Chapter 14 "Sevante"

Across town, a day earlier, Sevante is walking home. A billion different things, over and over again are careening through his head. He is calculating his worth against Colfax Avenue inspired thoughts. Every block, walking in the seedy bar broken A.M. is a new sob story, spoken about as fast as he could walk past. One mullet topped character drops a story about how he needs 14 bucks for a bus ticket to Durango. He hands him a buck. Another lady just pulls up her sleeve and shows a nasty infected hole on the inside of her forearm obviously from heroin. He hands her a dollar. Another Mexican boy asks him for some change because “Anything will help.” Sevante hands him a dollar as well. A man approaches him with a small card to read. Sevante reads the card and it explains that the man is deaf and if he buys the card he will be helping the man is his endeavors. He hands him a dollar and hands the card back. The deaf man is grateful and lumbers off. These are his people, from his neighborhood, but he can't help them all. He decides he won't anymore. When he was his poorest, he'd drop some change on every block. He'd carry a pocketful. Not anymore. “How exactly am I helping anything by dropping some change from block to block?”

Nowadays he is considerably richer than he was. There is a better way to do this. A grandiose plan emerges in his head involving small community centers on every block down Colfax Avenue, arguably one of the most poverty stricken areas in Denver. He is alternately thinking that he has six singles and about eighteen hundred in Benjamins, and sixty-nine cents in his wallet. God, if they only knew.

He drives an older BMW now. It's the 5 series. ‘03. It's in the shop, and this little scene, going from deep east Aurora to Capitol Hill is a simple bus ride. The reason he keeps walking is because he got on the wrong bus. The express bus stopped about fifteen blocks from his Capitol Hill home, a nice loft above a tattoo parlor and a coffee shop. Sevante calculates that if he spends a dollar on every damn person that confronts him, between here and there, he will spend about nineteen dollars. "It's kinda like paying ugly strippers." He said to himself with a chuckle.

Strutting down the sidewalk, he couldn’t be prouder of his accomplishments over the last few years. Sevante just had a meeting with a new punk band, and was excited about the outcome.

Sevante is a great guy. In the local music scene, he is a god. He has been responsible for promoting three hip-hop acts and one girl band out of Denver and into some notoriety. That's not easy, based on several circumstances. One, He's a black man working in this white man's ClearChannel friendly, country-bumpkin city. Two, the bands are all non-radio-friendly. ("Fuck and Fuck and Fuck" could actually be a song title on an album for every act he represents.) Three, Denver has been "blacklisted" by most record companies because the politics in this conservative cow-town are decidedly anti-gay.

Not to mention anti-Semitic.

"It's good to be a black king in this white bread town." He says to himself, quietly.

You're always afraid that your inner monologue is being overheard. The words are usually seconds, if not fractions of seconds from coming out of your mouth. This little morsel was tasted by the night air, and thusly tasted by him. The Wraith. Sevante never meant for those words to pass into the Colfax night, but his words bested his calm exterior because he had found a band, and this band was right for the times. He met with the lead singer and bassist tonight and listened to some demos and he was in high spirits, and Sevante was high. Weed high. Pot High. Mary Jane. The Chronic. Reefer. The Wraith was listening in a dark corner of Denver. He heard the words that escaped Sevante's lips like a whisper, and focused in.

"Life is never so black and white." It was a whisper.

Sevante froze for a second, then continued a brisk walk towards his home.

"What would you say to someone so desperate that they never dreamed anymore?" A voice called from shadows, from the alley to Sevante's right. He stopped and faced the alley. He considered the alley for a moment and in his state of gushy, weed induced good nature said, "If you get some good rest you'll dream again, brother." Silence. Sevante stood against a darkened alley, streetlights and cars blazing behind him. The demon saw him as a silhouette, black and crushing the neon cityscape behind him. Sevante's teeth were little white pearls set into the head of a fairly imposing man whose shadow leapt deeply into the alley so that part of it was enveloped by utter blackness.

"You're almost there," hissed a seductive voice.

"Yeah, wuddevah." Sevante started walking west again towards home.

"Hey!"

"WHAT, MOTHERFUCKER?" Sevante decided to act a little tough, and why not? He was a fairly large dude. He was brought up surrounded by drug dealers and convicts and general asshole-moron-gangbangers, and he knows how to handle himself.

"Ooooh, tsk, tsk, my brother," said the voice. "I wanted to ask you a hypothetical question." A shadow emerged from the alley. It was barely discernable from the walls, but at times appeared to be partially lit and sometimes seemed to blend into the flat, elongated shadows that the Colfax lights seemed to produce. Sevante turned to leave, but the seductive voice continued, "Imagine you had no option left."

"Man, I been there, guy."

"No option but to steal and rob and beg for your survival?"

"Look, man, I have been down that road." The shadow stopped and froze against a wall or a dumpster, it was hard to tell. A dry chuckle emerged from that side of the alley.

"No man who claims to be a king, has ever been a pauper. Why do I say that? Because any man who has been poor understands the faults of the rich, he UNDERSTANDS THE PROBLEM WITH THEM ALL. MONEY AND POWER ARE TRULY THE PATH OF WICKED AND CORRUPT PEOPLE!" There was a flash of khaki and grey and the Wraith crossed the alley in front of Sevante and disappeared into another dumpster's shadow.

"Whoa, man...Chill, dude. Look, I got some money in my pocket, it's not much, but, you know..." Silence. Then breathing. Not Sevante's. "Hey dude..."

