The Confession of Copeland Cane Read online

  AN UNNAMED PRESS BOOK

  Copyright © 2021 Keenan Norris

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Permissions inquiries may be directed to [email protected]. Published in North America by the Unnamed Press.

  www.unnamedpress.com

  Unnamed Press, and the colophon, are registered trademarks of Unnamed Media LLC.

  ISBN: 978-1-951213-25-1

  eISBN: 978-1-951213-27-5

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021933983

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are wholly fictional or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Designed and Typeset by Jaya Nicely

  Manufactured in the United States of America by Sheridan, Inc.

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  First Edition

  THE CONFESSION OF COPEL AND CANE

  A NOVEL

  KEENAN NORRIS

  THE CONFESSION OF COPEL AND CANE

  Jacqueline

  Don’t worry about who I am. Like Copeland would say, don’t vex, or do it on your own time and about yourself. Don’t vex me. I have enough to worry about all by myself. I stayed up all night last night with my thoughts, and on this sleepless morning they are still with me. Maybe I should say yes, yes, I’ll make this recording and risk my reputation and possibly my freedom in the process, or maybe I should tell him to turn himself in, make sure to text it to him, put it in writing so that law enforcement doesn’t go getting its black people confused.

  Who am I? I could say more about myself, but it would only reveal my methods of misdirection. The real tell is what I decide to do with this dilemma that that boy has decided to drop into my voicemail like an orphan child onto my doorstep. If I put my student journalist suit on, there’s no way I can say no to the wailing child. Not when his story has all but knocked on my door and asked me to tell it. Not when his story could make my career before I’ve even made it out of college—and all I have to do is hit record. That’s a question, not a statement—that’s all I have to do?

  I have no idea what to do, let alone what comes next, only that Cope’s got to talk to someone, got to tell his story to someone (to everyone?). After all, law enforcement via Soclear* has wasted no time telling theirs:

  Early reports indicate that the remaining fugitive is a male between ages fifteen and twenty-five. African American. Athletic build. Has a history of criminal behavior as a juvenile. Investigators are reviewing his records.

  A second bulletin states that if he does not turn himself in before their next scheduled briefing in two days’ time that they will bring charges. They might charge a single individual or multiple persons, maybe with one crime, maybe with multiple crimes. The public wants answers, so apparently everything is on the table. The timetable is even on the table; charges might come sooner.

  One part of me doesn’t want to involve myself in this. Another tells me that I’m already involved, that there’s no way not to be involved. Maybe being black means there is no means of escape. I’m always implicated, even when I have no connection to the crime, even when it’s only my heart that keeps me here thinking, questioning, fighting myself over freedom.

  Like, I know what the Fourth of July wasn’t to the slave, but what’s freedom to me? I think Cope is probably freer than I am. At least he’s not scared of the surveillance state. Even if his fearlessness is all from ignorance, it’s still more than I can say for myself. Confession: I’ve never participated in a proper street protest. In justifying this terrible apathy, I excuse myself by saying the same things that most people say, which is that even if I had picked up a sign and marched somewhere in a crowd of like-minded, angry people, there would probably be more police than protestors once we got where we were going, and, another excuse, that large crowds hive contagion, and, to top it off, that the merger of certain major media with the surveillance state simply isn’t worth messing with. Oh, and that it isn’t 2020 anymore, that everything is so different now—even though so many things are the same. (I mean, in fairness, there have been some changes. The city within a city that I once called home did go private. Its public school turned private, making Piedmontagne even more exclusive than it already was. Then the private police showed up. At first you would see one here, one there, in some weird uniform, standing guard in front of the custom courtyard gating of a mansion. Then the compounds went up, neighboring the mansions, and I started to see more and more cops in private security colors, usually a menacing corporate insignia flush upon black fabric, but other times nothing, no identification at all.)

