The body of the black man bobs five times before the
hook pulls it to shore. I watch the almost feverish undulation of the
water as the dead man goes under the smarmy water, then pops back up.
Even though I am a great distance away, leaning over the railing of the
Suwannee River Bridge, I can see where creatures of the water have taken
bites from his flesh. He is naked, I can tell that, too. His butt
explodes from the bubbles that are effervescent sheen and oily water,
and the glimmering of once blood warm flesh is interspersed by deep
gashes; serrated white flashes decorate the pink crevices. Flesh torn
and spit out, back into the world of the polluted living. Metallic
flavors engulf my tongue like thrush. Blue smoke fills the air in front
of my eyes, and the smell of sandalwood crawls up my nostrils. I am
chilled by my own sweat, but I know I must now walk down to the shore
and look at his face, full to the flashing lights of whatever government
agency has made it here first. I know more about this dead man than any
human in attendance of his life or death, even his sweet Mama. Yet I
have never met this man, this public figure once called larger than
life, the black John Locke and even America’s preeminent judge of
rightness. So much for the words of scholars and journalists. Means
nothing to us anymore. This man, this floating mother’s son, I’m
telling you, is accused of being a traitor to his country.
The hot August wind is like a searing blast against my
face, even though it is ten o’clock at night and the moon is full.
Lightning flashes from the horizon like the fires of prescribed
burnings. Thunder pounds the sky and horsemen head toward this place.
The water shimmers and sparkles with the reflection of the Bradbury
moon, altered redder than the harvest moons of New England. Heat rises
out of every pore of my body; every opening seems to release a liquid
heat so that I must shake my arms as I make my way along the path where
his body now lies, still face down. The smell of mushrooms inflates the
air. Searchlights mark my way. They are starry torches of the crazed.
That is good, since I must dodge the refuse of our humanness: shoes and
underwear that wash up from the Suwannee shore, oil cans, old tires,
dead fish, wood punctuated by worms, and steel. I am troubled by the
floating of steel. How did it get here? How does it do that, defy the
laws of physics?
I show my pass to the uniformed man standing over the
body. He nods his head. His stiff brimmed hat hides his eyes, so that I
see only a golden seal that brands his forehead. He does not know who I
am, no one does, not by looking at me anyway. But I will explain that
later. I study the man’s uniform: a dark color, maybe navy blue,
though the light is not bright enough for me to be sure, a gold-like
stripe around the cuffs of the jacket and down the side of the pants,
and on his upper arm a symbol of a badge with the letters FLA. I know
that is the Federal Law Agency, an offshoot of the FBI, actually, a
rival agency formulated by the man now lying on these once revered
shores. How I love ya. I calculate quickly, (that is my greatest gift)
that within fifteen minutes no less than seven agencies will each have
something to say about this death. FLA, FBI, DEA, IP, CIA, SSI and FDLE.
That’s minimum. And don’t think that each will not have a different
“take” on who killed the man. Take. Everyone has a “take” on any
subject you want to bring up. The point in “takes” is that there is
no more Truth, only interpretations. Yeah, murder it is. Believe me,
some will say it is justified. So is it really murder if it’s
justified? We used to believe that murder was, well, a crime, a sin, you
know, wrong. Well, let me set my views on the matter straight right now,
before I give you the whole story from the beginning. This guy really
did bring this whole thing on himself. Once we look at his face and he’s
revealed, you’ll know why.
The tall man in the black suit has finally arrived. I
know it is a black suit because I know this man, too. He is the Medical
Examiner from Washington, D.C. Amazing how he got to Florida so fast. It’s
almost as though the air parts for him as he walks down the embankment
and towards the body. He says nothing. Nothing comes from the mouth that
is no more than a deep slash across his white pasted face. He leans over
the body, then hunches down, wiping his long white hair back on his
head. I see blue veins and yellowed finger nails, all thickened from
fungal disease. The wind blows his hair back over his forehead. The
searchlight strikes his head, and it is as if Medusa has sprung to life.
He reaches into his left pocket and takes out surgical gloves, thrusts
his hands into the latex prophylaxis, then makes the sign of the cross,
sad and dreary. He is not a priest, though he has often purported to be.
It is all in the demeanor, sometimes. I see tears dribble down his
cheeks, like melting snow from a rocky mount; and I am not surprised.
After all, pride does goeth before the fall. And now it is time.
