Wind moves in waves, breaking along the empty street and spilling through B.’s partially cracked car window. Summer nights in South Carolina are cold and worn. The old movie theater stands alone across the street, its marquee’s glow breaking up the night. B. sits back, a new weight resting on his chest. The radio only gives him static.
Inside the old, converted theater, there is a man, and inside what B.’s coat pocket conceals, there are four bullets. He locates a familiar station on the radio that sings, “I was born beside a river that flows into a raging sea.” B. isn’t sure how many bullets it takes to kill a man, but he’s pretty sure it’s no more than four. A soft, ecstatic guitar lies hidden amongst the song’s bass drum narrative, slowly building on a muted riff that will eventually form its breathless finale. B. keeps his eyes fixed on the old theater’s entrance while the radio sings in the background, each song unaware of the one that follows.
When Sam Foles was arrested four months ago, the only thing B. could think about was Will, Ms. Shannon, and the dicks. This thing with the dicks had all happened before B. knew Sam, but, for some reason, on the day the sirens came, B. couldn’t stop thinking about it. Ms. Shannon, an ex-curator at the North Carolina Museum of History, was a first year teacher when B. took her U.S. History class at Georgetown Public. She wore a baggy blouse on her first day that she only partially tucked in and glasses with frames that were two decades too big. From the moment she walked in that first day, B. knew she never stood a chance.
It only took Will a few weeks to start drawing dicks on the blackboard. He was always drawing something. During his freshman year, Will got called out for doodling during class. When the teacher asked him to present his work to everyone, he held up a picture of a stump with giant, twisting roots. “It’s a picture of my parent’s love life,” he said.
His dicks started off small and on the fringes of the blackboard. Will would get to class 5 minutes early everyday and put one up there. When Ms. Shannon saw the dick, she would erase it silently, not making eye contact with anyone, the whole class laughing at the back of her head. Soon the dicks began to grow, each day taking up more and more of the blackboard, and each day, Ms. Shannon would slowly erase the dick while the class laughed mercilessly to themselves. Then, one day, Will came to class 30 minutes early and drew 50 dicks, ten rows of five, stretched across the entire chalkboard. He called it his masterpiece, a meditation on the imposition of phallic dominance. When Ms. Shannon arrived and saw what he had done, she sat down at her desk, took off her glasses, and cried for the entire 40 minutes. B. remained in his chair, guilt rushing into his lungs. When he was just a few months old, B.’s father dropped him in a swimming pool at a resort in Hilton Head. B. could still feel that drowning sensation, stored away somewhere he couldn’t quite touch, lingering in every room he was in, and it would come up sometimes, just away from his fingertips, like when Ms. Shannon cried, and he felt like he was swallowing the entire room. The sky was overcast that day.
And this image, the one of his middle-aged U.S. History teacher crying at her desk, a sea of white, chalk-colored dicks behind her, clung to B. when he went to visit Sam in prison. A reporter from Sports Illustrated wanted an interview with Sam, but he refused unless B. was present to verify the entire record. Since Sam was not being allowed visitors at the time of the interview, both B. and the reporter had to walk along the prison fence to speak with him. The prison, a “juvenile detention” center in name only, was built on an old plantation, but its fences stood sturdy in their barbed wire frame. The sun was blinding that day.
B. slept-walked through the interview. This line of questioning had begun to come and go easily, even if he wasn’t the one being asked. There was the chair and the girl and, of course, the word. Sometimes they asked about the game, the one the night after everything happened, in the state playoffs, when Sam tagged four homeruns and threw a one-hitter. This time, B. just watched Sam walk, trying to discern the high school freshman’s state of mind from the swagger missing in his steps. Sam’s feet didn’t land like they used to. Instead, they shuffled profusely, barely emerging from the unkempt grass on the other side of the fence. Sam also seemed skinnier and noticeably pale. B. stumbled after a while and sat in the wild grass. Even with his eyes closed, everything was too bright.
Then Sam spoke to him, asking the reporter for five minutes after the interview was over. B. stood up to face him, struggling to keep his balance. Sam looked just as un-sturdy. “They’re taking it. They’re trying to take everything because they can’t have it. They can’t do what I can do, no one can play like me, so they want to kill me. Not just part of me, all of me. It’s what they’re doing; it’s what all of this is. They’ll do it slowly, not all at once, in little steps, they’ll keep me away, but they won’t stop till I’m dead, completely gone. They’re taking it away from me, but they’ll never have it. I won’t give it to them.”
