God'll Cut You Down (34 page)

“You’re worried she’s going to give the flowers back,” I say, “and not accept them?”

“No!” he spits defiantly. “Hey, man—I don’t get no flowers back. They gonna keep that shit, you hear? Just so they can tell their friends, ‘He sent me some flowers,’ you hear?”

An old man waddles through the pool gate. He spots me in prime gazebo position and pulls a disappointed face.

“Send that shit to Momma, you hear?” he says. “And my grandma. But fuck a bitch.”

“Okay, not for a bitch, but for your mum and grandma?”

“I don’t want to get out there on a limb with this female I’m talking about,” he says. “’Cause she’s got a motherfuckin’ chain saw and could cut the limb, right? You hear?”

Vincent wavers back and forth on whether to send flowers or not. The old man keeps darting eyes at me to try to psychologically drive me out of the gazebo.

Vincent finally locks in. He
will
send flowers to the mystery girl.

“Make sure they’re some roses, man,” he says. “How are you gonna send them?”

“I’m just going to drive them over.”

“Get the fuck out of here!” He laughs.

“Why? What’s wrong with driving there with flowers?”

“There ain’t nothing wrong with it, I’m just sayin’ this is how I want you to show up. Have a little card I wrote. I mean I’ll write some playa shit on the card and you read it to her, but it’ll be my words.”

“Okay. Yeah, sure.”

“You should say, ‘I work for Vincent McGee and he just told me to deliver these flowers because I’m his secretary.’”

I laugh. “Okay.”

“Where are you going to get the flowers from?”

“I can look it up on the Internet.”

“I don’t want you to go pulling no flowers out of the yard and take them to her, you hear? I want the romantic type—like it popped in my head that I wanna send her some flowers and I’m thinking about her and shit.”

Vincent tells me to prepare my pen. This is what he wants jotted on the card. I pull my yellow notepad onto my lap in the lounge chair. I can hear Vincent’s feet plod around the prison cell.

“I need a rider . . .”
Vincent dictates.

“What’s a rider?”

“You just write it!” Vincent says. “And she’s gonna know what I’m talking about.
I need a rider. Somebody who understands me. And understands what I’m going through. I need to be with somebody. Together.
You hear?”

I scribble fast.

“Strike that out,” Vincent now instructs. “Entirely. Okay, I’m gonna start over. Tell her,
I’m that nigga
—No, put,
I’m the
man
to hold it down. When you need a shoulder to lean on, you hear? I’mma be there when you needed it. I’mma be there. But at the same time, when I need the same thing, I’mma need you to be there.
Read that back.”

“I’m the man to hold it down,” I say. “When you need a shoulder to lean on, you hear?”

“Hold up!” Vincent snaps. “Why’d you put in ‘you hear’? I didn’t say no motherfuckin’ ‘you hear.’”

I strike out
you hear
.

“And,”
Vincent continues dictating, feet clomping around the cell floor,
“we’ll enjoy all the good experiences together on our journey through this world,
you hear?
Behind every strong man is a strong woman. All I ask is for you to put forth effort to make my thoughts and beliefs a reality . . .”

Vincent’s dictating springs along, faster and faster, happier and happier.

“Because when I conquer the earth,”
he continues,
“I’mma put the sun and the moon around your neck,
you hear?
I’mma put the stars around your wrist. But it still couldn’t compare to, you know what I’m sayin’? It still won’t outshine your beauty,
you hear?”

Vincent laughs a joyous and satisfied laugh. He’s worked out just what a woman wants to hear.

“Yo!” Vincent laughs. “Put ‘you hear,’ you hear?”

“You hear?” I mimic back.

“You hear?” Vincent spits back in an Australian accent. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Okay, we’re gonna autograph this bitch and we’re gonna shut this bitch down, you hear? All right, tell her,
Don’t settle for the less when you can have the best. Without the headaches and the stress.
At the same time, I really mean that. I’m really, really tryin’ to tell her, you know what I’m sayin’ . . .
Look, all the complications, all the trials, we don’t have to go through that. I’m gonna keep the one honey, you know? I’m gonna do my thing and you’re gonna do your thing, but at the same time we gotta respect each other while we’re doing our thing, you feel?
”

“Do you want me to write that down?”

“No!” he says. “Hell no! I’m just sayin’ that’s what I’m basically trying to say. You the fuckin’ writer, here’s where you come in, you hear? You can’t be no motherfuckin’ writer if you can’t make her see what I’m tryin’a say, you hear?”

