Friday Black Read online

  “Got it. I have the same number,” Emmanuel said as the bus stopped.

  Boogie walked to the bus’s rear door. He turned, smiled at Emmanuel, then at the top of his lungs screamed, “J. D. HEROY!” The name was still echoing off the windows when Boogie took his fist and crashed it against a white woman’s jaw. She didn’t make a sound. She slumped over in her seat. Boogie pulled his fist back again and punched the woman in the face a second time. A third. It sounded like hammering a nail into soft wood.

  “Help!” somebody sitting near the woman screamed. “Fuck you, asshole,” another yelled as Boogie jumped out the bus’s back door and sprinted away. No one followed him. Emmanuel pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed 911. As he called, he stepped toward the crowd that had formed around the woman. Her nose was busted and bleeding. The blood rolled out in a steady leak and had bubbles in it. Again, Emmanuel felt a ticking and grinding in his chest. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. He imagined the color sky blue.

  “Hi. I’m on a bus and this lady is hurt. Yeah, we’re on Myrtle, right by Market Plaza. Yeah, she’s hurt pretty bad.” He could feel fear swelling toward him. He’d been next to Boogie and at 7.6. The bus sat on the roadside, and a small group of passengers made a wall around the woman. The other passengers took turns shooting hard stares at Emmanuel. He imagined the police officers blasting through the bus doors and the many fingers that would immediately point in his direction. He imagined the bullet that would not take even a second to find his brain. He’d never stolen a thing in his life; he didn’t even particularly like pandas. He got off the bus, ignoring the murmurs and trying hard not to look at the woman with the broken face. He walked a few blocks to a nearby bus stop.

  The mall was as it always was. Parents ran from store to store; their children struggled to keep pace. Three security guards tailed Emmanuel from the moment he stepped into the mall. Whenever he slowed or stopped, the guards jumped into conversation or pretended to listen to important information via their two-way radios. Normally, when Emmanuel went to the mall, he wore blue jeans that weren’t too baggy or tight and a nice collared shirt. He smiled ear to ear and walked very slowly, only eyeing any one thing in any store for a maximum of twelve seconds. Emmanuel’s usual mall Blackness was a smooth 5.0. Usually only one security guard followed him.

  He went into a store named Rodger’s. He chose an eggshell blue button-up, then handed the shirt to a cashier. The cashier took his card and ran it through the machine. Then she folded his shirt and tucked it into a plastic bag.

  “I need a receipt,” Emmanuel said, then thanked her as she handed him the flimsy white paper. He dropped it into the bag with his shirt. When he approached the store’s entrance/exit, he felt a tug on his wrist. He turned to see a tall man with a store name tag pinned to his shirt.

  “Did you purchase that shirt, sir?” The man’s voice was condescending and sharp, like a cruel teacher’s or a villain’s from a children’s television show. Immediately, Emmanuel felt habit telling him to be precisely gentle, to smile, and not to yell no matter what. He pushed habit away as he snatched his hand back from the man.

  “Yeah, actually I did,” Emmanuel said in a voice loud enough to make shoppers turn and stare.

  “Do you have a receipt for that purchase that you actually made?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Can I please see this receipt that you actually have for that purchase you actually made?”

  “Well, I can show it to you,” Emmanuel began. “Or maybe ask the cashier who rang me up two seconds ago.” He jabbed a finger in the direction of the register. He felt his Blackness creeping up toward 8.1. He was angry and alive and free. When the cashier looked up and saw what was happening, she raised a hand and waved with her fingers.

  “Hmm, so do you have a receipt or not?”

  Emmanuel stared at the man. Then he handed him the receipt. Emmanuel had had this conversation a number of times before. Not so much since he’d really learned to lock down to sub-6.0 levels.

  “Can’t be too careful,” the man said, and handed the receipt back. Emmanuel knew better than to wait for an apology. He turned and left the store and felt himself slide back down to a 7.6 in the eyes of the mallgoers around him.

  As Emmanuel made his way back to the bus stop, a different pair of security guards followed closely behind him, but far enough away to make it seem like they were just walking in the same direction he was. Emmanuel stopped to tie his shoe, and one of the security guards jumped behind a decorative potted plant while the other stared off into the sky, whistling. They followed him to the south exit bus stop, then turned back into the mall once he was seated beneath the overhang.

