The Sacrifice (35 page)

Did he care, fuck he
did not care
.

Fourteen years they’d been together. Except for Anis staying away sometimes but the place with ’Netta was
home
.

He’d never have another
home
, he guessed. All right with him.

Last three days he’d been drinking to numb the pain in his back and legs. Each day starting earlier and the alcohol made him feel heavy like lead in his veins. Used to be, drinking made Anis feel happy but no longer.

’Netta sayin the same with her. Plus God damn di’betes made her crazy-hungry why she put on weight.

Last year or so, the pain in Anis’s back and legs was worsening. Had to sit down where he could, outdoors there’s not many places to sit shake out his damn right leg the pain came so bad. Misery in wet
cold weather. He’d been young not giving a damn for how he took care of hisself, like the guys on the truck with him. Calling him
old man
like they felt sorry for him but didn’t respect him.

Driving to Twelfth Street he was blocked again. God damn!

Pascayne PD cruisers, uniformed cops and cops in riot gear along the street like the U.S. Army. And he’d been seeing people running in the street, that age the TV called
youths
.

Cursed turning the car around in the street not giving a damn if he blocked other vehicles or scraped against some motherfucker parked at the curb. The more you were boxed-in, the more you felt needing to get out. Close behind him a driver sounded his horn and Anis leaned the palm of his hand on his own horn, hard. Thinking
Somebody gon die tonight asshole, you keep that up.

Camden blocked at Washburn, too. More people on the street, and more cops.

It was the Ten-Thousand-Man March, he’d been hearing about. Everybody talkin about. Two men he worked with were planning to march, they’d said. Anis thought they had to be crazy, he’d just laughed. Assholes! Like they was Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and anybody’d give a shit about what happened in Pascayne that was one of the shit-holes of New Jersey.

A march along Camden Avenue to the Pitcairn Bridge and across the bridge to City Hall and the courthouse. Had to be two miles, maybe three.
He
couldn’t march a mile or half-mile or a block, Christ!

Some Black Muslim march. They’d taken up Sybilla Frye, the Reverend had had to quit his Crusade.

It wasn’t the Nation of Islam, Anis had some respect for. It was the other black Islam-religion, started by some punk incarcerated in a prison and tellin himself Allah gives a shit for
him.

(Had Mudrick died? Killed by some racist white man the cops didn’t stop from stabbing him? Asshole boastin he didn’t carry a gun
and didn’t wear a bulletproof vest what’d he think would happen to him? Couldn’t remember if Mudrick had died but it served the motherfucker right, interfering in Anis Schutt’s family life.)

The girl had a new name now—not a name he could pronounce. Some Arab-name. African-name. Ednetta telling him like she was embarrassed, she couldn’t pronounce the name either. And S’b’lla wearing a head scarf now, she’d have screamed with laughter seeing any friend of hers wearing on the street.

The one thing the Black Muslims did was protect their women. Keep the women covered up, and stayin indoors all they can. Hard to see how that sassy-mouth Sybilla gon keep indoors.

Missed her. The girl, and the younger children. And ’Netta.

Shit, they gone from him now. Had to happen sometime. His own kids growed up, and gone. He’d never see this lifetime and they’d been on bad terms.

He’d been seeing posters for the march. Close-up of a face that was meant to be “Sybilla Frye” but was some other black girl, Anis could tell. The picture was blurred on purpose so you mostly saw ugly swollen-shut eyes, mouth, a bloodied nose and the caption was WHITE COPS DID THIS and information about the TEN-THOUSAND-MAN MARCH scheduled for March 7 which was this day.

The posters had appeared everywhere in Red Rock the previous week, all along Camden, on the sides of buildings and on fences, on storefronts, on doors—hurriedly torn down by Pascayne cops as well as neighborhood residents who didn’t want trouble with the Pascayne cops.

Since there’d started to be stories in the papers and on TV about the
black girl kidnapped by white cops
it was a sensitive time in Red Rock. More dark-skin cops on the street, you could see that was deliberate. But any-skin-color cop is a white cop, people in Red Rock figured.

Lookin like Washburn was blocked—why in hell? People marchin on Camden ain’t gon come down here.

