Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

I try not to, but I can’t help but watch him be yanked back into the spastic steps. Now he adds a hand to the sequence — waist to nose and back again — and each pass seems to create and build nervous energy in him.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he snaps, springing forward — still not punching.

I try to cover. “Like what?”

“Like you’re angry or you pity me — whatever — you don’t know.”

“Covering all possibilities with that, huh?”

“Well, I have to.”

I look up into the night sky and wait for it to do something, it’s crisp azure — autumnal — the stars are bright yellow. Shake grunts like he doesn’t want the silence. I want him to go away. He resumes his dance.

“What’s the matter, nothing to say?”

“You know what,” I kick at the sidewalk again. “Forget it.”

“Forget what? You didn’t say nothing.” He turns, walks in a tight circle and then is yanked back to the square. “Damn, man. You’re fucked up.” He starts shaking his head violently, raises his hand to speak, aborts the attempt, and drops it. Then, like the gesture was a feint, he mumbles, “I didn’t tell you to marry a white woman.”

I step back, shoot a hand up. “Good night, Shake.”

He stops. “Donovan,” he says quietly, with a tremble. It stops me. “My name is Donovan.” He waits until he’s sure I won’t leave and then exhales fully. The pent-up energy seems to go out with his breath. He closes his eyes, either trying to see something inside or to focus on keeping his feet still. He starts swaying his shoulders, moving through the sequence, but slowly and on a smaller scale. He opens his eyes and looks down at his feet to make sure that his near stillness is real.

“I didn’t tell you to marry her, but I never said it was wrong. It’s not something I would do, but I’m not paying your bills, taking out your trash — whatever. Come on. I’m just saying that if you were with a black woman, she could tell you something. When you stand in the dark with that question on your face, she’d at least know there was something on your mind — right? And she knows, maybe not innately or anything, but it’s something she saw in her daddy’s face when he didn’t know she was looking. It’s on her brother’s now, too. And she’s not gonna hesitate, you know, she’s going to, on her terms, know. She might be completely wrong — hell — she might be just a fool,” he slaps his cheek violently twice, “but she won’t be locked out by this. There are so many other barriers in place, but not this one, your color. Your wife doesn’t have that. She probably looks at you and thinks, ‘I don’t know that.’ But she thinks, everybody thinks, whether they admit it or not, that the skin is the thing. At least with a black woman you could hunker down together and start something — start hurling assumptions at the world. What happened to that painter you were with back home?”

“She’s famous.”

“No, what happened to you two?”

“She stopped calling.”

“Why — you wouldn’t fuck her, would you?”

I think about hitting him, but I hold back because there doesn’t seem to be any malice in his voice. I exhale, too. My hand probably wouldn’t close anyway. “She didn’t like my poems.”

He grins and then shakes his head violently to erase it. “At least you would have someone you could talk about them with. Someone you could lie with. But with you, you look and all you can see is her white face — everything it stands for, all the ways it rejects you: Your wife’s white face. And you’re locked out. It can’t tell you true, not a damn thing, except maybe how far out you really are. That’s lonely. And then where do you go — for comfort — huh? Maybe you have that moment when you dare to say, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ or ‘I’m beyond that.’ You may not say it in words, but you act it. But what does your boy say—“. . redeemed from fire by fire.” You’ll forgive him his abstract crimes against humanity. . what about her? But I don’t know why any brown person on this here earth in their right mind would pass through fire of any kind for someone white. I mean, why would you do that?” He shrugs his shoulders. “Miles and miles of bad motherfuckin’ road. No road, sometimes.

“I don’t know, my friend, my brother. I don’t know if I’ve said it or only thought it. You’re either brilliant or you’re a fool, out here in the night, unseasonably cold, all by your broke self. No allies to call on.” He points at the books in the window. “What have you been doing, my brother, while everyone else was building networks, consensus, shared ideology?” He cackles again. It rips the night.

“No allies?”

“Well you can count me in, for whatever that’s worth.”

“I will.”

“I will.” He mocks. “G’wan claat! How goes the rest of the crew?”

“Gav’s back in.”

He winces, as though the news physically hurts him.

“That boy never met a fight he didn’t want. By the way, that was Gladys — yesterday.” He jerks his head back as though she’s behind him. He shoots the imagined woman down with a sharp, quick stare. “She ain’t mine”—he leans in as though this is a secret he needs to keep from her. “I’m just looking out for her, till she gets on her feet.” He cracks his knuckles. “Where’d you get that suit you were wearing?”

“Had it awhile.”

“You a banker now, too?”

“No.”

He shakes his head again, closes his eyes, frustrated, as though he’s trying to remember something he had to tell me. “Looking at you helps me remember. Sometimes that’s not so good, you know.” He springs forward, catching me with that old quickness, and hugs me. He rocks us back and forth. I smell sweat and pharmaceuticals — rubbing alcohol. He lets me go.

“What’s up, man?” I sigh.

He smiles, gently puts a hand on my shoulder. “Hey baby, gut me then haruspicate: Extrapolate from my viscera.” He bends, covers his mouth, and laughs to himself. He straightens but still smiles. “I can tell you what’s going to happen. I just can’t tell you how. I don’t know. Not a living ass can. Hell, the dead can’t probably either. I’ve been outside a long time now — way outside — but when I see you, I think of things I saw when I was in. I think it might be worse, being in, looking for something, seeing all the faces, the places that you’re locked out of, while they demand that you behave like they’re going to let you in. But I praise my psychophar-macologist: I haven’t spun completely out. I take my pills, try not to bust anyone in the head, and wait for my inheritance of the earth. Now that’s a plan. Hope to see you there.”

“What about now?”

“What about now?”

“What are you going to do?”

“What, you got a plan? You want to raise an army and take the capital — shit — nothing but mercenaries out there anyway. And how you gonna trust them?” He looks at his wrist, but he doesn’t have a watch. He lowers his arm, looks down, and goes back to the Thorazine shuffle. For a moment I wish I had the switch to shut him off. He looks up and jumps back, breaking the prescribed pattern. I can see the fight in him, trying to make his movements fluid, resisting being locked into a new box step.

He tries to shake his head, the effort to keep it slow requires him to turn his body in tandem as if it were all one piece. He whispers.

“I gotta go.”

I nod. We both exhale together. He spreads his arms, palms up, and waves them slowly, up and down.

“This collective consciousness ain’t big enough for the two of us — remember?” He stops his arms in midair. “That’s your fight — so I’m off.” He turns, wades into the street, and starts across.