Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

“So, you’re rich.”

“You could say that.”

“Well,” the Chief said. “Around here, we’re poor, dirt poor.”

I nodded.

“You got a girlfriend?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

His curiosity was strange and a bit annoying. I watched his lids get heavy. “I don’t. Do you have a girlfriend?”

He laughed. I must have looked as if I were pitying him because he said, “No pity, now, boy. I don’t need your pity. Nosiree, I do not need your pity.” He poured himself another glass.

“Do you drink like this every night?” I asked.

“What if I do?”

I shrugged. “Expensive habit,” I said, pretty much because I could think of nothing else.

He knocked back that glass and glared at me before closing his eyes, either because he could no longer stand to look at me or because he couldn’t keep them open. I was trying to figure out where I was and why. I understood that I was in his house because he had more or less arranged it, but it was also clear that I was there because I was afraid to be anywhere else. I didn’t know whether he was aware of my hidden money. He certainly knew I had a thousand dollars, which seemed to be a fortune to most of the residents of Smuteye, though he seemed unimpressed enough. Certainly this man didn’t believe that I could help him solve a crime. However, I in part had chosen to remain because I needed to solve the murder; I believed somehow that the body I had seen in the freezer was my own. I sat there through the night as the dust and mustiness bothered my nose, the policeman’s snoring filled the room, the sick light from the lamp at once too harsh and too dim.

The morning came with my stupid ass still sitting in that same lumpy chair. Watching. Watching the red, puffy, snoring face of the Chief. Watching the rain. As soon as there was light, there was rain — a hard-driving rain with wind that bent the pines severely. While he continued to sleep I got up and walked into the kitchen. To my surprise, it was not the sty I expected. It was in fact spotless. The sink was extremely white and the short curtains above it were crisp, bright yellow, and pulled aside evenly. One cup and one saucer were left on the drying rack. I actually turned to look at the doorway to the living room to be sure I was still in the same house. It was so strangely clean that I felt uncomfortable and so returned to my chair.

“Storm,” the Chief said, waking, rubbing his eyes. He sat up and poured himself another drink. “You sleep?”

I shook my head. “What now?”

“You’re the one that wants to find a killer.”

“What do you know about me?” I asked. “I mean what did the bank man tell you about my business with him?”

“He just told me he remembered seeing you.”

I wanted to believe him. “He didn’t tell you what my business was?”

The Chief just looked at me.

“Do you think that dead man looks like me? And don’t give me that shit about how we all look alike.”

“A little.”

“A lot.”

“Okay,” he said. “A lot. What’s your point?”

“I was in Montgomery picking up fifty thousand dollars,” I told him and then waited for a reaction to show on his face. None appeared. This I found odd. “That doesn’t surprise you?”

He drank from his glass. “What do you want me to say, Sidney? You want me to say, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of money’? What do you expect?”

“I don’t know what I expect.”

For whatever unfathomable and idiotic reason I decided to level with him further. “I became afraid that I was followed from the bank, that somebody was going to steal my money. And then when I met that Thornton Scrunchy, you know with the same last name as the guy from the bank, I got really scared.”

Still, he listened without showing any reaction.

“Why so much cash?”

“It was for the sisters. It’s for their church. They seemed to think god sent me down here to build their blasted temple. I don’t know how to build anything, so I had some money wired to the bank in Montgomery. The money was for them. I would have given it to them, but that Scrunchy was there.”

“So, you’re one of them good Samaritans.”

I laughed. “An idiot.”

“Where’s the money now?”

“I hid it.”

“Good move.”

“Is this where you point a pistol at my head and make me take you to it?” I asked, half smiling.

He swallowed the last of what was in his glass. “No, this is where I close my eyes and sleep for another five or ten minutes. You think about this killer you want to catch. Maybe I’ll dream about your kind of money. Fifty thousand good ol’ Uncle Samuel Greenbacks. Man oh man.” He laughed softly as he seemed to drift off.

If I wasn’t digging myself deeper, I was certainly lengthening the trench. The rain was not letting up, but was now smashing into the windows. I couldn’t see the trees clearly anymore.

What I did see clearly was the murder of the doppelganger of Not Sidney Poitier. He was struck on the back of the head by a redneck named Thornton Scrunchy who was subsequently disappointed to find no cash in the dead man’s pockets. Probably every KKK-connected miscreant in a five-county swath of Alabama was in on the murder and the search for the money. Whether the Chief was, I obviously didn’t know. But as he slept there I resolved to attempt to Fesmerize him upon his waking. I thought I might have a better chance and an easier job if I awoke him before he was ready. I perched myself on the edge of my seat and leaned into my stare — my eyebrow arched, my head tilted slightly, and I cleared my throat, again, louder, again. The man stirred, slowly opened his eyes, grew immediately alarmed by my posture, then fell into what I recognized as a successful Fesmerian submersion. He sat there even more like a lump and stared into the space that was me.

“Can you hear me, Chief?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Tell me your full name.”

“My name is Francis Rene Funk.”

“Really?” I leaned closer to him. “When did you learn about the fifty thousand dollars?”

“When you told me,” he said.

“Do you know who killed the man in the chest?”

“No.”

“Do you suspect anyone?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Whom do you suspect?”

“Thornton Scrunchy.”

“Why?”

“Because of what you said. He thought the black boy looked like you. He does look like you.”

“Do you want to hurt me?”

“No,” he said.

“Will you hurt me?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you believe my life is in danger?”

“Yes.”

“Look into my eyes,” I told him, and when he did, I said, ‘When I say ‘Chief, I need your help,’ you will help me. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“You will defend me, protect me if I need you, if anyone is trying to hurt me. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

I told him to go back to sleep and wake up in ten minutes. I sat there just a little less afraid than I had been, convinced at least of the fact the man with me meant me no harm. I was certainly no less confused. I felt terribly guilty for the man who looked enough like me to have been killed. I didn’t know what to do about the money. I had been stupid about it. I should have taken Sister Irenaeus to the bank and simply had her open an account, but it was too late to change any of that. I thought of the money hidden in the satchel and wondered how it was faring in the rain and wind. For all I knew one-hundred-dollar bills were floating all over southern Alabama.