The Sacrifice (36 page)

Every time he went out, driving slow under the speed limit so the cops would not stop him, he could see them—their cop-eyes following
him
.

Nigger motherfucker don’t have the balls to murder us, think we don’t know it?

Laughing openly at Anis and other black men on the street. The cops were high on being hated, it made them excited to know how the residents of Red Rock yearned to murder them but had not the courage.

One of the old men saying to Anis
You think you’d be ashamed livin here. That shit you take from them.

The old man scratching his crotch, laughing. Most of his teeth were missing. His jaws appeared misaligned. Anis felt the sick horror, the old man was Death. Liver spots on his skin you could see darker than his skin like paint-spots. Old man lived on the street or in vacant houses with his mattress, shopping cart and crap. A veteran of some war—“world” war—he’d had medals, a long time ago—Anis vaguely remembered unless it was another old bastard like a vulture fixing nasty eyes on him laughing at him. Then he’d start coughing, wheezing and scraping up clots of phlegm, Anis turned aside in disgust and walked away.

That evening, he’d come home early. And there was Sybilla in the kitchen rinsing dishes in the sink sulky and careless like she’s tryin to break them to spite her mama in the next room watching TV. And seeing Anis (she ain’t expected to come home so early) she shut off the faucets and hurried upstairs to her room like a scared cat and
Anis came after quiet-like not raising his voice.
Why’re you hiding in here?
he’d asked and the girl mumbled she
was not hiding
.
Why are you acting like you got some secret from your daddy?
and the girl mumbled she wasn’t acting like anything, she was just minding her business. And Anis said
Why’d you run upstairs, didn’t say hello to your daddy?
and when the girl not answer backing off and hiding her face he’d asked
Why’re you acting like some guilty bitch? Won’t meet your daddy’s eyes like you’re afraid of—what?
And the girl saying in her soft-scared voice she wasn’t guilty of anything, tried to lift her eyes to Anis’s face he saw this was true, and felt sorry for her, she was just a little girl begging him so. Saying
If I go to school and they see I am beat-up they will ask me about it like last time and send a social worker here and Mama will get in trouble and blame me and I ain’t done nothing wrong Daddy, I swear.

There was ’Netta calling up the stairs anxious and neither of them was hearing her.

So Anis had mercy on the girl seeing she called him
Daddy
, that time.

Nothing was so clear to him, he must kill the enemy.

Yet, if he began to kill the enemy but not enough of the enemy, they would kill
him
.

The Angel of Wrath chided him for his cowardice. Muttering to himself cursing as he dumped stinking garbage into the rear of the truck. The fury in his face was such, the other men kept their distance from Anis Schutt.

He’d see a cop cruiser on the street, and freeze where he stood. His hands like claws inside the smelly gloves twitching, so badly he wanted to strangle those throats.

His mind was clouded. He’d stop at the Blue Star tavern and wake in some other place.

Then back on the sanitation truck. The smell of it, even in cold weather when the garbage was frozen, nothing could lessen the stink of the truck, in his hair, his clothes, his lungs. Seeing then a police cruiser pass and the faintness would come over him, once he’d fallen from the truck onto the street, the men shouted for the driver to stop and they hauled him to his feet, and his vision was blotched like strobe lighting but he summoned back his strength, and insisted he was all right.

Jesus help me, I have got to kill some of them. They comin to kill me an my children.

Jesus give me a sign? How I can do this one thing, to put my heart at rest.

At the Blue Star seeing on TV how Pascayne cops are the highest paid in New Jersey, on account of the police union contract negotiated eighteen years ago. Cops making extra money working overtime. Cops with seniority retiring with such high pensions, the city ain’t got enough money for schools, road repair, sewers, clinics, finishing buildings started ten years ago.

He’s waiting for a sign. Gripping the steering wheel, and his arthritic hands like claws. On Camden Avenue the marchers were still passing. Anis squinting and staring through the badly cracked side-window of the car, amazed there were so many. Feeling the reproach
You a man, you be walking, too. Ten-Thousand-Man March and Anis Schutt sittin on his ass, too weak to be a man.

