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  Even as Sleepy attempted to find his bearings, a familiar figure of hair twists and sunglasses bobbed toward him.

  “I can’t stand places like this,” he said.

  “Who are you?” Sleepy nodded, before pretending to catch someone’s eye and made off toward the stage.

  Determined not to be left behind, the man followed. Not rushing, his nonchalant stride easily kept pace with Sleepy. “Today’s mathematics is knowledge. Ten numbers constitute the language of mathematics. Ten. I am the sum of the cypher. (120 Degrees of) Knowledge Allah.”

  The words hung in the air between them like the pronouncement was supposed to bring all action to a halt. But the world kept moving, as did Sleepy. Knowing he wasn’t about to call him that mouthful of syllables every time he debated between calling him One or Knowledge Allah before settling on the latter. “Well, Knowledge Allah, this is the home of true revolutionaries.”

  “What do you know about true revolutionaries?” Knowledge Allah half-huffed, his limp becoming more noticeable as he kept pace.

  “Submerged in song and poetry and stories, we bring the message, the fight, to the people. We awaken their minds.” Sleepy recited the refrain the poets often bandied about. While high.

  “Is that so?” Knowledge Allah made a point of craning his neck about. “Filled with self-important neo-soul types. Look at them. An audience of nouveau Negro bohemians.”

  “Is there anyone you won’t complain about?” Sleepy asked.

  “I uproot the mind state. I’m not satisfied with anyone. We can all do better.”

  Pausing at the side of the stage, Sleepy held up his hand without touching Knowledge Allah. A nearby sign read “Performers Only.” The man stopped short as if checked by an invisible force field. “Hold up. We about to start.”

  “Bring the funk, Sleepy.” Knowledge Allah limped off into the curtain shadows.

  Waiting until he made sure he was alone, Sleepy closed his eyes while he got into his mental place. He waited for the announcer to bring him out.

  “‘For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’” The announcer spoke low and breathy into the mic, a seducing minister of the word. “The time for games is over. The mission is clear. We fight to survive. We struggle to stay alive. You’re either with us or against us. The Cause is a state of mind. Some of us struggle with our past. Some of us struggle with our future. Some of us struggle with ourselves. We struggle against oppression. This is the good fight. Welcome with me a man who brings the fire. Who brings the soul. The government knows him as Hubert Nixon, but we know him by another name. He’s our brother. He’s our friend. Set it off for us, Sleepy.”

  Sleepy bumped shoulders with the announcer when they clasped hands. Stepping to center stage, the spotlight glared at him and the house lights dimmed. A gleam in his eyes, he inhaled and held his breath. He was in his moment, deep in his muse. When he opened his mouth, the words poured out from a different place.

  “I’d like to do a new piece for you. This is the first time even I’m hearing it out loud. It’s called ‘Let it Flow.’”

  The crowd applauded with encouragement then settled down to allow Sleepy a moment to gather himself.

  “Too many thoughts crowding in my brain

  I’m just so angry, so frustrated, I don’t know where to begin

  To unknot this cord inside my head.

  I just need to sit back, relax, and let the chiba flow.

  * * *

  You see, my girl done left and I say I don’t pay that no mind

  The first time in a while I let myself relax

  Been too long between girls. I got that charm. I got that smile.

  I got them words that burrow into your soul.

  I’m a mirror. Maybe they don’t like what they see.

  Or maybe it’s just me.

  I just need to sit back, relax, and let the chiba flow.

  * * *

  I got me a job and I got no right to complain.

  Gonna work the same line, dawn til dark, all sweat and grime

  In the end I don’t do nothing, don’t amount to nothing

  Ain’t changed nothing. Day in, day out, just another cog

  In a machine that grinds you up in its gears.

  And would never know that I was here.

  I just need to sit back, relax, and let the chiba flow.

  * * *

  I wake up in the morning with nothing but the craving

  The need to chill out and let my thoughts rise high.

