The Ballad of Black Tom
Page 9
I’ll take Cthulhu over you devils any day.
Then Malone returned to himself and, realizing he’d made a scene, he apologized to the gathered townspeople. After explaining himself to the local constable, he wandered back to his cabin in Chepachet and became, for a short while, an item of lively gossip in Pascoag.
18
BLACK TOM ENTERED THE Victoria Society and took a table in the dining room, one near the windows looking out on 137th Street. As soon as he arrived, he slipped the straight razor into his pocket and removed his jacket and vest. He’d cleaned up a little, but it hardly helped. His pants remained clotted with dirt and dark with blood, and his shirt showed so much perspiration that it clung to his skin. Still he was allowed entrance. The greeter feared him.
Black Tom sat in the dining room, and since it was late afternoon the space remained otherwise empty. He sat with his back to everything and watched the sun glow over Harlem, and he listened to the rumbling hive of life on the sidewalks and the streets.
When Buckeye arrived, a plate of food had been set before Black Tom. He hadn’t eaten anything. Buckeye ordered his own plate—a meal made by a Puerto Rican woman this time—and didn’t really look at Black Tom until he’d eaten two alcapurrias. The greeter had sent out word that Buckeye’s friend was at the Victoria Society, looking decidedly odd.
“I heard about your father,” Buckeye said after he’d swallowed.
“My father?” Black Tom said this as if he’d forgotten he ever had one.
“Where you been, man?” Buckeye asked, setting down his fork. “What happened to you?”
“You’ll hear about it,” Black Tom said calmly. “It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. Probably for a whole week. Then they’ll move on to something else.”
Buckeye watched Black Tom quietly. He’d been hustling long enough to know there are questions you don’t ask if you want to avoid being pulled into a court case later.
Black Tom said, “I did something big, bigger than anyone will understand for a long time. I was just so angry.”
Buckeye nodded, ate another few bites of mofongo, and strenuously did not ask follow-up questions.
“I was a good man, right? I mean I wasn’t like my father, but I never did people wrong. Not truly.”
“No, you didn’t,” Buckeye said, looking his old friend directly in the eye. “You were always good people. Still are.”
Black Tom smiled faintly but shook his head. “Every time I was around them, they acted like I was a monster. So I said goddamnit, I’ll be the worst monster you ever saw!”
Newly arrived diners at nearby tables turned to look at Black Tom, but neither he nor Buckeye noticed.
“But I forgot,” Black Tom said quietly. “I forgot about all this.”
Black Tom scanned the tables of men and women dining at the Victoria Society. He pointed to the row of windows that opened onto 137th Street.
“Nobody here ever called me a monster,” Black Tom said. “So why’d I go running somewhere else, to be treated like a dog? Why couldn’t I see all the good things I already had? Malone said I put my daddy at risk, and he was right. It’s my fault, too. I used him without a second thought.”
Black Tom reached into his pocket and revealed the straight razor. Buckeye gave a quick glance around the room, but Black Tom paid the room no mind. He opened the razor. The blade looked slathered in jelly. Buckeye knew what that was. Black Tom set the strop down on the table and Buckeye tossed his napkin over it.
“We need to get rid of that,” Buckeye cautioned, looking at the shape under the napkin. “You should have done it before you even stepped in here.”
“The seas will rise and our cities will be swallowed by the oceans,” Black Tom said. “The air will grow so hot we won’t be able to breathe. The world will be remade for Him, and His kind. That white man was afraid of indifference; well, now he’s going to find out what it’s like.
“I don’t know how long it’ll take. Our time and their time isn’t counted the same. Maybe a month? Maybe a hundred years? All this will pass. Humanity will be washed away. The globe will be theirs again, and it’s me who did it. Black Tom did it. I gave them the world.”
“Who the fuck is Black Tom?” Buckeye asked.
“Me,” he said.
Buckeye scanned the room once more, then grabbed the napkin and the razor blade as well. He folded the napkin around the blade.
“Your name is Tommy Tester,” Buckeye said. “Charles Thomas Tester. You’re my best friend, and the worst singer I’ve ever heard.”
Both men laughed loudly, and for a brief moment Black Tom appeared as he had been not so long ago: twenty years old and in possession of great joy.
“I wish I’d been more like my father,” Black Tom said. “He didn’t have much, but he never lost his soul.”
Buckeye had slid back from the table, fussed with his right boot, trying to slip the straight razor inside for safekeeping. He’d discard it, into the river, after he walked Tommy home.
“I wonder if I could ever get mine back,” Black Tom whispered.
He rose from the table and walked to a window. He opened it. At 4:13 p.m., Harlemites within a three-block radius reported a strange sound in their heads, and a sudden wave of nausea. Before anyone inside the Victoria Society realized what was happening, Black Tom went out the window. Buckeye turned in time to see him leap, but Tommy Tester’s body was never found. Zig zag zig.
About the Author
PHOTOGRAPH BY EMILY RABOTEAU
VICTOR LAVALLE is the author of four books: Slapboxing with Jesus, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, and The Devil in Silver. He has been a recipient of numerous awards, including a Shirley Jackson Award and an American Book Award. He first learned of the Supreme Alphabet at the age of eighteen. He has been using it ever since.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Part 1
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Part 2
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
About the Author
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Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE BALLAD OF BLACK TOM
Copyright © 2016 by Victor LaValle
Cover art by Robert Hunt
Edited by Ellen Datlow
All rights reserved.
A Tor.com Book
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ISBN 978-0-7653-8661-8 (e-book)
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First Edition: February 2016
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Table of Contents
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Part 1
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Part 2
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
About the Author
Newsletter Sign-up
Contents
Copyright Page