Displacement

They finished building the casino three days after Zion’s torso got sliced in half and the pigeons fled the plaza. It stood tall, stories above the crumpled houses and bars in its proximity, and the windows – brand new and untouched yet by the angry fists of men at nightfall, scared to return home several hundred bucks lighter – glowed in the sunlight. When asked about the building, Magdalene, whose house was just a few meters to the right, said it shadowed her entire garden and that sooner or later her flowers would perish; Gino, a well-known drunkard, disliked the golden façade because ‘It’s like they’re making fun of us, poor folks! Kick Mr. Johnson out just to build a whorehouse,’ he said.

When twenty-one-year-old Victor Darwin, an aspiring forest ranger in search of an isolated place to settle, found a large meadow not yet inhabited, he laid down on the grass and, in his descent, dropped his backpack and spilled its contents: a knife, a half-eaten loaf of bread, two pairs of underwear, a thin stack of cash and a bottle of maple syrup. Victor enjoyed the touch of soil, the tickle of dandelions and the sun directly above and, in this state of tranquility, thought he would give the place a name. While picking up his things, dizzy from all the walking and with a mild sunstroke, he glanced a few too many seconds at the bottle – a gift from an old lady who let him sleep in her cellar the other night – and thought ‘Yeah, that’ll do it.’

Darwin Street was lined with family houses, corner stores, small patches of grass they called parks and an occasional hair salon or some other type of business, making it the largest street in Maple. People used to say that, when that forester built his farm on this God-awful land, he must have had some kind of hay fever, for how could he not notice the constant whiff of shit hanging about in the air? They might have been poor, but they washed every Sunday and not many had livestock, especially not on Darwin Street where the less poor of the poor lived. The smell was just there.

Zion Sunny Johnson, much like Victor, noticed little of the odor engulfing the place, a perk of the deviated septum he was apparently born with. It was this deviated septum that allowed him to get up in the morning and stretch without turning up his nose. His great-grandfather was a good friend of old Darwin’s son, so good that he built a house of his own next to the original farm; others followed. New inhabitants settled near to the centerpieces of Maple, formed a community, and eventually became a proper town, shaped in a way that, more than a century later, the Darwin and Johnson houses were still geometrically centered, facing each other from opposite sides of the street. The latest successor of Victor, Calvin, led a relatively good life and took pride in the aspect of his house, to the maintenance of which contributed every generation – his father replaced the floors and painted the walls, the man before him did the roof and plumbing, while he, Calvin, brought in furniture made of real wood. Everyone was on their porches staring and gossiping the day he got his dresser and bed frame delivered.

Zion’s shack, on the other hand, looked as if it could collapse in on itself at any moment and swallow the entire city, its crooked floors and broken fence nothing but a canopy for the sinkhole awaiting below. The furrowed roof, with gaps in several places, might as well have taken off at the first gale.

*

‘I hated the sight of that house… hated it,’ was Mary’s quote in the newspaper after the death of Zion. ‘I’d have knocked it down myself,’ added Frank. The first event in the history of Maple that got nationwide attention was both a curse and a blessing; finally, the voices of its citizens would be heard loud and clear. When the first car arrived and a blonde woman named Ada Hunt stepped out, holding her nose between the thumb and index fingers of her right hand and clutching a notebook with the left, people withdrew from the surveillance spots of their own porches and charged the red Ford Pinto.

Ada Hunt wrote down as much as she could make out from the sea of voices and only after two hours of scribbling could she put her pen down, take a deep breath – something she regretted at once – and look up, up up up at the cause of all this trouble. ‘Impressive,’ she thought.

Unlike his fellow townspeople, Calvin did not stir at the sight of the foreigner. He had a most profound insight on the tragic death of his neighbor. Why share it, though? Such external forces were nothing but a threat to the place that he loved so intensely. His great-granddaddy’s town was to maintain its sovereignty for as long as Darwin blood flowed, ‘Y’all hear me? Don’t let these bastards in here again!’ he said after the first visit of the casino people.

Zion Sunny Johnson had a completely opposite reaction, however. Awaken by the sound of engines and wheels, he poked his head out the window and thought, ‘What are they looking at my house like that for? Matter of fact, I don’t care. Let them look!’ And so, when a round, short man with gray hair and a golden tooth waved and motioned for him to come outside, Zion pulled a winter coat over his pajamas and hurried down the stairs with a feeling of pride and gratitude. Tailored suit man liked his house.

He couldn’t have known. How could he? It was an old, unwritten rule – Maple welcomed everyone with the warmest of embraces, somewhere near the forest perhaps, where empty land awaited, or in one of the few vacant houses near the center of town. He would have gladly showed old suit and his friends around, walk them through the premises, down Darwin Street and further. Old suit, on the other hand, had seen enough of Maple.