“You’re probably right.” I laugh.

“Now at the end put
a murble nigga like me
.”

“A what?” I say. “A dog nigga?”

Vincent turns quiet. “Now, hold on, hold on,” he says sharply. “Now we’re cool, right? I don’t never wanna hear you say no shit like that again or we ain’t never gonna be cool again, you hear?”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought that was what you said.”

“I’m just sayin’, I know what I said but you don’t have to repeat what I said, you hear?”

“Okay, sure, sorry.”

“A’right. Just put, like I said,
a thug nigga like me
.”

“How do you want to spell the
N
word?
N
-
I
-
G
-
G
-
A?
”

“Yeah, like that. A’right, thanks, John. We’re one hundred, man. But I don’t really think about the
N
word and shit, man, real talk. It’s just that I’ve had a lot of bad experience with a lot of white folks, you hear? I don’t play by no kind of
nigger
word, no
monkey
, none of that shit,” he says. “That shit gets to feel real bad, you hear?”

“Sure.”

Vincent laughs. “At the same time, man, you’re gonna go straight to her house and deliver her the card. I want her to have a card, teddy bear with some chocolate and some roses.”

I scribble
Card, teddy bear, roses, chocolate
.

“Make sure you get a teddy bear that she can hug at night, you hear?”

“Sure.” I laugh.

“Now don’t be tellin’ me you’re gonna do shit if you don’t mean it, man.”

“I’m going to do it,” I tell Vincent. “Why not?”

“That’s what I’m sayin’—why not?”

“What’s the address of the girl, though?” I ask.

Vincent says he doesn’t have the address. He’ll hit me back with it. She’s not returning his calls right now.

“I was talking to her and we got emotional and shit and she started a little argument with me—‘You ain’t right for me.’”

I look up. The old man is waddling around the pool, still sulking because I scored the gazebo. A growl rolls up the corridor of East Mississippi prison.

“Hey, go to Facebook,” Vincent says. “You can go to the computer right now and erase my Facebook, you hear?”

“Erase it?”

“You gonna get on there and erase that motherfucker. When you come in to penitentiary they ask you if you’ve got Facebook. I told them I ain’t had no Facebook. ’Cause they’ll be all up in your business and shit. They’d be asking, ‘Do you disapprove of MDOC checking your Facebook account and shit?’ I told them I ain’t gotten it.”

I pluck my silver laptop from my bag and creak it open on my belly. I tell him I’ve been on Facebook myself this morning.

“You been on
my
Facebook?” Vincent snaps.

“No,
my
Facebook!”

“If I find out you’re the conspiracy, you’re trying to trap me or something, I’m gonna knock your noodle.”

“No, I’m writing a book, it’s not a conspiracy to trap you. By the way, the police have already trapped you. They’ve already got you in jail. They don’t need anything else.”

“Man, I don’t feel comfortable giving you my password,” Vincent says.

Then he spits out the digits.

“Seventeen people want to be your friend,” I tell Vincent.

“Don’t answer that shit. Erase my Facebook account. Hey, go check my messages real quick.”

I tell him a girl called Jasmine has written,
I’ve been texting but you won’t text me back, what’s up with that?

“You tell her she mustn’t be textin’ the right thang,” he says.

I type,
U musn’t be textin’ the right thang
, and hit send.

“Hey, but listen,” he says, “go on ahead and delete my account, right quick.”

“I’m trying to figure out how to do it. Just a sec,” I say, fumbling through the toolbar. “Do you go to account privacy settings or account settings?”

“Say what?”

“I’ll work out how to do it,” I say. “When we hang up I’ll talk to a friend who will know how to do it.”

“A’right, listen. I’ll hit you back soon, you hear?”

Vincent hangs up, and I stare at his Facebook message box.

I scroll down.

A white girl has messaged:

Hey, what’s up, you are beyond gorgeous. My name is Katie, I saw your face on TV.

I scroll down.

A person named Falona has messaged:

SICK SICK HUMAN. ALL YALL DO IS TALK THAT HOOD SHIT AND FUCK UP. YALL MAKE ALL BLACK MALES LOOK BAD. I HOPE THEY MURDER YOUR ASS IN PRISON. NO ONE HAS D RIGHT TO TAKE ANOTHER’S LIFE. YOU WILL SOON BE BACK WHERE YOU BELONG IN A CAGE FOR LIFE LIKE THE ANIMAL YOU ARE. WILD BEAST NEED NOT BE IN CIVILIZED SOCIETY . . .

