A world without a white face

Every time you make a choice it creates a different reality, another you.

100 miles out of Tennessee and 20 miles from a friendly face I have to think what would have happened if I shucked instead of jived. Every headlight that I saw I ducked down wondering if this was the one to lay me down. It wasn’t no time for black folk here and I asked myself if we ever would get our day.

The sun gave me a little solace when I saw it peeking its face over the horizon, because most tended to like to do dark deeds in the dark, maybe they thought god might not notice. When I got a gander at the milepost, I realized I walked 10 got’ damn miles the wrong way.

I sat at the fork in the road for a spell, not ready to make another reality just yet, another choice. I sat on a wooden post and pulled my guitar from my back. I played a few licks to distract myself from the long trek I was gonna have to make back the other way.

Not a minute later I saw a big lady coming up the road a piece. She wore a black dress, like she was dolled up for a funeral, and a big wide brimmed black hat as if she were ready for Sunday service. I was curious why this woman was walking along the same path as me, in a place nobody with faces like ours should be.

She met me at the crossroad and stopped even before I stopped her. “How you?”, she said with focus and determination. “Oh, just living baby girl, what brings you down this way, did your car give up on you too?”. “Nawh, I came for you, you called me is all”. I looked up at her with a raised eyebrow, my hand was mid strum.

“Nawh girl I didn’t call you”, I said. “You did, you stood right here in that crossroads there and strummed that guitar, you called me”. “Girl I didn’t call you?”, I said again. Big momma shrugged a shoulder, turned, and began to make her way back up the road.

Before she made two good steps I stopped her. “Hold on there baby girl, maybe I can help you find who you were looking for. You don’t need to be walking alone out here before daybreak, ain’t no tellin’ what white folk will do to you”. She smiled and turned back around.

“Such a gentleman, you don’t get too many of those these days, besides, I should rest cuz’ these dogs are barking”, she said leaning up on the fence and kicking off her shoes. She was short and wide, but that only made her sturdy when the wind blew is what I said.

“So who are you lookin’ for girl”, I asked. “Devon Jackson”, she said dumping out a pebble from her shoe. “That is my name, but I didn’t call you, seems like a hell of a coincidence that someone had my name that was supposed to be at this place”. “Not really, you sitting at a crossroads playing a guitar, you obviously called me, so what you want, and I don’t mean to be rude, but could you tell me before the sun come up, lord knows I deal with enough heat”.

I had heard plenty of legends about blues men and crossroads deals, it’s been in every tv show and every movie that ever had shit to do with a blues man. “Are you saying that you’re a crossroads demon?”. “I’m not saying it but I’m not not sugah, now what you want”, she said.

I smiled.

Why not play along, I walked 10 miles and didn’t feel like walking another. “What can I ask for?”. “Whatever… don’t matter”. “So, is the bigger the thing I ask for the more I have to pay, or is it a flat fee?”. “Flat fee, I get your soul regardless of what you ask for so make it good”, she said.

I couldn’t help but laugh, but a part of me was curious to see where this woman was willing to take it. “What if I ask for something big, like I wanna make myself king of the world or something”. “It’s in my power to do”. “You see that don’t make sense to me, what if someone asked to be made the king of the world, then another person asked for that same thing, who would be the one to get it”. The woman smiled as if amused by this line of questioning, but her amusement dropped just as fast when she saw the sun getting up there.

“You don’t need to worry about none’a that, just make your wish and I’ll give it to you, or don’t, it’s not like I have a quota to fill”, she said. “So where are you from girl?”, I asked. Big momma slowly and dramatically pointed her finger to the ground. “You know what it is baby, now do you want something or not?”. “What if I… what if I wished for a world without white folk in it?”. “Oh now we talkin’, that’s a good one”, she said as if excited. “It’s a ten year contract, after which I get your soul, no crying, no appeals, I come for you, I get it. Don’t have my ass running all over west hell to find your ass”, she said.

I chuckled and strummed my guitar still unconvinced, though when the contract appeared in a puff of black smoke I certainly began to. “What the hell?!”, I yelled out. “The hell indeed”, she said, producing a pen from the ether. “Are you telling me you’re a demon and you work for the devil?”, I asked. “When did you hear me say that”, she said with a smile. “I must admit your wish isn’t what I was expecting, I usually get I wanna be rich, famous, irresistible to the opposite sex, or super powered”, she went on to say, “Look, I don’t do this often, but why don’t you tell me why you want it because I must say I’m extremely curious”.

I put down my guitar, leaning it on the mile marker, then stopped to think about it. Confidentially I was just speaking out of my ass, but if this was something real, maybe I could do this, maybe I could do this for my people… or maybe I’d just fuck it all up. What the hell, if she wanted an explanation I didn’t mind bending her ear a bit. “Black folk in America been on the bottom rung of society ever since I can remember. We were slaves, we were outcast, we weren't even people to white folk, and any time we have a leader rise up, they either get killed or character assassinated”, I said. “Preach it brotha… amen”, she said as if I was holding court.

“If we were just out here without a white person in sight, maybe we could uplift ourselves”, I said. Big momma smiled, “I don’t know how that’s gonna turn out for you, but I know for damn sure it’s gonna be interesting”, she said. “What exactly does taking my soul mean… I mean like technically, I don’t wanna assume nothing, because it sounds really bad”. “Does it though, do you know what hell is”. I shook my head, I had seen the depictions and heard the stories, but I didn’t know, what normal man could.

