Forty Acres: A Thriller (15 page)

“Excellent,” Dr. Kasim said. “I have never met another man who shared my Zantu blood. It’s good to see that he is a rational thinker—even in his sleep.”

Intrigued, Martin replied, “You said that earlier. That I was asleep. What does that mean?”

Dr. Kasim smiled. “Eat your pie. We have a lot to discuss, my Zantu brother.”

CHAPTER 41

Y
ou might think that you dropped to the floor to help that girl because you were trying to be nice,” Dr. Kasim was saying, “but that’s just a rationalization. The truth is, my brother, you suffer from a mental condition that you’ve had your entire life and don’t even know it.”

After dinner, Dr. Kasim had moved the gathering into the library. The spacious room contained not only books but also an impressive collection of African art. The doctor was seated in a high-backed leather chair with his back to a crackling fireplace smoking a pipe. His tall walking stick leaned against the side of the chair, its fierce tribal carvings eerily animated by flickering firelight. Damon, Solomon, Tobias, Kwame, and Carver were seated around the doctor puffing cigars and imbibing their favorite liqueurs. Martin, to avoid Damon’s usual prodding in front of their host, had finally agreed to try a cigar. To his surprise, he found it soothing. After the drinks had been served and the cigars lit, Oscar had ordered all the servers out of the library and shut the door behind them. He did not join the group around the fireplace. Instead, he took a seat beside the door and remained quiet. It wasn’t clear to Martin if Oscar’s intention was to bar the servants from entering the library or to bar anyone from exiting, but the action did make Martin a little anxious. After what had been said in the dining room in front of the servants, Martin couldn’t imagine what could be said now that would offend them. Martin did not have to wait long to find out. With the servants gone, Dr. Kasim was shifting the conversation back to the pie incident in the dining room. Peering at Martin through curls of pipe smoke, Dr. Kasim, in no uncertain terms, had just accused Martin of suffering from a mental illness of sorts. Martin didn’t take the accusation as an insult because it wasn’t presented as such. Dr. Kasim’s tone was cool, as if he were simply stating a fact, the same as if he were telling Martin that his eyes were brown. When Dr. Kasim made the charge, Damon and the other men all nodded in agreement. Their faces were filled with grave concern and sympathy, as if Martin had just been diagnosed with something fatal and they were there to show support. Martin did not know how to react. What kind of doctor was this Dr. Kasim anyway? Martin had never asked, and nobody had ever told him.

Martin was seated at the end of a sofa, within arm’s reach of Dr. Kasim. Seeing the puzzlement on Martin’s face, the doctor reached out and squeezed Martin’s hand. For an elderly man, his grip was surprisingly firm. “No need to worry, brother,” Dr. Kasim said. “I’m going to help you. We all are.” Damon and the others nodded again.

“Help me with what?” Martin said. “It’s not like I kicked the poor girl. I just helped her pick up some pie.”

“Kicking her wouldn’t have been as bad,” Carver said.

Martin gave Carver a surprised look but noticed that none of the other men, including Dr. Kasim, showed any reaction to the comment.

“Ever heard the term
slave mentality
?” Dr. Kasim asked.

“Of course.”

“Do you know what it means?”

Martin frowned. “If you’re trying to tell me that I have a slave mentality—”

Dr. Kasim shook his head slowly. “I’m not. I’m telling you that you have something far worse. The slave mentality is just one of its many tragic symptoms. And the worst part is that you are not alone. Every black man in the world suffers from the same mental aberration you do. From the day he’s born until the day he dies.”

Martin glanced around at the men. Stern, solemn faces. Whatever Dr. Kasim was about to reveal was very important to them. A revered secret. This was the final door opening. Martin turned back to Dr. Kasim. To those ancient ghostly eyes measuring him. He was almost afraid to ask the question. “What are you talking about?”

Dr. Kasim touched his temple with the tip of his pipe. “There’s a kind of interference that clouds the black man’s mind. This interference keeps black children from focusing on their studies. This interference turns black teens into drug addicts and killers. This interference keeps black men from being good fathers and providers. This interference keeps a black man behaving like a slave even when he’s the master. It is this interference that keeps the black man from walking the earth with pride. There’s no scientific name for it, and you won’t find it in any medical books, but it’s as real as depression or bipolar disease or any other psychological disorder. I call it simply
black noise
.”

