The Voices of Martyrs Read online

  “Well, well, well. Look who we have here,” Frank Connolly said, suddenly standing in the open cell. “What’s up, Winnie? Winnie, the nigger.” Tannehill kicked himself for allowing the redneck to get so close to him without noticing. They shared history. Connolly, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, gave him a casual eyefuck but focused his attention on Wintabi. Connolly’s clean-shaven head glistened above his groomed handlebar mustache. Tattoos stippled the side of his neck and coursed over both shoulders. Connolly’s dieseled body leaned against the guard rails outside of Tannehill’s house.

  “Fuck you, Connolly,” Tannehill said, a little too defensively. A primitive part of his brain reminded him that, unless he wanted to be referred to as Mrs. Freeman, Wintabi’s prag, or a punk, he’d best leave Wintabi to fight his own battles.

  “Let it go, youngblood,” Wintabi said, earnest, yet without reproach.

  “I heard we had a rat problem.”

  “You always tryin’ to start shit,” Tannehill said, despite himself, while glancing at Wintabi. The only thing worse than being a rapist or a child molester was being a snitch.

  “Why else you think they transferred him from Angola? How the fuck did he get outta Marion?”

  “He ended up here, didn’t he?” Tannehill said. “Let me ask you somethin’: Do all you Nazi motherfuckas cut off one nut to be like Adolf?”

  “Fuck you. You don’t hear him denyin’ it.”

  Wintabi stood in silence.

  “We got a problem here, Connolly?” Officer O’Reilly approached the cell.

  “Naw,” Connolly raised his hands, “just jawin’.”

  “Then get your ass gone.”

  “This ain’t over. You can’t hide in your cell forever,” Connolly stage-whispered. “We know how to deal with vermin.”

  “Bitch ass can’t even spell ‘vermin.’” Tannehill watched Officer O’Reilly encourage Connolly. “What was that about?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care.” Wintabi returned back to his bunk.

  §

  That night Tannehill tossed in his bunk, not quite inured to the smell of grown men sweating in the night. The wooden sleeping berth scraped against his shoulders and ankles during his sleep. He dreamed that blood-slickened chains connected his wrists to Wintabi’s. Tannehill ached with longing for home. A noisy fly buzzed about his head. He fought the heaviness in his bowels all day, waiting for some measure of privacy to dump his business.

  “The funny thing about prisons is that, no matter where you go, they always feel the same,” Wintabi’s voice whispered from the shadows. “Losing everything can have a purifying effect on your soul—stripping you of your freedom, your privacy, your dignity. You learn what you really are.”

  “So, what have you learned?”

  “That most men become animals when you chain and cage them, but the true measure of a man comes in how he carries himself despite his chains.” Wintabi’s voice took on a faraway, dreamy quality; he no longer spoke directly to Tannehill. “Can you hear them?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The drums. The heartbeat of our people. Our ancestors. Calling out to us.” Wintabi’s voice no longer sounded like him at all. His voice grew deeper and more … ancient. “Let me tell you a story: A tiny village sent its children to the fields to gather the harvest. They filled their calabash bowls at the river for the journey home. A young man stepped from the reed and asked them to give him a drink of water. They did and in return, he gave them a pitcher of honey. They invited him to return to the village with them.

  “On their journey home, the young man grabbed one of the children and disappeared, saying, “If you tell anyone of me, I will come and kill you all.” When the children arrived at the village, their parents asked what happened and where the missing child was, but the children were too scared to say or do anything.

  “Finally, a young boy, whose wounds still bled, told of the man. A great rumbling shook the earth with the man’s voice thundering, “Why do you expose me?” He sprang from the forests, and they realized he was an Iimu, a great devil from across the river. He swelled to the size of an immense serpent. Fire burned in his mouth, flames fell to the ground like spittle. The men grabbed their spears.

  “‘You cannot kill me,’ it taunted, ‘for you must use your own bones to grind mine into powder.’ The Iimu started to devour some of the men, the children … and the women. It destroyed much of the village while caught in the throes of its lusts. The men realized the riddle of its words: That they must sacrifice themselves to destroy it. And they did. As they and the Iimu lay dying, they saw their family and kinsmen again. All had been restored.”

