American Saints

Part VI

Hate to break it you brodie you don’t really know me/you’ll never die alone the ghosts of your sins gone be/waiting for you/it’s the way/you gone see yeah/you got a part too/and part two ain’t peace nah/what’s a miracle when Pharaoh lose a first born/yeah that’s a plague/that’s revenge/thats some real scorn/and you earned it and the oceans gettin split nih/when you wake up it’s a world without bliss nih/yeah, be not afraid but I know they scared/we control the air/it ain’t fair/it never was, that’s the way it is/God’s chosen/400 years now it disappeared

• Punch Pilot Track 3 “Dreams of the Past and the Future”

Cait awoke but did not open her eyes. Her first breath was sharp as if she had been holding it the whole time her eyes were closed. Her muscles felt loaded and ready to fire. Enough fear to run through a nightmare and make it out alive. But the memories of the nightmare soon evaporated and Cait’s muscles relaxed as her breathing settled.

Now, any dream she had was swept away by the tide of waking. Cait was confused as to where she was, unable to see. And then she remembered–she tossed off her covers.

The day of Uncle Jay’s funeral. It was the summer after high school ended and Cait would conceal the fact that it was a suicide from her younger brothers. On the way to the funeral Cait’s mother would look resigned. Cait could tell her mom wasn’t surprised Jay had died this way by the way she lied about it. It was the way Cait was learning to lie from a lifetime of watching her mother. A lie that had been prepared some time before the truth would arrive. That was on the way to the funeral though; now, Cait awoke to the sound of her mother performing mourning in the kitchen as extended family arrived.

Cait sat up slowly and stretched out. Her head felt heavy as she had spent the last night unable to sleep. Cait got up and strode over to her baby blue desk and sat down. A smoky sunrise came through her west facing window as she sat down in the light, she picked up a brush. Cait looked into the small mirror on her desk. There was–but then nothing. Her eyebrows scrunched slightly in confusion as she stared into the mirror. Cait felt out of place as she blinked light headed for a second, but then it passed–she sighed and began to brush her curly hair. A knock on the door, followed by the door opening without Cait getting a chance to say come in. Cait’s father, his square grey head poking in through the door.

“Did I wake you up? Grandma Paula is here. So is Uncle Lee and everyone. You’ll be riding with your mother and them in the funeral car.” He said gently. Cait felt something else curdled under the annoyance she felt towards him for barging in. It was the way he was acting sadder than Cait knew he was. In the end, Cait knew her dad was glad Jay was dead.

“Okay.” Cait replied without looking at him, continuing to brush her hair. She looked down at her desk and on her notepad was the phrase “stop staring at the sun” written in sloping cursive. Someone else’s handwriting. Cait stared puzzled before her dad spoke again.

“...I’m going to miss him a lot too. When me and your mom first got together, Jay was just a kid…he was Ridge’s age. Fifth grade maybe. He was a little shit. He put staples in my coffee when I first met your grandparents. Janice gave him so much hell. You’ve never seen your mom so mad. I’m going to miss him.” He said sadly.

Cait brushed her hair harder, her father gave a smile that was all cheek and no joy before leaning out. Today, all Cait could remember was her dad arguing with Jay about his “communist atheist friends” hanging around too much. Or how much weed Jay smoked. Jay would counter back, saying at least he was never a loser in his thirties who knocked up a twenty-one year old. Flippant and fried and fed up. Uncle Jay.

Cait felt a slight headache bloom behind her right eye. She looked into the mirror and jumped back in shock, staring back at her, an empty black square that seemed to hum. Cait blinked and then she was in the funeral car, fully dressed surrounded by her family. Cait heaved; her breath caught in a net of fright. For a brief moment, Cait had remembered something that had filled her with terror. But like a dream, the knowing slipped through the cracks of her mind and she remembered where she was. Forgetting her fear and remembering her grief.

Funeral processions always felt unnecessary to Cait. What did driving together do to bring back the dead? How did driving through tragedy make you a family? Cait felt angry at the sun and its beauty today as she and her family rode to the funeral home. Grandma Paula looked like Cait and her mother. Dark eyed and unknowable as always, she mourned her son’s death with quiet coughs of heartbreak. Uncle Lee’s large hand fell upon her shoulder lightly. Sweat from his bald head mingled with his tears–he was in his military formals, to Cait he looked like a bird of prey trying to love.

Cait looked over to her mother. She had been strong for her sons. Both Jason and Ridge idolized Uncle Jay. Their war hero hippie uncle. Cait’s mother was crying silently. Cait gripped the paper booklet she was holding in her lap tighter. A poetry zine Jay had been passing out around town a year or so after he got back from his last tour. Cait opened it up to a poem she kept coming back to.

All Eye See

There was

no draft

and I

felt like

a he

ro when

we first

landed.

It was

math class

when the

towers

fell. Down

the hall

way we

all heard

Ms. Long

screaming.

She was

from Man

hattan

and had

an acc

ent we

all made

fun of

behind

her back.

Never

spared her

any

chance we

got. The

flames and

smoke did

not spare.

I got

over

there and

thought I

could bring

the tow

ers back.

Thought I

could drag

them out

the sand

float them

back cross

the At

lantic

to Miss

Long. There

was a

guy in

my u

nit who

dragged

a fif

teen year

old girl

back to

the bar

racks. He

sold her

to guys

for what

ever

they could

spare. That

was part

of the

war I

couldn’t

under

stand but

came to

see. I

can’t see

nothing

else.

Cait kept reading that as they drew closer to the funeral home, she flipped to the back of the zine–not a poem, but an author’s bio of sorts. Her head began to hurt a little more as she read.

Social studies was always my favorite class. That and literature obviously, I mean come on. Somehow the artsy day dreaming kid ended up in the marines. I don’t know. A lot of these poems are about that experience and how it’s made me feel about this place. Amerikka. My place in it. I’ll end this with a few lines from my favorite poet Vivian Emmanuel Christie;

“I can only hope you love me when you see the things about me you won’t love.”

Cait looked out the window and saw a billboard for a new sunscreen bearing the logo STOP STARING AT THE SUN!

Cait felt light headed even more so than earlier and closed her eyes. In her ears there was a song from a distance. Getting closer to the funeral, the choir maybe. With her eyes closed and the sound of singing getting louder Cait forgot where she was in the lightless room of her thoughts.

After a few seconds Cait opened her eyes and looked up at her mother only to find a black hole where her mother’s face would be. A violent mass of nothing that seemed to hum. In a panic Cait jerked her head over to Uncle Lee. His face was also a humming tunnel into nothing. When he spoke, his words seemed to take minutes.

“C a i t l i n ?” he seemed to ask across an eternity. Cait blinked and she was sitting at the funeral home, surrounded by family and friends with black holed faces that hummed and buzzed at different frequencies and volumes making Cait’s head hurt even worse. She clutched her head and doubled over in pain. Cait began to scream but couldn’t hear her voice over the buzzing of her family’s faces.

Cait bolted out of her seat and ran down the aisle and out of the door. Before Cait left, she paused and took a last glance at Jay’s casket. It was simple and brown, not even that shiny. Cait sprinted through the parking lot and into the woods behind the funeral home. A patch of forest on the side of the highway.

The woods were silent and Cait was the only noise as she stumbled her way through the thicket. Cait knew she would hit the highway eventually and expected to hear the sound of cars. However, the deeper she journeyed into the woods the deeper they seemed to go. Soon it was quiet, only the crunch of the leaves underneath Cait as she ran. Eventually she came to a clearing of sorts. A quilt of dead leaves over the land so deep her feet disappeared. Exhausted, Cait took a seat on a fallen tree.

Her head throbbed painfully and Cait doubled over burying her face into her hands, screaming in pain. Cait’s cry echoed and bounced through the forest all around as if thousands of birds screamed down at her. There was then silence in the woods and Cait’s mind felt like it had been set on fire.

“....can I sit?” Asked an impossible voice. Cait’s eyes flashed open and she turned her head to see Uncle Jay standing next to her, wearing a tired grin on his fox-like face. He was wearing his army jacket and his dirty blond hair was past his shoulders.

“Am I dead?” Cait asked plainly as Jay took a seat. The pounding in her head had vanished as soon as he appeared. Jay took a moment to consider and then said, “Naw. That gas is changing you, a lot of shit is coming up……aliens abducting white people though…hell yeah.” he finished with a sad laugh.

Everything came back to Cait, the Returners, Jim, everyone–suddenly the forest around disappeared. Cait found herself and Uncle Jay falling forever down a kaleidoscope tunnel of what looked like neon feathers. She locked eyes with Jay and he spoke with a laugh.

“I’m not surprised you ended up with that Jim kid. I always thought him and his friends were just like little versions of all of mine. Boys that think it’s cool to die young. Glad he’s not dead. Glad you’re not dead, Cait.”

Cait thought about what would happen next as they fell. To her, to the world, finally she spoke quietly, but yet her words seemed to come from every direction, “I’m not Jim. And I don’t know how we’re going to survive.” She said simply. Uncle Jay gave what felt like a smile of approval. Suddenly, Cait felt herself start to fall much faster. She was flying down the tunnel of feathers and Uncle Jay was rapidly becoming a smaller dot in the distance and yet–she heard his last words echo all around her–

“S T O P.

S T A R I N G.

AT.

THE.

SUN.”

Cait awoke standing in the desert with her arms stretched out staring wide eyed at the sun. Harper had her hands pressed over Cait’s eyes to keep her from hurting herself. “You’re gonna go blind Cait! Stop, please fucking stop!” She screamed in exhaustion. Cait’s body collapsed, her and Harper both fell to the ground. As they got up, Cait turned her groggy head in each direction. The Returners were gone, the rumbling in the ground was much quieter and far away now. Overhead the sky was a dark blue and the sun burned its way through space with malice and spite. Both Jim, and Lisa Jo lay unconscious on the ground. Harper looked as if she had been fighting Cait for hours. “What happened?” Cait demanded frantically. “And thank you…I feel like I heard you in my dream or vision or whatever…”

Harper was doubled over breathing hard. She took a second to catch her breath and Cait took a look around and noticed something. “This isn’t where we were…” She said slowly observing different desert trees and rock formations than they had sprinted past before. Harper raised her head and spoke finally.

“All three of you have been doing some weird shit. It’s been on and off like this for two days…you guys are either passed out or trying to hurt yourselves…” She heaved, glancing at Lisa Jo and Jim. “I think the Returners moved us while we were unconscious…but when I woke up Jim was speaking in tongues, he wouldn’t stop hitting himself. And Lisa Jo had the gun pointed to her heart. But it was like it wasn’t her, it was like she was possessed or something. And you kept standing up and staring at the sun…”

Cait looked at Lisa Jo and Jim on the ground and wondered if they had similar dreams to her. She also couldn’t believe she had been dreaming for two days. Harper looked ragged from the effort of keeping them all alive. Cait took another look at their landscape. She could still see the Davis Mountains and the grass felt the same. They weren’t too far from where they were, she concluded. So why were they moved? Cait looked at Harper and paused before asking.

“...did you…have like a scary vision or a really vivid dream?” Cait asked Harper timidly. Harper took a second to think, folding her arms and bowing her head. “Yeah actually, but it wasn’t bad or scary. My nana was there!”

Cait and Harper spent the rest of the afternoon comparing visions as they watched the sun slide down the back side of the sky as Jim and Lisa Jo slept. Behind the mountains the sun cast shadows across the plains. They sat quietly as night began to fall. After a while, Harper spoke again.

“I wonder what she’s dreaming about…” She said softly, her gaze falling onto Lisa Jo. Cait too looked at Jim and couldn’t help but wonder if he was trapped in a nightmare world with his father. Cait took a breath and looked back at Harper. She wondered aloud something she had been pondering. Something she had been afraid to ask. “Do you feel different now?”

Harper looked away from Lisa Jo and over at Cait as they sat cross legged in the grass. She looked down at her long fingers, as if she was seeing them for the first time. Examining them for new truths. “Not really,” she said. “I’m not hungry at least. I can still taste that honey.” Harper finished with a grin.

A shot rang through the air. Coyotes, buzzards and the cry of the desert shouted back–Cait and Harper sprang up. Wess Wayne and about ten white people marched over the prairie grass, a hunting rifle in his hands.

“Shit!” Harper hissed.

“Don’t you fucking move!” Wess shouted in an authoritarian tone. He sounded like a police officer kicking down a door. Eager and ready for this moment. His false blue eyes shone like two decaying stars in the night as his group crept forward. Harper and Cait raised their hands in surrender. As Cait did she scanned the group. There were three other men, and about six or seven women. One of the women, a small pale blonde woman in overalls, wore a manic smile as she too shouldered a rifle. Out of the corner of her eye, Cait saw Jim breathe a heavy breath in his deep sleep. She turned her eyes to Wess who was now a few feet in front of them.

“You’re a fucking murderer..” Harper spat, staring defiantly up at Wess, who smiled down paternalistically. Wess then turned his gaze to Cait, who in turn tried her best to glare back. The blonde woman and a short older white man with a patchy mustache pointed their rifles at Cait and Harper as Wess walked over between Jim and Lisa Jo. He knelt down and grabbed the old revolver that was lying besides Jim.

Wess then took a step over Jim and pointed the gun at the back of Lisa Jo’s head, before turning his own head back to Cait and Harper. Dead star eyes gazing through the abyss. He addressed Harper while he had the gun aimed at Lisa Jo. “You spat on me and this one tried to shoot me…” he said coldly. “I should shoot this bitch right now. But I don’t believe in spilling unnecessary white blood,” he turned to look at Cait and then back at Harper. “Not unless I have to. We need everyone we can get in this fight…if you can follow orders and accept what it means to be white in this world–you can join us.”

“Fuck you.” Harper said viciously, eyes darting between Wess, the small woman with the gun pointed at her, and then down at Lisa Jo in concern. Cait’s breath was rapid, she forced herself to speak between the heaves of her chest. In her mind was the memory of Uncle Jay’s last reckless grin, “Look, none of us know what’s going to happen. But we don’t need to be killing each oth-”

“Bullshit!” The little woman said in a thick Midwestern accent. When she spoke she seemed possessed. As if she was a church parishioner imbued with the holy ghost. It was bursting out of her in ways deeper than her words. She seemed made of wood almost in how her movements felt so heavy, a tree of faith immovable in the storm. “I hate that it had to be this way…but I’m glad something happened to wake white people up!” She said with determination, dogged and half rabid she stared at Harper and Cait. “And if you disrespect him again I will shoot you.”

Cait’s eyes snapped from the woman to Wess, who had now turned Jim’s old revolver towards them. He smiled and said “it’s time to choos-” before he could finish his threat Jim had leapt up from his feigned slumber and grabbed him from behind in a choke. Wess dropped the revolver while the blonde woman and the patchy bearded man turned their guns towards Wess and Jim. The rest of Wess’s onlookers rushed forward to try and pry Jim off of their leader–Harper leapt on top of the blonde woman wrestling with her on the ground for her rifle.

The patchy bearded man hesitated unsure of what to do; Cait didn’t know what to do either-so she sprinted for Jim’s gun. The patchy bearded man fired a shot that missed Cait and struck one of Wess’s band in the leg. He cried out while the old man apologized and fired another errant shot in embarrassment. Cait leapt on the ground and grabbed the old revolver and pointed it at Wess who was now upright. Two of his followers were holding Jim facedown in the grass. Wess turned around and locked eyes with Cait, his rifle pointed at her. Harper had wrestled the gun from the little woman and was now in a stand off with her, and the old man. Everyone was still.

The evening wind blew through the desert and Cait tried to breathe at its pace. Everyone kept their eyes on everyone. Overhead a thick cloud passed over the moon and Cait wondered if there would finally be rain. Instead of thunder on the horizon though, Cait and the others heard the sound of ATVs.

No one broke eye contact but the ATVs grew closer and soon they came to a stop. A voice Cait hadn’t heard in days spoke with precision. “Everyone put your guns down and put your hands up.” Kalima said confidently. Cait wanted to turn her head at the sound of Kalima’s voice but she felt compelled to drop the gun, and put her hands up. In that moment, it was as if that was the only thing in life that mattered. Harper, and the old man dropped their guns and put their hands up. Wess seemed to spasm. As if his body was trying to move two different directions. Kalima spoke again, this time with more force.

“I said, drop it. Now.” She said with an anger Cait had not heard yet in her voice. It was as if there was a scream in Kalima’s heart that was hatching. Wess threw the gun to the ground and dropped to his knees, a small nosebleed dripping out of his nostrils. As the blood fell, he stared at Kalima from his knees while she stared back stony faced until her face briefly cracked into a vicious smirk as she seemed to learn something. Her abstract painting eyes a canvas of triumph. “Wait…that’s so funny. They used to call you Wuss Wayne as a kid?” She laughed as Wess’s eyes grew wide with fear and embarrassment.

Cait finally felt that she could turn around, when she did Kalima blew past her without speaking and knelt down beside Lisa Jo. “....glad you alright.” She said to Jim sincerely without looking at him as she checked on her wife.

Cait saw that next to Kalima there was another ATV, on it was a stranger. He sighed as if this was all a drag as he hopped off.

A small black man with glasses and short dreads. He wore a blue and pink Miami Heat jersey over jeans. He looked more alien out in the desert than the Returners to Cait.

“Zay!” Kalima shouted to him, “Come give me a hand. And the rest of y’all that I don’t know get out of here. Go walk until your shoes split.” She finished viciously. The blonde woman and the old man got up and marched back out into the shadows as did the rest of Wess’s gang. Wess himself once again seemed to be moving in two directions, his body twisting and resisting. Harper too started walking West before she seemed to almost wake up out of a daze. Harper shook her head confusedly as she stopped in her tracks and stared at Kalima in fear. Jim rushed to speak.

“She’s with us!” He blurted out to Kalima. She nodded at both him and Harper as Zay helped her carry Lisa Jo back to her ATV. Cait plopped down in the prairie grass and watched Wess and the others depart. She watched Kalima as if seeing her and the world for the first time. The sound of more ATVs. Christian, and a light skinned black woman in overalls disembarked. Her hair was cut low, she was about Cait’s height, and her face was wide and friendly. “Are you okay Kalima!” she yelled over the sound of her engine,

“s o r r y, hol’ on..” she apologized for the noise shutting her engine off and cutting the lights. The woman with the gentle face trotted over to Lisa Jo and Kalima while Cait tried to absorb everything that had happened. In the distance coyotes painted over the night sky with the cry of the land.

