Hell of a Book

by Jason Mott

  The saving grace of this new discovery is the thankfulness that, at least, I’m not as dark-skinned as The Kid. Yeah, I’m not as light-skinned as I might want to be, but at least I’m not the walking ebony sculpture that The Kid is. If there’s one thing I know about being Black—and I know it immediately even though I’ve known about my Blackness for only a few minutes—it’s that dark skin is a sin. Hell of an affliction. The last thing you want. Just ask anyone.

  As soon as the doorbell chimes, the fans who have come out to hear me read and talk about my book get the full package. I’m cleaned up. My suit is perfect and vomit-free. My hair is straight. My smile is toothy and sincere. Everything about me says, “I’m a healthy, happy, functioning individual who has come here tonight in joy and love to be with you and I hope all of you are living the lives you dreamed of when you were children and still willing to dream unfettered.”

  “Good evening, everyone!” I shout, my voice as bright as a Juneteenth fireworks show.

  A geyser of applause and cheering erupts and spills out into the world.

  Meanwhile, just as the door closes, in the streets behind Renny, the sempiternal line of children marches in the streets, carrying their signs, and pumping their fists, and shouting chants about justice, and police violence, and racism, and Black lives mattering—it’s every generation of Black children that get burdened with this particular American work—and I cannot hear any of them over the sound of my pending book sales. I focus on the people who have come out to give me their money.

  I am, after all, not an activist, not the kind of writer who ever actually says anything that might ruffle feathers. One thing my business has taught me: that stuff’s murder on book sales. No. I’m none of those things . . . I’m a professional.

  William could see what was happening to his son. The boy’s smile faded a little more each day that he came home from school. It wasn’t the history lessons that were to blame, though they were difficult and intense. History still was always one of those things that could be partially compressed, pushed down into the recesses of logic, barred from feelings. No, it wasn’t the history but the current events that were slowly weighing on his son. Each day, there was a new news report about someone who looked like him being shot and killed. Each day, his son saw someone arrested, locked into prison. Each day, the tide of bad things swelled up a little more around him, clutching at his lungs, threatening to pull him under.

  Each day, William wanted to talk to his son about it. Each day, he wanted to sit down with the boy and tell him, “This is how the world is . . .” And then, with that modest introduction, he would start into the reality of his son’s life. He would talk about his son’s skin color and what it meant. He would talk about all of the people who had come before and looked like him and all of the things that had happened to him. He would talk about how the rules were different. He would talk about reality instead of the fiction that had been sold to him. He would say to his son: “Treat people as people. Be color-blind. Love openly. Love everyone.” And then, in the same breath, he would have to say to his son: “You will be treated differently because of your skin. The rules are different for you. This is how you act when you meet the police. This is how you act growing up in the South. This is the reality of your world.”

  William would one day have to say all of these things to his son and many, many more. And with each word, his son’s heart would break. With each word, his son would be capable of a little less love, capable of a little less imagination, capable of a little less life. It was the bonsai of a child. His own child.

  And because William couldn’t bring himself to take away his son’s optimism any faster than the world was already taking it away, he did not have The Talk with his son. He only preached love and equality and the idea that the world could be a fair place. And when his son asked him about why a boy his age had been shot and killed by a policeman somewhere halfway across the country, William did the best that he could with answering by not answering.

  “It’s hard to say why that type of thing happens,” William replied. He and Soot were in the living room, weighting down the old couch and trembling in the glow of the television as the news rattled off the grisly details of the boy’s shooting. He had been out for a walk when the police stopped him. Then, somehow, events conspired that ended with the boy lying dead on the sidewalk. The news showed the sidewalk where the boy’s body fell. It was unremarkable concrete that now wore a rather unremarkable stain, as if someone spilled a bottle of syrup and walked away without cleaning up behind themselves. “It’s not something that happens all the time,” William said. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together as he spoke, a habit that went back to his childhood. Something about the motion calmed him and, right now as he spoke to his son about the boy on the television’s death, he wanted to be calm.

  “What was the boy doing wrong?” Soot asked.

  “Nothing,” William replied. He cleared his throat. “I mean, from everything that they’ve said so far, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. There’ll be an investigation, I’m sure. So let’s try not to make too much of a call on this until we find out more about what happened.” William nodded in affirmation to himself. It was important to teach his son not to jump to conclusions, especially when faced with something like this. A person had to take news like this slow. They had to measure it out, moment by moment, and not let it get the better of them. That was the only way to survive the tide in the long run. You couldn’t just drink in all of this and let it take control of the way you were thinking. That was how you lost your optimism. That was how you lost your hope.

  And William wanted his son to have hope for as long as he could.

  Soot would not take his eyes off of the television as a picture appeared on-screen. He was about Soot’s age, lighter-skinned, of course. Everyone was lighter than Soot. In the photograph, the dead boy wore a blue baseball cap and t-shirt. His smile was wide and bright, like a winter’s morning after snow has slipped in silently in the late of the night.

  “What’s his name?” Soot asked.

  “I don’t know,” William said. “They’re keeping the name private for now.”

