God'll Cut You Down : The Tangled Tale of a White Supremacist, a Black Hustler, Amurder, and How I Lost a Year in Mississippi (9780698170537)

by Safran, John

  “No way! Are you telling the truth?”

  “I’m dead serious. Then I’d be seeing the grim reaper and all that shit.”

  “Really? I wish I could see your face now to see whether you’re telling the truth or joking.”

  “I’m dead serious. I ain’t here laughing.”

  “How old were you when you first saw things?”

  “I was old. I was about nineteen, twenty. Something like that. But ever since I was little I used to see, I used to see all types of strange things, you know what I’m sayin’? Like, to this day I feel if I’m in the room with the lights off, I can see red—every color—and it be little balls, like drops of water, floating around the room. I can see anytime in the room with the light off. When it’s on I don’t see it, when the light goes off I can just see all these colors floatin’ around, and they look like raindrops.”

  “What . . . what do you reckon it is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you reckon it’s ’cause you took drugs or do you reckon it’s, like, angels or something?”

  “I believe it’s something like—I don’t know about no angels—I’d say it’s energy or something, you hear?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Like, like, energy. I could see it anytime with the lights down low.”

  “And is it scary or is it good?”

  “It ain’t scary, you know what I’m sayin’? It’s like looking at a rainbow, but broke down into little drops, you hear?”

  “And what . . . what about the voices? The voices must be scary, though?”

  “Hell, yeah. Those motherfuckers keep me up many nights. I hear . . . I hear stuff callin’ my name. I wake up in my sleep, sweatin’. You know what I mean? I remember this one night I woke up and I was just laughing, you hear, and I just couldn’t stop laughing, and that just scared the hell out of me.”

  “You were laughing when you were still asleep and you didn’t know?”

  “Yeah, and I woke up laughing, though. Still laughing. I couldn’t stop.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “I believe I’m possessed, man, like The Exorcist or something.”

  “Really?! No way, you really reckon you are?”

  “Oh, nigga, I tell ya, like, I’m wide awake, you hear? I’m layin’ on my back and the grim reaper reached into my chest and he was pulling, like, he was pulling all the energy up out my back, and I resisted and everything went back to normal.”

  “How did you resist it?”

  “I just, like . . . I couldn’t move my hands and stuff, it was, like, my will, you know what I’m sayin’, like I had the will. I feel he was gonna snap my soul up. And in my mind I was, like, pullin’ back, but I wasn’t movin’ my body, you hear?”

  My foot pushes down and the streetlights speed by like balls of flame.

  “Is Richard the only person you’ve killed?”

  “I ain’t gonna get into that.”

  “Oh, you’re not going to get into that? Oh, okay, that’s ominous, but fair enough. Of course.”

  “What you talkin’ about?” he whines. “You’re talking about stuff that could get me more time. Yeah, we’re talking about shit that’s already happened.”

  “Yep, no, I understand. Your cousin, Michael Dent, he sort of feels that you got him in a lot of trouble that he didn’t need to get into.”

  “Man, fuck Michael Dent!” he spits. “You hear? I don’t need fuck with Michael Dent!”

  “That’s fair enough.”

  “I hate, you know what I’m sayin’, that he got into this trouble an’ all. And that’s why I gotta say shit happen, you know what I’m sayin’? And I can’t change the fact.”

  Vincent’s voice cracks on fact, like he’s crying or he’s high just for that one word.

  “The investigators said that Michael is a criminal, but he’s not really as violent and as dangerous as you.”

  “I’m a human being, man,” Vincent says earnestly, “you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Sure.”

  “Shit, Michael Dent, he’d probably, you know what I’m sayin’, kill a motherfucker or whatever he do—he gonna do his thing. Shit, if you get in a wrong situation, you would kill, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say, uncertain.

  “In the Bible, it say there’s a time for everything. There’s a time to kill and there’s a time for peace and there’s a time for war, you hear?”