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I don’t know if there is anything inherently wrong with pornography. People been depicting sex for thousands of years. Cave walls, pyramids, which are big ass tombs. Imagine having back shots on your gravestone. Niggas been on that ever since they invented art. So, I don’t think it’s anything wrong with depicting sex, but there is a lot wrong with the pornography produced in this day. And as a form of propaganda, it constantly influences your definition of what sex is, what is permissible, what is desirable, what is stimulating, what is consensual. Sexual tourism, violence against women, male dominance, transphobia, Trans fetishism, race fetishism, incest, all these ideologies are represented on the first few pages of pornhub. I think this ultimately serves as propaganda on a deep level. To make these acts and desires both normal and expected.

In my lifetime I have seen mainstream pornography go from exaggerated performances of vanilla sex to becoming performances themed around aggression and domination in the early 2000s when Ghetto Gaggers and Throat Gaggers and all that type of porn started being produced. I remember the strange feelings of shame and arousal that I felt watching those videos as a kid. At fourteen I feel like I was already a two-year porn addict, as were most of the boys I knew. This was the era of “flicks.” I remember my body watching the world redefine what sex was through those movies when I didn’t even know what sex was yet and still don’t. I sometimes think we are all broken past repair.

Acting out images we have seen in pornography is a not so secret, secret male rite of passage. I think we are being conditioned to fester a tremendous resentment between what sex is in real life and how sex is depicted in porn. Men weigh themselves against the men in pornography who get to do “whatever they want.” This is an illusion. Yet porn often tries to assure you it is not. It tries to obscure the fact that these are paid performers. I think this dynamic and how it contrasts to men’s real sex lives triggers feelings of inferiority, frustration, jealousy and ultimately fear of other men and their perceived superiority and what that must mean existentially. The men in porn must be more of a man since they get to do whatever they want and we have to ask. Under patriarchy, it is emasculating to have to ask. “Men” don’t ask. They take. They never don’t get what they want.

This dynamic exists all over patriarchy and it is one beaten into our bones from birth by the world of male dominance. There is always a way or mechanism to measure yourself against another man as lacking. And in fact, if you do not spend your life caring about and striving for the approval of other boys and men you will be cast out. And to be cast out by men, always means to be a target of men’s violence. Once you are outside the wolf pack, they will eat you. So as to not be eaten by other men we conform. Porn, as it can often exist now, helps us conform to all of those forms of violence I listed earlier.

To avoid being devoured by the world of man, men devour the world. That devouring is really encouraged by mainstream pornography. And the addiction to these images we carry in our bodies from childhood is a form of brainwashing that can be hard to break. I remember my father pretty openly watching pornography in the living room and I think I have always struggled with the resentment I felt for that. I think as I’ve made mistakes and caused harm and grown it’s uncovered some of those resentments.

I remember that my dad wanted to open a strip club before he died. He didn’t so much tell me this directly, but more so he had me draft an email to a prospective dancer when I was like eleven. This was the early days of the internet, and neither one of my parents being tech savvy people relied on me for tech stuff. I felt a numb sort of fear sending that email to that grown woman behind my mom’s back. Now that I’m older I see that as my first act of betrayal towards a woman who loved me. I think between men and boys there are often misogynistic rites of passage involving the harm and exploitation of women.

Boys tend to watch porn together and trade porn between each other. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that boys in the Black community use group sex–where the dynamic is multiple boys and one girl where consent for no one involved is established and its almost always organized by the oldest boy–as a boyhood rite of passage. We are uniquely wounded by and bound to patriarchy as a system. For Black boys patriarchy often becomes their sense of agency. We cannot control the white supremacist world around us, so we try to control women. I think everyone knows this, but I don’t think we really talk about it amongst ourselves.

So yeah, I think in all those ways, pornography can be a form of further brainwashing. Which is not a novel thought, but something rather to take more seriously.

American Saints

Part V

Wisdom in the shadows as they all run from the gallows/ can’t claim to be innocent/an inheritance of battles/wars for the sun scorch the sky with no victor/nobody excused/everyone complicit/mana from the sky keep us going when its dry/eventually the price of all the hubris gets high/the angels of the lord come to judge with no mercy/even angels can’t decipher what is God’s true purpose/I seen him send a messenger the size of a giant/his voice cracked the sky like a mirror made of lightning.

Punch Pilot, Track 11 “Apostles of the New God.”

The ground shook harder as the night blackened; the core of the Earth now a clock on fire and screaming the hour. Around Cait the velvet curtain of night seemed to vibrate from the unruly earth. Stillness for half a minute or two, then more tremors. While asleep, maybe Cait had placed her own heart into the ground accidentally. Cait’s heart beat too desperately to live in her chest anymore. The ground beneath Cait moved while her body was petrified into the cold stone of terror.

The Returner seemed to be more preoccupied with the shaking ground than Cait and her shaking companions. He stood sopping wet, turning his head and closing his eyes as he seemed to listen intently to the sound of the world shifting. Cait didn’t know if earthquakes were common in West Texas and she didn’t give a shit. She thought about every dead body she had seen yesterday and decided that the ground had swallowed them. That was it;it was them, beating their fists atop the planet’s mantle in mad protest. Cait looked at her friends.

Harper, Lisa Jo, and Jim seemed struck paralyzed as well. The Returner opened his eyes. Amethyst and wide, watery as his voice. Cait’s Uncle Jay had eyes that seemed to gaze from far away like the Returners did. He had fought in the Iraq War, maybe with Wess Wayne’s brother Trevor. Was this a war? Yes, Cait realized. Was she now a soldier?

“Yu all enterupt peeple as dey bathe? No wonder dey call yu savages.” He said, eyeing them sternly, before chuckling lightly. His voice was gentle waves on a night beach. Cait felt disarmed by its warmth, her shoulders relaxing involuntarily.

“Sit.” He commanded. They all sat. “Wait.” He said, seeming to remember something as he pointed at Cait. Her heart beat in two different directions, “Gō tu de fronna de cave ‘nd git my garments.”

Cait did as she was told and retrieved the giant pants she had mistaken as a tarp. And the poncho she had thought was a blanket. Cait noticed that it was a fine material. Some sort of alien silk. Underneath, a rifle longer than Cait made of gold so dirty it was brown. Cait paused for a moment, transfixed by this ancient weapon.

Without looking up at him, Cait timidly offered up the Returners clothes. Once he was dressed, Cait could see his cloak was a soft red. Patterns of six and ten winged birds all over. He sat and crossed his legs, the cradle of his lap wider than an office desk. The Returner then placed his hand into the dirt and said, “Fye.”

A campfire burned now where his hand had been. Cait and the others were astonished and silent. Cait felt guilty and grateful for its warmth. The flame danced with red and blue. It was unnatural, illuminating the cave more than it should. Coloring every corner of the cavern a soft purple. The Returner looked into the fire as another tremor shook the desert. Cait’s headache wouldn’t leave her alone. Harper spoke in a hesitant and respectful tone.

“...I thought you all said we had half a day.” She asked slowly, looking up at their captor. To Cait’s surprise, he seemed confused before replying. “I ‘ave never met yu beefore.” He said, his large brow scrunched with curiosity and focus.

Lisa Jo exchanged a confused glance with Cait before speaking too. “...Back at Fort Davis. Y’all said that we could have a head start… your leader S’an D’aelphon told us.” At the mention of S’an D’aelphon, Cait thought she saw something sharp flash through the invaders’ eyes. The sharpness was swallowed almost instantly by a field of violets. “Ahh…well–I deserted.” He said quietly with another chuckle. Cait was stunned as were her companions. She had come to expect no compromise from the insurgents. “Tell me yoor names.” He said looking back into the flames. Cait noticed something about him, he looked older than the other Returners somehow. The light of the alien fire revealed creases and wrinkles around his eyes and forehead.

Quietly, Cait and the others introduced themselves. Jim didn’t speak. The Returner seemed to take note of Jim’s silence, but he didn’t press it. “My name is R’aa f’ael.” He said looking each of them in the eye. “I wanna know yoor story. De story of yoor peeple.” He finished quietly, leaning back and sighing.

That caught Cait off guard. She sensed no one knew what to say, Jim winced in pain next to her. He had cleared his throat, but the motion must have aggravated his wounds. R’aa f’ael took note. “Yu hurt?” Jim stared at him like a stone. Cait desperately wanted to warn Jim not to say anything that would upset the alien, but he spoke anyways.

“...one of your boys damn near killed me. He whipped me…” Jim said quietly, a scream beating against the door of his restraint. R’aa f’ael smiled and closed his eyes, leaning back into the arch of the cave wall. “I see. I ‘ave not done enuff research on dis whorl tu sey fa sure but–I remember readin’ dat churn of de sun used ta git whipped ‘ere. Fa punishment. Fa fun. Fun fa massa. Well…das a knowin’ yu ‘ave now. Dat pain. Maybe sum knowledge grow from it.”

Jim was silent, his fists clenched in anger but when he looked into the fire, there was an expression Cait couldn’t place. The flames danced in Jim’s blue eyes. No one spoke for a moment. Lisa Jo began to say something but an especially large tremor silenced her.

As it subsided, R’aa f’ael seemed to be contemplating something as he stared at Jim across the flame. Once the shaking regulated itself he stretched his long arm over the fire and placed a hand atop Jim’s head. Jim was in no shape to move fast enough to escape and there was nowhere to go. “Shit!” He hissed. “Gone on! Do it motherfu-”

A soft green glow seemed to drip down Jim’s body. Rainlight that was both water and shine ran down his shoulders and back, much of it spilling onto the cave floor; flowers and grass grew around where Jim sat. R’aa f’ael removed his hand suddenly and the glow seemed to soak into Jim’s skin. “My back…my nose..” he said, standing up and stretching his newly healed body.

“Now-” R’aa f’ael said with a weary smirk, “-tell me de ‘istory of yoor peeple. Yu tell me wite boy. Kunsider it ə trade.”

Jim stopped his stretching and looked at the Returner as Cait and the others watched, shocked at what they had just seen. A miracle by the fire. Cait felt uneasy, and Jim tried his best.

“Our people’s history? What do you mean, like the pilgrims or Vikings or some shit?” Jim said sitting back down.

“ ‘s dat what yu call yoorselves, vying kings?” R’aa f’ael asked with real curiosity.

“Not all of us were Vikings. I mean some of our ancestors I guess.….I don’t know man! What are you expecting huh? Me to give you a history lesson? Y’all are killing us man. We don’t deserve this shit!” Jim said in a fluster, throwing his hands up like a boy.

“Well, what do yu deserve?” R’aa f’ael asked seriously. Jim didn’t seem to know what to say as the fire cracked. Cait didn’t know what to say either, and maybe it was just a way to think about something other than the headache, but she responded.

“I think we deserve another chance. Or to know how to be better, like mission trips or supporting in some way like that…” She said slowly. Cait looked at Jim, and then she looked at the others. “This can’t be the way to fix things. Right?” Lisa Jo and Harper both looked at Cait but neither responded.

R’aa f’ael turned his gaze to Cait, his eyes seem to be a spotlight. Cait hated it. It felt as if she was being appraised in some way. He spoke playfully: “Betta at not ‘nslavin’ ‘nd conquerin’; betta at not killin’ anyone darker tan yu? How kin anyone teech yu dat? Y yu even need tu lern dat?” R’aa f’ael continued to chuckle before getting serious. “I bin doin’ dis a looong time now. Tu long…it maybe ain’t no fixin’ things.” He finished sadly.

No one said anything for a moment as the fire burned blue and red. Lisa Jo asked quietly, “...Is that why you deserted then? Just tired of fighting.I mean..if there are planets like Earth all throughout the universe where Black and Brown people suffer…it must be really hard. I’m sorry, and killing like you all do can’t be easy. That has to affect you.” She finished softly. R’aa f’ael offered up a sad smile and turned his head towards Lisa Jo, “I bin doin’ dis work since I was a boy. Beefore da continents on dis planet separated–I was a killer. I have served God enuff in dis wey.” He said. There was a distant bitterness in his voice, Cait thought. As if it was far out in the black of the ocean under a sky of rotting stars. R’aa f’ael looked at Harper intently. His eyes narrowed. “Wha’ yu doin’ ‘ere? Dats da wun thing I kin’t understand.”

Harper looked sheepish in a way Cait had not seen in her yet. “I didn’t know how you guys would feel about me…or if I could even claim being Black..” She said softly, looking the Returner in his eyes. Harper’s voice was always earnest, like a child, Cait thought. Childhood was spilling out of her right now.

R’aa f’ael considered her seriously for a moment before responding, “It varies from whorl tu whorl. ‘Ow peeple like yu are perceived I meen…fa us, no. We wud not ‘ave konsidered yu Blakkk. But yu not wite either. We konsider yu as who yu are. Ya own thing. It was foolish of yu tu choose dis fate….” He finished sadly.

The ground shook more violently this time and after it subsided Jim spoke, “My dad was a soldier. So was his dad-”

“Y wernt yu?” R’aa f’ael cut Jim off, purple eyes snapping from Harper onto him. Jim’s face grew red but he responded. “I wanted to be one, I tried.” He said slowly, “but my knee was fucked up from football…couldn’t pass the physical. I wish I could have fought in Afghanistan or Iraq. I wish I could fight now. But everybody’s telling me it’s wrong. It’s wrong that I want to fight for my country, my family. My peo–I just don’t get it man. And you don’t even wanna fight. Yet here you are. Why’d you even come here? Why’d you heal me if I deserve to die?”

“Yu still ‘aven’t told me yoor people’s ‘istory. Da ‘istory yu wanna fight fa. Da ‘istory yu wanna die fa. It mus bee wun tu bee proud of. Eh?” He laughed harshly. Cait felt her face flush. Again, her skin was tying her to a legacy and destiny she had no say in. She knew now there was no running from it. But why? For some reason, Cait thought about how her mother had to give up school to raise her and her brothers. Cait thought about her mother.

“It’s not all of us!” She blurted out angrily, surprising everyone and herself. R’aa f’ael cocked a hairless brow in response. “Gō on.” He said. Cait took a breath: “...it’s like my mom, and women like my mom–and her mom–are getting punished for wars we didn’t start. And for laws that we didn’t even make. Laws that hurt us too. Come on Lisa. Harper? You guys are women. You know this isn’t right. I’m trying to learn but this can’t be the way.” Everyone around the fire seemed to contemplate as the flames swayed. R’aa f’ael spoke slowly and directly towards Cait. She listened.

“...trū…I don’ knō de ‘istory of dis whorl tu well…but I do knō de ‘istory of yoor mutha. I done seen it on ten tousan’ whorls. Wite ‘ooman like yu mek excuse fa wite boys dat wanna kill God. Bear dey churn, raze dey suns tu burn down de sky. Raze dey dawters tu bee de wite man’s spit rag. ‘Oomen dat neber side wit de ones de wite man step on. Een as da wite man step on dem. Dey wan’ dey turn to wear da boot. Dey turn tu step. So dey neber rise up wit de res’ of de stepped on. I know yoor mutha. I kill ‘oomen like dat. Like yu. But dere is always anotha whorl of ‘oomen like yu. And men like ‘im-” R’aa f’ael looked at Jim before finishing, “-and I am tired…”

There was silence and everyone filled it with their unspoken thoughts. A quiet that hummed. Cait thought about her grandmother and her great grandmother whom she had met once before she passed. A woman that had apparently shot Cait’s great grandfather and got away with it. Lisa Jo had almost shot Wess Wayne. Cait would maybe have to shoot a man too she realized. She took one more look at R’aa f’ael–he had shot a lot of men Cait thought. Women and children too; ethnic cleansing for eons. For a greater good. It seemed to cost.

They were all tired and words weren’t enough to change history or make anything right. Words never were. Cait’s head wouldn’t stop pounding and the world wouldn’t stop shaking. Eventually after they had all sat in silence for a few minutes R’aa f’ael extinguished the fire and the camp of mixed world survivors rested. Cait fell asleep next to Jim. Before he drifted off he said “Damn…my head has been killing me, I thought it was from the fight..but I still feel it.”

Cait and the others awoke a little after dawn. The ground now rumbled in an almost rhythmic way. R’aa f’ael was gone, and in the place he sat was a clay jar of honey. Cait’s headache had settled into a steady pulse. It wasn’t just Jim, Lisa Jo had a headache too. They concluded that maybe it was hunger as Harper seemed pensive. The dawn light peered into the cave and Cait stuck her head out cautiously.

The sky was a blushing blue over Cait and the mountains–however, to the West was a mile wide tower of storm clouds headed towards them. Blackish grey clouds thick with flood and hail. A storm that billowed from the floor of the horizon up to a lone fighter jet. Maybe the last warrior from an empire about to be thrown into the endless pit of history.

“Whoa!! This tastes soooo good dude.” Cait turned around to see Lisa Jo had her hand in the honey jar. She looked like a child’s dream of a bear. Cait smiled like a sob. They each took turns eating the honey, and to Cait it was savory almost. Sweet but peppery. Her eyes widened in surprise. After she swallowed, Cait felt as if she had eaten a full meal. The cleanest meal she had ever eaten. It was more than that though Cait felt; she forgot what it was like to be hungry. As if she had never really been full until now. She immediately felt a surge of energy.

“Whoa…” Jim said. The four of them sat in silence for a bit before Harper brought them back to reality. “We should get going. They’re coming after us now.”

The group moved swiftly as they could through the brush and hills. Pronghorn antelope grazed and Cait found herself admiring their beauty and grace. Their world would change too, Cait thought briefly as she and the others kept moving Northwest. In the last few days Cait had seen animals she had never heard of. Animals that to her, sprang forth from this new world.

Cait kept expecting to hear slow hymnals in the wind. But nothing yet. The storm drew closer and the ground shook louder in the same rhythm. It was about ten o’clock when they reached a ridge that forced them east. An hour or so later a weak voice called out to them from a patch of trees ahead.

As they drew closer Cait recognized him from the initial group that ended up leaving with Wess. Anthony’s father lay in the grass bleeding from a wound to his right side.

“He’s a…we should have never..I’m sorry..I’m sorry..I love you…he killed my wife...oh god…he’s a monster..Anthony…oh god…Anthony….”

The man died before they could ask his name or what had happened. Cait had started trying to anticipate death. She pursed her lips in a way that she thought would shut out the scream in her throat, but the rumble of it echoed through her chest.

“Jesus…” Jim muttered. “Gimme back my gun. I’m gone shoot that motherfucker when I see him.” Lisa Jo said a quick blessing over the man as they all stood in silence for a moment. This time Jim didn’t suggest that they stop to bury the dead, but rather he knelt down and placed a hand over the man’s forehead for a brief second. He tucked the gun in his back belt loop after Lisa Jo handed it back to him. The group moved on.