  With that, Wintabi’s voice faded to silence. Tannehill knew sleep would be long in coming for him.

  §

  “Shakedown!” Officer O’Reilly yelled. The prisoners stepped out of their houses as the hacks went in to ransack the cells. The ostensible purpose was to search for contraband—drugs, weapons, or what have you—but the real purpose was to remind the prisoners who was in charge. Officer O’Reilly lined up the prisoners and shouted a series of orders as if narrating a surreal workout video: “Run your fingers through your hair like your mothers were grooming you for lice.

  “Open your mouth. Stick your tongue out. Lift it and move it from side to side.

  “Lift your dick and your balls.

  “Turn around, bend over, and spread your cheeks.”

  A beating, Tannehill could take—a man took a beating—but the daily, heaping servings of pinprick humiliations, the constant reminder that he was owned by another, that reality slowly consumed him.

  Navigating the politics of the cafeteria often proved nearly as treacherous as negotiating the yard. Each gang set had their own territory, and one had to step wise if one wanted to survive chow. Wintabi and Tannehill respected the color line but ate at the fringes of it.

  “You feel it, youngblood?” Wintabi asked.

  “You ain’t gonna start with that drum bullshit again are you?”

  “What are you goin’ on about? I’m talkin’ ’bout the air. It’s got that vibe.”

  “I feel you,” Tannehill said, unsure whether the other man remembered his “drums” soliloquy, “like somethin’s ’bout to jump off.”

  “You see your man, Derrick?” Wintabi nodded toward him as he sat among his brothers. “You gonna make a move on ’im?”

  “If there’s gonna be a stickin’, he’s welcome to try,” Tannehill said.

  “Just make sure that you remember who you are. You’re still a man, they can’t take that away from you.”

  “What was Connolly goin’ on about the other day?”

  “Old ghosts. Most times, it’s about who hurt who last. I knew his father when I was at Leavenworth. Me and him got into it pretty bad. Someone dropped a kite to the warden …”

  “Didn’t know anyone up at Leavenworth knew how to even write a letter.”

  “The kite detailed a conspiracy to kill a couple of hacks. They took it seriously. Next thing you know, hacks shakedown Connolly’s old man’s house and found a shank. He ended up in Ad-Seg and died there.”

  “They thought you dropped the kite?”

  “Ask me, he sent the kite himself to get himself away from me. Don’t matter none. Even in Ad-Seg, you can be reached. Got me moved to Marion.”

  Tannehill felt hate like it was his birthright, the bondage of this life passed onto the next, with chains as his legacy.

  Connolly approached as the two stood up to dump their trays, bearing a scornful eyefuck that Tannehill couldn’t let pass without reciprocating. He was so intent on his posturing that he didn’t notice Connolly letting his filed toothbrush slip from his sleeve into his hand.

  Connolly turned and jammed it into Wintabi’s back. Blood darkened the old man’s prison blues. Connolly handed the shank behind him, and that person passed it along until its final owner was unknown.

  “Where’s all your jigaboo prancing now?” Connolly rais
ed his hands as the hacks rushed toward them.

  “Get down! Get down!” Officer O’Reilly shouted. Other hacks pinned Connolly against the wall as he smiled.

  “Why can’t I feel my legs?” Wintabi asked to no one in particular. He stretched out his bloody hand searching for purchase on Tannehill.

  With enough imagination, anything could be turned into a weapon. For Connolly, it was a toothbrush. For Tannehill, it was a bedspring, unwound with its edge sharpened. Tannehill pulled it from the waistband of his pants. The cycle tightened like a noose about his neck. If he had any inkling of hope, he watched it fade with the pool widening about Wintabi. Their eyes locked, the light fading from them even as Tannehill brought the bedspring to bear. The hacks pushed the men along, preparing to escort them to Ad-Seg. No one thought to keep a closer eye on Tannehill, not especially known for being a trouble maker. He buried the shank in Connolly’s chest, right through his cloverleaf tat, before the stunned COs had a chance to react.

  “Get the fuck to your cells!” Officer O’Reilly shouted. “Lockdown!”

