Rion Scott - Insurrections

Wait, I go get to the pipe in a minute.

So, Kin, you wouldn’t believe the amount of smoke they have rising up above D.C. Smoke for so. People burn cars. They burn stores. They burn apartment buildings. They burn everything. I tell you I ain’t never see nothing like it. People running around, in and out the broken windows of stores. Ain’t no police nowhere. I stand over there near Florida and Rhode Island, just watching, boy. I live on R Street, so it not too much of a walk. People screaming and waving they arms. I just watch. Taking it all in. Telling myself to stay on my feet.

The fires, though, remind me of the book. The cover self like it on fire. Sure did set fire in my mind when I was in teacher’s college back home. Three Insurrections . It flit through my head at that moment. I ain’t see that cover in about fifty years now, but it like I can see it right there in front me face. I ain’t see that book for maybe two, three years when I out there walking in that riot, but it’s in my mind’s eye clear, clear. I know what I see, Kin; those exact flames from the riot is the same flames on the cover of that book. What they describe on all those pages is what I see in that city. I wish I could go back to that moment in the library at the teacher’s college when I holding that book, drinking those pages, yes.

Before I could take in all of the riot, fully appreciate the moment, I feel a bump at my shoulder and is stumble I stumble.

Something in my heart start to flutter as I fall, like I go die right there in that strange city in this strange country. I say to myself, Neville, boy, what kind of mistake you make coming here? Like it’s a football match and I make the play that lose the game, that’s how I feel, but this is serious. I feel a hand grab my arm. Pull me up.

It’s Charles. Now, Charles live on my block. He don’t say much. Quiet eyes always searching. He sit outside on his stoop most of the time and he sit still, nearly a gargoyle. I bet he out there now. When I see him, we exchange two or three words, but the words got whole worlds inside them. Me and he born oceans apart, but we understand each other, oui.

He hand the only thing stopping me from hitting my head on the concrete.

Neville, what you doing out in all this?

I pull myself to my feet.

The man only talk peace and they shoot him. But what is that?

So you see how they do us? They kill a man of peace. What you think they do to regular negroes, huh? Neville, go home, brother. This all gon’ blow over. They’ll build the buildings back and then they gon’ be stomping us again. Go to class and get your degree and let us handle the shit, man.

Kin, Charles was wrong, you know. They ain’t build nothing back. Not for thirty years. Remember when I take you to D.C., begging you like hell to go to Howard. Nearly thirty years to the day, that’s when they start taking down some of them buildings and putting something new there. What you think that do to people’s minds, huh? How you think they feel living in the capital of the nation and it look like a war just happen?

But I respect the hell out of Charles. That winter before all this, I’m walking home and I see this man’s hand. Not Charles, someone else. Something black in it. Black, black, black. Heavy. The thing look impatient. I ain’t never see no gun in real life. My father ain’t like those things. Never wanted them around.

You got any money on you, sir? he say, polite as ever.

I tremble. I scared. I nod. Reach for my wallet. Slowly. I not trying to anger that gun.

Thank you, he tell me, still with all the politeness his mother teach him. He never meet my eyes. To this day I think his gratitude genuine, oui.

I see Charles the next day and I tell him what happen.

When all this go down? he ask, sitting there cool, cool, cool on his stoop. Yesterday? During the afternoon?

Yes. Bright as day, he jump out on me.

Charles nod. He grunt.

I go to pick up my mail the next day and beside the letters and thing there’s my wallet. Everything intact, except the money, of course.

Standing there on that street in D.C. with the riot all around me, I watch Charles disappear into the world. I want to follow. I see the last flicker of him in between the people and I feel swept up. Dust in the gigantic broom of history. This how they want it, huh? They negroes down bottom, frogs running from the river while giant children is chasing to crush them under they foot. Your grandmother used to say all the time — she ever say this to you? What is joke for schoolboy is death for crapaud . That was us, frogs scattering from the foot of a great white man.

I walk where I see Charles going; I don’t see he, but I walk. Just walk. I don’t know where I going. It’s just walk, I walking.

This all so different than how yesterday start. Yesterday I walk with purpose, nearly stomping to class. Nothing on my mind but the test I’m ’bout to take. When I get to campus, I see people huddled up. Seem like more people out on the Yard than usual. I don’t think nothing of it. No time to think of anything but this chemistry test, anyway. Besides, wasn’t nothing unusual about seeing people huddled up in intense conversation on campus. Howard was real. Someone always deep in political discussion. You look out and it’s a sea of Afros bobbing up and down furiously. Couple times we take over campus. That’s another story though. What I’m getting at is Howard was the center of black life, at least for us, at least in D.C. Wasn’t strange to see Stokely Carmichael walking round the Yard. He graduate from there. You know he come from your mother’s neighborhood in Port-of-Spain over in East Dry River? You know that, right? She brag they went to kindergarten together. What you laughing at, boy?

But I get by the library and I see Larry, your godfather. He say, Class cancel.

Class cancel? But I stay up all night studying. McGregor playing the ass—

All class cancel. You ain’t hear? Someone shoot Martin Luther King.

Shoot? King? Who—

Larry shrug.

That’s when the feeling start. That dislocation. It grow out a feeling that I always had with me when I ask myself just what the hell I’m doing here. I still ask myself that when the winter whip in and I think about how your Uncle Alton probably back home on the beach. That day I start wondering seriously why I’m here, though, like why I come to a place where they kill a man of peace just for spite? Not even a year before, the football team at Howard, we play some team down South and afterward we try getting something to eat. Now all of we is Africans or from the West Indies, black, black, black. Wouldn’t no one seat us, restaurant after restaurant. The coach, after he come from the last place, he get back on the bus, put he head down, and cry right there.

I ain’t want to cry, but I ask myself, why be here? Why I come to some place that hate me? I forget the book. That’s the answer to all that. The book. It flicker in my mind sometimes back then. Little shards of it. When I’m following the crowd in the chaos on that day after they kill King, I think of the book, a little bit. Not much, but I think of it.

When I walk home from campus after hearing King get shot, I start feeling dazed. On fire. You should see all the things passing through my head. I spend the fourth sitting in my room. I do schoolwork. I call your mother. I sleep. Dream. Wake and let myself get tortured by thoughts. Questions. Why am I here? Memories.

Right before I step on the plane to come over to America I hear about some negro bodies they find in the South all hung and twist up. Nowhere near D.C., but still. Alton read the article in the newspaper to me in disbelief.

Neville, is sure you sure you want to take this trip?