B. blacked out in the car ride home and got his stomach pumped at Georgetown Memorial Hospital. The doctors found a bottle of Oxycotin in his jacket pocket that was prescribed to the name “Chuck Knoblauch”. The TV in B.’s room was showing a John Wayne movie when he came to. “Well, there are just some things a man can’t run away from.” B.’s head was pressurized that day.
The Oxy started when B. was playing at Virginia. His thumb tore away from its socket when he was sliding into second base, and the surgery that repaired the damage brought on his first prescription. B.’s life became a poorly edited film, each day being lost to the next, no transitions to mark a change. His world, all of it, was tilted.
The first time B. mixed Oxy and liquor was when he fucked Jamie Bray. Her room quivered around them when B. breathed in something warm. At first, each movement was out of his control. The disorder trembling at the top of B.’s head caused him to pull back, momentarily refreshed in the cool air above it all. It was a feeling that brought him back, something he wanted to chase down and hold onto, to embrace entirely. So B. fell forward unconsciously and into Jamie, letting the scene perform itself, no longer trying to hold it all in focus. Below him, Jamie was consumed in the red comforter on her bed, eyes closed, chasing something down on her own. Two stereos played somewhere in the background, each with a different song. Their narratives clashed, meeting midair and crashing in a puddle of audible dissonance on the floor.
“I want you to cum,” Jaime’s eyes were wide when she spoke, trying to will B. to finish. He was still wearing his jersey. There was a game that day, but he was already an hour late. Closing his eyes, holding Jamie down, and trying not to fall, B. fixed his knees for better balance. Beads of sweat ran down his back, and the music cut out. The power had failed.
B. came on Jaime’s comforter and left her sighing in bed. His bags were already packed when she called him, “Why did you leave?” she asked.
“I thought I left my window open.” He didn’t realize until much later that he hadn’t been wearing a condom. The sky was full of storm clouds that day.
The bus ride was more of a vision, with people separated infinitely matching up elbows right next to each other. This Ramones shirt wore a kid across the aisle from B.. The girl a few rows up stared harshly at the road as if it were wrong for not staying, like it was leaving her rather than her moving across it. The lane lines outside the bus rose up, holding everything inside them.
The first few weeks at home could have been loud, but B. set everything to mute. His parents moved around him like ghosts, and he allowed them to haunt. His life in Virginia faded like it belonged to someone else. He didn’t make a phone call until the day his pill bottle stopped rattling. He dialed Johnny’s home number.
“He’s at the field, honey,” Johnny’s mom told him gleefully. “He’s an assistant there.”
“Which field?”
“Georgetown, honey, your field,” she said, a hint of concern buried beneath her delighted drawl.
“He’s coaching at Georgetown?”
“Yes, dear, been coaching there since February.”
B. hung up and headed to the varsity field. His hand shook on the wheel of his father’s car. It was partly cloudy that day with light, noticeable humidity. Johnny was taking a piss behind the dugout when B. pulled up. The smell was horrible.
“Still can’t take that shit to the woods, Two-Four?” Johnny twisted his head, spotting B. immediately.
“Three-Five, what kind of shit you getting into coming back here?” B. held up his splinted hand, offering no further explanation. “Stay for practice, we’ll grab some brews after,” Johnny said and headed back towards the field.
B. sat in the bleachers with a group of old Georgetown Public alumni who lived by the field. They always lingered around practice, unable to move on from their old haunt. It seemed most of Georgetown was populated with ghosts.
“Stay in on the pitch. Stop backing out.”
“Kid’s a pussy, soft as grass.”
“Keep your body behind that. Stop getting fancy.”
“They aren’t going anywhere with a catcher like that. Loose glove, no arm.”
Then Sam Foles took batting practice, and the bleachers fell silent. His swing was smooth and flawless. The alumni compared each one to brushstrokes, flowing from the hand of a prodigy not fully realizing his own supremacy. Sam didn’t hit balls; he stung them, all on a rope. “This colored boy,” B. heard a voice whisper behind him, at a volume meant for him to overhear, “he’s the future of this program. And this town.”
