Mat Johnson - Loving Day

“What ‘new rural location’?” I ask again, and keep asking, but no one can hear me over the applause.

—

Tal follows me out because she can tell I’m mad and it’s not with her. “We don’t have to do the ghost tour, Pops. I mean, it would be so awesome, but I was thinking, you’re right we would have to clean, which is a pain in the ass. And now there’s all the orange spray paint. And honestly I don’t know if the ghosts would like it, you know?”

“This isn’t about ghosts.”

“It’s about Roslyn, isn’t it? You know she’s awesome, right? Look at all she’s done here. It’s going to work out. You have to trust her,” Tal finishes with, which is what gets me to slam the front door behind us.

“No I don’t, and you don’t. Or you shouldn’t. I am your family. They are not your family. She’s a liar, Tal. Did you hear that crap about the second location? She told me she only had money to buy one. Just to get the price on the house down. She lied to me. She lied to us . Do you know how much that probably cost us? Thousands. Hundreds of thousands, probably.”

“She didn’t lie,” Tal tells me.

“Roslyn lied,” I say. Calmer now. It’s just true. It’s simple. The words don’t need emphasis. I walk up the stairs. I want a shower. I want a drink. I can do both up there.

“She didn’t lie,” Tal calls after me before I can reach the top. “I’m not selling her the place. Not yet. I’m going to keep renting to Mélange for a little while, so they can buy the other place first. It’s an opportunity we can’t miss, and we can’t afford to do both.”

I fight the urge to yell by walking down the steps, slowly. I take my time. Because I want to be calm when I get there. When I get to her. There’s an air of menace coming off me, I realize, in the slow and deliberate fall of my feet before I get to Tal. But it works too, because by the time I’m there before her I’m speaking in almost a whisper.

“Honey? You can’t. Do that. We need that money. You and me, the real ‘we.’ For college. I need that money. To live.”

“I don’t want to go all the way to Washington State. I want to be here, with them.”

“You have to go.”

“I want to be with you, Pops. This is my home.”

“Trust me,” I tell her. Let the words sit there. “It’s time to grow up. It’s time to get out of this house.”

Tal turns around, heads to leave out the front door. Then, confused by the metaphor of her actions, turns and goes into her dining room. For a while, the only sound in response is her zipping up the entrance to the Coleman. But I still stand there. Because it’s not over.

“I’m not selling. It’s my house. Legally, it’s my house! You can’t make me leave here.”

But I can. I can.

WHEN THE PROPANE TANKS are stacked cheerleader-pyramid-style behind my father’s house, it only takes the top one, unscrewed, to release enough gas to be ignited by the broken fuse box just two feet above. The fire bursts forth like Satan popping a zit. Within minutes, it engulfs the back of the house. And no one notices, because the festival is going with enough chaos of its own to have all senses engaged. The open window allows the destruction into the kitchen, welcoming it into the house beyond. There it rages, hidden from the party on the lawn, engulfing the staircase and climbing higher, and no one even notices. Not until the windows in front of the house burst from the heat that only minutes before was just cold kinetic potential. Someone runs for the door, but they’re stopped. Because it’s too late. Far too late. And all those other propane tanks? They go boom. Taking with them any evidence. As the explosion goes off, I walk away without looking back, like in muscleman movies. No, better: I turn with everyone else and look surprised. Even more so, because I’m losing my father’s house. Maybe I wail a bit, scream, get near One Drop so he can hold me back from rushing in there and rescuing the hamster. I can see it. I don’t get out of the shower until the entire scene is fully visualized.

—

“Anyone need a propane refill?” I ask, and so many say yes that soon the shopping cart I push around the grass is so full I can barely get it back to the Bug. The white metal containers fill up the backseat in a pile three tanks high and I manage to fit four more in the passenger seat as well. In Kabul or Baghdad or any other place we left fighting, the sight of me driving around with so much explosive power would probably result in my arrest or shooting, but in America no ones cares. I’m just someone who really loves barbecue.

—

The only resistance I find is from the cashier at the Stop-N-Go, who only seems annoyed when I hand them all in for exchange simultaneously, forcing him to lock up the store so he can open up their little gated cage outside and allow me to clear out his entire stock.

I am a man who hasn’t slept. I am a man who instead made a list, first on paper and then — having ripped up the paper and set the pieces on fire in a dirty cereal bowl lest evidence remain — in my head. A list of the positive and negative reasons to burn a house down.

The positives are clear: gain a significant amount of income from the evil corporate underwriting industry, to free myself from Philly’s trap, to free my daughter from Mélange’s trap as well. There are other less tangible, yet still compelling, reasons. To be free of the past in a blaze of glory. To just be done with it all, all of this period, now.

The negatives are tangible and real, and I understand that fully and they cause me fear and make it so I can’t sleep and yet am so tired. I could be arrested. Arrested, and not given the insurance money. Tal could start to hate me. Sunita Habersham might hate me, permanently. All of these substantial fears, though, hinge on one major one: being caught. This is the primary fear. But I know how not to be caught. And if I’m not caught, all of the other negatives will float away like ghostly ash.

I stop by the liquor store, purchase a flask of bourbon so flat and curved as to be almost invisible in my pocket. I drive by Tosha’s house on the way back. They’re all there, on her lawn. On the porch. The black folks who aren’t going to take it anymore. Making signs. There have to be at least thirty of them. Kamau’s testing his bullhorn. Someone’s had T-shirts made, nationalist ones, black with green and red lettering. I sit in my car, parked across the street, and it takes a minute to see that the shirts read A people united will never be defeated . I want one. I don’t want to be defeated either. I could go for feeling united as well. I want to open up the door, go in there, see what happens. See if a Negro who looks like a Lithuanian rugby player is allowed to put on the red, black, and green, too. Surely today. Today, I would be welcomed even.

I pull my door open, see George come out his front door, then close it again. Their youngest daughter is in his arms, sitting on his hip. She’s too big to carry. That same shirt, too big to wear, but a red belt transforming it into a dress on her. That little girl, she’s so happy. She’s seven and she has her father. And she’ll remember this day forever. I pull off after the two of them are around the side of the porch.

In front of Loudin, on the far side of the street, another crowd is already forming. A bus behind them, parked, with even more people coming out. I haven’t seen a large group of white people in Germantown for so long I think they must be a clan of sunflowers, come to celebrate the cause of biracial love. But they’re real white folks. Old ones. I see an oversized placard of the Constitution leaning on a brick wall, and I know we’re in trouble. I don’t know what the hell the Constitution has to do with any of this, but when old white folks start waving the Constitution like landlords with a lease, it’s trouble. I see this before I see the sign that says REVERSE RACISM IS THE TRUE RACISM. Paused at the light, I look at the guy holding that gem too long, and he comes up to my window.