He was presented with a briefcase full of money, with which the strangers intended to buy his house.

‘It isn’t for sale,’ muttered Zion, frowning while his eyes scanned the shiny gravel beneath his feet. ‘It isn’t for sale.’

‘I’m sure we can figure something out, mister—?’

‘Johnson.’

‘Mister Johnson! How about we go get a drink?’

Isaiah Greene would often, throughout his life, recall that day when Zion Johnson walked in his bar, followed by five men with fresh haircuts and naughty grins on their faces: at the dinner table, or in other people’s houses, at funerals or weddings, as a bedtime story for his grandchildren or simply as neighborly chatter. His retelling, that more or less followed the same structure while recycling phrases that Greene thought added to the musicality of the story, began with Zion sitting down and ordering a glass of scotch.

‘That rascal opened the door, greeted nothing and no one, and sat down in his nasty leopard print pajamas like it was some kind of brothel. One of those other men – keep in mind, I’d never seen them around ‘fore – said, And we’ll each have a coke. Bring Mister Johnson here, however, anything he asks for. We’ll pay! Should’ve seen the look on his face, God rest his soul! You know he stopped coming to my place after that nasty fight with the twins, remember? And he owed me a couple hundred bucks he could never pay back. Cause, how would he get the money? Maple ain’t ever seen a man as lazy as him, never has and never will. I poured him a glass and he downed it at once, right there. Then he said, top me off!’

According to Isaiah Greene and the few other drunkards that fought sleep after a whole night of revelry, Zion Johnson repeated those three words several times, ‘Didn’t keep track, to be honest. But it went on for a while. Those men just kept staring at him. Some kind of weird spark in their eyes, with each glass the poor fella had. At first, I didn’t know what made him drink so much, nor did I care! None of my business, y’know. And what happens in the bar, stays in the bar. Then they started talking. I could barely catch anything – I had a bar to tend to, after all. Next thing I know, Zion signs some papers and asks for another drink.’

As attested by Gino, who was sitting in his usual corner of the bar, the men – ‘there were four of them, I think’ – put some bills on the counter and walked out. No sooner had the door closed behind them than Zion Johnson started to weep ‘like a baby. About ten minutes later, Mister Darwin walks in, screaming something like, I better not see them in here tomorrow. Yeah, something like that. And then – here’s the good part – he whispers something to Zion and Zion whispers back to him and so on and so forth, yada yada yada, until Mister Darwin takes two steps back and screams, You idiot! What’d you do that for? Oh, Zion… Stupid boy!’

Only when Zion got up from his chair, took the cash-filled suitcase that had been propped against the wall and walked towards the door did Calvin stop bellowing. Music played in the background, men kept drinking while women continued their lively walks outside, and the air smelled worse than ever.

*

The relationship between Joshua Hayes’ daughter, aged nineteen at the time, and Samuel Fields – twenty-five, moderately wealthy – gave the people of Maple a positive feeling of anticipation; Gabriel Fields wouldn’t let his son marry without a proper festivity, worthy of collective acclaim. They were even willing to give up on park walks at noon, where the two lovebirds could be seen making out in broad daylight; when it got too cold outside for Sarah’s scrawny limbs to handle, they retreated to Isaiah’s bar, who occasionally served them free drinks. Therefore, the lush grass of the plaza didn’t crush under pairs and pairs of feet until late in the evening.

Magdalene usually left her garden around the same time Sarah and Samuel had their first glass. She led the way for the other bored homemakers who gossiped in pairs of two since dawn, each woman eager to intertwine her stories with those of neighbors from other parts of town. Magdalene, who would normally take a seat in the middle of the plaza and wait for the others to circle around her, was distant and quiet that evening.

‘Did y’all get the news about Fields’ boy?’ was Mary’s way of opening the meeting, while throwing pieces of old bread for the birds. ‘Heard he cheated on that –’

‘Mary, shut your mouth.’

‘– on that raw-boned –’

‘Don’t make me say it twice!’

‘– raw-boned tramp! There, I said it. What’re you telling me to shut up for?’

Samuel walked the distance between the trees and the group of women, lodging himself like a bullet near Mary’s shoulder. He cast her a venomous look and turned to face Magdalene.

‘Miss Johnson, sorry to bother you. Could you make me a nice bouquet for my girl?’

The two left the plaza and strolled towards the woman’s house, where pots of peonies and dahlias adorned the small patch of grass she called a front garden. Magdalene picked some flowers carefully, trying to keep their crowns intact.

‘Come inside, I’ll wrap these up quickly. Your girl mad at you or something?’

‘Nothing a nice gift can’t fix,’ he replied.

