Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

I walked over to what had been the money’s hiding spot. Bills were still all over the place — in the crooks of tree branches, in puddles, on the muddy ground. They hadn’t gotten nearly all of them. Everett started collecting the money he could reach and stuffed it in his pockets.

“We have to catch him,” I said, realizing suddenly just what was happening. “He’s the one who killed me.”

The Chief, Ted, and Everett studied me, quizzically.

“We have to stop him,” I said, again. My heart was pounding. “He killed that man because he thought he was me. Someone is dead because of me. Because of my stupidity.”

We hurried back to the car. The Chief slammed his foot on the gas as we hit the highway again. The weather began to turn bad once more. We were driving into another storm. Sheets of rain washed along the road and then over us. The rain fell so hard that the wipers did little to help our vision through the windshield. The rain stopped, all of a sudden.

In front of us was the overturned and mangled blue Ford pickup of Thornton Scrunchy. Engine parts littered the road. As did Sister Irenaeus and Scrunchy and Scrunchy’s hair. The utility pole into which it had crashed was broken and lay on the ground beside it; the wires were sizzling and popping on the wet road.

Ted whistled as we stood there staring from a safe distance. “Hell of a thing,” he said.

“Do you think they’re dead?” Everett asked.

“Dead enough,” the Chief said. He was at the open door of his car and on his radio. “Lucy, call Donald and have him come over to Two Forks Road and the highway with his wagon. And call the county and tell we need a cleanup, some power lines down.”

“What if they’re alive?” I asked. The electrical line bounced and danced across the asphalt.

Ted turned to Everett. “Does rock beat paper or does paper beat rock?”

“Paper beats rock, but I have no idea why,” Everett said. “A rock should go right through paper, don’t you think? I mean, I love paper as much as, or more than, the next guy. My guess is that it’s the function of some kind of privileged intradialogical and embedded enunciator.”

“What are you talking about?” Ted asked.

“Paper beats rock. What beats paper?”

“Scissors.”

“Ah, yeah.”

“Your friends are nuts,” the Chief said to me.

I had to agree. And so I did. I didn’t know why I’d asked them to come. But somehow things had worked out for me. The same could not be said for Sister Irenaeus. Neither could it be said for the unfortunate young man in the freezer who may or may not have been me.

The sun burst through the dingy steel gray sky and made everything bright. For whatever reason the power line appeared to discharge and then after a few last pops lay there quietly, unmoving. The Chief and I stepped forward toward the bodies. Except for the twisted metal and carnage on the road, the sun had made it a beautiful day. It was pretty clear once we were close that both Sister Irenaeus and Scrunchy were quite dead. All four eyes were wide open and staring into what I believed the sisters would have called the afterlife — into what my mother would have called nothing.

The Chief pointed to the satchel. It had been tossed clear of the truck and was lying in the tall brown grass at the side of the highway. “There it is. Take it. It’s your money.”

“It’s not evidence?” I said.

He gave me a get-real look.

I picked up the bag. “I’ll give this to the sisters.” I walked back over to Everett and Ted.

Everett handed me the money he’d collected in the woods. “What do I need with money? I’ll just gamble it away.”

“You have a gambling problem?” I asked.

“Not yet.” He looked at my face. “What now?”

“Why don’t you just fly to Los Angeles?” Ted said.

I flew to LAX. Podgy told me he’d arranged a car for me. For a while at least I would live the way my money allowed. I called it a kind of vacation after Alabama. At the bottom of the escalator at baggage claim I saw several black-suited drivers holding signs with names. There was one with a placard that read Sidney Poitier. I stood in front of him.

He said with a British accent, “Are you not Sidney Poitier?”

“I am,” I said.

“I’m Gilbert. Do you have any luggage, Mr. Poitier?”

“This is it, Gilbert,” I said.

He took my small bag from me, and I followed him out and across the lanes of traffic to the dusty parking garage.

I sat in the back of the black sedan as he paid the Somali attendant and might have flirted with her, I couldn’t tell. I looked out at Los Angeles as he curved around onto Sepulveda. He took me on a slow drive to the Beverly Hills Hotel. Stale glitz and money conspired to make me feel comfortable. Everyone there knew me — the men outside the door, the men inside the door. Mr. Poitier this and Mr. Poitier that, welcome back, long time no see. The driver left me at the desk, told me that he would be back to collect me at fifteen past seven. I did not tip him, and this seemed to make him happy. I turned to face the desk clerk.

“Mr. Poitier, so good to see you,” the young woman said.

“It’s good to see you, too.”

She was pleased that I had perhaps remembered her.

“May I say that you’re looking younger?”

“You may,” I said. “And thank you.”

I accepted my key, with a graze of her soft hand, and was led up to my suite by a quiet little man. I showered for a long time, put on a robe, and ordered a sandwich from room service. I then sat on the sofa and watched a man who looked for the world like me in a movie called For the Love of Ivy.

At six thirty, a valet delivered black dress pants, a white shirt, and a dinner jacket to my room. At seven, I was dressed. I walked through the lobby, and a young woman came up to me and asked for my autograph. She said, “I just love you, Mr. Poitier.” I didn’t know why. I asked her name. She said it was Evelyn.

I wrote: For Evelyn, All the best, Not Sidney Poitier.

She was puzzled as she read. “You’re not Sidney Poitier?”

“I am.”

Gilbert was entering the lobby as I approached the door. He seemed upset that I was there before him.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Poitier.”

“That’s okay, Gilbert.”

“We’ll be there in no time.”

“Very well, Gilbert.”

“Good to be back?” Gilbert asked.

“I suppose.”

“Big night,” the driver said.

“If you say so, Gilbert.” I noticed that he was taking me toward the middle of the city, toward my old neighborhood of West Adams. “Gilbert, could you turn here please?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“And a left here,” I said. I was feeling my way through a place that had changed and that I didn’t remember all that well.

“Yes, sir. This is a rather, shall I say, rough neighborhood.”

“It’s okay, Gilbert.”

“May I ask what we’re looking for, sir?”

“We’re looking for my home,” I said.

Gilbert said nothing.

We were a source of interest to the people on the street. My window was down, and everyone could see my face. Some women seemed to recognize me. They didn’t wave, they pointed.

We wended through the streets.

And there was the house I’d lived in with my mother. Other children played in the yard now. A fat man rocked on the porch. It was less profound for me than I had imagined. I wanted to hear my mother’s voice, but it never came. I stared at the same front door through which I had passed so many times. I could smell my mother’s cookies, cookies that were always just okay, she would say, and she was correct. I could see the flow of her open housecoat as she crossed the yard. But I couldn’t hear her voice.