Cait thought about last night’s conversation with R’aa f’ael as they marched towards noon. She looked at the back of Jim’s head as he and Harper led the way. Cait thought about some of the things Jim believed because of his dad. Some of the things she had just hoped Jim would grow out of. Things that were off putting to her, but not deal breakers. Things she would sometimes just roll her eyes at. Cait used to feel like a buffer between Jim and the shadow his father cast. But now, she felt like an accomplice all of a sudden. The approaching storm filled up much of the western sky. Below, the ground shook so violently it threw them all off of their feet for a moment.

Harper was the first up. “Shit! Is everyone okay?” She asked. Before anyone could answer, a haunting gospel filled the air, and from the South warriors on horseback rode–their ancient weapons flashing in the sun. Guns and spears from beyond history. Cait thought about the pain. What it would feel like to be butchered into uneven pieces of fascia and skin. She grabbed onto Jim’s hand.

“Shit!” Harper hissed, before tugging Lisa Jo out of the stupor of fear they were all in. “We have to run!” For whatever good it did, they ran. There was no care for rattlesnakes, what did it matter. Today they would die. Cait knew it. Still, she ran harder than she had ever ran, for longer than she had ever ran. Over the prairie grassland they scrambled and grasped for freedom. The gospel was catching up to them and to the West the storm loomed closer and the ground shook harder. The rain would wash away their remains soon Cait thought as her sides burned from exhaustion. Today the ground would finally devour them. Maybe that was good, or God. Lisa Jo collapsed, doubling over to vomit from exertion. “Fuck!” She sputtered. The stitch in Cait’s side along with her headache felt like two spears already piercing her body. She too had to stop from exhaustion. Harper and Jim ran back from yards ahead to pull them up. But all around them now the Returners began to surround. The first thunder from the storm broke the sky into a chorus of hammers. A familiar voice Cait had come to fear spoke like an unexpected wave crashing.

“Sō!” S’an D’aelphon crowed as he hopped off of his ash white horse, a sardonic grin on his lips. He steadied himself on the shaky ground before speaking. “Fore wite gurls los’ in de desert.” He then addressed Jim who had his fists balled. “Yu heeled up fas’ wite gurl.” Cait put her hand on Jim’s balled fist before the Returner continued, “We ‘ave all de wite folk we gon tek. Do yu wanna run o’ fight?”

“All of you don’t want to fight you know!” Harper said defiantly stepping forward. Around them all the Returners laughed and exchanged incredulous looks between each other. Some mimicked Harper cruelly before shouting obscenities and threats. She continued as S’an D’aelphon looked down at her. He was no longer smiling as Harper spoke again. “We’ve met one of you that deserted. I’m not saying this to save myself but my mom is half-black. I’ve seen how hard it is for her. It hasn’t been easy for me either all the time…I’m angry too. Always. But this isn’t it, and you know that. I’ve seen how it really affects you.” She finished without breaking eye contact.

The Returners stopped laughing and S’an D’aelphon looked down at Harper with scrutiny. Cait thought that he seemed to want to know something, but he didn’t want to seem curious. Finally, he spoke. “Who deserted. Whas de name of de one yu met?”

“R’aa f’ael!” Lisa Jo said. There was a plea in her voice as she spoke. “I saw it. I saw how hard it is to kill….even if the people you’re killing deserve it in some ways...the children don’t. There’s always a chance with them, man. Black and Brown people do deserve their land back. They do deserve to get back at white folks. But y’all are hurting them too. Hurting everyone…and you’re hurting too.” She finished. The Returners looked genuinely confused before they started laughing again. The sound of white thick rain on a highway window. S’an D’aelphon smiled wider than ever.

“See, dis is ‘ow I knō yu all are liars by nature. Who told yu de name R’aa f’ael eh?” He said laughing before Jim responded angrily. “We met him last night dude!” S’an D’aelphon looked down at Jim before saying, “R’aa f’ael was a Returner dat died in battle billions of yeers agō. One of de fusst Returners. ‘E bin ded. Fa eons.” Cait would have been stunned if her body had room for shock. No one knew what to say and there was nothing left to say.

As S’an D’aelphon unsheathed his machete a shadow above blocked out the sun. Maybe the first cloud from the storm. A Returner from the crowd yelled to S’an D’aelphon, “Kaptan! Look!” He then pointed up at the shadow.

Everyone’s eyes followed his finger to the sky and Cait saw the silhouette of a bird. One with many wings, six Cait counted. Six brushes of shadow, it descended in swirls of darkness. She looked down at S’an D’aelphon as his confusion turned to sudden understanding and what looked like fear. He shouted at the other Returners, “Kneel! De General approaches!”

What Cait had thought was a bird grew larger in shape as it floated gently to the ground. And eventually a Returner more than twenty feet tall with six black feathered wings protruding from his back landed. In his hand was a soft red cloak. As he stood, the wings on his back disintegrated into ash and feathers large as kites that landed around his feet. The Returner threw the cloak over his shoulders and stepped from underneath the glare of the sun to reveal a familiar creased face.

“R’aa f’ael..” Cait whispered to herself, as S’an D’aelphon and the other Returners knelt. The Returner Cait knew as R’aa f’ael gave her a sad smile but no other acknowledgement before addressing his legion. “I am My’Kael. De Return of dis kontinent is under my kommand. I ‘ave been əway on a speshul mission. Under de guise of one of my ancestors-” He said gesturing towards Cait and the others.

“-I ‘ave been learning about dese ‘umans by spendin’ time wit dem akross de whorl. De ones ‘nslaved in mines and sweatshops and ones ‘nslaved in cities. Alla dem. I lerned much….tell me what ‘ave yu lerned from dis sadism?” He finished, glaring at S’an D’aelphon who remained quiet. Cait could see him breathing hard before he responded.

“On dis whorl de wite men rape and sell churn. Tu each otha, fa fun, fa status. Dey poison de wata, and dey rewrite de ‘istory. Dey split atoms to kill. Dey are monsters General. I am ova tree tousan’ years ol’ and I ‘ave neber seen dis.” He pleaded and many of the other Returners murmured agreement.

My’Kael looked down at S’an D’aelphon and Cait saw him sigh paternally before speaking. “...yes ‘nd yu are young still in de eyes of God….I am haf a billion years ol’ ‘nd I have seen whorls like dis. Yu cryin’ ova an atom. Dere ‘re wite men dat bomb galaxies. And rape all de churn akross every planet…” he finished harshly causing many of his soldiers to flinch. My’Kael continued, and Cait heard the same distant bitterness from across the ancient seas.

“De sickness ‘s deep ‘ere yes. We muss cleanse dese peeple. Alla dem. Look tu de west.” He pointed, Cait and everyone else turned their eyes to the mass of clouds churning their way. My’Kael spoke again. “Keep looking while I speek.”

Cait saw the swirl of clouds crack with lightning near the middle, and overhead the sky began to darken. Her headache grew worse somehow as the storm spread across the sky and the tower of clouds grew closer. My’Kael continued.

“God bin stretchin’ and ballin’ up de universe ova and ova again since always. Wide out as ‘E can…and den small down tu ə singularity.” My’kael mimicked a bubble stretching and contracting. “Everytime ‘E stretch….it pop louder den de las’ time. It bin foreteen billion yeers since ‘E dun popped de universe open again…de Big Bang dey kall it ‘ere..God’s fuust miracle.” My’Kael paused to smile.

“Except…’E bin doin Big Bangs. Ain’t no fuust. Ain’t no las’

maybe..not yet.” He preached to his soldiers.

Cait coughed as the storm advanced and the sky darkened. Ahead, the maelstrom seemed to twist and fold up on itself. Was this a tornado? Cait thought. No, there wasn’t any wind and the ground kept shaking louder in that same rhythm.

“Fa de fuss tree hunndred ‘nd eighty tousan’ yeers it was dark. Dere was nuthin…but den God sed let dere be lite! De stars all around bloomed. Dis was back wen God walked through de garden of de universe…de largest thing yu will ever see. Dat’s how God look. De biggest blakkk hole is smaller den God’s eyes….” My’Kael said in a voice that was reverent.

Not clouds Cait realized. Smoke. Was this a wildfire headed their way? The smoke seemed to come from the ground and near the top of the clouds two fireballs seemed to burn.

“We are de churn of dat fusst lite. Lite is de word of God. De fusst word of God. We ‘ave God’s words all ova our skin and ‘E rites through us. Yet, under de fusst star…we were ‘nslaved fa our skin. ‘Nslaved by wite men that traveled from a distant whorl’. A whorl’ wit no lite.”

From the tower of smoke a giant emerged. The top of the highest mountain came up to its ankle. Ink black skinned, with deep scars of crystal the color of beryl. Scar tissue of jewels. Cait could now see polished brass feet that shook the world with each step. Cait craned her neck up to see a face composed of lightning bolts and two burning eyes. In a brass hand the giant held a skyscraper size incense burner that billowed out smoke. He swung the thurible in slow arcs covering the sky and land with opaque clouds. It smelled like pine straw and frankincense burning. Cait and the others fell to their knees coughing uncontrollably.

“We prayed tu God fa power…power tu free ourselves. ‘E gabe it tu us… Now we gone gib it to dem…dis ‘s de Returner kalled G’ah’bree-el. One of de fusst Returners. He carries de Word of God and ‘e been carryin’ it across dis whole planet.

Dis ‘s a miracle yu are witness tu. A mutagenic gas radiated wit God’s lite. De lite from de fusst star. All de trauma and violence ‘as changed de genetics of all de peeple ‘ere.. dat trauma gone mek de churn of de sun like us, Like God.” My’Kael then looked down at Cait with a sad resolution. She struggled to breathe as the titan loomed above, blocking out the sun and shaking the world apart with each step.

“And dat trauma will be de undoin’ of dey oppressors. Dey will beg us tu tek da res’ of dem tu Ubermensch. And we won’ ‘ave to kill anymoor...”

The Returner G’ah’bree-el stepped over Cait and the others and the world around was consumed by smoke as the ground shook violently. Cait couldn’t see or even heave her chest to breathe. G’ah’bree-el spoke and all the water of the world was his voice. Cait could hear his voice coming from her spit, her blood, her bile. It hurt so bad Cait couldn’t hear what he was saying. No air and no sound but water, Cait felt herself drowning in the desert. She blacked out.

American Saints

Part IV

Sunset blues/sky like a bruise/you can choose fate/if you don’t hesitate/refugee rhythm/religious sect schism/marooned with quadroons on the moon as a prison/destiny manifested/the legend of white succession/iris like sabers/savior with no blessings/two roads/choose directions/zombified suns burn the night with God’s message/shelter in a shadow where the angels been resting/the war of heaven ain’t gone leave you lone you being tested.

-Punch Pilot, Track 2 “The Chosen People.”

Every cloud was stained pink, the sky swollen into the blue before purple. Jim fell in and out of coherence and the day burned down to the slow indigo of dusk. The bandages on his back were moist from blood and sweat. Cait watched Jim as he slept while her mind watched the red brushstroke of the day play over. She swung between guilt and fear and landed where she always lied. A space flung between the inertia of the two. A small headache bloomed behind her eyes and the ground seemed to tremble slightly.

The townsfolk dressed and cleaned Jim’s wounds from scant supplies they had smuggled from first-aid kits. A young woman gave him a few hydrocodone but Cait could see he was in immense pain. Another swallow of guilt. Sharp rye and brine. The Returners had corralled them all tightly into the town square; a makeshift camp from what had just been the center of the little tourist town in West Texas. The invaders stood guard at various intervals around the captives. They were trees alive with hateful eyes.

Jim lay face down in the grass breathing slow while Cait watched on. Around them, the huddled mass buzzed with anxiety. A mix of tourists and locals of all ages. All white, all afraid. Lisa Jo had sat with Cait while Jim’s wounds had been dressed–she left as soon as Jim was stable. An elderly man and woman from Wisconsin that looked as if they could be Jim’s own grandparents offered to watch over him as Cait went to look for Lisa Jo.

The sun began to melt across the sky. As it slid stains of orange and pink soaked into the fabric of the world. Some of the younger children played games of tag before their parents rushed to keep them still; afraid of provoking their captors with too much movement. The sky grew heavy with change. Cait now scanned the white faces for her only friend. Maybe her last friend left on Earth. She spotted Lisa Jo, talking to a woman with short curly brown hair and green cargo shorts. Cait strode over, her heart beating just as fast as it was earlier. Lisa Jo didn’t say anything when Cait walked up. Cait was a little put off by the heat that she seemed to radiate. With the peach sunlight behind her Lisa Jo was a soft fire.

“Hey, there you are.” Cait said slightly out of breath.

“Heyy.” Lisa Jo replied looking Cait up and down–then straight at Cait without blinking much.

“....Jim’s gonna be okay I think…thank you so much for staying with me while they wrapped him up. I don’t think I could have sat there without you…. I felt like I was in shock, like I couldn’t really believe that just happened..you know?” Cait blurted out as Lisa Jo didn’t break eye contact.

“....Cool.” Lisa Jo replied to Cait shortly after a pause. As if she had expected Cait to keep speaking. There was silence. A quiet burning. “...oh hey, this is Harper. Harper…this is Cait.”

Harper smiled and shook Cait’s hand. She was tall and tan, a bit taller than Lisa Jo and her hair was very frizzy. She had a lot of freckles and her voice came from her belly. “Nice to meet you!” Harper said as she continued to shake Cait’s hand. “This is some crazy shit huh?” She forced a laugh while her greenish eyes showed the same worry as the rest.

“Yeah…” Cait responded, bothered by Lisa Jo’s odd brevity. Harper pulled a travel size cologne out of her fanny pack and sprayed twice over her baggy purple tank top. She spoke again, looking around at The Returners and the crowd.

“I had been traveling through the Big Bend area for a month or so, I just left Marfa yesterday! This is a beautiful part of the country…anyways. This is rough, but we’ll get through this. Hey, you said you were Guatemalan?...Did they take you by mistake then?” Harper said to Cait sincerely, looking down into her eyes in a warm yet concerned way. Like a dad during a family emergency.

Cait felt herself burn with embarrassment as Lisa Jo stared at her and spoke with an intensity Cait had not yet seen. Fast wind on a hot day. “Yeah dude, we’ve talked a lot. And you’ve mentioned that people mistake you for a person of color a few times…but I k n o w I’ve heard you say that you were white. Did you try to lie and say you weren’t? That’s fucked up.” She said all this without malice, yet in the dying sun; Lisa Jo’s disappointment became its own dusk.

“....I didn’t mean to lie….it just came out!! I’m just tired-” Cait pleaded before Lisa Jo cut her off as the afternoon wind flew through the junipers around the town square.

“Of what? Being white? Do you think you’re the only one who’s scared right now? Or the only one doesn’t feel weird about being white sometimes? Get over it! Our ancestors were fucked up dude. We don’t have to be. But you can’t fucking lie about not being white when you are. Even if being white sucks. You can’t just let me and Jim bear it all! You have a part too dude.” Lisa Jo said desperately in one breath. All around the wind continued to fly, and from the mountains the sound of canyon wrens echoing through the heart of the world. Cait felt the words crash over her like an unexpected wave before a rough voice punctured the growing bubble of her embarrassment.

“Being White is a privilege. And we should be proud to be white. Our ancestors were some of the bravest men that ever lived.”

The rough voice stepped through the crowd. Most people were quick to get out of his way. If the Returners weren’t around–he would be considered a giant. He was taller than all of Cait’s traveling party and he had a dense muscled physique. Like a police officer. He had long blond dreadlocks and electric blue eyes. So blue compared to Jim’s, Cait knew that they were color contacts immediately. His jeans were too tight and he had eyes made of teeth.

“And right now, we get the honor of carrying on that tradition in a way they never dreamed of. My brother died in Iraq so that we could live free. We can’t give up. We never have.” He addressed the crowd of people around who had stopped to listen. He spoke in a way that projected and expanded. To Cait, he reminded her of those televangelist preachers. “My name is Wess Wayne, White people have always had to sort out violent invaders that threatened our safety and freedom…this is no different. We will win. We will conquer them.”

Wess Wayne immediately reminded Cait of Jim’s father and the worst parts of Jim. Cait’s eyes flicked over to Jim and the old couple while Wess continued to preach. Wess’ rhetoric made her think of the last thing Jim had said before he passed out:

“....I hope Christian’s alright..he really stood up for me…”

“That’s bullshit dude!” Harper yelled, her green eyes glinting in the early evening. “Look around us. The world has gone to shit because of crap like that! Who knows what’s gonna happen?? But I know for damn sure this era is over. Wake up.”

Wess smiled and his large teeth seemed to grind against each other from the pressure of his jaw. Cait noticed he was always chewing. Maybe gum, maybe tobacco, maybe himself. Every part of him seemed ready to strike.

“I have been awake ma’am. I understand the true history of this world and the White man’s plight. How we have been hunted and infiltrated by foreigners, diluting our culture and drowning us one drop at a time.”

“AYŌ!!” the voice of S’an D’aelphon silenced everyone. Cait and the others were left to mull over everything Wess had said as their captors shouted instructions and marched them all to the edge of town back into the Chihuahuan desert.

Someone had brought out of their home an old wheelchair. Cait pushed the groggy Jim as Lisa Jo and Harper paced behind. Wess Wayne was far ahead of them and Cait was glad for that.

Night had fallen and The Returners stood sentinel in the dark atop their monstrous steeds. So black they were almost invisible against the backdrop of space. When they moved it was as if parts of heaven shifted. Restless with violent creation. Cait and the rest were marched into the arid grassland and she started thinking about the coyotes and the bodies and the smell and the spit that the earth had claimed.

“Sō!” S’an D’aelphon began addressing the crowd; his legion of assembled riders and their horses pacing impatiently behind. “I sey de place we tek yu all tu is holy. Only fa de mos’ worthy. De mos’ superioor of de superioor. De ones who survive. We ah giv yu all ah haf dey ‘ead start.”

There was no time for shock. There was no shock left in Cait. Instead, Cait found herself witnessing their exodus from outside of her own body. As if her spirit had been cut from her flesh and now was forced to watch motionless as the white mass was made to move.

They trudged through the desert, a people with no home.They ran in different directions, soon swallowed by the absolution of the desert night. They were refugees Cait thought. Fear was a schism that broke them into groups of ten or fifteen. Cait, Jim, Lisa Jo, and Harper found themselves moving at the same pace and the same direction of a loose pack of about twenty people. Wess found himself in this group as well. They ran through agave in bloom. Bright century plants that blossomed once or twice a lifetime tall as the Returners. Tight herds of javelina kicked up dust in between the scattered tribes of humanity and rattlesnakes sent warnings through the night. Cait witnessed a few panicked escapees be struck down by near invisible whips of lightning striking at their feet from the brush. Thunder filling up their veins.

