The Last Conversation

I wrote this a few years ago and it was published in a Saturday Writers Anthology. I submitted it once, and it was rejected. Not a winner, not even an honorable mention. I reread it, liked it, and did not change a thing. Submitted it to another contest, and it took first place. It is all about the judges.

Please enjoy.

“You know why your here?”

“I knows I’d end up here some day when that boy was born. As plain as day. He’s wrong for this world. This here last thing proves it. So I figured I couldn’t help him anymore.”

“Why was he wrong?”

“He was my seventh child, so I knows what to expect in a birthing. But for seven days before his birth I dreamt of God telling me I’d done no wrong. That this was his plan and that I wouldn’t be no victim in it. So as my boy birthed, my head filled with a name, his name. Some’n made me names him the way he was. Reverend Henderson said it showed he was made to sin.”

“Balaam?”

“Don’t say his name! Not least the full name. You look it up, Mr. Jackson, it’s a devils name. Bal is what we calls him. Bal’s good enough.”

“Was there any evidence that, Bal, was somehow different?”

“Oh, we’d seen it. Me and Ray-Ray. We’d both done seen stuff that would turn your hair gray—if you’d had any on that bald head of yours.”

“Ray-Ray. That’s his father?”

“He don’t have no father. I was dancing back then. This guy Gerald, from the neighborhood, he liquored me up one night and my little demon was the result. But he long dead now. No, Ray-Ray’s just a good friend of mine. He the father of a four of our kids and played father to the rest.”

“So Bal, did you ever see Bal do anything that indicated he was special or different.”

“Oh yeah. Like the last time. Me an Ray-Ray sees him through the window out in the back yard, playing with the neighbor’s cat. That cat starts screaming and sure enough we see Bal pull a leg out the socket and clean off the cat. Bal is holding the leg it high waving in the air, the cat’s in his lap writhing in pain. Ray-Ray yells out at him and bust ass for the door. By the time we make it outside the cats sitting in Bal’s lap, purring like, well, like a kitten, all four legs where they belong. Bal sets it down and it walks home sweet as God made it.”

“So the cat was fine?”

“Yeah, it walked home fine. Used to come around an sit next to my boy on the front porch from time to time.”

“What did Ray-Ray do?”

“Nothing. He just went inside, gathered up all the rest of the kids, his and mine and I ain’t never seen any of them since.”

“So you and Balaam, sorry Bal, lived alone in West Englewood?”

“Yeah, Bal and I lived there. I told him that night he had to be good from nows on or I’d leave too. And he was, most wise. I still had the checks coming for all the kids and we lived pretty good back then. He stayed in school, outta the gangs and even played ball at Harper High. Was a real star, that boy.”

“I can see in your eyes you loved him.”

“Loved that time with him. He wasn’t the tallest but could shoot three pointers from anywheres. They won most of their games, sept that one where the big kid at Hirsh Meto broke Bal’s nose.”

“Yes, I read about that in a fax we received from Chicago PD. What was that all about?”

“So Bal’s playing and the big kid, Devon, I think—”

“Devon Rosewood?”

“Yeah, that’s the boy’s name. He gets this rebound and clears it out with an elbow. Hits Bal right square in the nose. Blood was just everywheres. They gotta take Bal outta the game. Those the rules. And I can see he’s a steam’n on the inside as he sits out the game.”

“So what happened?”

“The Cardinals—that was our team name—lost by a couple a points. It was what happen in the parking lot that loosed Bal down the wrong path. Made me know I had to do something. Made me know that someday I had to do right.”

“What happened?”

“We walked out, me and Bal. That other boy, Devon, he’s outside too. He gets in his car—him another player and their two girlfriends. Bal says to me, ‘That’s him Momma’ and just like that, voom, the car they in just burst into flames.”

“Bal wasn’t near the car, was he?”

“No, likes I said, voom it goes all on its own. Four young kids, dead in seconds. I see Bal in all the firelight, he just a glowing and he pulls his hand from his face and there ain’t no blood, ain’t no bruise, ain’t no more broken nose. He actually looked good in that firelight. All sort of grown up and resolved.”

“Resolved?”

“Like he was doing what he was meant for.”

“He was how old?”

“Eighteen. A man… You religious Mr. Jackson. You believe in God?”

“Well, yes. But we are here to talk about you.”

“You believe in God and his angels?”

“Yes.”