“And you’re saying that I have this disease? This black noise?”

Dr. Kasim nodded. “But not just you. As I said, all black men suffer from it. And that is exactly why I built Forty Acres. To help strong black men free their minds of the interference. To teach them how to quiet the noise. And once my students accomplish that, they become unstoppable. Just look at the results.” Dr. Kasim waved his hands with a flourish before the other men in the room, like a stage magician at the conclusion of his grandest illusion.

The men were all smiling at Martin now, their faces lit up with some secret joy. Could what Dr. Kasim was telling him be true? That these great men owed their phenomenal success to some kind of mysterious therapy?

“Martin, listen to him,” Damon said. “The doctor will change your life forever.”

“Brother, once that noise goes away,” Solomon said, “the whole world will look different.”

“This is a new beginning for you, brother,” Kwame said. “A beautiful new beginning.”

Tobias patted Martin on the shoulder. “I wish I were you, learning this for the first time.”

Even Carver was smiling at him. “You’re lucky to be here, Grey. Quieting the noise will change your whole way of thinking.”

Dr. Kasim blew a long stream of smoke as he looked at Martin. Studied him. “I can heal you of the sickness. I can quiet the black noise in your head. But you have to open your mind for the cure to work. Can you open your mind, brother?”

It was Carver’s last comment that really struck Martin. That gave Martin a strange feeling that he was the guest of honor at some surreal intervention. And the more Martin thought about it, the clearer it became. That’s exactly what this was. In their minds he was like an addict. But not hooked on drugs; he was an addict hooked on this so-called condition that they believed was responsible for holding the black man down. They had brought Martin out to Forty Acres to confront him with their truth and, as Carver so bluntly put it, change his whole way of thinking. Their goal was to persuade him to accept their unusual view of the world—an extreme afrocentric worldview that, no doubt, empowered them. Made them feel more confident and walk a little taller. And what was wrong with that? How was Forty Acres any different from dozens of private country clubs around the country? Clubs where black servants catered to an all-Caucasian membership. Forty Acres was just the reverse, with a touch of dark humor. If subscribing to Dr. Kasim’s “black noise” philosophy was the final step to joining their inner circle, so be it. Martin didn’t know if Damon and the others really benefited from Dr. Kasim’s teachings, but what he had heard so far was intriguing. “Yes, I can open my mind,” Martin replied finally. “Tell me. How do I quiet this black noise?”

Dr. Kasim frowned. “Before I provide that answer, you require another answer.”

“What do you mean? What answer?”

“The answer to the question that you haven’t asked me yet.”

Martin was quiet, trying to understand.

Dr. Kasim continued, “If you said to me that you hear a strange noise, what would you expect my immediate response to be?”

“‘What noise?’”

Dr. Kasim nodded. “Why haven’t you asked me that?”

Martin thought about it. “I guess I assumed it was more of a metaphor.”

“Perhaps. But a metaphor for what? You didn’t ask because you don’t believe any of this. Am I right?”

After a beat, Martin frowned. “Sorry. It’s not that I don’t believe it. It’s just hard to get my head around.”

Dr. Kasim smiled. “Don’t be sorry for being honest. Honesty is the first sign that your mind is willing to open.” Then Dr. Kasim leaned closer. “Only a damn fool believes anything he’s told without questioning it. Are you a damn fool, brother?”

Martin shook his head. “No, I’m not.”

“Prove it. Prove to me your mind is truly open.”

At first Martin didn’t know how to respond. His thoughts were frozen by those piercing, ghostly eyes. Then the answer came to him. It was so obvious that he couldn’t see it. The answer was the question. “The black noise. What is it?”

Dr. Kasim leaned back in his chair wearing a pleased smile. “Now we are getting somewhere.”