Once again Cait knew the sky was watching them. The void above opened its eyes one by one then all at once. Light starved by time shining dead in the abyss. She looked up into a field of corpses and the crescent moon was a blade being sharpened by the hour. Cait returned to her body and found nothing left in her but terror.

She pushed Jim over the uneven ground. He didn’t say much and neither did most of their group. However, Harper gave words of support to those that were lagging behind, and she would walk with them at their pace. She even got the group to slow down a few times to make sure everyone stayed together. In the dark Cait could hear Harper’s steady voice alongside the coyotes in the distance. She heard them side by side.

It was about eleven o’clock when the group came to rest and put to mind what they should or could do. Harper spoke.

“We’re doing a good job sticking together…and we’ve put some good distance between us and them! But…we need to decide together on a direction we’re going. Right now, by my compass we’re headed North.” She said, taking the time to look around at everyone as the murmurs of agreement spread. Ripples through the desert pond. A brown haired man in his forties or so spoke up. “Our son, Anthony–we got separated from him during the attack. We don’t know if he’s still back in Fort Davis or...we need to find a way back.”

Harper addressed the man and his wife with empathy. “...I can’t imagine how you two must feel…how old is he?” Harper asked the tall blonde haired woman leaning on the man. She had the eyes of a soldier that had come home to a country changed. “Anthony is nine…this can’t be life now.”

“That boy is a martyr…if he’s gone.” Wess interjected. Cait felt the crowd be seized by the spread of his voice; the prairie grassland around becoming an amphitheater of sand and survival. “White boys and men have always laid down their lives for the American dream.” He continued as Anthony’s parents recoiled at the suggestion of their son dying for some noble white cause–and yet, they listened. Everyone did until Harper spoke. She too addressed the herd as one.

“And that’s part of the problem. White boys have been brainwashed by white men like you, and then they end up terrorizing us all! Or they end up dying for your stupid cause.” She said loudly to a crowd that met her back with contemplation.

“There’s nothing stupid about our survival ma’am.” Wess said coldly, taking a step towards Harper in the moonlight. Lisa Jo took a step closer to Harper while Cait felt Jim shift at the word survival. Cait’s breath quickened. Wess continued.

“This very land we are on was born from White survival. The White men here survived comanches and mexicans to carve some civilization out of the frontier. Texas itself is a symbol of White survival.” He then turned back to Anthony’s parents.

“Your boy might still be alive for all we know. And if he is, he’ll be another hero in a long line of heroes. Like my brother, Trevor…don’t give up hope. The White man won’t die today. They will never get rid of us.” A smile so big it threatened to tear his face apart erupted from his lips as he said, “No nigger from space is going to force me out of my home. Not without a fight. We just need some trees tall enough to hang the big ones from right?”

There was some relieved laughter from the crowd, tension breaking, some normalcy. Meanwhile Harper and Lisa Jo recoiled. Cait felt her hands grip Jim’s wheelchair tightly, and she felt Jim tense up a bit. Lisa Jo stepped forward angrily.

“Dude shut up. My wife and brother-in-law are Black. And it doesn’t even matter if they weren’t. Never say that word again.” Lisa Jo’s flame from earlier grew white hot as the moon. She shook with anger and her large hands were balled so tightly her knuckles shone white. Cait too had had enough of Wess, and surprisingly it was Jim who spoke next in a drugged voice.

“.... some of what you say makes sense…but the way I see it…I’m the only one that’s fought those motherfuckers. Stood up to them. That knows what it’s like…and bud–let me tell you…there ain’t no conquering them. I got my views…but….. I only saw one person come to help me back there, and it wasn’t you. And he wasn’t white. I honestly expected one of you all to help me..I would have helped you.” Jim glared in desperation at the assembly of survivors who turned their eyes to the grass or to the stars. Jim looked at Wess, their blue eyes at war. “But it was Christian. And as big as you are man–where were you?”

There was silence amongst the group as the stars above continued to decompose buried under the tomb of eternity. Wess’s eyes narrowed, slicing between Lisa Jo and Jim. He smirked. “You’re traveling with blacks? How can you stand the smell?”

“Alright!” Harper said marching forward and getting eye to eye with Wess. “You wanna know something? My grandmother was a Black woman. I might not look it, but I’m mixed okay. And I’ve had enough of your shit.” She said with ferocity, before addressing the rest of the group.

“And honestly, I’m tired of Black people having to be someone’s grandmother, or wife–or to save you for them to matter. I’m tired of part of me being seen as less than the rest of me.” She said with a plea. Cait felt a new wave of shame about her choice to lie about being white. She was running from something bigger than her. So big it was chasing them all in different ways. Jim, Lisa Jo, herself, her parents, Jim’s parents, the people in London, the soldiers at Fort Davis, the pile of bodies–it was something that had always been running after them, Cait realized. Harper had chosen to face this beast, when she actually had the way out Cait desperately wanted. Much stronger than earlier–the ground shook once again.

Wess stared down at Harper with a stony expression, the little color in his face evaporated and his voice rigid. “...being that your grandmother was…black, you should know better than anyone what a privilege it is to be White. She didn’t lay down with a black man did she? You wouldn’t be here if she did. She chose a better destiny for you. A real future. Once this is all over, you know that we’re going to punish them right? Niggers I mean.”

Harper spit in Wess’s face. He reached up to strike her and Lisa Jo pulled out Jim’s old revolver from her tote bag. She aimed straight at Wess’s face. The desert wind blew and the mass of white people fell quiet as coyote cries split the night into fractals of shadow. Wess smiled.

“I suppose this is where we part ways.” He said quietly.

“...we were never going the same way...” Lisa Jo breathed out as she cocked the gun, her eyes wide and filled only with Wess. Cait could hear her own breath, as well as everyone else’s. She once again saw herself from outside of herself, as if she sat on top of the mountains overlooking them all. She had a strange feeling that Lisa Jo was sitting right next to her on that mountaintop, watching herself prepare to kill a man. This was the world now. This was always the world Cait realized.

In the end, Wess and the other white folks headed far Northeast, leaving Cait, Jim, Harper and Lisa Jo alone in the dark.

Cait was the only one who spoke as they moved to the Northwest.

“...I’m sorry I lied.”

The group loped into the very shadow of the Davis Mountains and stone from beyond time rose all around them and stretched their voices into the abyss. The tall shadow of Jim’s words seemed to brush up against the underside of the sky.

“....I’m glad you grabbed my gun.” Jim said, deadpan from exhaustion–then, the first spark of laughter all day. A small fire they all took turns carrying through the long night of the new Earth. The flame of laughter crawled up the mountain walls on both sides and lit their way. Cait felt warmer even as her headache grew worse.

Lisa Jo kept talking about Wess’s clothes as they progressed over the rugged ground. “His pants were soooo fucking tight dude! How did his balls even breathe?? How do you guys do that??” She chuckled, helping Cait maneuver Jim over rocks and stubborn grass as Harper laughed back and chimed in.

“Yeah Jim, is that why you guys like to pee outside so much? So you can just unbutton your lil cowboy pants and breathe?” She teased good naturedly from ahead, pausing every so often to scout their path for snakes and scour the mountains for shelter.

“I don’t wear lil cowboy pants.” He laughed before wincing in pain. Cait immediately pictured Jim’s faded Levi’s as she pushed him through the dark.

Harper stopped, looked back and responded,“Yeah you do. All you white boys wear your lil cowboy pants and drink Tecate like someone should notice you for it.” As Cait laughed, she remembered high school parties on unchaperoned docks. Jim and some of his friends that would go on to die of overdoses with their natty lights and tight jeans. Spitting tobacco into the marsh.

“Oh my God!” Lisa Jo exploded with laughter from behind. “Yes Y’all doooo. Like it’s cute sometimes, but you guys wanna be tough redneck cowboys so baddd. Well, I guess you are kind of a tough redneck Jim.” She said with a sigh.

Cait remembered one of Jim’s friends at the party–Bradley. A private school redneck. Bradley would pull his dick out under the desk during class and then ask the kid next to him to pass him a pencil. He would die three years after they all graduated. Jim was devastated. Bradley wrapped his car around a tree after a bad breakup.

“...we’re not all bad..”Jim said groggily.

“Not all good either.” Harper said firmly but not unkindly. “It’s good that you said what you did to him though. I really hope that kid Christian is okay…” Jim was silent as Cait pushed him slowly over the rocky ground. Lisa Jo was silent as well, her eyes on her feet. Cait was sure her mind was on Kalima and Christian.

Cait looked at Harper and hesitated for a second before asking, “....how come you didn’t tell the Returners you were mixed?” Harper didn’t reply immediately. She kept moving forward. When she did speak, it was to point out a cave they could rest in. Cait left it alone.

The cave opened up into a high blackness that was made up of echo and drip. The sound of an underground water system nearby. Near the entrance an old burlap tarp and a blanket some previous camper must have left. Harper shined her phone flashlight deeper in the cave and they spotted a soft waterfall that had collected into a pool of freshwater. Harper spoke again.

“...I think we should stay here for the night. We can at least hydrate.” She said walking over to the pool of water and filling up her bottle and taking a big gulp before continuing.

“We still have until sunrise till the Returners come after us. We should rest up and head out in the morning.” She said tiredly, flopping down on the ground and spreading out. They all did the same, Cait helped Jim lay on his stomach as Harper gave him some water before she walked over to the pool herself and took her first drink since morning. Relief.

Once they had all laid down, Cait immediately felt exhaustion take her into a dreamless sleep of only sound. Chanting and church song. Laughter that stabbed and cut through her dreambody. The cry of vultures and water splashing. The sound of water became louder than anything else. It was as if a shipwreck was being dragged from the ocean floor, Cait could even feel the spray of water on her cheek. The ground shook even harder this time. She bolted awake as had the others. Standing in front of them, nude and dripping wet–a Returner–a shadow that seemed to swallow the dark around it. Every breath he took was as if the abyss was biting and swallowing itself.

American Saints Part III

The sky opened a thousand eyes/angels came/and they done set the world on fye/chain like/Leviathan flooded out with diamonds/its scary out/dont worry bout/the police no mo/ain’t no laws/ain’t no judge/just human kind/ain’t no tellin who survive/a monster came up from the dirt/the world around pulled out its heart/karma for the lambs that died/the tithes paid is genocide/cant lie about what’s inside/the blood you got wont let you hide/the blood you got become a river/baptized in Jordan’s banks/the Lord wont lead you where you can’t/make it out/just make a way/

-Punch Pilot. Track 8 “Midnight Lambs.”

Now, Cait found herself afraid of the sky. Under the wings of dark Cait and the others took shelter from a burning night of stars. The stars were ragged holes God had struck through time. God was shining white hot judgement from all points in history, a billion flaming arrows from the past hurtling towards entropy. They sped through the night while the arrows of time soared above threatening to fall from the arc of heaven and pierce the Earth. She had never been afraid of the night time, even as a child. Now, Cait couldn’t help but feel that the sky was blue from fire and black from ash. Dawn of the third day when from the land they saw a beast emerge.

Kalima drove and Cait sat across from her while everyone else slept when they spotted it. Their attempt to know one another interrupted by violence. “The book is….t o u g h.” Cait said, clutching a mug of cocoa. Cait didn’t read much and talking to Kalima made her wish she did. “But, I don’t know…maybe that’s good. I haven’t really read a book-book since school, you know? Thank you.” Cait finished, taking a sip and looking East. The scab of the horizon peeled to the bloodless pink wound of the new day.

“What’s the last book-book you remember reading? Dr. Amaru’s book is honestly something I’m always trying to get through too….” Kalima mused not taking her tired eyes off the desert–she rolled her window down and let her left arm dangle. As if to catch the first raw scraps of sunrise in the wind they shot through. Cait paused–in the distance she saw a strange mass. Mottled in color and still indistinguishable in the early light. “Last of the Mohicans. I had to read it for an American Literature elective. Do you see that?” Cait finished pointing ahead. She felt the same sense of dread in her stomach that the beginning of that video had made her feel. Kalima’s eyes narrowed and she looked in the direction Cait had pointed. East, right under the rising sun. A star tossing a world of water brutally in its wake. “...yeah.” Kalima responded with uncertainty. As they grew closer to the mound it seemed to be squirming slightly; like a great worm in the sun.

They were on a back road through the Chihuahuan desert heading towards Fort Davis when they saw a pile of naked white bodies stacked up beside the road. Corpses piled two stories high. Mostly white men young and old. A woman or two amidst the waste. Their skin bloated and stretched. White skin of all shades. Paper pale, olive tan, pink and splotchy. Varicose vein and capillary all collapsing into a melting wash of whiteness.

Kalima drove past slowly as she and Cait witnessed. In the dawn light the bodies took on the pink shade of morning. Their blood and mush became mirrors of the opening sky. Dwarfed by the hill of flesh, a frail ugly black boy with matted hair sat. His expression was that of one watching the sunrise. His jaw looked almost too big for his face. As if he would unhook it and swallow the horizon. He was a sharp contrast. A small scrap of black in a baggy blue prison jumpsuit against a mountain of white and red.

Kalima stopped the bus and Cait woke the others as her heart became a drum. Outside, the smell of blood shit piss and death was overwhelming to Cait and she threw up. Christian retched and covered his face with his denim jacket. Lisa Jo closed her eyes. She breathed out an old Catholic prayer to the wind as her white flowy dress billowed like a sail. Kalima and Jim both were stoic. Or rather, it seemed to Cait they were transfixed, witnessing the birth of a world maybe they both were afraid of. Elbow and knee creases became blood gullies over the new country of flesh. They watched the slightly shifting corpses jostled by the desert clergy come to collect tithes. Vultures had long since convened. The hooded priests of destruction the eaters of memory set forth. Coyotes emerged from the flame of the sunrise. Fur the color of rust. Tails like smoke. They snapped and ripped flesh with gratitude and ferocity.

Cait spit. Thick chunks of saliva and bile and snot that fell on arid land. Land that swallowed her spit and snot and dried it into nothing. As the desert mass processed the altar of flesh blessed wretched and divine. Consecrated by the archbishop of vultures. The largest bird Cait had ever seen, a high priest of erasure. His wings wide in prayer transfiguring the newborn sun into shade as he perched atop the heap. A gyre of frayed and tattered angels descended. There would only be bones for the land to dry and swallow, Cait thought. The land would swallow this world of bone and blood. Just like her spit.

Coyotes continued to appear in greater numbers. Kalima cried out to the frail black boy with filthy hair and they all entered the safety of the bus. Cait noticed something as the boy got up; coyotes and vultures went around him, giving his shadow a careful berth. He smiled at each creature as he passed. Bowed to them politely and Cait could have sworn she heard him quietly naming them. “Tony…Gwen….Nick…okay T, you got some teeth ain’t it...”

Lisa Jo sat on the floor next to Christian. Cait saw both of their eyes low in the quiet of morning. Still waking up to this new day. Christian put an arm around Lisa Jo’s shoulder. She exhaled into him while Cait’s own breath had seemed to stop moving minutes ago. Jim was standing up staring out the bus windows at the corpses. Fists clenching. He continued to watch the animals feast while Kalima checked the black boy for injuries. Cait sat on the couch rubbing her temples. Trying to rub away the smells. Rub away all the new fears. Just a few weeks ago her biggest worry had been telling Jim she was thinking of grad school in a different state. Cait didn’t even know how many states there were now.

“What’s your name and what happened?” Kalima asked the boy gently. Cait looked up and took him in up close. He was the youngest of them all, but he looked the oldest. He was about Cait’s height. His skin was dark like Christian’s but uneven and blotchy. He had a few browned teeth and his eyes were a flat black. The morning light from the windows seemed to be swallowed up by the black of his eyes when the sunlight fell upon them. Nothing danced in his glare.

“Suda.” He replied, not looking at Kalima but directly at Cait. “You Spanish?” He commanded. Suda then stared at Cait. He was annoyed. As if Cait’s identity was taking up space that belonged to him.

“I…I don’t know…can I just–process for a second?..Yeah, I’m white, but does that matter?” Cait pleaded desperately. The bodies, the invasion, Jim, all of it was starting to stack up for Cait. Her heart kicked up again. She stared back at the boy and saw how the blue of the jumpsuit hung limp, a parachute over his small body. His smoke stained lips curled into a smile before he replied.

“....before my Mama died she wood say wite folks feel lyke bein’ wite is a blessin’, but reeeally, issa bomb. She was rite. You better off tellin’ The Returners you Puerto Rican or sumn.” He finished with a laugh that started deep in his stomach like a cannon being shot, and moved up his back–shooting out of his mouth high pitched like a girl as he doubled over with giggles.

“What happened?” Kalima pressed again, more firmly. Lisa Jo looked up from the floor at the boy and he in turn gazed back at her. His eyes darting between hers, and the back of Jim’s head as he seemed to memorize the carnage outside. “Shit…gettin’ transferred. From what I know, The Returners been goin’ prison to prison. Freein’ niggas. Our warden was havin’ us bussed out from James Lynaugh in Pecos when the Returners stopped us. Mind you, they gave all the wite folks, inmates and guards, the chance to go with ‘em ni. A lot of the wite inmates did. One or two guards. You seen the rest. All the niggas ran, but to me it wun shit to run from really.”

Cait saw Kalima close her eyes and take a breath. When her abstract eyes opened they seemed to be painting a question: “....How old are you?” Kalima asked softly. Cait had honestly been expecting her to ask him what he had been locked up for. Cait could look at Suda and see he was young, but she hadn’t really thought about what all this must have been like for a kid. She felt a strange guilt for thinking a child was ugly. Guilt for not feeling guilty at first.

“Sixteen. Ima be seventeen in two months. Been a man though.” Suda answered proudly, sticking his hollow chest out. Kalima gave a wane smile. “I don’t know about being a man. You’re still just a kid. Even with all this craziness going on. Especially with all this going on actually. My brother Christian has a birthday in two months too. My wife’s just passed.” She finished waving towards Christian and Lisa Jo.

Cait saw Suda’s eyes briefly widen and then narrow when Kalima had identified Lisa Jo as her wife. Kalima didn’t see his eyes. She walked over to her wife and brother, sat down, and hugged both of them. Suda looked at Christian with a curious smile. “I’m the 2nd of June. What day you born big bruh?” Suda asked Christian. Hearing Suda’s birthday, both Kalima and Christian perked up. “That’s crazy…that’s our mom’s birthday.” Christian said.