I scroll down.

There’s a message to Vincent, and a reply from Vincent, on April 21. Why is that date itching me? Why is there a tickle running up my arms?

My brain pulls itself together.

That’s the night Vincent wandered down to Richard’s home and jumped on Facebook and began typing, then stood up from the keyboard and killed Richard Barrett.

I squint at the screen. Vincent’s brother, Justin, has typed:

Nigga where u at

And Vincent has typed back:

getting money

oh lets do it.

The first time I drifted into the McGees’ I could hardly see the McGees. This time the world blows its light into the living room.

Vincent’s sister Sherrie has shorn her hair, and lanky Justin seems closer to the ceiling than last time. Tina is somewhere else.

“Vincent wanted me to give this to your mum,” I say, floating in the doorway.

“God, they pretty,” says Justin McGee.

“He dictated the card over the telephone,” I say. “You can tell your mum I’m leaving Saturday so I won’t be annoying your family anymore.”

“Yeah,” says Sherrie from the couch, “but, you know, you ain’t no problem, you’re okay.”

I pull out the affidavit and run Justin and Sherrie through Daniel Earl Cox’s story.

“It’s really hard finding stuff in Mississippi,” I say. “Lots of secrets.”

“Mm-hmm,” says Justin. “It’s something else down here.”

My fingers reach in my bag and pluck out the shirtless photo of Vincent.

“The lawyer Mike Scott showed me this picture,” I say. “He was saying it was taken down at Richard’s. And that the person in the reflection is Richard Barrett.”

Justin blinks at the photograph.

“Oh, that picture,” Justin says. “No, I took it.”

Justin leads me through the living room to the hallway. The cream walls running down the McGees’ hallway match the cream walls in the photo. The doors in the hallway match the doors in the photo, too. The mirror glimmering in the photograph glimmers in front of my eyes.

“It must have just been the flash,” I say. “Because the flash makes the arm look white.”

“Yeah, I took it right here,” says Justin.

I deflate. One of the smoking guns is no smoking gun after all.

“Me and my little brother Eric,” Justin says, “Richard wanted us to help him one time. And we said, ‘How much money you going to pay us to help you?’ He said, ‘You shouldn’t wanna get paid every time you do some work.’ And I was scared ’cause he looked gay.”

“So what do you reckon happened?” I ask him. “Do you reckon Vincent was angry ’cause he didn’t get paid, or do you think Richard tried to attack him or something?”

“Oh no,” Justin says knowingly, “he got paid.”

“So you don’t think it was because of that?”

“No,” he says definitively.

“You think maybe . . .”

“I think there was something going on,” Justin says.

Sherrie rustles on the couch.

“Some people do things,” Sherrie says. “You need things and you’ll do it, but it’s not always the best thing, you know? Vincent would continue to do things for money. Big, large-lump sums of money, hundreds of dollars, you know? It’s just, if he need it, he would do it, but you don’t want the world to know it, so that’s the situation.”

I scrunch up my nose. I wasn’t expecting this. Vincent’s brother and sister are steering me to the story embroidered with homosexuality.

“Wow,” I say. “Because it’d be a big taboo for everyone to know that?”

“Yeah, it would be embarrassing, right?” Sherrie says. “He couldn’t enjoy his life after that. Especially since he didn’t want to come out. I’m
not judgmental. But anybody that prefers the same sex, they’re embarrassed about it, they hide it.”

I’m crumpling my brow trying to sort out exactly what Sherrie is getting at.
Anybody that prefers the same sex.
Is she talking about Richard or Vincent?

“Do you think Vincent . . .” I stop. I back up and rephrase. “It would have been just for money, though, wouldn’t it have?”

“It would have just been for the money,” Sherrie says. “But at the end he got a good feeling behind it. If you’re getting whacked off, sucked off, you know, you’re gonna enjoy that.”

“What, Vincent?” I say.

“Yeah, he gets everything,” Sherrie says. “I don’t think he was doing the man. I don’t think he was suckin’ him. So he would be on his back and getting chopped off, as they say—his penis sucked. He was the one who was getting the service, but he was getting paid for his services—to be worked on, you know?”