CHAPTER 42

O
scar carefully removed an old framed photograph from the mantel and handed it to Dr. Kasim. In the faded black-and-white photo, a young black man, his bare torso rippling with muscles, stood beside a wooden plow hitched to a stout horse. In the background a small weather-beaten house and newly built barn sat at the edge of a freshly plowed field. The young man in the photograph looked tired and dirty but there was still determination and pride in his gray eyes.

“That’s me, when I was still Thaddeus Walker, on my farm back in 1937.” Dr. Kasim spoke with a spark of admiration that left no doubt that he was truly the man in the photo. “My father used to be a sharecropper, but when the landowner died, he willed my father a tiny patch of land. A little more than a year later, my father dropped dead on his land and I inherited it. It was just one acre but I worked that acre hard. My father had sowed that land with his sweat and blood and I was determined to make it pay. One day I raised my eyes from the soil and discovered that my tiny patch had expanded a little. Through the years I had purchased more and more of the land around my property, and before long I was the owner of a fifteen-acre farm. That might not sound like much today, but back then in Macon the only thing that most black folks owned was the clothes on their back. A black man with a fifteen-acre spread was something exceptional. I married the prettiest black girl in town; people looked up to me. I had big plans to expand my property even further and have lots of children to help me work it. As far as I was concerned, my whole life was set. But I was a fool. I was doing better than many of the white people in town, but I didn’t see the envy and bitterness in my white neighbors’ eyes until it was too late.”

Dr. Kasim passed the framed photograph back to Oscar, who carefully returned it to its spot on the mantel. Martin noticed a hint of sadness in the doctor’s eyes as the photograph left his hand, as if he hated to part with the idealistic young man in the picture. Martin and the other men waited patiently as the doctor took a moment to relight his pipe. Although Martin was sure that the others had heard Dr. Kasim’s story before, they all appeared just as riveted as he was. Dr. Kasim puffed his pipe back to life, dropped the smoldering match into a nearby ashtray, then continued his tale, eyes edged with bitterness.

“Richard Brown Jr. was the only son of the landowner who left my father that first tiny patch. Father and son were similar only in name. Even from the start Junior resented his father’s generous gift to my father. And after I had worked that land into an enterprise that was beginning to rival his own, he went insane with hatred. He offered several times to buy my farm and I always flatly refused. Not because his price wasn’t fair but because I believed that that land was who I was. My identity. And without it, I would be nothing.

“But Junior saw only a stubborn Negro who was making him, a white man, look like a fool. So Junior gave up trying to buy my land and found another way to get it. He whispered in the ears of some of his friends, people who had influence in the courts and the clerk’s office. White people who sympathized with his Negro problem. Suddenly the county judge revoked Junior’s father’s will. The deed to that tiny patch of land that my father left me was taken from me and given to Junior. Even worse, because my success with the surrounding acres was a direct offshoot of working the original land, I was forced to sell it all to Junior for less than a tenth of what it was worth. And when I refused to take Junior’s money, the sheriff and all his deputies came out and kicked me and my wife off the land.”

“But they couldn’t have done that,” Martin said, regretting the impulse even as the words left his mouth. Dr. Kasim’s story took place in a time when the color of your skin was directly related to how much justice you received.

“Oh, but they did do it,” Dr. Kasim said. “They did it as easily as the government takes fifty percent of every dollar you earn. They robbed me of my land right out in plain sight. In the name of the law . . .”

“The white law,” Tobias sneered.

Martin found Dr. Kasim’s story moving, and he could understand how anyone who had suffered such an injustice might harbor a grudge against the offenders, but what did any of this have to do with this so-called black noise that afflicted all black men? Martin was pondering a way to phrase the question without appearing impatient when Dr. Kasim smiled and said, “Patience, brother. I’m getting to it. Question is, are you ready?”

Martin didn’t give an answer, and Dr. Kasim didn’t wait for one. Instead the old man just blew a stream of smoke and went on.

