It could not have been Leonie. Those were not pictures of her. Her face was still beautiful, to me, but the hair, the clothes, the wallpaper in the background, all of it was wrong. Rose pattern wallpaper. The motel’s walls had been plain magnolia. She was dead in an old room with rose pattern wallpaper. The clothes were not the same. It was impossible. Leonie, dead in another room, years before she was born.
They left me alone for a long time. They had forgotten whatever string or tie they used to secure the hood and I was able to worm it partway off my head. I lay and looked at the world on its side. Table legs jutting from the wall. A tin mug, coffee spilling up towards the door in the ceiling. The cop had been carrying a paper cup, with a plastic lid. This was an enameled tin mug. A chipped white tin mug with a blue rim. I was lying on a floor covered in white hex tiles. At another time the room had a concrete floor, sealed with some kind of rubbery paint. All the voices whispered in the darkness, all the confessions that had ever been made there.
A tiled floor. The shoes came down from the ceiling and walked around me. Two pairs of wingtip oxfords, highly polished, prodding me with their toes. Argyle socks, wide cuffs on suit pants.
—Make them shine, boy.
The leather toecap, knocking against my mouth and nose.
—Lay off, Gene. You’ll just get blood on them.
They walked around me. They turned out the light. They turned it on again. They asked questions, suggested various things that I must have thought, things I must have done. I stood up, I sat down. They sat and smoked, told me how bored they were. One of them put out his cigarette on my hand.
I screamed.
—Jack, he can’t handle it no more. Look at him.
—See, we know you’re a good boy. Deep down.
—But you’re the type thinks he’s a sport. Hanging round outside the general store.
—Drinking liquor, throwing dice.
—Just sign the paper.
—If you don’t know how to read, we’ll read it to you.
Propped up at the table, the light in my eyes.
—I thought you were one of the good ones. Not like them city niggers.
—They think they’re so slick.
—Please.
—See that, Jack, he can’t handle it no more. Wants to go back to his momma.
I told them I didn’t do it, but my tongue was swollen in my mouth.
—What you say, nigger?
Please not that word. I did not hear that. I am not that.
I looked down at my hands. I have always been looking down at my hands, but as in a dream when you find yourself unable to read text or tell the time, they are vague. Though I see them, though I know they’re there, I can’t concentrate on them to extract the single piece of information I need.
—There’s been a mistake, I say.
I pull up my shirt. The same thing. I can’t tell. I look at my stomach but I can’t tell what color it is. I can’t tell what color I am.
I may dream things cause your heart to weep
—You sick little bastard.
Hood on. And they dragged me downstairs, down into the red maw, into the entrails, and I tried to keep my head up off the concrete steps but I couldn’t and it was slammed again and again, each concussion doubling the roar, the red raging in my ears. I had disappeared. No one knew where I was. No one knew and no one would come to get me.
A clip attached to my fingers, another up under my hood, its metal teeth biting down on my ear. The sound of a handle being cranked, then the electricity, sending my muscles into spasm. I screamed until I was just a mouth. Electricity, the past of the future, primitive and brutal. Screaming, sucking. The clips were pulled off. A high white sound. A high whine.
—Why did you do it?
Hands tugging at my pants, tugging down my filthy underwear.
—Now look at you.
Oh death spare me over.
After a while I lost consciousness.
Then I was back at the desk, cuffed to its leg. A wooden desk, pitted and scratched, my face very close to its surface. A wheedling voice in my ear saying boy let me give you a helping hand. You can talk to me. I know how it is.
I felt so grateful.
—You know what pain is now, am I right?
—Yes.
—You want to be cool? Outside of society? Be careful less you get what you wish for.
—But it wasn’t me. I never wanted this. Carter was the one. The one who wanted to be cool.
—I don’t even know what you’re whining about, boy. Let me tell you how it was. You wanted to have one of those sweet little girls. You wanted to break yourself off a little something something.
—Please don’t talk about her.
—But she wasn’t interested. She told you no. But you went ahead and took some anyway. Those rich fancypants white girls. They got it all. Their parties and tennis lessons. But you deserve something in this life too, am I right?
I can’t see his face.
—Don’t talk about her.
—What you say?
Cranking the handle. The whirring electrical sound. No hands no arms no fingers no feet no cock no guts no teeth or eyes or ears or hair. Just a screaming voice, just panic. Juddering behind the desk. The smell of charred skin, my rigid body a vibrating membrane. No mouth, no tongue, no teeth, no belly, no anus, just a tympanum, amplifying the pain and passing it on.
Back at the desk. The polish pitted and scratched, my head yanked back.
—We’ll try again. You wanted her. You wanted to fuck her so bad. But she’s way out of your league, right?
—Yes.
—Yes what?
—Yes sir.
—Yes sir what?
—Yes sir she’s out of my league.
—That’s right. Say it one more time for the Captain.
—She’s out of my league.
—Yet you wanted to fuck her all the same.
—Yes.
—Yes what, you little punk?
—Yes sir, Captain, I wanted to fuck her all the same.
—You piece of shit. They are going to turn you out on the farm, you know that? You are going to take it from everybody. Say to me, I wanted some.
—I wanted some.
—Say, I wanted to stick it in her. I wanted to do that rich white girl in her every hole.
—I wanted.
—That’s right. And it’s what you did.
—I wanted to stick it in her.
—And?
—And she wouldn’t let me.
—Now we’re getting somewhere.
—So you’re in the room with this fancy piece of heiress pussy and what do you do?
—I stick it in her.
—That’s right.
—I fuck her.
—That’s right, boy. You fucked her. Oh, you did. You fucked her good.