After the practice finished up, B. signaled to Johnny to bring Sam over. “You got any seeds?” B. asked him.
“Sunflower seeds?”
“Yeah, you got any?”
“Yeah, in my bag. You want some?”
“Bring them here real quick, I want to see something.” B. walked toward the woods and found a long, thin branch then sat down in the dugout. The sun was setting. He handed Sam the stick. “Alright, I’m gonna toss up these seeds, and I want you to hit them with that stick.”
“Are you serious?”
“I just want to see something, here,” B. tossed the first seed, and Sam swung, missing everything. B. tossed another, and again Sam missed. Soon the entire pack was at Sam’s feet. B. stood up, “Bring a new pack tomorrow.”
That night, Johnny found B. a new prescription. The two of them drank on the beach with a couple of girls from town, and they all ended up naked, sand scraping their skin, and trying to make the stars fall. B. fucked one of the girls on a bench underneath a streetlight. Her body looked disfigured in his hulking shadow. They left the other girl at Georgetown Memorial. Johnny said her fingers were broken and that her eyes had capsized.
The next day B. went back to the field and threw seeds to Sam. Again, he missed them all. “You’ve never done this before?” B. asked him.
“I hit baseballs.”
B. kept coming back, everyday, sitting with the alumni during practice and throwing seeds to Sam after. Soon, when Sam started making contact, their drill wasn’t silent. B. told Sam his story, how he tore his thumb from its socket, how he didn’t want to play anymore. It all seemed illogical to Sam because, without the parts B. chose to omit, it was. But Sam knew about the number 35 and what it meant to Georgetown. He knew about the legend, and the difference between that kid and the man who threw seeds to him everyday. They were two different stories.
One Sunday around mid-season, Sam invited B., who had been out the night before with a girl named Charlemagne, to church. Charlemagne’s smell covered him when he pulled on his coat. She had laid on it when the two of them watched the moon sway across the sky. “My dad used to say the moon was his heart,” Charlemagne had whispered. “He said my heart was the sun, always shining on his, letting it glow. He’d say, ‘The sun gives us life. It is life. And you are mine.’ But it was always just a story. The sun and moon are never together, always apart. They pulled him out of a storm drain after Irene, there was a needle from a syringe wrapped up in his veins. I’m not even sure where he’s buried.”
The churches in Georgetown had survived de-segregation, and B. hadn’t considered this before meeting Sam and his uncle for mass. He was underdressed, wearing a collar and no tie. Sam’s uncle joked, “The Lord doesn’t deserve a little more effort?”
“Where’s the bathroom?” B. responded. He took his last four pills in there, splashing cold water on his face. The fringes of his hair were wet when he joined Sam and Sam’s uncle in their fifth row pew.
“A little holy water will do ya just fine,” Sam’s uncle said, smiling, his spotless white teeth matching his tie. An organ played somewhere behind them with a melody treading carefully over the sunny conversations of the early Sunday crowd. B. took off his splint and tried moving his thumb. It was stiff and weak, barely rotating at all. He left the splint off for the entire service.
Church, B. found, was an easy thing to fake. Everything was simply, and obviously, choreographed. The preacher, drenched in sweat and moving in quick, meticulous fits of inspiration, was almost entirely out of breath when he began the homily.
“On this Sunday,” he began, “on this holiest of holy days, I can finally say, thank God, that an empire of evil and of hate, will fall. I can tell you with full faith in the Lord, that it was this congregation, each one of you, through contributions and constant prayer, that brought this empire to its just and deserved end. As you may know, and I hope those who don’t will rejoice with those of us who do, this Church has purchased the deed to the ugly heart, the beating cancer that this town has concealed for years. Last Sunday, with only one hundred dollars in my pocket and Jesus’ love at my side, I bought the deed to the Elwin Thomas Movie Theater.
