“All you folks think I got my price

At which I’ll sell all that is mine

You think money rules when all else fails”

-Tracy Chapmen, Crossroads

Not to be outdone, Reggiemon Thom, stood soundlessly, reached into his dreadlocks and drew forth a greasy black joint, lit it on the blue flame that licked up from the time-painted drum, and it came to life, a heady blue glow giving off the end. He stepped beyond the drum as the sound snake that slithered through the belly of the word, given birth by the sullenly clattering beast that had created and now followed it, came all the more near. With one mighty drag of the joint, Reggiemon’s eyes turned to cat-like slits of black on a field of gray-flecked yellow—cat’s eyes, if Simp ever saw a cat in his long sorrowful life.

Reggiemon then flicked the joint to Otis, who caught it in his mouth, as if these two had rehearsed this trick their entire lives, though they just met an hour or so ago. Reggiemon then looked meaningfully at the bulky giant, appearing like a greyhound casting narrow eyes on a mastiff, and commanded, “Pass it around, monz.”

Otis simply sneered, blew an O-ring of smoke at the one who had just bestowed this smoke and snarled, “Get to it, niցցer. If ya do tell a good story, I’ll let you stay on this here couch and clean my sneakers.”

Reggiemon gave out a cackling call into the night above, peopled as it was by the 101 dead dolls, mouths nailed shut, pinned closed, or tooth-picked together, so that their little black asses might not never tell what their beady toys eyes saw so well.

The breeze rustled the drooping branches of the crying willow just as the call went out and the 101 damned effigy souls danced their done dance above the decades matted hair of the man who was at once their creator, their enslaver, their life-taker and their ever patient undertaker.

Reggiemon seemed ridiculous in his castoff white lady blanket with the white quilting and rose patterns, catching the light of the blue fire, rendering his extremely dark vulture-like countenance that much more menacing, with skin the color of black ash re-burnt to blue gray. Every bit as tall as the massive Otis, Reggiemon turned without seeming to move, and looked directly into the fire, and began speaking in a trance, not a sign of his curious zisp at the end of certain words, a pattern of speech Simp had been trying his darnedest to decipher in hopes of understanding his one and only friend the better.

“Little Reggie was born in the hood,

Born a walking talking boy,

Castoff by his mamma of blood,

Crawling along alley and way,

Scraping and grinding like a man would,

‘Till he come one day,

Upon this Big Black Shoeboxed Babay, sold—

Down the drain by his dadday!”

“Take that, I will,

Say Little Reggie,

En snatch that box with a thrill

In the gutter, left behind, that big Black Baby!

Swallowing that hard life pill,

Which do warp a mind badly,

To produce a stooge, mean and shrill.”

Otis sneezed, “A-bullshit!” and Reggiemon continued without taking notice.

“Reggie, bearded at ten,

Walk the Hood of life,

Seeing The Man bring woe too often—

Go off a pilgrim, packing his righteous knife—

By age ten, done killed ten men!”

Otis barked like a great big dog, “You got some shit with you, niցցer!—go on fool, tell it allz.”

Reggiemon did not misjudge the length of his pause one second on account of Otis’ outburst, and continued, cat eyes glinting blue, gold and black in the weird firelight.

“Reggie, wanted to fight,

Ten men cut down like a dog,

One white cop dead in the night,

Eyes blinking up into the deathly fog,

Sent Reggie off, on his way, pilgriming out of sight!

Off to Detroit he did jog,

A thousand miles in a night,

This bearded boy log—

Such was his might,

Come alas, like a lone wolf to the bitch dog,

Reggie to Detroit, city of Devils, where fright,

It did rule, under the hand of Gog and Magog,

Chaining the people tight!”

“The white devils done ruled Detroit

Moving their ill-begotten gains at night—

Not a thrift shop allowed in Detroit!

The Moving Night was the night of Fright,

When White Devils of old haunted Detroit,

But Reggie, bearded at ten, killer of the men, he come to fight, to set that stuff right.”

“Little do Reggie know that the people

Been sought, bought and sold,

Come to be the Whiteman’s sheeple,

Him they lord and shepherd, them doing what’s told.

One night, two evil sheeple,

Sneak up on Reggie, their souls done sold—

Cut down, their killer was sought by the people—Comes Ali Gordy and the Forty Thugs—bold,

Hard hitting brothers, hunting Reggie from church steeple,

Down into basements cold.”

Reggiemon spread his long arms of thin sinew, looking like twisted rope under an ashen film, and intoned, “And so Reggie, beard like man,

Twelve souls accounted for by scalps under his belt,

Found a blue iron wire in an old trash can,

A thought come to him—deep felt,

Like a thought that had originated within another man,

‘They minds do melt,

If first you fish-up the power beyond human

That the ancients did, into a mirror, smelt.’

The wire he hooked and fed down the sewer grate beneath the trashcan,

Until weight—weight of ages and evil—he felt,

And drew that ancient thing up, at ten, curious and brave when grown-ass men would have ran.”

“Up come a mirror of gold and blue,

And Reggie say, ‘I’ll take that.’

But the mirror answer, ‘No, I’ll take you.’

“A magic mirror?” Simp declared as he clapped, excitedly on the edge of his couch.

Otis snapped, “That’s what the niցցer said. But I don’t believe he got the rest of his story. I think this stoned-ass niցցer trickin’ us into filling in the blanks in his story—jus’ like he put black baby IsrаelMight in his story as a chump!”

Otis then pointed one massive finger at Reggie as the joint in his mouth yet glowed blue, and somehow had grown to near cigar proportions, though Otis seemed not to notice, and still spoke on as the blue smoking joint bobbed between his big meat lips, slotted neatly in that black crease burned by the previous joint, “You at a dead end, niցցer—if this shit commin’ don’t rhyme—‘cause you done committed yo dumbass to the rhyme, en if it don’t make sense an explain yo Halla-Muslim-ween shit, then you goin’ down the road boy, without no place to lay yo nappy head!”

Simp declared his support for Reggiemom’s story, just as he had supported Otis’ tale, as he was a “can’t-we-all-just-get-along kind of guy, “Oh, Otis, it’s a good story—I just know it. Wait ‘til you hear. Reggiemon always tell the most thinked-upon-afterward tales.’

Otis reclined like a king with a mumbled, “Whateva, whateva, nigga,” and puffed away at the steadily growing and still blue-glowing, joint.

And Reggiemon Thom did naught but stare with scintillant eyes into the dancing flames, that yet licked, though Simp had not seen a branch or a board dropped into that time-painted drum for the five hours since he showed up at the Crossroads of the World, with nothing but a forty of malt liquor in his time-weathered hand and the hope of friendship in his world-beaten heart.