Hollis Joel Henry Read online

  “You know? It don’t seem like you know, eh,” the constable winced when he chuckled. “You have a fighter in you. You have what you need. Why you think they named you Toozen?”

  This, he knew for sure, “Because I am too peaceful.”

  “What?” The old man nearly found the strength to stand up on the bed.

  “Zen means peaceful in Chinese. So I am too peaceful.”

  And the ailing man produced the healthiest steups. “Who tell you that shit? Brian nuh? Boy your name is Toussaint! You are named for a warrior who fought for his people. Down in Martinique or one of them islands. Brian again with his damn wrong information.”

  Toozen stopped his beach stroll. He closed his eyes to see. He looked over his shoulder without looking. The hunters were close enough. He would have to deal with them. No peaceful day on the beach for him.

  Constable Antoine, like Auntie Heather, like Uncle Brian, and so many more, were dead now. The shitty people killed them. Sometimes they used violence, sometimes neglect. The people got shittier and shittier, so that the Septembers had to run and hide in the bush. And in the bush Toozen finally stopped being so dotish. In the cold night forest he finally understood.

  The flame was beautiful, but it was just a flame. It meant life, like a beating heart or a rising chest. But the harshest heart still beats. What mattered wasn’t the flame, but what was done with it. And he could feel with his mind, listen with his mind, for everything ugly and small and ruthless in a person. In truth the light was nothing more than the flame on a stove, like the old gas stove in the kitchen at the center, cooking a pot of hunger and fear. And bubbling like foam were the lies, lies to protect themselves from the truth of themselves.

  And Toozen realized as well, sitting starving in the forest, going over every cuff, kick, and snarl he had received, remembering everyone from the center that was now gone, contemplating teenage Heather defeated on the beach, that his own pot was bubbling. It was bubbling awful.

  And most importantly of all, Toozen learned that in the same way he could see people’s light with his mind, he could touch it. He could reach out with two fingers of the mind, and clamp over it like a candle flame. Out. He could take a deep breath with lungs of the mind, make a tunnel with lips of the mind, and blow out a whole birthday cake of candle flames. Out. And when he did, finally it was quiet. Finally the assault of stares and words and weapons ended. The boiling pot of ugly thoughts that spilled from shitty people no longer scalded him. Finally it was peaceful. And this was the only way, he realized, to make it peaceful. So he went through the town and made it peaceful. He turned it into the most Zen place.

  And these three that had come for him were interrupting his peace. They were shitty people. Their work was shooting Septembers. They were professional shitty people. He was picking up their broadcast now. They were frightened. They felt weak. It made them murderous with rage. One of the men was reciting prayers in his head. The other man wanted to show them who was the best by shooting Toozen in the face. The woman felt disrespected by both of them because she was a woman. She wanted to prove she was just as good by blowing out Toozen’s heart.

  None of them even considered him a person. He was a dangerous thing made to collect bullets and hot light. All of them felt they were righteous and doing God’s work. They all lied to themselves this way. They hid from themselves the hunger for the money they were going to collect for murdering him. And down deep were the images, Toozen saw, of shots splashing like red water balloons into Septembers, many of them children. So many splashes and they felt each one in their chest and down in their sex. Each eruption was an eruption.

  People not nice. You nice, too too nice. And ah frighten for you. You don’t look like me but you are September too. They go hate you too. They go come for you too. You have to get hard, Toozen. They go mash you up.

  Toozen remembered the words of Auntie Heather, poor Heather. And he smiled and shook his head. He chuckled like Constable Antoine used to do at the dotishness of the young boys of the center.

  “Mash me up? Nah.”

  And he sent three sets of two fingers, projections of the mind, up to the candle flames hiding in the bush. Out. Out. Out.

  Footnotes:

  1 - A “red” person is a Caribbean term for mixed race people, usually of African and European heritage.

  2 - “One time” is often used in the Caribbean to mean “immediately” or “at once.”

  3 - “Passing out” is a slang term for killing.