Pym by Mat Johnson

resultant sigh was labored and bass filled. I asked if there was something wrong.
    “I will not be able to do this over the phone. You are a stranger, so I do not mind telling you: I am a very sick woman and I am not long for this world, honey. No, not long at all. If you expect me to discuss this … alleged Dirk Peters business with you, you will need … you will need to inquire in person. And considering my condition, you will have to do this immediately.” I eagerly agreed, and despite the clear theatrics, she had me hooked. Even though it would mean getting patted down at the airport for an hour, and risking an airborne explosion flying to Chicago.
    I didn’t know that meeting Mrs. Mathis also meant I would be forced to travel from Chicago to the bleak urban landscape of Gary, Indiana; after thoroughly reading her website, I was under the impression that Mahalia Mathis was a resident of the Second City. I soon found that what I thought was a residential address in Chicago was in fact a post office box, and that her driving directions led me not only out of the city but out of the state of Illinois altogether. This information arrived at my cottage in an overnight package from Mrs. Mathis, along with an elaborate press package that included glossy head shots of the lady and several print clippings from her neighborhood newsletter, some more than a decade old, all attesting to her numerous creative abilities.
    I found her residence an hour out of O’Hare without much trouble. It was harder to leave my rental car parked on her street, with its thugs hanging about the concrete like bats hang in caves.
    “Niggers!” Mrs. Mathis yelled out at them as she let me into her town house, a response which only increased my concern that the car was done for, despite the fact that she insisted this would scare them away for a while.
    The home of Mahalia Mathis was elegant on the inside, ornate. It was crowded too. There were many possessions on display in this house, and many, many cats to guard those possessions. Mrs. Mathis struck an impressive figure herself, wearing a muumuu of green paisley silk and a sparkled turban to match. She was a statuesque woman, both in height and in weight; aside from an occasional violent fit of coughing, she didn’t look sick or weak to me as she went about her overcrowded house, with its many boxes and piles of antiques and random curiosities. She was a hoarder, and I was happy about this: if this woman had ever possessed anything of use to my quest, it was clear that she still had it.
    It was in Mrs. Mathis’s living room, seated at a large mahogany table covered in antique lace, that we began our discussion in earnest, tape recorder and notepad on my side of the table, a dusty box marked “pictures” on its lid in a handwritten scrawl between us.
    “You must realize that the man you speak of—”
    “Dirk Peters,” I interrupted. I wanted no mistakes about this.
    “Dirk Peters,” she acknowledged with a hand to the side of her temple, as if even uttering those words made her anxious. “You have to understand, in my family, we weren’t even allowed to say his name out loud. No one in my mother’s generation talked about him, and that’s because no one in her mother’s generation did, or the one before that.”
    “But why?” I asked, largely because Mrs. Mathis took a couple of seconds off after her opening confession, dabbing her head with a handkerchief repeatedly even though it must have barely been more than sixty degrees Fahrenheit in the room. I was still wearing my coat.
    “Because he is the Dirk Peters written about by that great author Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, all those years ago. The one who accompanied Arthur Gordon Pym on his southern adventure!” she shot back at me as if I was a fool. But I did not feel like a fool at that moment. To the contrary, I felt brilliant: I hadn’t even mentioned Poe’s novel before this point.
    “Mrs. Mathis, do you realize that this