It was the keenest morning of his young life, long before he had become ambitious as a young man, fat as a grown man, and finally an agent of avarice as a well-known man. The April sky was powder blue streaked with shining yellow. The wind was up and roaring in its silent way. It had been near a year since the Yankee Man had come a asking about Uncle Ben Samson’s adventures. The man had asked about the ‘wormhole in the wind’, and had left Little Whiff with his little gray man card of investigation.
The wind was kicking up good, and big ole Miss Moore, a ‘butt the size of a crooked bumper billiards table’, Big Daddy Gleason had always complained, though he forever favored he lady with his presence when he thought Whiff had gone off sound to sleep, was hanging out her drawers to dry. There Whiff was; hiding behind the white-walled tires of Big Daddy’s Atlanta Motors Rambler, the favored car of sporting men and touring billiard champions.
There she went, lumbering off in her jiggling way and heaving herself up on the porch and through the door—and there went Whiff as the drawers took flight in the wind, billowing like ghostly sails with no ship to move beneath them. Whiff was gleefully dancing beneath them with his Little Gray Man Card of investigation and possible Yankee calling held in his little brown hand, like a totem held up to some pantheon of underwear Gods, hoping for a vision of the Yankee Man’s wormhole in the wind. The wind seemed too cold though for April, and felt heavy and creeping like water, not like the breath of the Little Gray Man Underwear Gods.
He was peeing in his pants—Big Daddy would whoop him for peeing in the bed.
No, Big Daddy is long dead, and I lay in no bed.
His head no longer banged, his face no longer felt the warmth of the sun that had bathed it through the course of his cowardly nap. Indeed, the sun now warmed the left side of his face, where it had merely kissed the right side when he lay his head back in the inches deep water, that now began to flood up over his cheeks and lap his lips—I am to drown in this muddy high tide.
His body was stiffened now, wet up to his ankles, though his big ole belly was spared so much as a water mark, riding high and dry over his torn attire. Many sounds assaulted his ears through the medium of the water—indeed had for some time, invoking the harried dreams of this cowardly slumber. The dreams crowded around, and he pushed them aside, in favor of the dream of his youth, under Miss Moore’s clothesline.
The sounds continued to intrude through the surreal medium of the rising water, lapping now at his face, his big head sunk in the sandy mud-gravel river bottom. Then came the sound of steps, of ‘fee-fi-fo-fum’ giant steps coming to get Little Whiff from beneath the clothesline, the footfalls of Big Daddy with the hiding strop ready to whoop him for dancing beneath Miss Moore’s ‘bigass drawers’.
His eyes opened to a darkened sky as giant feet kicked up water into his face. He looked up through slits to see that the sky was darkened by the faces of two white men, white men of the law. He recognized Sheriff Tomlin, of the Middle River Deputation. The other man, a large one, with a round head and sandy hair—to the narrow face and gray hair of Tomlin—he did not recognize. He did, however, recognize the uniform and hat, of a Captain of the Maryland State Militia. This man seemed surprised when Whiff opened his eyes, “Good Miss Marie Tomlin, we have us a live lynched negro!”
Tomlin began to take hold of Whiff’s right arm, “Captain, this is good Old Whiff Gleason, the Carney King. His boy Jordy just lodged a missing person complaint. Help me up with his fat ass before he’s like to drown.”
The Captain straightened up, and Whiff saw—as if from the bottom of a well—his big beefy finger point over at the narrow-assed Sheriff as if he were committing a crime. “Are you daft boy! This here fellow falls under NBA jurisdiction. Let him be before some smartass NBA lawyer hauls you into court for Breach of Segregation.”
What the hell? Am I in hell? Is this hell—a world gone mad and peopled by madmen?
The entire proceeding was leant an even more surreal air by the watery medium through which he was hearing the seemingly insane words.
The Captain then bellowed, “Marshal Talbot, a Live Lynch!”
And here I lay, beginning to shiver—and already done peed myself—cold under this fading Autumn sun. Am I dead and they just—no they said, ‘Live Lynch’.
The water bubbled in his ears as the Sheriff and Captain stepped around to make way for the owner of a set of footsteps that invoked the stature and whooping capacity of Big Daddy himself. Momentarily a giant of a black man stood above him. A man coal black of color, stern of continence, and uniformed in the black and white of the NBA! The man’s bloodshot eyes seemed to burn through Whiff’s soft brown face. Whiff had never seen such a glare, projected as it was with blazing mote-like eyes of banked coalfire.
The voice was mean to match, “Always glad to find a Live Lynch”, he rumbled to the men besides him. Then, he widened his stance, and, with hands imperiously on his hips drawled, “It’s a shame he lays here in violation of the Negro Bond Act, as per Negro Duties Two-point-zero. I shall cuff him directly gentlemen. Regrettably, we may not take a statement without an NBA notary being present, the nearest of which is Notary Council, at the Baltimore County Detention Center. Save your questions until then gentleman.”
Sheriff Tomlin began to object, “But Marshal, Whiff here is a good ole boy!”
The Captain then hissed, “Tomlin, are you gone stupid? Once a lynching is apparent it is a CSA matter, with the Negro parties, or remains thereof, placed in the charge of the NBA.”
Tomlin stepped back, but insisted on some courtesy, “At least let the boy have some medical treatment.”
“The gravel and thunder voice of Marshal Talbot quieted the debate between the white men, “Gentleman, I shall take care of my own thank you. NBA jurisdiction is hereby invoked.”
With that the towering black man bent at the waist, grabbed Whiff, all four hundred and twelve pounds of him, and pulled him by the man-breasts up out of the mud, a cruel hold which brought Whiff out of his numbed state with a mighty, “Ouch negro!”
The Captain could be heard saying, “Oh no he didn’t! Come on Tomlin, we got parts to match with the coroner—It is there affair boy!”
As the white men could be heard trudging off gracelessly through the underbrush, the iron grip of Marshal Talbot switched to his shoulders. Whiff now stood beneath the huge 100% African man, who glared down into his face, “Look at this backsassin’ piece of chocolate hear! Boy, don’t think I don’t know about the high yella son of that race-tradin’ pool shark who owns hisself a crew of soft-headed negros and no-account retarded white trash. Sho nuff boy, yer quatroon cravin’ captains and colonels ‘ill come to your aid. Until then, boy, yer brown ass belongs to the NBA!”
As big and fat as Whiff was, and as athletic as he used to be, and as wide as his ball-playing butt remained—a broad butt that had saved the rest of his ass up on that tailgate—Marshal Talbot twirled him around like Big Daddy about to whoop Little Whiff, and slapped the handcuffs right on—handcuffs that were a might to tight.
God Lord, whatever did I do to deserve this?
For answer the hand of a dark angel dragged him bodily through the crashed down undergrowth through which he had fled in a turkey vulture panic earlier in this darkest of all days.
Big Daddy, please say it ain’t so. Please say you didn’t take this black-as-night straight-from-Africa negro’s daddy’s mortgage note at some billiards meet! Please say it ain’t so!
Statutory References
Negro Duties 2.0
As a ward of the CSA it shall be unlawful for any Negro to depart the scene of a crime without being so directed by an officer of the law; municipal, state, or Confederate.
-The Negro Bond Act, 1898
To be continued in Hung From A Family Tree, Hurt Stoker: Chapter 5, Segregate Me Please! Bookmark 3