  Just wanting to escape. Alone, not wanting to be alone, resigned to loneliness.

  Looking all around me, my soul cries out for more.

  I just need to sit back, relax, and let the chiba flow.

  * * *

  Every time I share my story, I create a new history.

  Stuck with a ghost spell truth: builders build.

  I’m wandering in the desert of our U-N-I-verse trying to overstand.

  Didn’t know my father. Couldn’t save my mother. Couldn’t save my brother.

  I need to get out so that I can at least save me.

  I just need to sit back, relax, and let the chiba flow.

  * * *

  Where can a brother get a light?”

  The pause when he finished was always the longest, most unbearable stretch of seconds. The held breath of the audience deciding if his piece was to be received well. But the roar of finger snaps and a series of “all right, now”s greeted him. Sleepy basked in their approval for several heartbeats before he tipped his hat. He returned the nod of the announcer who prepared to bring up another poet. A few patrons passed behind him and clapped him on the back for his poem. Another poet took the stage, talking about the tragedies of her family.

  Knowledge Allah remained locked in an animated conversation with a man not dressed in a too dissimilar manner from him. The man’s long suit jacket, black tinted glasses, and bow tie gave him the intimidating appearance of a classic gangster. He carried himself with a grim seriousness.

  “Peace, sun. I heard you took on a new name.”

  “Peace, sun. One is Knowledge. Zero is a Cipher. Completion,” Knowledge Allah said. “(120 Degrees of) Knowledge Allah.”

  “The tricknology of living mathematics.” The man stepped back a bit, taking a fuller appraisal of him. “Two is Wisdom. One plus two equals three. Three is Understanding. Seven is the diving influence in the physical realm.”

  “Seven is wholeness,” Knowledge Allah said.

  “Seven plus seven plus seven equals twenty-one. Two plus one equals three. Three is holy, because seven is God.”

  “G was the seventh letter made.” When Knowledge Allah spied Sleepy, he crossed his hands to wave off the man mid-sentence and limped away from him. “You dropped some deep science there, Sleepy. It was like you were aiming your words right at me.”

  “I spit for me.” Sleepy dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief. His pre-performance jitters kept him from eating, but after his success, both his appetite and thirst returned with a keen fury.

  “You put words to something real right there. A hurt. It was like you knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “I think you’re ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Withdrawing a small pouch from his jacket pocket, Sleepy tamped out a measure of chiba leaves into a pipe. He couldn’t wait to let loose a long, thick exhalation of smoke to issue up and about him in a languid curl. The glow of his struck match lit up Knowledge Allah’s face, distorting his features. His face drew dark and ugly. Knowledge Allah waved him off from lighting it and ushered them to a table near the rear of the room.

  “I need you clear-headed for what I want to talk to you about.”

  “What’s up?”

  “People underestimate you, Sleepy.”

  “Go on.” Checking his pocket watch, Sleepy
decided the man had three minutes to keep him from his smoke.

  “I need you. We do. And part of you knows it.” Knowledge Allah swept the room with cautious eyes before lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “The Cause you all talk about in your poems is more than rhetoric for hipsters and bohemians. It’s a very real movement. With very real and committed people.”

  “I don’t understand.” Sleepy wrote for himself. His passion for words provided release. Like there was an anger in him he rarely admitted to, but when he put pen to paper, it bubbled out from a well he couldn’t control. So much anger to go around. Himself, for settling in life. The system, for cutting him off at every turn until he threw his arms up and settled. His wasn’t exactly a unique story. This was the dissonant chords of the measure of his life. Their life.

  “The Cause actively moves to thwart our oppressors. The forces of Albion in its American colony. We move in secret. In cells, so that no one person could reveal too much if compromised.”

  “We?”

  “I’ve been charged with forming a new cell. We work in threes. Three is the trinity. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a she. Three is a trimester. Three plus three plus three equals nine. Nine is the ninth letter. There are nine months of pregnancy.”

