by H. M. Mann
I take a few steps toward it, and it turns its marble-sized head my way and stops whining. Maybe it’s going to jump, too. I wish I had wings. But can the bird fly? Its wings have to be soaked. How does a little bird wring itself out in the rain?
I look down. The front of the barge sweeps slowly underneath me like a huge black and red tongue, drawing me closer to the edge. I find myself leaning forward in spite of my fear, and in the corner of my eye, I see the bird looking down, too.
Four huge rectangular coal cars covered with red tarps float past. Is it time to fly? I pull myself up onto the railing, steadying myself with a hand on a metal support that goes all the way to the top of the bridge. I see the bird still sitting there.
“You first,” I tell it, and I stamp my foot.
It drops more than flies directly down into the darkness.
Maybe its wings dry themselves in flight.
I take a deep breath. “This is for Mary,” I whisper, “this is for my child, this is for Mama.” I stick my face up into the sheets of rain. “And God, if You’re there, whether I’m going south to hell or just going south, please …”
I haven’t been inside a church more than five times in the last ten years. Why would God listen to me? I want to ask God to watch over Mary … and my son. I don’t know why I think it’ll be a boy, I just have a feeling that it will because he’ll be born around Christmas to a saint named Mary—
The second row of coal cars has almost cleared the bridge.
I let go of the support and almost tumble back to the sidewalk, get my balance, and step off into the abyss, sighing “don’t want to hurt no more,” the wind and the darkness sucking me down, down, down …
Part II: On the Water
3: Somewhere on the Ohio River
“Honey, now you get some sleep. Mama’s gonna be back before you know it and make you breakfast. I’ll bring you some Captain Crunch, and I’ll even bring you some fresh doughnuts, okay? Don’t open the door for anyone, you hear? Sweet dreams …”
The little boy runs into the kitchen with sleepy eyes the next morning looking for the red box of cereal and the doughnuts, and when he doesn’t find any, he tiptoes to the door of his mama’s room. He listens and hears no sounds. He crawls back into bed …
He wakes and still no Captain Crunch. He listens at his mama’s door again. Still no sounds. He’s not supposed to open her door, but he does and sees—
“And Kazula was a fierce warrior taken from his people, and he was chained to a bunk in the bottom of the boat for many days while others around him called out for death to take them. When he arrived in Mobile Bay, the white men took him to a swamp where he lived off the land for many days before working at a plantation. When the Civil War ended, he and his tribe found each other again at Africatown …”
“No, Manny, please, I can’t, I want to stay pure. You know I love you, but we can’t do it until we’re married … I know Mama’s not here, but that’s no reason to … Will you marry me if I get pregnant? I feel safe with you, Manny Mann …”
Rosary beads skitter on the cold granite floor, and he grabs at them, each time coming up with rats, the circles around him glowing. He looks up and sees St. Benedict the Moor, his arms no longer spread, his arms folded in front of him, his voice clucking at him as another rosary bead skitters into the Circle of Honor and turns into a syringe which floats into the air and comes down on a man’s back, the man on all fours, a man with glassy eyes, the man saying, “Least I’m good for something now, huh, Manny?”
Cooking in the Ellis, using a Coke bottle cap … “It’s the real thing, huh?” Flake says, handing him a tube … his own blood squirting on the walls covered with dangling crucifixes over ancient toilets and tubs—
“Maybe I’m dead and this is hell,” he hears a voice saying. “Maybe I’m dead and this is hell, I’m dead and this is hell, maybe this is hell and I’m dead …”
I open my eyes and see nothing but darkness, and the darkness is hard and slimy.
And red.
I’m lying on a tarp, and underneath is coal, and my blanket is a hard, cold rain on my back.
