At Night All Blood is Black

“Let me take you. It’s no trouble” said Maeve from the front door. She had the Subaru keys in hand, just in case. She wanted so much to help.

“I’m fine. I need some air,” said Tyrone.

Tyrone was already walking up the hill towards town. It was getting dark. Did he know to walk on the left-hand side, facing the traffic? To wear something bright?

Tyrone knew neither of these things. Maeve closed the door. 

The patrol car pulled up just ahead of him, near the airfield. The lights started flashing. It was a mile or more to town, dusk. Tyrone winced.

 “Where are you going?” said the police officer, standing next to his vehicle.

Maeve told Tyrone not to worry about the local police, they’d received training. The Chief was a registered Democrat. Cool. 

“Our sort,” said Maeve, “your allies”. Good to know. Very cool. Much to be grateful for, including this foster mother. “Thank you, Maeve, thank you”.

It was nearly dark now. Tyrone was dressed in black. Black on black on Black. The cop shined a torch at him.

“Where are you going?” Same question, but with a bit of spice. The officer was chunked up with equipment, bullet proof vest. It was easier to pull a trigger than give chase.

“Can I help you officer?” said Tyrone. The evening air went frigid. Just the two of them, middle of nowhere, probably not much separated in age.

“What are you carrying? What’s in your hand?” There was a tremor of anxiety in the officer’s voice. His hand didn’t twitch, but there was readiness in his stance.

“This?” Tyrone held the metal object up, which glinted in the flashing lights. The cop’s finger did twitch. “It’s a camera.”

“Don’t be a wise guy.”

Passive, passive-aggressive, aggressive: they were following a script. 

The police are trained to de-escalate, whereas it came naturally to Tyrone.

“I’m sorry officer.” Tyrone apologized for holding up a vintage Canon EOS SLR.  “I am sorry.”  He held his hands up high, higher. 

"Why are you carrying a camera?"

"To take photos, sir. Black and white, vignettes".

"Say what?"

The incident ended without incident. The patrol officer let it go. “Have more sense”.

Tyrone was at the south end of town, near the harbor, where he climbed through a gap in the chain-link fence that surrounded the Wabenaki reservation. It was nearly dark, around 9.30pm. A pole-mounted sodium lamp smudged the train tracks and scrapyard with forlorn yellow, casting more shadow than light. The watchman was gone, riding around on his tricked-out tricycle. A lonely gopher loafed along between the tracks, sending two chained mongrels bare-teeth and bat-shit. Tyrone slipped between the giant concrete grain towers, ran past Indian Enid’s house, where the windows were dark and shuttered. He was soon atop starlit Indian Rock, a tilted outcrop of granite stone. Cove beach and the submarine marble ledges glowed faintly. He raised the camera to his eye, focused, adjusted the aperture, depressed the shutter release. Black, two, three, four.

It was mid-summer dark now, the stars visible in thousands. High tide, the inky ocean water slopped against the rock, irresolute. An onshore wind was pulling a dense fog to shore from the open Atlantic, obscuring the narrow approach to the harbor, including the flash-flash beam of the breakwater lighthouse. Upon the rock, Tyrone stood alone, soon enveloped in the fog, no fixed points in the universe. He crouched, steadied himself with one hand.

Tyrone heard the boat’s rhythmic labor in the gloom, long before he could see it. The heave-ho oars, the weeping of taut rope, the lament of wood on wood, water flat-slapping a hull. From nothingness, a dragon head on high, the sweep of the neck and the contour of its shoulders, a slacking square sail, the double-ended longship emerged slowly from the fog, revealing the entirety of its intent. This was no pleasure craft, or fishing vessel; this was a warship. these were warriors, a dozen or more, pulling hard, grunting and steady, compelling the boat directly at the inclined strand. Thick-limbed, armored, tapestried in hemp and flax, you could better smell the stench of the men than you could see their faces.

The longboat ran aground. The Vikings pulled their oars into the boat, easy and orderly, sound swallowed in stealth. They rose, they stretched and flexed, and with weaponry in hand, they vaulted the gunwale, landing knee-deep in the water. To a man they were bearded, and wild-haired. To a man, they were Black.

Was it a hallucination? Some kind of dystopian fantasy? The warriors splashed ashore onto the deserted south-end beach, where they gathered, conferred, half-hidden from Tyrone by tendrils of mist. Black men, black armor, black-bearded, black Vikings. It might have been funny if it hadn’t been so weird, and terrifying.

An historical re-enactment, color-blind, for an audience of one: Tyrone. 

“Say or do anything and I will fire this fucking arrow through your heart, boy,” said a man aboard the dragon boat, “stay atop your little mountain, and you might live another day.” In his hand he held a single-stringed death-dealing long-bow, which resonated with his Hurdy Gurdy voice, and hummed.

The Vikings disappeared into the mist, near Indian Enid’s house. Dogs barked, whelped, then went silent.

“Who are you?” said Tyrone. His voice carried across the water to the Hurdy Gurdy man, whose face seemed etched with sorrow.

“I told you to say nothing, do nothing, boy”. The Viking pulled an arrow from the quiver that was resting against the gunwale of the boat. He placed the arrow nock on the bowstring. “What is that?”

“A camera, vintage, no film.”

“Are you getting fresh with me?”

“No, Sir”.

The first cries were those of people taken by surprise, the kind that is accompanied by a hand on the heart, an exclamation of anger, denial or disbelief, resolved with a laugh or an explanation. Tyrone imagined a lady walking the dog; two leaning men coming back from the pub, a night jogger, confronted in the fog, their minds grasping for understanding. “I’m sorry”.

The screams that followed were those of fear and inflicted pain. The imagined dog-walker thrust-through by a sword, the two leaning men hacked to the ground, the jogger clubbed. More screams, from further afield. The sounds were not imagined.

“It’s just vengeance,” said the Hurdy Gurdy man.

“Just vengeance?” What did that mean? If Tyrone had a film, he would not have taken a picture. The camera helped make white people feel safe. Tyrone ditched the camera in the ocean. The splash made the Hurdy Gurdy man start.

“I saw you here last night too,” said the Hurdy Gurdy man.

It was true.

“I’d a killt you if you’d been with that skinny white boy again.”

Finn the fisherman, the brother from a different mother. With Finn, things were high-spirited and just-fooling. Without Finn, jaywalking and trespass and walking-while-Black. Have you ever seen a Black boy fishing, alone?

Just. Vengeance. 

Shouting, the sound of gun shots. The blue-white-red lights of a cop car, again, rushing down Main Street, throwing a light=show into the fog. Tyrone didn’t need to appear twice in that movie. Dogs barking, a ways away. Sirens. More screams, of the Munch kind, of the last words kind.

The marauders reappeared from the fog bank. They ran to the long-boat and leapt aboard.  Blood is black at night.

“Catch”, said the Hurdy Gurdy man. A small object flew through the air, from the Dragon Boat to Indian Rock. Tyrone caught it like a flying bug.

“What is it?”

“A cockle shell”.

It was heavy, yellow, shiny, smooth to the touch, where it should have been coarse or sharp. It felt warm and inviting in Tyrone’s hand.

“Take me with you, ” whispered Tyrone, but when he looked up the Dragon boat was already moving swiftly away from shore, laden with the warrior men, who stared at Tyrone as they boat slid by Indian Rock and back out to sea, into the sea fog. It was like they were measuring him up, whether to kill or kidnap him. These Black men.

Astern the receding boat the water boiled and shimmered with phosphorescence.

“It’s just vengeance,” said the Hurdy Gurdy man.

“Take me with you,” shouted Tyrone.