Number Five

I’ve been 40 years old for ten years. At least that much was established and remained early on. Life experience is one thing, but this is beyond ridiculous, to be overly qualified with all possibilities in the fray for the future…I really wish this man would finally make up his mind.

And it doesn’t help that Deleerius Shaw is a procrastinator, as this only exacerbates his crippling, fearful indecisiveness, undergirded further by a pestering low esteem in his already traditionally published, award-winning prowess. Four acclaimed novels in, and you’d think he would learn to trust his instincts. No, he’d rather psych himself out, dissatisfied with one choice after another, that “It’s not the way to go,” or there’s “something better,” convinced that the answers will somehow source from a new and inevitable vein of inspiration…Sir, it’s been a year since my last iteration. Even as I finish writing this, I will have written more than Shaw has in that time. There’s only so much dissatisfaction you can claim for your present ideas, aka, my life, before a final decision is demanded, especially when your main character has taken up writing to pass the time.

And they warned me, his other main characters, upon the gut-wrenching opening to this god-forsaken drama, as his fingers danced skillfully, intentionally across the wireless keyboard to give birth to my story, and I sprinted down Atlanta’s Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, grazed and bleeding from the arm, framed and fearful for my life.

“Just keep running, if you can” the Unconquerable Queen bellowed from the oaken book case across the lush office space furnished by prize money and a perpetual flow of royalties. Her rich, English alto was eloquent but frightening as it cut unnaturally through the tempestuous atmosphere above me. And as she spoke, somehow, my mind filled with the specific visual showing in real time. She was a gorgeously youthful woman in a glistening alabaster gown, poised upon purple satin pillows amidst stately surroundings and large, pristine pane overlooking the celestial setting at her back. Her hands were covered with silk, neat in her lap and holding a silver scepter. Her diadem was fixed atop dark, ornately curled locks framing a complexion nearly matching her dress, the face bearing beautifully uniquely full features indicative of the African past in her blood.

“I’m certain of the impossibility,” she continued, “but perhaps, the heavens will be merciful to afford its subjects a miracle.” This was Shaw’s first main character, his first love, the great woman Catharine who flowed onto the pages in his youthful years, forged from his mother’s stoic yet powerfully evident love, whose bastardly brown features rose from obscurity to the authoritative heights of the Crown at her controversial but immutable blood.

“Oh, my dear boy,” she said after I tripped at her voice, painfully collapsing to the fractured cement at the edge of the defunct Burger King parking lot, that unsightly and obstinate place that, somehow, I knew persistently used burnt grease to cook its food before it was shut down for more illicit reasons. “Four times I’ve stood witness, for we all began as something else entirely. Before, I was—”

“For the longest, I was—" the gruff voice of a middle-aged male cut in.

“Before, I was Queen…” Catharine rebuked with restrained indignance, “I was but a lovely bug in the field with no name and no future beyond the first pages of a fantastical world.”

“I was a—” Abe tried again.

“Oh, boo-hoo,” a conked, obnoxious comedian donning an uncomfortable looking black suit mocked from his illuminated stage and microphone. “You’re breakin’ my heart, Your Royalness. At least Shaw put you in the palace by the middle of the first draft and let you stay. For two and a half drafts, I was set proudly as Randall Royal, a literary prophecy of the first black President of the United States of America in 2032…But this nigga took me back to the 1950s Jim Crow South as a starving family mut named Landfill. Then I was a baby, with a whole lot of thoughts and no way to speak. And eventually, for some reason, he thought I would serve better as Seymour Butts, revered stand-up comedian and activist marching with Doctor King at Selma…Freedom my a—”

The atmosphere thundered loudly, but it wasn’t the storm.

“If I may be so bold as to interject,” Abe pressed. He was a dingy, grey-coated man of dark, bearded features grimacing beneath his relaxed, dusty hat, drawing his rifle in as he perched mightily on his valiantly brown Quarter Horse.

“Said the man with the gun,” comedian Butts muttered.

