Erasure

by Percival Everett

  When I wakes up I hear balls breakin on a table outside. I opens the door and takes a peek and I see Yellow and Tito playin a game. I walk out there but I stay in the shadows. Yellow see me.

  “Nigger, what you doin here?” he say, tryin to keep his voice down.

  Tito come over. “Man, you hotta than a Swisher Sweet.”

  “You been on the TV non-stop,” Yellow say. “They gone gas yo’ ass.”

  “Shit,” I say. “They don’t gas you for rape and runnin.”

  “They does fo’ murder,” Yellow say. “They caught yo’ butt on the security cam shootin that K’rean.”

  “Oh shit,” I say.

  “Oh shit is right,” Tito say.

  “Who dat back there?” the fat man call to Tito and Yellow.

  “Aint nobody but us, Pops,” Tito say.

  I ducks down in the hallway.

  “What you gone do?” Yellow ax.

  “I guess I’ll go down to Mexico,” I say.

  “Nigger, you dont eben speak Spanish,” Yellow say.

  “So what,” I say. “Them muthafuckas come up here and they dont speak no American.”

  “Police been here lookin for you,” Tito say. “Fat Man look at yo’ picture and took they card. There’s a reward. He’ll drop a dime on yo’ ass in second.”

  “Buncha niggers would,” I say. “I need a car.”

  “We aint got a car,” Tito say.

  “Get me one,” I say.

  “And why should we get yo’ stupid ass a car?” Yellow ax.

  “Cause I’m a brother,” I says.

  “Fuck that shit,” Tito say. “You just lucky we aint turnin yo’ ass in.”

  “That how you treat a brother?” I say.

  “Who dat?” that fat bastard say again.

  “Nobody, Pops,” Tito say.

  “Is it that Snookie Cane Show nigger?” Fat Man say. “Where my phone.”

  I jumps up and run to the desk. I be pointin my pistol at him, but he keep dialin. “Hang up, Fatso!” I yell. But he keep pushin in the number. I rip the phone out the wall. I stick the gun in his face. “You still drive that piece-a-shit Ford?” I ax.

  “It aint no piece-a-shit,” he say.

  “Give me the keys,” I say.

  “You bet give him the keys, Pops,” Tito say.

  The fat man reach into his pocket and give me the keys.

  “Awright,” I say. “Awright. Now, dont go runnin to the cops. You hear me?”

  “I hear you,” the fat man say.

  Then I point the gun at Yellow and Tito. “You, too!”

  “Okay,” Tito say.

  Tin

  I be in that fuckin Ford Torino belong to Fat Man. It from the sebenties and it be dirty as shit. Beer cans and burger wrappers be all on the floor. The thing put smoke out the back and the engine be soundin like a jar full of pins. I can see a piece of the vinyl roof flappin in the wind on the passenger side. I member how smooth that Dalton car drove. It was like a cloud and I was floatin somewhere above all this shit. Everybody else floatin, so why not me?

  Then I hears the choppin of blades and I sees people on the street lookin up and I just knows there be a helicopter spotted me. I look in the mirror and I see a cruiser way off. But he comin. They always be comin. I turns onto the 101 and the traffic be thick but I speeds on through them cars, blowin my horn and usin the shoulder. People be gettin out the way. There is a couple of cruisers behind me now. They lights be on, but they hangin back. I see a sign for Union Station and I think SHIT, cause I’m goin the wrong muthafuckin direction. I swings off and head down some side streets. Maybe the chopper cain’t see me for the trees, I thinks. The cruisers still back there and now I be passin some at the intersections. I gets back on the 101. I know it go south. They be behind me and above me and be drivin a hole in the highway.

  Somehow I end up goin the wrong way again. I be on that 60 headin to Riverside. I know cause I gots a cousin who live there. He used to live out there. Nigger got shot for pokin round a speed lab. Niggers always wanna be gettin sumpin fo’ free.

