In the Jailhouse Now ...

Fiction Friday: Actually, that's a bit of a lie. I know you can't believe that of me, but this is a truthful account of a bad day in my life. I enjoyed reading it on Tales From the South a few years ago.

My Short Life of Crime

By Jimmie von Tungeln

My father decided, the year I turned fifteen, that a summer job would provide just the catalyst through which to redirect me from a life of idle languor to one of resolute achievement. He was, he assured me, there to help. Little did he know that his efforts would nearly veer me into a life of crime.

It happened this way. Daddy procured for me a job at a “filling station” in downtown Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It was during the late 1950s and life was slow and predictable, particularly in the summer months. The station employed two full-time attendants plus me and a college student, the son of a multi-millionaire cotton farmer, a father who also saw work as curative. The college kid arrived at work each morning in a brand new Corvette Stingray that probably cost more than the annual salary of one of the regular workers. My sister dropped me off on her way to work at a bank in the family car, an old purple Pontiac my classmates dubbed “The Purple People-eater.” Life can be sorrowful for a high school kid with a color-blind father.

Social disparity aside, we were a happy crew. When we weren’t serving customers, we washed cars, the college kid and I. When there were no cars to wash, we greased vehicles that were hoisted on racks like kings on their thrones. When there were no cars to grease, we learned things that would, the older guys assured us, stand us in good stead in later life—like shooting craps, doing card tricks, and learning how to spot girls who lived “on the spicy side of life.” What, one might ask, could go wrong?

It had to do with the FBI.

Two Special Agents, both bachelors (I think maybe all the agents were then) roomed in a boarding house two blocks from the station. It was our privilege to maintain their vehicle, a powerful Ford, in peak condition from which to fight crime, ferret out the Communists lurking in Pine Bluff, and keep the region safe.

The agents left that car in one of our vehicle bays at night and that is where the trouble started.

During the day, the car sat on the street, ready for action in the event of a Communist uprising or a chase after known criminals. It came to pass that it was my lot one hot summer afternoon to move the vehicle from the daytime spot to the vehicle bay. Like a good scout, I backed the car into the bay, left the key in the ignition as I had been taught to do and, having been told not to forget to close the bay door, followed that instruction. Then I was careful to lock the bay from the inside.

By exhibiting such a high level of professionalism, I could already visualize being accepted as a Special Agent myself, with all the glory that such a life promised. Certainly I would achieve a grander post than a sleepy Southern town, maybe New York. Just wait.

What no one had told me was that, due to a lack of criminal activity and the sleepy nature of our city, the station owner had agreed that the vehicle bay door wouldn’t be locked at night, just closed. This presupposed that nobody would be stupid enough to prowl around where an FBI vehicle was parked.

Wouldn’t you know it? That night, the only bank robbery that I remember occurring during my entire time of growing up occurred. It was in a little farming town with a branch bank some thirty or so miles away.

I knew nothing about this until I slammed the door on “Old Purple” next morning, ending some argument with my sister, and walked into the station.

Somber can’t describe it. All three of my comrades were leaning against a counter looking at me as if I were carrying a violin case and a copy of Das Kapital. I nodded but not a single one of them nodded back. They just stared. Finally the one we called Boss spoke.

“Where were you last night?”

“Me? At home.”

“Can anyone prove that?”

I knitted my brow. What business was that of his? “Sure, the family. Why?”

“What time did they go to bed?”

He knew what time my parents went to bed: “with the chickens,” as they say down South.

“Your sister there?”

“No, she was on a date.”

“Hmm,” he said. “You better get your story straight.”

“My story?”

“Your story.”

“What,” I said, “on earth are you talking about?”

“Somebody robbed the bank at Sherrill last night, just as they were closing.”

“Really?”

“Really. Guess what else happened?”

“What?”

“Somebody locked the FBI car in the bay here and the FBI guys had to walk all the way back home and get the key or they might have gotten over there in time to catch the robbers.”

The weight of the world began to lower on me like one of our fully loaded vehicle hoists. I said nothing.

“Don’t leave,” Boss said.

“What do you mean, don’t leave?”

“The agents want to take you in for questioning when they get back.”

“Questioning? Why?”

He looked at me as if I had just asked where sunlight originated. “Because you are the one who locked the FBI car in the bay.”

I couldn’t speak. I tried but my vocal chords just made a little squeaking sound like a screen door being opened on a hot summer day.

“They are pretty sure,” Boss said, “that you were in on it.”

Robinson Crusoe, on first reaching shore, could not have felt more abandoned and alone than I did at that moment.

“Don’t worry,” the college kid said. “We won’t get to listen to them.”

I finally found my voice. “Listen to them what?” I said, a half tone below “High-C.”

“Interrogate you,” he said in a grave voice honed by years of hazing fraternity pledges. “They are going to take you to the Police Station. That way they can just go ahead and lock you up if they decide to.”