  At college, my Media Studies professors tell me that the merger of network news with national security has been so subtle and so slow that now that it’s happened, now that it’s in place, its omnipresence escapes notice. One ancient professor whose name is on a textbook tells us that everything in America is the will of the people. That our capitalist system, its outcomes, is the decentralized voice of all 375 million of us. That we actually desire this new COINTELPRO or we wouldn’t be liking and hearting and clicking on all this crap. I took that argument in, and at first, I thought the woman most likely needed to retire, but then I thought how simple yet fathomless her thesis was, how much it implicated me and everyone else, and then my brain started decentralizing, flying apart like a Frisbee fracturing as it’s flung across the campus lawn. I came to the next morning, my face planted in the book that the professor has her name on, which we were studying for her class, of course. I felt painfully out of my depth or above my pay grade or whatever cop-out makes most sense, and I still feel that way—like I’m copping out out of ignorance, like all I know are the questions that I have wandered into. So why’s Cope calling me?

  That boy. He’s out there, phoning me like fear of arrest doesn’t factor into his equation. Like fear is foreign to him, which I know it’s not. Maybe he knows something I don’t and has figured out how to evade the police and the news, but I doubt it. As for me, I’m careful beyond careful not to state whether I’m contemplating my innocence in a studio apartment, or a small condo, or a town home, or a student hostel. And my city shall remain undisclosed, thank you. I police myself better than the police ever could. Here, how about I play detective on myself, interrogate my own imagination. Where might I be? How about an unaccounted-for New York City cellar? Underground, literally. Like Cope’s phone, I’m old school: I testify under penalty of perjury that I am me and the Pharcyde is on the phonograph. I’m smoking the finest California Kush, so good they might recriminalize it. Meanwhile I’ve strung LED lights across the perimeter of the ceiling to illumine me to myself.

  That story makes more sense than the other one repeating itself in my thoughts. That story is the one where I tell Copeland to play it safe, turn himself in, and prove his innocence in court. As soon as that story starts to take hold and I make my mind up to call him back and tell him what to do, I hear laughter, loud, deep laughter. I’m laughing, but it’s not my laugh, not my tenor at all that I’m hearing; it’s something from the insides of the city instead, a boy laughing through the streets and my body so loudly that all I can hear is him, and his laughing becomes crying and crying becomes testifying, and he calls out through me to me: Ain’t shit safe, girl!

  *Soclear Broadcasting: America. Politics. Business. Alert Desks.

  Cope

  They already arrested Keisha, Free, and DeMichael, snatched them up easy cuz Soclear done searched out they location. And then law enforcement did that criminal contact-tracing thing, followed them from they phones and whatnot, bagged them
up. Long as we’re talkin’ technology, boss, you might as well know my audio comes to you unencrypted in this bootleg ol’ Pre-sage voice app, the most off-brand, unheard-of cell phone app you will ever encounter. It calls itself the Cayman Islands of apps. Don’t ask how I got this mess on my phone, but it’s all yours truly gots to work with right now, so you might have to trust me on this one, even if you’re not trying to trust this technology.

  Real talk, Jacq: I only ask that the people hear me all the way out. It won’t jeopardize y’all no kinda way, except maybe in y’all’s feelings. I cain’t tell you about your heart, Jacq. But I’ma tell you what’s in mines. Nobody wanna hear why shit hit such a swerve and went so left, but the fact is it was all kinda facts done built up to the one big fact—excuse me, edit that—the one pivotal incident that everybody and they momma cares so much about: the crime in question, the weed that worked its way up from spoilt soil to choke the chief gardener.

  Now I’m giving testimony the only way I know how without having Mr. Miranda’s rights read to me. I’m making a real record right now not just of how that man got got, but about everything that got me here, Copeland Cane, the alleged accomplice, the fugitive, the ghost, the rabbit, the radiated, the remediated, medicated, incarcerated, the child who fell outta Colored People Time and into America, the whole deal, to go against the apex predator they steady creating me into on the news feed every five minutes.

  And fair warning, I tend to tell three stories to tell one and get sidetracked sometimes, but I’ma try and not do that shit.