Police-cruiser blockade at Eighth Street? Also, Barnegat. Had to be, the cops had orders from the mayor to shut down Red Rock. Traffic backed up and everybody honking his damn horn and the God damn city buses detouring from Camden onto side streets too narrow for them to pass oncoming traffic. Plus kids runnin in the streets. There were looks in the cops’ faces—Anis perceived, even in the faces of dark-skin cops—like in boxers’ faces before a fight. You work yourself up, your blood is up, you ready yourself to break some motherfucker’s face, and you are
ready.

All the cops armed, and
ready
.

Anis tried another block, and was stopped. God
damn
he wasn’t ever gon get home except to abandon his car and
walk
.

And his knees hurtin so bad, fuck he could
walk
.

You could see the cops was sectioning off Red Rock so people were boxed in. Except for the marchers on Camden who could walk in the street, in wide, wavering rows holding posters and pictures of “Sybilla Frye” (in fact, it was the picture on the poster, which was not “Sybilla Frye”) as well as pictures of other black faces (gunned down or incarcerated) and some of them pictures (it looked like) of black men in full-dress uniform like in the Army or Marines. Nobody could walk mostly anywhere. Driving a vehicle was impossible unless it was one of the police vehicles everywhere you looked.

Cops boxing in Red Rock like the inhabitants was cockroaches. At the time of the 1967 riot it was reported the police chief had said that, about cockroaches, meaning black people without any doubt. He’d sworn he was misquoted but there was no doubt. White folks in Pascayne hopin there’s a “riot” tonight so the mayor can call in the National Guard, and tanks.

Anis was seeing cops in riot gear. Cops with riot shields lining
Camden Avenue so if marchers wanted to quit the march they couldn’t—had to keep moving forward.

Along side streets Anis could see cops erecting barricades.

If you wanted to cross a street on foot you had to make your way the length of a block to get around the barricade—except the cops were yelling at people trying to walk in the street. And if families had gotten separated from one another, cops were refusing to allow even small children to slip through the barricade. (Anis saw some small children crying, their mother on the wrong side of the barricade. Felt a flash of disgust, a woman got to be a damn fool, or drunk or high on crack bringing children out onto the street at such a time.)

It was the old story of Red Rock and Pascayne. If you don’t tear up your place of residence, trash and burn it, nobody gon give a shit about you. But if you do that, you got to live in the rubble.

No way to win. Anis knew that. Ten-Thousand-Man March for justice but also to “celebrate” being black. Anis had to laugh, some people believin anything.

He was sorry he’d missed the start of the march. Had to suppose the Black Prince and his shave-head guards were at the head and (maybe) Sybilla was walking with them?—in white female robes, and one of them Muslim scarves on her head?—if she was, there’d be white-clad Sisters walking with her. Not Ednetta, they’d sent the mother away.

If Anis had been standing at the curb watching for her, unless she’d pass within a few feet he wouldn’t have seen was the girl really
her
. This the way of the Kingdom of Islam, they made their women and girls dress “modest.” He guessed she’d never lift her eyes to look at him, as she would not look at any man standing at the curb.

Never meant to hurt you so bad, S’b’lla. You know that.

All you accomplished now, you and your damn-drunk mama, is broke up our home. Thank your little slut-ass for that.

Her and her mother, he’d never forgive. Taken what he’d done to the girl like it was something actual he’d meant to do, and not Anis losing his temper like he did sometimes. Damn bitches
knew better
.

Ednetta saying the doctors would tell the cops and the cops would come and arrest
him
. And Anis sayin, shit how’d anybody prove any fuckin thing. You don’t know nothin about the law, ’Netta you head up you fat ass.

That fat-ass female! Jesus he was glad to be rid of
her
.

This woman he was staying with now on Twelfth Street, never tried to get the last word. Anything Anis said, she’d agree real quick. Younger than ’Netta and a cashier at Walmart. That sick-eager look in her face, she’d be grateful for any kindness and Anis Schutt the man for such a woman.

Everybody boxed-in here, blowing his horn. Sounding like cattle braying. Anis pressing the palm of his hand down hard against his horn though shit, he knew better, seeing cops up ahead in the street making people open their trunks. That shit Anis didn’t want nothing of, carrying his gun like he was.

