A Moment of Silence: Midnight III (The Midnight Series Book 3) (70 page)

He obviously wants me to attend some academy in Switzerland, I thought further. That’s what I had gathered as I sat in complete silence at the dinner table. My objective was only to listen and consume an expensive meal in an expensive restaurant where the prices were not printed on the menu. Was that his method of separating his daughter and me by distance? Or, did he and his sister Aunt Tasha and their whole family believe that if I didn’t start
racking up the degrees the way they had, that I needed to be cut out from Chiasa and their family, like a cancer? Or was it worse? Is my Islamic lifestyle so unacceptable to them that they needed to see me humiliated in order to feel comfortable around me, and comfortable around Chiasa? Is this some deep-seated jealousy?

True, I had knocked out a guy at their family barbeque in the Vineyard. But he deserved it. A friend to Xavier, he had tried to kick it to my first wife, asking her to dance and touching her hand after she said no, to coax her to accept his offer. I dropped him. Had to let them all know that both women belonged to me by marriage and choice, theirs and mine.
I love Chiasa, true. She is your relative, true. But still don’t fuck with my first wife, because I love her, true.
They thought that I was cocky, even though I had cooperated and showed up to Clementine Moody’s all-male family breakfast very early that same morning, to squash the beef between Marcus and me. I was quiet and humble. I shook hands with Marcus even though he had tried to stab me in the back before and had actually stabbed me in my chest, inches above my heart. But at the late afternoon big blowout barbeque, male and female, family and friends and Vineyard neighbors gathered. Soon as I arrived with my beautiful Umma, covered in her summer-light sparkling fabrics, and my two beautifully modest wives and little sister, I felt all eyes on me. The men watched me, thinking I was too brazen. It felt like my everyday lifestyle and my wives were getting them green with envy and red with fury, while they fronted it off, glancing and gossiping while flashing fake smiles. I remember. Marcus had Chiasa captivated by his fireworks, a suitcase filled with stink bombs, firecrackers, nigger chasers, sparklers, M80s, and other holiday explosives. I was chilling in the shade, sipping a lemonade when I saw the dude looking, then approaching Akemi as she stood watching the dance steps intently, and admiring the art of the gathering.

They think I’m violent. I think they’re uncivilized. They think they are higher-ups. I think they are spiritual lows. If they could separate me from my women, and infiltrate their minds, they would.
But, because my women are loyal, there was absolutely nothing they could do to break it. It was sad and funny to me. Their women of all ages, from very young to senior elders, were at that big barbeque event, most uncovered and nearly naked. Why focus on my wives, covered and true?

So my standing with my second wife’s family before my lockup was left on shaky grounds.

But now, I was faced with a larger dilemma. The General might have gotten me freed at his daughter’s demand. But if he got me out and off without me becoming a fugitive on the run, or the “most wanted,” I understood that I owed him . . . something. Even though I did not ask him to do it, could have served out my time and come home in a year and a half. At the same time, if I am free, now, without doing the rest of my time, of course I got to be grateful. My praise goes to Allah, of course, but in the physical world, I paid my debts fair and square as well. What about all the men I left behind at Rikers? What about the ones who were waiting for me to drop a line and let them know my whereabouts? What about the handful of people who would be following up to check on me, like my lawyer and Santiaga, who would wait for news of my release, and Ditch, who was also sent to “Little Siberia”? What about DeQuan at Greenhaven and his newsletter that kept all of us aware and connected, and DeSean at Sing-Sing.

My second wife had been asked three questions by her father. According to her manuscript, he had asked her, “Do you understand that he murdered a man and how serious a crime that is?” And he asked her, “Why should I go out of my way to bring him home before he serves his time with the other convicted murderers and criminals?”

