Part I: The Raven
Maji hayatokoti yakishushwa kwa moto.
Water does not boil if taken away from fire.
—Swahili Proverb
Breath brings word
Nappy Dusky Longing Song
Song like my own
—Maya’s Kwansaba
Prologue
A solitary cafe au lait-colored man with freckles, his thick hair tied back with cords, walked to the lot behind the Constabulary Station. Keeping his head down, Richard Starks moved silently through the rows of steam-autos parked there. He walked past them, looking carefully at the numbers painted on the auto doors. When he found the one he sought, he crouched on the other side of the steam-auto and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long. Minutes later, a burly white Constable exited the station and walked through the lot. He hunkered down before the auto and started turning the crank.
Richard drew a dagger from the folds of his shirt.
Moving swiftly, he crept from the side of the car. As the
Constable rose from his haunches, the black man sprang—
stabbing him over and over. The Constable fell to his knees
and then toppled over, twitching and bleeding at Richard’s
feet. Moments later, he was dead.
Shaking and crying, Richard stood over him. At
length, he calmed himself and slipped the dagger back
inside his shirt. He wiped his face with his arm and stepped over the dead Constable to the side of the auto. He drew a symbol on the steam-auto door with his bloody fingers and spoke the mantra, “Kuja kwangu mpendwa wangu kwa maana ni kisasi mimi kutafuta … Come to me my beloved, for it is vengeance I seek.”
Diaphanous shades smudged into view. In the next instant three figures towered over him, their faces shifting in the darkness … from black to red … green to blue … female to male … It made him dizzy trying to hone in on their features. He realized that perhaps he was not meant to see their faces. Perhaps it would drive him insane. He fixed his vision on a point beyond their huge shoulders.
The one on his left spoke, “You summoned us, little one?”
“Yes,” Richard whispered.
“You know what it is you seek?” the second one asked.
“We cannot harm the innocent,” the third entity intoned.
For the first time anger crept into the young man’s
voice. “They ain’t innocent. They’re murderers.”
The spirits spoke in one basso profundo voice, “So
be it.”
Rivulets of blood ran down the Constabulary
building. The dead officer sat up. His wounds healed, and
his eyes glazed over with a white film. Then they turned blue once more.
The blood vanished. The Constable got to his knees, crouching before the auto, and finished turning the crank. The motor sputtered to life. He stood and walked to the driver’s side, got into the auto and drove from the lot.
——
Constable Burt Phillips, a thick-set white officer, pulled his steam-auto up to the curb beside his flat. Burt put his auto in park, got out and turned the crank on his steam-auto, shutting the engine off. He was feeling good this evening—better than he’d felt in weeks. For awhile, he’d thought that Eddie Plumb, the unarmed black man he’d killed months ago, was haunting him.
He’d been drinking the night he killed Plumb and
in a foul mood. I just wanted respect. That darkie needed to be put in his place.
Plumb had walked pass Burt that night, his eyes
insolent, his back straight and proud. Something had snapped
inside Burt. He’d shouted at Plumb over and over to stop
walking, but the young man ignored him. So Burt shot him in the back. When questioned by Internal Affairs, he’d told a different story: Eddie was a robbery suspect, who’d fled when he ordered him to stop.
The DA cleared me. That’s that.
The week of his death, Eddie Plumb had appeared in Burt’s steam-auto and, for weeks afterwards, he’d rode beside Burt—mocking him, insulting him, calling him a murderer. Then just as suddenly he was gone. Burt had dismissed Eddie as a hallucination brought on by the stress of the hearing.
Certainly. he bore no guilt over killing Plumb. Darkies getting out of control. In my daddy’s time they knew their place. That’s one that won’t make trouble no more.
His daddy had been a hard man, and even harder to love. But love him Burt did, through all the beatings, through all the times he’d found his mother bloodied from his old man’s fists.
His father’s most essential rule, THE RULE, was that
he should hate anyone who wasn’t white. “Keep ‘em under
your boot son,” this was said with the utmost emphasis
during the few times he’d shown Burt affection. “For a
white man, ain’t nothing more important.” His daddy had hated black and brown folks, and Burt loved his daddy. So, he hated them too.
He opened the door to his flat and stepped inside.
——
Richard sat in the darkness. The only illumination came from the moon and the streetlight outside his window. He shut his eyes.
When he opened them, his room had been transformed. Thick grass grew under his feet. He stared into a gold, orange and blue sunset, a half-smile of wonderment on his face. To his right, the walls and door of his flat remained. Straight ahead, camel thorn trees spouted in the brush. In the distance, he could hear the steady rhythm of drums and a faint whisper. Richard cocked his head to the right. Listening.
He nodded and shut his eyes once more. His spirit
rose from the chair. He looked back at his body then
walked out into the night. Those he passed on the street
could not see him … But they felt him as a breeze.
——
Phillips was sitting in an armchair nursing a beer
when Richard walked through his wall. Burt felt a
presence, a shifting in the air, and looked about uneasily.
Richard became solid.
Burt jumped up. The glass of beer dropped from his hand to the floor, shattering “Who are you? How the hell didyou get in here—?!”
Richard raised his right hand and the stand holding four knives on Burt’s countertop rotated. The knives rose, hovered in midair, and flew toward the Constable. He fled and the knives followed him—impaling him in his chest and stomach. Burt stood for a moment, blood leaking from the corners of his lips, then collapsed in a boneless heap.
Richard Starks became shadow once more. He turned and walked back through Burt’s wall, melting into the night.
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Collision of Worlds 