  “I want to know his name.”

  “Why?”

  “So that I don’t forget him,” Soot said, staring at the picture on the television screen. He gazed as though he were trying to memorize all that the dead boy was. “I can’t forget him,” Soot said.

  William’s thumb and forefinger rubbed together faster. He swallowed, trying to keep back the tears and trying to find the words to tell his son, “You will forget him.” He tried to find the words to say, “This boy is only the first of many that you will meet over your life. They will stack upon one another, week by week. You’ll try to keep them in your head but, eventually, you’ll become too full and they’ll spill out and be left behind. And then, one day, you’ll grow older and you’ll realize that you’ve forgotten his name—the name of the first dead Black boy that you promised yourself you wouldn’t forget—and you’ll hate yourself. You’ll hate your memory. You’ll hate the world. You’ll hate the way you’ve failed to stop the flow of dead bodies that have piled up in your mind. You’ll try to fix it, and fail, and you’ll drown in rage. You’ll turn on yourself for not fixing everything and you’ll drown in sadness. And you’ll do it over, and over, and over again for years and, one day, you’ll have a son and you’ll see him staring down the same road that you’ve been on and you’ll want to say something that fixes him, something that saves him from it all . . . and you won’t know what to say.”

  William wanted to say all of the correct words to Soot, but they were not in his mind. All that was in William’s mind was the image of his son lying on the concrete, dead, just like all the boys that came and went on television.

  Okay. Let’s pause for a minute. Let’s go back a few months. I think there’s something there that I might have forgotten:r />
  PROFESSIONALISM.

  The word is painted on the wall of the office in midtown Manhattan in foot-tall lettering that’s bolder and darker than any lettering I’ve ever seen before, like it’s been etched there since the beginning of time and will continue to be long after I and everyone else on this planet have crumbled to dust. This word will remain. PROFESSIONALISM. Both a decree and a dare.

  “What is this place again?” I ask.

  “Media training,” Sharon says. She’s typing an email to someone with her thin, fast fingers. Like all publicists and agents, Sharon is always contacting unseen people.

  “What exactly is media training?”

  “Training you for media,” Sharon replies.

  At this point, I’m still new to the authoring machine. Still cow-eyed and optimistic about everything. Hell of a Book is still a full six months from being published and I’m learning the ropes as quickly as I can. Sharon’s the agent who accepted my query letter and then accepted my manuscript for Hell of a Book. In fact, she’s the one who came up with the title. She did the legwork of helping me revise it—she always said it was never personal enough—and then she helped me find a publisher. So when Sharon says I need media training, I take her word as gospel.

  “Could you define ‘media’ for me?” I ask.

  Sharon only focuses on her phone and her emails.

  “And why did you insist that I wear a sport coat? It’s ninety degrees outside.”

  “You’re a professional now,” Sharon says. “A professional author. Authors wear sport coats. Readers love authors who wear sport coats. Don’t ever forget that.”

  I don’t ask any more questions for the next half hour while waiting for the media trainer to show up. His secretary, a thin blonde woman named Carrie, offers me something to drink at exactly ten-minute intervals. Her hair is slicked back, giving her a lean, athletic look. But when she smiles, it’s soft and full of light, like someone who, in the middle of a heat wave, has discovered ice for the very first time.

  Her smile reminds me of my mother’s.

  It’s almost 10 a.m. when the media trainer finally shows up. His name is Jack. Jack looks like he stepped out of a Christian Dior ad once upon a time and decided never to go back. He’s too handsome to be real, so I start to think that maybe he isn’t. You know how that happens to me sometimes.

  But Carrie sees him and Sharon does too. “I’m Jack,” he shouts as soon as the elevator doors open. “I’m Jack the media trainer. It’s so great to meet you!” he says, stepping out of the elevator at a lope so fast you’d think he was being chased by someone threatening to return him to that Christian Dior ad.

  He’s got his hand extended for a handshake while he’s still fifteen feet away. He steers his hand toward me like a torpedo. I barely manage to catch it in time, fearful that it might spear me through the breadbasket if I don’t. Even though we’re in midtown Manhattan, Jack smells like the ocean.

  He shakes my hand like a pit bull. “I’ve been waiting all week to shake this hand of yours. I finished reading your book and immediately thought: I can’t wait to shake the hand that made this happen! It’s just an amazing creation. One pure, throbbing, screaming, convulsing, hell of a goddamn book!”

  “Thanks,” I say, trembling as the handshake persists. He squeezes tight enough that I think that, when this greeting finally ends, I might find a raw diamond where my hand once was.

  “You’re as welcome as hell,” he says, finally giving me my hand back. No diamond. Just bruised flesh. “. . . You’re Black?”

  “I am.”

  Proof, in memory, that I’ve been Black this entire time, apparently.

  “You didn’t tell me he was Black,” Jack says to Sharon.

  “I wanted to see if you could tell from his writing.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Good.”

  “Good indeed,” Jack says enthusiastically.

  “What does my being Black have to do with anything? And what do you mean it’s good that you couldn’t tell I was Black?”