The ME, (I will call him the ME because his name does
not matter to our present dilemma) grasps the body by the shoulder with
one hand, scoots his other hand under the body and applies a sort of
leveled action. The fleshy bulk turns slowly, and I am not sure it is
cooperating, until the body is backed against the muddy earth. Begging
eyes infect the sky. It is Roosevelt Able Stanford, first black (or
should I say Afro-American?) Chief Justice of these United States of
America, lawyer, civil rights leader of the bygone days, scholar,
reported billionaire, and, according to CNN, ABC and whatever similar
news messenger you want to listen to, a traitor. I know that this ME
helped kill him and he will pay. But right this minute, I am here to
tell you that Roosevelt Able Stanford is a savior. Or was a savior. Yes,
we have no reincarnations today. He’d give the world to see the old
folks now.
“Looks like he was shot six times in the chest and
stomach,” says ME, as he sticks his index finger into the gaping, raw
holes. The white finger comes out clean. A bloodless man now.
“Sure does stink,” says the FLA guy.
“That happens being in this shit pool of a river for
more than twenty-four hours,” says ME. “We’ll wrap him up and fly
him back to Washington. You’re not to talk to anyone but your
Commander, do ya hear me,” he says with a down home accent. Down upon
the Suwannee River, far, far away.
ME pushes up into a standing position. A quick breath of
stale air opens his suit jacket. His torso is wrapped by a bulletproof
vest that is like a backward turtle shell. He snaps the gloves off,
makes a ball and flings it into the river. The ball comes undone,
separates into two, flutters down like an eagle descending to feed, and
softly spreads on the water like supplicating hands. Go and be a part of
the pollution. ME looks at me, nods and turns away, heading towards his
helicopter. He doesn’t know who I am, either. There is the assumption
that since I am standing in the area, I am acceptable. I love being
innocuous. Innocuous. The first time I read the meaning of that word,
running home from school and promising myself to learn ten new words a
day, I felt the exhilaration (new word) of being. There I was, just
seven years old, pouring over the Is, beginning on page 561 of Webster’s,
when it came to me; this was my life, this is how I would be somebody:
be innocuous: “not likely to give offense or to arouse strong feelings
or hostility.” I’ve spent my life getting to this point. It is
amazing how much one person can accomplish by living behind the scenes.
Not like being a Chief Justice of these United States of America.
I watch the cobalt blue sky suck the helicopter away and
I suddenly feel abandoned. Then I turn toward the shore and the body
that has been transformed into a fat black bag. It is being lifted into
an ambulance. Doors close and the automobile heads up the embankment and
into the hallowed night. The sounds of horns roll in from the world
beyond, trumpets announcing civilization. I walk to the lapping edge of
the river and put my right foot gently into the water. Wet warmth
permeates my skin. My left foot squishes into the sandy mud and I begin
to slip. When I look down, I see that three scorpions have risen up to
join me.
Good or evil, yen or yang, vice or versa, I mumble to
myself. I will return home, to an apartment that is always cold and only
a dime throw away from the Potomac. The place where I live is wrapped by
the foul and misty breath of the homeless of today and the ghosts of
yesterday, who whistle the tunes of Hooverville. It is a sound of doom.
Good-bye America, how are ya? I am homeless, too, but far from helpless,
since I still can whistle through my teeth.
My name is H.E. DuBois, better known as Dubbie to my
colleagues and friends. To the FBI, CIA, DEA and all the other
supercilious agencies, I am known as just H.E. They do not know that I
am Dubbie. But, as H.E., I am in great demand. I am the world’s expert
in linking the mind’s intentions, whether thoughtful, thoughtless,
subconscious, buried, regressed, split, sublimated, incarnated, or
whatever, to any piece of paper written on, touched, scribbled on, be it
plain paper, notepad, legal pad, steno pad, post-it pad, prescription
pad, the most sophisticated legal document, love letter, hate letter,
whether you talk common law, civil or criminal law, or no law. Write it
down on touched paper and I can read all intentions, down to your
attitude, political leanings, hates, loves, inner longings. You cannot
hide once you write just one syllable, even one cursive or typed letter.
I am a Forensic Document Examiner, par excellence. Words on paper are my
passport to another person’s life.
The social contract is supported by pieces of paper.
Remember that so you can understand the full impact of my story. I had
been called in by the Deep Seven (composed of one member from each of
the government agencies and supposedly cooperating parties) five weeks
to the day after Stanford had risen to the highest lawmaker’s post.
That was four years, to the day, ago. The Deep Seven’s charge was to
investigate any and all real or supposed subversive groups, functioning
within and/or outside the U.S. borders. Let me tell you at the start
that each thought they could use me, manipulate me, make the words mean
what they wanted. They surely did underestimate me, old innocuous.
Dividing and conquering doesn’t take might. Now, RAS (that’s the
secret code for Stanford and very original) I will tell you now, was
never a traitor. I repeat: He was to be our savior. Now he’s dead.
