—
They were having another funeral. Kind of a mix this time—some were suicides; some were not. It had been a bad cancer week.
Milo stood quietly, a safe distance from the fire. The story would wait.
They watched the fire afterward, and when a little time had passed, Milo cleared his throat and said: “Listen.”
The Family Stone turned and looked at him, and eyebrows were raised. Milo had smeared some kind of black shit all over his body. On top of that, he had smeared some kind of white shit, in the shape of bones. He looked like a child’s drawing of a skeleton. They gave him their complete attention.
“I’m going to tell you a story,” he announced. “Afterward I’ll tell you why I think the story is important, but for now just listen. Okay?”
Silence.
“A long time ago,” he began, “on an island somewhat like this one, there lived a man named Jonathan Yah Yah. And Jonathan Yah Yah was one of those people who are afraid of everything. When a bully beat him up in school, he was afraid to fight back, for fear of making things worse. All his life he was in love with Marie Toussaint but never once brought her flowers, because what if she didn’t like him? As long as he kept his love secret, it was possible that she might love him back. If he brought her flowers and she laughed at him, then this illusion would slip away and things would be worse. Later, when he was poor and had a dull job at a toilet junkyard, he was afraid to look for a better job. What if he didn’t find a better job, and his boss found out and fired him? Things would be worse than before. Things could always be worse.
“And then he died.
“They carried him up to the boneyard and buried him. And Jonathan Yah Yah lay there in his coffin, feeling all sad because of the crappy life he had settled for. Because of all the things he hadn’t done, because he was afraid. How silly it was, being afraid like that. Either way he’d be in his grave now. The only difference was, he might have had a fine life to look back on and be proud of. As it was, here he lay with his memories of the toilet junkyard.
“As it happened, Baron Samedi, a powerful voodoo loa, was sitting atop a nearby crypt at that moment, having a cigarette, and he called out, ‘Jonathan Yah Yah! Come up here and talk to me!’
“And Jonathan Yah Yah climbed out of his grave and dusted himself off and waited to hear what the loa had to say.
“Baron Samedi said, ‘Jonathan, you have my sympathy, because you have missed your chance for a happy life. But you also have my contempt,’ and he crushed out his cigarette on Jonathan’s forehead, ‘because you have let fear make your decisions for you. So I am going to do you a favor. And I am also going to do something cruel.’
“Jonathan Yah Yah asked, ‘What is the favor?’
“And Baron Samedi answered, ‘I will allow you one day more to walk on the Earth with the living, to do whatever you wish.’
“Jonathan Yah Yah bowed and was grateful.
“?‘And what,’ he asked, ‘is the something cruel?’
“And Baron Samedi answered, ‘I will allow you one day more to walk on the Earth with the living, to do whatever you wish.’
“And the loa vanished in a great cloud of ash.
“In the morning, the sun came up, and Jonathan Yah Yah walked out through the cemetery gates. He meant to make the most of the day, more than any day before.
“The first thing he did was find the man who had bullied him as a child. He was going to punch the man in the face, but then fear spoke up.
“What if you are jailed? said the fear.
“But Jonathan thought about this and said, ‘Let them jail me. At the end of the day, I will be in my grave!’
“And he punched the man and broke his nose. This felt good, and the man looked afraid to hit Jonathan back and afraid to call for the police.
“?‘I should have done that years ago,’ said Jonathan to himself.
“Next, Jonathan went to the house where Marie Toussaint lived with her husband, and he brought her flowers and gave her a lingering kiss on the lips. He saw a light in Marie Toussaint’s eyes that he liked very much, and he thought, I really should have done that long ago! Then her husband punched Jonathan in the face, but Jonathan didn’t care. ‘I am for the grave, anyhow!’ he said, and bowed his way out.
“Last, Jonathan Yah Yah went to see a cattleman he knew and said, ‘If you would hire me to tend your cattle, I would be attentive and thorough and take pride in doing good work.’
“And the cattleman said, ‘Very well. Come back tomorrow, and I will give you a horse and a rope, and you can work six days a week.’
“On his way back to the boneyard, Jonathan politely quit his job at the toilet junkyard, something he had wanted to do for years.
“As he climbed the hill to the boneyard, Jonathan began to feel a terrible sadness. Why, he thought to himself, there was so little to be afraid of! Pain? Sadness? Death? All these things came to me, anyway, and I have nothing to show for them. How easily I might have had dignity. A family. I might even have been a cowboy.
“It was much harder now, lying in his grave, knowing that he might have lived happily with far less grief than it took to live afraid. That was the cruel thing Baron Samedi had meant for him. And he passed into death that way, full of regret.”
Milo paused.
No one said anything for a bit.
“So,” said Sir St. John Fotheringay, “the thing with the black paint all over you, and the skeleton, that’s meant to illustrate, basically, death, right?”
Milo nodded.
“You’re saying you’re dead,” said Yoko Jones, “and so are we. All of us.”
Milo nodded and smiled.
“It’s about the cartel,” said Jale, speaking from beyond the firelight.
Milo nodded and held up a skeletal hand.
“We are living as slaves,” he said, “and pretending that it’s okay because there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“There’s not,” muttered Fotheringay and a lot of other people.
“We have absolutely no power—” said Old Deuteronomy.
“We have all the power!” interrupted Milo, with unusual force. “Because the cartels and their goons depend completely on us for work. The cartels could not exist if people didn’t choose to work for them.”
“We don’t choose,” said Fotheringay. “They force us!”
“Force?” said Milo. “That’s not possible. What are they going to do, come down here and move our arms and legs for us? They need us to do it ourselves, and we only do it because we are afraid. That’s not force. That’s fear, and it’s a choice.”
The Family Stone chewed on that awhile.
“If we stop working,” said Fotheringay, “they’ll kill us.”
“They can’t kill us all,” answered Milo. “Like I said: They need us.”
“They only have to kill a few of us, is the idea,” said Yoko Jones, “and then the rest of us will chicken out and go back to work. Right?”
“Wrong,” said Milo. “Because we won’t be afraid.”
“The thing is,” said Fotheringay, “I rather think we will be afraid.”