(The heavy gun he kept in the left-trouser-leg pocket of his coveralls. Anis left-handed all his life so the schoolteachers tried to teach him right but never succeeded only just made him stutter till he got out of grade school. Anytime Anis feel a stutter come on he think of them teachers an wishin he could strangle them and nothin to do with race. The coveralls loose-fitting like Anis has lost weight which maybe he has, or lost height, which definitely he has like a doctor say on TV, a man can lose one inch of his spine a year he don’t take in enough calcium.)

It was a cop-tactic,
boxing-in
. They’d
boxed-in
pedestrians on the street in 1967 with barricades, then squeezed tighter. Like an animal pen and the animals pissin theyselves knowin they was to be slaughtered. On the highway they came up behind you in a squad
car not running its siren, and another squad passing you, and goes ahead then slows down; and a third car comes up alongside you and you are
boxed
.

This they did to the Hispanic boy they’d shot back in the fall on the Turnpike claiming he was going for his weapon when his hands were in full view on his steering wheel. And that boy, turned out, was a first-year National Guardsman—but the white cops not knowing
that
. One squad car came up behind him making no sound or signal, and the others closed in forcing him to brake onto the shoulder of the highway with a claim he’d been speeding and “reckless endangerment”—some shit like that. Meaning they wanted to shoot a dark-skin boy, like a hunter gets it into his head he wants to kill some animal.

Since Lyander shot down like a dog. Anis has known he will kill a white cop only not
when
. Shit, since Anis twelve years old, he has known. The black-feather Angel of Wrath chiding him, how long he’s going to wait? And what if he dies first? If the white cops
kill him first
?

This was a sobering thought: if Anis waited too long to kill a white cop, one day it would be too late.
Sorry-ass nigger ain’t you gon be embarrassed!

It was like ’Netta’s girl. How long you gon wait before the girl havin sex right in that house, and the two of them laughin at you like you was some asshole old helpless blind man. He’d had to discipline them all, ’Netta couldn’t control even the younger children saying
shit
and
fuck
to their mama and her not able to stop them. ’Netta always bawlin sayin she loves the children too much to discipline them, feels sick if she has to whip them, and Anis say, you want me to do it, then I will. And you keep your fat face out of it then.

This fish-net-top the girl was wearing, last summer. You could see right through it, Jesus! And skinny little straps falling off her shoulder like she didn’t notice, or didn’t give a damn. And the short-shorts all
the girls wore, you could see half their asses like little half-moons, and that soft pale goose-pimple flesh there, Anis stood dead-still staring and blinking; and he’s seeing Tana just turning away from him, slim girl, the side of her face, the way she touched her hair with her hand like to stroke it, and her slim legs, and feeling weak seeing Tana and him so old now, could be his young wife’s daddy at least. A hot flush came into his face, the girl was seein him, and giggling. But it was Sybilla giggling like that, not—not the other.

Most of the time Sybilla shrewd enough to wear a shirt over herself, and when Anis was home most of the time she’d wear her jeans that was stiff with dirt, and keep out of his way like all of the woman’s children had learned to do, like you’d keep out of the way of a bull to respect it. What he brooded on wasn’t whether the young girl was having sex—(he had to know she was, wouldn’t be normal if she wasn’t)—but whether she’d get pregnant and have a baby and the upkeep of the baby would fall on
his head
. Like some ugly mongrel sneaking into a yard where there’s a special-breed dog, mating with the female and you had to bring up the pups, take care of them like they were your own. Family Services checks didn’t add up to shit, everybody knew. You had to be punished for any new baby in the household, Family Services made sure of that.

These things, and many other things triggered his rage. It was like a rim of small blue flame on a stove, turn the burner-dial fast to the left and a hot yellow flame burst out. He’d be talking with somebody could be ’Netta, or a stranger, or somebody at work, or one of the kids, and the way the person shifted his face, or wiped at his nose, Anis understood there was a judgment against him. Sybilla always trying to slide away from him, sideways on the stairs, and that scared cross-eye look to her, that freaky left-eye of her, made him mad; and worse mad, when she giggled to show she wasn’t scared, and she
was scared;
and it fucked him up bad, that his stepdaughter and the other
kids were
scared as hell
of him when he tried to be nice to them, God damn they had to know, he’d heard ’Netta telling them, Anis was the main financial support of the household, but they scared as hell of him as much when he was nice to them as when he was blind drunk and wanting to slam them against the wall.