Deceleration, the Thames police craft slowing into their own wash as they manoeuvred alongside the garbage cage. There was the normal detritus washed in on the tidal bend, the condoms, bottles and ballooning rat corpses, the burger wraps and hypodermics, the sodden trash thrown out by human trash, tipped and dumped carelessly or deliberately to be carried away and cleared by others. One of the cleanest sewers in Europe, wiping away filth, evidence, throwing up surprises. Collection time. An officer leant over with a boat-hook, found purchase on the wallowing object; a colleague, wearing rubber gauntlets and a surgical mask, knelt to assist. They were fishers of men. The body rolled. It was a male – female cadavers always floated on their backs – but the lack of a head would hinder identification. They slipped the cradle-harness around the torso and worked to edge it onboard and into its bag. On the second boat, divers rocked themselves over the sides to begin their fingertip search. It was later, on a pathology slab, that the clues would be tabulated, theories formulated. It was later that the victim would be ascertained as black, in his mid-forties, that the use of torture before death was determined, and the acid-enhanced blade scars to his chest distinguished as a paean of praise to one Professor Duncan Pitt.
* * *
The USA
Not a breath of wind, just the unstirred gumbo stillness of a northwest Mississippi night. The Delta – mojo and moonshine, God and gin tins, catfish, cotton and corruption – the smoky darkness pressing down on the scrub fields and cedar swamps, the levees and shotgun shacks. This was poverty, southern discomfort; this was the blues. Mary turned down the kerosene lamp and hummed quietly to herself. She had a good voice, engrained with suffering and past liquor abuse; she sang each weekend in juke joints or a wayside casino in Tunica County, had been known to stand on a stage and transfix an audience at the Crossroads Festival, had been known to the police, had been known to a lot of men.
Behind the curtain screen her baby boy Jesus slept sound. She would die for him, kill for him. He was all she had; the corrugated one-room cabin with its newspaper insulation, its lack of plumbing or electricity, was all she could give him. So she hummed, the refrain that had carried her family in chains from the Gold Coast to the plantations of the South, that had seen her ancestors pick cotton, escape, act as ‘conductors’ on the underground railroad for other fleeing blacks, that had seen them fight for the Union cause, evolve into sharecroppers and a new generation to be exploited. Civil War to Civil Rights, and she had yet to spot the change. She came from lineage who had either served time in Parchman Penitentiary or the US Armed Forces, who expected to be shot, whipped or lynched, who were dirt poor – ate dirt, earned dirt, handled dirt, were kept in dirt. Emancipation Proclamation, 27th September 1862. She was the end product. Full cycle, full circle. The feudal overlords still lived in their smart town houses, drifted among their cotillions and all-white country clubs, dined at their expensive Cleveland restaurants; each October the cotton crop was still harvested, the stripped stalks standing blood-red for mile upon mile. Soil bled here. Antebellum, post-bellum, it made little difference. Slavery came in many guises, prison took many forms.
She peeked behind the curtain to check. The boy’s breathing was steady. He had been fretful these past few weeks, must have picked the tension up from her. She had tried to smother her anxiety, but the shock at finding an arsenal of automatic weapons and grenades hidden in oil drums near a creek used as a trash tip and dumping ground for rusting farm equipment weighed heavy. It would serve her right for scavenging. She had not told a soul, would not dream of approaching the law. These parts, it was best to let things alone, let things, explosives, people, lie. Basic safety procedure, survival reflex. She had tiptoed away, prayed she went unnoticed, then prayed again for herself and her baby Jesus. The Lord would protect them; the red flannel mojo bag tacked to the wall, with its contents of High John the Conqueror root, would protect them.
Time for bed. It was the optimum way to save on fuel. She undressed, splashed her face from the water bucket, lay down on the horsehair mattress rolled out on the floor and extinguished the light. Her own little space, her own little world, and people and fire ants were not welcome. She yawned, thoughts trailing off into darkened cul-de-sacs, consciousness slowing, stress uncoupling. Dog tired. Sleep came quickly.
Strange, she thought she had dealt with the lamp. But its brightness seared her retinas, illumination chiselling through into her slumber. Wakened state came in stages, confused and intermittent, one dream substituting for another. She rubbed her eyes, senses stupefied, fear rushing in with focus. Devils, must be. The apparitions stood above her, three hooded figures, messengers who came by night, were of the night. She clutched the thin blanket about her. Please don’t touch Jesus, please don’t harm him, please … she begged silently. They gazed on her without speaking. The central demon leant forward to take a closer look, his flame-red robes picked out with the symbols of the zodiac, his head a funfair grotesque with devil horns and a tapering conical hat, pompom nose, goatee beard and snaggle-teeth. It was a mask that smiled fixedly at her terror, an image ripped from a comic book, a history book. They had returned.