‘Be quiet though, I have guests.’

For seven months, she had been housing her former neighbor, while a grand building was rapidly rising, cutting the sky like a knife, where his humble abode had formerly been.

‘His mother used to give me sugar and flour, good woman — doesn’t mean I have to cradle her boy but, you know, one day turned into a week, a week turned into a month and so on. I don’t have the heart to kick him out. Plus, I like the company. He doesn’t do anything all day but cry and nap.’

Magdalene and Samuel had both assumed that Zion’s choice that evening was the latter, a deep, noiseless sleep, for not even the faintest trace of a snore made its way to the first floor. The bouquet was passed from the woman’s hands to the young man’s, who gave her some bills in return; his payment, however, was declined. ‘This one’s on me, if you promise to treat your girl right.’

An hour later, Zion Sunny Johnson’s insides were being scraped off the shiny blade of a circular saw over at the casino.

*

Funerals in Maple followed a precise schedule; they concluded in the house of the deceased, where family and friends drank their pain away, telling stories to soothe the agony. Small alterations could be made – some didn’t get buried, but cremated, wealthier families served warm meals while the poor barely had enough alcohol to get a man drunk. And so, the death of a homeless, orphaned bloke was, by all means, a premiere for them. If it weren’t for the generosity of the casino owners, who offered to host and pay for the service, poor Zion, God rest his soul, might have rotted away on the side of the street.

The wake began with small talk and awkward encounters, people still too lucid to dive into the tragic death they were mourning. On a big table, in the middle of the lobby, stood countless bowls of food and five bottles of unidentified drink. Conversations started with ‘How’s your daughter doing?’, then turned to politics once the bottles had been emptied. While men teased the doll-faced girl tending the bar, they drank their first set of self-purchased drinks and debated different topics of local interest; next round stirred recollections of childhood memories and long-lost friendships, there were hugs and kisses between neighbors who only greeted each other at church. Alcohol kept flowing and flowing, with dollar bills slowly evaporating from men’s pockets. Gossip, fights, laughter and – in the poorly lit corners of the room – romance.

Only when the entirety of Maple went numb, and the casino men saw their business flourish on its sad, but profitable opening day, did people start talking about the incident.

‘I’m smoking a cigarette with that tall guy, y’all know him, used to be up on scaffolding all day, painting the walls and whatnot, when suddenly we hear screams from inside the building. Almost everyone had left by that time, only three men left behind to install some wall cabinets. Loud, loud screams, that man was howling like an animal.’

‘Didn’t you go check, though?’

‘Nah, I just told you I was smoking. And my friend was on his break. Anyhow, we’re waiting outside, minding our business, when another guy walks out of the casino, all blood-stained. He looks at us and then faints.’

‘Who wouldn’t have fainted? One moment you’re cutting oak and, next thing you know, a stranger charges at you with a knife.’

‘Gonna take him a while to prove that it was self-defense…’

‘For sure. It was a reflex. Don’t wanna bad mouth the dead, but Zion must’ve been out of his mind. You can’t jump a man with a saw in his hands.’

‘But he was out of his mind! Been walking around like a ghost for the past seven months.’

Calvin had not uttered a word, not since Gino vomited on his shoes, four drinks ago. He gave the silver chandelier a blank stare, took a deep breath and thought, ‘this place stinks just as much as the air outside.’ When he started speaking, dozens of pairs of eyes fixed him with confused looks.

‘He was out of his mind; you got that right! No house, no family of his own and a load of cash, but nothing worth buying.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Darwin. He sold, no one forced him to. Signed the papers himself.’

‘You all are missing the point here! He loved that house, it was his house. The only thing that belonged to him. Then rich man comes, throws money at the fella knowing damn well no poor man would decline such an offer. What happens after, the regret and confusion, that’s for him to cope with and for rich man to laugh at.’

Zion Johnson’s breakdown was the result of a sequence of actions and decisions that were not, in fact, his own; Magdalene leaving her knives in every room, to slice up fruit, the bright sign at the door of the casino, piercing through the darkness, months and months of looking through his window at the building, wishing he could set it all on fire. The day they knocked down his shack, he took a cold shower and got drunk on vodka. Maple was much too crowded; it was hard to make way back through its cracks and find refuge beneath the surface once you’d abandoned your designated spot.

‘I asked him one day, over at Magdalene’s, Why’d you sell the house, man, and he said, Who wouldn’t? God, what an ugly house it was! But, on second thought, the casino’s much uglier.’

*

The casino was not well liked. People scowled every time they walked past its entrance. Still, when the sun hid beneath the blurry line between sky and land, men sneaked in and gambled everything they worked so hard to earn during the day. Maple dough stank of shit.