The sketch had already done that to me. It was of a young black couple, sweaty and hard at work. You couldn’t tell what they were doing except that you knew it wasn’t sex but the point was that in the midst of their work, they were looking up and sharing a private smile of satisfaction and accomplishment. It was all about hope and faith and hard work and pride and it was wonderful.
But Flash Phil thought it wasn’t “black enough.” Flash Phil was our local crime boss. Every shadow neighborhood, even one as deserted as ours, had a chief pig. Flash Phil was ours. He ran a little dope, a little stolen merchandise, a few junky hookers. He spent a lot of time driving around in a purple Caddy convertible, stopping occasionally to shove people around. He was a coward and a bully, but also six foot four.
He wore a huge black Abraham Lincoln stovepipe hat with a purple feather in it.
When the word came through that Flash Phil thought the preliminary sketches on the side of the building weren’t “black enough,” we all knew what he meant. There were lots of other murals in the area, all of them depicting the inevitable misery of blacks and other minorities under the heel of white racism and white money. Poor downtrodden classes with no chance of success no matter what, so if the game is rigged anyway, why not get it while the getting is good? Drop out of school and join Flash Phil and get high and . . .
You get the idea. A coward and a bully, yes. But not stupid. Flash Phil was a crafty and cunning politician.
The first week the penciled outlines were erased; Amber redrew them. A week later they were rubbed out again; Amber redrew them again. A week after that our pitiful scaffolding was trashed and we helped Amber with carpentry.
There were ways Flash Phil could have finished it sooner but he liked once-a-week attacks because they helped draw the whole business out longer. There was a lot of tension in the air and fewer people willing to publicly support the mural and in the middle of it all poor sweet naive Amber, who thought Flash Phil would stop if he could just get enough done between vandalisms to show how pretty it was going to be.
The fourth week Amber spent almost twenty-four hours a day on the scaffolding, painting like mad under Coleman lanterns and sparking jury-rigged spotlights, and managed to complete almost half of it.
It really was lovely—anyone could see that—and when another week went by without trouble it looked like Amber’s strategy had worked.
It was getting dark the night I found Flash Phil and his punks laughing and talking on the curb in front of our building. We nodded to each other as I stepped inside and trotted up the steps. At my door I heard weeping above me and knew, right then, I knew. On the landing above I found a sobbing Simone cradling a very bloody Amber. Not seriously hurt but slapped around plenty.
It was all very strange. I had never been much of what I thought of as a tough guy. In point of fact, I was scared of Flash Phil. But the next thing I knew I was skittering full-speed down the steps. I rocketed out of the building’s entrance across the sidewalk and, still holding the sack of groceries I had been carrying, slammed into Flash Phil like a locomotive. He was too smart to carry a gun and he never got near his knife. I broke his nose, blackened and closed his eyes, knocked out some of his teeth. I kicked and butted and bit and gouged and screamed and roared and seconds later I had won.
And when I stood back up with Flash Phil unconscious on the street and his great black hat gray and squashed ^eneath my boot, I sneered at his punks and twirled his purple feather in my hand, gone completely mad, and asked: “Anybody else?” and just then the streetlamps came on.
They ran.
I knew it wasn’t over. So did everyone else, and they told me so. I remained quiet, keeping to myself. I slept with a tire tool, when I could sleep at all, and resolved not to wait for hurt.
When Flash Phil reemerged bandaged and angry three nights later it was in the abandoned lot next to our block’s only apartment house. As reported, he was with two new—and larger—goons. I watched from the darkness a few feet away for several moments while they passed around joints and wine and muttered vengeance. Then I stepped forward and bashed the tire tool against the side of Goon #l’s neck. Goon #2 got the pointy end through the cheek, and there was Flash Phil, wide-eyed and mouth agape, reaching for a pistol. I broke the reaching wrist and the collarbone above it and his jaw and a lot of the rest of him and then had some other short vague struggle with one of the goons and then . . .
Then it was over and they were groaning at my feet and above me, high above me, came the sounds of wild cheering and applause from the people in the apartment-building windows and seconds later they were surrounding me and smiling but looking at me kind of funny and some time after that a cop was standing in front of me gently taking the tire tool from my hand and pointing out, just as gently, how it would be better for me to sit down seeing as how there was a knife sticking out of my chest.
Ever the hero, I fainted dead away.
It wasn’t that bad a wound, but any chest wound is serious. I was in the hospital three weeks. I had to answer some friendly questions, but there were no charges brought and some of the many people who came to visit were the cops from our beat. Almost everyone else came as well but I think only Simone guessed why I was so quiet.
The mural was finished but covered because they had decided the unveiling should be a joint celebration for Amber and me. There were tables set up with food and wine and claps on the back and then the mural was released into the glare of those shorting spotlights.
The mural was incredibly beautiful and wildly cheered and Amber and I were wildly cheered and people were sweet to me and warm and full of compliments and I stood there and took it. I took every bit of it. I even smiled.
When it was finally over and everyone had gone home and I was sure no one was around I grabbed up all my paints and charcoals and materials and all my sketches and went to the river bridge and threw them off and sat down and cried and cried and cried and still found no relief from the facts.
For the facts were too hard. What I was, was too clear within them. What I was and what I would always be. The mural, Amber’s mural, was not simply good, it was better than anything I could ever have hoped to accomplish. Sure, I had made it possible. But Amber had made the mural. And I didn’t want to
make murals possible. I wanted to make the murals.
But what I could do, I had already done.
1 moved out that night and wandered back to my white-semirich-kid life. I got into a little karate and into a little shooting. Then one day, at a Horseclans convention, I saw a sword I liked and I bought it.
7
The next night we cracked Smada free.
It was easy, once they told me the rules, and yes, there were rules to the Dead. The Ormans hadn’t told me about them because they simply assumed that I, Felix, being Smada’s One and therefore his best rough-and-tougher, would already know them. Wrong.
Most of the rules were pretty simple. They even made sense, in a Hollywood sort of way. For one thing, they could only be killed by decapitation, which I had already figured out the hard way, or by flame. They were really scared of fire. For another, they could only'come out at night—or at least out of direct sunlight.
Like I say, it made a sort of macabre sense, particularly the part about their victims inevitably rising to become one of the Dead themselves unless cremated.
I really was in a zombie movie.
The procession carrying Smada was technically that of the Lady Gor, also on her way to the Keep of the Dead. Her carriage was really just a huge, intricately carved wooden box the size of a motor home drawn by a dozen oxen almost as large. She was in the rear, surrounded by half a dozen mounted swordsmen. At the front of the little parade was the wagon for the Dead. It was huge and flat black, enabling the Dead to be transported during daylight hours.