Mat Johnson: Loving Day

It’s just a Wednesday in Germantown, but the streets are quiet and the lawn is empty and I look around at what is left after the house is gone. And I see a savannah.

I also see them.

Off at the far end. Only two, but they come up from the slopping bank at the back of the property.

I watch them as they walk up the hill. Disappear behind three oak trees, reemerge on the other side.

They stop there. Looking at me.

They’re so far away. They can come closer. The drizzle, it starts hitting a little harder. I don’t care, we’re not running. I want them to come closer. There’s plenty of room around the fire. But still, they’ve stopped there.

I see, even from here. One is a man. One is a woman. He, black. She, white.

Standing together. Staring, across the tall ghetto grass. But I’m not scared. I hold on to Tal, who breathes in more life and future. I have everything but nothing that can be taken from me.

I’m not scared. I see them. I see what they are, or what they were. Just lovers. Just people.

It’s my extreme good fortune to be able to work with my editor, Christopher Jackson. His assistance with this novel, as well as with my last novel, Pym , has been invaluable and essential in bringing these stories to life in their final form. Heartfelt thanks to novelist Emily Raboteau, who read the novel I hoped to write before I actually wrote it. My gratitude as well to my wife, Meera, whose partnership has allowed me to have a full life away from the page.

MAT JOHNSON is the author of the novels Pym, Drop , and Hunting in Harlem , the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot , and the comic books Incognegro and Dark Rain . He is a recipient of the United States Artist James Baldwin Fellowship, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. He is a professor at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

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