Chiasa, clever and swift, had replied softly, “And how many men have you killed, Daddy? Shall we count them? Or, are there too many to count? And doesn’t it matter that he was defending his sister? Or, would it have been better if he was killing for pay? Just obeying orders because it was his occupation, and without any other
real consideration or right reason? Daddy, I’ll bet there are bodies buried beneath every medal on your chest. Aren’t there? But if you were somewhere suffering, like I feel my husband is suffering, it would be unbearable to me. Same as I have waited for you my whole life, I can wait for my husband. But the thought of the element that he is in, and the conditions that he’s enduring, is unbearable for me. And of course he is different than almost all of the men he might be locked up with. He is my husband. When I met him, he had already made twenty thousand more prayers than me. Before I met him, I had never made even one. He had already fasted for nine Ramadans. Now, he has fasted for eleven. He is so good and so beautiful. He is better than me. He loves and lives for his family and he loves me a whole heap, maybe more than you do. He would do anything for me, even give up his life. Won’t you do what I ask of you?”

“He has another wife,” the General had reminded her. As I read, it felt like it was his last desperate attempt to alter her allegiance to me.

“Yes, she is his wife and she is my wife, too.”

I doubted that the General had read her manuscript. Now that I think about it, though, perhaps he was aware of its existence. Perhaps she had used it with the accuracy and precision of her knives and hit the bull right in his eye, so to speak. Perhaps she had threatened him with it. After a lifetime of his not being photographed, and under the protection of his family to keep everything concerning him private, he must have wanted to stop the autobiography of the General’s young daughter from being published. Maybe it pushed him to the point that at the threat of losing his daughter’s loyalty, he felt the shame of abandoning Marcus, his son. Maybe I was somehow ruining his “do-over.”

The off-road vehicle rode rugged off road. We maneuvered over ice and rocks and sticks and even veered around a massive elk. After a bit of a journey, we arrived at a miniature oddly shaped log cabin in the wilderness. There was a Jeep already parked there below the towering trees. Again, I had no idea what was going on. He climbed
out of the Hummer. I followed. I observed that the tiny place had a weird chimney. It was just a pipe popping out through its roof. The smoke was pouring upwards and then dispersed by the intensity of the cold air.

A woman, maybe about twenty-two years young, opened the door and stood in the doorway. She wore a colorful kimono, with no socks or stockings or anything to shield her from the cold. As we entered, I realized that she was wet but seemed unfazed by the intermingling of two extremely different temperatures. She rushed us into the warmth. “Happy New Year!” she said enthusiastically, and in a manner and a tone that led me to believe this was not her first meeting with the General.

The cabin ceiling was so low, the General, who stood six foot eight, had only two inches remaining above his head. I also was strangely close to the ceiling. She was not.

“I’ll take your coats. You may hang your clothes right there.” She pointed out a row of metal hooks lodged in the wall. We both removed our coats and suit jackets. I was following his lead. He began unbuttoning his dress shirt and removing it as well. I paused.

“Come on, son. When in Rome, do as the Romans. When in Alaska, do as the Eskimos; when in Buffalo, do as the Buffalos.” He chuckled. “This place is a
muk’ee
, an Alaskan-style steam bath. You’ve had a hard run for a long time. You’ll need this to extract all that filth from your skin.” Even though we were not in Alaska, the General seemed to like Alaskan things. I noted that fact and the possibility that he is either currently stationed there, or had been stationed there for some extended period of time. Maybe that’s why he was at ease in the Buffalo freeze. He was down to only his boxers and about to come out of those. I adjusted my mind. I moved it right past my recent past and beyond the jail and perversities that I never knew or considered existed before going to jail and observing. I settled my mind way back in the Sudan, in a memory of my southern Sudanese grandfather. He was a huge black-skinned man, same as the General. Grandfather was blacker than black, and
shaded even deeper than the General, who was surely black too. In the Sudan men washed side by side at times, in the flesh. It was natural and clean, there with no suspicions or threats or even a remote thought of anything else.

Fully naked now, both of us men, the General and me, duck-walked to pass through the door that led to the next room, which was only five feet in height. The floor and the ceiling and the walls were all made of wood. We eased out of our duck squat and sat on a long wooden bench facing a wooden stove that was percolating. The metal pipe that sat in the middle of it ran all the way out through an opening in the roof and was so hot it was turning red. In this room, both of our heads were touching the ceiling.

