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“Like what you see, eh?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just that you look so much like him. Yet you’re so different. Chaym, I didn’t know you were a painter—”

“Yeah,” he yawned, now looking very Dionysian. “I painted some when I was institutionalized. The doctors thought it’d help me heal. As you can see, I ain’t no famous beauty, nobody’s gonna mistake me for Harry Belafonte, but I was hoping that if I created something beautiful, I could offer that to others. Something that would live after I was gone. A li’l piece of me, you know, that’d endure. Problem was, I was second-rate. Naw, I didn’t say bad. What I did — everything I’ve done — was good. Thing is, being just good don’t get you to heaven. And I’m just too mediocre for hell. God don’t like near misses. Runner-ups and also-rans. Second-best means no banana. Purgatory, I been thinkin’, was designed for people like me … and you.”

“Me?”

“That’s right. Who’s your daddy?”

“I … don’t know.”

“That’s what I figured. You like most of the rest of us. Brothers, I mean. You’re illegitimate. No father prepared the way for you. You want to be among the anointed, the blessed — to belong. I saw that in you the moment we met. Nothing’s worked for you, I can see that. You ain’t never gonna have fame or fortune. Maybe not even a girl. I’ll bet you ain’t had pussy since pussy had you. When you die, it’ll be like you never lived. That’s why I said I think I can help you.”

“With what?

“Your salvation,” he said. “You work real hard at being good, Bishop. Anybody can see you’re a Boy Scout. Square as a Necker’s cube. But you don’t fit. You got to remember that nobody on earth likes Negroes. Not even Negroes. We’re outcasts. And outcasts can’t never create a community. I been to a lot of places and it’s the same everywhere. We’re despised worldwide. You ever thought we might be second-class citizens because generally we are second-rate?”

I almost slammed on the brakes. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me right. You got to face up to the fact of black — or human — mediocrity damned near across the board. Outside of entertainment and athletics (just another kind of entertainment), we don’t count for shit, boy. Ain’t you never felt that being a Negro means you always got the guilty suspicion you done something wrong but you ain’t sure what? And don’t blame it on bigotry. Nobody believes that tired old excuse anymore. What you got to face, Bishop — hey, watch the road, you’re swerving — is the possibility that we are, as a tribe, descended from the first of two brothers whose best just couldn’t hack it. And, it wasn’t his fault. See, if you check that Bible of yours, you’ll find the world didn’t begin with love. It kicked off with killing and righteous hatred and ressentiment. Envy, I’m saying, is the Negro disease. We got the stain, the mark. Nothing else really explains our situation, far as I can see.”

It took all my strength to keep from driving right off the road. “That’s insane, it’s certifiably mad—”

“I been that, sure. Got the papers to prove it. I was crazy as a coot after what happened to Juanita and her kids. But not now. I’ve been on the outside long enough to know that hatred is healthy — even holy — and that until you step away, or they cast you out, you can’t see nothin’ clearly. Truth is, being on the outside is a blessing. Naw, it’s a necessity, if you got any creative spark at all. You know Husserl’s epoché, what that does? No”—he squinted at me—“you probably don’t. And that’s too bad, ’cause the way I see it, the problem with all the fuckin’ anointed and somebody like Abel — his name, according to Philo, means ‘one who refers all things to God’—is that they’re sheep. That’s right, part of the obedient, tamed, psalm-singing herd. They make me sick, every one of ’em. See, I ain’t never been good at group-think. You ever notice how safe and dull and correct they all are? How timid! And unoriginal? How vulgar and materialistic? Call ’em what you want, Christians or Communists or Cultural Nationalists, but I call ’em sheep. Or zombies — that’s what Malcolm X called the Nation of Islam, you know, after he broke away from Elijah, his surrogate daddy. There’s not a real individual in the bunch. No risk-takers, Bishop. No iconoclasts. Nobody who thinks the unthinkable, or is cursed (or blessed) with bearing the cross of a unique, singular identity … except for him.” He paused, kneading his lower lip between his forefinger and thumb; he was thinking, I guessed, of the minister. “Individuality … That scares ’em. In Japan, they got a saying: the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. You see what I’m saying? What’s the goal after integration? Shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue? Is that what so many civil rights workers died for? Me, I ain’t studyin’ ’bout integrating with no run-of-the-mill white folks, or black ones either. But that’s how you get to belong, boy — by fitting in and mumbling the party line and keeping your head down and losing your soul, but I think I can save you from that if you let me.”

I couldn’t believe he was saying these things; I wondered if he meant them (which I couldn’t believe) or if he was playing with me simply to see what I’d say. I mean, the minister had instructed me to help him. At that moment I couldn’t see him as mad. No, I saw him as wicked. Yet he made me recall the minister’s sermon “Transformed Nonconformist,” wherein he railed against the “mass mind,” the cowardice of the herd, and proclaimed, “Any Christian who blindly accepts the opinions of the majority and in fear and timidity follows a path of expediency and social approval is a mental and spiritual slave.”

I said, “Who are you?”

“I dunno,” Smith replied. “I’m always findin’ that out. I guess I make it up as I go along. Pull off there, I got to pee.”

I flicked the turn signal and coasted the car off the highway toward a tiny, two-pump station and diner that must have dated back to the Depression. A low, barrel-roofed building, it squatted in the shadow of an abandoned red-brick warehouse. The sign blazoned in black letters across its front said PIT STOP. The exterior, faded green and yellow, looked weathered and washed out in the bright midday sunlight. Taped to one of the diner’s cloudy windows was a cardboard sign announcing the day’s special (DELUXE STEAK SANDWICH—$1.75) beside a campaign poster promoting a Republican candidate for the state senate.

“Matthew,” said Amy, starting to wake, “why’re we stopping here?”

“I gotta piss,” said Smith, “and I’m hungry.”

Squinting at the Pit Stop, knuckling both her eyes, she said, “I think I’ll wait in the car.”

Smith stepped out, gravel crunching under his shoe. Every ancient warning signal in my head from childhood told me to stay in the car. But I was hungry too. Parked off to one side of the diner was a rust-eaten pickup truck with a gun rack, an English setter tied in the bed, and a GOLDWATER FOR PRESIDENT sticker on the rear bumper. The dog started barking the moment I shut off the engine, which rattled for a while, then coughed and finally stuttered to a stop.