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

  “He started payin’ me to catch them. He used to pay me to go catch everybody else’s dogs in the neighborhood, you hear? And shit, I’d bring them back to him, he’d take ’em bitches and tie a rope around their necks and hang ’em bitches from a tree, you know?”

  Vincent watched his relative tape shut the mouths of the dogs. Vincent stood back from the tree. His relative drifted to his car, parked nearby, and creaked opened the door. Pit bull puppies scuttled out of the backseat.

  His relative was training the pits for fighting.

  He led the puppies to the tree. The neighborhood dogs flapped on the branches, wailing through the tape. The pit bulls tore up the dogs.

  The pit bulls would eventually calm down, and his relative would herd them back to the car. Vincent would gaze at the carcasses swinging from the tree. It wouldn’t take long for the flies to arrive.

  “How old were you?” I ask.

  “I was about eight,” Vincent says with a slurred, pained giggle. “He’s the one who put me on to this shit.”

  “That’s a pretty horrific thing for you to have to see.”

  “That’s what I used to do. I used to fight any motherfuckin’ thing that would fight—cats, dogs, chicken. Oh man! I used to fight motherfuckin’ little black ants with the little pincer on their mouths!”

  Vincent giggles a woozy giggle.

  “But when did you move on to people?”

  “Why you tryin’a make it seem like I’m so violent, man, when I’m so friendly, I’m so nice and pleasant?”

  Vincent’s serious. I chuckle.

  “I mean, I think there are two sides to you,” I say. “I think you’re nice, but you’re also violent. I’m just trying to understand what happened in your life that made you end up being able to stab people.”

  “I’m gonna tell you what happened, right? I finally realized either you were doin’ it to them or they were gonna do it to you, you know what I’m sayin’? In this world, nigga, you gotta be . . . It’s a dog-eat-dog world, you hear? Only the strong survive—that’s my motto. Only the strong survive, and the weak die.”

  Vincent says that aged ten he would shoot dice with his adult cousins. They’d jump him if he won and he’d have to fight to keep his winnings.

  “So, you know what I’m sayin’? I’ve been fighting for my life. All my life, man.”

  A clang echoes down the corridor in the East Mississippi prison.

  “Hold up,” says Vincent, “hold up.”

  Cicadas scream outside my apartment, and the sky is turning purple.

  A minute later Vincent whispers in my ear.

  “Hey, listen,” he says, “talk down low ’cause there’s lots of police around here, you hear?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “But I’m gonna need you to do somethin’ for me, you hear? I need some G-Dot cards, you hear? I got some big business coming through, you hear? Gonna need twenty-five hundred. And get it in single one-hundreds, you hear?”

  “I can’t give you twenty-five hundred dollars. I don’t have much money left,” I say. “You’re going to have to figure out another plan.”

  “No,” he says. “You the plan.”

  I laugh. “You’re going to need another plan.”

  “Uh-uh,” he says. “No. Uh-uh.”

  “No, uh-uh,” I mimic back.

  “Say, John Safran?” he says.

  “Yes?”

  “I can get you killed from right behind this door, man. Real talk.”

  “You can get me killed from behind your door?”

  “Real talk,” he says. “I can get your motherfuckin’ ass killed from behind this door, if you playin’. I’ve got niggers right now, on my honor, that can come up to your motherfuckin’ house and put your brains outside the curb.”

  “Pardon?”

  My “pardon” is me buying time to sort this out in my head, while fear rushes through me.

  “I said, by a motherfuckin’ player, I can get you killed in your motherfuckin’ house tonight. I got the address on the letter: 5201 Lakeland Boulevard, Flowood. Apartment F58. Motherfucker’s brains be in the street.”

  “That’s rather scary, you know?” I say. “It’s pretty scary to hear that. I don’t understand when you say things like that whether you’re being serious or you’re being funny.”

  “No, I ain’t laughing. I’m serious. Serious as a motherfuckin’ heart attack or a stroke.”

  “Jesus!” I say, then, “Mmmmm,” not sure where to take this next.