“Hell is doing the same thing over and over and never moving forward… boy you been in hell and so have your people”. “Your people, not our people? baby girl we in the same boat”, I said. “Oh this… this is a shell, I became someone you would trust. We don’t have genders where I’m from”, she said. Now I was more confused than when I started. “Then what exactly do you get out of it?”. “You know I’ve been doing this for years and nobody asked why I want what I want. They just assume demon from hell and I get their soul. I just want to see the simulation run for the sake of posterity”, she said. “The simulation?”. “Yes, the simulation. I’ll put you in it and let it play out for ten years, your collective consciousness runs it and that’s about how much you can take before you shut down”.

“So you make another world?”. “Of course I do, how can everyone be the world's biggest rock star or the best… whatever”. “So you just wanna see it play out?”. “Yes”. “Then can I back out of the contract then”. “Technically you can, but most people tend not to… but you know what, I’ll put a clause in your contract that you can back out at any time. How does that sound?”. I smiled. If I could back out at any time I couldn’t conceive of a downside, as far as I was concerned it was just a thought experiment.

I looked over the contract like a hawk. I’m not a smart man, but I couldn’t be said to be no dummy either. The wording was clear and concise, so simple that even a child could understand it. “Are we good to go?”, she asked.

I was ready. I took the pen and signed the contract. There wasn’t a grand explosion, or mist and smoke, the woman just folded the contract neatly, then it disappeared. “Alright I’ll see you in 10 years, and if you ever want out all you have to do is come back to this crossroads and say so”, she said. She looked at the sun and shielded her eyes, “Boyyyy it’s gonna be a hot one today”.

I looked over to the horizon then back to her, but like all characters in a dream she was gone. For the longest time I thought that just maybe it didn’t happen. I scooped up my guitar and wandered into town. I saw black face after black face, and I got more and more suspicious with each one. I was in the heart of Tennessee, and didn’t see one white face.

I stopped at a diner and the black man behind the counter was there to seat me. “Say brotha, my phone died up the road apiece and I gotta get back to my car”. “Brother?”, he said in an uncharacteristically white sounding voice as if confused. “Yeah, I can find you a charger”, he said. He let me charge my phone and when I got enough power I checked the internet. There wasn’t one face on it that wasn’t black, not one. “I’ll be damned”, I whispered to myself.

***

In the years that came I realized that though there wasn’t any white people, people were still the same. Everyone cliqued up and instead of skin color everyone had a bug up their ass about nationality. Most of history played out similarly with a few differences, only color was not one of them.

I had most of the friends I had back in the day, but any friend I had made that was white, or not black, was black now. The world had barely changed. Even slavery happened, it was ex Africans in chains, but no white men holding the whips. Human nature was essentially unchanged.

By year 5 I managed to get myself a family and have a few kids. I knew that I was going to die in a few years because of the deal, and knew I wasn’t gonna back out now. Life was relatively good for me.

One night my little baby girl said something to me that ear wormed into my brain. She didn’t mean anything by it, but she asked me if she was going to die. I had to have that awkward conversation about death with a 4 year old, but honestly that wasn’t the part that bothered me. The woman said somehow I was running this… simulation, as she put it, what exactly would happen when I died.

The thought bothered me so much that I drove back down to Tennessee and went back to that same crossroads. I played my guitar just before predawn and asked for that ‘woman’ to appear. Low and behold she came huffing and puffin’ down the road in the same outfit as before. “Oh look who’s back, by my estimations you have a year before this ends, you wanna come out?”, she asked with no malice or urgency.

“No, I’m gonna stick to it, I’ll die if I have to, but what happens to the world when I’m gone, does it go on?”. “No”, she said plainly. “I’ve made a life here, I have a wife and kids, you mean to tell me they die once I’m gone”. “Yes”, she said as if she didn’t understand the question.

“This simulation ends once you do, you only have so much energy in you before you burn out”, she said. “What can I do, what can I do, I’ll do anything”, I said begging on my knees. The woman smiled as if she knew it was coming. “Ok, if you want this world to continue, you have to get others to make wishes to power your universe, and to power you”. “How many?”. The woman shrugged, “how long do you want it to go on?”.

I cried. “When I stop this world ends”. “Yes”. “But I’ll eventually die, so it’ll end anyway”. “No, you don’t actually have to, if you make another deal… or you can just let it go and let the simulation end”. “I can’t”. She pat my face lovingly, “I know you can’t, most don’t”.

“Why are you doing this to me, you are a demon”, I said angrily. “I ain’t no demon, I made the deal the same as you”. I froze and fell over in shock and horror. “Does that mean… does that mean my world wasn’t real”. The woman shrugged non noncommittally. “What is real baby, it’s as real as you think it is”. “Then someone in your world made a deal with you”. “Yes”. “Then that means your world isn’t real either”. “Does it… because it’s as real as it needs to be”. “Then when did it start, who started it?”, I pleaded.

She shrugged again, then handed me a pen. If you want the world to end fine then don’t worry about it and do nothing. The more people you get the better chance you have of your world not bottoming out. I looked at her hatefully, but ultimately, I took the pen.

Every decision was a choice, and a new reality created, so if I didn’t give people choices this reality was no more.