I’m not dead yet, I’m not dead …
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Crawford Grill in Pittsburgh’s ‘Little Harlem’! We will be really swinging tonight! George Benson’s on the guitar, and he’ll be breezing through so many riffs we’re gonna lose count. We also have Earl Hines on the piano, so you know those ivories will be laughing out loud because he’s gonna tickle them hard tonight. Say hello to Art Blakely on drums and Stanley Turrentine on sax. While Art makes you feel the noise, Stanley will make his saxophone talk to you like a long-lost friend you haven’t seen in years.”
Sarah Vaughn and Cab Calloway step up to the mike and are belting out a scat-soul version of “How High the Moon” when who should walk in but Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, and Cool Papa Bell, all of them talking about getting haircuts from Woogie Harris at the Crystal Barber Shop. And there’s Mary serving up some wings for August Wilson. “Still hearing those voices, Mr. Wilson?” she asks him, and he nods. Then he writes everything down on a little notepad before leaving two nickels and two pennies for Mary’s tip, and Mary’s comes to my table and says, “I don’t need you anymore, Manny Mann, here’s your meal,” and I look at my plate and see a bundle of “Death Wish” and a bloody syringe in my ice water—
It’s cold.
I turn my head only slightly and feel pain all the way down to my toes. It’s getting lighter out, but that rain just won’t quit. If I don’t get out of the rain, I’m going to die. The back of my head aches most, and I feel two knots on my calves and a huge bump on my hip. I’m almost afraid to roll over, and when I try, I can’t move my arm because of a bloody gash on my elbow that’s stuck to the tarp. If I can just figure out where I am on this thing—
I wrench my elbow off the tarp, and it starts bleeding again. That wakes me up. I roll over my good hip and sit, staring through the fog … at nothing.
I push up on my shaky arms and see more coal containers but no tugboat pushing us the fog is so thick. It’s like a sea of red tarps floating on air. How did I land backwards? I hear water rushing behind me, so I turn carefully to see waves and spray not ten feet from my head. How did I land in the first row? I must have jumped out pretty far. I also find that I’m almost dead center in the rectangle, the hump of coal sliding to my right and left. Maybe I can slide to the edge and roll under the tarp.
I end up rolling to the edge and sliding my body headfirst between the tarp and the cold metal side of the container only to realize that I’m not going to fit because of the mound of coal underneath. I push off that dry, gritty coal with my hands and pop back into the light.
Maybe if I go feet-first I can kick away some of the—
Hey, where’s my left boot? I had a pair of Wolverine work boots when I jumped. I must have jumped right out of it. So I peel back the tarp, stick my right foot down, and start kicking and digging in the coal.
I barely make a dent, and the exertion makes me feel dizzy. Maybe I have a concussion.
I look at the container to my left and see its tarp flapping in the wind at one corner. I wish I was over there, but I am not about to do a tightrope act from one coal container to another. Maybe I can squeeze enough of me under the tarp to sit.
Or I can just sit here looking bruised and stupid.
Oh yeah. Bruised and stupid and alive.
After practically tearing the tarp from the side, I ease underneath until I’m wedged with my feet going up the pile of coal and my back against the side. Most of my head still sticks out into the rain, but maybe that’s good. The cold rain feels good on the bump on the back of my head. I’m glad it’s foggy so no one can see me. I feel like one of those prairie dogs, I feel like a periscope on a submarine, I feel like …
“…thirty-seven is old around here …”
“I’m closing accounts.”
“I’ll pray for you.”
The little boy sees his mama lying on the floor in her bedroom. He tries to wake her, but she’s stiff. “Mama, Mama,” he says, “where’s the Captain Crunch, Mama?” Both her eyes are open, and her skin is cold, and she won’t squeeze his hand, and he runs back to his bed to hide under the covers, only one eye visible in case a monster comes out of his mama’s room to freeze him like her forever.
He spends the whole day like that, and he has to pee, and he’s hungry, and he’s scared, and he can’t leave his bed because the monster will get him for sure, and he can’t make a sound or his mama will be mad, and when he can’t hold it any longer he wets his bed and cries because Mama’s gonna be so mad—
I wake and hear my kidneys screaming, my bladder screaming, just about everything below my neck screaming in pain. All that whiskey and beer last night. I fumble for my zipper and pull it down, but I’m too late.