“We gotta bury those folks.” Jim seemed to say in concrete. Under his voice he had built something that would not be broken. “...We can’t just leave them out there like that. It’s not right. They deserve more dignity than that.” He finished simply. Jim then looked each of them in the eye earnestly, lingering for a moment longer on Caits.

“Shiiiit. They deserve what they got! What is this man talkin’ bout?” Suda laughed, looking back and forth between Kalima and Christian like he expected them to laugh as well. When they did not he continued. “Well, the way I look at it is this bruh: they were enslavers and torturers. If my Mama was alive she would spit on they ass. Not bury them. The fuck? You don’t have to fuck with them just cause they wite bruh. Wite…ain’t even some real shit actually. It’s jus’ violence. They just made that shit up so they could take some land. Take some pussy too. Take everything really. So naw. I don’t feel sorry for them bitch ass niggas. At all. Fuck em. Three times.”

“En s l a v e r s?” Jim sneered, taking a step forward. “They were correctional officers dude. Calm the fuck down. They were just doing their job and they got killed for it cause they were white. Period.” Suda sucked his teeth at that.

“Go lay with ‘em.” Suda replied, taken aback at Jim’s declaration. He stepped forward as well, black tunnel eyes boring into Jim’s icy blue. Jim in turn took a step back in surprise. “Free labor. And the state of Texas gettin’ rich off it. We was fuckin’ slaves you bitch. Jus’ lyke America wanted us. Tell yo ass don’t read. Caint reed.” Suda spat. The fathoms of his eyes wide and deep. Abyssal plains, hot and black. Cait could see that the whites of Suda’s eyes were yellowed a sharp goldenrod. An oil field on fire that Jim was stuck inside of.

“..It is slavery. Just like how they wanted to lock up the coal miners and moonshiners.” Lisa Jo said quietly. The first thing she had said since seeing the bodies. She closed her eyes and exhaled. Breathed out in the same way she had breathed out her prayer and then said, looking Jim in his eye. “It is.” She finished simply, forcing her blue eyes to remain tethered to Jim’s. A blue eyed sky between them Lisa was trying to fly a kite through. Cait saw Jim’s eyes do something she had only seen in Kalima’s. Something taking shape in the light of the sun.

“...We’re not leaving without saying a prayer, or something for them.” He said quietly, looking down at his boots.

Outside, Cait, Jim, Lisa Jo and Christian stood silently, heads bowed as Jim spoke some words over the dead. As Cait bowed her head she saw how vast the mound of bodies was. How many people had been killed. She had been moved by Jim, a few minutes ago. But now, she felt a strange sharp pang of annoyance. Cait couldn’t help but wonder how Jim had planned to bury this many people. Would they be elbow deep in the remains and waste of dead white men just to do what was right, according to Jim? Cait felt relieved when the prayer ended and they went back inside. Jim lingered for a full minute or two longer than the rest.

~~

It was mid-morning now, and Cait could sense that they were each trying to put their memories of dawn behind them. Jim was silent. He stared out of the window mostly at the mosaic of desert clouds blowing past. The rough grassland of the Chihuahuan desert flashing green behind them. Christian was rifling through a set of Magic the Gathering cards, shuffling the same deck over again. Kalima and Suda got to know one another while Cait read a few passages from To Live and Die in a White Man’s World:

Chapter Two

The animals that were put here to be named.

White men braved the primordial aether of the dark continent to complete God’s unfinished task of naming the negro into existence. Before the white man came the negro was dust and idea and possibility, but nothing is more primitive than an idea. And possibility unchecked can lead to ruin if the inherent animality of the negro is not steered towards civility. The negro exists within the world of animality and instinct. Savage and malleable; powerful but childlike. Children with the strength of gods.

Before they were named, these unnamed savages failed to realize any of the potential industry that could be mined from the land they pranced upon. They never built, they never dug, they simply covered themselves and their homes in mud like babies playing in the muck. Unaware of the rare ores and minerals right beneath the dirt they stomped and danced on barefoot.

Once named by the white man –named as subhuman, slave, chattel–the negro can be put to the work of using their God given strength to transform the Earth beneath them and around them into named goods and materials the white man can sell. Rubber is not rubber until it is named so by the white man. In the wordless world of the negro, the rubber tree is never named for its potential for industry and wealth. That is where the white man arrives in his benevolence to name truth from tree and reveal to the negro the world underneath his stupidity. Through this endeavor, we are seeing how reality itself for the negro is built upon the white man’s depravity.

That naming of land and resource requires the rubber tree to be chopped, and for hands to be chopped off the negro if not enough rubber can be named from tree. Profit for the Belgium king named Leopold II. In her essay, The Insanity of King Leopold, afropessimist critic Sydney Baker Shaw states “Leopold, like all tyrants before him wanted a big ass piece of land to fuck off on. A big place to show he was bigger and better than all the big best white niggas he was competing with. That’s the whole reason for the Berlin Conference. Just a bunch of white men carving up Africa to prove whose dick was bigger. The territory that became known as The Congo Free State was anything but free. He was gone buy Texas at first.” (The Insanity of King Leopold pg. 23, Shaw.)

Shaw goes on to draw parallels between the rubber trade in the Congo, its effects we still see today, and the rubber trade in Vietnam. The cascading effect of that rubber trade and the crusades of independence fought ultimately becoming the Vietnam War. In Vietnam the French based Michelin ti-

Cait’s reading was interrupted by the machine gun of Suda’s laughter. “I’m just sayin’ Miss Kalima, you don’t think she kinda evil?” Suda laughed as they continued to ride to Fort Davis. Lisa Jo drove while they all sat in the living area. “Lyke, I feel lyke black folk shouldn’t git judged for bein’ evil as much really, but–you don’t think she evil? Real talk, lyke be for real. Iono think Hailie and Chloe een real HONESTLY! She cloned one of them bitc- I mean females.”

Kalima laughed back before answering,“I mean yeah…but I still fuck with her music I’m not gonna lie. Females is also bad too dude.” Kalima sighed. Cait took notice of the way Kalima talked to Suda. She had a sisterly way of talking to all of them, even Jim, in her own way–but with Suda it was different. It felt real. Like she had finally found their long-disappeared kid brother. Kalima seemed desperate to connect with him. Or desperate for him to know he could connect.

“Who else do you listen to?” Kalima asked, opening up a bag of honey barbecue fritos. “You want some?” She offered it to Suda and then Cait. “Hell yeah!” Suda exclaimed, childlike and eager while Cait declined, glee spreading across his face like pond ripples from stone. “Uhhh…I fuck with Kodak, I fuck with Lauryn Hill, my Mama used to play that shit, I fuck with Baby Drill, I like India Arie and all that type shit cause of my Mama and my auntie really. I fuck with that Punch Pilot too, I seen yall got the vinyl... My older brother used to make beats, so I be fucking with all type shit really. I fuck with movies too: Scarface, Godfather, it’s some shit called Eraserhead I really fuck with. Weird ass shit. Issa craaazy ass movie called Salo I like alot. All type shit really. Stories.”

Cait’s father was a film buff. That was the one thing her dad and her Uncle Jay seemed to connect on. Cait pictured Suda talking to the men in her life about cinema. She wondered what her dad would think of this kid. She thought about Bible passages her father would reference. For some reason her dad always liked stories where Jesus blessed the people sick with leprosy. Something about Suda made her think of that. She couldn’t tell if Suda reminded her of the lepers or of Jesus.

“I like yo book collection too. I fuck with Fanon. I think he was just mad he couldn’t fuck up the world like how wite men do tho.” Suda said sharply, as he munched fritos and eyed Kalima’s books in the overhead book cases. “Really…he wanted wite women to see him how they see wite men.” Suda said seriously. “He was really surprised wite women in Europe would rather dance with Nazis than a nigga. How bruh?” He finished with a laugh.

Cait swallowed some fear and asked a question. “I read that name….Fanon, he was cited in the book a few times. I saw you highlighted some of those parts Kalima…who was he? Also…I hope this doesn’t sound…bad, Suda…but you know alot.”

“My Mama used to read all that shit. She wud read it to me and my brother a lot…”Suda said quietly, not looking at Cait, but instead at her copy of Dr. Amaru’s book. “She used to like that book too. Can I hold that wen you dun?”

It was early in the afternoon when they pulled into Fort Davis. In the shadow of the Davis Mountains the small town spread out like sesame seeds over the Earth. Green mountains and hills covered in rugged desert trees made Cait feel as if they were pulling into this world’s last breath. The past was exhaling. They pulled in through State Street and passed the tan and orange colored Methodist Church burning gold in the afternoon sun. A few blocks later they passed a Presbyterian church on the right, and Cait immediately got a feel for this town. She could feel her shoulders unclench a bit as the clouds above were soft and the scant crowd in the streets seemed to be going about their day-to-day life despite it all.

Quaint and proud little homes populated the little village. Cait felt a peace she hadn’t felt in days. She looked over to Jim and saw that his jaw looked relaxed as they drove past houses that looked like the houses she knew he grew up in. In the ways that small Southern towns can feel–this place felt safe. It felt home. From this place a well could be drawn–from that well, America could spring forth again after the destruction. They should have never come here.

The forested mountains were alive with movement. There was no wind today but the trees bent and swayed as if pulled by some force. Kalima opened the window behind her and a strange alien song flew in from the trees. It sounded like something Cait had heard coming out of the black churches in her hometown. During funerals. Slow and ancient and on fire. Voices that burned. And as before, the sound of water in the distance. Crashing. It was only then Cait noticed the National Guard vehicles staged throughout the little town. The soldiers looked ragged and some of them didn’t even have uniforms. As they continued to drive their view became level with the seat of the forested mountains.

From the tree line erupted riders on horseback. Monstrous pale horses the size of pick up trucks bearing a legion of riders from another world. Cait opened her own window and looked out. The Returners were tar black. In the afternoon sun, their skin seemed to give off shimmering waves of heat as they rode forward. Dozens of them, horses faster than any car Cait had seen. The horses eyes glowed red, a charging line of torches. The National Guardsmen raised their weapons and fired as The Returners swooped down. They struck with large machetes made of a jet black metal. Others instead fought as machine gunners. Heavy rifles made of dirty gold that didn’t seem to need reloading. Others wielded spears long as Olympic javelins. Handles made from some alien tree and tips that were made of stone sharpened and polished.

The Returners whooped and hollered and sang as they killed and hopped down from horseback to disembowel or stab or yell obscenities at the dying and some allowed their horses to defecate on the dead and wounded and some stripped corpses naked stabbing at genitals and anus and scalping the wounded and brandishing new trophies to each other a while machine gunner threw an explosive device that rocked the bus so much it flipped tossing them all into each other and the windows and the furniture as Suda laughed and laughed and laughed. Cait blacked out as the sound of the flood outside overtook her.

“Yuh all git ya self ta’gether ‘nd clīme owt.” A voice from outside splashed Cait awake. Around her everything had been tossed about as the bus had rolled. Cait saw the others come to, looks of shock and fear on all of their faces. The voice spoke louder.

“Ə Returner called B’ara Q’el said ‘e saw ə vehicle like dis ə few deys ago. I axe ‘im if dere was any sun lepers in dere. ‘E sed ‘e didn’t een search. ‘E sed ‘e beelieved de ones we tryna ‘elp. Returners like B’ara Q’el fool up. But not I. Git out beefore wee come git yu.”

Cait’s nose was bleeding again. There was blood in her mouth too. The bus was trashed. Their oasis ruined as dishes and furniture and books were thrown about. Cait pulled glass shards from her hair as gently as she could after the first one cut her fingers. She had somehow managed to hold onto the book throughout, and Cait continued to clutch it as she tried to stand amidst the wreckage. Around her, everyone else looked to be in a similar state. Her heart was louder than all the yelling and singing and chanting and gunshots outside. Cait saw how terrified Jim looked. Bloodied and covered in dust. Kalima was clutching Lisa Jo’s hands and Christian had his eyes closed and lips pursed in concentration. Suda had already hopped out.

As they all trooped out with their hands up, Cait gazed at the aliens finally. Carved in her mind through fright, Cait would never forget what The Returners looked like. Giants, the shorter ones eight or nine feet tall–the taller ones fourteen or fifteen. Their skin was so dark it had no other hues. As if where they stood had been cut from reality. They all wore loose fitting pants of what looked like a tough burlap sort of material. Many wore what Cait would describe as cloaks or ponchos of beautiful patterns and colors. Geometric shapes in wild hues stitched patterns of birds with ten wings.

Some were shirtless and wore gold necklaces or beaded ones. Some wore trophies from battle. Fingers and ears and scalps of different races. Different shapes but all white. The Returners were lean and powerful looking, and their eyes were indeed a deep indigo with no whites or pupils. While Cait and the others had been incapacitated, the invaders had been busy rounding up all the residents of the town. Overwhelmingly white people.

The Returners lined them up in the sun ordering Christian and Kalima and Suda and a few other black and brown people to one side, Lisa Jo and Jim and the rest of the town on the other. Many of the Returners smiled at Cait as she stood contemplating in between. The lead one approached. He was about nine feet tall, shirtless with a necklace of ears adorning his chest with several thick gold chains. Machete in hand.

He spoke again. “My name is S’an D’aelphon.” He commanded in a voice that sounded spoken from the depths of some old and deep ocean. His charcoal lips curled into a smile that was a sneer as some of the other aliens started doubling over with laughter. “Wat about yu? Eh, yu wanna tell me sumn?” He laughed, alternating between staring straight down into Cait’s eyes and telling his companions to shush. “Bee quiet ni, let ‘er speek.” He chided in a stage whisper.

“I-I-im, I’m Guatemalan…” Cait sputtered out in fear, looking anywhere but at Jim and the others. She didn’t want to be white anymore. She was tired. She was tired of paying for what men like Jim’s father had done she thought savagely. Cait forced herself to look S’an D’aelphon in his eyes as her own eyes began to water with shame and vindication.

“Shut up wite gurl.” He laughed spitefully before spitting in her face. “Crawl ova tu ya peeple. Crawl.” He finished, staring down into Cait’s dirty face with a hand on his blade and glee in his eyes.

Cait kept her eyes on the ground as the invader’s laughter became the only thing besides the earth below that was real. She choked back tears of shame as she crawled towards Jim and Lisa Jo. As she got closer she lifted her head to see Jim inching towards her hesitantly, one eye on the riders and their horses, one on Cait. A crowd of white people huddled together behind him. He knelt down beside her and helped lift her up as he gazed at the aliens. She tried to look in his eyes. To see what he was thinking but Jim was too focused on The Returners. His fists were clenched. He was stoic in the same way he had been earlier when they had first seen the bodies. She spotted the old revolver in his belt loop.

“Wat yu clenchin ya fists fa? Eh? Wats gon ‘appen tu me? Tell me wite boy!” S’an D’aelphon laughed, daring Jim to come closer by waving him forward. “Yu ə man rite? Iss ‘ard tu tell whoo ‘ah stand up ‘ere.” Jim’s breathing was rapid and Cait heard him whispering “this is our home….this is our home…” as he marched towards S’an D’aelphon.

The alien moved faster than Cait’s eyes could follow. In two strides he loomed over Jim like a malevolent tree, striking him hard across the face–breaking his nose and knocking loose a few teeth. Jim hit the ground hard. “AYŌ!” S’an D’aelphon crowed to one of his lieutenants, as he motioned him to come forward. “Rise ‘im up!”

One of the largest Returners stepped forward, a tall cloaked monster with a spear behind his back. He lifted Jim up by the wrists with one of his hands and held Jim up like a plucked chicken. Brandishing him to the crowd. S’an D’aelphon spoke again. “Let us see ‘ow much of ə man ‘e is.” He laughed as he pulled down Jim’s jeans and underwear, exposing him to everyone. Loud whoops and cheers came from the Returners while Cait felt sick. Jim was put on display for all to appraise.

S’an D’aelphon held Jim’s penis up as if weighing it while the invaders laughed. Waves crashing all around. “I am ə man. Dis is not ə man! Dis ə ‘oman!” He laughed as Jim yelled and cursed through blood.

“Toss me ə whip!” S’an D’aelphon commanded his troops. Cait closed her eyes. But Jim’s scream was so bright it burst through her eyelids. The Returners all cheered and laughed as Jim was whipped. Oceans colliding and waves exploding all around Cait.

The one sound that cut through the wash of agony was that of Christian desperately trying to help Jim. A few minutes later the invaders tossed Jim’s shaking body to the crowd of white people as he bled and cried. S’an D’aelphon addressed the assembled crowd of white people with a paternalistic smile.

“Wee ‘posed tu tek ya skrait off whorl, but I bin doin’ dis much much longer den mos’. Yu gotta mek ya own meaning owt it. My meaning iss ta teech yu all beefo wee tek yu eway. Ore e ntay shun. Wen da sun gō down wee gon’ lern ya.”

Cait held Jim’s bloody frame in her lap as he shook and cried. She stroked his hair in shock as a few of the white people tried to pry him from her grasp. “...that boy needs help Miss…let us clean him up at least..” Cait caught a quick glance of Kalima and the others being led away by The Returners. Christian was unconscious, thrown over the shoulder of a Returner.

Suda turned his golden black eyes towards Cait before they were led away. Their eyes locked, and the sun overhead choked in the collar of the sky. A stained and wild smile Suda left Cait with. A coyote that for once got to eat it’s fill.

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“You have such a nice smile.” The white man said, using his white man I'm talking to an exotic Black woman voice.

“Thank you.” She replied back.

“I bet you never have a bad day.” He answered. He said a few more things after this but that last line stood out for me. “I bet you never have a bad day.” I know for a fact that Black women have bad days. All people do. And Black people as a whole probably have more. And Black women specifically. I've also been told by many well meaning white people some variation of “you have such a nice smile, I bet you never feel sad.”

It's the tone in which they say it. White people have a tone that I can only describe as “naming.” They feel very comfortable naming and renaming already named people/places according to their own interpretation. Or oftentimes, if the original name is too difficult for them, they feel quite comfortable and in fact entitled to stripping that name away and coming up with a new name that they can pronounce.

That habit of renaming difficult names also happens as they rename difficult people, difficult emotions, difficult different cultural norms too foreign and hard to rationalize when held up to the light of their whiteness. So they will rename you a terrorist, insane, a super predator, just for being not white in ways that are difficult for them to pronounce spiritually.

They will erase your actual identity and prescribe one to you more convenient to them.

At its core, paternalism is the stripping of authority and agency of the child subject, and replacing it with the will of the parent subject. That is why paternalism remains such a stalwart part of white supremacy.

