6.

Sometimes, for the good of the group, individuals gotta be made examples of. Lenny tries to keep this in mind as he stands before the group, taking their insults. Weak. White. Bourgeois. Lazy. Junkie. Homosexual. Only a homo could be married to a traitor-bitch so long without realizing it. Only a homo would need Father fucking his wife on the regular to keep her loyal. Only a homo would get drunk in Georgetown and try to overcompensate with a married woman.

‘Where’s the woman?’ Jim barks. ‘Where’s Minnie Luce? Get up here.’

Minnie rises, eyes round and mortified. Her sister, Ursa, rises with her, and Minnie frantically pushes the air, shakes her head. Clarisse, Minnie’s pregnant sister-in-law, tugs Ursa back down to the bench and diverts her with the kicking in her belly.

‘Lenny, are you interested in fucking this woman?’

There’s no point denying it. ‘Yes, Father.’ People jeer.

‘Minnie, are you interested in fucking this … “man”?’

Minnie looks at Lenny. ‘No, Father.’ More jeers.

‘But you broke the rules for him, hmm? Rum on the porch? Batting them nice eyelashes? Felt good, didn’t it, this whiteboy lookin’ at you like you the Queen of Sheba?’

Minnie doesn’t dignify this with an answer for a long time; so long, in fact, that Jim’s smirk slips.

‘It felt good to be distracted,’ Minnie confesses eventually. ‘There’d been a lot of talk of death that night, but Lenny wasn’t part of it. He was a nice distraction.’

‘Nice you can be distracted from death, sister,’ Jim taunts. ‘Rest of us, we livin’ it. I’m dyin’ every day to keep y’all alive. But drinking, white boys? Them’s nice distractions … Just don’t you go getting distracted from how they been keeping you enslaved for centuries.’

The mob kicks in, calling Minnie ‘uppity’, ‘race traitor’, ‘negro princess’. She stands tall, arms at her sides. Jim asks again if she’s interested in Lenny. Again: No, Father. Why not?

‘I’m not interested in any relationship. Socialism’s my only reason for living. I don’t want to die if there’s a chance for socialism in this life. And I don’t want to be distracted.’

Jim softens. ‘Well, don’t be, honey. You ain’t no use to us if you distracted. I want you to keep death in your mind always. If you ain’t ready to face death every day, you’re no better than that traitor-bitch.’ He waves Minnie down, saying he’s feeling merciful; at least she recognizes sex is only a distraction. To Lenny, he says, ‘You still wanna fuck that woman?’

‘No.’ His ears burn. ‘Not if she doesn’t want me.’

‘Not if she don’t want him.’ Jim laughs, prompting the crowd to do the same. ‘What’d you think she’d want? Your body? Your bitty white dick? Cause sure as hell you don’t got a mind to give. Can’t even string a sentence together.’ Jim waits for Lenny to disprove him. ‘Think that’s what a proud, black socialist woman wants?’

‘No,’ he says; the only answer.

‘You got anything else to give her? You got anything to give any woman?’

Peace? Love? Loyalty? None of these things are articulable, against Jim’s scorn. ‘No.’

‘Nothing? Well, sisters, he’s offering. Don’t got nothing, but he’s offering. Any takers?’

The pavilion buzzes with the disinterest of every woman present; shifting legs, averted faces, hands cupping whispers. A few stray cheers, whistles. Lenny feels a searing hate: for Minnie, for Terra, for Marianne Glover, who broke up with him for coming to bed with red eyes; for his mother, who gave him life. But not Jim. Hating Jim is too much hate to live with.

‘Sheila, what d’you say? Would you fuck him?’

‘Hell no.’

‘Ninette?’

‘I don’t fuck faggots.’

‘Gail? Elly? Sally-Ann?’ As an endless lineup of women shout their rejections, it takes all Lenny’s willpower to keep his arms at his sides, instead of covering his groin like he wants to. Finally, Jim growls, ‘Not a single sister out there wants you, and you better get used to it, ’cause you ain’t getting nothing. Any sister goes near you, she’s a traitor-whore. Already proven you can’t keep a woman faithful. Pussy. Piece-of-shit. What are you? Say it.’

Words, the power of speech, have evaporated from him completely.

‘Say it, pussy. Say what you are. Say what you’re good for.’

His self — something small, a glove, a pebble, dropped off the side of a mountain. Someone hooks him, jarringly, in the ribs. Someone else deals him a shin-kick. Someone else, a knee to the groin. He’s on the dirt, the faces surprising: Johnny Bronco, with his cool moustache; Eustace, his old buddy from the Red Creek commune; Irving, who was badly beaten for missing that boat to Jonestown a few weeks ago. Jim laughs amiably into the microphone. ‘Don’t hit him too hard; he’s still gotta work,’ then, in tender wonderment, ‘He’s not fighting back? Course he isn’t. Little peace-dove. Bless him.’

Lenny feels himself hauled up by the armpits. Wetness on his cheek; his own blood, clean and sweet as watermelon. ‘What are you, Lenny Lynden?’

Lenny still can’t see Jim for all the people, the UFO lights in his head.

‘Nothing.’