“’Ding’ boy, ‘ding!’”

Their cruel jest echoed in his head as if their voices would never leave that once prodigious space between his ears. The iron hand of Marshal Talbot shoved him roughly into the stainless steel dumbwaiter for human chattel in its modern guise. He tap spun on what remained of the soles of his Jamaican goat-hide loafers in time for the back of his big soft shoulders to take the shock of the steel wall as opposed to his much abused face. His body was fat though, and having his wrists cuffed behind him hurt mightily about the shoulders and dug deep into the soft skin that was once all chalk and sweat when he had played ball back in the day.

Whiff felt, for once in his life, like a cornered animal. He had no thought, no calculation, but a feral need to live with some dignity, as a man. He would not end as a man the way he had lived as a child. As a boy he spent many a sundown over Big Daddy Gleason’s knee being whooped with the same broad leather belt it was said that Uncle Ben Samson had used to strop his razor when he rode beside The General—The General having no need for shaving equipment. Somehow he knew, like a plant knows to close its petals for the rain, that another cruel kick was to be expected—but by God he was a man!

As The Marshall strode arrogantly toward him Whiff lunged forward like a fat little bull and slammed his considerable pecan-hard head into that big black jaw.

He heard the chamber ring with the crack of skull to jaw.

He looked up into two coal-bank eyes as the hands of their owner held him by the shoulders. The man seemed to consider him anew, not the least put off by the vicious head butt. The great black hands straightened Whiff’s torn collar and seemed to appraise his entire tattered person, the product of a nightlong adventure of abduction, lynching, frightful manhandling and even a hellish buzzard-pecking! Marshall Talbot’s voice sounded evermore like the bell of some dark dread church in the confines of the elevator. “Carnival Man, I would say you look right bad enough. It looks like the Fates have tap-danced on your person already.”

He then raised his chin and fingered it, winking to Whiff, as if seeking an opinion in the absence of a mirror. “A good mark is it? I suppose a Marshal of the NBA would pay back dearly any fool so rash as to mark his face?”

Whiff had found his voice, if not his humor. “I suppose so.”

The Marshal then began unhitching his broad triple-thick brass-studded black leather belt, the one weapon—other than the two foot long blued steel flashlight that normally hung from it—that NBA enforcers were most renowned for wielding. The Marshal cracked the flesh-tearing bone-cracking belt in his big hand and considered. “A Marshal weak from the kicking in of his balls might need a full fifty lashes to makes his man mind.”

The Marshal then grabbed Whiff’s shoulder and turned him to face the wall, and undid the cuffs. Whiff was past caring now, past resisting, was finally ready to fade away into some meaningless tomorrow, and leaned heavily head and palms first against the steel wall, spotted as it already was with clotted blood. When the belt snapped in that powerful hand there was a moment’s hesitation, then the icy dark voice rumbled, “It seems you have already taken enough whoops to make lying on that back a terrible consideration. Oh well!”

The heavy murderous belt, which could kill if it struck the head, whistled like a whip, faster than many a pitch that old Sockeyed Jackson had sailed by him at home plate back in the day, contributing to his dismal batting average. And just so, just like those speeding fastballs, that belt whistled on by his shoulder and slapped the steel wall with terrific force.

“What?”

The voice of iron behind him rumbled, “Boy, I am whoopin’, dat pecan ass en would appreciate a yelp or two!”

The belt then whistled by again, and as it slapped terribly into the steel wall, Whiff, a stage actor for some twenty years gone, found a proper use for his talents on this grimmest of days, and howled like the very devil was crawling up his back!

The voice behind him was shocked and congratulatory all at once. “Jesus H. White Christ boy, you will make my reputation today. The boys all the way down in F block ‘ill here your shameless howl!”

The belt came again, and again, but slowly, giving the Marshal time to speak lowly of cryptic things: of the CSA Secret Service; of the Matamoros Enclave; of Yankee drug pushers; of The Thirty Foresters; of a threat to the entire Southland, white and black—and Whiff’s brown ass too—alike; of a secret negro society of The North called the NRA; and of an opportunity for a redemption, even for a carney who was the product of ‘blatant miscegenation’ a ‘low-down pimp’, and a ‘colonel coddlin’ backsassin’ muvasuca’ as well.

At last the belt stopped smacking into the steel wall, and Marshal Talbot intoned, “You will abide by the wishes of Notary Council, and carry out your duty, less I need to remind you of this here blood oath.”

“What blood oath?”

The belt cracked and came whistling again, laying open his remaining shirt threads so the silk garment fell away softly to his hips, tearing through the rolls of fat on his back and ripping open the already torn skin beneath. He could feel every stud like the teeth of a millipede monster as it laid him open and blood splashed the chamber. His howl of anguish, of indignation, and wild animal pain, was nothing compared to the ones he had just let loose in the sham of a whooping, for the air had been driven clean from his lungs. A great hand then slapped into his bloody back and he was spun around on his heels to look up into the teary eyes of the Marshal, belt draped over his shoulder, who extended his empty, dripping, whipping hand for a shake.

“This here oath Whiff Gleason, that we are Brothers of The Cause—blood in, blood out—meaning it’s your ass if you backslide.”

Whiff shrugged, nodded, and shook the big hand bloodied with his own life essence, and, felt somehow, somehow—powerful, deep inside, like he had more than an angle in life, that he had a purpose. His ready acceptance of some pact he scarcely understood did not surprise him. He had made many a shady deal off the cuff to save his ass before. And this, this was like walking on the shoulders of a dream. He felt reborn, without even the knowledge that he had just died to the world.

The Marshal then took off his own coat to cover Whiff’s back, and re-cuffed him with hands in front. He patted him gently on the shoulder as he turned to hit the red button with the other hand.

“Yes Siree Marie, that Marshal Talbot laid that back-sassing milk dud so-en-so open! You know it a bad whoopin’ when the NBA don’t want the results recorded on the closed circuit journal!”

Whiff turned and looked up at his new ‘blood brother’ with what he knew was a look of astonishment.

Marshal Talbot shrugged his shoulders, “What?”

“Why, I did not think you had the requisite intelligence for an astute sense of humor.”

“Don’t push it negro!”

With those words the door opened and Whiff was rudely shoved out into a concrete basement way where a white guard then frantically began collecting money from one of his fellows and two black guards over the matter of some bet or another. The three losers looked at Whiff in hurt astonishment, as if they could not believe he walked on his own two feet. The guard collecting the money smiled at Whiff and chortled, “Ma Boy!”

Whiff and Talbot proceeded down the dank hall in silence. When they turned the corner into a narrow access way, Whiff hissed without turning, “If I find out you tipped off that white boy and are in for a cut, then I will respect your wits, Brother.”

Talbot seemed un-phased as he guided Whiff to a drab side door, painted in fading yellow with the legend ‘Notary Council, NBA.’

Talbot’s voice rumbled low like gravel under his boots. “Let’s just say that a Marshal of the CS-of-A minds his reputation. It’s all a Marshal really has.”

To be continued in Notary Council: Hurt Stoker, Chapter 5, Segregate Me Please, Bookmark 6