“Geez!” I shout, not because I peed myself but because the pee is shooting up my pants legs then trickling back down to my underwear.
I turn my head and still see fog. How long have we been traveling? How fast is this thing going? I wonder if I’ve crossed the Mason-Dixon Line yet. Every so often a breeze parts some of the fog and I see the shore. There’s not much to see except trees hanging over the edge. I wonder who planted them there. It doesn’t seem to be the right thing to do, planting trees so close to the edge of a river. What if there was a flood and they all got washed away …
“Emmanuel Malik? Where are you, Emmanuel?”
The little boy doesn’t answer. His bed is full of pee and tears. They will be so mad at him. But now that it is dark, maybe they won’t see.
“There he is, thank the Lord Jesus!” he hears Auntie June shout.
Rough white hands slide under him and take the bottom sheet, the top sheet, and the blanket from his bed. “You’re okay now, little man,” the white man says.
“Give him to me,” Auntie June cries, and he sees Auntie June’s face through the little hole in the blanket. “Oh, Emmanuel, Emmanuel, Emmanuel, my poor little boy!”
“I peed the bed, Auntie June. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, you poor little boy!”
“Where’s Mama?”
“She’s … Oh Lord, help me, Jesus …”
This time when I wake, I’m staring into a copper sunset, angry black clouds scooting all around it, gashes of light stinging my eyes. While steam rises from all the containers of coal, islands float by, houses on hills better clothed than I am stare down with thousands of glinting eyes, iron bridges fly by as do sandbars anchored by trees and enough driftwood to build a town or two. Low clouds hug the hills while I hold my shivering self, and if I’m past the Mason-Dixon Line, my right hand is the land of freedom, and my left hand is the land of slavery.
I’m in between again, a drifter on a river that never stops.
I feel stiff, hungry, and thirsty. I keep waiting for the withdrawal to start, and I’ve heard that everything lets loose, but so far, I’m not hurting too bad, not hurting too bad at all. Now if I could just—
“Hey you!”
I turn my head to the right and left and see no one. Maybe he’s not talking to me.
“Hey!” he yells again.
I push with my legs, pop further through the tarp, and look behind me at a black man the size of several mountains, his head blocking the sunset entirely.
“Hey,” I say feebly, my mouth full of parched cotton.
“How’d you get there?” he shouts.
“I jumped,” I say, and now my throat feels like it has gravel in it.
“Wait right there,” he says, like I can go anywhere, and in a few seconds, he’s towering over me. The man is darker than the coal at my feet with the widest face and flattest nose I’ve ever seen. “I asked you how you got there.”
“I jumped,” I say, almost in a whisper, and my head starts to spin. Is this the beginning of withdrawal?
“You jumped?”
I nod, and even that hurts. “Just trying to get right.”
“Get what?”
I try to swallow, but it hurts too much. “Get right.” I peel back my right sleeve, and though it’s getting even darker, he has to be able to see my scars.
“Oh,” he says. “That kind of getting right. When’d you get on?”
“Last night.” I think.
“Where you from?”
“The Hill.”
“Where?”
Nowhere. “Pittsburgh.”
He smiles. “No kidding. You jumped on in Pittsburgh.”
I nod. “I could use some water.”
He laughs. “Boy, you’re lucky to be alive. Pittsburgh was two days ago.” He looks out over the water. “And now you gotta go.”
“What?”
“You gotta get off now.”
I struggle to get out of my hole, but I can’t move. Maybe the coal shifted and surrounded my body. “I’m stuck.”
“Look, you don’t get off, you’re gonna be left here in Weirton.”
“Weirton?”
“Weirton, West Virginia.”
I want to ask where Weirton is, but I can’t afford to waste words with no spit in my mouth.
