Insurrections (29 page)

This day I watch the madman and his smoky black eyes. This man who know nothing but his daughter and his short corncob pipe. That pipe. That pipe. It look nothing like the one I hold in my hand in Safeway, but it everything like it if you ask me in that moment I'm standing in the aisle pretending. Granddad's house burn of urine and hot air hanging heavy. He call her name and his voice take on an edge until she respond or sometimes she just put a hand on he back.

Then he sit in his creaky chair and settle himself before reaching into the coal pot at his side to flip a piece of coal into his pipe. A couple puffs at that thing and he'd be content, peaceful. Granddaddy was always so precise, not just for a blind man but for any man, that burning ember flipping through the dark. It never burn him. Never spark on the ground. Always flip into the mouth of that pipe.

This time it's me and Raoul and Mom. She wander about straightening up, and then she go off to the kitchen to cook Granddaddy's food. I think is whisper I whisper when I turn to Raoul and say, Granddaddy's gonna burn this place one day.

Neville, you hush your mouth, your granny call from the next room.

Neville, you better hush your mouth, I mumble to myself in that Safeway tobacco aisle, and I'm back there smelling the smoke coming from the street. Raoul disappear and then my mother disappear and then my grandfather once again he dead and gone, always like a spirit in a cloud of smoke. Sirens start screaming in the distance. There's a riot. A dead king somewhere shaking he head at all that burn in he name. There's the book and another insurrection somewhere, sometime. Police out there, maybe coming to save the Safeway, and they don't mean no good for no one.

I stuff the pipe in my pocket and run from the store back into the smoky streets and I ain't stop running till I at my door. All the while,
my heart is beating fast, fast, fast in my ears like history shouting loud enough to deafen me.

Not a day that go by after that I don't think about Cross River. That pipe, every time I look at it, it remind me that the book exist somewhere and another insurrection go be happening sometime. Thinking about Cross River make me late to my wedding. Laugh, Kin, but you almost wasn't made because of Cross River. We flirt with moving back to Trinidad, moving to upstate New York, but the only thing we take serious is moving to this town. I go to law school at Howard again and get a job and thing, but then when your sister is three or four and your brother is five or six, we pack up all our things, no job, no nothing. People tell me it have a big Caribbean community in Cross River, and is true and that nice and thing, but that not why we move here. People ask me why I go Cross River, I say, We come to see the Insurrection.

I don't know what we think we go find; I don't know what we did find, but we find it.

I want you to remember this, Kin: You are the only member of this family that is born into Cross River. The rest of we adopt it. Cross River is you. That moment in the aisle is you. Tell you the truth, when your brother, Blair, come a cop, I get disappointed. The son of Neville Samson a police? Naw. I feel like I ain't give him enough of what was in me in that moment during the riot. And your sister too damn reasonable for her own good. Sometimes, Kin, I think I give you too much of what was in me in that Safeway. You too damn miserable, but you, Akinsanya Abel Samson, you are the Cross Riverian Dream. I know you say that sound corny and thing, but when them people wrench themselves free, is you they think about.

We sit in silence listening to the hospital machines beeping and sighing. I wonder if the thoughts spinning wildly and crazily around my head are from the delirium or from my father's crazy tale.

He breaks the silence first by drifting off into a snore that startles and wakes him. I think of how much all this recollecting must have cost him.

Now you, he says.

Huh?

Tell me a story.

I don't have no stories like that.

Don't play the fool, Kin. You know what I mean. Tell me why you go quite out in the Wildlands.

Is nothing, boy, I say, mimicking my father's accent, his voice, the shrug of his shoulder and the wave of his hand, the same way my face has always mimicked his own. Playing dead to catch corbeaux alive.

First, I'd like to thank all the readers who opened their minds and their hearts to these words. I wrote them especially for you.

Thank you to the people of Cross River, Maryland, for letting me into your world.

I would like to thank my wonderful editor, Lisa Williams, for choosing my book and then approaching each story with enthusiasm, care, and a sharply critical eye. Whenever I figured I'd done enough, she showed me ways in which the words could do more. Thank you to everyone at the University Press of Kentucky.

Thank you to all the editors who gave these stories a home in their literary magazines, and even to many who declined to publish early versions but provided a kind word or a helpful suggestion.

Support provided by Kimbilio, the Pan-African Literary Forum, and Bowie State University kept me going.

Many of these stories were written while I attended George Mason University's MFA in Creative Writing program and quite literally wouldn't exist without the spark and encouragement of my brilliant professors Susan Shreve, Alan Cheuse (RIP), Courtney Brkic, Mary Kay Zuravleff, and Steve Goodwin. Thank you also to my classmates, fellow writers and friends Ryan Call, Alyson Foster, Eugenia Tsutsumi, David Conner, David Heath, David Rider, Becky Bikowski, Mike Scalise, and Sara Hov. Thank you to everyone who's ever been in a workshop with me.

Bro Yao, your heartfelt words of encouragement have been just golden and so necessary, especially when I can't see around the dark corners.

Thanks to Mensah Demary for the laughs and the literary camaraderie.

Thank you to Kyle Minor for the encouraging messages, which were just minutes of his time but always seemed to come right at the moment I needed them most.

If I extended ten thousand thank-yous to the incomparable human being known as Kima Jones, I would still come up short.

Thank you to all the good people on Twitter who allow me to waste time with them.

Thank you, Rickita Perry, for being such a good reader, but most importantly such a good friend.

Thank you to my parents, Nigel and Monica Scott, for their ongoing unconditional love and support. None of this is possible without their emotional, material, and spiritual backing. My big brothers, Duane and Omar, were my original readership, and to this day they are my most loyal readers. I'll never stop wanting to be like my big brothers. Thanks too to my sisters-in-law, Tracy and Tara, my nephew and nieces, Zavier, Sasha, Nia, and Maya, and my cousin Brian.

Thanks to my Abdur-Rahman family in New York. It's incredible how much richer my life is with you all there.

Special thanks to my father for letting me interview him about his journey. I got a couple of stories out of our talks, but I also got so much more.

My grandmother used to sit with me and tell me all about her childhood, her travels, the pains still fresh after decades and decades, how she grew to be a master seamstress, and how much she loved my mother. All of this is in here somewhere and for that I am grateful. I miss her dearly.

My son, Samaadi Cabral Scott, the funniest little comedian on the planet, Daddy loves you.

Eternal thanks to my wife, Sufiya Abdur-Rahman, for reading every word, critiquing every syllable, and most of all for loving me.

T
HE
U
NIVERSITY
P
RESS OF
K
ENTUCKY
N
EW
P
OETRY AND
P
ROSE
S
ERIES

This series features books of contemporary poetry and fiction that exhibit a profound attention to language, strong imagination, formal inventiveness, and awareness of one's literary roots.

S
ERIES
E
DITOR
: Lisa Williams

A
DVISORY
B
OARD
: Camille Dungy, Rebecca Morgan Frank, Silas House, Davis McCombs, and Roger Reeves

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