Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [34]
The flesh was gone, all that was left was a brown skull resting on a puzzle of aged skeleton pieces. It was enough to make me jump. It was enough to end Garth’s rant when he came up next to me. Beside this head was a note, handwritten in the elaborate cursive loops of the woman herself.
To Be Sent to Christopher Jaynes, on the Event of My Untimely and Unfortunate Passing:
My family has carried this burden, cast down from one generation to the next, since 1849, when they had to dig him up to hide his bones from Rufus Griswold. My plan for our last unfortunate meeting had been to ask that professor to test them next, but you saw how he made a fool of himself with his little Q-Tip nonsense. Please find me a good Jewish doctor who can run that DNA test right. Redeem him, Christopher Jaynes!!! You’re my only hope!!!*
There was the skeleton of Dirk Peters. The man himself, in my possession. It was almost as great an honor as the book. And I made a vow to myself right then that I would redeem him. I would redeem him, beyond the petty prejudices of his family, distanced and departed as well though they were. Someday, I would find Tsalal. And I would go to Tsalal with these remains. And there, on the highest mountain, I would bury Dirk Peters in the ground, on the island of blackness that he, a black man, had discovered and, by leaving Pym behind, had preserved from the predations of white supremacy, colonialism, slavery, genocide, and the whole ugly story of our world. This was Dirk Peters’s legacy. Even if he was an Uncle Tom.
“Damn, dog. A box of bones, ain’t that some shit? From here, nothing can surprise you. You’re not going to get a bigger shock than that in this life.”
Garth was wrong. Very wrong. A bigger shock came three months later, when we met at the hotel in Ushuaia, Argentina, the day before the journey. To save money, Garth and I were sharing a hostel room with four other considerably unwashed German backpackers down the street, but I made sure that when I began my journey with Angela Bertram I was ironed and fresh shaved.
She was standing in the lobby, the woman I used to call the Ashanti Doll, her skin a wealth of rich melanin above the white vinyl of her snowsuit. And I saw myself with her, I saw a vision of us spooning on an iceberg, within an iceberg, the blue and white and the rest of the world impossibly hard and cold but the two of us warm in an embrace. And then I literally saw myself, right there, behind her. Me but chewed up me. Me but chewed up, digested, and shit out again. This guy. Like me but bloated and stupid and going bald where I was going gray.
Angela introduced her new husband. Nathaniel Latham told me how “fucking psyched” he was that “his babe” chose this as their “honeymoon journey.” Garth put a hand on my shoulder to make sure I wouldn’t do anything. Aside from murmuring “someone adventurous, creative,” I didn’t. I couldn’t. My brain was flushing down my spinal column. My head was empty, my eyes blank.
“He’s an entertainment lawyer,” Angela Latham said and beamed back at me. “Being here, doing this, now I know the divorce came too late. Nathaniel reminds me so much of you too.” The rock now on her finger matched her earrings. “You guys are going to get along great.”
* Although represented as three, there were in truth at least a dozen exclamation points at the end of the note’s final sentence. And each of those had a frowning face drawn carefully into its base dot, which I am both unable and unwilling to re-create here.
IT was the last continent; man had overrun all the others. It hid on the bottom of the planet, below, white and silent and as still as it was cold. And it was very very cold. Our crew was black and loud, running and stuck, always freezing and yet sweating in our insulated clothes. It was boring. It was too bright. The sun never set, just went red at two in the morning and then back to yellow an hour later. And I was stuck in a double-wide aluminum box with Angela who was now Angela Latham, not even