Mitchell Jackson: The Residue Years

One. Two. A thousand. You lose track of the trips he takes upstairs. I float, fly to a street-level window, see dark between the boards, and I can’t know for sure when I last saw light, if we’ve been at it hours or a day or days.

What time is it? I say. What day?

Noon, midnight, next week. What difference does it make?

The difference is I work, I say. I told you I have to work.

Michael shakes his head and yanks his pockets inside out. We musta been here a few minutes, he says. Ain’t no more encores.

No more? I say. That’s it?

Well, they say all’s well that ends … or whatever the fuck. Michael’s eyes are spangled. His lips the color of wet bark.

Work or no work, God knows you hope this lasts forever, knows too you hope it ends right now, and in time it does, though it always does before its time.

No, too soon, I say. It’s too soon.

The. End, he says.

Or next act, I say. My head is fogged, I shove on my shoes. Come, I say. Let’s go.

It should be jude picking up or his voice saying leave a message, but it’s neither. It’s a dial tone and the lady that says a number has been disconnected. First thing I tell myself is not to panic, that I must have misdialed, that I should try again. So I do. I do again and again and again. Every time suffering the same grim result. You should see me snatch the phone from my face and stare at the dial pad, expecting I don’t know what. Disheartened? Damn skippy, but I keep at it more times than I’d admit, keep right the fuck on dialing until I’m convinced the recording ain’t a fluke, that it ain’t a joke being played by a clown with loads of free time and a sadistic streak. I’m a photon out my crib. Zip! I jump in my ride and catch rubber out the lot. Some things happen and in an instant it’s so easy to think the worst, so tough to stay composed. But I tell myself this ain’t one of those times, that we (me and me) should stay positive — deceits that keep me sane for blocks upon blocks, keep me from blowing yellows and reds, which is genius, with this strap in my ride. The first time I drove to Jude’s office I needed directions, and directions for my directions, but right now homeboy’s cross streets are a compass point on a map stamped in my brain. A right here, a left there, all I got to do is listen and steer. The freeway gods show me favor till the last few exits, then, bam , either there’s a major pileup up ahead or I’m caught in an ill-timed experiment of time-lapse photography, slowed to a crawl, then a standstill, with gloomtastic math knocking around my skull: This + that + this = the sum that might be lost! Then there’s a sliver of daylight in view, and boy, that’s all I needed. Here I go weaving through cars, blasting the slow lane, tailgating niggers Sunday driving on a Friday. It’s a wonder that I don’t get stopped. I get to Jude’s office, park across the street, hop out blind, and feel the gust of a truck this close to killing me forever. I squeeze my eyes tight, pause while my heart falls back in its cage. Jude has a sign on the door which makes me hopeful. That lasts, what, a second, till the moment I peer into his office window and despair: no desk, no plaque, no chairs. It’s barren but for scattered papers and an empty cardboard box. I yell his name and rap the door. Pound so hard I might’ve broken a knuckle. Bang with one hand, then the other, then, blam , try to kick that bitch off the hinges. No go, so I go around back and repeat. This time, I press my ear to the door and listen for a sign of life. An also-ran top-flight security type in uniform moseys out and tells me Jude’s moved, that he packed up earlier this week (what was supposed to be my last down payment). I ask dude if he’s sure and he tells me he’s positive, that he helped Jude load a truck hisself. Did he mention his next address? I say.

The rent-a-cop pokes out his chest and asks can he ask how I know Jude. I tell him I’m an old friend, a new client.

He gropes his baton, juts one leg out in front of the other, says No offense, guy, but you don’t look much like either one. The top-flight rent-a-punk strolls back into his office, tapping his baton and whistling. The part of my brain that makes bonehead choices says to bash a window, tear up the place: smash lights, graffiti the walls, piss-soak the floor, all of which I’d do if I suspected it would help even an inkling. Come on, man, let’s not get out of character here.

That’s me talking to me.

In a masochistic fit, I pull my cell and once, twice, ceaseless call Jude. We’re sorry … We’re sorry, but the number … We’re sorry, but the number you have reached … The one person I can fathom to call besides the culprit is Half Man. So I call my homeboy and he, hella-astonishing, answers. You ain’t gonna believe this shit, I say, and explain the drama.

Quit bullshittin, he says. Put that on something.

On my mama and baby, I say.

Static cackles across our line and we wait for it to clear.

Damn, so the whitey tryin to pull the okey on us, huh? Hell nah, hell nah. Come swoop, he says, and we’ll find this motherfucker.

Next thing I know, I got Half Man barking in the passenger seat, swearing what he’ll do when we catch Jude. Serious threats I’m hoping ain’t a bunch of fatmouthing on his part, cause about now I’d be happy to see Jude waylaid, flogged, water-tortured, Chinese-style. Sounds extra, but I’m so so serious: When we catch him it’s whatever, zero interference on my part. Better yet, why stand aside when I can partake?

Me nursing visions of grave physical harm. Half Man’s a mute-mouth, don’t utter a motherfucking peep till we wheel into a suburb, and even then, all he asks is how much farther, how do I know that we’re headed the right way.

Cause I been here once, I say.

So we’re relying on your faulty memory? he says.

Who’s the one who’s fucked? I say. Who wants to find him more, me or you?

We’re in Southwest, which means we’re suspects. (Try not feeling suspicious when you’re treated suspect.) We journey long suburban blocks, stretches and stretches minus nary a familiar sight. We do this for what feels like an eon of hearthurt, and just about the time I’m about to wail a dirge I see, if my memory can be trusted, Jude’s house up ahead. There, it’s up there, I say, feeling pleased for a snap.

He asks me if I’m sure, this dude and his assurances, and I park right in the front, lift the armrest, hand him my strap. He tucks it in his belt, and about now it’s looking like an amulet, though how long can good fortune last in this zip? We bandit out the car, policelike, hunterlike, bounty hunters who’ve fallen under the gaze of wish-they-were-circumspect citizen detectives: a woman tending plants in her front yard, a guy reading a paper on his porch, the person spying us from a Red Sea part in a curtain — all waiting for an excuse, legitimate or not, to call Officer Arrest-a-Nigger-for-Nothing’s direct line. Maybe they’re too preoccupied to notice we don’t (or do) fit the neighborhood profile, but maybe, just maybe, they ain’t.

Scratch what I said about the pistol offering comfort. It’s an onus.

The back and forth, the back and forth, Ibullshityounot, if you snatched off the top of my head, you’d hear me pop and fizzle. Half Man follows me onto the porch, and if he’s attentive at all, he mocks my best nonthreatening Negro gait, the one full of leisure and anti-bounce. I rap the door and stand back and it’s déjàfuckingvu. I hit it again, inch closer. I twist and catch a detective (the green thumb lady) peeking up from tending her plants. She sees me see her and don’t bother to look away, the white woman’s audacity gone in the flesh. Half Man hits the door this time, and bet a life, you could hear it for blocks. That loud, and still no answer, not a sound. Stand close to me this second and hear hope’s slow leak. Ssssssssssssssssssssss … Half Man says we should go around back, bust in, see what’s what.