  “And do you think when you’ve killed it’s been the time for war?”

  “It was the time to kill, you hear? You know, just think, if you was a young man, you hear, and you only twenty-two, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. I was startin’ up my little rap career and everything. And then shit. And you’re faced with this life-or-death situation, you know what I’m sayin’? You ain’t seen no more bad things and all of a sudden you got a obstacle in your way—somebody’s trying to kill you, so what you gonna do? You gonna defend yourself the best you can. You know what I’m sayin’? That’s what I did, you hear?”

  “But people say that because he was a sixty-five-year-old man he wasn’t strong enough to kill you. That’s why they’re suspicious about your story. Because they’re saying, because you’re young and strong, that you would have been able to . . . even if Richard had attacked you, that you would have been able to stop him without having to kill him.”

  “That’s where they lying,” he objects. “The man was strong to me. I’ve seen the man take an ax and chop a motherfuckin’ tree down, you hear? You know it’s all about how you keep your body in shape, you hear?”

  “Oh, so you think Richard was strong enough to kill you?”

  “No, I ain’t gonna say all that, know what I’m sayin’? I don’t feel like no one’s strong enough to kill me.”

  “You were saying that you blacked out when you stabbed Richard, but is that true? Did you really black out or are you just saying that so you don’t have to take responsibility?”

  “I was sayin’ that because it was some, like, outta-body experience, you hear? It was like I see everything that happened but I really couldn’t control it, it was like I couldn’t control it, you know what I’m sayin’? Like, once I got in that mode, I all the way in that mode. It’s like, just say you step out of your body and you just sit there watchin’ yourself do this, and you know you need to stop it, but your mind and your heart won’t let you stop it.”

  “And were you scared when you were doing it? Or were you . . . were you thrilled?”

  “I was thrilled. I ain’t gonna lie, you know what I’m sayin’? It’s like an adrenaline rush. But, you know, I’m sane. I’m a sane human being, know what I’m sayin’? I don’t walk around causin’ people problems for no reason.”

  “Yeah. But once you kind of got into it, you just couldn’t stop, and it was, like, exhilarating?”

  “Right. Like a high or something, you hear?”

  “Yeah. Wow.”

  “It was like I gained strength from it, you hear? Just to tell you the truth about the situation, I gained strength.”

  “You gained strength from it?”

  “Yeah. Like I got his power. Like I got his power, man, like real tough, you know, man? It’s like I had pumped all the way up—felt like I could jump through the roof!”

  “And do you reckon he was dead when you left him the first night? Or do you reckon he was still a bit alive?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t know. I ain’t checkin’ his pulse, you hear?”

  I cough out a laugh. “The woman who did the autopsy, she told me that she didn’t know when he died; he could have been, like, alive all night, but she didn’t know.”

  “I doubt that, though.”

  “And when you went in the next morning, was he just . . . He must have not been moving?”

  “He was just laying up.
”

  “And he was definitely dead then?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Wow. And so did you try to move his body about some, or did you just leave it there?”

  “When it first happened, the first night, I tried to move him, know what I’m sayin’? That’s why I tied the belt on, around the arm, tried to move him, know what I’m sayin’, ’cause, like, I knew they was going to try to pin something on me. ’Cause I was a black man and I had been institutionalized two times already. And I knew, know what I’m sayin’? Once they catch up and find out what happened, they won’t take my side of the story. Just look at the whole situation, right? So I had, know what I’m sayin’, to cover up what I did. Out of fear of going back to jail, know what I’m sayin’? I ain’t wanna go back to jail—penitentiary. This ain’t no place for a human being to live, you hear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This right here will make you out an animal, you hear?”

  “And so where were you trying to drag him? You stabbed him in the kitchen, but then were you trying to drag him somewhere else?”

  “I was gonna put him in a truck, drive him somewhere to bury him, you hear?”

  “Oh! I get it. Where were you going to take him?”