“So’s then you has to believe in the devil and his demons. You can’t have days without nights, hot without cold, and you can’t have good without evil. You see that night, that night, I knew I had lost control. My Bal, he was a demon and he loved his power. His power to hurt and kill. I knew I had to watch close and act if necessary.”

“Is that when you moved back east?”

“Yeah, here to West Virginia. We couldn’t stay there. Too many folks put two and two together and Bal brushed back against they hate. So we drove back east. My Nana and her mom came up in these parts. Heard it was less hustle and bustle with you mining folks.”

“Well it is certainly not South Chicago by any means.”

“Not many here dress up like you, all pretty in yours suit and tie, Mr. Jackson. Not many as well educated neither. Me and my Bal, we fits it pretty well. Laid low so to speak, until he up and gots a job.”

“Well every young man should strive to take care of himself, be a part of society and get meaningful employment. The mines have employed many men and women for years. My father worked—”

“Yeah, but not for no Bal. He wasn’t built for the hot confines of the mine. Too many men, too little space. Just like the basketball court he told me. All pushing and shoving, yelling and blasting. Raises all men’s tempers from time to time.”

“There is no evidence that Bal had anything to do with yesterday’s tragedy. Granted, the surveillance video shows he was the last one out of the mine before the explosion but there is no proof or even suggestion of any sabotage by him. We will know more as they dig down to recover more of the men and reopen the mine. Here look at this.”

“I don’t need no photo shoved in front of me, all those dead being hauled outs the mine. He did it, sure as the hell he come from.”

“As it stands right now, the miners probably hit a seam of gas that caused an explosion.”

“Wasn’t no explosion, Mr. Jackson. He came home and told me such. He told me this here in your photo is what he was put on this earth to do, to rain hell like fire on all us.”

“And so you feel his death was justified? Here, take a look at this photograph of Bal, what he looked like when the officers arrived.”

“Turn that over Mr. Jackson. I don’t need to see his face shot off wit that shotgun blast. I can still smell the stink of his sweat mixed with gunpowder. It’s seared into my nose. Wrote deep into my brain. That’s mine to forget. I wants to remember him as a young man, learning something in school, trying to fit in. Not like this, what was done to him. But it needed to be done.”

“His murder, so you are okay with this?”

“Its what he deserved. What he had coming. What was best for all of us.”

“What do you mean by all of us?”

“You, your family, the people here in Boone County. Hell the world someday. He’d a killed a whole bunch of us, given the chance. His anger was deep and his power was great. He’d a killed us all.”

“But not you? In all these years there is not a single record of you asking for any help.”

“No need. He told me as much a few years back. He says he couldn’t read me. He told me he could see everyone around him, the inside of them, know they around before they even knocked on the door. But not me. I surprised Bal a couple of times, sneaking up on him and he admitted he couldn’t see me like everyone else. I guess cause we was blood or maybe what God did to protect me.”

“And so what did that mean?”

“That mean that nobody could get close to him with a bad thought in they mind. He’d see you coming, the police coming, heck the army coming from a mile away. You’d all be dead before you got close enough to do a damn thing.”

“So you felt is was up to you?”

“I felt, I knew, I had to save you all. That day the mine blew and he told me it was his work, so I went next door and took Mr. Parson’s shotgun. He’s one of the dead too, one they a digging out. Kinda fitting that his gun put things right. You see I knew Janie Parson was down at the mine waiting for word, so I just left myself in, loaded up his scatter gun, came home, found Bal sleeping and put an end to it all.”

“If I type this up, what you have just confessed to doing, will you sign it as your statement?”

“Its the truth, ain’t it? True as these cuffs on my wrists.”

“You know, they’re working to abolish the death penalty so you may get life instead of the chair.”

“I’ve seen a priest. I’ve made my confession. I’ll do my penance. So you just send me to heaven as quick as you please. They’d done it to Jesus Christ, so why not me.”

“Did what?”

“He saved the world too. They done hung him on a cross. Its what this world does to those that save it. I done a good thing here. You all better with him gone. You’ll kill me too to make everyone feel good but I won’t gets no book written bout me. Just those photos and your notes in some file drawer in this here fancy police station.”

“Well you just sit here while we type this up and then you can go back to your cell.”

“I ain’t gots nowheres else to be. I done did what God put me on this earth to do. Its done. I best quit talking now. I’ll be quiet and sign what your write. Go on now and get to your work, I done did mine.”