  I turns on the radio and hear they be talkin bout me. I can see a news helicopter off to the side, but it be from the telebision. I can see the cameraman hangin out and pointin it at me. Hey, I be on the telebision three times in two days. My heart feel all big. I press harder on the gas. There aint much gas in this fucker and there bout six cruisers behind me now. Sheriff cars be back there now.

  I drives past Ontario and Chino and I miss the 15 headin souf to Mexico. I drives through Riverside and I’m sho’nuff bout to run outta gas and I turns onto the 215 headin souf, but I know I gotta get off the freeways. I gets off and I’m drivin through someplace call Moreno Valley and the car startin to knock and shake and them cruisers still back there and them helicopters still choppin up the air. I wave to the camera.

  I pull into the post office, jumps out the car and runs in. I shoot my gun into the ceilin and people start screamin. I yells for them to shut up. “Shut up!” I says. “Everybody get down on the flo’!” I screams. They gets down but one old lady is goin slow. “I say DOWN!” I yells at her and she start cryin.

  The police be outside. Must be twenty cars. I can see them through the big window.

  A black cop call to me on one them horns. “Van Go Jenkins!” he say. “It’s all over, son! Time to call it quits!”

  “I aint quittin nuffin!” I yell back through the glass. But he aint hear me. I points to a skinny blond girl. “Come here!” She crawl to me. “Get up!” She stand up and I grab her round her neck and put the gun to her head. I walk to the door and lean out with her in fronta me. “I’ll shoot her!” I shout. The girl be cryin. “I swear to God I’ll shoot her.”

  “Let’s talk, Van Go,” the nigger with the bullhorn say.

  “Fuck talk!” I say.

  “What do you want?” he ax.

  I see a telebision news crew settin up. The camera be pointin at me. “I want some money and another car,” I says.

  “We can’t do that,” he say.

  “You bet do it,” I say. I go back in and throw the girl on the flo’. This old black woman be starin at me. “What you lookin at, old bitch.”

  She shake her head. “What happen to you in yo’ life?” she say.

  “I aint had no life is what happen to me,” I say. “Now shut the fuck up.”

  “Just give up, boy,” the old lady say.

  “You aint my mama,” I say.

  “Thank the Lord for that,” she say.

  “You think you funny,” I say.

  She dont say nuffin.

  I counts the people in the room. Then I realize that them workers been behind the counter. I run over there and they all gone. I got seben hostages. All I want is a car. I yell at the window, “Just get me a fuckin car!”

  The cameras are starin at me. Three of ‘em now. I see someone I recognize from the news. I waves at her. The phone ring. I go and answer it. It be somebody wantin to know bout a package.

  “I aint got yo’ fuckin package!” I say and hang up.

  The phone ring again. This time it the police. “You’re going to have to give it up, Van Go,” he say. It the same nigger that was on that horn.

  “I aint givin up shit, man. Now you get me that car!” I say.

  “The car is coming. Why don’t you give us a couple of those people in there?” he say.

  “Old lady,” I say and point at her. “Go on out there. If you say a muthafuckin word I shoot you.”

  She get up and walk to the door real slow. Then she out and she run cross that parkin lot like nobody bizness.

  “Okay,” I say into the phone. “You got one.”

  “The car is comin, Van Go.”

  I hang up and I be sweatin like a pig. I shoulda killed that rich bitch. It be all her fault. Callin the cops and makin me run. And it be Reynisha fault too for comin after me wif that gun and lettin me take it from her. It be my mama fault for sho’, gettin pregnant wif me and havin me
. It be that basketball coach fault. It be that white teacher fault. It be everybody fault.

  After bout ten fifteen minutes, the phone ring again. It that cop. “Your car is here,” he say.

  “Bout time,” I say. I watch as it pull up in the lot. It be a little red sport car. It look fine as shit. Awright, I says to myself.

  “Okay?” the cop say on the phone.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’m comin out wif this girl in here. I takin her wif me.”

  “Okay,” he say. “Be cool and don’t hurt anybody.”

