Free Pym by Mat Johnson

It changed on me,” my cousin told me, in a way that sounded like he was adding it to a long list of things in this world that had betrayed him.
    He asked about my motive for the expedition and I launched into the story of Pym . As his eyes drooped, I suddenly appreciated Garth for his ability to feign the slightest interest in literary history. Next, he asked me about the family. It was clear he wasn’t interested. He was just checking to see if I was really me. Once that was confirmed, Booker Jaynes cut short my family update.
    “This bar holds a lot of memories for me. I was here, taking a break from working a dock in Brooklyn, the morning the truck bomb went off in the shipping entrance of the Twin Towers. I heard the bomb go off, went outside. Smelled the smoke and saw the soot-covered people, and it all kicked in. I knew exactly what I had to do. It was time to march, ” he told me, hit the last word slow and hard so that I could feel the impact, then took a swig of his carrot juice. Immediately locating a Kinko’s, my cousin had a flyer typed, printed out, and copied by the hundred before the smoke had even cleared. Setting the rally for four hours in the future, Booker Jaynes barked the news and handed out the flyers as he took his long walk north, from City Hall to Fourteenth Street. Hours later, flyers dispensed and throat parched from calling others to the cause, Booker Jaynes arrived at his rally point at Union Square, the historic site of American civil disobedience, and received the shock of his life.
    “Not one goddamn person came to the Twin Towers Bombing Rally. Not one, not even the Negroes bothered. Not even one news crew either, and I called them all. What type of shit is that? Not a one; people just walking by. What the hell has this country come to, that people won’t rally against injustice? What the hell is wrong with a society that won’t even bother marching anymore?”
    “But, you were going to march about what?” I asked my cousin, somewhat confused.
    “What? What was I going to march about?” Captain Jaynes spun in my direction, shoulders, chest, and all. When Booker Jaynes looked at you, he really looked at you with his whole body: an errant billy club in Little Rock in ’64 had resulted in a loss of rotation in his neck. “Negro, we were going to march! Don’t ask me about marching; what kind of ignorant ass question is that? Let me tell you, I marched at Selma, I marched in Mississippi, I marched in Montgomery. I know how to march.” The last sentence was delivered in a loud staccato, each word nearly a sentence in itself.
    “I’m sorry, Captain, I’m a bit lost,” I continued carefully, truly unsure as to whether I had missed some form of information. “March against whom? Why? I don’t understand, how would that help anything to do with the bombing?” Maybe I did lack some insight, but my cousin didn’t bother sharing his with me. Instead, he just stared me down, the gray snakes around his neck now still as if steadying themselves for a lunging attack. He paused to take me in. For a second, I thought he was going to stand up and walk out, leave me there sipping my wheatgrass. I could see he wanted to. But he didn’t. Instead he leaned forward, and in little more than a whisper, he let me in.
    “There are people out there, people who have made fortunes just following me around, finding out where I’m taking my boat next, so they can come right behind me and steal something. White folks who wake up every morning and say, ‘Hmm, I’m getting kind of low, I wonder what Captain Jaynes is finding that I can take from him.’ So this doesn’t go beyond this table, do you understand me?” he demanded. I didn’t really, but assured him I did. After making me swear a few more oaths, he continued.
    “This is the deal. Drinking. Water bottling. In Antarctica. All above sea level. Go down, cut and drill blocks of glacial ice, then ship it on tankers back up Stateside. Big