“We’re dropping most of this coal off and picking up another load, so you got to get off.”
“I can’t.”
He reaches down a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt and yanks me right through the tarp to the edge of the container. “Can you stand?”
“No.”
“Just as well,” he says, and he slings me over his shoulder, bounding to the next container, and the next, and the next until I feel like a sack of potatoes, my forehead bouncing off his massive back. “You been riding a horse?” he asks, and at first I don’t get it. “The horse with no name?”
“Yeah.”
“Had a cousin go through that. How long since your last, um …”
“Had one a few hours before I jumped.”
“Man, you’re already going through it, and there ain’t much I can do for you. Memco barges are drug-free.”
“So am I.”
He laughs. “That ain’t exactly true.”
He stops and turns side to side, giving me a view that I’ll never forget. All but a few coal containers remain behind us. Where did they go so fast? That’s when I realize that we aren’t moving anymore and are docked next to this huge metal machine.
The next thing I remember is him saying “… got to jump into the water.”
“Huh?” I must have blacked out again.
“You got to jump,” he says directly to my face, “into the water.”
“I can’t swim.”
“You can’t swim?”
“No.”
“Then what can you do?”
I take a long breath. “I can mess things up.”
He laughs a long time at that one. “Okay, okay. I’m gonna drop you in the water.”
“No!” I shout, but it still comes out in the hoarsest little whisper.
“I’ll save you, man. Just try to keep your head up and don’t get smashed between the cars.”
“But—”
Moments later, I’m falling into the river, the top layer warm, but the water around my legs bone chilling. I’m trying to stand, trying to hold on to anything I can, but I can’t grasp anything but bubbling water. After bobbing for a second or two, I start to sink and think I’m through. Some crazy man just threw me into the Ohio for no good reason, and I’m gonna drown when I’m at least a full day into the cure.
The next thing I know, I’m flying up out of the depths into the air, and though it smells like diesel and oil, dirt and sludge, the air tastes delicious.
I smile and almost pass out as the man slings me over his back and drapes my arms around his neck. “Hold on,” he says, “and act hurt.”
That won’t be a problem.
“But not too hurt, understand?” he whispers.
“Is he okay?” a voice high above us shouts.
“Yes,
Cap’n,” my savior replies.
“What happened, Slade?”
We’ve reached a ladder going up into a tugboat. “Think we hit his canoe. I found him squeezed between four and five. He’s pretty banged up.”
“I’ll call for an ambulance.”
Oh no! If they put me in hospital, I’ll have to tell them who I am. After that, they’ll send me back to Pittsburgh for breaking probation. Back to hell.
We stand in front of the captain, a white man about my height with gray sideburns and an old-fashioned handlebar moustache, every stitch of his tan clothing ironed and creased.
“Well, Cap’n, he, um, he’s lost everything. No ID, no wallet.” He flops one of my legs forward. “He even lost a boot. I don’t think there’s anything seriously wrong with him that a few days of bed rest wouldn’t cure, and you know the police would investigate, maybe put us further behind schedule, so …”
“You’re right, Slade. Put him in thirteen.”
“Yes sir, Cap’n, sir.”
He carries me past the captain up a narrow set of stairs. “You are now the guest of the towboat Boonesboro.”
“The what?”
“The towboat Boonesboro.”
“It’s not a tugboat?”
“No. Tugboats pull, towboats push.”
“Oh.” Which makes no sense at all. “I have to let you know something.”
“What?”
“I’m breaking probation.”
“I figured as much.” He stops at a door, the number thirteen staring at me.
What a lucky place to go through withdrawal.
“But you won’t be thanking me in a little while,” Slade says. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Emmanuel Mann.”
“Emmanuel, huh?”
“Yeah. Most folks call me Manny.”
“Manny Mann, they call me Slade, just Slade.” He opens the door and carries me inside, setting me on a bunk barely longer than my body. “Can I get you something?”
