Serialized Novel
Dust Cover
Whiff Gleason had been a failure as a Negro League ball player. He had, however, become one of the most successful colored men in The South; operating his own carnival through various white front men. One autumn night, while admiring his personal progress, he is confronted with the greatest of ironies: he is about to be one of the three colored men to be lynched in The South in the year 2013!
Since Stonewall Jackson’s defeat of Meade, and the capture and lynching of Lincoln, The South had, ever so gradually, adapted to modern mores. Since The Negro Bond Act of 1898, The Act of Segregation of 1934, and The Negro Incivility Act of 1971, lynching had become among the rarest of events. Now, on this fine evening, as Dixie Day draws to a close in the sleepy town of Hawthorne Maryland, Whiff Gleason has the misfortune of being waylaid by three Pennsylvania boys in a pickup, intent on asserting their superiority south of the Mason Dixon Line, where they suppose it will be appreciated.
Most men would plead, beg mercy, say prayers to the Lord Above, or whisper a word to The Dear Departed. But not Whiff Gleason. Whiff knows that there is one incontrovertible truth in life: that there is a potential profit to be made from any situation, no matter how bad it might seem. Now all he has to do is figure out how these three rednecks are going to pay for his next French-tailored silk suit.
In this alternative history novel the irrepressible Whiff Gleason takes the reader on a tour of a ‘what if’ America; a strange mix of the depressed 1930s, the hedonistic 1970s, and our own criminalized present.
Author’s Note
Nothing is impossible, particularly in war. How different might life have been, right here, right now, for all of us, if the Confederate States of America had defeated the United States of America, decisively, in 1863?
I have long wondered about the possibility of a CSA victory, but have shied away from contemplating the long term effects. For some confluence of reasons my subconscious forced that very contemplation on me a few months ago. I am done fighting the impulse to peer into the hypothetical abyss that I might have been born into. What follows is a series of shadows illuminated with my best guesses. I chose an uplifting character to provide enough contrast to make this exercise of the imagination bearable.
I have chosen to serialize this novel on this site, as I think no publisher would be interested in such a tale about a black man, in a white man’s world, told by a white man. Many will say I don’t have the right. But I know how to write, so deal with it.
The first 24 chapters will be serialized free of charge here. The last three chapters will appear as a single installment for $3, for those of you who care to follow the tale to its end.
Dedication
This book was inspired in part, and is dedicated to, Arnay Dunson, an irrepressible soul.
Contents
1. Candy Cane in the Sky
2. The Lonely Tree
3. The Man, Who Saved The Man, Who Saved The South!
4. One Dumbass Excuse for White Man
5. Segregate Me Please!
6. Twelve White Men and One Mean Ole Boy
7. The Elegant Quatroon
8. Crossing The Line, Walkin’
9. Eugenically Speaking
10. Be Straaaster!
11. Bringing the Hurt
12. One Big Ole Road
13. Rambling Thrones
14. South Side Song
15. Three Too Nasty
16. Them Iron City Stakes
17. Japman Yank
18. What in Hell is a Hungrian?
19. Straight up Out of Africa
20. A Menace to Sobriety
21. Answer My Ass That!
22. That Slop
23. Pinkerton Wheels
24. Goddamn Me a Russian Man
25. Just How Stupid Can One White Boy Be?
26. Jezzme
27. Epilogue: Supervisory Agent Dawson
Statutory Reference
Colored Person
Legal: term defining a person of the British Commonwealth of mixed ancestry, abroad; living as a resident alien in the Confederate States of America; or any mixed-race or Negro person residing in the United States of America.
Illegal: attribution or self-attribution identifying a Negro or mixed-race person born to the Confederate States of America.
Attribution by a white of a Negro ward of the CSA may incur a fine, generally at the governing municipality’s discretion.
Attribution of one Negro as ‘colored’ by another Negro is typically punished under the Interstate Privilege Revocation clause according to the Negro Incivility Act.
Self-attribution as ‘colored’ by a Negro ward of the CSA is regarded as a treasonous utterance punishable under the Interstate Criminality clause of The Act of Segregation.
-Ruling #719, CSA Eugenics Association, 1984, Doctor Harlin Knowles presiding