“Is it too hot for you, son?” he asked me. I didn’t say anything. I was adjusting, breathing in the moist heat. I felt it swirling in my lungs and was breathing it back out as all of my pores were opening. I knew he was using that statement to have a double or triple meaning. I knew he was trying to break me, get me under his wing and control, not kill me. But I’m from the desert. I’m from the Sudan, land of the blacks, home of the original pyramids even before Egypt, which was previously known as Kemet, the land of the black-skinned pharaohs, and the region of the prophets Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, peace be upon them, for those who don’t truly know.

“When it gets too hot for you, lie down,” he said. “I got this place reserved for two hours. You should be good, clean, smoked, and steamed by then.” He laughed, and the deepness of his voice echoed.

Crouched there on the bench, sweat pushing out of our pores and glazing our faces and bodies and even soaking our toes, he said, “Let’s begin our negotiation.”

“Let’s do that,” I responded. Even I was eager. I wanted the information, the verdict, and the conclusion. I’d rather be beside his daughter, nude and moist and wet.

“You realize that you are not in the same position as you were
before when you won, and I allowed you to leave Asia with my sixteen-year-old daughter,” he said.

“Right,” I agreed, purposely brief.

“You realize that you committed a serious crime, murder, and you are a convict.”

“I was in the middle of serving my time for that conviction when your people came locked and loaded and interrupted.” He turned and looked at me hard and grimaced.

“Ungrateful. You should be glad my people came and ‘interrupted’ you. Or did you grow accustomed to living like a beast?”

“I’m not confirmed that you have rescued me. You may have sunk me into a deeper legal problem. Convince me. While you’re at it, please tell me exactly what you want.” He was quiet. As the steam rose, shrouding his face, he looked like a gorilla in the mist. At the same time, he resembled my father—his looks, not his content or his style.

“Son, call it what you like. But it is what it is. Since you have no negotiation etiquette, I’ll give you the harsh bottom line. You are a prisoner of war. Do you know what that means? In this war between you and me, you’ve lost this battle. You know the rules of war, son? When you lose, you lose something of great value, something precious to you. The best outcome for a loser is that he becomes a hostage, a servant, a slave, or a dead man.” He pulled a thick string that caused a bell to ring, then moved off the bench and lay out flat on the floor. The swinging door that separated the steam room from the dressing room pushed open. The blond-haired, blue-eyed young white woman walked in, completely nude and carrying a bucket filled with some fluid. She used a wooden bowl to scoop the liquid and began pouring it all over the General’s body from head to toe. It was water. From his grunting out his relief and pleasure, I knew it was cool to cold water to lessen the intensity of the steam heat.

“Lay down, son. You gotta learn when to lay down,” he said. “The wrong timing or the wrong decision could leave you out of breath.” As she poured water on him, her eyes were trained on me. I turned from her gaze. I had already seen it all vividly, her plump
titties and poked out nipples. Her bald pussy lips and thighs and feet.
She’s a trick
, I said to myself. His spoonful of sugar to force down the bad-tasting medicine he was trying to feed me. She left.

“You were purchased, son. A private corporation purchased your sentence and your servitude. Now, they own you.” The door swung back open. The woman reentered the room with two large paper cups filled with water. She handed one to me and placed the other beside him.

“If you lie down, I’d gladly soak you in some cool water,” she said to me with her eyes and lips.

“That’s enough,” the General said to her. She turned and left in an instant, leaving the door in the open position, causing cool air to rush in and lessen the heat. I drank the water. Then my mind was ready.

“I agree. When a man loses a war he becomes a prisoner or a slave. I wasn’t at war with you, though. We both have someone precious in common. The war I was in I won in a sense, because I did what had to be done. I lost in a sense because I got locked up. But I looked at it as me paying the blood price for my actions. My debt to the prison system was three years. That’s in writing. I did seventeen months. I have nineteen months, roughly a year and a half, remaining on my debt to the prison system. If a company purchased that debt, which is something I never heard of, I would owe that company one year and nine months of my time,” I said. Then I rang the bell and lay down.

“Good, now you’re negotiating,” he said. The naked girl reappeared and began pouring the cool water over me from head to toe. It was a relaxing feeling in a tense time. She left.