“Lock me up for what?”

Boss said, “Aiding in a bank job is a pretty serious offense.” He told me that he had assured the agents that all his employees knew not to lock the bay at night. Mine was clearly a renegade action. With that, they all found something to do that didn’t include me. I moseyed around, bumping into things, until I finally found a quiet place to sit and await my doom.

Maybe prison wasn’t so bad, I thought. Maybe I could learn to sing there. Elvis did in some movie. Or maybe I could escape. As the minutes evaporated, so did my options, until only dark despair remained. Then I heard the sound.

It was the dark rumble of the FBI car’s powerful engine. The car came into view, lumbered alongside a gas pump, and stopped. It didn’t occur to me to attend it until I looked around and saw nobody else in sight. I was alone. The agent driving honked and it evoked the sound of a large creaking door closing on my life. I wandered out.

The driver rolled down the window and smiled. “Hey sport,” he said. “We drove this old gal a piece today so fill her up.”

“Fill her up?”

“Fill her up, and check the oil.”

“Yes sir,” I said. “Anything else?” I would get this thing over with, once and for all.

“Windshield’s dusty,” he said. “Oh…” Here it came. I froze. “They forgot to tell you but you don’t lock that bay door at night. Saves us some time and trouble.” With that, he turned to the other agent and began to compare notes. I moved to the gas pump.

As the pump hummed to life, my life hummed afresh. I even whistled. Then I saw three heads peer from the back of the station, laughing like they might never have another chance. I squeezed the pump handle like it was the hand of a lover, took in the smell of gasoline as if were the scent of roses, smiled at the three guys, and nodded. That was a good one, all right.

Somehow, we make it to adulthood.

The Storms of Life

Just what we needed: more rain. It happens I suppose. It sure happened in 1927. I’ve heard old-timers say that flooding was what made the Arkansas Delta so fertile, all those nutrients being deposited, as the floodwaters receded. Does that mean something positive may come from all this? I don’t know.

What I hope may come from it is the awaking of an understanding that we need adults in charge of government. A slow dismantling of state government, for example, hardly prepares us for facing a catastrophe like we are experiencing.

I can remember as a lad when a bad storm would hit. My Sainted Mother tended to go into hysterics, one of the few signs of weaknesses I ever observed in her … well, that and snakes. She wasn’t, I will admit through the fog of time, above elevating the histrionics a bit for the pure delight of garnering attention.

Anyway, it scared the hell out of my sister, my brother, and me.

Know what though? We made it through those violent electrical storms (and they did seem more violent back then) because of one thing. Our daddy was there. There was an adult of legendary proportions who wasn’t about to let a puny little thunderstorm threaten his family. Why he would walk outside and seem to taunt it. We knew we were safe.

It used to be like that in our politics. When disaster hit, we knew we had adults there to protect us. We, as a country, might stumble, but we couldn’t fall. We feared no evil when we had the likes of James Lee Witt in charge of FEMA.

Then it started, this dismantling of government, this cancerous belief that public service had no meaningful role to play in our lives. We fist elected those who denounced government. Then we elected those who distrusted government. It's finally led to electing those who hate government. Somewhere, in a lonely place, we left the adults. It’s like if our little group of pirates that made my childhood so memorable suddenly quit listening to our adult, Boogie Shannon, and made Nicky Bohannon quit picking his nose and take over as our leader.

It’s like if the crew of the USS Hunley, (AS 31), on which I served, were to decide that we would vote our beloved Captain Anders out of office before we reached that storm down in “the Devil’s Triangle” and put SA Dewayne Puttephat in the Captain’s seat.

It’s like if some insidious force had, one day, put me in charge of our household.

I make light of it now, but it’s painful, very painful, to watch people who don’t believe in government try and tell us what we, as a state and nation, are going to do to face our current crisis. So far, they've mumbled platitudes, as the floodwaters devour home after home. Very painful. Very sad. Maybe the more fertile seeds of understanding will enrich us if the floodwaters ever recede. We may even find the adults waiting for us there.

Some think better times are ahead.

A Cleansing Allegory ...

Sometimes it just takes a rattlesnake. That’s true. One of the species Crotalus horridus (what a tacky name) can be proud. He is responsible for a major cleanup of our farm in north Lonoke County, Arkansas. How? You might well ask. Oh, he didn’t actually do the work. He just provided the motivation.

It happened this way.

It’s been a busy couple of years for us, Brenda and me. We aren’t the neatest people in the world for starters. In addition, we both suffer from Tentyseconditus. For those who don’t know, that’s a medical syndrome whereby one can pick up a strange item, one that he or she doesn’t remember acquiring, one that he or she has no idea what it could possible be used for, one that he or she cannot remember having seen before, … but … after staring at it for 20 seconds can imagine a tres charming use that it might be put to, rendering it worthy of saving.

