Tragic Magic

by Wesley Brown

  There had been some disturbance in the street earlier. The police had moved in to disperse the crowd and arrested a boy who didn’t move quickly enough.

  “I may be young, but I’m old enough to know that youth ain’t never been a reason for gettin away clean…”

  Heads nodded in rocking-chair fashion.

  “That boy couldn’t a been more than thirteen. But they busted him for not movin fast enough. But where was he movin to? And who wasn’t it fast enough for?”

  “Talk about it!” someone shouted.

  “I’m not runnin for nuthin,” he said, “and I don’t wanna be in charge. I just wanna run this,” he said, jabbing his two index fingers into his chest. “But I can’t do that if I don’t go over to the precinct and see about that kid who didn’t move fast enough… Some of you may think messin with the po-leece is like goin barehanded in a brass-knuckle affair. Well, strength ain’t always a fat-mouth parade. It can also come on like a hush that even dogs can’t pick up on sometimes.”

  He jumped down off the milk crate and began walking down Seventh Avenue. Almost immediately people began filling in behind him. I joined the procession, and soon it extended the length of the block. I don’t really know why I followed him, but I think it had something to do with the way his outrage recomposed itself in a word design that x-rayed his hole cards. It scared the shit out of me that anyone would open up like that in front of strangers. My senses were aroused in a way I’d never experienced before. I wanted more. So like everyone else I latched onto the whirlwind he’d created and rode his guts.

  At each comer our ranks swelled, thickening the primer with another coat. The hitting of all those feet on the pavement became a drum roll. When we got to the precinct, some police were waiting on the steps. A beefy one with a chest studded with trinkets that might have been left over from the sale of Manhattan stepped forward.

  “What seems to be the trouble?” he asked.

  “We wanna know what happened to the boy you arrested,” said the man we’d followed.

  “Are you speaking for all these people?”

  “No, I’m speakin for myself. But we’re all here for the same reason.”

  “He’s all right. We’re just asking him a few questions.”

  “We wanna see him.”

  “Everybody can’t come in, but since you seem to be the spokesman, you can come in.”

  “I’m goin in,” he hollered back to us.

  “Don’t you go in there alone, blood!” someone shouted.

  “It’s either you or nobody,” the policeman said.

  “I’ll be all right,” he assured us and went in.

  After about fifteen minutes, the boy came out. A brassy cheer went up as the boy disappeared into the crowd. Everyone began to leave, and I was about to go when I saw the beefy policeman put his hand on our spokesman’s shoulder. He nodded to what was said to him and then followed the cop back inside the precinct house. In the jubilation over the boy’s release, this went unnoticed.

  I waited around after everyone had left to see when he would come out. When he did, it was almost dark. His head was down and his arms were wrapped around him as if he were trying to hold himself together.

  “What happened?” I asked as he passed me. He raised his head and looked at me with eyes floating in pools of red.

  “I didn’t move fast enough,” he said.

  “Ain’t you gonna tell anybody what they did to you?”

  “What for?”

  “So something can be done about it.”

  “There’s no way to prove it. They beat up on me in a way that don’t show.”

  “But if everybody knew what happened—”

  “They know.”

  “But how? I’m the only one that saw them take you back inside.”

  “There were others besides you that saw what happened. You just the only one that didn’t know what was goin on.”

  “You knew what they would do?”

  “Yeah! I made em look bad. And they didn’t dig it. So, in exchange for them cuttin the kid loose, I had to take the ass-whippin he was gonna get.”

  “But if you knew what was gonna happen, why did you speak up?”

  “I didn’t intend to. It just happened. Most a the time I don’t trouble trouble till trouble troubles me. But this time I just couldn’t play it safe.”

  “But how do you know when not to play it safe?”

  “When it happens, you’ll know. Just don’t let nobody else tell you when… What you lookin at?”

  “Your eyes.”

  “What about em?”

  “They’re red.”

  “Well, if you think that’s from cryin, you wrong. They red from overflowin! Thanks for lookin out for me, youngblood. Later on.”

  “The cat should a known better,” Otis said, when I told him. “He definitely didn’t have no smarts.”

  “But what he was sayin was true.”

  “That ain’t got nuthin to do with it. Whether it’s broads or not, you never let anyone know what’s really on your mind. If he had really been slick he would a got somebody else to go inside with the police.”

  “But if you could a heard him. He was serious. He didn’t care about the police.”

  “Then he got what he deserved. Talkin that political talk is all right when you in school. But you don’t be runnin that shit in the street.”

  “All he did was say what was on his mind.”

  “And all the police did was put something on his ass! Would you a done what he did?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shit, you know what you would a done and so did everybody else who was there. That’s why he’s the only one that got the ass-whippin!”