  “I cool, fool,” I say. “You the one be cool.” I hang up. “You!” I points at the white girl again. “How old you?”

  “Sixteen,” she say.

  “Just be cool,” I say.

  The light outside is brighter than I member. The cameras is pointin at me. All them cops be pointin they guns at me. I tell the girl not to move again. We walk to the car. I yell out at the cops, “Try sumpin! Try sumpin and this girl get it in the head.”

  That car be little as shit and it hard for the girl crawl over the brake to the passenger side. I tells the girl to be cool again. I smile at the cameras. I turn the key and BAM! I dont know what happen. I think maybe I been shot. I cain’t see nuffin for a second and then I be covered with this powder shit. Then I be yanked by my hair out the car to the ground. I don’t know what goin on. Somebody kick me in my side. Somebody grab my arm and I think it be broken.

  “What happen?” I say.

  The cops be laughin. “Air bag, you dumb fuck,” one says to me.

  I looks up and see the cameras. I get kicked again while I’m bein pulled to my feet. But I dont care. The cameras is pointin at me. I be on the TV. The cameras be full of me. I on TV. I say, “Hey, Mama.” I say, “Hey, Baby Girl. Look at me. I on TV.”

  It was the middle of July and Washington was a big bowl of soup. I was parked in the study, counting time to the air-conditioning unit in the window. I picked up the heavy black telephone and called my agent, who recognized my voice and said, without much pause, “Are you crazy?”

  “No, not quite,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “This thing you sent me. Are you serious?”

  “Yeah, why not? You’ll notice I didn’t put my name to it.”

  “I did notice that. But I’m the one who has to try to sell it, with my name. I have to work in this town.”

  “Look at the shit that’s published. I’m sick of it. This is an expression of my being sick of it.”

  “I understand that, Monk. And I appreciate your position and I even admire the parody, but who’s going to publish this? The people who publish the stuff you hate are going to be offended, so they won’t take it. Hell, everybody’s going to be offended.”

  “The idiots ought to be offended.” I looked over at a cluttered secretary desk across the room. On the lowered surface, below the encased medical books was a gray box.

  “So, what do you want me do?”

  “Send it out.”

  “Straight or with some kind of qualification? Do you want me to tell them it’s a parody?”

  “Send it straight,” I said. “If they can’t see it’s a parody, fuck them.”

  “Okay, I’ll send it out. A couple of times, anyway.” Yul sighed. “But no more than that. This thing scares me.”

  “I understand,” I told him.

  My tools were in storage in LA and I found myself missing the smells of wood, glue and varnish. I missed the splinters and the blisters, the sawdust and the red eyes. More than a few times I found myself standing in the garage, imagining Mother’s Benz parked elsewhere and the space filled with table saws and planers and jigsaws and stacks of wood. I bought some basic hand tools and built a birdhouse, painted it and gave it to Lorraine for the garden. Then I began visiting antique shops in Northern Virginia, in Falls Church and Maclean and as far away as Manassas, picking up a rabbet plane here and a block plane there, hammers, chisels, mallets, until I was a collector. I didn’t want to be a collector and decided I had to build something and that something became a nightstand for Mother. While I was using the rabbet plane to make the sloping edge of the table’s top, I considered Foucault and how he begins by making assumptions about notions concerning language that he claims are misguided. But he does not argue the point, but assumes his notions, rightly or wrongly, to be the case. As I recalled his discussion of discursive formations, I stepped away and looked at myself. To watch shavings fall away from a fine piece of ash wood and have such thoughts. I could feel my sister watching me.

  I was just tall enough to dunk the basketball, but not quite big enough to get close enough to the basket in a half-court game to do so. I enjoyed the exercise and the game, but not so much playing the game. I wasn’t very good at it. I would catch the ball, look to make a reasonably safe pass while dribbling, then make that reasonably safe pass and move to another spot on the perimeter. One day, a sunny May Saturday, I was playing on a court near my house. I was seventeen and feeling more awkward than I ever had or would feel again. I had been playing for about thirty minutes, making safe pass after safe pass when I found myself considering the racist comments of Hegel concerning Oriental peoples and their attitude toward freedom of the self when I was bumped into the lane and so appeared to be cutting to the basket and the ball was thrown back to me. I threw up a wild and desperate shot which had no prayer of going in; it was ugly. A member of my team asked me what I was thinking about and I said, “Hegel.”