  “I don’t know which of us is supposed to be high right now.” Sleepy raised his hand to light his pipe again, anxious to let the smoke wash over him. With his head up, even Knowledge Allah’s nonsense amused him.

  “Welcome to The Cause.” Knowledge Allah reached out again to hold his arm, keeping him from lighting it. “The chance to do more than just tickle the ears of a few. This is an invitation to do something real.”

  “Why me?” Sleepy asked, a little too loudly.

  “Your discretion for a start.” Knowledge Allah rapped his cane against the floor as if calling a meeting to order. “Besides, that’s the wrong question. The real question is why not you?”

  Sleepy hadn’t made up his mind whether he much liked Knowledge Allah. Admittedly, despite the air of crazy, Knowledge Allah had a charisma about him, a gravity which made one pay attention. He reminded Sleepy of his mother. She was a woman of dreams and ideas. And causes. “Life ought to be lived outside of yourself,” she often preached. Drumming his fingers against the table, Sleepy tapped percussive melodies, losing himself in the rhythms of his thoughts.

  “Am I boring you?” Knowledge Allah asked.

  “Nah, just trying to get my head around what you’re saying. And I’m waiting to hear the deal, you know, figure out what you want from me.”

  “Simple, we want your effort. We want your voice.”

  “I don’t know, Knowledge Allah. I …”

  The front door rattled under a large boom, as if it had been struck by a tree during a tornado. The Two-Johns Theater patrons froze in their seats, heads turned toward the source of the disturbance. The doors were slammed again, buckling under a sudden weight, and then broke free of their hinges with the third heavy thud.

  A sea of blue uniforms trimmed with black streamed in. City Ordained Pinkertons took positions blocking the exits. Many slapped their batons into their empty hands, ready for action.

  “Everyone stay where you are,” the lead officer yelled. “You are in violation of the Gang Congregation Act. Get your national registration cards ready, but stay where you are. You are all under arrest.”

  Two

  Pollywannacracka

  Vox Dei Data Files: The Jefferson House was a celebration of immigrant ingenuity. Designed by the famed architects Bernard Vonnegut and Arthur Bohn, it was constructed between 1894 and 1895 along the Central Canal. A 21 room, mansard-roofed mansion built in the Broad Ripple neighborhood, famed for being a summertime retreat for Indianapolis dwellers. Not much is known about the home’s current owner.

  * * *

  Riding pleased Sophine Jefferson. The wind swept through her hair as her mechanical horse sped madly across the field. Steam escaped in clouds as the beast snorted, the heavy bellows within its chest cavity thrummed, firing the gears and pistons that animated it. Many considered the animatronic steed old-fashioned to the point of being rather gauche. Young lords and ladies gravitated to the two-wheeled variety of metal conveyance rather than the kind with undulating brass shanks, a mane of metal shingles, and clockwork gears at each joint. Sophine appreciated the art, the craftsmanship, of the older ways.

  Her skin like porcelain, her slight build gave the impression that a stiff breeze might snap her in twain. She crouched low over her steed, its brass flanks tensing beneath her. Ironically, horse hair padded her bustle beneath her dress. She pressed her ride harder. Designed to work in tandem, teams to draw carriages, the mechanical horse chuffed impatiently. The rolling landscape sped by in blurs of green and brown. Everything seemed so much smaller since her return from school.

  Sophine slowed the horse to a trot when she wound the bend toward her home. The sun set in the cloudy sky, the western heavens drew to a nacreous gray. The iron steed squelched, its pistons idled. The workmen rushed out to meet her, anxious to get the horse put away before her father could see what she’d been up to. They implored her to be careful, as the Colonel would have their hides fashioned into rugs for his study should anything happen to her. But the daughter of Colonel Winston Jefferson was not to be denied. When she wanted to ride, she would ride.

