Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel José Older

and ride it into the motherfucking sunset.’”
    “Damn.”
    “Again, paraphrasing.”
    “Right.”
    “They said the Creator made certain ones of us look white for a reason, that we had a mission: to infiltrate thewhite man’s world and find out what we could, right? Because the fact is, a white dude will tell my pale ass some shit he won’t even tell your pale-but-brown ass, just on the sheer fact that I pass much more than you do, Carlos. It’s just a fact of it. And I can complain about it, because it’s easy to fall into bitterness when you got white people in your ear talking about all their twisted fears and fantasies, trust me. But now it’s ordained as such. There’s a reason for it. The Creator wants us to use our complexness for the good of our people. Reconnaissance. You feel me?”
    I nod because I do, I really do. I’m not sure how it applies to my life yet, but I definitely feel him.
    “And I was like, fuck: I have a mission. A divine motherfucking mission, no less. All right.” Russell struts a few times and adjusts his slick blue suit like he’s just now coming into the glorious realization of who he is. “That’s some shit I can deal with. Let me tell you something.” As if I could stop him at this point. “I never drank again. I sold all my coke.”
    “You sold it? Most people just flush it.”
    “I’m a businessman.”
    “Understood.”
    “And I never looked back.”
    “Damn.”
    Russell nods endearingly and swoops into the store on the wings of his own self-generated momentum. I stand there for a few seconds trying to puzzle out whether the dead are the white people or the Indians and then Baba Eddie pokes his head out. “You wanted something, Carlos?”
    “Oh, yes! No. Wait . . . Hang on.” I’m all turned around from Russell’s speech.
    “Hanging.”
    I see Eddie make for his pack of smokes and stop him. “Wait—let’s go inside.”
    He looks disappointed but shrugs and leads me to the back room. Baba Eddie divines with a bunch of cowry shells, a piece of chalk, and a pebble, from what I can tell. I’ve never actually gotten a reading from him, but I get the feeling he knows what he’s doing. His reading room is tiny, possibly a converted broom closet or bathroom, with a little foldout table and a chair on either side. A Ferrari calendar from 1993 hangs on the wall as if it belongs there, and there’s a little shelf with various spiritual knickknacks in the corner. That’s about all that could fit in the place anyway.
    “You want a reading?” Baba Eddie says with a mischievous grin. Maybe one day I’ll get one, but this isn’t the moment. Part of me just doesn’t want to know what kind of spiritual mess is going on with me right now; I think it’d be too depressing. Part of me just can’t be bothered.
    “I’ll let you know.” I take a seat in the client’s chair. “Things’ve gotten hairier.”
    “Hairier than ngks in Mama Esther’s hood? Do tell.” Baba sits in his spot and listens attentively as I run down the events of yesterday, glazing over certain details around the Amanda situation. When I finish, Baba just sits glumly for a few ticks of the clock and ponders.
    “That is hairy,” he finally says.
    “Indeed.”
    “Riley thinks the guy’s building something?”
    “Well, plotting. Maybe building. We have no idea, to be honest.”
    Baba Eddie lets out a sustained
hmmm
and unconsciously fondles his cigarettes. “I wonder.”
    “Do you wonder something in particular or just wonder?”
    “I wonder . . . I wonder if this character, this nakedfellow, is actually trying to get your attention more than anything else.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Yes. You said his massacre had an air of performance to it, no?”
    “Well, he waited till we were all there, certainly. And”—I shiver a little somewhere deep inside—“he looked me right in the eye when he did the real estate Hasid.”
    “See. He could’ve killed you, no?”
    “Well, I