Southern Legitimacy Statement: Heat that bears down like warm inland waters, spice that nourishes even as it cuts through, and stories that are passed down as precious family heirlooms. I am not from the American South, but I know a thing or two about life as a citizen of the Global South.
Split
You should go see Jessey Gurney.
Who’s Jessey Gurney?
He is a man who walks up and down 67th street telling people his name.
Why does he do that?
So he won’t forget who he is.
How could a name make him not forget? It’s not enough to know a name to know a person.
To him it’s the thread end of the spool. He holds on to it so the spool won’t unravel.
Since when has he been there?
A couple of months now. He began the past December some weeks after his family died.
They died? How?
They say he burned them alive.
Who are the they?
His neighbors, and a man out for a walk in the woods behind Jessey’s house. They claim to have seen him that night bustling about in his backyard with a jerry can minutes before the house went up in flames.
What a malicious claim to make about someone in the throes of a terrible tragedy.
What a malicious thing to have done.
If he did do it, wouldn’t he have been held prisoner?
He did it do it. Only they couldn’t prove it.
You sound sure. Imagine being the only survivor of something so horrible – your whole family gone and with such violence and then being accused of having perpetrated it. He’s suspicious because he survived.
They couldn’t prove it because he had a watertight alibi.
It’s only people projecting their own fears and insecurities onto this man. It’s too terrible to imagine that you could wake up one day and lose all your family, gone up in flames, due to a stroke of bad luck or an act of random violence. If it were a matter of chance, beyond your control, it could also happen to you. It keeps people safe to imagine that deliberate intent was involved, since if you do not possess deliberate intent, and most people believe they don’t, then you can keep your loved ones safe.
People say he learnt dark magic to split himself into two. He used his shadow self to set the house on fire, while his flesh self was tucked away in a bar on 67th. He chose the busiest night of the week to go in there too.
That is some turn. You do not believe this bewildering muckraking.
I wouldn’t if I didn’t know it to be true.
What do you mean that you know it to be true?
I learnt the magic too. I can split myself in two.
No, you cannot.
I can.
This is not funny.
I was scared too. I still am. This is power. You will when you see it with your own eyes. I’m not him. I’m the shadow self.
I can touch you. You’re not shadow.
I am solid, but not as solid as him.
Not solid. If I cut you open, will you bleed?
I do not know. I haven’t tried such a thing.
If I stab you through your heart, will you die?
I wouldn’t, but he would. I’m not as solid as him. There’s less of me to hurt.
How are you so sure?
Look at what happened to Jessey Gurney.
What happened to Jessey Gurney?
His shadow on the 67th has been telling people its name so it can still hold on to a memory with its earthly tether gone.
Are you saying that the flesh and bone Jessey Gurney is dead?
Once his family died, he walked into the river at the 19th entrance. His shadow is all that is left of him. It has no reason to stay but is afraid to go. It grasps at memory like straw.
Why did you split yourself in two?
Because he was curious.
What happens next?
He is going to see the world.
And you?
I will stay and hope to forget.