Traffic was edging forward, but again stopped. He saw a street sign—
EAST VENTOR
. Dead-end by the river. That nasty smell of the river. Boarded-up warehouses and factories. Shouts on the street, cops surrounding a vehicle ahead. Anis steeled himself waiting for gunfire thinking
If the first shot is fired, that will be a sign
.

He hadn’t practiced with the gun. Didn’t know if the damn thing would fire.

His heart pained him, thinking of Lyander. Him and Lyander
hadn’t seen each other in almost two years, news came to Anis the boy had been shot dead. For a long time he didn’t think about it, and he didn’t let the woman talk to him about it. (A woman has a way of slipping inside a man’s grief like a hand inside his trousers, once it’s there, you aint goin to push it away even if you don’t want it. But it’s disgusting to you, and the woman goin to pay.) But now, since Sybilla an all that, he’d been thinking about Lyander and how the boy had died in the street, and the last voices he’d heard had had to be white cops shouting to one another
Nigger down! Finish him.

And later they would say
Refused to throw down his weapon. Firing shots. Ordered him to stop but he would not comply.

Later they would add
Evidence of drug psychosis.

Shameful to Anis, he’d lived so long in this city, and such a coward.

Even now he’s thinking with a part of his brain if he can turn the damn Plymouth around, drive back where he came from, take that backstreet by the river by the railroad yard then uphill to, what is it, Depp Street, maybe the Ten-Thousand-Man marchers are past that block of Camden, and the cops have opened it . . . Trying to turn the car around and both rear wheels jolting up over a curb, there’s a fierce-looking white cop pounding the hood with a billy club and another cop shouting at him from a few feet away. God damn he hadn’t seen them.

The cop with the club is rapping hard on the windshield like he’d like to break it. Telling Anis to put his hands where they can see them, on the steering wheel. But the other cop shouting for him to lower his window.

Anis frozen-still behind the wheel. Cops shouting at him the way cops do, repeating their words louder, angrier-sounding and Anis’s brain like something stunned with a sledgehammer—not sure what to do except he knows it’s better to stay still than to move.

Sweating, and his heart pounding with the strain. They were
shouting at him through the window asking him for his driver’s license and vehicle registration. How many times Anis has been stopped by cops in Red Rock and across the river! Each time like it will be the last time, you make a wrong move.

Not sure how to react. Shut-mouthed, silent like he didn’t know the language. Or, quick to obey.

Silent might be mistaken for resistance. Quick-to-obey might be mistaken for mockery.

You didn’t want to move too much, or too quickly. White cops anxious they gon be shot-at tonight and primed to shoot first.

The (older, thick-face) cop yelling at him to lower his window was louder than the other (younger, pimply-face) cop and standing closer to him so Anis lowered the window moving slowly and deliberately. The kind of old-style window you crank by hand, and that takes time. Black man, thick-neck black man in smelly work clothes, scarred-looking face, heavy-lidded eyes, mouth not smiling—the cops were excited having cornered their prey, but like their prey they could not know precisely what would come next.

Slow-moving like a crippled old animal. Yet in the predators’ eyes, a dangerous old animal.

Anis considered asking the angry cops what the “parade” was all about?—shaking his head to indicate he wasn’t one of
those blacks.

Considered asking them if there was some way he could get back to Depp Street, or was all the streets blocked by that damn “parade” . . .

The Smith & Wesson .45-caliber revolver heavy in the left-leg deep pocket of his work-pants. He’d had the revolver in the glove compartment, now in his pocket. Moving the gun from the closet to the car, from the car to his pocket had to mean something. Seeing the posters—WHITE COPS DID THIS. He’d come to believe—almost—that
white cops had raped his daughter like everybody say
and
that fact was unbearable. A man just could not live with it, and be a man.

The button on that pocket had pulled off long ago. Say he reached into the pocket, seized the gun, could he raise it and fire, before the cops shot him? Brain calculating the odds even as he was smiling now, trying to smile at the cops, friendly-seeming lifting his hands so the cops could see yes, OK, he did not have a weapon and did not appear to be the kind of black man who carried a weapon, except of course there is no black man who does not carry a (hidden, deadly) weapon, and the cops knew this, they’d been trained to know this, sharp-eyed, excited and eager.

