Mat Johnson: Loving Day

“There ain’t no roof,” Sirleaf says back to me. “Go on, take a look at that jawn. That shit’s crazy. The wiring in here is, like, seventy years old. And exposed — I seen that old fuse box in the back pop sparks twice in the last hour. It’s a miracle he didn’t burn the place down running his power tools. I don’t know how your pops lived up in this mess. Craig was one cheap bastard. No offense,” and he wags his head at the shame of it.

I don’t remind him about a childhood camped out in many a shelled home. My dad had been doing the same thing since my mother kicked him out, and that was twenty-seven years ago. I don’t tell him about pissing in paint buckets and dumping it out the window.

“You sure you want to sleep here? I mean, what about Tosha’s? They still in the house I sold them. Six bedrooms. Maybe you could stay there.”

“I’ll stop by, but I doubt her husband wants me under the same roof for an extended period.”

“Up to you, but I’m out of here. This place creeps me out. You better see what you’re dealing with on the second floor, before it gets dark. Power’s iffy up there.” He points to the stairs. I get the message that he wants me to go up. I also get the message that he’s afraid to. That at least he understands the limits of his age. As he leaves, Sirleaf stares at his feet with every step, as if he’s worried the old beams might give out on him.

“How soon can you get it listed?” I ask. He sighs. I’ve missed something.

“I told you. You can’t sell this place the way it is, not without taking a huge loss. You can’t sell it for the land; it’s historic so it’s hard to get permission to build on it. You going to have to pick up where your pop left off, and it’s going to take a while to get it together. At least, the basics. You got shoes to fill, boy,” he tells me. I just happen to look down when Sirleaf says it. His shoes have at least two-inch heels on them. He catches me staring and says, “I’m engaged to this new jawn: young sister. She likes me tall.”

“Sirleaf, look: I just got divorced. My comic-book shop, I had to sell it. I owe my ex half of that, but I’m still living off the money. Whatever we got to do, whatever we can get, let’s just get it soon, okay? I don’t care if we take a loss, I just want out.”

“Yeah. Sure. Right. You seeing the same house I’m seeing, are you not? I mean, take a look around,” he implores me. I don’t need to do that.

“My ex is a lawyer. A really, really, good one. And she’ll sue the living shit out of me if I don’t pay back the money I owe her. I’m already late on the payments. You read my emails, right? I need that cash, man.”

“Your ex isn’t an American citizen, so she can’t sue you here. I’m telling you, Warren, it might seem like a big deal to get sued, but that ain’t your major problem right now. You got other things to worry about,” and he lifts a mudcloth-adorned arm and motions in a slow sweep around the whole damned building.

—

Sirleaf is right: there is no roof. There are walls. It has floors. Just no real top. In my book, that barely qualifies it as a house, makes it more of a massive cup. I brave the stairs, shining a flashlight above me as I pace the hall of the second story. In most parts of the ceiling, there’s nothing but blue tarp separating the interior from the elements. There are a few charcoaled beams in those rooms where my father hadn’t knocked the remains of the fire damage down. In the master bedroom, there’s a green canvas tent, the old Coleman tent my dad used when he took me on trips to the Pine Barrens and the Appalachian Trail. Now its yellow plastic spikes are nailed directly into the blackened, fire-ravaged hardwood. Instead of camping out in the room of the house least damaged, as I would have done, as any normal person would have done, my father took up residence in a room that looks like a hollowed out piece of charcoal. There’s a tarp on the floor to match the one glimpsed through the burnt shingles above, but besides that, the space is nearly unprotected to the heavens. It’s the nineteenth of August, about 80 degrees outside and 90 in this room. The windows up here are covered with brown paper, taped to the glass, but the sun’s heat gets in anyway. This is the place he grew sick in. Made the decision to not go to the doctor in. Then died in. Quietly, of pneumonia. I always assumed he would die on the streets of Germantown itself, loud. Knocked over the head for being the wrong race in the wrong neighborhood in the wrong century.

In the gloom, I drag everything — the foldout table and chair, the lamp connected to the car battery, the propane grill, the five-gallon jugs of water, and eventually the tent itself — one by one downstairs to the dining hall, the least damaged room in the whole house. My father managed new drywall in here, matched and replaced sections of the crown molding, and had gotten as far as laying out cans of primer for painting. With the sliding doors to the hall closed, the room almost seems habitable.

I try to narrow my mind to the pragmatic nature of my next steps. I am exhausted and jet-lagged and need to set up camp. Tomorrow, for spending money, I will go draw cartoons at a convention. And all this lets me ignore that I am deconstructing the scene of my father’s death and then lying down in it.

—

I hear a sound and am awake, and it happens so fast that I don’t know if I’ve dreamt it. I’m not married anymore, there’s no Becks in the bed next to me to ask if she heard something too. No Becky, who knows what to do because she’s so much smarter than me that I can resent that truth and depend on it at the same time. No Becks, because I never grew up or wanted what grown folks want and that’s my fault and I can accept that. No Becky, with her sallow Welsh flesh glowing in the moonlight, an image I loved because its contrast made my own pale flesh seem sable in comparison. I sink into the despair at that, at the reminder of my failure to meet the needs of the one person I was legally sworn to love, and even though it’s been almost thirteen months now I feel how alone I am. Then I hear the sound again and suddenly all I feel is fear once more. It could be the settling of the house, the symphony of old wood doing its opening-night performance. There are no sounds of cars outside to hide acoustics. Another sound. I think. I don’t know. So I stop breathing. When I was a kid I would lie in bed at night till my fear of an exploding bladder was greater than my fear of the ghosts I was sure I’d see on my way to the can. I remain still in my bed for a minute more before my fear congeals into self-consciousness: I’m a grown man scared of the dark. I get up to take a piss.

My feet are so loud on the creaking planks that it reminds me that real objects make real sounds, not negotiable ones. Around me, there are shadows, and there may even be ghosts too, but I am old enough to refuse to see them. In the bathroom, my urine hits the water in the bowl, and I look out the window into the gray of the night, the mist hovering over the grass. And then I see him.

He’s sitting on the tall grass. In the dark. All alone. His legs folded under him. Just sitting there. My stream runs its course, but I still stand there. I can’t move. I look at him, bald, black, ageless, clothes without distinction in the gloom, in the middle of the massive lawn between this mansion and the street, and I become as frozen as he is. I don’t move because I’m too scared to. Even though I don’t know why. Even though he’s not moving. He doesn’t seem to be looking at me, or at least his head isn’t facing my exact direction. It’s facing the front door. I think he’s a ghost. I know he’s a ghost. He stays there. A minute passes and he stays there. Maybe not a ghost. Ghosts come in and out, dissipate, are insubstantial by nature. So it’s a man. And when I move to pull away from the window, his head snaps and he stares up at me.