  A distance had begun to crack between us. Otis still believed he had all the answers. But questions were insinuating themselves into me. I was no longer a ready echo for whatever Otis said. And he was surprised to find that more and more after one of his assertions I would not follow up with a refrain but with a theme of my own. This development in our friendship crescendoed when Otis decided to go into the Marines and I opted for college.

  One afternoon during my first semester at City College I was sitting in the snack bar leafing through a textbook.

  “Hey, my man, didn’t you hear about the meeting?” A billy-goat-faced dude stood over me, going through a grab bag of nervous mannerisms that resembled a third-base coach flashing signs.

  “What meeting?” I asked.

  “The meeting to discuss what’s happening in the South and the ways we can support The Movement. You comin?”

  “Yeah, I guess I’ll check it out.”

  “My name’s Theodore Sutherland. What’s yours?”

  “Melvin Ellington.”

  There were about twenty people in the student lounge, either sprawling in chairs or sitting on the floor. Just about everyone sported the roguey attire of faded dungarees, work shirts, and desert boots. The racial composition was an unequally distributed keyboard favoring treble white over bass black. Theodore, who was one of the organizers of the meeting, was the first to speak.

  “As you know, the purpose of this meeting is to form a group that will be a second front for The Movement in the South. Since the press has been reluctant to publicize the recent bombings in Alabama, we see it as our function to pressure our elected officials in Congress to call for an investigation by the Justice Department of these criminal acts.

  “Secondly, we want to begin through weekly workshops to politicize the students of this college to parts of the American profile that they don’t see. And finally, in order to raise bail money and other operating expenses for The Movement, we will have parties or what we call ‘freedom highs’ every Friday night. For those of you who decide to join with us in struggle, you should realize that you are not only doctors but also part of the disease. To explain what I mean, Keith McDermott will rap to you.”

  A white dude joined Theodore at the front of the room. Long, drawn-
out hay dogged his face, except for his eyes, which glared out of his head like dime-sized pieces of sky blue. He stuck his hands in his front pockets up to the knuckles as he spoke, shifting his weight from one leg to the other.

  “What Theo means is that serious commitment demands experiencing someone else’s pain. I know it’s impossible for me to really know what a black man feels. So what I must do is get in touch with the pain that whites historically have been estranged from. Once his pain is my own, there should be such outrage in me that it would require that I do something to alleviate that condition.

  “As a preliminary step toward feeling the black man’s pain, all whites who wish to work with our group are required to read in one sitting Ralph Ginzburg’s One Hundred Years of Lynching in the presence of Theo or one of the blacks in our group. This should begin to put you in touch with the pain of black people. Reading the details of each atrocity without stopping will be a test of your commitment to The Movement.”

  “I’d like to add,” Theo broke in, “that blacks who are joining us are required to read the book, too. But without a witness. If you can put this book down after beginning it, you’ll have to answer to your own conscience… We’ll meet again next week at the same time and discuss your experiences with pain while reading One Hundred Years of Lynching.”

  I tried to get through the book but couldn’t. Reading about one atrocity was enough for me. Far from becoming a redcap for every documented lynching in America over a hundred-year period, the cumulative effect of thousands of lynchings left me with no desire to carry the legacy any farther than my knowledge of what had happened. And I felt guilty about being unable to keep my outrage up to the level of the horrors recounted in the book.

  At the next meeting, Theo started off by questioning a white chick whose face played peekaboo behind marble cake hair.

  “Were you able to experience pain while reading the book?”

  “Yes, I was,” she said.

  “How did it express itself?”

  “I threw up.”

  “And did you continue reading?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I felt if black people could survive those horrible experiences, I could tolerate a bad taste in my mouth long enough to finish the book.”

  “Are you prepared to do anything else besides throwing up?”

  “I know I can’t undo what’s already been done, but now that I’ve begun to experience black pain I am ready to be the instrument for whatever is required by The Movement.”

  “What about being white? How do you intend to deal with the resentment you’ll have to face because you’re white?”

  “I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to change that. And if I can’t, I’ll just have to accept it.”

  “I see,” Theo said, testing the strength of his patchy beard with a few strong tugs. “Keith, why don’t you question one of the brothers?”

  Keith scanned the room and dropped his two blue dimes on me.

  “Your name’s Melvin, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, what did you experience when you read the book?”

  “How come you don’t question somebody white?” I asked.

  “Because the only way to work out antagonisms between blacks and whites is to confront them. That won’t happen if I talk to whites. By challenging one another we get the disease out in the open. When that happens, we can sort it out and then go about finding a cure.” “And what’s the cure?”

  “The cure is to use these sessions as outlets for fucked-up attitudes so our political action won’t be tainted by contradictions… Now, what did you think about the book?”

  “I couldn’t finish it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It was too much to take all at one time.”

  “Did you feel any outrage?”

  “At first, but then I didn’t feel anything.”