White people insist upon occupying the parent role towards the child roles of the Black and Brown. And for Black people especially, they feel a large degree of entitled paternalism due to the psychological effects of the master slave relationship that existed for Black and white people during enslavement.

They are conditioned by this country to see us as a mongrel race in need of saving and instruction. “You ain't Black if you don't vote for me.” In they heart of hearts most of them feel Black folks are too blinded by trauma to be trusted with our own agency. Too hysterical with righteous anger to be the ones who lead.

So the insistence and readiness they apply the servile smiling negro trope to me and other Black folks they deem “safe” because of superficial traits like a smile is alarming. Physiognomy is the pseudo scientific practice of assigning character traits to a living creature based on its appearance.

White supremacy as a philosophy and a business model for imperialism could not survive without physiognomy. It is how they separated us into different categories of enslaved. And for them, it shows up in the silly idioms that allow white men to be president. “You can trust a man that has a firm handshake.” Or the classic that has fallen out of style sadly; “I just like the cut of that guy's jib.”

No one knows what a jib really is. But it is likely an amalgamation of square jaw, eye contact, 6’2 or taller and hard handshake. I know from working in the tour guide industry and getting tipped large amounts by white men you can win them over simply with unwavering eye contact and a hearty laugh.

They are culturally trained to look for every shortcut that allows them to assign a role to you or themselves in society. To me, that is the white workers prescribed function, to oversee the marginalized lower than them, while also being manipulated and abused by the big man in the house. That is very much another essay.

So when they insist that Black people with nice smiles never have bad days it reads as a renaming to me. The context of the event is usually during a transaction. It just feels like “good for you, aren't you happier like this?” I doubt that is the conscious or even unconscious intention sometimes. But it is the function of that renaming. The function of that interaction that insists the Black body is whatever one dimensional back of the box description of the chattel in front of you.

White people in my opinion, struggle and are often unwilling to see Black people as more than one thing at one time. They are much more comfortable assigning to us our character and function based on how we look and talk. As has always been in America.

If you are tall and Black, you need to play sports, if you are small and Black, you need to be funny and sidekick willing, if you are a woman and Black, you need to be sexually available at all times–this physiognomy is what America runs on.

This physiognomy says “smile” and “Black” equals “safe.” Black people throughout American history have had to smile to keep themselves safe from white violence. Their smile made them look smaller and less likely to fight back in the eyes of white supremacy. Good boy. One not sick with drapetomania or freedom psychosis.

It's a shame that something as primordial as a smile has been corrupted by white supremacy. Even Black folks find themselves suspicious of niggas that smile a lot. Cause what is there really to smile about for a Black man?

One of my first memories, also a gas station actually. I'm four, smiling at a Black lady I don't know. “What you smiling for?” As an adult, I wonder what her tone really was. I don't remember it necessarily as good or bad. The question has just always stuck with me I think. And throughout my life it's been an aspect of my appearance the white world fixates on.

American Saints

Part two

After a minute or two of tense darkness, Jim spoke. “Is that a window up there?” Jim whispered. Cait looked up and saw over the toilet a small rectangular window facing out towards Kalima and the alien. While he was asking the question Jim had crept on top of the toilet and quietly slid it open. Night was painted red by the light of the alien craft. The black of the desert night was a bleeding wound. Jim crept back down like a raccoon trying not to be caught in the trash, and Cait could hear the Returner interrogating Kalima and Christian. There was rushing water in the distance behind his words. The effect had a way of compelling Cait; she wanted to listen closely so she could either hear his words more clearly–or get lost in the waves. She couldn’t decide. Cait couldn’t see anything except for the shadows of maybe what were the last white people on Earth huddled in a bathroom. She closed her eyes and imagined what outside looked like:

The stars bled and the moon was a beating heart in the sky. Cait saw a voice that seemed to brush the clouds and march through mountains. Like a river with legs, towering over the black siblings that had offered her shelter. “-mee tee yors gestatin’ in de planet’s mantle, yoor whorl’ iss pregnant wit’ ‘istory. Dey seed jewels from ‘eaven in de ground; lul stars de peeple kin ‘oold–lul suns dey stab and murder fa. Yu see it cross de galaxy. Gold mines all look de same. Look like yoors. Peeple beelo de ee-kway-tor suffer on planets klose nuff ta a star like tiis. Klose nuff for wahta. Most whorls like tiiis end up at whar jus’ ta kuntroll wahta, or wut wahta iss leff. Atrocity universe. Dis a dead whorl’. But wee will ree-turn it tu life.” The alien voice said.

“....Yes.” They heard Kalima reply softly. Cait pictured her clenching her small fists and looking the river in its eye. “It is dead. My brother and I have been traveling alone, seeing the world. It honestly feels good not having to worry about white people for once.” She lied while not lying. Cait could tell her sigh was sincere either way. “Shii, I kin eemagine! Iss all I eemagine actually. De jyoy of liberation yu all muss feel! Fa uss, dis mission iss from God. I have never not done dis work. And my father did it beefore me. So did ‘is father. I’ve ‘eard my peeple wur once ‘nslaved. ‘Nslaved on a planet like tiis. Once. I cannot say, all I know, and all I remember is dis. I kill and capture ‘eretics. De ones who dare tu “manifest destiny.” I heer dhat quite a lot. But God is resistance. God is violence. God iss sacred anger. A God yu cannot murder. A God yu cannot eet.” The Returner responded. To Cait, the desert became an ocean of screaming waves in the black.

“....Where you taking them?” Christian said after a long pause. Cait imagined him pulling his hoodie down and looking at Kalima first before asking the alien. “Where yall putting the white folks? ” Cait heard Christian’s voice as made of light. Light and sound trade shoes sometimes. Echoes of fireworks that make shapes in your mind. Cait’s mind was trying to shape the world the aliens’ dogma would strike into existence. Flint of the future burning and ash at the end. Another pause, this time from the alien. “Aggressiv races offen share planet wit otha speci-”

“Hold on, we’re all the same species.” Kalima interrupted in spite of herself. “White people and us, we’re all human, I know that white people have colonized the whole world. But they’re not some other species. We’re not animals.” She said definitively.

“Iss yu sure? Yoor concept of species iss static. Yoor microscopes only see so far down.” The alien replied, his voice seeming to loom higher. Like a slow tsunami. “In de deepest cracks of yoor genetic code iss trauma dhat ‘as mutated both yuu ‘nd dem. Boht receivin’ violence ‘nd givin’ violence, changes yu. Yu will see.” He finished.

“....so where are you taking them?” Kalima asked after letting the aliens’ words resonate. This time when the alien responded there was a bite of impatience–Cait could hear the splash of the rapids. “A place dey can be wit species moor like dem! A planet dey will share wit others who “eevolved” into de dominant race on dey planets–wee give dem all de opportunity ta scramble over resources and see who iss de truu superioor man. De closess ‘uman word for de planet’s name would be Ubermensch. Wee gon drop dem all on Ubermensch–wit all de others who manifested dey destiny.”

For a moment, Cait could only hear the wind blow as the conversation seemed to reach a fork. “That’s what they deserve.” Kalima finally said in a plain hard matter of fact tone. “We found this empty car about an hour ago...we figured that someone abandoned it after they ran out of gas.” Cait pictured Jim’s vintage Mustang bathed in the fiery glow of the alien’s headlights. The blue of the paint burned a deep indigo.

Christian chimed in to back up the story. “Probably some white folks tryna get out the way…this look like a car you’ah see in a white person drug heist movie. Say–you said that you’ve been doing this for eons right? You feel like it’s working? Like you making things better for folks across the universe?”

“Christian.” Kalima said sharply. However, when the alien replied to Christian its tone had a knowing sort of humor to it. “I not yoor enemy. But yu knowin, eh? Iss always people like yu. Kind ones. Ones dhat don’t believe in God. But I have seen it on planets just like tiss one; God kuvers yu in blood. Have yu ever kunsidered dhat de ones who set yoor sky on fire, and poisoned yoor water are trying to kill God? Beekum God? Yu will see.”

There was silence between the three of them for a moment before the alien spoke again. “Now, as fa dhis vehicle–I’m going tu disable it. Git back.” Cait and the others were forced to listen as they heard the sound of Jim’s old blue mustang–the one his dad left him–be dismantled by some unknown alien technology. All that American history, scrapped in under two minutes. Cait held Jim’s shaky hand as one of his last family heirlooms was destroyed. He cursed and cried in the dark while two of the last white women on Earth consoled him to no avail.

There was almost a sort of music to the sound of metal being eviscerated Cait thought carelessly as she held Jim. A rhythmic shredding almost, some giant sharp creature molting and leaving behind a husk of shrapnel. Jim had been right about the aliens all along, Cait thought. Suddenly, fear caused her to grip Jim’s hand tighter and her breath to race as her thoughts did as well. What would it be like? A planet full of people like Jim’s father? A planet full of women like Cait, just dragged along even though they tried their best she thought bitterly. “This is honestly so unfair.” She whispered angrily in the dark. “Not all of us are bad, okay! I try my best to have tou-”

“Shhh!!” Lisa whispered frantically. “Don’t shush her!” Jim said a little too loudly. Suddenly, the music of the mustang being torn apart stopped. “Someone in yoor vehicle?” Cait and the others heard the alien ask. “Do I have yoor permission ta search?”

The longest pause of the conversation followed, Cait, Jim and Lisa held their breath as the sky continued to bleed above them.

“....No.” Christian said plainly.

“Why?” The alien replied, Cait didn’t know if he had eyebrows but his voice cocked an eyebrow. “...Well, you say you’re doing all of this for us right? Black and Brown folks right? Well, we been gettin stopped and searched by invaders with big guns for hundreds of years now. Kinda hypocritical of you to stop and frisk us–right?” Christian said defiantly.

“CHRISTIAN-” Kalima began before the Returner started chuckling, the sound of his laughter like waves crashing. “Well…yuu are right. And bold. Dis world will need you–dis world will change you. Yu will see. Dis world iss yoor world again.”

“...It was never not ours.” Christian said back without malice or contention. “And really–it’s nobodies. We just on this bitch really.”

The alien exchanged parting words with Kalima and Christian before leaving. Cait heard Kalima say something interesting to him before he pulled off. “...It might sound strange to say this, but you talk like my grandmother.” The desert sky healed blue-black. Meanwhile Cait sat in the bathtub hugging her knees. Jim had stormed out and Lisa had tried to console Cait to no avail. “Hey man, we got away, we just gotta keep getting away. And Kalima and Christian really are showing up for us in a crazy way. We’re gonna be alright, let’s smoke! Woohoo!” She said doing a little dance before swaying out of the bathroom dancing and singing in joy.

Cait’s mind was spilled soup and there was no putting it back into the bowl. How could everyone let this happen? She thought angrily, as she finally lifted herself from the tub and strolled over to the sink, turning it on; the sound of cool water forcing her to remember the aliens words:

The ones who set the sky on fire and poisoned your water are your enemy.

Cait turned the water off and looked up at her reflection in the mirror. Staring back was not someone who set the sky on fire, she thought. “I never set anything on fucking fire.” She whispered to her reflection bitterly. As Cait exited the bathroom, and headed out into the living area where Jim was ranting, she thought about fire and how it was a reaction. Chemically and emotionally she supposed. People were always burning things down when they were mad, she thought. As Cait heard Jim sob and rage, she wondered what men like Jim’s father, and Jim’s father’s father were reacting to that made them burn the sky down.

Kalima and Christian stepped back into the RV and Lisa ran up and looped both of them into a rainbow wide embrace. A real rainbow. Not a faint one fading into the after of a storm. But one of those ones painted right over the sky. That’s how Lisa hugged her family. “You guys fucking killllleddd itttt.” She laughed. “Bullshit!” Jim interjected. “My car, you let hi-”

“We was not gone fight no alien bruh. That nigga was Wemby size.” Christian said flatly, walking past Jim and into the kitchen area opening a cabinet and grabbing a box of frosted flakes. “Taller to be honest. We saved you, really.” He finished plainly, not looking at Jim but inspecting the cereal box to see how much was left. “It’s like, three bowls left. Y’all boys hungry?” The gentle matter of factness of Christian’s tone seemed to be its own soft light. The kitchen area was dim but the shadows had a way of carving Christian’s features sharper. Like a tree at dusk. The sound of cereal slapping the bowl, cut through Jim’s tirade. Cait smirked a tired smile despite herself.

Looking around, Cait felt like she was in a cozy basement apartment, with everything wood paneled and lit by soft yellow string lights all over. Cait and Jim sat eating Frosted Flakes while Lisa rolled what had to be the thickest joint Cait had ever seen. “...so what did this one look like? Did he look like the last one?” Lisa asked as she finished and began searching the pockets of her flowy pants for a lighter. “Kind of.” Kalima replied. She was laying down on the couch staring up at the orange velvet ceiling of the RV. To Cait it looked like she was maybe trying to stare through the roof into the night, into space maybe–the stars with worlds of water at war spinning around them. Maybe. “He was just as serious though. These niggas really believe in what they doing. I’ll give them that…” Kalima finished without finishing really. “.....And-don’t-be-saying-nigga-just-cause-I- said-nigga!” She blurted out after a pause, as if she urgently needed to pass that message along to her new companions.

“Y’all know who Idris Elba is right? Christian asked, sitting crossed legged next to Lisa before taking a hit as the joint came to him.

Cait/Lisa/Kalima all at once replied-

“uh,yeah/I think so!/Duh.”

-Jim replied “who?”

“Well, he looked like a black ass Idris Elba. But nine feet tall, and no eyebrows, no hair. Just like the other one we saw. But like, black as fuck. Like, blakk ee fuhhh” Christian said in a pensive sort of way, blowing the smoke above Jim and Cait’s heads. “Okay Christian-” Kalima interjected before Christian continued. “-I’m just saying that nigga was past Akon black! Not in a bad way. But black like the crayon black….and his eyes were bright purple all the way. At least this one told us his name though. I don’t know why, but it’s cool to know they have names.” He finished, passing the joint to Jim, who hesitated before accepting it with a soft muttered “thanks.”

“B’ara Q’el…” Kalima said quietly. “It sounds kind of musical to me.” She mused to herself before continuing. “And his way of talking felt like music too. It’s different from the propaganda they’ve been broadcasting…”

“His voice was…musical.” Cait said out loud as Jim coughed his lungs out(“Shit!! This is strong), “I kept hearing water behind his words.” She finished quietly as Jim handed the joint to her.

“Yeah!” Lisa chimed in, stretching her long arms up and then flopping backwards onto Kalima. “Now that you mention it, it sounded like there was like, a little stream or a creek behind him right?”

“Well yeah, but it was w a a a a y bigger than a stream.” Cait dismissed, taking a hit and immediately feeling her lungs burn, as she started coughing more than Jim. “It was like a roaring r i v e r.” She finally choked out.

After Cait’s coughing fit, there was an odd silence in the room as the joint moved to Kalima, who had now sat up, and was softly brushing Lisa’s head between her lap. “I didn’t hear anything.” Kalima said in a sharp tone, her eyes narrowed at Cait and Jim, the joint simmering in her hand. “What about you?” She said, looking towards her brother. Christian paused for a moment, contemplating; “...Naw. It was actually like I couldn’t hear anything but his words. Like all the other noise–that shit was dead. Just him. Just the message. It was weird, I could have swore the stars even blinked out.”

“....I couldn’t hear shit. Well, just barely… maybe every few words or so..” Jim said in a hard tone. “It sounded like a thunderstorm was raging. I could hear yall every once in awhile…but that’s it.” Cait and the others sat quietly a moment more, each of them musing on why they all heard different things. They all then caught Jim up on what B’ara Q’el had said. Jim listened, and the more he heard of the Returners plans, the angrier he got. He launched into a barrage of history his father had likely drilled into him as ammunition. “These motherfuckers are delusional as shit if they think America is gonna let this shit slide. Pearl Harbor? 9/11? Anyone that thinks they can get away with catching us off guard ends up sucking our dicks and thanking us for it.” Jim said with a savage laugh that Lisa recoiled from. Christian stared at Jim with a strong look that was not hateful. One Cait couldn’t place. Wherever the look was coming from though, it was on a shelf Jim couldn’t reach, despite how tall he was. Kalima took a breath and replied–her eyes and voice turned stone and hammer.

“...So is that what happened in Vietnam? Afghanistan? Because I think a lot of those guys got their dicks blown off by little Brown boys. Or sniped to death by little Brown women.” She laughed spitefully, before getting serious and looking Jim hard in his eyes. “Look, I don’t know how you were raised, but this is our home. We’re not glorifying any of that patriotic imperialist shit. Look at Russia and the UK, there aren’t even empires to be brainwashed about anymore thanks to The Returners.”