  “Listen, this is real nigga shit,” he says. “I’m gonna need you to send some flowers to somebody, too, you hear? I gotta get her address tomorrow and call you back.”

  Vincent hangs up, ending the strangest turn of conversation I’ve ever had in my life.

  The purple sky turns black, and I fall asleep to cicada screams.

  My eyes snap open at two in the morning. I’m sure I can hear a key rattling in the keyhole. I roll my shoulders back and breathe. Everything soft is loud—the refrigerator hum, the tap drip, the breeze on the window.

  The Next Day

  “I’m leaning toward not sending them flowers to no bitch,” Vincent tells me. As usual he’s called me. He still holds control as to when we talk. “I ask myself, what has the bitch done for me, you hear?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I understand.”

  I’m stretched out on a lounge chair under the gazebo by the pool.

  My non-cell-phone hand is thumbing through Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy. I’m hunting down the chunk about Ted witnessing animal cruelty as a child.

  Here we go: Ted Bundy watched his grandfather kick family dogs till they cried and swing neighborhood cats by their tails.

  “I’m thinking,” says the man who watched the dogs sway from the tree in Jackson, “I think it should go to my mom or my grandma.”

  I plonked this thought in Vincent’s mind at the start of this call. That perhaps he would like me to drop flowers to his mother and grandma as well as this mystery girl.

  I, of course, have my reason for plonking this in his mind. It would allow me to circumvent the unspoken Tina ban and knock on her door. Vincent asked me to deliver these flowers. And Vincent will have to cough up an address for his grandmother, too. Who knows what detail she’ll add to the story of Vincent McGee?

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Vincent says, “actually I might send some to that bitch. At the same time, I don’t really know.”

  “What’s the longest,” I ask, “you’ve ever gone out with a girl?”

  “Couple of months, like, three months, some shit like that.”

  “That’s not very long.”

  “At the same time, it’s like—this is what I’m saying. I always been in jail, man. I go to jail so much, that’s how my relationships end, you know what I mean? No bitch never break up with me while I’m on the street. But when I’m back in the penitentiary and shit, we break then, you see? That’s why I say I gotta murblestatic them all over, see the little girl, the honey, before I try to send them some flowers and shit. I don’t know murblestatic but she murblestatic gave them back, you hear?”

  “You’re worried she’s going to give the flowers back,” I say, “and not accept them?”

  “No!” he spits defiantly. “Hey, man—I don’t get no flowers back. They gonna keep that shit, you hear? Just so they can tell their friends, ‘He sent me some flowers,’ you hear?”

  An old man waddles through the pool gate. He spots me in prime gazebo position and pulls a disappointed face.

  “Send that shit to Momma, you hear?” he says. “And my grandma. But fuck a bitch.”

  “Okay, not for a bitch, but for your mum and grandma?”

  “I don’t want to get out there on a limb with this female I’
m talking about,” he says. “’Cause she’s got a motherfuckin’ chain saw and could cut the limb, right? You hear?”

  Vincent wavers back and forth on whether to send flowers or not. The old man keeps darting eyes at me to try to psychologically drive me out of the gazebo.

  Vincent finally locks in. He will send flowers to the mystery girl.

  “Make sure they’re some roses, man,” he says. “How are you gonna send them?”

  “I’m just going to drive them over.”

  “Get the fuck out of here!” He laughs.

  “Why? What’s wrong with driving there with flowers?”

  “There ain’t nothing wrong with it, I’m just sayin’ this is how I want you to show up. Have a little card I wrote. I mean I’ll write some playa shit on the card and you read it to her, but it’ll be my words.”

  “Okay. Yeah, sure.”

  “You should say, ‘I work for Vincent McGee and he just told me to deliver these flowers because I’m his secretary.’”

  I laugh. “Okay.”

  “Where are you going to get the flowers from?”

  “I can look it up on the Internet.”

  “I don’t want you to go pulling no flowers out of the yard and take them to her, you hear? I want the romantic type—like it popped in my head that I wanna send her some flowers and I’m thinking about her and shit.”