“Now, for those who do not know this building, who are unfamiliar with its history, should know that it has not shown a film for quite some years. Instead, it stands as a sanctuary to the evils of the Confederate movement, a movement our Northern brothers believe they killed off with that Civil War, a name that we still cannot hold. Well, I must say, for anyone who has walked by that theater, that old infrastructure that was gutted of its innocuous soul only to be injected with evil, we can tell you that the Confederacy is still alive and well in this town. It still moves. They call their sanctuary, ‘The Southern Post’, a name that carries with it the violent hopes and visions of the Confederate movement’s founders. Within its walls lie the costumes and symbols that hold every bit of hate that has ever existed in this country. But now, with this deed, we control the fate of the store, the one that sits at the center of town, its light reaching out, touching everything as the hand of the devil always tries to do. Soon, it will no longer have to be our ugly heart.
“And the story, the history of how we got here, as God has shown us, is just as important as what lies ahead. Because when the store opened, when the theater became something else entirely, there were two men behind it, a Mr. Hagar and a Mr. Bram. The two were both sons of God, burdened with anger, and raised in Georgetown, by Georgetown. Their anger was cultivated, methodically, in the Silent Cirlce Knights of the Klan. They stood anonymous, hidden beneath that same white cloth that forever has swallowed anger and spit forth hate, that has created demons. It grew inside them until they found a way to spread it further. Thus, borne on hate, came ‘The Southern Post’.
“Now, their monument still stands, but there’s a timeline, with an endpoint approaching, as death will meet all those who work in evil. This is what we must wait for, patiently, never forgetting what approaches. But this story has brought one of those men here with us today. Mr. Bram sits among you now, a changed man, repentant for the hate he once carried. The Lord’s love, shown to him through Ms. Chee, has done this, and his hate will soon be absolved. I sat down with them, when they came to me with the deed, knowing my emotional stake in the store, and I asked what had caused this, what had made such a change in Mr. Bram’s heart, in his soul. He looked at me and said, ‘There’s anger and there’s hate, we have to figure out which one we can afford to live with.’
“That day he offered me the deed to the theater, saying Mr. Hagar had sold his share to him years ago, needing the money to settle debts. Mr. Bram had offered Mr. Hagar the land first, on the condition that he change the store’s image, but Mr. Hagar spit on his old partner for falling in love with the Native American woman he sits with here, in our house of God, today, amongst his true brothers in the Lord. I bought that deed, we bought that deed, for a hundred dollars that same day. Mr. Bram offered it up for free, but God wouldn’t have it handed over like that. And now we sit here, waiting, because the law has ruled to let Mr. Hagar keep his store until he faces God. I will wait for that day, as I am sure you will too, with the Lord’s name in my mouth, as well as my heart. I will never pray for death, but I will always pray for life, as well the destruction of hate. So together, let us pray.”
This wasn’t a new story, it had been accumulating and spreading over time, like strands in a web. It stretched itself across the city, strung between lampposts, never escaping any listening ears. The Klan Empire of Georgetown was coming to ruin and there was a Native American woman at the center of it. The story B. had heard, the one that was most often told, was about Mr. Bram and Ms. Chee’s first meeting. It was in his store, back a while, when Mr. Bram looked her over, catching everything, and said, “You shouldn’t be in here.”
She didn’t look at him, just responded, “No, it is this place that shouldn’t be.” The rest of the story is left to legend. Their relationship mostly happened outside of town, so no one knew much about it. Everyone did know that Ms. Chee started wearing a diamond ring a few days before the deed changed hands. They also knew that it was around that same time when Ms. Chee began carrying extra weight along her beltline.
Even as he sat withdrawn from the service, B. felt the story strengthen its grasp on the congregation and the town. It lived among them, walking the streets of Georgetown, carrying, always, purpose and possibility.
B. declined an invitation to breakfast with Sam and his uncle and drove to Laurens Public instead, down the highway a little ways, to the field where he had played for a state championship just a year before. It was empty, and B. sat in the visiting dugout, running his hand over the faded Swastika carved into the bench. He remembered seeing the carving before the game, wondering if the Laurens players had done it as a prank or if it had been another team out of boredom or if it had just always been there. He thought about getting something to sand it down, to erase the mark, but he couldn’t take his eye from it. B. remembered what he had done that day, the first time he saw the carving. He remembered the two homeruns, the feeling of the ball popping off the bat, the sound it made against the wood, the way, for a second, everything felt weightless, like he was holding air. He remembered jogging around the bases, making sure to touch each of them, and giving the shortstop a smile. And a wink.