  “What?”

  “He was a German philosopher.” I watched the expression on his face and perhaps reflected the same degree of amazement. “I was thinking about his theory of history.”

  The order of the following comments escapes me now, but they were essentially these:

  “Get him.”

  “Philosophy boy.”

  “That’s why he threw up that brick?”

  “Where the hell did you come from?”

  “What are you thinking about right now?”

  “You’d better Hegel on home.”

  Novel idea: The Satyricon

  Let us put this affrontery behind us. This from Fabricus Veiento, and he laughed in the middle of his lecture on the follies of what we took generally to be religious belief, though he couched it in terms of particular mania for revelation and prophecy. Indeed, all lofty themes, religious, political or otherwise, were equal in their being subjects of ridicule or simple askance-looking. Indeed (again), I learned from him and agreed that the seductiveness of the verbal engagement which Veiento so disparaged was the reason why so many pupils, namely young men like myself, grow up to be idiots. That the young would rather be entertained by tales of the extreme rather than the mundane is not arguable. Pirates defeat accountants. Beheadings outweigh slivers of wood in buttocks.

  Academic training catering to such vulgar taste can only promise vulgarity. Rhetoricians are at the root of the decline of Oratory—empty speech for empty heads, pretending eloquence and so redefining the very thing it has killed.

  While paying Mother’s and my own bills in mid-August, I found myself nearly ready to accept the poorly salaried lecturer position at American University. I put in a call to my brother to see if he might be able to help.

  “I have no money,” he said.

  “She’s your mother, too,” I said.

  “I can’t even see my kids,” Bill said. “I have my own problems.”

  “Do you have a car?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of car is it?” I asked.

  “What are you asking?”

  “Is it expensive?”

  There was a long pause and he said, finally, “I don’t actually own the car. It’s a corporate lease. I’m incorporated. I get paid a salary and that’s just enough for me to live.”

  “Can you take a less expensive apartment?” I asked. “Listen, Bill, I’ve left my job to come here and live with Mother. You could do a little something.”

  “Sell the hous
e and move her to a cheaper place.”

  “The house is paid for. There is no cheaper place.”

  “But selling it would give you some cash. You could get three-four hundred thousand for that house.

  “Actually, Monk.” His pause was a fat one if not terribly long and I could imagine his habit of looking at the ceiling before speaking. “I’ve taken a lover.” Taken a lover was how he put it. Removed one from the closet? Conned one out of his savings? Taken a lover.

  “So?” I said.

  “His name is Claude.”

  “I don’t care what his name is,” I told him. “What is he? French?”

  “I want you to meet him.” And suddenly Bill’s voice was different, but it was more than just the sound of a man in love. His pronunciation changed. It was not quite that he developed a stereotypical lisp, but it was close.

  “Why are you talking like that?”

  His voice went back to normal. “Like what?”

  I collected myself and tried to make my way back to important matters. “What about Lorraine?”

  “What about her? We don’t owe anything to Lorraine.”

  “So, you’re telling me to sell Mother’s house, move her into a home and kick Lorraine out into the street.”

  “Basically.”

  I hung up.

  The phone rang the next morning while I sat at what had been my father’s desk staring at the gray box across the room. It was my agent.

  credo quia absurdum est

  “Sit down,” Yul said.

  “I’m sitting,” I said, though I was standing and looking out the window at the street.

  “I sent it over to Random House.”

  “Yes?”

  “I didn’t offer any qualifiers or anything.”

  “Yes?”

  “Six hundred thousand dollars.”

  “You’re kidding me,” I said, sitting now.

  “Paula Baderman, a senior editor over there, wants to meet Mr. Leigh.”