  §

  Administrative-Segregation, Ad-Seg, was a prison within a prison. Most of its inmates were snitches in danger of being shanked in the yard, prisoners too dangerous to roam “free,” or incorrigibles awaiting a transfer. However, even within Ad-Seg, there was a prison, the secure housing unit known as “The Hole.” Twenty-three hour a day solitary lockdown with two hacks that escorted each bound-in-chains prisoner to the concrete exercise yard during his one hour of rec time. Hacks cut the lights on or off at their discretion, most leaving them on and forgetting about them.

  Ashanti Tannehill sat in the middle of the floor and admired his handiwork. He crafted a mural of misery from the only media at his disposal: his own blood and shit. The buzzing flies didn’t bother him. Their company dispelled some of the loneliness. After the first three years, his family, one by one, wearied of doing time with him.

  His frayed braids fell into his face. He wanted to brush them out of his face, but he was cognizant of his shit-stained hands. A fly buzzed past his ear and landed on his eyebrow. He fought to ignore the crawling of tiny legs along his body. A sole fly circled his head in its own curious orbit. Soon, two engaged in aerial combat chasing each other through the ravines of his body. The flies swirled around him, their wings’ hum haunted his ears. More flies gathered, a pooling swarm of wings, legs, and bulging red eyes. They scurried along the walls drawn to the stench and filth. They crawled along Tannehill’s body, despite him brushing them aside. A maddening buzz, incessant voices that formed words.

  “Ashanti.”

  He cocked his head to the side, uncertain that he heard the name from his dreams. He pushed aside the gnawing nervousness as if the nesting army of flies swarmed solely in his imagination. The flies gathered around him in a thick cloud, whorls and eddies, blown about by an unfelt breeze. He dared not breathe for fear of inhaling dozens in a careless gasp. Innumerable feet itched his flesh in their passing. Tannehill covered his face. Still more flies settled along the mural, their bodies glistened as light reflected at impossible angles from the black sheen of wings. A figure took form along the mural. From within the head of the figure, red embers burned to life. Its voice, like terrible thunder, echoed through the beating wings of its mouth.

  “Do you know what I am?”

  “An egwugwu,” Tannehill said, not knowing how he knew, “an ancestor spirit.”

  “Yes,” a tremulous voice covered in raffia replied. Tannehill dared not stare into its face. A sickly odor hung in the air about him, cutting through the filth, like the rot of diseased fish left in the sun. “I have come from the underworld. My journey has been long, and my stay will be brief.”

  “What do you want?” Tannehill asked, sure that this time his mind had finally snapped in the bowels of the Hole. He wouldn’t be the first to go mad in solitary.

  “‘Ike di na awaja na awaja’—Power flows through many channels. As long as your head is not separated from your body, your ancestors will guide your spirit home. Let your body die that your spirit may be free from these chains.”

  The flies flew tight circles around his form, each competing for space to claim. They skittered across his eyes and crawled into his mouth. They climbed along his nostrils. Flies crawled along every inch of Tannehill’s body. His flesh glinted in the moonlight like shifting shards of shattered glass. He imagined the flies consuming his body, grinding his bones to dust to float away.

  Home.

  Family Business

  Nathan Bratton was always closing his eyes to something.

  Though only 16 kilometers separated Montego Bay from Maroontown, an eternity passed in the dips and sharp turns of the hillside roads. He forced his eyes shut. He hoped to sleep—if God so chose to favor him—but mostly he didn’t want to watch. The taxi driver expertly (Nathan prayed it was expertly) wove along the road. With each heave or lurch of the car, Nathan’s mind registered a flood of images. The taxi honked. Kids laughed and yelled. Branches whipped the car. Tires squealed as they skirted what Nathan knew was the edge of a steep drop off. The taxi honked. A passing car returned the honk. The din was like mating sheep being run over. Nathan opened his eyes for a moment. A bus passed excruciatingly close at its own breakneck speed. He tugged at his seat belt. Again.

