Damned If I Do
Authors: Percival Everett
damned if i do
Other Books by Percival Everett
Percival Everett by Virgil Russell
Assumption
I Am Not Sidney Poitier
The Water Cure
Wounded
American Desert
A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond As Told to Percival Everett and James Kincaid
Erasure
Glyph
Frenzy
Watershed
Big Picture
The Body of Martin Aguilera
God’s Country
For Her Dark Skin
Zulus
The Weather and the Women Treat Me Fair
Cutting Lisa
Walk Me to the Distance
Suder
The One That Got Away
damned
if
i
do
STORIES
Percival Everett
Graywolf Press
Copyright © 2004 by Percival Everett
This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, Amazon.com, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.
Published by Graywolf Press
250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55104
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-55597-411-4
Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-048-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2004104191
Cover design: VetoDesignUSA.com
Cover photographs: Digital Vision
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications in which these stories have appeared:
Callaloo, Fiction International, Idaho Review, New York Stories, Story,
and
Triquarterly.
“Age Would Be That Does” also appeared in
Calling the Wind: Twentieth-Century African American Fiction,
ed. Clarence Major (New York: HarperCollins, 1993).
“Randall Randall” appeared in
Ancestral House: The Black Short Story in the Americas and Europe,
ed. Charles H. Rowell (New York: Westview Press, Perseus Books Group, 1995).
“The Appropriation of Cultures” also appeared in
The
Pushcart Prize XXII,
ed. Bill Henderson with the Pushcart Prize editors, 1998.
For Gene and George Rochberg
Contents
The Devolution of Nuclear Associability
damned if i do
The Fix
Douglas Langley owned a little sandwich shop at the intersection of Fourteenth and T streets in the District. Beside his shop was a seldom-used alley and above his shop lived a man by the name of Sherman Olney, whom Douglas had seen beaten to near extinction one night by a couple of silky-looking men who seemed to know Sherman and wanted something in particular from him. Douglas had been drawn outside from cleaning up the storeroom by a rhythmic thumping sound, like someone dropping a telephone book onto a table over and over. He stepped out into the November chill and discovered that the sound was actually that of the larger man’s fists finding again and again the belly of Sherman Olney, who was being kept on his feet by the second assailant. Douglas ran back inside and grabbed the pistol he kept in the rolltop desk in his business office. He returned to the scene with the powerful flashlight his son had given him and shone the light into the faces of the two villains.
The men were not overly impressed by the light, the bigger one saying, “Hey, man, you better get that light out of my face!”
They did however show proper respect for the discharging of the .32 by running away. Sherman Olney crumpled to the ground, moaning and clutching at his middle, saying he didn’t have it anymore.
“Are you all right?” Douglas asked, realizing how stupid the question was before it was fully out.
But Sherman’s response was equally insipid as he said, “Yes.”
“Come, let’s get you inside.” Douglas helped the man to his feet and into the shop. He locked the glass door behind them, then took Sherman over to the counter and helped him onto a stool.
“Thanks,” Sherman said.
“You want me to call the cops?” Douglas asked.
Sherman Olney shook his head. “They’re long gone by now.”
“I’ll make you a sandwich,” Douglas said as he stepped behind the counter.
“Really, that’s not necessary.”
“You’ll like it. I don’t know first aid, but I can make a sandwich.” Douglas made the man a pastrami and Muenster on rye sandwich and poured him a glass of barely cold milk, then took him to sit in one of the three booths in the shop. Douglas sat across the table from the man, watched him take a bite of the sandwich.
“What did they want?” Douglas put to him.
“To hurt me,” Sherman said, his mouth working on the tough bread. He picked a seed from his teeth and put it on his plate. “They wanted to hurt me.”
“My name is Douglas Langley.”
“Sherman Olney.”
“What were they after, Sherman?” Douglas asked, but he didn’t get an answer.
As they sat there, the quiet of the room was disturbed by the loud refrigerator motor kicking on. Douglas felt the vibration of it through the soles of his shoes.
“Your compressor is a little shot,” Sherman said.
Douglas looked at him, not knowing what he was talking about.