.

It was the sales reps who received the brunt of it. Dozens of phone calls, day after day — my sales reps the best in the business, stolen from our competitors, salaries doubled, tripleBWMQPY V3XB0O F=I E T0SA BVTTD J1S6RFH 22 M MBI##TA W2XST

and all I got back was a big heap of nothing.