  Hopping down from the horse, she strode to the front door. A Victorian mansion built in 1875, its recent refurbishing had returned it closer to its original state, down to the forlorn gaze of the windows. The Doric portico, whose massive columns supported an outside walkway meant to instill a sense of terror and magnificence, but only added to the singular shroud of gloom. A veil of melancholy hedges hid the side of the house. The voices of the trees spoke their dark whispers in the rustling leaves. Virginia creeper choked the surrounding sugar maples and smallish elm trees, its berry be-decked red leaves winding about the young trees’ leaves. The throaty croak of bullfrogs reverberated from between the house and the carriage house. The front steps were reduced to scree along the edges. The woodwork, upon closer inspection, was rotted from years of neglect, glossed over to preserve the memory of a great home. Vines threatened to overtake the eaves. Taking in a deep breath, she took a moment to collect herself and rang the doorbell.

  An automata opened the door. Its brass fixtures beamed, but it moved with a jerky clunkiness. When it came to automata, it wasn’t that her father appreciated history and older ways, he was simply cheap.

  “May I take your coat?” It’s garbled voice speaker squawked. It also lacked facial recognition or else it surely would have fussed more and announced “Lady Sophine.”

  “Thank you.” She didn’t know why she maintained the art of civility with the automata, save perhaps that she didn’t want to fall out of the practice of graciousness. She casually noted the lines of the machine. Her mind dissected it and re-assembled it a half dozen times, improving its design and movement with each pass. She couldn’t help herself. Machines had a way of speaking to her.

  A life-sized portrait of Sophine’s mother, the Lady Trystan, though poorly lit, loomed over the mantel of the front parlor. Lady Trystan had stood at a formidable six feet tall. Olive complected—only slightly darker than Sophine—long brown hair framed aristocratic features from her piercing brown eyes to her aquiline nose. Despite the distraction of her peculiarly framed glasses, her features favored the Negro. In a wide-brimmed hat garnished with tall feathers, her mother preferred to let the world take her as she was. Having died when she was young, Sophine never really knew her. All she had was this portrait, her heart, and her father’s stories of their life together to define her mother in her mind.

  “I’m glad you made it home safely,” Lyonessa Jefferson said. Outlined by the parlor doorway, Sophine’s father’s second wife (she steadfastly refused to even think of Lyonessa with the overly familiar term “step-mother”) was a coiled ball of repression and restraint; a tightly
wound polar opposite of who Sophine imagined her mother to be. Lyonessa’s stiff wardrobe failed to completely hide the bulges left over from “the trauma of carrying a child” as she once self-described her pregnancy. She insisted that having a child aged her ten years, thus the flecks of gray in her long brown hair. From the time of her son’s birth, nannies raised him, until he could be shipped off to boarding school. Just like Sophine the very next week after her father and Lyonessa pronounced their “I do”s. They never tried to have another child.

  “I’m glad to be here, Lyonessa.” Sophine kissed the air beside her step-mother’s cheek but regarded her with suspicion.

  “Oh, look at you. You must have taken a steam horse out for a gallop. Your dress in a crumpled mess” Lyonessa grasped each of Sophine’s hands and swung them wide for a fuller inspection. “You will have to hurry if you’re to be ready in time.”

  “In time?” Sophine withdrew her hands and took a wary step backwards.

  “For the dinner party. The Colonel arranged for Lord Leighton Melbourne and his son, Gervais, to join us.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the Colonel.” Sophine poured herself a glass of sherry rather than wait for an automaton to be summoned. She watched her father’s second wife begin to mouth a protest then purse her lips with disapproval. “That young fop, Gervais, wants nothing more than a trophy to become his wife.”

  “You should aspire to so much,” Lyonessa sniffed. An otherwise still-faced and taciturn woman, she shared the Colonel’s bed only when it suited her. He didn’t care because his heart belonged to Lady Trysta. After Sophine’s mother passed, it was as if all the things in him that loved or dreamt of love—other than Sophine—were put under glass and kept on a top shelf in his study. She stood in frozen pose as an automaton poured whatever delicate drink she favored.