Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

“Is he an architect?”

“Elroy, is Scrunchy an architect?”

“Thornton Scrunchy is a lot of things,” said the man in the cap. “An architect? I don’t know.”

“He ain’t no architect,” said the other man, a fat man. “I reckon he’s a Baptist jest like the rest of us.”

The screen door opened and slammed shut, and I turned to see a policeman of some kind standing rigid, in dark glasses and a Smokey Bear hat that wore him. He was a skinny, young man with a bad shave. He rested his right hand on his sidearm, a large-caliber revolver, and rested his eyes on me.

“Hey, Horace,” Diana said.

“Diana,” he said.

I looked away from him and at my near-ready burger sizzling on the griddle. Diana watched the man behind me, seemed nervous as she flipped the patty once more. I felt the deputy approach me, hover at my shoulder.

“What’s your name, boy?” the deputy asked.

“This here is Sidney Poitier, Horace,” Diana said.

“Not the Sidney Poitier,” Horace said.

“No,” I said. “Not Sidney Poitier.” I knew it was a bad idea to say that as soon as I opened my mouth.

“Why don’t you step out and put your hands on that counter for me,” the deputy said.

I turned to look back at him. “What did I do?”

“I think you know what you done,” he said.

I supposed that was true of all of us, and in a strange way I found it a reasonable utterance.

“Now, I ain’t gonna ask you again.” He released the leather keep on his holster. “Hands on the counter and spread them legs.”

“What’s this boy done?” asked the man in the tractor cap.

“I think I done caught myself a murderer.” The deputy seemed ready to giggle he was so excited.

“You don’t say,” said the fat man.

I leaned against the counter as instructed, and Horace kicked my feet into a wider stance. He then frisked my torso, under my jacket, and then moved down to the pockets of my trousers. He found the lump of cash in my front pocket.

“What do we have here?” he said. He pulled the wad of bills out, looked at it, and whistled. “Boy, howdy!”

“What is it, Horace?” asked tractor cap.

“A ton of money.” The deputy leaned closer to me. “This here is a lot of money for a nigger to be carrying around.”

I cleared my throat and said, quite without good judgment, “One, I’m not a nigger, and two, that’s not that much money.”

“Oh, I got me an uppity one,” the deputy said.

“He’s uppity, all right,” tractor cap said. “Tell by that suit.”

“How much money he got?” from the fat man.

“Ten crisp one-hundred-dollar bills,” the deputy said.

Tractor cap whistled. “That must be close to a thousand.”

“Pretty close,” I said.

“Shut up, boy.”

I shut up.

The deputy reached out and took my left wrist and pulled it behind my back, slapped a cuff on it, and then said, “Put the other back here.” I did and I was cuffed. “Don’t you try running now.”

“I won’t run,” I said.

“Okay, let’s go.” Horace put his hand in the center of my back and shoved me through the screen door and across the gravel to his battered squad car. He opened the back and muscled me down into the seat. He let out a rebel yell and said, “Have mercy. I done caught myself a crook.”

I tried to get comfortable against the ripped vinyl, but my hands were tied behind me and my suit coat was bunched up. I pressed my face against the cool, dirty window and looked at my Skylark as we rolled away. Just down the road from the Smuteye Farmers Savings and Loan was the Smuteye Police Station.

Deputy Horace rooster-strutted into the crumbling station house with me in tow. “I got him, I got him,” he said in a singsong. When the big-haired dispatcher asked him who, he said, “The killer, the killer.” I wondered as I observed the woman sitting at the ancient radio set whom and to what would be dispatched in Smuteye. Horace pushed me through the first room and into the dank back where the cells were. He opened a barred door and roughly shoved me in. I stumbled, but I didn’t fall. I sat on a metal bed that was attached to the cinder-block wall and looked up to see a filthy white man sitting on the bunk opposite me.

“Nice suit,” he said.

“Got it in Montgomery,” I said.

“Good place to buy a suit. What are you in here for?”

“I don’t know. You?”

“Stealing,” he said.

“Stealing what?”

He shrugged. “I steal a lot of things. It’s kinda what I do.” He studied me for a second. “You ain’t from around here.”

“The suit give me away?”

He laughed. “Funny nigger.” Then, “Naw, just the fact that I ain’t never seen you before.”

The arrest in the diner and drive in the cigarette smoke — soaked squad car and the hustle back to the dingy cell all seemed unreal enough that I felt simply lost. Now, sitting in the cell across from my fellow prisoner, the reality of the situation settled on me. I began to shake. I held out my hand and looked at it.

“Scared?” the man asked.

I nodded.

“At least you ain’t no fool.”

I was in fact terrified. It was a ghostly kind of fear, a kind of distant growl or rumble in the ground. I was in jail and being accused of murder. I had a notion that I could just get up and walk out, but I knew that was just a way to get myself shot. And I didn’t want the last words I heard in life to be, “I got me one.” My stomach felt empty and icy and hot and crowded all at once. My stupid foot tapped with a mind of its own, and I stupidly watched it.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Poitier.”

“That French or something?”

I nodded.

“My name is Last.”

“Last?”

“Yeah, last face you’ll ever see.” He laughed hard.

There was commotion in the front of the station. I lay back and looked at the ceiling. Horace came to the door and told me to get up. “Come on, boy, the Chief’s here, and he wants to see the killer I caught.”

“Who is it that I’m supposed to have killed?” I asked.

“Woooeee, don’t you talk pretty, boy,” the deputy said. “Just get your black ass up and out here.”

The bald, wide Chief was sitting in his office trying to get a drawer open. “Horace, didn’t I tell you to fix this here drawer?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, did you fix it?”

“Not yet.” Horace pushed me in the middle of my back farther into the room. “Chief, here’s the prisoner.”

“You a killer, boy?” the Chief asked.

“I’ve killed no one,” I said.

“See how he talks, Chief.”

“Shut up, Horace.”

“Just where were you yesterday morning?” the Chief asked.

“I was in Montgomery.”

The Chief bit his lower lip and looked up and out the window. “Anybody see you there?”

“A banker named Scrunchy.”

“Horace, did you ask the prisoner any questions?”

“No, sir. But I ain’t never seen this boy before. And he had all this money on him, just stuck down in his pocket.” The deputy pointed to the wad on the desktop in front of the Chief. “That’s close to a thousand dollars.”

The Chief counted the money and frowned at Horace. “Pretty close.” He looked at me. “This here is a lot of money, boy.”

“Not really,” I said.

“Whoa, he say ‘not really.’ You hear that, deputy? He say ‘not really.’ ”

“I heard it, Chief.”

The Chief picked up my wallet, opened it. “Not Sidney Poitier,” he said, looking at my license. “That your name?”

I nodded.

“Where you from, boy?”

“Like the license says, Atlanta.”

“Atlanta,” he repeated. “Big city. What you doin’ here, boy?”