I knew those faces, versions of those faces. I’d seen many of those faces on the family pool house wall. I forgot about food and got up from the table to look around. Leaning over other diners, I began to cause annoyance and consternation. I was eventually made to leave, thrown out physically by a burly cook, but not before I had seen a photograph of Judge Wilbur as the winner of a 1932 fishing competition and another, dated 1929 but otherwise uncaptioned, tucked away on the wall near the bathroom. It was taken high on a ridge. A river was visible down below. Three white men stood in postures of ease and authority, one with folded arms, a second with his hands in his pockets, the third cradling a shotgun. Behind them, scattered through the frame, were black workers, carrying spades and picks or paused in the action of wheeling barrows along a duckboard path. They were dressed in convict’s stripes.
Captain Jim, Captain Jack and Judge Wilbur, up on the levee. Starting the family firm.
Sprawled in the dirt outside the shack, I could feel the earth rising up, the cold wet earth of the levee. These were Carter’s people. This was the earth they came out of. I remembered something Leonie had said, about grandpa somebody or other moving the family up to DC, so the firm could bid for Federal Government contracts. Already big by then, Wallace Construction became a money machine. Then, years later, the DC children took the next step and moved to New York, to convert all that capital into culture. An invisible thread connected Carter and Leonie to Charlie Shaw. I thought of the buildings I had lived in, the expensive things I had handled and consumed. Whose work had paid for them? I peered at the faces, the black men with their picks and shovels, but they were too small, too blurred to recognize. I could not see if he was one of them.
I walked back into town. Whenever I heard the sound of engines or saw headlights in the distance, I climbed into the ditch and hid. As I reached the suburbs, the light began to fail. I walked the blocks until I saw the red HOTEL sign. As I grew closer, I kept it in view, or perhaps it kept me in view. The sign seemed to follow me as I walked the blocks. Sometimes I carried a box of records, sometimes I carried a guitar. I went to sleep under a carport, picking up my sleeping bag when the flashing blue lights came around. Later I walked to Farish Street and found a spot in an abandoned building. I lay, curled up on a broken-down cardboard box, listening to Wolfmouth prowling in the alley outside. Step shuffle switch, step shuffle switch. Wolfmouth, Papa Charlie, Charlie Shaw, crossing the threshold, walking out of the picture frame. For much of that day, he had left me alone. Now he seemed closer than ever. As the thought formed in my mind, the spray-painted walls around me were lit by a flickering light and I sat up in a state of terror to watch him slowly come cakewalking in, a lantern in one hand and a silver-tipped cane in the other. He bowed with a courtly flourish. I could not move. His teeth were like tombstones, his great mouth ready to swallow me up. He swung his cane, pointed it at me.
—Sam, you sure am look like you got the miseries.
There was another name for what I’d got. On the floor beside me was a cracked sliver of mirror. Wolfmouth put the lantern down and handed me a champagne cork, which he produced from his pocket like a magician with the card I’d just been thinking of. I started to burn it on the flame. I had always been burning it on the flame, turning it round so it seared on all sides, just as I’d done many times before. Wolfmouth held up the lantern so I could see as I smeared my face. When I was finished, he examined my work, first one cheek and then the other, careful not to dirty his white kid gloves. He laughed his great hearty laugh and stretched like an athlete limbering up for a race. Then he stuffed his hands into my mouth, pulling my jaws wide open, then wider still, until I was in excruciating pain. I tried to scream but I could not, and he stretched my jaws until they cracked, the top and bottom hanging a whole hands-width apart. He peered inside like a dentist or a plumber examining a pipe, then stretched some more. Even that wasn’t enough for him. He pulled ever wider until he was able to fit, first one patent-leather pump, then a knee, then a second shoe and a second knee into my mouth, and finally it was the work of a moment to climb inside entirely and disappear down my gullet like an eel down a chute. My jaws snapped back in place. Now I was the horse and he was the rider.
Somewhere near the river. Frogs croak from a swamp at the edge of the field where we’re set up. Kerosene torches spit and gutter at the four corners of the stage.
Spat spit. Spitting, guttering. I am sitting by the tent, as I always do, and as always a crowd of white children is watching as I put on the greasepaint and the cork. I make my eyes wide, my mouth wider. I show my pearly white teeth. I make them squeal and run.
The comedian comes on, to tell the story about the loyal old slave who got lost in the war.
—Lord I am Found Again! I done brought you a whole mess o’new niggers, Marse George! Some folks tell me dey is free, but I know dey b’long ter Marse George.
Putting on the burnt cork. Age of seventeen years, singing “He’s In The Jailhouse Now” before the pitch doctor comes on to sell his Congo salve. The learned professor has consented to share with you a secret discovered at peril of his life! Purifies the blood and cleanses the stool!
I left after a season. I could not hear myself anymore. I could not see myself in the mirror.