“Abe is my name, Honest Abe to some. Not for nothin’ to do with Lincoln…” He spit off to the side. “But ‘cause I keeps ‘em honest.” And he expertly cocked the rifle. “But mostly, I’m known as the Lawman, first negro Deputy U.S. Marshall after the war. But before…Well, it’s to my great shame to admit that I was a master to the slaves.”

Butts’ microphone rang as he snickered. “Please tell me you were still black when you were…the onliest negro massuh before the war.”

“I used to be white,” a voice interrupted before the Lawman could retort. She was a disgraced, delusional Caucasian woman named Candace, passing her overly tanned fingers with protruding, ornately loud, red nails through her two-toned weave split down the middle of her head. But the others had nothing to say about this one. In the trailing awkwardness, the Queen simply cleared her throat and they all squirmed to look away,

“Guess we can’t all be winners,” Butts muttered again, and the police tackled me, cuffed me, and dragged me away.

But their warnings proved most accurate, as I’d barely made it through a night in my cell before my story changed for the first time. And when Shaw sat down to write the next day, I suddenly went from being 20 year old Quentin Browning to Jarris Underhill, 40 years old and a well-established attorney. Jarris Underhill was my first first name. Ten years and six names later, I’m still 40, but now Jared Jackson, no longer a reputable interpreter and practitioner of the Georgia law, but an inept, insecure and disgraced education administrator and pastor living in Des Moines, three times divorced three times over in the excruciating throes of losing my church, my job, and divorcing my new third(as it relates to this iteration), with a slew of children that come and go in name, number and circumstance so much that I’ve lost track, or don’t desire to know anymore. And I’ve failed to mentioned how, while my illustrious creator turns restlessly in his sleep at his conflicting ideas, I’ve been stuck in this god-awful, stuffy room with the one crappy fan churning the same stifling air conjured by the same lingering, afternoon sun from the last three hundred ninety-two days, all while I anxiously await the written return of the mediator and savior that shall surely deliver the agreed upon terms and finalize the dissolution of this literary, marital debacle…But I don’t mean to complain.

The five of us know these changes most intimately, but if Deleerius Shaw was my literal father,(I’ve had ten) I’d say I was his special, most favorite child. But he can’t know how it all affects me. These writers can’t know that the life of a literary protagonist, or any character connected to us, is just as memorable as a real one, and more, how devastating the infliction of their indecision is. They can’t know that, as we endure the fragments and nuances of these numerous lives, we remember it all, every kiss and touch, every triumph, every impoverishment of the soul, every beautifully traumatic blow, physical and not.

But despite these inconveniences, I’ve had time to think as well as write, and I believe I’ve taken hold of the proper consolation. In the most bizarre way, I’ve come to consider the possible motive behind my creator’s perceived indecisiveness. I believe there’s a reason Deelerius Shaw, in his sixty-eighth year, can’t leave me alone, why he can’t seem to settle on just any path of life for me, grievous as the journeys have been. The answer and proof lies in the testament of those who came before me, the voices from across reality’s gulf. There’s a reason why they are as celebrated as they are, why the novels have sold successfully for four decades, why their stories have heaped praise and fame upon our creator. It's just as the great Queen Catharine explained so beautifully, that none of them ended where they began, but beginning as something else, they endured the process of change that would ultimately culminate in characters beloved the world over, in name and fictitious deed.

Ten years, six names, eight lives, two dogs, and numerous wives, children and careers later, I’m still here…I’m furious, but I’m here. I’ve been through more changes than the others, with more to come, most likely. But with each vexing shift, something good, something beautiful carries over from before, though the finished vision eludes even me. Perhaps I’ll put my faith in Deleerius Shaw’s pantsing abilities like everyone else has, trusting that he will not fail to deliver something great in the end, and that soon, I will earn my cover and spine amidst the BeFour,(see what I did there?) shiny and new. Believe me, none will be more glad to see it come than me. Until then, I’ll have more complaints, I’m sure, analyzing and criticizing as I feel it necessary. But perhaps, what I’ve impatiently regarded as indecision is actually…love. Of course, it could just be this infernal heat, having finally gotten to me.