‘Lookee here,’ it whispered. ‘Mercy. If it ain’t proud Mary. Why’ya call your son Jesus? Is it cos only God knows who his papa is?’
She tugged the blanket higher.
‘You’ve been careless, Miss Jim Crow. Prints all over things that don’ concern you, prints that check out ’gainst records held at the sheriff, see?’ It whisper-tutted close to her face, the trailing horns exaggerating the admonishing shake of its head.
‘So what are we to do …’
‘… with you?’ the second and third figures chimed.
The leader straightened and scratched musingly with a finger at the base of his occult hat. ‘You nigger contrabands are always gonna be a problem, what with your Thirteenth Amendment, your rights, your freedoms, your vote registration, your nosin’ ’bout.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Mary whimpered.
‘Oh you do … an’ you will.’ The man cocked his head, scrutinizing her. He felt no pity for this race, could stamp them out like roaches. Hate was the primal source, the motivator, the catalyst, and hate he had carried from the day he entered Menard State Penitentiary, Illinois, from the moment he was beaten, stripped and gang-raped by the blacks on his gallery, from the moment HIV was diagnosed. Soul and asshole sodomized, all for the sake of subjugation, discipline, sex slavery, all for the sake of keeping the primate cages in the prison system happy. And now it was he who wore the happy face, the folksy, jokesy wizard guise.
‘Understand this?’ One of the flanking assistants dressed in black pulled up the short sleeve of his T-shirt. Inked on a shoulder was the outline of two peaks side-by-side, their slit-eyes recreating those on the man’s dark hood. An unmistakable profile: the Klan.
‘I … I think so.’
‘Uh-huh. And this?’ The other shoulder flash portrayed a similar silhouette, its motif a curving double-A. Viewing was brief, the sleeve tugged down. ‘Worn with pride, along with my flamin’ sword tattoo and the spider’s web on my back. Figured it out yet?’
She mumbled something, incoherent with terror.
‘I’ve killed myself a nigger, we all have. We’re gonna kill again.’
‘You’d like a chance, wouldn’t you?’ The leader folded his arms. ‘For yourself, for Jesus there?’ She nodded, eyes wide. ‘Sure you wanna live?’ More frantic nodding. ‘Then you leave, and you don’t come back.’
‘And you don’t talk,’ said the executioner to his right.
To his left. ‘You never saw no guns, no ammunition, you never saw nothin,’ you never saw us.’
‘Never,,’ she repeated trance-like, her eyes swivelling.
‘That’s right. Otherwise, the Citizens Council will send us ridin’ out to track you down one last time.’
She shivered. Citizens Council. It was a name that clawed at her bowels, clutched at her from the past – the 1950s – when an uncle had been strung from a tree for encouraging fellow-blacks to vote, when churches and halls were firebombed, when Mississippi burned. Her throat was dry, her skin damp and chilled. The horsemen had galloped back into the present, carried their sacred fiery cross, their rope nooses.
The chief placed his foot on her belly. ‘One week. Then Herod orders the killin’ of the first-born. Catch me?’ She did. ‘Two weeks, and you’re bein’ fed in bite-size pieces to friendly ’gators.’ She let out a sob. ‘Inconvenience us, defy us, it’ll be slow – for you both, for keeps. I promise.’
She believed him utterly, wanted to run screaming down the track, to run a thousand miles without stopping. It translated into breathing so tight she was gasping at the margins of a faint.
‘Ah didn’ mean no harm, missa.’ There was beseeching misery in her voice.
‘That’s where we differ.’
‘Why? I’m just a singer, I’m poor …’
‘You make a mighty fine hushpuppy.’ Quiet laughter, mocking.
‘I try and mind my business.’
‘Not hard enough. You’ve heard our offer. Sleep on it. Life or death, Mary. Your choice.’
‘Where do I go?’
‘What do you do? Your choice.’
‘What we’re sayin’ is run out of state, before the state runs out of you.’ Hard eyes behind the black sack hood.
The sorcerer took a pace backwards. ‘When you see what happens in Mississippi, when you see what happens ’cross God’s chosen country, America – stare at the flames, and remember tonight, Mary. Remember your meetin’ with the Forresters. Tidin’s of great fuckin’ joy.’
The light went out.