That night B. got high with Johnny in a McDonalds bathroom. They met up with two high school girls, and Johnny tried to hit one of them with a beer bottle. B. didn’t remember laughing at all that night. The sky was full of hidden stars.
Then, a few weeks later, something new spread, starting at the bowling alley and swelling till it tore down all that came before. It was a story about Sam and a chair and a girl. The girl was on the cover of the Georgetown Local, her jaw dislodged and one eye shut behind an expanding purple eyelid. B. got a call from Sam’s uncle asking if Sam had stayed with him. His nephew hadn’t come home after the incident.
“What incident?” B. asked, his eyes still mostly shut.
“There was a fight last night, at the bowling alley. They’re saying Sam was there, that he threw a chair at this little white girl. Two police officers have already been by my house. I need to find him.”
“I’ll find him.”
B. found his flask in his right jacket pocket and finished what was left. It didn’t even sting. He was having a hard time tasting anything. His car couldn’t move fast enough, barreling through town and right by every face that wasn’t Sam’s. He wondered if Sam had left, like he had, and gone somewhere to let things heal.
B. found him sitting on the pavement across the street from the Southern Post. He settled beside him. After a while, Sam spoke, “You see those mannequins in the window? The ones in the confederate uniforms?”
“Yeah, I see them.”
“I can’t decide whether they were built to fit the uniforms or if the uniforms were made to fit them.”
B. considered it for a while, not letting the theater’s reach devour his thoughts. Sam got up and walked towards B.’s car, “I’m ready.”
Sam was the only one charged in the fight, but he was able to live at home until his trial. His first night home, B. threw him seeds. Sam didn’t miss one.
Georgetown let him play in his last game before the trial, the conference championship. He threw a one-hitter and hit four home-runs. The town was divided that night. A lot of people held words in their mouths, but very few were said.
The trial started on a Tuesday. B. was sober. The witnesses claimed a dispute had started between Sam and a white kid, and each had been backed up by their respective group of friends. Some claimed Sam threw the first punch, but most agreed that it wasn’t Sam or the white kid who threw the punch. They said it was someone else, someone who was there looking for a reason to throw a punch. A fight had broken out, and Sam was the only name that the other side kept mentioning; it was Sam and collection of mostly illegible black faces.
Sam’s teammate claimed he had ushered Sam out an emergency exit knowing what something like this could do to his future. “He’s a freshman and the best player in the state,” the kid had said. “I wasn’t going to let him get mixed up in something like that.” Another kid said the word “nigger” had been used but then recanted. B. felt his legs tighten and recede.
Then they brought in the girl, the one from the papers, and she pointed to Sam when asked to identify who threw the chair that disfigured her face. “I’m very sure it was him. I remember he was black, and he was angry, and he just threw it into the crowd. He just wanted to hurt someone.”
B. got high again the night after the girl testified. He knew the trial had ended that day. A new story was in the streets, familiar rumblings escaping from the town’s ancient heart. B. could fully recognize this particular story. It had been there, sticking to everything, an opportunistic force relentlessly breathing and expanding to fill in the cracks. That night, B. slept in the sky, looking down over everything.
Now he’s sitting in his father’s car, hands steady, the radio singing about dying in a river. The lights are turning down under the marquee, and B. thinks about Sam’s verdict and the crowd that wept for him. An entire year, for a chair no one could even prove was thrown, and he was taken right from the courthouse and into an armored van. Sam disappeared, and most of the town let him. And the heart kept beating.
B. holds the new weight in his hand, the gun. He fired off two rounds earlier in the day just to get used to the blowback. When it was time, he had thought, he has to be sure nothing misses. Three bullets rest in their clip with one eager in the chamber. The door hasn’t opened yet. The mannequins stare at him, expressions fixed beneath Confederate war caps. The moon is full in the sky, glowing.
The Southern Post’s front door opens and a faint figure appears, obscured behind the glow of the marquee. B. remembers the last thing Sam said to him when he visited the prison. “Remember those mannequins at the Southern Post? I don’t think any of it was ever their decision.”