But, why do you think the Deep Seven really called on
me? What were their motivations? The fact of that multiple solicitation
puzzled me, at least for a while. Then bodies started to bob up in all
the waterways, and lakes, and tributaries, man-made and natural, within
the confines of the legal parameters of Washington, D.C. By April of
2021, as I was two months into my work with the Deep Seven, and having
gleaned much from the documents given me, eight bodies floated through
our capital. Every last Friday for eight months a body floated and
bobbed its way along the capital estuaries. At first, and according to
the authorities, there was no rhyme or reason. One each month. Remember,
I am a calculator. But I am much more. I know from the paper, the touch.
So I managed to insinuate myself into the previous lives of the dead. I
got hold of pieces of paper they had written on, pretending to be a bill
collector, insurance auditor, or even a medical claims adjuster. Funny
how those words instill fear in us. I want your money! All of the dead
floating bodies had one thing in common. They were in some way related,
by blood, to each of the justices that sat on the Supreme Court, except
RAS. Uncle, distant cousin, sometimes three times removed. One of the
now dead bodies had recently arrived from Sicily and was a member of the
CosaNostra. We don’t hear much about that organization now, but
believe me, I’ve touched many of them. I know them. Why weren’t the
justices themselves murdered? Blackmail? A warning? Yes, a warning.
Because dead bodies are ugly things, especially the way these people
were killed. Three were children. There is no mercy. And a warning of
what, you might ask? I suspected, but was not sure. Five months went by
with nothing happening. No more floating bodies. It was five months of
torment. It was to begin again, but I was not ready to stop it. I
certainly couldn’t tell the Deep Seven and then expose myself.
Besides, not one of the Deep Seven seemed a truly trustworthy human
being; all men, all buzz cut hair, all white, all muscle-bound. I have
to tell you here, I saw them, but they never saw me. It wasn’t
necessary since I only work with paper, and I exchange my reports
through secret computer files. Never paper files. Never. Then the eight
Justices were murdered. Floating down the river. There was one more to
go, nine old people, and RAS was last. But I didn’t expect him to die
so soon.
Walter Lippman once said that it is the job of the
journalist to give a “picture of reality on which the citizen can act.”
Who said the picture has to be true. We’ve heard it all before. It is
propaganda, although, in all deference to old Walter, I don’t think
that’s what he meant. But we ought to be more careful when we make
pronouncements. They can be taken to mean many, many other things. By
December, things had gotten out of hand. Who could you believe anymore?
Roosevelt Able Stanford, I was convinced, knew what was happening, was
interred in the only branch of government that could restore, well,
sanity. No other black robed citizen took a seat where the dead had
butted heads. So the bees hummed and the banjos strummed. Our country
was divided, pragmatism reigned, there were no Truths, and we were now
on the verge of revolution and only RAS was perched on high. But, can I
start from the beginning of who I am? That’s the only way that you can
help me restore balance.
In the spring of 2008, I was fired, okay down sized,
from a position I had held for almost twenty years. “Just pack up the
things in your desk and leave. It’s much better if we do it quiet like”
said Stephen Smythe. I was second to the top editor for Fields
Publishing. We represented and published the works of the best selling
authors, both fiction and nonfiction. Anyway, there I was, cut adrift.
One morning about two a.m., as I stared at the darkness
that was my bedroom ceiling, contemplating my fate, counting the
memorized water-stained squares, it came to me. Start your own business.
I wasn’t a writer of great, good or mediocre literature. It just took
too long to get a point across that way. Sometimes five hundred pages go
by and you make one point. So I sent out fliers and business cards, and
advertised in the local newspapers: Have you ever wanted to write a
letter to someone … the letter that puts down in written words all the
stuff you wanted to say to that person? Like: hey you, you hurt me when
you.... or I love you because… I’ve always wanted you to know. …
Let me do it for you IN JUST THE RIGHT WORDS, TO GET JUST THE RIGHT
EFFECT. And, yes, I refused to dabble in insults or threats that could
result in violence.
Well, if anyone ever proved that Americans have a lot to
say to each other but couldn’t because they are functional
illiterates, I did. The calls were ceaseless, endless. I had more work
than I could manage. And a funny thing happened. Well, it was scary at
first. When my customers told me what they wanted to say, and I started
writing, it was like I was them, their lives flashed into me. I knew
everything about them, their desires, angers, hates, fears. I became
them. My business grew, I wrote a book that sold over five million
copies, and I was invited on the talk show circuit by the stooges, O’Reilly,
Oprah, and Larry. I didn’t go, because anonymity was necessary for my
success and safety. Remember innocuous? I wasn’t even on the dust
jacket. It was great! For a while. But could I sleep at night knowing so
much? I was going crazy. Every time I touched a piece of paper with
words on it, I saw the person who wrote it. I flashed into them. I
couldn’t stand it anymore. So I decided to vanish, retreat to the
mountains before I went insane, totally ballistic, postal, ended up sing
singing.
