He’s got to get up.
That’s an order, Wilson! Move your ass!
Yes, sir! Fuck you, sir!
Charlie! You’re going to miss the bus!
Damn it, Charlie! Do I have to do this every morning?
All right! I’m up! Jesus Christ!
The Lord’s name in vain, Charlie. Every time you say it, He takes a note, he writes it down on the floor of hell in golden letters you can’t read…
You dumb little fucker! I swear to God, man! Stand up again, I’m not gonna knock you down, I’m gon’ fuck you up!
Charlie!
This last voice, a woman’s scream, does the trick. It’s an effort, but he makes it, he’s up. On his hands and knees. He can’t stand, his knees won’t lock. His arms are trembly, but he’s okay for strength and only mildly dizzy. He can’t feel much at all, not even the ground beneath him. It’s like he’s resting on something as solid and as insubstantial as an idea, and because the idea is without form or void, it’s impossible to get his bearings. But he knows what to do. Find the tree. Trust to faith that you’ll find it. Throw a move on the world before it throws one on you. Here we go. Left hand forward. Drag the right knee. Right hand forward. Drag the left knee. Breathe. You repeat that ten thousand times, Wilson, you just might get to be a soldier. Alternate method. Sliding both hands forward and then dragging the haunches. Slower, but more stable. It’s a tough choice, but he’ll work it out, he’ll devise a pattern of alternation, a system by which he can rest different muscles at different times and thus maximize his stamina. He knows how to do this shit. It’s all he’s ever done, really. Going forward against the crush of force and logic. Moving smartly when smart movement is called for. Crawling through shadow, looking for shade.
10 Things Specialist Charles N. Wilson Wants You To Know
1. Everything I’ve ever known has been no more than a powerful conviction.
2. Nothing motivates like sex and death and sound effects.
3. Politics is the Enemy.
4. Jesus and Mohammed would probably hang out together.
5. GRob is a hottie, maybe not as cute as Laura Witherspoon, but a woman who can kick ass is a definite turn-on.
6. Love is all there is, but there ain’t enough to go around.
7. War is the geometry of chaos.
8. Only in the grip of fear can I appreciate the purity of my life’s disguise.
9. Survival as an occupation: I am the worker bee. Survival as religion: I am its revenant priest.
10. My pink-and-black skateboard with the design of the demon gleaming the cube, it is the bomb!
CROCODILE ROCK
You must not think of me as a reliable witness, as someone immune to bias and distortion. Every story, of course, should by rights be introduced with such a disclaimer, for we are none of us capable of a wholly disinterested clarity; though it is my intention to relate the truth, I am persuaded by the tumult of my recent past to consider myself a less reliable witness than most.
For several months prior to receiving Rawley’s phone call, I had been in a state of decline, spending my grant money on drink and drugs and women, a bender that left me nearly penniless and in shaky mental health. It seems that this downward spiral was precipitated by no particular event, but rather constituted a spiritual erosion, perhaps one expressing an internalized reflection of war, famine, plague, all the Biblical afflictions deviling the continent—it would not be the first time, if true, that the rich miseries of Africa have so infected an expatriate. Then, too, while many American and overseas blacks speak happily of a visit to the ancestral home, a view with which I do not completely disagree, for me it was an experience fraught with odd, delicate pressures and a constant feeling of mild dislocation—these things as well, I believe, took a toll on my stability. Whatever the root cause, I neglected my work, traveling with less and less frequency into the bush, and sequestered myself in my Abidjan apartment, a sweaty little rat’s nest of cement block and stucco with mustard-colored walls and vinyl-upholstered furniture that would have been appropriate to the waiting room of a forward-thinking American dentist circa 1955.
The morning of the call, I was sitting hung over, watching my latest live-in girlfriend, Patience, make toast. Patience was barely two weeks removed from her home village; city ways were still new and bright to her, and though she claimed to have previously observed the operation of a toaster, she’d never had any hands-on experience with the appliance. Stacks of buttered toast, varying in color from black to barely browned, evidence of her experiments with the process, covered half the kitchen table. The sight of this lovely seventeen-year-old girl (the age she claimed), naked except for a pair of red panties, staring intently at the toaster, laughing when the bread popped forth, breasts jiggling as she laboriously buttered each slice, glancing up every so often to flash me a delighted smile… it was the sort of thing that once might have stimulated me to insights concerning cultural syncretism and innocence, or to a more personal appreciation of the moment and my witness of it. Now, however, this sort of insight only made me feel weary, despairing of life, and I had grown too alienated to keep a collection of intimate mental Polaroids—and so I was glad when the ring of the telephone dragged me away into the living room.
“My God, man!” Rawley said when I answered. “You sound awful.” His tone became sly and knowing. “What can you have been doing with yourself?”
“Business as usual,” I said, more brusquely than I’d intended. “What’s on your mind?”
A pause, burst of static along the long-distance wire, after which Rawley’s voice seemed tinier, flatter, less human. “Actually, Michael, I’ve some work to toss your way… if you’re interested. But if this is a bad time…”
I apologized for being short with him, told him I’d had a rough couple of nights.
“Not to worry,” he said, and laughed. “My fault for calling so early. I should have remembered you’re a bit of a cunt before you’ve had your coffee.”
I asked what kind of work he was talking about, and there was another pause. A radio was switched on in the adjoining apartment; a soukous tune blasted forth, lilting guitars and Sam Mangwana chiding an unfaithful lover. From the street came the spicy smell of roasting meat; I was tempted to look out the window and see if a vendor had set up shop below, but the brightness hurt my eyes, and I closed the blinds instead.
“I’ve been put in charge of a rather curious case,” Rawley said. “It’s quite troubling, really. We’ve had some murders up in Bandundu Province that have been attributed to sorcery. Crocodile men, to be specific.”
“That’s hardly unusual.”
“No, no, of course it isn’t. Not a year goes by we don’t have similar reports. Sorcerers changing into various animals and doing murder. Although this year there’ve been considerably more. Dozens of them. Hang on a second, will you?”
I heard him speaking to someone in his office, and I pictured him as I had seen him three months before—blond Aryan youth grown into a beefy, smug, thirtyish ex-swimmer given to hearty backslapping and beery excess. Or, as a remittance man of our mutual acquaintance had described him, “Halfway through a transformation from beautiful boy to bloated alcoholic.”