My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 20

The car jerks forward and the light
from the church follows it far, far in
the distance….
The headlights strike the billboard.
The sign is old and worn. They shove
Fon from the car and push him
beneath the wooden structure. The
night crowds in around the sharp line
of the car’s headlights. They make
torches with the rags.
“All right, nigger, git on your knees.”
Gus wraps his bloody fist in a rag.
Fon—slumped slightly, his right hand
touching the ground lightly by his
right knee—does not blink in the
direct light of the headlights.Nor does
he look in the faces of the men around
him. They are lighting torches and
threatening him. Only Nillmon speaks
to him. Fon watches the trees and the
long shadows of the beams.
“Boy, what you mean, that rock come
from the sky? I thought you said your
brother chucked it.”
“My brother shoots only arrows.”

“I’m not goin to Hell,” says Fon.
Ed Frickerson stuffs the dynamite
in Fon’s rear pocket. Gus lights the
last torch.
Nillmon seems confused. He eyes Fon.
This nigger still ain’t broke.
“Nigger, you mighty popular, eh? You
know how to pray?”
“Prayer is for people who want help,”
says Fon.
A torch is pushed near Fon’s feet.
“Where’s your goddam brother now?”
Fon does not answer rig ht away, but
seems to watch the flickering of the
shadows from the torches. High in the
heavens now, a star comes into view
from the clouds. A thin glow from a
hidden moon peeps ominously from a
horizon of clouds.
“My brother is in the trees somewhere,
now.”
Gus slaps Fon. One of the lights of the
car goes out. Something has broken it.
A puff of blue smoke sails away from
the dying light. One of the torches falls,
and Nillmon, standing next to Fon,
thinks he hears a man’s voice moan.
“Gimme the pistol.” Nillmon turns to
see Gus — the pistol falling from his
hand — stumbling, clutching an arrow
which has completely pierced his neck.

Suddenly the other light explodes,
and the only light is the darting flame
from the dying torches on the ground.
Nillmon leaps to where he thinks he
saw the pistol fall….
But as he leaps he finds that he is falling,
grabbing a sharp pain in his neck.
Silence.
In the distance a dog barks and Fon
hears the faint sound of a cowbell. He
clutches his side and walks deliberately
over to each torch, stomps it out with
bare feet. He thinks, That was mighty
close. But it is better this way.To have
looked at them would have been too much.
Four centuries of black eyes burning into
four weak white men…would’ve set
the whole earth on fire. Not yet, he thinks,
not yet….He turns toward the levee
where a light in the night reaches out
to him and to the great distance
between him and the far blinking of
the stars. The light from the church
reaches out almost to him. They are
expecting him back….When the tower
is finished…One more black stone.
He will be able to see how to walk back.
A fragment of the night, kicking, kicking,
at the gnawing teeth of the earth.

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

“Move out!” shouts Gus.

“Goddammit, you gonna let your
brother go, while you go to Hell?” asks
Ed Frickerson.

19

Suddenly they see Fon inside, and a
cheer leaps up from them such as the
white men have never heard. A sound
of distance and presence, a shaking
in the air which comes from that
invisible song, that body of memory,
ancient. A long sustained roar from the
bottom of the land, rising, rising….