"I WILL ONLY EXPLAIN TO YOU ONCE. THE POPULATION IS TOO BIG, TOO MUCH, TOO MANY SOULS, TOO MANY MEDIOCRE PEOPLE, YOU ARE COMPLETELY WASHED IN IGNORANCE; I CAN’T SMELL YOU. YOU SMELL LIKE NOTHING!! YOU CAN'T COMMIT TO ANYTHING, NOT EVEN A SCENT! YOU ARE USELESS TO OUR RACE! PERPETUATING, AND PROCREATING...WHAT?! WHAT, WHAT, WHAT DO YOU CREATE?! I'LL TELL YOU THAT YOU ARE THE CORRUPTION!! CAN YOU KEEP LIVING LIKE THIS?!!"

"Look, man I'm just trying to spread love and hip-hop...and maybe, after tonight, some punk-rock," said Sevante easily. He watched a flurry of khaki and grey dip around in shadow and flop around the dumpster. It was such a flurry of motion, that it appeared spasmodic and other-worldly. Sevante was transfixed, and took a step forward. He sighed, "And the punk stuff is..." Sevante was cut at the knees and throat at the same time. This was confusing. He was falling over and as he tried to say, "...a new venture into unknown genres." He found himself croaking out little bubbles of sound. His ears were ringing; his breath was short. He hit the ground with his arms up, but they were unable, they were too weak to protect his face. His face hit the ground which seemed to be an impossible angle from his knee which was bent in the opposite direction from which he should of landed. Sevante felt warm all over. It was nice.

It was unnatural. It wasn't right! He wanted to scream, but he couldn't. He tried, but he could only muster a tired growl. He cranked his neck upward, and could look into the lights of Colfax. There were people walking by! He was only a few feet into this darkened alley. His call for help seemed drunken and lost in the din of Denver's busiest street.

There was a hand stroking the back of his head. Sevante put his head on to the pavement in the alley. A little rivulet of water touched his ear. In his mind, he thought that it was probably dumpster water. The soothing voice started breathing sweet tendrils of vowels into his ear. This demon was almost licking and sucking the air in a quiet and sensual whisper, like this:

"AEOOWAHATEE"

"OOWAYOOWITEEYAWEY"

"PIOOOOOOOHWAHTAEYEEEEEEE...sorry about this." The demon got up and walked to Sevante's broken leg and grabbed it and pulled it towards the darkness of the alley. Sevante's body followed, as the Wraith heaved, there was more pain than Sevante could ever remember feeling. Ever. Every moment became and elongated bubble of pain and confusion, and most disconcerting thing of all, a gurgle-scream of near silence. Why can't they see? Why won't anyone help me? Sevante's perception of the police slipped deeper into his memory, from evil white guys, to brave figures who only had designs to protect and serve. Is anyone out there with the balls to see what is going on at 12:45 AM on Colfax Avenue? Someone, anyone could save him with a glance in the right direction.

The Wraith turned him around on his back, if Sevante could gasp, he would, but he stared blankly, hoping this demon of a man would consider him dead, but he was looking into a black face, a shadow face. The Wraith said, "Oh now, don't play dead. You can't talk, but don't pretend. That reminds me of a song I heard once. Well, it wasn't really a song, it was a rap." Sevante spat blood. It dawned on him that he could be killed because he was a black man, and that he was into the wrong music. Fuckin lame. He squinted to see the face of his attacker.

"Stop it, bitch...you're looking too hard without your glasses," said that soothing voice.

"Check it!" The Wraith was about to rap but he was also feeling Sevante and his clothes up for some glasses. Sevante's glasses.

"Sometimes when you don't feel the same as playing the numbers game on the street when people that you meet are always gunning for the same end-ing...and it always amazes me, how a sawed off shotgun can break up a party, but I'd really like to know, which one of you fucked up bitches is endin ass up on my floor...so...it's me supreme, stayin away from dairy and fuckin up your scene, yo, cause I am he and who am I, but the same fuckin nigga that jams it in your eye, bitch...I got dat itch to fuck you up...yeah, you bitchass snitch, so here I go, yo, no more smokin the indo, where you want it in he head or the heart, yo?"

At that, after finding Sevante's glasses in the left front pocket of his shirt, the demon places them on his eyes.

Sevante sees the barrel of a large shotgun. It dawns on him like scientific theory.

Sevante is dead, he knows it. His mind hasn't really caught up with that fact yet, but he knows that those are the lyrics of one of his hip-hop acts. It's revenge or something. Sevante knows he's a dead man.

He is thinking he’d like an open casket funeral. He says, "HEART!"

It's a sledgehammer driven by a freight train to the chest.

It's an orange flash and heat.

Concrete is the softest thing Sevante has ever felt. His body rebounding makes it feel like a waterbed.

He is lifted up, but there is NO white light.

If Sevante could talk and tell you if heaven exists, he'd tell you.

Yes.

The best way he could explain it, would be this:

(Framed as a letter to Sevante's mom.)


Dear Mom,
The craziest thing...I'm dead. Here's the thing...Don't be afraid, it won't hurt...you'll actually be surprised...and you expect salvation, and a great white light...but it's funny, it's more like a great relief...you remember when Buster died {our dog}...you remember when we found him, after all that suffering, it was like a relief to find him all dead? It's like that.

There isn't actually heaven or hell there is just one last forever memory.

And blackness.

And that lasts forever too, but they coincide forever as your energy explodes into everything, so don't mourn me, because I don't care to be mourned. I am part of everything now. It is the most satisfying feeling you could think of.

It is a great release. I love you.

I have loved and so my life goes and goes, even in death, this imperfectness.

So I died.

So what?

I am in that great black silence that you fear, but it's only for a second, it's only repeating over and over and over into nothing.

Love,

Sevante