Jim and Kalima stared at each other for a long time, as if they could see each other in ways no one else in the room could. No more words were exchanged, but Cait saw that something was happening between them. It felt familiar to Cait. Like it happened before. Like it was always happening. They were each a legion, a legacy of others before them. Cait came to know, by the scream of Jim’s tight lipped quiet as he turned red–that silence was filled with blood. Cait broke the silence by asking, “What happened to Russia and the UK?”

~~~

Lisa had set out a laptop and was playing a video called London Massacre GRAPHIC.

The streets were filled with white people, conspicuously only white people, staring up at the sky. Cars parked in traffic. Everyone with their phones out, looking up. Children, some hopeful despite, tugging their parents hands and pointing up excitedly. Some of the adults look hopeful too, Cait thought. They were probably people that believed in aliens as kids. Cait could picture someone like Lisa being really excited and snapping pictures, as some of the white people were. The camera lingered on a couple, in their twenties maybe, holding hands and looking at each other. The boy smiled at something the girl said. Cait could tell it was something she always said. The smile came before she finished and he was nodding his head in a way that said “I know, I know.” Cait wondered what did this girl know right now that reminded the boy to smile. When the world they all knew was ending. The camera panned up.

Cait saw the London sky completely blocked by the alien ship for miles in all directions. Like a false night pulled over the world. An eclipse made of iron. The footage was from a news camera crew standing in the street panning their camera up in sweeping arcs to show the audience how vast the alien ship was. Cait noticed how many rivets and bolts it seemed to have. How it looked built by hand somehow, like somebody tinkered with this in their galaxy sized garage. “Again, scientists have estimated the alien ships to be about the size of Portugal. These ships have app-”

The reporter’s voice was drowned out by the loud sound of metal scraping from above, like a cloud raining machetes. Heavy machine gun turrets longer than pine trees emerged from all over the underside of the Returners ship. Hundreds of thousands of guns, guns all pointed down at the city of London. What Cait had expected was lasers. But this reminded her of a navy ship or a helicopter or something. That was it, Cait thought, they reminded her of the helicopter guns she saw in Vietnam war movies and documentaries. The automatic guns fired as the herd of white people scattered. Bullets cut through buildings, cars and people. People were blown into clouds of pink vapor and dew. Little sunrises in fast forward. Some were cut in half at odd angles. Others had limbs blown off. Ratty stumps with frayed ends. The camera caught sight of a child, his stomach pulled out. A pile of soiled rags. Yolk yellow with bile. The streets became pink and brown arteries where human matter stirred with concrete tar and plastic. Veins beating through the city. Communion. The sound was as if the sky actually had gears behind all the blue. That’s what Cait thought. That maybe The Returners had come from the other side of the sky, and were showing us the gears and rivets of life. How it really worked. How loud it really was.

The white people ran but the bullets found them anyway. The bullets ate them, Cait thought. As if these bullets had been born from some mother of war; and were suckling. There was a joy to their velocity. Cait found it strange how people could be whole one moment, and then have chunks of themselves blown off. Tatters. There were always tatters of fascia and ligament that didn’t blow clean. Clean-off was a lie, Cait thought. Another lie. People’s bodies fought to stay in one piece. The muscle of the man’s hip joint holding, pulling, reaching for the tendon of his upper thigh as it flew off. Cait saw it. Their bodies fought. Fought as the bullets ate. And they lost every time. Cait had lost sight of the couple holding hands almost immediately once the hail had begun. Tears came. She wondered if they had tried to hold onto each other. If they had watched each other be erased, bone by bone, bullet by bullet. Mourning each piece of their love being butchered. She wondered if the girl, in that moment, tried to save every tendon, every gift of flesh she could of the boy. Cait felt stupid for thinking that. They didn’t have time to miss each other. They had died before realizing they were being killed.

There was then a rough cut to the point of view of a sailor on a British destroyer out in the North Atlantic, his phone capturing a wide screen view of how vast the alien ship stretching over the UK was. It was a pyramid. A pyramid the size of Portugal made of stone and metal. There were steps as wide as neighborhoods going up the side of the pyramid ship. Veins of that same riveted metal weaved through the stone work of the pyramid, the tip of it plunging through the clouds and the underside of the stratosphere.

Cait and Jim watched in silence as the guns fired for over fifteen minutes straight, the rate of fire somehow seeming to increase every minute. It was like watching a thunderstorm of stone. Where the rain looks like sheets of shadow draped over the land. The hail of bullets became so thick at one point, that it appeared as if black curtains were sweeping through what was once the world’s greatest empire.

“...stuff like that has been happening all over..” Lisa spoke in a quiet voice, closing the laptop and addressing Jim and Cait. Jim had his head buried in his hands like a little boy. Cait put a hand on his shoulder. “Everywhere that either is or was an empire, The Returners have massacred. Half of Europe is wreckage. Have you guys not been keeping up?” Lisa finished innocently. “Well..” Cait began slowly, her mind still reeling from what she just saw. Cait thought about what it must have felt like to run when there is no place to run. Rounded up like pigs and slaughtered. She shot Jim a look before continuing. He was weeping silently. “We didn’t really have time to pack properly, we took what we could grab and hit the road. So my charger is back in California. And Jim doesn’t have one for his car. Neither one of us even knows how our parents are doing.” She finished in a tired sigh. “We’ve been out of the loop for a while now. ”

Kalima said “Wow.” and laid back down looking up at the roof again. “We had to go.” Jim said defiantly, looking up with tears streaming down. “You all heard what they said on TV! Sending their soldiers through our streets going door to door rounding up all the white people. And now we know we were right! Those poor people. God bless their souls.”

“Well-” Lisa began slowly before Jim cut her off. “Well what? We should just all get killed? I’m not saying slavery and all that wasn’t bad. But that doesn’t have anything to do with us. My family has always been poor. But we ain’t dumb. We ain’t white trash. I know more about working the land than half the indians and black people I ever met. No offense. So why do I have to die? Why do I have to leave my home?”

There was silence for a few minutes. The joint kept going around and the smoke in the air got thicker. Opaque almost. Cait didn’t know what everyone else was thinking, Cait didn’t really know what she was thinking. It was maybe the weed, it was maybe the world. But in between vivid remembrance of bodies being torn apart by bullets from the sky; Cait found herself thinking about some of the black people she grew up with.

For some reason she kept flashing back to this girl, Kaciana, a black girl she went to middle school with. Everyone used to say she “talked white,” and that she wasn’t a “real” black girl because of that. Cait couldn’t help but wonder, wherever Kaciana was, if she felt a sense of vindication right now. Cait never said those things about her, never told the girl she wasn’t black. But she used to laugh despite herself, when Jake, a boy Cait used to like, would mock how Kaci talked. Would mock how she asked to be called Kaci. “Kaci’s a white girls name. Why do you wanna be white so bad?” He would laugh. For whatever reason, Cait could see Kaci’s hurt face right now. How she would choke back tears and defiantly say her mother worked hard to send her to the best schools. How she didn’t talk white. How she just talked like herself. Cait wondered if The Returners cared about who talked white, and if white people could even talk them out of their genocide.

After a while, the rush of the evening caught up with everyone as their adrenaline dump brought on a welcome wave of drowsiness. “We’re still in the Chihuahuan desert,” Kalima began as she stretched and yawned, “but we’re headed to Fort Davis to check on some comrades of ours, we’ll drop you off there and hopefully you can dodge The Returners from there on your own.” Lisa then showed them to their own room as they all turned in for the night. Cait touched her bandaged nose as they walked. Feeling the dried clump of blood. She kept thinking about blood. How much of it she had inside of her. How much everyone had. Even Jim had to acknowledge how big this RV was. “...I’m really not trying to be rude…or racist. But how did Y’all afford this thing?” He asked Lisa genuinely as he and Cait sat on their new bed.

“Oh yeah! Kalima and Christian’s uncle used to be a tour manager for a big R&B group in the 90s. This used to be a tour bus!” She said, as Cait looked around her new room. Taking in the posters of R&B singers from what looked like the 70s or 80s. “Speaking of music, you guys are the first people in awhile that didn’t tell Christian he looked like that rapper.” Lisa continued with a smile.

“Which one?” Cait asked, pulling her eyes off a poster she thought she had recognized from one of her Uncle Jay’s records. The singers frozen with their arms stretched, reaching out, and their mouths wide made Cait think they were screaming. “His name is Punch Pilot, have you ever heard of him? That’s who we were listening to when we picked you up. He just dropped an album a few weeks ago and he’s talking about all-this -shit.” Lisa said, pointing emphatically with every word.

Cait thought for a minute if she had seen this rapper but the most hard-core rapper she knew was J. Cole. “Also, just to catch you up to speed. Right before we picked you guys up, I was telling Christian and Kalima that I think I want to start going by my middle name too. It’s Josephine, so I’m going to be Lisa Jo from now on.” She said putting on a Janis Joplin-esque vocal fry. “My parents are from Appalachia, so I feel like I’m getting back to my roots.”

“That’s where my folks are from too. Me and mom moved to California to get away from my dad…but the South is my heart.” Jim said quietly. Cait looked over at him and saw how tired he looked. Under his mustache though there was a small smile as he talked about his home.

There was a pause while Lisa Jo looked at Jim a little sadly. “....I hope both of yalls parents are okay for real man.” She said sincerely, eyeing both Jim and Cait. “We really haven’t been able to get in touch with anyone either. Our phones are pretty much just flashlights. We downloaded that video and a few others from the last few weeks.” Jim and Cait sat silently for a second before Lisa Jo spoke again. “Anyways, I’m sorry about your car Jim….. buuuuut cars-are just-metal-and-plastic-anyways and-we-really-really-really-needed-less of them. I lost mine too when The Returners first came. It was actually really fucking sick to watch.” She finished with a laugh. “I didn’t even have insurance anyways.”

Cait saw Jim suppress an eye roll out of politeness. She also thought she saw the blueprints of a bigger smile sketched over his mouth. “Anyways, I hope you guys get some rest, and Kalima wanted me to give this to you Cait.” Lisa Jo said, handing Cait a small red covered book with black bold type on the front.

To Live and Die in a White Man’s World. By Dr. Henri Amaru, professor and essayist.

Under the title was an illustration of what looked like Adam and Eve, but black. Who Cait assumed was God, an old white man with flowing white robes, was pointing to a tree with fruit hanging from it. She gave the intro a quick glance:

Foreword

When we apply ontology, the study of being, to the condition of the negro, ontology itself collapses. The annihilation of the negro is as fundamental to the engine of the world as the burning of coal for power. How can you apply a philosophy of being to beings whose purpose is to be erased? I propose that Black people by their continued existence create a sort of reverse ontology rather. A study of non-being. How does the human being stripped of being exist, I continue to ask. That state of continued existence as a non-being I think ruptures society in capitalist driven nations. How can the coal walk and talk and demand not to be burned? What happens when the coal won’t just burn? Well, it’s just a rock then. Useless, kickable; or collectible. Something to be polished, or pressured into a diamond. Diamond made people made for burning. Burning to keep the world spinning as it does. At all costs. The terrifying velocity of the Black life is what we must write about.

“.....I’ll try to get through it.” Cait said.

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American Saints Part I

After all the white people were gone, and Earth was a memory–Cait remembered that when the aliens arrived on the morning of Fall equinox; they had brought the first perfect day of the season with them. As if they had drug the winds of Fall from outer space hitched to the back of their ships after Summer. Mostly, she couldn’t believe the end of the world had felt so good. She was old now, and today, with the wind running like a horse’s song over the budding fields, her memories of those last days in the American desert began to soar. As her mind was transported back; Cait felt overwhelmed by her nostalgia for the apocalypse:

“N i g g e r s are gonna kill us eventually, just you wait–that’s what my daddy would say every time Cait. Every time after I brought over one of my football buddies–one of the black ones I mean. Once, when I was drunk, I had the nuts to look him in his eye and call him a racist. Fuck did I know man. Just a stupid kid.” Jim muttered through gritted teeth as he gripped the steering wheel of the blue convertible as it shot through the American desert.

Under the motherly pink of the sunset, Jim’s freckled scowl and hay colored hair in the wind made him look boyish and petulant to Cait. Not racist. Even as he blamed black people for ending the world. Cait never thought much about black people or space aliens. If aliens were real or not, Cait cared less, unless they could help with the bills. And black people? I mean she had black friends, and worked with them and went to school with them. Unlike Jim’s father, Cait’s parents raised her to truly not see color. So she really didn’t get why anyone on both sides got so worked up about it.

But today, as she looked up at the newborn night sky hurtling behind them as Jim sped–Cait, not for the first time wondered why it all mattered so much. She had met Jim’s father once, before he died, on a Thanksgiving visit. On his living room mantle Jim’s father collected figurines of American men he would say lived and died for us to be free. Robert E Lee, Charlie Kirk, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Kyle Rittenhouse, George Zimmerman. And many more white men Jim’s father said mattered. Over dinner, after the prayer; Jim’s father had politely interrogated Cait about her dark eyes and thick hair, where she was from, really from, and what she thought about the president. He asked where she was from in a tone that was customary. Like Cait’s identity should have come with the casserole. Cait noticed he chewed the way Jim chewed, and burped the way Jim burped, as he swallowed mouthfuls of potato and gravy in between questions. He was chewing the potatoes, but as his all too similar blue eyes locked onto Cait’s–she felt he was also chewing her answers. Impressively, he managed to spend a good bit of dinner talking about how his grandfather was in the last Confederate regiment to fire a bullet in the Civil War. However, what Cait saw most was how Jim would look to catch his dad’s eye after a joke, how Jim joked more than often, how excited Jim got to tell his dad about a promotion at work, and how small Jim got when his dad asked him when he would get a man’s job.

“I swear to God–we’re not going any w h e r e.” Jim said with all the bravado he could muster, as he drove the pair of them as fast as he could, off road, in the desert–in any direction that wasn’t clogged with other white people fleeing the American cities. They had been out here, nowhere, for a week now. Although Jim had ripped off the volume and tuner knobs from the old car sound system, the aliens somehow managed to broadcast their message on loop from the car’s radio. Jim had been complaining over it all evening to drown it out as he drove Cait and him anywhere and nowhere. He continued to try even as it looped once again.

“Again, we call ourselves The Return, our mission across the universe for millennia has be-

(-thats such a pussy ass fucking name dude. Return? What does any of that even mean? Fucking fa-)

-anets like this are out of balance. One group dominates the rest; while the land, and all living on it suffer. Stewards of the land enslaved and forced to mine its resources in the name of profit. The trees-

(-that we chopped and made into something. Most of these motherfuckers would be naked in huts if we didn’t do something with all this space and land. Bridges, and buildings and places where people can make a living. We made all of that possible, where there used to no-)

-which is to say there is still much beauty here, but so much has been lost for the profit of s-

(-and fought for. And fought for motherfucker, by great men like my daddy and his dad. Died so we could just…live in this country. But what does that matter to you? They’re just dumb racists to you I guess. And what did either one of them get for it but PTSD? And now you want me to leave where my daddy and his daddy are buried? So you can DEI the whole planet? I’m sorry, if black people knew what to do with Africa then why is it s-)

-in healing this planet, we will be transporting all white people off world, somewhere…..safe, where you can do no more harm. Please migrate to the following cities for transp-”

Jim always flipped out at that part. Cait was white as far as she knew, but she was what black people online would call spicy white. Her Uncle Jay would always jokingly refer to her as his “Mexican niece.” While Jim had been throwing their lives into the trunk of the car as the state-sized ship hovered above, Cait had tried to joke to lighten the mood; “Hey, maybe when the aliens see me they’ll be just as confused about my race as everyone else and I’ll get off free. Then, I can snatch one of their keys and come save you! It’ll be like Pocahontas.” She had said with a laugh, tossing her black hair in the wind–attempting to pose and look beautiful and concerned like how she remembered Pocahontas.

But the look of anger Jim had shot her in response scared her more than the aliens for some reason. In that moment, Cait saw how much he resembled his father. He had been nervously chewing gum, but again, there was a devouring unseen, threatening unleash. After Jim’s radio tantrum waned, he and Cait fell into a tired silence for about an hour as night blossomed. Jim had been driving non-stop since morning. They had stopped only to refuel with the gallons of gas they had managed to hoard, and to relieve themselves in the sand.

Cait decided not to joke that the desert sun had turned Jim a little darker. Instead, she was stirred from their quiet by the sound of the engine running out of gas as night finally took its seat on the world. Jim sighed as if the sigh would unstick something deep, and closed his eyes as the car slowed. Cait was relieved that when he put it in park his mustached face held a sad, sheepish smile rather than a grimace.

“Thanks for puttin’ up with me.” Was what he said without looking at her. “I gotta take a leak.” Jim got out, popped the trunk and pulled out a plastic jug of gasoline before sitting it down and strolling by a cactus to pee. He aimed at the small cactus flowers growing from the ground. Cait couldn’t help but love Jim. It was the fact that he peed on flowers she supposed. She hated that about him. But inside, buried underneath his father, she knew there was a boy that would ask a flower its name. At least she hoped.

The stars turned on above. And from the west, what appeared to be two stars in the dark barreling through the sand, caught Cait’s attention. “Headlights...” She said out loud to herself as adrenaline began to flow. “Jim! There’s a car–or something headed our way!” She yelled to Jim as he zipped up and ran back into the car. Jim scrambled to open the dashboard, inadvertently elbowing Cait hard in the face, in his fervor to grab and load the old revolver. Cait’s nose began to bleed heavily. “Jim!!? What the fuck?!!!”

“Shhh!!” He whipped sharply, shooting her a stern look, his blue eyes on fire. “If it’s aliens I’m gone shoot.” Jim cut their own lights, and then turned to hang half out the window with his gun pointed at the two stars headed their way. Cait wiped her nose, but Jim’s careless elbow had caused her nose ring to rip, and she was bleeding badly. She tried not to make any noise as she covered her bloody nose with a hand. Cait stared at the back of Jim’s head as he stared down the approaching headlights or aliens. They grew brighter and closer, flooding Jim and the window, turning him into a silhouette against the bright. Like a stained glass painting of a saint Cait thought.

“This is our homeThisisourhomeThisisourhomeThisisourhomeThisisourhomeThisisourhomeThisisourhome-”

Jim kept whispering to himself as the lights finally came to a stop, up close they were so bright Cait couldn’t tell if this was a spaceship or what. Jim cocked the gun as the lights cut and from the distance Cait thought she heard the faint sounds of r&b music.

“-that sounds like someone listening to SZA or Beyonce or something, do you hear that?” Cait asked as she recognized a melody she’d heard.

“What in the hell are you talking about?” The oddness of Cait’s question made Jim turn around finally. “Jesus, you’re covered in blood, what happened?” He asked innocently. “Yo! Y’all aite!” The sound of another male voice came from outside as Cait continued to hear the music more clearly.

“No, I’m bleeding really bad!” Cait yelled back without thinking. “Caitlin!” Jim hissed at her, but it didn’t matter, Cait was fed up and ready to take a chance rather than keep driving to nowhere. She got out of the car and approached the voice as Jim scrambled out of the front seat to intercept her.