  Vincent tells me to prepare my pen. This is what he wants jotted on the card. I pull my yellow notepad onto my lap in the lounge chair. I can hear Vincent’s feet plod around the prison cell.

  “I need a rider . . .” Vincent dictates.

  “What’s a rider?”

  “You just write it!” Vincent says. “And she’s gonna know what I’m talking about. I need a rider. Somebody who understands me. And understands what I’m going through. I need to be with somebody. Together. You hear?”

  I scribble fast.

  “Strike that out,” Vincent now instructs. “Entirely. Okay, I’m gonna start over. Tell her, I’m that nigga—No, put, I’m the man to hold it down. When you need a shoulder to lean on, you hear? I’mma be there when you needed it. I’mma be there. But at the same time, when I need the same thing, I’mma need you to be there. Read that back.”

  “I’m the man to hold it down,” I say. “When you need a shoulder to lean on, you hear?”

  “Hold up!” Vincent snaps. “Why’d you put in ‘you hear’? I didn’t say no motherfuckin’ ‘you hear.’”

  I strike out you hear.

  “And,” Vincent continues dictating, feet clomping around the cell floor, “we’ll enjoy all the good experiences together on our journey through this world, you hear? Behind every strong man is a strong woman. All I ask is for you to put forth effort to make my thoughts and beliefs a reality . . .”

  Vincent’s dictating springs along, faster and faster, happier and happier.

  “Because when I conquer the earth,” he continues, “I’mma put the sun and the moon around your neck, you hear? I’mma put the stars around your wrist. But it still couldn’t compare to, you know what I’m sayin’? It still won’t outshine your beauty, you hear?”

  Vincent laughs a joyous and satisfied laugh. He’s worked out just what a woman wants to hear.

  “Yo!” Vincent laughs. “Put ‘you hear,’ you hear?”

  “You hear?” I mimic back.

  “You hear?” Vincent spits back in an Australian accent. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Okay, we’re gonna autograph this bitch and we’re gonna shut this bitch down, you hear? All right, tell her, Don’t settle for the less when you can have the best. Without the headaches and the stress. At the same time, I really mean that. I’m really, really tryin’ to tell her, you know what I’m sayin’ . . . Look, all the complications, all the trials, we don’t have to go through that. I’m gonna keep the one honey, you know? I’m gonna do my thing and you’re gonna do your thing, but at the same time we gotta respect each other while we’re doing our thing, you feel?”

  “Do you want me to write that down?”

  “No!” he says. “Hell no! I’m just sayin’ that’s what I’m basically trying to say. You the fuckin’ writer, here’s where you come in, you hear? You can’t be no motherfuckin’ writer if you can’t make her see what I’m tryin’a say, you hear?”

  “You’re probably right.” I laugh.

  “Now at the end put a murble nigga like me.”

  “A what?” I say. “A dog nigga?”

  Vincent turns quiet. “Now, hold on, hold on,” he says sharply. “Now we’re cool, right? I don’t never wanna hear you say no shit like that again or we ain’t never gonna be cool again, you hear?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought that was what you said.”

  “I’m just sayin’, I know what I said but you don’t have to repeat what I said, you hear?”

  “Okay, sure, sorry.”

  “A’right. Just put, like I said, a thug nigga like me.”

  “How do you want to spell the N word? N-I-G-G-A?”

  “Yeah, like that. A’right, thanks, John. We’re one hundred, man. But I don’t really think about the N word and shit, man, real talk. It’s just that I’ve had a lot of bad experience with a lot of white folks, you hear? I don’t play by no kind of nigger word, no monkey, none of that shit,” he says. “That shit gets to feel real bad, you hear?”

  “Sure.”

  Vincent laughs. “At the same time, man, you’re gonna go straight to her house and deliver her the card. I want her to have a card, teddy bear with some chocolate and some roses.”

  I scribble Card, teddy bear, roses, chocolate.

  “Make sure you get a teddy bear that she can hug at night, you hear?”

  “Sure.” I laugh.