  “Do you think the reason might be that you don’t want to deal with history?”

  “What’s there to deal with? It’s already happened!”

  “But you’ve got to put it in its proper perspective.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Do you know why most people in The Movement don’t wear ties?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Wearing ties is a form of contemporary lynch law. In other words, it’s the rope revisited. They are part of the official uniform of oppression, lynching people to stifling jobs and choking their identity. Having this perspective forces us to commit a kind of suicide by murdering our capacity to cop out.”

  “It also,” Theo interjected, “keeps a vigil over our consciousness by not allowing us to become what we despise.”

  I was impressed. Theo and Keith seemed to have thought it all out, complete with contingency theses to tighten up any snags in their arguments. That night there was a party in the student lounge. I ran into Theo when I got off the subway, and we walked over to the school together.

  “How are these parties?” I asked.

  “They’re probably a little different from the sets you’re used to.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, we call them ‘freedom highs’ because everybody is supposed to slide their fantasies up under somebody else. If the other person digs it, then they both experience it until they’ve had enough. And that’s a freedom high. It’s just a way to get all the bullshit out of our system. If you analyze it, you’ll see it’s not as fucked-up as it sounds. It’s all political.”

  The student lounge was lit with the red tone of a traffic light on simmer. Everyone seemed to be heeding the light as a signal to slow down, because there was very little movement. Don’t Make Me Over by Dionne Warwick was playing as people went through what I assumed were forms of freedom high. A black dude and a white broad took turns tracing with their fingers the contours of their bodies. Two women, one black and the other white, moved their hands in a massaging motion through each other’s hair. A black cat and a white dude faced each other and traded salvos decrying the other’s presence in the human race.

  “Hello.” It was the peekaboo girl behind all the marble cake. For the first time I got a good look at her. Her vanilla skin adhered so closely to bones in her face that skin and cheekbones seemed about ready to change places.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “You wanna get freedom high?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not really sure how to go about it.”

  “Get angry at me.”

  “You haven’t done anything.”

  “All right, I’ll help you… Did you know that when you move you look like you’re a walking chicken with your ass picked clean?”

  I cracked up.

  “You’re not supposed to laugh.”

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it,” I said.

  “Okay, let’s try again. Say, What’s the word?”

  “What’s the word?”

  “Thunderbird! Now say, Who drinks the most?”

  “Who drinks the most?”

  “Colored folks.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” I asked.

  “You mean you never heard that before?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you having a white person talk to you like that?”

  “Not really. It’s only a freedom high, right?” “Not if you don’t act right, it isn’t!”

  “Now you’re getting angry. I thought that’s what I was supposed to do.”

  “The way you act no one would ever believe you were oppressed,” she said, walking away.

  I looked around and noticed Keith talking to a black woman. She wasn’t paying much attention to him but was looking in my direction. A mane of thick black wool rose above her forehead like a second story. I acknowledged her look with a nod. She excused herself from Keith and walked over to me.

  “You’re Melvin, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Geneva. Theo has told me a lot a
bout you. He says you’re a very quiet dude.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “What made you get involved in The Movement?”

  “I don’t know… I guess it had something to do with seeing this dude stick up for a kid in front of the police. They let the kid go but beat the dude up. At the time I wondered whether it was such a good idea for the cat to have gotten involved. But then when those little girls got blown up in that church in Alabama, I realized getting involved didn’t have anything to do with whether it was a good idea or not.”

  I couldn’t believe what I’d said. Something I had never really understood before was clarified for me at the same moment I tried to explain it to someone else. Geneva’s face squinted with curiosity.

  “What do you think of this freedom high?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but Theo has a way of making just about anything make sense.”

  “You’re right about that. Sometimes I wish he wasn’t so good at it.”

  “Have you known him long?” I asked.

  “Long enough to be strung out on him.”

  “You go to City? I’ve never seen you around.”

  “I go to Hunter. I met Theo at a demonstration. We talked. And he made a lot of sense. But lately he hasn’t been making any sense. He wants me to make it with Keith as part of this freedom-high business. He thinks if I do, I’ll get the fantasy of getting a white man out of my system. The idea of sleeping with a white man as an experiment is something I’ve never thought about. But white women are definitely on Theo’s mind. That’s why he concocted these freedom highs—so he could rationalize chasing white women by making it a form of political work.”

  “But don’t you think he’s right about it being better to live out your fantasies than repressing them?”

  “But it’s his fantasy, not mine… Look at him over there with that white woman who was talking to you.” The woman was transfixed as Theo pointed a menacing finger at her as if it were a gun barrel. “Do you know anything about Gandhi?” Geneva asked.

  “Not very much.”

  “Somebody once asked Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization, and he said he thought it would be a good idea. He didn’t say it should be made into anything. Just that it would be a good idea. But Theo seems to think every idea he gets is worth pursuing.”