“Do you need us to come out there?” The sound of a female voice from the vehicle that Cait couldn’t make out in the pitch black of the desert night. But from the presence the vehicle had, the shadows it cast within the shadows, she could tell it was big. “...Nah…I don’t think so.” Said the male voice in a calm and curious tone. When Cait finally got close enough to the voice, a cell phone flashlight from his hand revealed his features. He was a sharp cheeked dark skinned black guy, probably a little bit younger than Cait and Jim, but taller than them both, and Jim played basketball in high school. His pupils were so black that they had hints of purple in them almost. Like an oil painting Cait thought.

“D a m n. You bleedin bleedin.” He said, pulling up the hood of his red hoodie. “Let me hit the RV, I know we got first aid stuff in they. Be right back.” The boy with the oily eyes ran into what Cait could now see as a huge RV, her own eyes starting to adjust to the darkness. Jim had caught up to her right as he ran inside. “Cait, we need to get out of here now.” He said as he grabbed her wrist and tried to lead her back before she snatched it away and responded. “I’m bleeding Jim. I need to get some bandages at least. You elbowed me in the face…”

“I don’t like this.” Jim said as he started to pace. “I’m sorry about your nose–I swear I am–I was just trying to get the gun–but I don’t like this shit. The fuck is he even doing out here?”

“...Jim?…What are we doing out here?”

“...escapin’...we’re gettin’ away so they don’t round us up like animals, what do you mean?”

“Have you ever thought that it might not be so bad Jim? Wherever they want to take us I mean. Look how big their ships are–look how you can still see the one over El Paso from here! We’ve been driving for a week and it’s just hanging in the sky like an island...their technology has to be amazing. What if it’s better up there?”

“It’s perfect here.”

“It’s perfect here?”

“It could be. If people would just act right. When my daddy was younger things were-”

“-you weren’t alive when your dad was younger. How do you know how any t h i n g was?”

In between them, a desert wind kicked up sand and stone. And in the dark of the desert, Jim’s blue eyes looked like two dead moons. “I know that they-” Jim replied, pointing in the direction of where the boy with the oily eyes had gone. “-were cheering in the streets when the aliens first made their big announcement. Cheering. After all we’ve done for them, and put up with, from them. They’re happy we’re losing our home. It’s not right.”

Cait fell quiet for a moment as she thought of what to say back, but before she could speak, the boy had returned and behind him were two young women. One black, and to Cait’s surprise one white. “Y’all a throuple or something?” Jim blurted out, his eyes landing on the young black woman.

“Aye nigga that’s my sister!” The young black man shot back, taking a step towards Jim, tossing aside the first-aid kit in the sand. “Jim!” Cait said sharply, before standing between the two of them. The young black woman spoke up: “....Leave it alone Christian. The aliens are dealing with white boys now. Let her get some alcohol wipes or whatever and let’s get out of here. He’s just mad that white privilege will get him kidnapped or killed now. He’s just mad that some strange men in weird ships showed up and told him to leave.” The young black woman said. Her voice was precise but conversational, in a poet’s way Cait thought. Like she had put every word she spoke into her pocket before the conversation, pulling them out and arranging them on the countertop like exact change.

As Christian cleaned her up, Cait sat bemused by the thought that older sisters have a way of taking charge of an entire friend group. Not that they were a friend group. But she learned a little bit about them, while Jim paced around impatiently smoking a cigarette. “Kalima and I have been married for two years now. Our anniversary was actually the equinox, believe it or not!” The young white woman named Lisa said breathlessly, her smile so wide and cheeks so big it almost made her dice earrings shake. Lisa’s voice was earnest and fast, Cait thought. She talked like she was trying to say every word in her sentences at once almost.

“But we’ve been dating since high school! I was one of those white girls who did slam poetry in high school. And yeah all of it rhymed dude, and I sounded like Gwen Stefani. She’s so weird now but I still love her. Whoa, I wonder if they got her?? Anyways, that’s how we met. What about you guys?”

“Jim’s mom and him moved to my hometown when we were both in middle school. His mom, and my mom helped with Sunday school so I would see him around church and pool parties. We both were in the same Confirmation class. He was always friends with the boys that ended up doing dip in high school so we kind of drifted then. Well, we ended up both going to the same college and got closer there I suppose. It’s funny how college can be like that. Jim and I moved in after I graduated.” Cait mused that in the night both Lisa and Jim resembled soft struck matches flickering in and out of burn. Lisa’s hair was down to her back though, whereas Jim’s was just a little bit longer than what his father had thought appropriate for a boy. Cait’s first impression of Lisa was that she was a person that probably picked up fallen items in grocery store aisles. She found herself immediately liking Lisa.

As Christian’s gentle hands bandaged her nose; Cait observed how similar but different Christian and Kalima looked. Kalima had abstract painting eyes Cait thought, compared to her brother at least. Whatever light source present seemed to splash into Kalima’s pupils, masking whatever her thoughts were behind unnameable shapes of light and shine.

Her braids, dreads? Braids, dreadlocks? Lox? Locs. Cait had heard some black people online use the word locs for what Bob Marley had. Her thick shoulder length locs had little jewelry all throughout. Miniature blue Africa pendants, and little dice, and watermelons, glinted in the moonlight. “That’s cool, I bet your moms are happy that you two got together, I hope they’re okay! Kalima and I, we’ve been van lifers for like, some years now.” Lisa said. “And Christian was on Spring break last week when everything happened. His freshman year yo, what the fuck! What a cool story to tell your homies though. Yo my first Spring Break all the white people on Earth got abducted! I honestly support the aliens and what they’re doing, some super land back shit I guess.” She said with a laugh before finishing off. “But I don’t want to leave Kalima, that’s all.”

Kalima didn’t speak but rather stared hard at Jim as he paced smoking his cigarette a few feet away. However, Cait noticed her fists unclenched a little when Lisa said her name. “To me, Lisa family.” Christian said matter of factly. “I-don’t-fuck-with white-people-like-that-to-be-real, like be for real…but I don’t rock with people being forced anywhere against they will either.” He said simply, taking a step back after he finished bandaging Cait, admiring his handiwork. “Really, I love Lisa. That’s like my sister.”

“Are you in nursing school or something?” Cait asked, touching her perfectly bandaged nose tenderly. “Naw…I just watch Animal Planet a lot.” Christian responded as if he himself was contemplating why he was so good at healing. Kalima then chimed in. “Well, white people have been forcing people out of their ancestral homes for centuries. And in far more brutal ways than this.….far more…the karma of their ancestors was always going to catch them. I definitely didn’t think it was going to be aliens but, I think it’s ironic that it happened this way. The aliens just came here and did to white people what white people have been doing for hundreds of years. Watching those ICE agents get chopped up all over telev-” Kalima was saying before Jim cut her off.

“Why the hell are you married to a white girl then?” He spat, finally coming to the end of his cigarette and joining the conversation. “If you hate white people so mu-”

“I don’t hate anybody, I just read books.” Kalima cut him off, her eyes narrowed. “I just know history, I just have eyes, I’m just not dumb.”

“You calling me dumb?”

“Yes.”

“Ooey shoot!” Christian said, collapsing into a fit of giggles at his sister’s boldness. “Yuh.”

“Cait!–let’s gas up and get the fuck outta here!” Jim shot Cait a glare and then began to walk back to the car. Cait felt her heart sink suddenly. Was this life now? Driving in circles with Jim going nowhere. Was Jim a circle?

“Well…thanks for everything–and good luck.”Cait finally said looking each of them in the eye. She looked at Christian last, and in return he playfully patted her on the head like she was a cat or something. “Okayy.” Cait laughed, but was still feeling somehow warmed by the gesture.

As she turned around to leave, from the East, Cait spotted a singular red light coming towards them much much faster than Kalima and Lisa’s RV had. Faster than any car. Jim had already spotted it and was running back towards the group, gun in hand. “Cait! We gotta go!”

“Come on!” Christian said, grabbing Cait’s wrist and sprinting towards the RV with Kalima and Lisa. Without thinking, Cait ran as fast as she could with them. “Caitlin!” Jim cried desperately as they all piled into the RV. Once they were inside Kalima spoke to Cait in an urgent hush. “Tell him to get in here before they snatch him! We’ve seen them do it. And we have to hide all of you. You’re white right? If they get one of you they can track other white people you’ve been around...”

“Jim! Get in here–you can’t win with just a gun.” Cait pleaded, as Jim for a moment had tried to steel himself, and raise the old revolver at the red light that was rapidly swallowing him. A cowboy trying to shoot down the sunset.

“Shit! I’m coming!” Jim finally barreled his way in, and Cait barely had time to notice the Scooby Doo-esque shag 60s aesthetic blurring past her as Christian pushed her and Jim into the bathroom. For a moment, Cait could hear Lisa and Kalima speaking to each other frantically, then, the loud silence of a sudden hug–the sound of sound being extinguished as the space between two people collapses into embrace. Lisa entered the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She cut off the light and the three of them sat in silence for a moment before she spoke much slower than Cait had her speak up until now. “Kalima is going outside to talk to them.”

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You cannot gentrify the azaleas and what their bloom in spring signifies to me.(1) How they sigh pink over quiet bushes in the backyard–bushes where secrets, and “don't tell nobody bout this” started happening behind one April. Or May. All April's and May’s and Springs and pinks blend together for me into a chant of “thatdidnthappenthatdidnthappen” and a stomach ache of “don't tell Mama, don't tell Daddy.”

The folks that move here love the azaleas. But I don't trust them, the azaleas I mean. They don't speak up when bad things happen behind them. They just stay silent and keep sighing and keep letting the transplants that move here gush over their blushing. They're all complicit to me. Flowers and all.

None of the transplants are okay.

Their idea of what “heartbreak” is in Savannah is pathetic. Heartbreak in Savannah is not crying over coked out fake cowboys at Moodrights that exclusively fuck 20 year old SCAD girls who get in with fake IDs. It's watching the street your uncle got murdered on get turned into a trendy hip spot with overpriced “bodegas.” The white boys are not okay. The white boys are not okay.(2)

Nothing in Savannah is okay.

A mayor telling his distraught citizens at a George Floyd rally, that the best way to stop police brutality was to become police, and “change the system” is not okay. It's just stupid. But what would you expect from a mayor that looks like a Carl Winslow knock-off. Carl was always the worst character on that show. It's not okay to look like Carl Winslow but fail to realize your family matters. This city is your family but you treat it like a political dungeon crawl to level up for points. Get more experience and move onto the next level. It's not okay Carl.

It's not okay for me, and everyone else in this town to drink this much fucking fernet.(3)

It's not okay that Title 1 schools like Myers Middle still get the rep of being for “the bad kids.”

Bad kids just really mean Black kids.

Black kids just means kids whose parents are actually from here.

Those kids are beautiful, funny, care about each other, and care about being from Savannah. They don't even fully know what it means to care about being from Savannah yet. It means hurting. It means feeling angry at every red light, looking around and the only thing being the same from your past is the trees.(4)

And nowadays they cut those down too.

Bring back Backus Cadillac. Bring back a Black Savannah. From the river to the sea, speaks to me so much. I know what it feels like for your soul to be born between waters. I was raised on Waters and 37th, and my people have lived and died here for years. I remember when the waters of the flash flood on Grenoble destroyed Aunt Pat’s house. How it felt like all of Savannah was washing in through the front door. I can't stop fighting for this place that almost washed us away. I just can't. And if any of you white liberals wanna threaten me, please remember, the Black folks of this city got hands and we do not operate by y'all fake ass rules and decorum. We can really square up at Daffin. It's really like that. Y'all not from here. And I'll beat the shit out one of y'all boys really.(5)

Footnotes

1. Dear azalea bushes,

I forgive you. I used to get really sad every Spring. It was around that time of year when you bloom that____ started abusing me as a kid. He was my next door neighbor/first older brother figure. The first time I remember it happening was actually behind one of you guys. Gals? Flowers are girls right? I really like flowers. Nowadays I have flower-printed everything. But I'll admit as a kid I sort of spited you for a while. I sort of spited Mama and Daddy for a while. But after Daddy died mostly Mama. I hated having to get that lawnmower every two weeks from ______ to mow our lawn cause we didn't have our own mower. I chopped up everything with that lawnmower, flowers too. I wanted to chop up every azalea bush on the block. I wanted to chop up the block and then the world. But mostly myself. I never wanted to chop _____ up though. He felt unchoppable. Unstoppable. To me, his teeth were so crooked and rust colored, they were their own set of mower blades. Everytime he smiled, he would chop me up, and I'd swallow whatever chopped up feeling was rising from my stomach to my throat and threatening to come out as a scream. What does a scream look like chopped up? Like flower petals in the grass getting ran over by a mower again and again I bet. I'm sorry that I still get a little angry at your pink. I'm sorry that I still get a little happy when you wilt. But I do think one day we'll have the Spring together we should have. No one will chop it up.

Love,

Chris

2. Scene 1(ext. any patio of any bar on any night in Savannah)

I sip on a watered down whiskey sour sitting down on a not too damp bench outside my favorite bar. It rained earlier, and the smell of it is still in everyone's hair as they walk past. Even still, new clouds shoo away the stars attempting to loiter all cool in the wet sky. It's gone rain again, I can tell by how the air smells and how smug the clouds look sitting there puffing their bellies out. Down here that rain smell is like cloud cologne I suppose. And it makes sense that storms would be like businessman, wanting you to smell them before they walk in the room. My black Wu-Tang shirt is sticking slightly to the rain-speckled bench. I love this shirt but I should have known better than to wear it out in public.

WHITE MAN

Mind if I sit down? (He asks while already taking a seat.)

ME

Sure. (Not looking up from phone)

WHITE MAN

Wu-Tang man. Right on. Nas, am I right? That real shit. Not that fake ass Migos shit. I can tell you know what's up. What's your name man?

I tell him my name ,and he cannot hide his disappointment in my non-African name. My very white first and last name makes him feel like I am wasting my Blackness. His shock at my one syllable hyper common name makes him ignore all the things I tell him about valuing Black artists no matter how they express themselves.

WHITE MAN

Where you from man? The islands? (His eyes light up and his voice fills with mystery at the words “from” and “islands” respectively.)

ME

You mean Whitemarsh?

WHITE MAN

(Annoyed but determined)

Nawh man, like, where you from, Jamaica? Cali?

ME

Here.

WHITE MAN

Here?

ME

Yep.

WHITE MAN

Noooo way! Nobodies from here–you don't sound like you're from here. Born and raised?( Clearly confused about what ‘from’ means.)

ME

Yeah, until I went to college. And then after that I lived in Atlanta for a while. That was a wild, pivotal time. And then I came back here on accident.

WHITE MAN

(Slowly)

I bet it's changed a lot.

ME

Yeah. The gentrification bothers me sometimes. A lot of times. Bull Street used to be really different man. Honestly, just seeing white folks on Bull Street is still odd to me. It used to be pretty dangerous.

WHITE MAN

Word word. We have a house in Ardsley. Me and my wife will walk to Starland pretty much every evening after work, catch the sunset. Get a beer. So beautiful over there. Where do you live?

I tell him 42nd Street and he lights up, telling me that area is “coming up.” He asks me if I'm excited or if I ever go to the Savannah Banana games. I tell him no, but I went to a Savannah Sand Gnats game once a long time ago with friends. He looks puzzled and a bit annoyed before asking me who my favorite member of Wu-Tang Clan is.

3. Fernot ( a Fernet sonnet )

One shot is way too much for this city boy.

There is a flash flood of fernet down

Abercorn and Lincoln on Thursdays.

I parked in a puddle by accident–

fernet up to my ankles and thought

“This is what it means to be home these days.”

On Thanksgiving I crawl to Lone Wolf to eat

Mac and Cheese made by the bartenders fam

while my aunties lay asleep a few blocks

down Lincoln at an assisted living

facility. The fernet made me forget them.

The fernet makes me remember them

at the worst times like walking hand in hand

down Lincoln with a girl I will never kiss again.

4. There was a tree in Daffin Park where all the popular eighth graders would sit and talk about popular things. I write about this a lot, but a lot of those kids are dead now. Mostly from drugs or suicide. There is something dark in those white upper middle/lower upper class families. Something that turns my yearbook signature page into a scrawl of ghosts.

5. In eighth grade I hit one of my classmates with a math book after he said a racist joke. No, I did not end racism that day, but the resounding THWACK! off the back of his head is a sound that I never wanna forget.

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It was the last year of the universe and only black holes were left in the starless sky. From one end to the other, the universe was a cold dark. It was Christmas. I had been happy for a long time and then one day I wasn’t. And as our space station rotated around the black hole, siphoning its rotational energy through the use of giant mirrors scattering electromagnetic radiation, it hit me–I didn’t always want to be a teacher. But the kids who don’t have a future in this starless universe need to think there is a future. 

I pressed my hand on a window and saw nothing but black. The Black of my hand disappearing into the black of the universe. And outside, something darker than dark was giving us a little bit more life and then it would kill us for sure. I sighed and looked back at the children.The classroom was full of Black hole kids. All the last stars were in their eyes. 

“So! It’s the year 101000000000000000000000000000000000000 and you guys wanna talk about poetry huh?” A chorus of groans and “I don’t understand poetry” followed. 

“Kids never wanna talk about poetry.” I said with a laugh, eyeing my favorite student D’ante. D’ante smiled a silver toothed smile back through curtains of jeweled toned dreadlocks.”I just don’t get why they don’t say what they mean.” D’ante shot back, sliding his tattoed notebook into his backpack. 

“I think they say what they mean.” N’joya blinked, on her round cheeks a ghosty smile, “Or at least they're trying to say what they mean, but-” she trailed off looking up, trying to find the answer in the ceiling. The ceiling was a good place to look honestly, it was hologramed to look like what we think a sky must have looked like. Anytime I look up I think about how my first kiss was under a hologram sky and a moon made of code. 

“Buuuuut-” I encouraged her, leaning forward slightly in excitement. I was sitting criss-cross applesauce on my desk in the front of class now. But, before N’joya could answer, outside the black hole screamed it's no voiced scream. The kids and I shuddered collectively. I don't know how to put it, but we can all hear the singularity even though it's silent. It is the quietest part of quiet–the wrathful patriarch of silence from which all hushes trace their lineage. It is a quiet that fills up your ears, and then your skull, popping and pouring out of your eyeball corners, your nostrils, the space between your teeth, so silent it is cold. The students and I all took a breath that none of us heard. The silence forced all light to its knees, the room went black as our power went out briefly. The first thing I heard was the kids fidgeting nervously in their seats, some breathing heavily. I gathered myself with a sigh, and my brain registered a tick of annoyance with the building maintenance. I would be complaining to my partner Rahnni later on about how underfunded our space station was in comparison to one's around bigger black holes.

“Buuuuut-” I resumed pointedly in the dark, determined to keep this lesson plan on track. A few beats of time–then a light voice through the dark. 

“But they feel too much that they can't put it in normal words, like they have to say it in a metaphor or a simile or whatever to make it make sense.” N’joya said.

“They just be wantin’ to sound smart.” D’ante shot back with a smile that I heard.

“They are smart dummy.” N’joya launched back playfully.

“Nobodies dumb.” I said reflexively, knowing full well that the universe had more idiots than stars. A big part of taking care of kids is lying to them. But another big part of taking care of kids is making sure they can read their damn textbooks when you’re trying to teach them. So with another sigh, I slid off the desk(a little too fast losing my footing in the dark) and stood up.

“I’ll be back, y’all stay put. I’ma try and see if I can make it down to the basement and flip the breakers or something. Don’t nobody leave.” I said to the invisible class, but looking especially at D’ante and N’joya. “Y’all gone be aite?”

A chorus of “yeahs” and “duhs” echolocated their way back to me in the dark. 

“Bet. This shouldn’t take too long.”

I quit my job at a shitty nonprofit and I'm going full into writing. So this substack will be a place where I share that journey. Expect poetry, fiction and essays. Excited to have you here!

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