“My reaction to losing my land was surprising. I wasn’t devastated or heartbroken or depressed. None of that. I was so filled up with anger that there was room for nothing else. Not even the love for my wife. I took her back to her father’s house and I never laid eyes on the woman again. I lived in the woods surrounding my land and all I did was eat, shit, and watch that white man. For weeks and weeks I watched that white man and his white family and his white friends living off what was mine, and for weeks and weeks my anger grew. I began to realize that the pure and perfect anger that I felt was fueled by something more than just my personal loss. Something deeper. Like a pressure inside me suddenly let loose. It was the anger I felt for all the crimes committed against my people. For kidnapping and raping and enslaving and killing my people. It was the anger I felt because no one had been punished for these crimes. It was the anger they tell black men to keep inside. The anger he’s told that he just has to let go of because all that raping and killing happened in the past. It was that anger that I felt as I watched that white man . . . and I began to feel thankful to him. Because that anger led me to a greater purpose. A purpose far more important than owning a few acres of dirt.

“I decided that I wasn’t going to play by the white man’s rules any longer. No, I was going to unleash my pent-up anger and dedicate my life to avenging my people.”

Dr. Kasim paused, catching his breath.

“And how were you planning to do that?” Martin asked.

Dr. Kasim gave an unexpected shrug. “I didn’t have a clue. But I did have an idea how I could start. I crawled out of the woods with my hat in hand and I asked Junior for a job. Most people would think twice about keeping around a man that you had just cheated out of life, but he was so eager to completely humiliate the stubborn Negro that he took me on. I worked hard and I saved every penny until, after a few years, I had enough to quit and buy my own piece of land in the next county. It was only an acre, another tiny patch like my father left me, but this time I had a new idea as to how I could make that land pay. I went back to visit Junior, but not in the light of day. I went in the dead of night. The same way his ancestors would raid African villages. The same way masters would creep into the beds of their female slaves and rape them. I kidnapped Junior from his home and kept him chained to a beam in my barn. My place was pretty isolated, so I’d work him in the fields all day and keep him locked up in chains at night. And let me tell you, I got a lot of work done that way.”

Martin couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t. “Are you saying that you made Junior your
slave
?”

“That is exactly what I’m saying.”

“But that’s—”

“Go on, say it,” Dr. Kasim urged. “Illegal?”

Martin had another word in mind:
wrong
. But hearing Dr. Kasim’s mocking tone, Martin merely nodded.

“Running a red light is illegal. Burglarizing someone’s home is illegal. But abducting a man and enslaving him like an animal for his entire life, that’s far worse, wouldn’t you agree?”

Martin did not speak. Dr. Kasim had just confessed to a serious crime with the ease of delivering a punch line. True, the offense had occurred decades ago, but as far as Martin knew there was no statute of limitations on kidnapping and slavery. And what troubled Martin more was that Damon, Solomon, Tobias, Kwame, and Carver all appeared to be comfortable with Dr. Kasim’s confession.

“You look shocked,” Dr. Kasim said to Martin.

“Shouldn’t I be? If that story’s true—”

Dr. Kasim smiled. “I’m an old man. I might get some of the details mixed up but the good parts, like the first time I slapped chains on that white bastard, I never get wrong.”

“That’s a very serious crime. Why tell me about it?”

“Because you asked about the black noise.”

“I still haven’t heard anything about any black noise.”

“But you have. That uneasiness and resistance that you’re feeling right now, that’s a normal reaction when you begin to become conscious of the noise.”

“But I don’t hear any damn noise,” Martin snapped.

Dr. Kasim waggled his pipe at Martin. “Annoyance is also a typical reaction. Your mind wants to shut down, but you must fight that impulse. You must keep your thoughts open until I finish my story. Can you do that, brother?”

“Believe me, I’m trying. But all I’ve heard so far is you talking.”