  *

  Since they wanna go and air me out for everything I done did since I done crawled out the crib, here’s some back in the day: I’m Copeland Cane V, but it’s probably more’n five of me in our history, we just don’t have the records on all that. They say the name comes from a plantation, the Copeland plantation in Louisiana, and that after slavery ended my people came with that given name to Oklahoma, Greenwood, and, yes, my folks’ folks’ folks’ folks’ folks did get torched up out that mug when the white people went and burnt up Black Wall Street, murdering three hundred some people of the sun. At least that’s why I believe they left. I know for a fact the fam fled out that bitch on account of somethin’ mean June 1921—them and all of Oakland’s Oklahoma ancestors done came out west, no turn backs, not one piddlin’ pillar of salt left behind, as Daddy would say.

  But now that old man does look back, and he blames hisself like my predicament can be put down to his parenting. But, real spiel Curt Flood Field, deep in the heart of East Oakland that old man’s always been around for me, which is more’n most kids can count on from they father, even if, truth be told, mines was too much around for me. Yes, back in the day, Daddy had me surrounded. He was everything to me, even if, by the accounting of the government, he barely existed, having no employment, no property, no credit, just a Social Security number and a name. When it came to work, he stayed unemployed, or he stayed employing hisself, mostly unsuccessfully, which ain’t much different, am I right?

  Now, don’t get it twisted, the old man was a hard worker. Had him his tools, his parts and pieces, plots and plans drawn up and scribbled down on Post-it notes and loose sheets of paper that was scattered round the apartment like so many surprises. He was an inventor, you dig. His mind never rested, and never let me rest neither. On God, Jacq, any hour I wadn’t in school had me on work detail. Inventors need laborers, after all, so I served as Daddy’s workforce no matter the project. Sweep that porch. Go pass out these flyers. Knock on them doors. Haul this water. Run tell that to him/her/them/the man on the telephone/the customer over there/the icy motherfucker with the permits and the mad on ’bout any and everything east of downtown. And while you’re at it, dodge a hungry stray dog or two. Wadn’t no money in it neither. Once in a blue, the old man would throw me a couple cowry shells: Here, just so you don’t go hollerin’ to yo’ teacher or momma about no slavery; don’t go askin’ for no salary, though, that food on yo’ plate, clothes on yo’ back, and roof over yo’ head is CEO money, damn near. Focus, boy, he would say, we tryna make somethin’ of ourselves.

  From this young sahab’s perspective, my old man’s vo-cation made about as much sense as Arabic. Wadn’t nobody else’s father trying to invent anything when the post office was hiring and shit. But with time and experience, now I see his inventions as the natural response to an East Oakland existence, what with all the tests and experiments and other mess we done had ran on us—what else could a man do but start experimenting his own self? If the old man had a problem, it wadn’t his career choice, it was that he wanted to make more of hisself’n the world would allow: Daddy dreamt of uplifting our neighborhood and overcoming it all at once, making millions off a code-switching app, a black business magnet, and anything else you couldn’t think of but he could. But selling dreams to broke folks who ain’t seen inside they eyelids in who knows how long—well, suffice it to say, Daddy’s dreams was always a little outside his reach.

  Meanwhile, Rockwood remained well within our grasp: the Rock, that towering old East Oakland apartment complex, which, like Daddy, didn’t fit the description. Understand, Rockwood was not the hood. Not in the 2010s, it wadn’t. That whole line about our buildings being Oakland’s last housing project, which they sold us all the way to the wrecking balls, that woulda been news to us residents back in the day when I was knee-high to a Nike shoe. To the contrary, the Rock was actually tranquilo.