  “Now don’t be tellin’ me you’re gonna do shit if you don’t mean it, man.”

  “I’m going to do it,” I tell Vincent. “Why not?”

  “That’s what I’m sayin’—why not?”

  “What’s the address of the girl, though?” I ask.

  Vincent says he doesn’t have the address. He’ll hit me back with it. She’s not returning his calls right now.

  “I was talking to her and we got emotional and shit and she started a little argument with me—‘You ain’t right for me.’”

  I look up. The old man is waddling around the pool, still sulking because I scored the gazebo. A growl rolls up the corridor of East Mississippi prison.

  “Hey, go to Facebook,” Vincent says. “You can go to the computer right now and erase my Facebook, you hear?”

  “Erase it?”

  “You gonna get on there and erase that motherfucker. When you come in to penitentiary they ask you if you’ve got Facebook. I told them I ain’t had no Facebook. ’Cause they’ll be all up in your business and shit. They’d be asking, ‘Do you disapprove of MDOC checking your Facebook account and shit?’ I told them I ain’t gotten it.”

  I pluck my silver laptop from my bag and creak it open on my belly. I tell him I’ve been on Facebook myself this morning.

  “You been on my Facebook?” Vincent snaps.

  “No, my Facebook!”

  “If I find out you’re the conspiracy, you’re trying to trap me or something, I’m gonna knock your noodle.”

  “No, I’m writing a book, it’s not a conspiracy to trap you. By the way, the police have already trapped you. They’ve already got you in jail. They don’t need anything else.”

  “Man, I don’t feel comfortable giving you my password,” Vincent says.

  Then he spits out the digits.

  “Seventeen people want to be your friend,” I tell Vincent.

  “Don’t answer that shit. Erase my Facebook account. Hey, go check my messages real quick.”

  I tell him a girl called Jasmine has written, I’ve been texting but you won�
��t text me back, what’s up with that?

  “You tell her she mustn’t be textin’ the right thang,” he says.

  I type, U musn’t be textin’ the right thang, and hit send.

  “Hey, but listen,” he says, “go on ahead and delete my account, right quick.”

  “I’m trying to figure out how to do it. Just a sec,” I say, fumbling through the toolbar. “Do you go to account privacy settings or account settings?”

  “Say what?”

  “I’ll work out how to do it,” I say. “When we hang up I’ll talk to a friend who will know how to do it.”

  “A’right, listen. I’ll hit you back soon, you hear?”

  Vincent hangs up, and I stare at his Facebook message box.

  I scroll down.

  A white girl has messaged:

  Hey, what’s up, you are beyond gorgeous. My name is Katie, I saw your face on TV.

  I scroll down.

  A person named Falona has messaged:

  SICK SICK HUMAN. ALL YALL DO IS TALK THAT HOOD SHIT AND FUCK UP. YALL MAKE ALL BLACK MALES LOOK BAD. I HOPE THEY MURDER YOUR ASS IN PRISON. NO ONE HAS D RIGHT TO TAKE ANOTHER’S LIFE. YOU WILL SOON BE BACK WHERE YOU BELONG IN A CAGE FOR LIFE LIKE THE ANIMAL YOU ARE. WILD BEAST NEED NOT BE IN CIVILIZED SOCIETY . . .

  I scroll down.

  There’s a message to Vincent, and a reply from Vincent, on April 21. Why is that date itching me? Why is there a tickle running up my arms?

  My brain pulls itself together.

  That’s the night Vincent wandered down to Richard’s home and jumped on Facebook and began typing, then stood up from the keyboard and killed Richard Barrett.

  I squint at the screen. Vincent’s brother, Justin, has typed:

  Nigga where u at

  And Vincent has typed back:

  getting money

  oh lets do it.

  The Flower Drop: Justin and Sherrie McGee

  The first time I drifted into the McGees’ I could hardly see the McGees. This time the world blows its light into the living room.

  Vincent’s sister Sherrie has shorn her hair, and lanky Justin seems closer to the ceiling than last time. Tina is somewhere else.