  Emmanuel found a window seat. No one sat next to him. The bus had just started moving when his phone buzzed. He recognized the number as the same one that had called him that morning. He pushed the green dot on the screen, immediately setting his voice to a 1.5.

  “Hello. You’ve reached Emmanuel.”

  “Hey there, son, I called this morning about an interview we thought about lining up for you.” The man’s voice was full and husky.

  “Yes, I’m looking forward to it. Tomorrow at eleven, correct?”

  “Well, the thing is and—I really hate to be this guy, but I just thought I might save you some time. It’s Emmanuel Gyan, right?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “Well, Emmanuel, thing is, and shit, I didn’t think things all the way through, but I think we might have that position filled already.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Well, thing is, we have this guy Jamaal here already, and then there’s also Ty, who’s half-Egyptian. So I mean, it’d be overkill. We aren’t an urban brand. You know what I mean? So I thought it’d—” Emmanuel ended the call and tried very hard to breathe. Again, his phone buzzed. He eyed the screen hard; it was a message from Boogie. The park 10:45.

  “Mister Dunn.” The defense attorney sashays to the bench. “What were you doing on the night in question before you encountered the five people you say attacked you?”

  “Well.” George Wilson Dunn looks at his attorney, then at the jury. “I was with my children at the library. Both of them. Tiffany and Rodman. I’m a single father.”

  “A single father out with his children at the library. So what happened before you went outside?” The defense attorney looks curious, as if this were all news to him.

  “Thing is, being a father is the most important thing in the world to me. And being a father of two kids like Tiffany and Rodman, you just never know what you’re going to get.

  “That night, as we’re looking around the movie section for something to watch that weekend, Tiffany out and says she’s not going to school anymore ’cause she’s fat and ugly, and all of a sudden I’ve got this crisis on my hands. And she’s the older one, usually gives me less trouble. But that’s being a parent. No prep. She’s never said anything like this before, and all of a sudden you have to fix it or else she’ll become some kinda bum or crack whore.”

  “This is irrelevant, Your Honor,” the prosecuting attorney says from her chair.

  “I’ll allow it, but get on with your story, Mister Dunn.”

  “This is the story,” Dunn says. “So outta nowhere I gotta figure out something to say to my only daughter to put her back on track. And all the while, my only boy, he’s quiet and not saying a word this whole time, and that has me almost more worried than anything else. I love the kid, but he’s a crazy one. So as we’re getting ready to leave the library, I tell Tiffany how she’s beautiful and how Daddy loves her and how that will never change. And you know what she says? She says, ‘Okay,’ like it’s all fixed. Like she just wanted me to say that one thing. And I can finally breathe. Then the other one, Rodman, pushes over a cart that crashes into a shelf and makes about a hundred DVDs crash down to the floor. But that’s being a parent, ya know? Anyway, that’s what happened before I got outside.”

  “All right, an
d when you were outside?” the defense asks with a warm smile.

  “When I got outside, I was attacked. And I protected myself and both my kids.”

  “And, on this night in question, were your actions motivated by the love you feel for your children and your God-given right to protect yourself and them?”

  “They were.”

  “No further questions, Mister Dunn.”

  Emmanuel greeted his parents with a smile when they got home. They ate dinner together as a family, though Emmanuel hardly spoke a word. After they were finished, Emmanuel’s father told him he was proud of him no matter what happened at the interview and that he should wear a tie and try to speak slowly. “You’ll do great,” he said.

  When his parents were asleep, Emmanuel slipped into the shower. He got out, combed his hair, then put on fresh underwear and socks. He pulled and zipped himself into ironed tan slacks. He looped a brown leather belt around his waist. Then he put on a white undershirt and the eggshell blue button-up. He tied the laces of his wing-tipped dress shoes tightly.

  Emmanuel moved slowly out of his room and out of the house. He closed the side door as quietly as he could manage and was in the garage. There was an aluminum bat leaning against a wall with peeling paint. He stared at the bat. The grinding, clicking heat in his chest hadn’t stopped churning since he’d gotten off the bus. It made him feel like the bat would cure everything if he could just grab it and bring it with him to the park. Emmanuel walked toward the bat, then thought better of it. He left his home empty-handed and headed toward Marshall Park.