No doubt my special gift was triggered when I started
presuming to think for someone else. To write the words they should
have. I was manipulating other people’s lives. Despot! I called
myself, laughing. Where did this come from, originally I mean?
I was born in South Florida, on the border of the white
world and the Big Cypress Reservation, the only child of a one hundred
percent Seminole Indian mother who was raped and impregnated by a white
man, whose goo became me. My mother told me the whole story when I was
five, that instead of the Musicians of Bremen that I was longing for.
“ Rest your head, little eagle,” she had said, “because your Ma
has to tell you something about why you are special.” I know you will
say it’s wrong to describe rape to a young child in vivid living
color. Especially of a mother by a mother who always wore vermilion
instead of red, whose form seemed clothed in the sun when she worked in
her garden. A mother worshipped by the child who knew no other. But,
there was a point to it. And the point had slipped away until I had
started writing those letters. Even when Ma died, I didn’t remember. I
should have. She died defending her property rights on the shores of the
Okeechobee. Her heart gave out dead in the path of the bulldozers sent
by the twenty-four judges, circuit, regional, county, state and supreme.
It was an old trailer, pushed up against the dried scrub, alligators
waiting for a childhood snack. She had dared to stay off the
Reservation. She, descended from Osceola, lines drawn straight to Chief
Billy Bowlegs. I remember the burning trailer, Ma screaming at me to “remember
your gift. Born in violence to know violence.” She had yelled it in
the language of her ancestors, Calusa, way back when. A rejuvenated
tongue like hands on tree bark.
Do you think I went into this whole Deep Seven thing to
exchange rage for revenge? Go play psychologist somewhere else. That
couldn’t be further from the truth. I love my country. It belongs to
me.
When I wrote the first love letter for my new business,
I suddenly remembered talking to animals, leaning out of our trailer
window, nurturing quails at the edge of the scrub, never fearing the
moccasin, and gathering crop eating grasshoppers without cages. Whoot
and peep were part of my young souls vocabulary. I had the intuition,
the knowing.
So, my business took off, I could read the souls of the
loved, beloved, the vulnerable and the hated. And desires put in words
by me on tangible paper became reality. This was the point at which I
began my experiments. I wrote a letter to Elliot Asimov Channels, the
richest man in America. He had gluttoned the American economy, made pigs
of us, and stole one good name. This is what I wrote: (I knew his
bodyguards or secretaries would get the letter first, so I included them
all): Dear Mr. Channels, bodyguards, secretaries and other hired
underlings: Give the money back.
Within three months, Channels had disbursed (I love that
word) most of his cash, stocks, mutual funds, and credit holds over
valued companies. I was convinced. I had the power of the word. Just one
more example, lest you doubt my abilities and thus miss the full impact
of my story. I wrote the following to all owners of the major
professional football teams. Item: please have your players recite one
recently passed law during half time. The nation was captivated. If a
football player cared enough about his country to know the laws, then
the people were going to imitate that interest. Trading cards, even for
baseball, “replayed” a law, rather than player statistics. The
American people became enamored, and even began to debate the pros and
cons of the laws recorded on the cards. Collectors items. Talk about a
free society! That is what I did in my vanishing period.
It was fun until two things happened. Roosevelt Able
Stanford became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the Deep Seven
activated their underground move against the reading Americans. History
tells us that governments, democratic or not, really fear the masses.
When they are educated, watch out! I guess you could say I had created a
historical event. A dialectic, so to speak. Fear no chains. A sports fan
understanding the Omnibus Spending Bill, well, that is frightening,
awesome. Riots broke out, because now debates that usually took place in
Congress, or even at town meetings, spilled over into the public arena.
It was Greece and Rome all over again. Gadflies all over the place. So
who was going to stop it? Overt or covert law? Ha, there’s the rub. I
sided with Stanford. Go overt yourself.
I could feel the Deep Seven when I held a newspaper that
printed the words CIA, FLA, FBI or any insane use of the alphabet. Their
seal was on the message. So, I decided that I was born to use my powers
for good. I am the fiddle player in the town of Breman, still longing
for the old plantation with trailers all in a row. I wrote to the Deep
Seven’s overt organizations (they open all their mail) and simply
willed them by words to contact me: use me. They did and thus I was
hired as part of their underground organization. I was the subverter of
the subverters. But I didn’t bank on Stanford being murdered so
quickly, before my work was done.
