“Go sell your soul and keep your shell

Standing at the point

The road will cross you down”

-Tracy Chapmen, Crossroads

Reggiemon opened his eyes wide, so wide they like to fall out of the sockets, which, to tell the truth, seemed to Simp to be a little too big for those cat eyeballs. He then did a dance around the burn-barrel, a stuttering, jerky—as if a rich white man tried to boogie—dance that seemed intentionally ugly, as if to assault the soul. With each rigid, crooked step he tapped the feet of a hanging doll cruelly, setting them all in motion one-by-one to twist turn and collide in their pendulous bobbing way.

With the dolls near and the train clattering a mere mile off at most Reggiemon resumed his trance-like recitation of the mythic struggle between Reggie Beard boy and Ali Gordy and his Forty Thugs.

“Ali sent down the alley,

Thugs to number Forty,

Who when asked who they honored said, ‘Gordy, Ali Gordy.’

“On they came

Into the basement,

Where Reggie, boy with a beard, hid in shame—Down behind the furnace vent.

“In a rush they came upon Reggie,

Boy with a beard,

The face in the mirror glowered darkly,

The Face of an ancient man with ringlet beard

Scowling with dark fury

Until the forty that Reggie feared

Were upon him, turned to rats, greased and furry,

Skulking into the sewer, never again to be heard.

Ali Gordy brought Reggie,

Now a grown-ass man with a beard,

His own beauty,

But Reggiemon took his head,

Turned to a dove, fled the beauty,

The man in the mirror said,

‘You Reggiemon Thom, you at my mercy.’

Otis did not an irreverent sound make, but just kept smoking the enlarging joint, blue flame and billowing, enwrapping his big medicine ball head in a halo of lurid smoke.

Otis looked in wonder, at the dolls still dancing their wicked dead dance, not slowing one bobbing step.

“The man in the mirror struck a gong,

A little hand mirror but mojo-strong,

The man sing his song—

A song of long eons of right and wrong;

Twisted and agonied under the smoking tong

The Burnings of the Sky’s savage song:

“I am the Negro of the Sand

Without a trace,

Taken from my dark father land,

By the hawk-faced race,

To their burning mother land,

Sought my kind to erase,

Chained in a goat-band,

My defiant head smashed with a mace.

“For a thousand years,

I lay with upturned face,

Drinking the tears

Of my bound race

Then, belly filled with tears,

The Negro of the Sand rise from his ancient place

Full of the hawk-faced fears,

Destined to take his place,

“Pharaoh said, ‘No you can’t go”

‘Till a black sand hand rest on his shoulder,

Then he sing, ‘Go Moses go.’

“Rome, that vile bitch, built a wall,

Whitey caveman saying, ‘How we move this square boulder?’

Then a sand-raspy voice say, ‘Fall!’

And with a shudder,

That was it for Rome, once and for all.

“The Negro of the Sand,

You rain maker,

The Negro of the Sand,

You master maker,

The Negro of the Sand,

You mind breaker,

The Negro of the Sand,

You life Taker!”

The train was speeding along moaning to beat the band, drawing Otis and Simp from their dumfounded trance, Otis’s giant reefer gone from his scarred mouth, and Otis himself writhing in horrible pain on the big brown couch, clutching beneath his billowing coat at his groin, even as Reggiemon stood tall and vulture like under the castoff white lady white and rose quilt, a big black blood-dripping human part in his hand.

The camp was momentarily alight with racing train shadows, dancing dolls and the blue flame licking from the time-painted 50 gallon drum. Otis withered powerlessly, his eyes bugged out and reddened with pain and panic and manly dissolution, looking like a sinner about to be dragged to hell, as the train rumbled by in its massive, subdued snake like way. Reggiemon consulted each and every doll with a word in some strange language as he touched the feet of each with the large bloody, root-torn masculine member.

Eventually, minutes and ages later, as big Otis bawled like a baby, no longer the arrogant jaw-breaking tale-teller of Black IsrаelMight, but a mere punk submerged in agony, misery, and fright. The numerous languages that Reggiemon spoke to the dancing dead dolls were lost on Simp, who marveled at the man’s many tongues, even as he had wondered at the magic of the many-tongued blue flames that never diminished in the time-painted drum of black steel.

Then, as the caboose that was not a caboose, but looked like something that would be piled in a freight yard, passed, Reggiemon dropped the gory trophy into the burning barrel and the blue flames licked to scorch the feet of the dolls dancing directly above it, who now, it seemed, had melted feet. Otis now cried and sobbed with pathetic resignation

Reggiemon looked vulture-like, down on Otis and hissed like some great snake, and the big man moaned and curled up in fetal position as close to the burning drum as he might.

Reggiemon then looked at the dolls, who all seemed to be looking at him now, and intoned, as if a deep-voiced man smoke from within that burning drum “Something This Way Rolls.”

Simp blurted, “But, Reggiemon, the train done just passed, brutha.”

To this Reggiemon looked to the moon climbing high above the willow tree, now streaking its weeping limbs, dangling dancers and whimpering shade denizen with light, and spoke as if he exhaled a sacred word, “Mother Come, Mother Me, Reggiemon Free!”