  “You see what I’m dealing with here?” Sharon asks, rolling her eyes.

  “Not a problem,” Jack says.

  “I didn’t know it could be,” I say.

  “We can work with anything here,” Jack continues. “Anything. Had a client once who was a Russian spy. Murdered seventeen Americans over the course of his life. I still made him a bestseller. If I can handle that, I can handle this.”

  “I knew you could,” says Sharon.

  “Right this way,” Jack replies.

  Jack the Media Trainer leads Sharon and me into a small conference room with a large oval table and a handful of chairs placed around it. There’s a small video camera on the center of the table and a few microphones. At the far end of the room, there’s another camera, and a lectern, and even more microphones, as if the President of the United States might soon be coming by for a press conference.

  “So this is it,” Jack says proudly, opening his arms like a game show host. “This is the room where I’m going to train you to become you.”

  “Train me to become me?”

  “Yep.”

  “Aren’t I already me?”

  “Nope,” Jack says. “Right now, you’re you. But I’m going to really help you really become you. I’m going to help you become the best version of you that you’ve ever seen. You won’t even recognize yourself when you’re done here.”

  “So, I’ll look different?”

  “That couldn’t hurt,” Sharon says, taking a seat at the table. She still hasn’t looked up from her phone. “This ‘Aww shucks’ country chic wardrobe of yours will never cut it in Chicago.”

  Jack the Media Trainer laughs. “Sharon’s right, as always. Would you believe me if I said that, yes, you’re going to look physically different when this is all over?”

  “No,” I answer. “I wouldn’t believe you.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” Jack says. “But facts exist objectively, regardless of whether or not you believe them. That’s what makes them facts. The world is still round no matter how flat the horizon looks.” He lets out another game-show-host laugh and slaps me on the shoulder and leads me to one of the seats at the table. “It’s going to be a downright metamorphosis.”

  “Like Kafka?” I ask.

  “Is that a rapper?”

  He takes a seat on the other side, so that he’s squarely in front of me as he talks, like a perfectly groomed and manicured army recruiter. “So here’s what we’re going to do,” he begins. “I’m going to help you get to know yourself. I’m going to help you get to know your book.”

  “I know my book. I wrote it.”

  “Again, do you see what I’m dealing with here?” Sharon interjects. She looks up from her email long enough to shake her head in disappointment.

  “It’s okay,” Jack says to me, smiling like a parent with a child who’s had a potty-training accident. “You only think you know your novel. But you don’t. Not really. A writer doesn’t know their work any better than they know themselves. And let’s face it: when you get right down to it, we’re all strangers to ourselves.”

  “What?”

  This is the point where I decide that Jack the Media Trainer isn’t a real person. Or, at the very least, he’s real but the things that he’s saying are figments of my imagination. The way he talks reminds me of the character of John in Hell of a Book. John was a good guy that I based on my father. He spoke quickly and in full paragraphs, always aware of what he wanted to say long before he got down to the business of saying it. He was a mixture of Fred MacMurray, and Humphrey Bogart, and every time my father and I sat together and watched a movie about men who spoke fast, and wore hats, and lived in fuzzy black-and-white worlds.

  “Think about it,” Jack the Media Trainer says. “Have you ever fe
lt some emotion that you didn’t know why you felt it? Maybe you see some television commercial for a long-distance carrier and you start crying. Or you read some passage somewhere and, all of a sudden, you’re angry, even though you’ve read the exact same sentiment and idea of that passage a thousand times before. But something about that specific way it’s worded this time just sends you into a fury. That’s happened to you, hasn’t it?”

  I don’t want to answer any of Jack’s questions. Even if he is just a figment of my imagination, he’s steering me, guiding the conversation like GPS to some destination that he’s been planning to make since long before he ever met me. He’s media training me, one word at a time. All I want to do is sit back and let him talk. Offer no answers. Give him no ammunition to use against me, to train me with. But I’m still too new at being an author to not answer someone when they ask me a question.

  So I find a compromise and decide to offer only the smallest answers I can. “I suppose,” I say.

  “Of course it has. It’s happened to everyone. And then we sit there like idiots, angry or sad, not even knowing why.” He shakes his head in contemplation. “We’re complicated creatures, each and every one of us. We all contain mazes inside ourselves, and it’s easy to become lost in that maze.”

  “So I’m a maze now?”

  “Damn right you are!” Jack slams his fist on the table. “You’re in that maze of yourself. That wild, chaotic world of wants and desires, solipsism, and egomania. You’re only able to see the world through your eyes and that’s what leads you into the heart of the maze itself, into the—”

  “Please don’t say ‘Heart of Darkness.’”

  “—into the Heart of Darkness! And you wouldn’t want to drag others into a dark maze, would you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “You’re damn right you guess not,” Jack says. He bolts up from his chair. “That’s a terrible thing to do to someone. To lead them into a maze and . . .” Jack pauses for a second. “You know something, I’ve said the word ‘maze’ far too many times. What’s another word for ‘maze’?”