  “Mister Dunn, please recount the night of July the thirteenth.”

  George Dunn sits on the stand looking sweaty and apologetic. Apologetic in an I-sure-am-sorry-acting-well-within-my-rights-caused-all-this-gosh-darn-hoopla kind of way.

  “Well, I was with my two kids—Tiffany and Rodman—when I saw a gang laughing and doing God knows what outside the library.”

  “Did you at any point feel threatened, Mister Dunn?”

  “Well, I didn’t at first, but then I realized all five of them were wearing black, like they were about to commit a robbery.”

  “Are you suggesting that it was these young people’s clothes that made them a threat to you and your family?” The prosecution has been waiting for this moment for weeks.

  “No, no. Of course not. It was when one of them, the tall one, started yelling stuff at me. I was afraid for my children—Tiffany and Rodman. That’s all I was thinking: Tiffany, Rodman. I had to protect them.” Several members of the jury nod thoughtfully.

  “And what did Mister Heroy yell at you?”

  “I think he wanted my money—or my car. He said, ‘Gimme,’ and then something else.”

  “So at what point did you feel your life was threatened?”

  “I wasn’t about to wait until I saw my life flashing before my eyes. Or Tiffany’s or Rodman’s. I had to act. I did what I did for them.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I went and got my saw.” Dunn’s eyes glow. “I did what I had to do. And you know what—I loved protecting my kids.”

  The jury stares, attentive, almost breathless. Engaged and excited.

  The night was cool. Under an unspectacular sky, Emmanuel felt the story of the Finkelstein Five on his fingers and in his chest and in each of his breaths. He imagined George Wilson Dunn walking free down the courtroom steps as cameras flashed. Emmanuel turned around and went back to his garage where the bat was waiting for him. It was from his Little League days. He’d played second base. The bat was too big for him then, too heavy. Now it was just right. He took it and walked to the park. I’m awake now; Boogie had said something like that while they were on the bus.

  “Looking like a young Hank Aaron, bro,” Boogie said as Emmanuel approached. With Boogie was a middle school biology teacher Emmanuel remembered as Mr. Coder, as well as a girl named Tisha, Boogie’s girlfriend, and another tiny man with glasses. Mr. Coder and the tiny man each wore three-piece suits, navy blue and coal black respectively. Their eyes looked cold and dead. Tisha wore a flowing yellow dress with a festive hat that had a kind of veil that swooped across the front of it. On her left hand was an elegant white glove. Boogie was wearing the same white shirt and slim red tie he’d had on that morning. Gang. That was the word they’d use.

  “My bro Manny has the right idea,” Boogie said after a quick exchanging of names. “Today we’re going all the way. I hope you know how to swing that thing.” Boogie crouched into a stance and rocked an imaginary bat back and forth like Ken Griffey Jr. Then he took a hard step into an invisible fastball that he crushed into the cheap seats. Emmanuel’s body tensed. Boogie laughed and ran around a tiny diamond. “All the way,” he said as he rounded the bases.

  “So you’ve grabbed your chain saw. What happens next?”

  “The tall one, he was so tall, he must have been a basketball player or something, he says he’s not scared of no hedge cutter, and he comes charging at me.”

  “So an unarmed J. D. Heroy came charging at you while you were holding a chain saw—totally unprovoked.”

  “Totally.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Vroom, I had my young children, Tiffany and Rodman, behind me so I could, vroom, vroom, protect them.”

  “What exactly does that mean?”

  “That I revved my saw and got to cutting.”

  “You ‘got to cutting’? Please, Mister Dunn. Please be specific.”

  “Vroom. I cut that basketball player’s head clean, vroom, off.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then three more of them rushed me. They tried to jump me.”

  “And as these children were running toward you, what did you do? Did you ever think to run? Get into your truck and go?”

  “Well, I checked to see if Tiffany and Rodman were safe, and then I went to make sure they stayed safe. I was too worried about my kids to think about running.”

  “And how did you ‘make sure they stayed safe,’ Mister Dunn?”

