Rion Scott - Insurrections

I got a sale on that Starr Product, he said. Chronic’s always a crowd pleaser. I got ’Dro, Purple Haze, but I recommend the Starr Product. Cross Riv’s finest. They don’t grow that shit nowhere else. Only find that shit in and around Cross River. I’m smoking it now for your sampling pleasure.

I looked around at his cramped apartment.

You don’t make a lot off of this, do you? I asked.

Enough to afford this mansion and to keep me in these fancy Armani linens, he said, running his hand along his jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, both torn and faded from frequent washing. Naw, my man, it’s all shorty-cool. Don’t need to make a lot. Just enough for rent and books.

I–I heard you were a kingpin.

Yeah, there are competing versions of me out in the world. Damn near heard I popped a Kennedy one day in November.

His words were slightly amusing, but as I watched him, something shocked me so much that my skin tingled. I noticed that he and I did share a slight resemblance. He too had drawn cheeks and big eyes that looked as if they were floating in his head.

Hear the police tell it, I got tons flying in on planes every afternoon. They scared of me ’cause they think I’m getting their little daughters hooked on my jungle weed. He paused. I guess I am. I sell dubs and half-centuries and centuries and sometimes I might sell an LB, but that’s as much as I griff. I ain’t trying to be their monkey in a cage. That’s why I had to come down here until things ain’t so radioactive. I found out they were after me. Accused me of doing some apocalyptic shit, of being behind all the tea in Cross River, jackson. You know how many niggas be selling grass? They looking for me back home, they can’t even imagine I’m over here. They know how much I love Cross River. They figure I’d never leave my home. Shit, I never thought I’d leave The Riv, myself. Things’ll calm down eventually and I’ll be back. I don’t even like this job.

You don’t?

Fuck no, my nig-nig. Been doing this too long. You look cool, so I’ll tell you this.

Juba walked over to his desk and picked up a notebook. He flipped through the pages before putting it into my hands. See that? That’s my real job. I’m just doing this weed dealer biz until I can finish up this project.

There were strange markings on each page, words I didn’t understand, beautiful sketches that had an unfinished quality.

What is this?

Man, can’t you read? See, Cross River folks so busy talking like white people, they done lost their tongue. Every strange word you hear in Cross River, every little piece of slang, probably sprang from me. Like seventy-five to eighty-seven percent. I come from a long line…

Of weed dealers?

Don’t get smart, my nig-nig. You knew I wasn’t gonna say that. My dad was an engineer, but that wasn’t his main thing. I capture and create the language we speak in Cross River. Just like my daddy before me and my grandfather before that and my great-grandfather who was in the Great Insurrection before there even was a town called Cross River in Maryland. We done lost our tongue. Some shit I got to say to you, I won’t even try to say ’cause there ain’t no words for it. I got to use more words than I would have to use if we had our language back. I got to speak slowly so you understand me, even though we from the same place. Ridiculous, but it ain’t your fault. I’m trying to complete the Cross River tongue.

I flipped through the book. The words started to make sense a little, but there were huge canyons of language I couldn’t understand. It’s probably the way, with my high school Spanish, I’d look at a book written in that language.

So what is this, a dictionary? I asked.

A dictionary? You niggas in Cross River are more lost than I ever thought. Shit. He stopped speaking for a moment. Naw… naw… hell naw, this ain’t no damn dictionary. The people ain’t ready for that. For like twenty years, I been translating the Bible into Cross Riverian, as you bougie niggas like to say. Naw, y’all wouldn’t even call it that. Y’all don’t think the way we talk is nothing special. At least not special enough to have a name. Y’all spend a lot of time translating from English to Cross Riverian and back in y’all heads. Y’all just don’t know it. Niggas ain’t slow, they just translating.

I’m gonna do the Koran next, and then the Bhagavad Gita. I already did the Heart Sutra. Did that shit to warm me up. I got a rack of other sutras to do, but that’s a ways off. I got a lot of books to translate. It’s gonna take a while, though. Once I finish the Bible, everything else should move quickly. I need to capture the language first. It’s triply hard now that I ain’t in Cross River no more. Got folks mailing me new words in exchange for ’Dro. The police might catch up to me before I’m done.

As he spoke, it was like a spirit moved over the void of the words on the pages, and I started to understand completely what Juba had written. I came to the end of the story of the Great Flood and it was like one of my cousins from the Southside had whispered it into my ear.

I tell you what, brotherman. I’ve enjoyed this convo with you, Juba said. Take a dub of that Starr Product for the road.

I shook my head. I–I-I can’t—

Naw man, you don’t know how good this has been for me. I like meeting Riverbabies. I don’t hardly get a chance no more since I’m in Port Yooga. Not that I don’t like Port Yooga in its own way, but it ain’t Cross River.

I pocketed the bag of weed. It was nearly black, and it smelled like all outdoors. One whiff was enough to intoxicate me for precisely fifteen seconds, at least that’s what Juba said. I never did smoke it, though. I put it in my basement in a briefcase where I kept things I wanted no one to find. After a while I forgot the code and couldn’t even get back into the briefcase if I wanted to. Juba and I stayed in touch, but I never saw him again. I offered him words, phrases, and critiques on his translation of the Bible by mail. Sometimes he’d send me weed as payment, and I always threw it away. As I walked from his house that evening, I had no idea what to make of the afternoon.

When I got onto the bus to Cross River, I sat next to a man from the Southside who spoke to me about his life. His accent was thick, so at times I got lost, but when I was engaged I felt transported to his childhood. As the bus crossed the bridge from Port Yooga into Cross River he said, I know who you are.

Who am I?

He leaned in and whispered, You that dude they call Juba.

I shook my head and smirked a bit. I’m not Juba, I said. I’m not him at all.

It’s okay, he said. I ain’t a yauper. I can keep it to myself, my nig-nig.

The man pulled out a piece of paper and wrote down some words and phrases. They were things a Cross Riverian might say. He nodded and crinkled the paper into my palm and I accepted it, folding it away in my left breast pocket.

I

A month after school opened — when the most coveted boys had paired off with the most coveted girls and, for the majority of us, our affections were going tragically unreturned — Mr. Coles, the new art teacher, decided he hated Ezekiel Marcus. It was in the way he shied from addressing Zeke whenever he could, the upturned curve of his lip when he was unable to avoid talking to him, and his clear relief during Zeke’s frequent absences. Mr. Coles wasn’t like most of the other teachers at Alfred McCoy Middle School; he was essentially a good and decent man, so he would have never admitted what was plain to me. Even to this day — wherever he is, certainly no longer a teacher — I bet if I were to ask him about these old times, he’d deflect with his signature joke, I hated you all equally . Then, thinking twice, he’d take the edge off and add, I loved you all equally, too .