Walking towards the figure, B,’s hand grips the gun, firm. He hears a voice as he approaches. “I’m closing up now… Don’t worry about it. I can heat it up… I’ll be in bed before you can fall asleep… Love you too.” B. looks at the moon as he walks by Mr. Hagar, leaving the gun hidden inside his jacket. Four bullets aren’t enough to kill a man. The marquee casts shadows around him as he falters down the street, all of Georgetown surging into his mouth.
B. circles the theater, which stands alone on its own block. When he reaches the front door, Mr. Hagar is gone. The whole town is empty and muffled, ghosts off haunting elsewhere. He tries the door, rattling the glass in its frame, but it’s locked. B. wraps his coat around his hand and punches through the glass. Shards stick into the coat, and one reaches his skin, carefully digging inside. B. pulls it out easily. A thin trail of blood rushes down his arm.
The mannequins seem taller inside the store. A collection of Confederate pins, flags, posters, pencil sharpeners, erasers, and other collectibles fill the showcases below them. There is a rifle mounted on the far wall behind the register with an engraved plaque below it that reads, “You can have my country when you take it out of my cold, dead hands.” B. picks up a wooden Klan doll from the counter, pulling back its hood to find that there is no face painted on underneath. He sees a collection of books, and a watercolor portrait of Robert E. Lee, and a few gas grills with the Confederate flag painted on.
Last night, B. met up with an old high school teammate named Brendan at the field. They drank from brown paper bags and shot up some dope in the visiting dugout. B. slept at a girl named Leah’s house. They fucked in her shower, and B. fell asleep under the water before she finished. Earlier Leah had told him that she loved flying, seeing the orange lights from high above the city. “You know, they look like embers, like somebody burned down the whole fucking city while you weren’t looking. It feels good, for that split second, when you believe it.”
B. has broken off the safety valves on the three propane tanks, and the gas is filling the store. This wasn’t his plan, but he can’t help but acknowledge the fate of it all, the karmic placement of the grills. The heart still beats. The moon still glows. And the gas talks to him,
GAS
What are you doing?
B.
Destroying it. The store, the story, everything.
GAS
Advice on these matters shouldn’t come from girls in heat.
B. turns to recognize WILL amongst the GAS, a hallucination, standing behind him.
B.
This is your fault, you know. You’re in here too. I’m destroying you too.
WILL
You need to stop using. Look at yourself, look at how skinny you are. You were gonna murder someone tonight.
B.
But I didn’t.
WILL
Right, you didn’t, but you’re here now, still here, always here, trying to drown this place in propane. It’ll just be fireworks, you know, something for people to look at.
B.
Maybe for you. It’s more important than you know, this place, and I need to do this. For this town. For Sam.
WILL
So that’s what it is, white guilt? You’re going to burn a landmark to the ground out of guilt? You care about Sam? Stop getting high. You mistake addicts for prophets. Leave them behind. Leave this place behind.
B.
I’m sorry, I can’t.
B. walks towards the broken glass door.
Are you coming outside?
WILL
No, I’m in here now. I need to see this up close.
B. walks out to his car, grabbing his jersey and a mostly full bottle of Jameson from his trunk. He rips the sleeve from his jersey and rolls it up. He pours a bit of liquor on it and sticks the torn fabric into the spout so it touches the contents of the bottle and hangs free. He takes a few steps back, brandishes a lighter from his pocket, and lights the sleeve. He takes a crow hop and throws the bottle through the broken glass door. It ignites.
.
Mr. Hagar didn’t show up until the Georgetown Fire Squad had mostly stopped the blaze. Someone pointed him in the direction of the local kid who had started it, a college dropout, an all-state baseball player. He found the kid sitting on the pavement surrounded by police officers, wrists crudely cuffed in white bands, watching the smoke rise in a smooth pillar above the town. Their eyes finally met, and the young kid sat up tall. Mr. Hagar tried to charge at him, but two officers held him back. “Do you know what you destroyed?” he yelled. “Do you know what this place was?”
The kid stood to face Mr. Hagar, “There’s anger, sir,” he said, “and then there’s me.” When the cops moved the kid to the armored van, he looked back at Mr. Hagar, who was still being restrained, one more time, and gave him a smile. And a wink.
Midnight Prayers 