  “I ain’t gonna spill all this tonight, you hear?”

  I laugh, maybe out of nerves, but throw back another question.

  “And how long did you drag him before you realized it was gonna be too hard?”

  “I didn’t say it was gonna be too hard, you know what I’m sayin’? I ain’t wanna run back up the street and be seen, though. And the truck was locked up in the, uh, garage, so I said fuck him. Left him now, you hear me? And I come back and see him tomorrow, cleaned up.”

  “Sure.”

  “But then I got—know what I’m sayin’—I tell everybody what happened. They was like, ‘Shit, man, you gonna go to jail for life.’ I’m like, ‘Man, hell no.’ I say, ‘Shit, I’m gonna go burn the whole house down.’”

  My road trip buddy and me laugh.

  “You know,” I tell him, “they said you screwed up because you didn’t leave the windows open, so it was hard for the fire to start. You should have, like, opened the doors a bit more to let air come through to help the fires go.”

  “That’s what I said!” He laughs ruefully. “I was sittin’ down in my cell one day. I thought about it, there was shit I could have did, you hear?”

  “Sure.”

  “Too little, too late, man. You know, learn from your mistakes.”

  “And um, what was Richard saying when you were stabbing him—was he telling you to stop?”

  “Nah, he said one thing, you know, he scream my name, you know, he screamed like, ‘Vincent!’ He was attacking me, too, you hear?” he adds defensively. “I had scratches on me, you know what I’m sayin’? This, like what I said, nobody want to hear my side of the story. All they want to do is make me out as a murderer, know what I’m sayin’? ‘You killed him’; that’s all. They don’t want to hear ‘Okay, he had a knife,’ they don’t want to hear it. All they wanted to hear was ‘We got our man. He’s gonna do time.’”

  “From my point of view, when I hear you tell your story, your side sounds correct, except I feel like you’re leaving out something.”

  Vincent laughs. “Ha-ha!”

  “I feel like something happened that made Richard attack you or something. It just seems like too odd that, like, oh, suddenly Richard—”

  “We got into an argument, right?” Vincent interrupts. “He told me to get off his computer—I was using his computer to look up my Facebook, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “An’ we got into an argument about that an’ shit, you know what I’m sayin’? He was tryin’ to tell me that I don’t respect authority an’ shit. An’ I was like, what authority he has, you hear? For real. He was tryin’ to act like a white supremacist, you hear?”

  “Mmm,” I mmmed, unsatisfied.

  “So you have a big white supremacist dude, right?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “An’ he was like, ‘Damn,’ and I was like, ‘Dude, what you mean?’ And he was talking about, like, he, know what I’m sayin’, how he, like, just don’t like black people. He was tryin’ to play me, right? And that’s why it escalate.”

  I put this alongside the other white men who tried to play Vincent, the prison officers who told him his mother didn’t come, the prison officers he fought. But is that enough?

  “Sure. Okay, fine. I don’t know, I feel like . . . I really feel like there’s some missing piece.”

  Vincent laughs. The nighttime and my sleepiness are bonding me to Vincent. But I’m not so out of it to not be frustrated that, out of everything in his life, not leaving the windows open is the mistake he’s mulling over while in his prison cell.

  “But listen,” he says, “one more shit, man. You know I got a new girlfriend, her name’s Chywanna?”

  I throw my eyes around the car. My pen is lying on the passenger seat floor, vibrating a little with the car.

  “Her name’s what?” I say, calculating how I can snatch it and not skid into trees.

  “Chywanna,” Vincent says. “Ain’t nobody told you her name yet?”

  “No, no, no, what’s her name?”

  “You wanna call her on a three-way?”

  I scoop the pen up. I bite the lid off with my teeth and spit it to my feet.

  “I’m gonna talk to her, you hear me?” he says. “You just put her on three-way and listen, you hear?”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t bring no . . . Don’t bring up no crazy shit around her, you hear?”