Dr. Kasim nodded. “Sometimes you don’t notice a thing until it’s gone. And that’s exactly what happened to me. Back when I had my first farm, the only time I would have any contact with white men was when I’d have to go into town to buy seeds or supplies from their stores. A black man would have to be careful of what kind of mood he caught a white man in. Sometimes a white man would treat you like anybody else and charge you a fair price. Sometimes they’d treat you mean and jack up the price just because you were a Negro. And sometimes they’d just refuse to transact business with you at all. I used to dread these encounters because it made me, one of the most successful farmers in the county, feel like I was less than a man. I wouldn’t even look those white men in the eye too long for fear that they’d take it the wrong way. But after Junior stole my farm and then I stole him, something about me changed. Over the years, as I forced Junior to work my land, I began to notice a profound change in my personality. Gradually, when I would go into town, I would deal with those white men with more and more confidence. My manner became firm and more direct. I would hold my head up high and look those white men straight in the eye. And the odd thing was, no matter what mood those men were in, they never took offense. All of a sudden they were treating me with respect. It was as if something inside their subconscious was responding to whatever had changed in me. But what was it? What about me had changed? Looking back now, the answer seems perfectly obvious, but back then I had to think on the problem for a long time before I solved the mystery.” Dr. Kasim tapped his temple. “That constant black noise in my head that had drowned out my pride and humanity—it was suddenly gone. That’s what had changed in me.”

“That still doesn’t explain what black noise is,” Martin said.

Dr. Kasim fixed Martin with an intense stare, a lifetime of wisdom pouring out of his ancient eyes. “Black noise is screams,” the doctor said, his voice grim. “The screams of our kidnapped, enslaved, tortured, raped, and murdered ancestors crying out for vengeance.”

Dr. Kasim’s sudden intensity caused Martin to draw back, like he was avoiding a blast of heat from a roaring fire. He saw the other men nod in agreement.

“The screams of our ancestors haunt every black man’s soul,” Dr. Kasim said, with sorrow in his voice, “a constant reminder that the white man not only conquered our forefathers but robbed them of their humanity. And because of this burden of shame and humiliation, deep down every man of African descent, no matter how rich or powerful, harbors a poisonous seed of doubt that he is truly equal to the white man. Even worse, a fear of the white man.”

Martin was quiet a moment. “I don’t feel that way,” he said at last, with deep thought. “I do not feel inferior to white people.”

Dr. Kasim gave a dismissive grunt. “Of course you’d deny it. What kind of man would admit that he’s inferior to another man? But if your mind was truly open, you’d see that what I’m telling you is true. The black noise is very real. Working in the background, holding you and every other black man back like an invisible leash. Only once you recognize it, only then can you learn how to quiet it.”

Martin pondered this a moment. “And how do you do that?” he asked.

“That is what I had stumbled upon when I made Junior my slave,” Dr. Kasim said. “My tiny act of revenge had appeased the black noise. Now whenever I faced a white man, I could look him dead in the eye, because I’d taken an action to avenge my race. I wasn’t a victim any longer, groveling at the feet of my conqueror. Suddenly, I could stand toe-to-toe with the white man on the same playing field because now I was his equal. Those screams of my ancestors were replaced by the pleas of that white man chained up in my barn.” Dr. Kasim leaned closer and laid a fatherly hand on Martin’s shoulder. “Brother, until you quiet the noise in your head, you will never be able to look a white man in the eye with genuine pride. And because of that, you will never achieve your full potential.”

Damon, Solomon, Tobias, Kwame, and Carver all blew smoke and threw back drinks. “Amen to that,” Tobias said.

Martin turned his gaze back to the doctor. It still didn’t make sense. “You’re saying that in order for a black man to reach his true potential, he has to keep a white man prisoner in his basement?”

Dr. Kasim made a face. “Come now. Think about it, brother. Could men such as these, men under constant scrutiny, get away with something like that?”

“No,” Martin replied, detecting a disingenuous tone in the doctor’s voice. “That would be crazy.”

“Indeed it would,” Dr. Kasim whispered.

“But according to your theory, it takes an act of vengeance to get rid of the black noise. An act of vengeance against a white man.”

“Oh, it’s not a theory, brother.” Dr. Kasim gestured to the surrounding books in his library. “I could show you countless published studies on the ill effects of abject injustice on the human psyche. Depression, diminished self-worth, lower IQs, suicide, even erectile dysfunction. I could show you a dozen more papers by esteemed psychologists on how revenge is an essential human trait. A primal instinct as innate and necessary as reproduction. It’s even in the Bible. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Dr. Kasim shook his head. “No, Martin. What I teach is not a theory. It’s a fact.”