The Confession of Copeland Cane by Keenan Norris

Author:Keenan Norris [Norris, Keenan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Unnamed Press
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE CITY IS COVERED IN OUR DEAD FRIENDS NAMES

Maybe I was just a pawn for Pied-montay. I couldn’t call it. Still, I decided that I would write about Ravenscourt, all of it, everything that I had seen. I couldn’t guarantee Sherrod the money he and his fam actually needed, but I could tell they story.

As we crossed the street and walked back onto the Rock, DeMichael said, “It’s like birds. One has its song, another has a different song. Hella different songs. But they all jus’ birds, and if you shoot them out the air, they all gon’ fall the same.”

*

Later, at night, when it was just me and the explosions sounding away lonely as I was, I wrote my piece and I wondered about things. If we were all just the same kinda bird with so many songs, like DeMichael said, then what made my song special enough to write up in the Picayune? What was so special about me that I might become the “conscience of the campus community” one day if I could commit to communicating with my editors in an informative and efficient manner while also staying on deadline? It wadn’t too much to ask, which was why, when I thought about why I hadn’t done that shit to the best of my ability, I realized that somethin’ was holding me back. I knew I could do what the newsletter required of me, and I knew a gang of other folks who could do it, too, who would never even have the chance cuz wadn’t no one checkin’ for them in the first place. Why was I important enough for Pied-montay and for the newsletter and all that yang while DeMichael and Miguel and the others had to stay theyselves on the Rock? I asked myself this, and the only answer that came to me is ain’t shit special about me, not special enough at least.

Maybe, I figured, it was just a matter of quitting the newsletter. Writing was complicated and compromising and uncontrollable in ways I couldn’t even explain to myself, let alone to anyone else. Maybe I should just drop the Sherrod story and drop the journalism class, and then I could take regular PE and I could quit the track team. I pictured my responsibilities falling like dominoes and a dude in the Rockwood courtyard scoopin’ up them bones by the handful and demanding his money right then and there.

I wadn’t in no position to go demanding things of the prep school. It was them that had brought me in on they dime, not the other way around. I couldn’t just go making my own rules. Nor could I just go being a normal-ass student. It would not work. I was there to fulfill a public role. I knew that and they knew I knew it. I might not mess with the “conscience of the campus community” thing too tough, but it was no point in pretending that I could drop everything all at once.

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