  “I got to cutting.” George Dunn pantomimes pulling the rip cord of a chain saw several times.

  “You mutilated five children.”

  “I protected my children.”

  Emmanuel was surprised to see he was the only one of the group who carried a weapon. He felt a strange pride.

  “So where are we getting them?” Mr. Coder asked.

  “Right here. We’ll wait in Tisha’s car for a couple to come round trying to use their car as a love box. This is the spot for that,” Boogie said. He pinched Tisha’s side.

  “I want to know who we’re Naming,” Tisha said, swatting Boogie’s hand away playfully. “That matters,” she finished, her voice dropping to seriousness.

  “And what about Fela St. John?” the prosecution asks, finally.

  “Which one is that?” George Dunn replies quickly.

  The prosecuting attorney smiles, her eyes are bright and unflinching. “The seven-year-old girl. The cousin of Akua and Marcus Harris. What about the seven-year-old girl you decapitated with a chain saw?”

  “She looked a lot older than seven to me,” Dunn replies.

  “Of course. How old did you think she was as you pulled the blade through her neck?”

  “Maybe thirteen or even fourteen.”

  “Maybe thirteen or fourteen. And you approached her—you ran after her and murdered her. The reports show you killed her last and that she was found yards from the rest. Did you have to chase her? How fast was she?”

  “She didn’t run anywhere. Tried to attack me, same as the rest of them.”

  “Fela St. John, the seven-year-old girl, tried to attack you, a grown man who she had just watched murder some of her friends and family. And somehow her body was found in a completely different area. Do you think that adds up? Does that sound like a seven-year-old girl to you?”

  “She looked at least thirteen.”

  “Does that sound like a thirteen-year-old girl t
o you, Mister Dunn?”

  “These days,” Dunn says, “you just never know.”

  “Fela,” Emmanuel said. “Fela St. John.” He could see those news photos of her in her Sunday best: a shining yellow dress and bright barrettes in her hair. Then the pictures that had leaked to the internet: her tiny frame dressed in blood, headless.

  “Okay. Now we just gotta wait,” Boogie said. He started walking toward Tisha’s car. The group followed. “When they get going, we’re gonna run up on them, crack open a window, and pull ’em out. No playing around. We’re doing this right.”

  They didn’t have to wait very long. The couple looked young. Emmanuel only glimpsed them for a second as they turned hard into the parking lot. They parked, and soon their silver sedan was bouncing gently. All Emmanuel knew for sure was that one had brown hair and the other blonde.

  “All right, I want to put it in blood real quick,” said Boogie as he pulled a small box cutter from the glove compartment. He handed the cutter to Tisha, who took his right forearm. She brought the blade to his skin and, with surprising ease, cut a large 5 into him. “It feels good, I swear,” Boogie said as he bit his lip and looked into the rearview. Once Tisha was finished, she handed the cutter to Boogie, who scooted closer to her and reached over the middle console so he could carve a 5 into Tisha’s shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay; don’t be nervous,” Boogie said. Tisha took several sharp breaths in, then exhaled in a great wave once he was finished. Emmanuel could see the 5 sprout up in red. Boogie turned in his seat to hand Mr. Coder the blade. “Shit, they look like they might be getting ready to dip, we gotta move.” Boogie took his blade back, then looked at Emmanuel. “Hit those windows,” Boogie said to Emmanuel, who was sandwiched between the two older men. “Then we’ll pull ’em out.”

  Boogie unlocked and opened his door first, then Tisha opened hers. The air that flooded into the car felt charged. Emmanuel waited for the two men sitting on either side of him to open their doors. The group of them walked slowly across the lot. The bopping stopped. They knew. Fela St. John. He said the name to clear his head. Fela St. John. Fela St. John. Emmanuel imagined the fear the couple in the car might be feeling. He imagined each of the Finkelstein Five. Emmanuel ran forward and, with a force he imagined could crush anything, swung his bat into the rear window on the right side. The bat met the glass and clanked. His body was tingling with energy, and where there had been grinding and heat, there was an explosion. “Fela St. John!” he roared, and swung at the window a second time. It shattered, and suddenly the night was aflame with screams.