  Nathan reconsidered his reasons for coming back to Jamaica, although that made it seem like he had a choice. Nathan’s mom was born in Maroontown. She left when she was a teenager. She visited often, bringing Nathan with her. She wanted him to know where he came from even if he didn’t. Jamaicans struck Nathan as a proud people, proud to the point of arrogance. They acted like their culture was superior to everyone else’s, their ways made more sense, their history somehow richer. Those beliefs were shoved down Nathan’s throat. He took it for granted, the foods, the stories, his heritage, until his mom died last year. Only then did he realize how little he knew about her. And himself. He was a tabula rasa, part of his identity was missing. He’d planned, or meant to plan, a pilgrimage to Jamaica. Then yesterday the phone rang with news of his grandfather’s death. This morning Nathan found himself on a plane bound for Jamaica. And as much as an outsider as he felt, he knew he had no choice but to come.

  He was summoned.

  “How much?” Nathan asked, tugging his suitcase free of the car seat. “Five hundred dollars.” The driver’s thick accent clubbed his ears. Nathan watched as the driver studied him in his rear view mirror. Even with the $40 Jamaican for $1 U.S. exchange rate, the price seemed high. Nathan hated to haggle, but the word “tourist” might as well have been spray-painted across his forehead.

  “You must be mad,” Nathan said, believing that the key to effective haggling was in the attitude. “That doesn’t even sound right.”

  “Five hundred dollars,” the driver repeated.

  Nathan spied a familiar face pulling alongside the taxi. He removed a folded photograph from his vest pocket. A wedding photo of his mother’s sister, Karen, and her new husband. The photograph was little more than a month old. “You must be Uncle Edward.”

  Edward filled his police Jeep with his massive build. He opened the door and put one freshly polished black boot on the ground as he waited for the transaction to finish. Stiffly pressed Navy slacks with two red stripes running down the side and an equally pressed light blue shirt was the uniform of a ranking police officer. A sense of menace exuded from Edward like a sinister shadow. Staring into his black eyes was like being raked by shards of glass. The taxi driver locked eyes with him momentarily. Edward nodded.

  “I’m sorry. How much was that ride?” Nathan repeated.

  “Fifty dollars,” the driver muttered. He gripped his steering wheel like a drowning man to his life preserver. “Respec’, corporal.”

  “Respect, man.” Edward dismissed the driver. He looked about conspicuously, then pulled his black cap curtly to the front of his head. He approached Nathan in arrogant strides. Though Edward’s hands w
ere soft and manicured, there was a heaviness to his handshake.

  “It’s good to finally meet you, Uncle Edward.”

  “It’s good to meet some of Karen’s American family.” Edward’s words rang with exaggerated enunciation, as if speaking slowly for Nathan’s benefit. It was only mildly condescending and was better than the sing-songy, frenetic accent that sounded like it could have been as easily Chinese as English.

  “I’m happy to hear someone I actually understand,” Nathan said.

  “Oh, surprised to hear my command of the English language?” Edward’s voice bubbled with a self-satisfied haughtiness. Nathan was swept along in the intimidating charm of Edward’s serpentine grin.

  “I didn’t mean any offense.”

  “None taken. Not everyone speaks in ignorant patois.” Edward gestured toward his Jeep. Nathan quickly learned to hate the silence. Edward spoke in a loop, as if he had rehearsed only a certain amount of topics. Any lull in conversation was filled with Edward recapping how important he was. As senior Justice of the Peace for his ward, he knew everyone. He was well traveled. He’d been to America, England, and Canada and had no trouble driving on either side of the road. His authority was such that he could have anyone jailed, for no reason, for three months. Nathan listened amiably, a forced smile plastered across his face. Edward droned on, in love with the sound of his own voice. Either that or he was simply used to people hanging on his every word. Every so often, Nathan caught Edward glancing at him, trying to read him. Nathan smiled, continuing the dance of first impressions. The radio distracted him with jingles for Prima milk. IRIE FM was the main station received in the country. The trip took a surreal turn as a reggae version of “We Are the Champions” played.

  “How much longer to your house?” Nathan masked the impatience in his voice as travel fatigue.

  “It’s just around the corner,” Edward chuckled to himself. “Everything’s ‘just around the corner’ out here. You can go 10 miles around that ‘corner’ and still not be there. But if I honk my horn from here, they’ll have the gate open by the time we get there. Supper will be ready.”