  Come to think of it, I’m not sure if we was even all that poor, or if the city just got too damn expensive, but most folks had lost jobs in ’20, found worse ones in ’21, and ain’t really recover since. Those losses alone labeled our neighborhood. But it wadn’t a homeless camp on every corner back in the day. And wadn’t all these compounds for rich folk just flaunting they wealth right in front of us. The wealthy was strictly segregated to downtown back then. And with it being less of the extremes in the streets, it wadn’t so common for folks to covet the next man’s bag, let alone for them to gank it at gunpoint. We lived in an apartment complex, not a housing project; a neighborhood, not a quarantine zone. It was only as I got older and the housing projects nearby, buck-wild Ravenscourt and the rest, was razed that the place where we lived was deemed guilty by its disassociation from the future of the city, from this future state that don’t even wanna include us. But it wadn’t always like this. In the beginning, Oakland was rough, sho nuff, but Soclear and that thing y’all call America was a million miles away. As long as we played it close, life and death felt safe on the Rock.

  **✦

  Rockwood didn’t have no elementary school, though, so when the quarantine came down and schools opened back up, we were sent away: each morning seen us sent several blocks off to a below-code campus where we learnt numbers, cut up the King’s English, and forgot what innocence was.

  The day stands out, unforgettable even if I was tryna get it out my memory: there I was, minding my own damn business, a child small and skinny and sentenced to the shadows. You see, for a second grade grasshopper like myself, being big and strong, but slow, woulda been just fine. Everyone would know not to test me, or if they did, they woulda social distanced while they did it—outta arm’s reach at the very least. Small, slim, and fast would work, too—I’da been good at the games kids play by juking dodge balls, two-hand-touch tacklers, and queer smeerers. What does not work is small and skinny and slow, especially if you done been moved ahead one grade class because of some test you took ’fore you knew how to read. That’s what I was, a child ahead of his time, a kid cursed with lankiness and littleness and so dead on my feet that I couldn’t catch a cold butt-neked at the wharf after dark. So I was always picked in that last pocket of losers.

  That’s why on that fateful day, the day my life began, I wadn’t doing no more’n my usual, playin’ the background, avoidin’ competition like my existence depended on it. But the great DeMichael Quantavius Chesnutt Bradley, who was in my same grade but wouldn’t so much as glare in my di-rec
tion most days, was having none of it.

  “Aiiiyo,” DeMichael, who was almost the size of a grown man, commanded, “you in the race now.”

  Put a question mark on the end of that if you feel like it, just know it ain’t always the tone of the voice, let alone the words being said; sometimes it’s the size of the speaker and whether that boy has a reputation for puttin’ paws on people that’s the issue. DeMichael had that rep and he was actually twice my size, a great big, broad-shouldered child with frying pans for hands. Word was he had already been held back a grade, but a year’s growth in no way explained young Black Hercules. You see, I grew up pulling up old clips from the Cartoon Network where house pets killed whole families, kids committed war crimes, and whatnot. So it was easy to imagine DeMichael as the Complected Hercules who might actually tear my head from my torso if I told him, Nah, nigga, I don’t wanna run, I’ma just be chillin’ right here in a private meeting with myself.

  “Get in on this, family,” DeMichael encouraged, or threatened.

  The other runners, Keisha, Free, Trey, Miguel—these wadn’t regular schoolchildren, now. Keish was tall than a mug and had the longest stride I had ever seen. I was pretty sure she could outrun me just by stretching. Free was half her height and half Egyptian, but everything else about them was one and the same. They loved the same music, kept the same crushes, got sent home the same day for wearing the same bloodstained *8:46 shirts to school and shit. Trey was tall and athletic, too, but he was the opposite of both them girls as soon as recess ended; bruh didn’t care about none of that back-in-the-day stuff, no politics, history, or anything else had to do with a book. And then there was Miguel, whose daddy got deported and still cain’t get back in the country. They mighta came up in chaos, but somethin’ good had got in they water, cuz these kids was no less than the future stars of every sport. Keisha and Free could run, Trey could run and hoop. Miguel seemed to be good at everything. Each of them was destined for domination. They would doubtless leave your boy in the dust, dust up to my eyeballs. I pictured my body post-race, a dusty, old mummy cast in last place forever like the people at Pompeii cased up in ash.