Yet, they’d allowed Anis Schutt to reach into his rear pocket—slowly—and to remove his wallet. In the midst of jammed traffic, a dozen cops in view in just this section of the street, red lights flashing. Allowed Anis to open the wallet with his splayed fingers, and fumble for the laminated New Jersey license, miniature photo of a glaring black man likin to rip out your throat with his teeth. And—slowly, his lower back seizing with pain—reaching over to the glove compartment, to fumble for the registration. Closely they watched Anis through the lowered car window and through the smudged windshield as one might watch an animal not only deadly-dangerous but unpredictable and Anis continued smiling at them, feeling muscles in his lower mouth twitching and straining against the assault of pain.

The cop’s voice, now he wasn’t shouting, sounded high-pitched, querulous. “‘Anis Schutt’? Seems like that’s a name I know.”

Anis sat quietly. Arms on the steering wheel now, big-knuckled hands visible.

The cops talked together loudly, like Anis was deaf.

“Y’heard of him? ‘Schutt’? We know him, do we?”

“Yah. ‘Schutt.’ He’s—ya know who he is?—the father of ‘Syb’la Frye.’”

“Fuck he is! Jesus.”

Still, Anis sat quietly. The pain in his back was suspended as if in anticipation of a greater pain, from another source, to which the afflicted man must give one hundred percent of his attention.

“Mr. Schutt, you the father of that girl? ‘Syb’la Frye’?”

Shook his head
no.

Shrewdly the younger cop said, “You livin with her, though? Says here ‘939 Third Street’—right?”

Shook his head
no.

“No? You ain’t? Changed residence, and this driver’s license ain’t up-to-date?”

Anis mumbled an inaudible reply. The cops asked him to repeat what he’d said so he repeated what sounded like
Just moved out Officers. Meanin to change that.

The younger cop took the auto registration to a nearby cruiser to run a check. Anis was feeling light-headed the way you’d feel if small strokes of lightning were striking your brain. Reasoning
So many people here, they ain’t gon just shoot me. Too public.

The narrow street was jammed. Behind Anis, a city bus was stalled. Vehicles were being abandoned. Drivers were shouting at one another. Cops were yelling, brandishing billy clubs. There were no pistols in sight. Not yet.

The old police tactic, from union marches of long-ago, Anis had been hearing all his life, is the cops fire at a “sniper”—the sniper “returns fire”—cops discharge as much ammunition as they can, hundreds of rounds of bullets, as long as ten minutes solid firing, in the direction of the rooftop, the building, the hiding place where the “sniper” is crouched. You’re in the “cross fire” you hit the pavement and lay right there, don’t even try to crawl away.

Or even if you lay still not breathing sometimes they shoot you anyway. Cop bullets flying wild.

Cops blocked his view. Anis couldn’t see the marchers on Camden Avenue. But he believed they were still marching—hundreds, thousands of marchers—ten thousand? And all for justice, for Sybilla Frye?

Again he thought
They ain’t gon shoot me this time. Feels like, they gon let me go.
A sensation of disappointment came over him though also relief. Though also dismay. Fuck!—he’d have to return to his old, debased life. Have to crawl into his skin like crawling into a befouled bed.

Now came again the God damn spine-pain, like a vise gripping his lower back, obliterating all thought.

The second cop returned. Anis had been thinking the cop would just hand back the registration and the driver’s license and tell Anis Schutt to sit his ass still in the vehicle until the street was opened up, but turned out, both cops had more questions to ask and there was an excitement in their voices a signal for trouble.

Where was Anis headed. Where did he come from. Where did he work. Where did he live if it wasn’t Third Street.

And where’d he been at the time his “daughter” had been kidnapped in October.

To these answers, Anis mumbled replies. In the midst of his mumbled words stuttering, stammering like a terrible quake beginning deep inside his body and moving out. Last time they’d stopped him, Anis had not stuttered, he was sure.

Looking at their prey with contempt but also pity. If he’d been a true black man like a Kingdom of Islam warrior he’d have shown it by now, the white cops is thinking.

Now ordering Anis Schutt to release the lock of his trunk, which Anis did with careful, deliberate motions. In his rear-view mirror he saw the younger of the cops staring into the trunk, moving a few items, sour-faced seeing nothing suspicious. The cop then peering
into the rear of the car, saw nothing suspicious yet in loud voices both cops ordered Anis to step out of his vehicle.