'Under your beard… where'd you get that thing around your neck?'
'You mean…' The old man's free hand moved to the peppery hair that went without break from the top of his chest to his chin. He unfastened the necklace, which fell, like a diamond snake. '…this? Where'd you get yours?'
He'd thought collar and cuff hid his own. 'On my way here. It says it comes from Brazil.'
The old man held the end of the chain close to see:
'…Japan?' then extended the end for him to look.
On the tab of brass were stamped letters:
The old man got it around his neck again and finally managed to secure it with one hand.
He looked down at the papers: he could read, just at the old man's crumpled cuff:
BELLONA TIMES
Wednesday, April 1, 1979
NEW BOY IN TOWN!
He frowned at that.
'I didn't see your chain,' the man went on, in un-requested explanation. 'But you wouldn't have asked if you hadn't got one yourself, now, would you?'
He nodded, mainly to make the geezer continue — an urging not needed.
'I guess it's like a prize for an initiation. Only you didn't know you were being initiated? And that sort of upset you, I bet.'
He nodded again.
'My name's Faust,' the old man said. 'Joaquim Faust.'
'Wakeem…?'
'You're pronouncing it right. From your accent, though, I bet you wouldn't put the same letters in it I do.'
He reached for Joaquim's extended hand: Joaquim caught his up in a biker shake. 'You say—' Joaquim frowned before he let go—'you got yours on your way here?
'That's right.'
Joaquim shook his head and said,
'On the clock,' Joaquim said. 'The front face. That little stub used to be the minute hand. So you can about figure out which way it's pointing.'
'Oh. What about the hour?'
Joaquim shrugged. 'I left the office around eleven. Least I guess it was eleven. I haven't been gone that long.'
'What happened to the… hands?'
'The niggers. The first night, I guess it was. When all that lightning was going on. They went wild. Swarmed all over. Broke up a whole lot of stuff around here — Jackson's just down there.'
'Jackson?'
'Jackson Avenue is where most of the niggers live. Used to live. You new?'
He nodded.
'See if you can get hold of the paper for that day. People say you never seen pictures like that before. They was burning. And they had ladders up, and breaking in the windows. This guy told me there was a picture of them climbing up on the church. And breaking off the clock hands. Tearing each other up, too. There's supposed to be one set of pictures; of this
'No. What?' he ceded, warily.
'He went down and hunted up the nigger in the pictures and had somebody interview him; and he printed
'But
Faust waved that away.
'There's this other colored man up from the South, some civil rights, militant person — a Mr Paul Fenster? He got here right around the time it happened. Calkins knows him too, I guess, and writes about what he's doing a lot. Now I would guess this guy probably has some decent intentions; but how's he going to do anything with all that George Harrison business, huh? I mean it's just as well—' he looked around—'there's not too many people left that care any more. Or that many niggers left in Jackson.'
He resolved annoyance and curiosity with the polite question:
'What started it? The riot I mean.'
Joaquim bent his head far to the side. 'Now you know, nobody has the story really straight. Something fell.'
'Huh?'
'Some people say a house collapsed. Some others say a plane crashed right there in the middle of Jackson. Somebody else was talking about some kid who got on the roof of the Second City bank building and gunned somebody down.'
'Somebody got
'Very. It was supposed to be a white kid on the roof and a nigger that got shot. So they started a riot.'
'What did the paper say?'
'About everything I did. Nobody knows which one happened for sure.'
'If a plane crashed, somebody would have known.'
'This was back at the beginning. Things were a hell of a lot more confused then. A lot of buildings were burning. And the weather was something else. People were still trying to get out. There were a hell of a lot more people here. And they were scared.'
'You were here then?'
Joaquim pressed his lips till mustache merged with beard. He shook his head. 'I just heard about the newspaper article. And the pictures.'
'Where'd you come from?'
'I'm sorry.' He was taken back.
'You going to meet a lot of people who'll get all kinds of upset if you go asking them about before they came to Bellona. I might as well tell you, so you don't get yourself in trouble. Especially—' Faust raised his beard and put a thumb beneath his choker—'people wearing one of these. Like us. I bet if I asked your name, or maybe your age,