LITMIR.BIZ

      This book was made possible thanks to a grant from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      First printing June 2017

      Cover and text design by Drew Stevens

      Cover photo: Untitled #301, from the series The Parts by Evie Leder, © 2016; courtesy of the artist.

       LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

      Names: Purnell, Brontez, author.

      Title: Since I laid my burden down / by Brontez Purnell.

      Description: New York: Feminist Press, [2017]

      Identifiers: LCCN 2016047025 (print) | LCCN 2016054862 (ebook) | ISBN 9781558614321 (Ebook All)

      Subjects: LCSH: African American men—Fiction. | Self-realization—Fiction. | Gay men—Fiction. | Domestic fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / African American / General. | FICTION / Gay. | FICTION / Family Life.

      Classification: LCC PS3616.U785 S56 2017 (print) | LCC PS3616.U785 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016047025

      CONTENTS

       PRAISE PAGE

       TITLE PAGE

       COPYRIGHT

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS

      ABOUT FEMINIST PRESS

      PROLOGUE

      Hate is a strong word, but sometimes it’s not a strong enough word. DeShawn hated this.

      He knew what had brought him back to Alabama. It was all that drinking, drugging, and fucking all those fucking worthless men. It was not any one catastrophe in particular, but all his failures in general. His uncle’s death was just happenstance.

      DeShawn got the call while in bed, in California: Your uncle is dead. The sentence punched him in the stomach, hard. He stayed in bed for two days, got up, packed, got on a plane, landed in Nashville, and drove an hour straight to the church. It was tucked deep in the woods, through the cotton fields, and sat on a grassy hill. The creek where he had been baptized almost thirty years earlier ran at the bottom of the hill. He remembered the cold, dirty water, and the preacher with one leg dunking him underwater like a little rag doll.

      DeShawn peeked into the church he grew up in, and was shocked by how much hadn’t changed. Maybe it was even moving backward. He entered and was handed a fan by the ushers, the same kind he was handed some thirty years ago as a little boy. It had a wooden handle with a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. or Frederick Douglass or Booker T. Washington. He couldn’t believe they were still using these fans, which were a symbolic gesture, as they really didn’t protect one from the oppressive humidity. Plus, the church had central cooling. As a child in the late eighties, a time before the church had an air conditioner or even a PA system, they only had the fans in the subtropical summer heat. That heat was a nuisance. As a child he would sit on the first pew and look back at the sea of black faces, all frantically fanning.

      Before the coming of the PA system, the church choir’s prerequisite was not that one could actually sing, but that one could project their voice to the back of the church. For this reason, DeShawn had led many songs in the children’s choir. He couldn’t carry a tune to save his life, but he could project. These things become metaphors for life if you’re not careful. DeShawn learned it well; projection of voice was everything—be it literal or on paper—as was judicious use of its divine opposite, silence.

      DeShawn sat some twenty feet from his uncle’s body and thought about how all open-casket funerals are a son of a bitch. DeShawn told his mother, should anything happen, he wanted to be cremated. “Where do you want your ashes thrown?” asked his mother. “IN THE EYES OF MY ENEMIES!”

      There had been this hysterical disease in his family’s bloodline. Growing up, DeShawn watched his granddad and uncle behave like unchecked crazy people. The two men were often drunk, overly emotional, usually crying, exceptionally hysterical,

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