Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

“What killed him?” I asked.

Donald cleared his throat. “Somebody smashed him on the back of the head with something harder than his skull.”

“How do you know when he was killed?” I asked.

The Chief cocked his head and looked at me. “Because one minute he wasn’t there, and the next minute he was, along with a lot of blood that wasn’t nowhere except under him.”

“Chief,” I said, “I’d like to help you find the killer.”

“That’s a weird thing for you to say. What makes you think I’m looking for a killer?” he said.

“I just thought … ”

“For all I know this boy beat himself in the back of the head with a bat. You want to find yourself a killer, go ahead.” He looked at the ceiling and over at the disassembled Plymouth. “There ain’t nothing here that makes a difference to nobody. Do what you want.”

The face of the dead man haunted me. I stared at the closed lid of the deep freezer.

The Chief yawned. “Can we get out this way?” He pointed to the wide garage doors.

Donald hit a switch on the wall and one of the doors rolled up. The sight of the late afternoon turning to dusk terrified me. There were people out there looking for me, wanting my fifty thousand dollars. I knew they would kill me for it and I wondered if in fact they already had. As we stepped out of the makeshift morgue I thought that if that body in the chest was Not Sidney Poitier, then I was not Not Sidney Poitier and that by all I knew of logic and double negatives, I was therefore Sidney Poitier. I was Sidney Poitier.

“When we get back to your office, may I use your phone? Collect call. After all, I never got my one. Don’t prisoners usually get one call?”

“Yes, you may. One,” he said. “One call. Collect.”

Back in the dimly lit police station I placed a collect call to Podgy, who again reaffirmed his absolute refusal to come to any place called Smuteye. “What even does that mean?” he asked.

“I don’t know. You don’t have to come. Just call Ted and Professor Everett and tell them that I need them here.”

Podgy said he would, and I hung up. I looked around at the station walls, at Horace in the corner watching me, at the dispatcher who might have been sleeping, at the calendar with a woman leaning over an Oldsmobile beside the passage to the cells, at the open door to the Chief’s office. I wanted to ask if I could spend the night there, but I knew what that answer would be. Hell, they were probably tied in with the people who were after my money. I stepped over to the Chief’s door.

“This might be a stupid question, but is there a motel in Smuteye?” I asked. I leaned against the jamb.

“No,” he said, “there’s no motel, but I do know where you can rent a room.” He looked at his desk and nervously rearranged some papers. “I just now got off the phone. That was the state police over in Montgomery, and they told me that them boys up in Washington want this murder solved or they’re gonna come down here and go through all of our drawers, the ones in my desk and the ones I’m wearing. They say this is a matter of civil rights. I say it’s a matter of a boy being dead. I don’t want no suits down here crawling up my ass. You think you can figure this out?”

“I’m not a cop.”

“You’re a smart guy. You don’t think you can help the dumb crackers?” He smiled smugly at me. “Don’t you want show up us peckerwoods?”

“I can find out who killed him.” I didn’t know why I said that, except for the fact that I somehow believed I would be investigating my own murder. I wanted to know who would kill me.

“You didn’t think that man over there looked just like me?” I asked.

“You all look alike to me.”

I felt stupid for having set that one up.

“Stay around and show up the poor white folks,” he said.

“I think I will,” I said. “I’ve asked some friends to come here. They’ll help.” Truth was I didn’t know whether either of them would come, and I certainly didn’t know whether they would help or whether they could help. But I wanted someone to know that someone knew where I was. I was, in effect, trying to cover my ass, my tremendously exposed and vulnerable ass. My black ass. “Where’s this room that I can rent?”

“My house,” the Chief said.

The Chief’s house was a clapboard box set on cinder-block footings stuck far off the road in the center of a clearing of thin pines. The slow night drive there in his somewhat less foul-smelling police car was a bit nerve-racking. The idea of this white, rednecked, little southern town sheriff, or whatever he was, driving an unarmed, naïve, and solitary and stupid black man into the deep woods was unsettling at best, surreally terrifying at worst. The headlights panned across the yard and settled on the house. It was predictably dark, and it had the look of a man who lived alone.

“It ain’t much, but it’s paid for,” he said.

“How much for the room?” I asked. “We never talked about that.” I was afraid of what he might say. He knew that I had a thousand dollars on me. I wondered again if he knew about the rest of the money. Even if he wasn’t involved with the people trying to get my money, perhaps Scrunchy had told him on the phone about my business in Montgomery.

“You know the kind of money you’re carrying around is enough to get a boy killed,” he said.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

We walked into the front room. The Chief walked through the darkness to a standing lamp in the corner and switched it on. There was a saggy sofa, the original color of which was a mystery, and a matching stuffed chair. There was a rolltop desk under a window. There were no curtains on the windows. There were no rugs on the linoleum floor.

“You never told me how much the rent is.”

“You don’t have to pay me anything,” he said. “Have a seat.” He moved some magazines from the sofa, but I sat on the chair.

I sat.

“You want a drink?”

“I guess.” I was uncomfortable. I was especially uncomfortable with the fact that he was all of a sudden acting cordially. “What are we drinking?”

“Rye whiskey,” he said. He took a bottle from the desk and brought two glasses to the coffee table in front of me. He sat on the sofa, leaning forward. He poured the whiskey. “You like rye?”

“Never tried it,” I said.

He laughed. “Drink it slow.”

I sipped the drink. It burned my throat, but I didn’t gag or cough, thus surprising myself, and so I think I let go a little smile.

“Good, ain’t it?” he said.

On top of the desk was a dark lamp and a photograph. I stood and took the glass of whiskey with me. I was determined to nurse the three fingers he had poured for as long as possible. I walked over to the picture, looked at it without switching on the lamp. It was of a woman.

“Who’s this?” I asked.

“My mama,” the Chief said. “She’s dead now.”

“Did she live with you here?”

His eyes narrowed. “No, she did not live with me here. Does this look like the kind of house a decent lady would live in?”

I looked around at the bare windows, the dingy walls. “This house isn’t so bad,” I lied.

He knocked back the rest of the whiskey in his glass and automatically poured himself another. “How you doin’?” he asked. “That’s enough whiskey for you, boy. Your judgment is already impaired.” He laughed.

“Maybe so,” I said. I sat back down.

“What do you do back there in Atlanta?”

“Nothing,” I said, quite honestly.

“How do you make your money?”

“Inheritance.”