Dear FBI (etc.), I wrote the following morning, October
12. It has come to my attention that you are not utilizing my skills to
your fullest advantage. Here is what I can tell you about the death of
RAS. You are the perpetrators, all of you, and I will name you to the
world. On Monday November one, 2024, the day before elections, please
read the newspapers of every major city in the United States. Do not try
to use the Internet. It is touchless. That, I was sure, would scare the
bejeebies out of them. (or is that really bejesus?) What would they do
between October 12 and November 1? I was counting on their reaction.
Really, I dictated it. They are so predictable.
Deep Seven started an all out war with each other. They
overted. I had them just where I wanted them. By October 15, twenty-four
agents had mysteriously died, their bodies thrown into the Potomac. Why
not the Suwannee? Because the river running through our libertine town
was a much more effective signal. It was all a simple run around the
bases, a joke about whose on first. Everyday from October 15 to November
1, I advertised my intention to Deep Seven. Section D, Sports, page 10,
in the New York Times, for example, a five by seven ad that read: go get
‘em boys.
It was all too easy being a despot. I promised I would
always be benevolent. None of this “benign neglect” stuff. I would
opt for progress, depend on the enlightened few.
Deep Seven continued to call on me. Touch the ad; tell
us whose doing this. We’re killing each other. No shit, Popeye. What
could I tell them? Should I lie? Absolutely not, I’m all against
lying. I’m for truth with a capital T. I have traced the documents to
an internal mole. He is among you. I make out the letters D, H, U in the
name at this point. That message sent seven times and sealed by my hand,
signaled the end. By the end of October, the Deep Seven no longer
existed, at least for their original purposes. Whoever was left in the
cabals were left to sadly roam the world.
I knew that the election of 2012, presidential and
others, was to be great theater. The usual two parties presented
candidates, with six other recently formed parties offering sacrificial
mimes. Socialists, Marxists, progressives, knight riders, secessionists,
and even a deconstructionist party. Political advertising is expensive.
The media has one message. The pamphlets of days gone by had touchable
words. What are you reading? Words. My old publishing house had gotten
wind (through me) of H.E., and I very easily convinced them that the H.E.
and the me of the five million plus books sales were one and the same.
So, they graciously published my pamphlet (anything for a buck), and
called it a chapbook for literary marketing purposes. The publisher sunk
huge amounts of money in advertising and promotion. By November first,
sales were up to ten million, an all time record for a sixty-page chap
entitled: Internal Revelations. It was purchased mostly by the voting
public for the price of a burger all- the-way. $5.99. Sales went up to
eight million, my contract gave up ten percent, and my rights were to
last for four years. Anyway, what the hell, I could change the contract
by written suggestion. Well, I was rich, rich, rich.
Internal Revelations hit the public on the simplest
level possible. It talked constitution, rights, property, liberty,
tolerance, and really said very little that shouldn’t have been known
already. I paraphrased the great works on popular sovereignty all the
way from Plato to Jesus to Locke, Montesquieu and Thomas Jefferson and
finally ended with RAS’s seminal work, Against the Tide, which rivaled
only the legal briefs of the still respected Justice Brennan.
I suppose it sounded original and unique to the voting
public. Americans had journeyed so far afield. Dismal education. Now,
the true body politic learned from baseball trading cards and
professional football players. I had brought back the civics lesson, in
substance if not form, for form always begs for the morality play. My
publisher soon notified me that we had gone into second printing.
On November 2, a new president and a host of other
representative personages were elected. All eight parties got people in,
with the majority going to the grand old two, but they certainly were
learning a lesson. Chapbooks may be the best hope for civilization.
So, here I stand, listening to the swish of the water in
the Suwanee River, planning the future of my country and watching ME fly
up into the clear night sky. It is a bright and starry night. I can make
stories come true.
Copyright 2008 by
Lyn LeJeune
Lyn LeJeune is the author of The
Beatitudes, Book I in The New Orleans
Trilogy, and spearheads The Beatitudes Network-Rebuilding The Public
Libraries of New Orleans at www.beatitudesinneworleans
.blogspot.com. Her
short stories have been published in literary journals such as Big
Muddy: A
Journal of The Mississippi River Valley (East Missouri University), The
Bishop's House Review (Duke), The Dead Mule School of Southern
Literature,
Nantahala, Milestone, Out Stories, and Identity Theory. She is
recipient of
the Paris Writers' Institute Scholarship for study in Paris, France.
