Rion Amilcar Scott - The World Doesn’t Require You

THE

WORLD

DOESNT

REQUIRE

YOU

STORIES

Rion Amilcar Scott

Liveright Publishing Corporation

A Division of W. W. Norton & Company

Independent Publishers Since 1923

New York London

To Sufiya

My World Requires You

Tony: Me, I want whats coming to me.

Manny: Oh, whats coming to you, Tony?

Tony: The world, chico.

Scarface , 1983

Contents

THE

WORLD

DOESNT

REQUIRE

YOU

Thou shalt have no other God but the Negro.

The Lincoln Catechism

G od is from Cross River, everyone knows that. He was tall, lanky; wore dirty brown clothes and walked with a limp he tried to disguise as a bop. His chin held a messy salt-and-pepper beard that extended to his Adams apple. Always clutching a mango in His hand. Used to live on the Southside, down under the bridge, near the water. Now there is a nice little sidewalk and flowers and a bike trail that leads into Port Yooga. Back then there was just mud and weeds, and Hed sit there barefooted, softly preaching His word. At one time He had one hundred, maybe two hundredsome say up to five hundred or even a thousandpeople listening. But the time Im talking about, Hed sit with only one or two folks. Always with a mango, except during Easter time, when Hed pass out jelly beans to get people to stop and listen.

He lived on the banks of the Cross River until one day He filled His pockets with stones and walked into the water and sank like a crazy poet. He wasnt insane. It was all part of Gods plan. Last time He was crucified, this time drowned. Anyway, God cant drown. Hell come back, perhaps to oversee the writing of another Testament or to judge the living and the dead, whatever He feels.

This story, though, isnt about God. Its about one of His sons. Not His son in the metaphorical sensewell, he was, as we are all the children of Godbut more so he was His son in the physical sense.

David Sherman was Gods last son. The youngest of thirteen. Five different women had lined up to sire the children of God. They were all boys except for the fifth, a disappointment who, at the age of twenty-five, seduced her fifteen-year-old brother with her shapely behind and left Maryland to build a sinful life with him. God could have had more children, but He got a message from Himself after David was born to stop spilling His seed into His servants. Who was He, or anyone else, to argue?

David lived with his mother, Violet, in a one-bedroom apartment on Sally Street that teemed with water bugs and mice but rarely any rats. God slept there sometimes, but not very often. Hed rise early, long before the sun, and Hed tell His boy, God Morning to you, son.

David would reply, And God Morning to you, too.

He stopped spending the night after David turned twelve.

To David, God was a disappointment. God told His son things from time to time, things about virtue and the coming Holy Ghost Testament, but never anything David could understand. He wondered if one day hed lose his mind and be out on the streets speaking an incomprehensible Gospel like his Old Man. And when David was sixteen, God took His own life.

Even before Gods death, David earned money by turning old pots and plastic barrels into drums and banging out intricate rhythms by the side of the road. After his Father died and he inherited His harmonica, David stole a guitar from the neighborhood nerd. He taught himself how to play them in the privacy of the boxy apartment he shared with his mother, and eventually worked the instruments into the act. It never took David long to learn an instrument. He was always teaching himself a new one, but he was best at the guitar.

Still, he loved the drums the most. Even if he could only afford old buckets and tin pans. David thought himself a percussionist until Randall, a slightly chubby kid from a few blocks away, challenged him to a battle. They sat before those plastic buckets going back and forth, drumsticks raised high above their heads, the great clopping of plastic-trash-can rhythms, sweat pooling at their armpits in the thick summer heat. Randalls precisionhow he danced and rocked as he drummedwas almost too much for David to take. He slowed to watch his friend, letting the drumsticks slip from his slick hands. Soon he became just another spectator gazing. After his whipping, David mostly played the guitar to Randalls drumming, and sometimes hed sing. People from the neighborhood often joined in to jam with dented and tarnished saxophones and trumpets. It was a good time.

A little after David turned eighteen, his oldest brother, Delante, opened the Church of the Twice Risen Christ on the Southside and asked him to play guitar on Sunday mornings. Delante, who now called himself Jesus Jesuson (everyone, though, referred to him as Jeez), wanted to look out for his little brother. David didnt believe what his brother preached and wondered if he really believed, but didnt ask. After all, he didnt know Jeez well. All that flash and dazzle, all that talk of God coming back as a general, leading an army through the streets and bathing the concrete with the blood of the wickedwho could believe that?

David played dutifully every Sunday morning beneath a stained-glass window that portrayed his Father as a shepherd in a cream robe, staff in one hand, sword in the other. It was a gig. For his work, Jeez kicked David a hundred dollars from the offering plate, and when the plate came up short, Jeez would reach into his own pocket and make up the difference. God will always provide for you, little bro, Jeez said often.

Despite his brothers money, Davids pockets still felt like bottomless wells. God didnt always provide, and again he felt let down by Him. While taking a walk one day, David spotted a drum set in the window of a downtown music shop off Seventh Street. It was mostly midnight-blue and glossy. Proper bass, cymbals, high hats, and toms. The works. Everything he and Randall had to improvise without. Something stopped him from moving forward. It was a thumping in the center of his chest that wasnt his heart.

The drums are the sun, he heard a voice say.

He decided it was a stray thought, but still the drum set was what he needed to get his band going so he could make some real money.

I cant get them drums with the money Delantes paying me, David told his mother one night over rice and peas. Violet, he said, let me hold something.

She laughed. I dont have no money. Go ask the preacher, she said, scraping a metal spoon around a huge cast-iron pot.

Come on, Ma, he whined. You dont give me nothing no more.

I gave you life. You dont hear me demanding nothing from you for pushing you out and raising your ungrateful ass. As a matter of fact, give me that plate of rice and peas if it aint nothing.

Violet made a playful snatch for her sons plate. He shielded it with his arm and looked off into the distance. David didnt much feel like joking around.

When David told his brother about the drums that Sunday morning, he too laughed. Save your wages, Jeez said. Then you can buy the drums.

Man, I cant hardly save nothing from them few dollars you give me. Between helping Violet with the rent and the electric, I dont hardly have twenty dollars to my name by Friday, and I got to eat too.

Get a job.

Then when am I gonna practice my craft?

Hit the streets, lil bro, Jeez said. Find better places to play, like downtown by Riverhall. Go to Port Yooga, hit the crackers up.

David took his brothers advice and played one long night in downtown Port Yooga. He went alone, without Randall or anyone else, to avoid splitting the earnings. He would be the percussionist and the guitar player. He carefully set up his buckets as two teenagers heckled. One stood tall with the belly of a middle-aged beer drinker and the red pimples of a pubescent boy. The other sported a thin blond mustache that made David laugh a little. The latter screamed at David over and over. David just watched him, everything about him seemed ridiculous. The man told David his music was noise, and when he played louder, the beer-bellied one spit a thick glob of saliva into his tin cup. David shoved the mustached man. In the ensuing fight, the men smashed Davids guitar and kicked his cup, scattering his change for passersby to snatch.