“Walk ‘im slow
Big Mo—
Bring ‘im true-tied,
To the White Side!”
-Up From the Chain Gang, by P-Jay Slax
Marshal Talbot walked him slow along the tier—which was in actual fact nothing but a steel catwalk—hand to shoulder, as the negro boys down in the yard sung the one song most appropriate to his situation. The irony was not lost on Whiff, that he had helped launch the career of P-Jay Slax back in the day, and that he had even laughed loud to the roof eves of his winter home on that January night when he and P-Jay had conspired upon the subject of those cruel lyrics.
“Darn P-Jay,” he had chuckled, “we will sell as many copies of that to the po’ white trash as we will to the negro boys!”
It had in fact been their very best selling 8-track release back in 1998, before cheaper Yankee cassette knockoffs had begun flooding the market, eventually compelling P-Jay to tour up North under a Union agent.
P-Jay, in his inimitable way, had laughed his silent laugh and then intoned in his outsized voice—which probably could have been heard over some white boy’s screaming guitar—“Can you dig it Whiff! Can, you, dig, it!”
“I can son, I can!” and Whiff had rolled off his easy chair onto the floor, barely saving his Maltese shag carpeting from a cigar burn as he rescued the delightful combustible from his grinning lips and held it aloft—as he had way back in the day that line drive he snagged at the bottom of the ninth out in Knoxville—to the accolade of P-Jay’s guitar.
How far you have fallen fool Gleason! You should have headed north for a Union gig when P-Jay had made it big. You know that you are a natural songwriter, that you should have never—what is the point boy!
Down and out to the right was the Negro Side, a yard of tents, tool sheds and latrines, where the working boys were enjoying their day off at his expense, serenading his long walk across the tier, open but for wire fencing to the right and visible to the negros out there, and enclosed by bullet glass to the left and visible to the white boys in their concrete encampment below. The entire population of the Baltimore County Corrections Center was housed in two vast open yards, one gravel, tent and latrine, and one concrete, wire cot and mess table.
Whiff had hired many a man out of jail and knew well the routines. The negro boys worked on road crews and chain gangs—the later now primarily tourist attractions for the Northern Wealthy, intentionally stocked with the hardest looking men to lend allure and up the bus tour ticket price. The whites slaved away in the dungeon-like workshops that manufactured license plates, printed books, rolled cigarettes, and fashioned furniture. The negroes lived in a yard and slaved on the highways and byways. The whites lived on a patio and slaved in the basement, an embarrassment to the betters of their kind hidden away like a rancid sore beneath a concrete bandage.
On second thought, perhaps I would enjoy the roadwork more.
He just now realized that he was staring with open-mouthed terror down at the hard pale faces of the men on the White Side, looking up at him like hound dogs at a treed runaway of old. The whites stood in utter silence even as the negroes sang their sarcastic tune, and Whiff proceeded along the long wrought iron catwalk a story above their heads.
Marshal Talbot nudged him with his elbow. “Are you stupid boy? You cannot show fear to those ravenous white dogs.”
“Yes, quite right. I was lost in thought is all, considering their plight. What about our boys out there. Do you think they know that I had a hand in writing that song?”
“Jesus H. White Christ boy, is you serious?”
“As serious as Old Most up a Yankee general’s hightailing be-hind!”
“Shit Brother, I like you even less now. You see old One-eyed Haystack down there, the giant bullet-headed boy?”
“Yes indeed, appears to be the only one not singing the song.”
“That is because he is the only negro boy to survive his time on the White Side, and he lost an eye in the bargain. That boy tore off a steel cot frame and twisted it between his hands to make a lay-about bar. He’s doin’ eleven life sentences, one for every white boy he kilt, and six ten year terms for those he rendered unproductive.”
His stomach flipped within his belly and his knees turned to jelly. The Marshal noted his quake and tried to buck him up. “Look Brother, Notary Council says you have ‘the way’, that white-taming gift, that you got more white men in your slacks pocket than the President of the CSA his own self. That is the wisest man I eva knowed, en if he say you can survive this here day on the White Side—than your backsassin’ ass surely can. If not, I will say a prayer over you on burial day—‘cause One-eyed Haystack you surely not.”
“Why thank you Brother,” Whiff said sarcastically, as they took the spiral stair down to the White Side and the chorus of “Walk ‘im slow, Big Mo” faded as they made their descent.
I am so goshdarned tired. A man my age was not made for thirty hours straight let alone with six or eight lived at the end of a readymade rope.
Marshal Talbot was now making a show of snarling into his ear, “The whites are left to their own. So long as no escape attempt is made no guard enters the White Side unless invited by the elected representative—and they elect by the fist. Work done in the basement is paid for with food which is brought up. Those that don’t work tax those that do. I will be bustin’ your ass through this here gate for your own good—good luck Brother.”
Marshal Talbot dragged him past the two white guards and snarled at the gate jockey who pulled the lever raising the steel mesh inner gate, and then the outer, around which many a scowling shaven-headed white boy—most covered in body art—formed a semi-circle that made him quake. Whiff did not have to reach within for his acting skills, but simply let his inner dread that he had been bottling up bubble up to the surface of the Silent World of Courage and burst forth into the Audible Realm of Fear, “God Lord no!”
A mighty cuff of the back of Marshal Talbot’s hand knocked Whiff’s head silly and spun him around. As he pirouetted on his heels, whirling his arms to the side in a struggle to maintain the dignity of his footing, his Brother by blood-oath and fatherhood both, planted his size sixteen hobnailed ass-kicking NBA boot into Whiff’s prodigious belly—which he had often patted in a self-assured manner as the very manifestation of his affluence—and shoved him off across the gray concrete floor like an oversized sack of potatoes. This ignominious entry was accompanied by the legendary NBA admonition to the backsassing coloreds who that august law enforcement body had often ‘kicked over’ to the not so tender mercies of white criminal elements from white brownstone ghettos, to white trailer park slums, to this very pit of white degradation, “Not a negro of NBA concern!”
He seemed weightless and free even as he flew across the surface of the hardest world contrived by Man to oppress his own. The broad swaggering back of Marshal Talbot was already visible between his tattered feet as he looked at the man who had spun-kicked him so fast that he was already walking way before Whiff’s soft torn back hit the pavement.
So long Brother.
The burn of his back opening on contact with the concrete was painful, more so than the final dissolution of his favorite operating shirt. He scraped along the concrete floor for a yard or two and finally came to a blood-smeared halt at the base of two huge calloused white feet. For none of these men wore shoes. They wore little in fact, other than boxers and the occasional sleeveless T-shirt. He looked up into a ring of six faces, the ugliest of which was perfectly upside down, possessed cavernous beady eyes of blue, was housed within a massive square head, and mounted on a tree-trunk neck.
Not a word came from the assembled bruisers, obviously the welcoming committee of this savage concrete cave-dwelling community. Not wanting to be impolite, and as always preferring levity to bland or over-serious introductions, Whiff decided to break the ice so-to-speak, “Well hello there, said the fat to the fire.”
Not a smile greeted his warm introduction though near a dozen hands reached down to haul his fat ass to his feet.
Oh Whiff, you may have just now sassed your last!
To be continued in Raw Straws: Chapter 5, Segregate Me Please, Bookmark 8
