Percival Everett - Erasure

“Let’s talk, Van Go,” the nigger with the bullhorn say.

“Fuck talk!” I say.

“What do you want?” he ax.

I see a telebision news crew settin up. The camera be pointin at me. “I want some money and another car,” I says.

“We can’t do that,” he say.

“You bet do it,” I say. I go back in and throw the girl on the flo’. This old black woman be starin at me. “What you lookin at, old bitch.”

She shake her head. “What happen to you in yo’ life?” she say.

“I aint had no life is what happen to me,” I say. “Now shut the fuck up.”

“Just give up, boy,” the old lady say.

“You aint my mama,” I say.

“Thank the Lord for that,” she say.

“You think you funny,” I say.

She dont say nuffin.

I counts the people in the room. Then I realize that them workers been behind the counter. I run over there and they all gone. I got seben hostages. All I want is a car. I yell at the window, “Just get me a fuckin car!”

The cameras are starin at me. Three of ‘em now. I see someone I recognize from the news. I waves at her. The phone ring. I go and answer it. It be somebody wantin to know bout a package.

“I aint got yo’ fuckin package!” I say and hang up.

The phone ring again. This time it the police. “You’re going to have to give it up, Van Go,” he say. It the same nigger that was on that horn.

“I aint givin up shit, man. Now you get me that car!” I say.

“The car is coming. Why don’t you give us a couple of those people in there?” he say.

“Old lady,” I say and point at her. “Go on out there. If you say a muthafuckin word I shoot you.”

She get up and walk to the door real slow. Then she out and she run cross that parkin lot like nobody bizness.

“Okay,” I say into the phone. “You got one.”

“The car is comin, Van Go.”

I hang up and I be sweatin like a pig. I shoulda killed that rich bitch. It be all her fault. Callin the cops and makin me run. And it be Reynisha fault too for comin after me wif that gun and lettin me take it from her. It be my mama fault for sho’, gettin pregnant wif me and havin me. It be that basketball coach fault. It be that white teacher fault. It be everybody fault.

After bout ten fifteen minutes, the phone ring again. It that cop. “Your car is here,” he say.

“Bout time,” I say. I watch as it pull up in the lot. It be a little red sport car. It look fine as shit. Awright, I says to myself.

“Okay?” the cop say on the phone.

“Okay,” I say. “I’m comin out wif this girl in here. I takin her wif me.”

“Okay,” he say. “Be cool and don’t hurt anybody.”

“I cool, fool,” I say. “You the one be cool.” I hang up. “You!” I points at the white girl again. “How old you?”

“Sixteen,” she say.

“Just be cool,” I say.

The light outside is brighter than I member. The cameras is pointin at me. All them cops be pointin they guns at me. I tell the girl not to move again. We walk to the car. I yell out at the cops, “Try sumpin! Try sumpin and this girl get it in the head.”

That car be little as shit and it hard for the girl crawl over the brake to the passenger side. I tells the girl to be cool again. I smile at the cameras. I turn the key and BAM! I dont know what happen. I think maybe I been shot. I cain’t see nuffin for a second and then I be covered with this powder shit. Then I be yanked by my hair out the car to the ground. I don’t know what goin on. Somebody kick me in my side. Somebody grab my arm and I think it be broken.

“What happen?” I say.

The cops be laughin. “Air bag, you dumb fuck,” one says to me.

I looks up and see the cameras. I get kicked again while I’m bein pulled to my feet. But I dont care. The cameras is pointin at me. I be on the TV. The cameras be full of me. I on TV. I say, “Hey, Mama.” I say, “Hey, Baby Girl. Look at me. I on TV.”

It was the middle of July and Washington was a big bowl of soup. I was parked in the study, counting time to the air-conditioning unit in the window. I picked up the heavy black telephone and called my agent, who recognized my voice and said, without much pause, “Are you crazy?”

“No, not quite,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“This thing you sent me. Are you serious?”

“Yeah, why not? You’ll notice I didn’t put my name to it.”

“I did notice that. But I’m the one who has to try to sell it, with my name. I have to work in this town.”

“Look at the shit that’s published. I’m sick of it. This is an expression of my being sick of it.”

“I understand that, Monk. And I appreciate your position and I even admire the parody, but who’s going to publish this? The people who publish the stuff you hate are going to be offended, so they won’t take it. Hell, everybody’s going to be offended.”

“The idiots ought to be offended.” I looked over at a cluttered secretary desk across the room. On the lowered surface, below the encased medical books was a gray box.

“So, what do you want me do?”

“Send it out.”

“Straight or with some kind of qualification? Do you want me to tell them it’s a parody?”

“Send it straight,” I said. “If they can’t see it’s a parody, fuck them.”

“Okay, I’ll send it out. A couple of times, anyway.” Yul sighed. “But no more than that. This thing scares me.”

“I understand,” I told him.

My tools were in storage in LA and I found myself missing the smells of wood, glue and varnish. I missed the splinters and the blisters, the sawdust and the red eyes. More than a few times I found myself standing in the garage, imagining Mother’s Benz parked elsewhere and the space filled with table saws and planers and jigsaws and stacks of wood. I bought some basic hand tools and built a birdhouse, painted it and gave it to Lorraine for the garden. Then I began visiting antique shops in Northern Virginia, in Falls Church and Maclean and as far away as Manassas, picking up a rabbet plane here and a block plane there, hammers, chisels, mallets, until I was a collector. I didn’t want to be a collector and decided I had to build something and that something became a nightstand for Mother. While I was using the rabbet plane to make the sloping edge of the table’s top, I considered Foucault and how he begins by making assumptions about notions concerning language that he claims are misguided. But he does not argue the point, but assumes his notions, rightly or wrongly, to be the case. As I recalled his discussion of discursive formations, I stepped away and looked at myself. To watch shavings fall away from a fine piece of ash wood and have such thoughts. I could feel my sister watching me.

I was just tall enough to dunk the basketball, but not quite big enough to get close enough to the basket in a half-court game to do so. I enjoyed the exercise and the game, but not so much playing the game. I wasn’t very good at it. I would catch the ball, look to make a reasonably safe pass while dribbling, then make that reasonably safe pass and move to another spot on the perimeter. One day, a sunny May Saturday, I was playing on a court near my house. I was seventeen and feeling more awkward than I ever had or would feel again. I had been playing for about thirty minutes, making safe pass after safe pass when I found myself considering the racist comments of Hegel concerning Oriental peoples and their attitude toward freedom of the self when I was bumped into the lane and so appeared to be cutting to the basket and the ball was thrown back to me. I threw up a wild and desperate shot which had no prayer of going in; it was ugly. A member of my team asked me what I was thinking about and I said, “Hegel.”