  “Okay, so what do you want me to say, then? Or . . . Oh, okay, do you want me to ring her? Now?”

  “Yeah, you just ask her what type of dude I am, you know what I’m sayin’? She gonna tell you while I’m on the phone.”

  “How do we do the three-way?” I squeak. “I don’t understand how you do that on the phone.”

  I ready the pen to scribble on my hand.

  “But what’s her name?” I say. “I didn’t get her name. How do you spell it?”

  “Hold up, hold up,” Vincent instructs.

  He puts me on hold.

  Golden light explodes in my eyes. A jerk with switched-on high beams speeds past. I shake my head to reorient myself and rattle the glowing shapes from my vision.

  Vincent returns.

  “She’s asleep, you hear?” Vincent says vulnerably. “Have to be another time, you hear? I’m gonna take my ass to sleep, too.”

  Vincent says he posted the Mike Scott letter so it should be sitting in my mailbox when I pull in to my apartment.

  “We gotta seal the deal, nigga, you hear? So go ahead and get the Green Dot, you hear?”

  “Yeah. As soon as the letter comes I’ll give it to you. You know I will. How can you not think I will?”

  “Nah, I ain’t said you won’t. I just said you gonna need to go do it tomorrow. I got some business an’ you holdin’ me up, right? I gotta handle this business.”

  “I’m so sorry I’m holding you up on business.”

  “Hey,” Vincent says, “don’t be writing nothing bad about my people.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “The only one you can write bad about is Michael Dent.”

  “Oh, I can write bad about Michael Dent, can I?”

  “Me and Michael Dent don’t get along, really. Real talk.”

  “Sure. I think he’s just annoyed, to be honest. I think he’s just annoyed ’cause he’s, like, in jail and he says that if you didn’t come over to the house, he wouldn’t have ended up in jail.”

  “Fuck Michael Dent,” Vincent says. “Tell him I said fuck him in his ass, you hear?”

  The Mailbox

  The first
thing I do upon my return to my apartment is check the mailbox. Vincent’s letter hasn’t arrived.

  I text him:

  Hi Vincent, letter hasn’t come yet. Maybe it’ll come tomorrow

  Vincent: A Bitch better have my money on deck. FlyBoyDahLasDon

  Me: What does that mean?

  Vincent: It means pay up or die slow. FlyBoyDahLasDon

  Me: A bitch better have my letter to Mike Scott on deck. FlyBoyJohn

  I think of Gerry’s story of Richard stealing the waitress’s tip. I think of Vincent turning furious when I don’t cave in to his Green Dot demands. Guy most likely to rip you off, meet guy most likely to snap if you rip him off.

  My half day in Florida is bobbing in my head. I spoke to one person, Gerry, so I could write with clarity and confidence about Richard as a boy. But what if I had stayed a week? I would have talked to that man who had answered the door. He might tell me a different version of a story than Gerry had told me. So I’d have two variations on the story. I might then meet a niece of Gerry’s who doesn’t like her, who tells me Gerry often paints others in the worst light. And I would have asked myself, taking that into account, could I really trust everything Gerry said about Richard? And then I’d meet someone who would diss the niece. And on and on.

  In Mississippi, the more layers of the onion I peel, the more I’m standing in a mess of onion.

  Tonight, Three Days After Florida, Drunk, Twelve Thirty a.m. in New Orleans, with Dictaphone

  It’s about twelve thirty at night. I’m walking down the corridor of Le Pavillon in New Orleans. I’m trying to get into my door because I’m drunk. I’ve gotten in through my door. It’s a four-and-a-half-star hotel. It’s small, but beautiful.

  New Orleans hasn’t worked out. I came to hunt down the black people Richard lawyered out of a home. I really wanted to talk to them because they were a solid example of Richard fucking over some black people. I wanted to look into their eyes and get something real and human. But they weren’t home and no one knew where they were, so I guess I’m not going to get that.