A year ago, there were maybe 15 piles of such items scattered at various sites near the entrance to our farm. Any discussion of removal of the slightest item, no matter how rusted, bent, corroded, or absent major parts, instigated an argument the likes of which haven’t seen since Helen fled to Troy with Paris. Several new words have been added to Webster’s Unauthorized Dictionary of Profanity as a result of these discussions. So, the piles remained in place.

Grass and weeks grew up around and within the piles. A bittersweet pecan tree arose from one. Poke sallet soared above others. The piles lay undisturbed and developed a someone mocking demeanor. We simply mowed around them as best we could and discouraged visitors.

Then the snake showed up. Our dogs announced the fact by circling it and emitting, in seven-part harmony, their “snake-bark.” The snake itself stayed calm, coiled and daring a canine entry into the strike-zone. Its tail quivered that message which, translated from the original Rattlesnake, means, roughly, “Don’t **** with me.”

Then La Jefa, “The Boss” appeared, shocked at such a saucy intrusion into her yard space. The dogs parted in deference to the higher authority. The snake made the mistake of turning its narrow eyes toward her. Then it went to see Jesus, suffering an expiration from more or less natural causes.

Next, a search began for a site of origin. There were at least five piles of unclassified junk, covered by weeds and grass, that could have accounted for this herpetological nightmare.

May I proudly state that almost all the piles of trash and weeds have now been removed? A multitude of trash bags, containing the objects du hoarding, now await transportation to the county dump. Tired, sore, but proud muscles stand ready for the task. Oh, we didn’t get away scot-free. We did retain something that looks like part of an old music stand. You just never know. Also, there is a twisted object that might be one of those tools country women once used to lift hot jars from pots. “I might start canning again,” was all she said. I knew to keep my mouth shut.

The lesson? sometimes we don’t pay attention and our world gets clogged and profaned with piles of trash. They fester and grow if not stopped. They attract more vermin if we don’t stand up to the task.  Sometimes we feel it is just too great and we don’t have enough support to get the job done. We argue amongst ourselves as to the best course of action. We suffer malaise. We long for a cleansing motivator.

All it takes is a rattlesnake.

Make America Beautiful Again

In Memorium III ; the last ...

It’s a little bittersweet, coming to the end of the Memorial Day Weekend. There was so much divisiveness on social media that we left and worked on the farm all afternoon. It seems that, instead of relying upon the sadness of previous wars to steer us from another, they are drawing us inexorably into another Middle East quagmire. They say that US military spending for FY 2020 will reach $989 billion once you add components hidden in other budgets. That’s nearing a trillion dollars, people.

Perhaps when you spend that much money on something, it makes you want to use it.

We ended the weekend revisiting some stories from the 79^th Infantry Division, Brenda’s dad’s unit. The first wasn’t a story he told. Rather, it was something that she read this week that he never mentioned at all. It seems that the 79^th was one of the units that discovered a Nazi concentration camp. According to the piece she found, they made the entire division view it.

As I say, he never mentioned it. He did tell about a squad of American soldiers taking a group of men claiming to be “Polski, nicht German,” behind a building and shooting them. War can make your children do things you never imagined, sometimes to other people’s children. There’s sad scene in one of the documentaries about the fine sunny morning that the United States of America began dropping bombs on the people of Baghdad. There’s a snippet where a man runs across a plaza between explosions carrying a son of maybe 11 or 12 years of age. The child has wet himself through fear, his backside revealing it to the camera. In all likelihood, he’s not an American ally today.

The other incident we discussed yesterday was one that her dad did relate. It happened during the last few days of WWII in Europe. The 79^th was encamped at some resort area in Germany, awaiting the Armistice. German forces still occupied the nearby hills and were laconically, it seems, getting rid of their artillery. They were lobbing shells in with no apparent tactic in mind in the general direction of the spa. A squad of Americans, including B’s dad, were lined up for chow. A random shell hit nearby and took the off the head of a soldier standing in line. It was the unit’s last casualty.

Julius would always end this story with, “And he was the shortest guy in the squad.”

War is a terrible, unpredictable, inexplicable thing. Why, after once losing more than 58,000 of our country’s best in its idiocy, we would let it all happen again is beyond me. Dick Cheney, in his grotesque and twisted “logic,” hit a nerve when he tried to justify an all-volunteer army. “Why send men to war who don’t want to go to war when you can pay men to go who do want to go to war?

Only a Dick Cheney could fail to miss such a point as lay nested therein. If only Lysistrata and her comrades were here, they might could explain it.

Shall we say "lo, look what
our hands hath wrought?

In Memorium II

I never knew either man, never even heard of them. The first? I just stumbled upon his grave one afternoon in a lonely but well-kept cemetery. It was not far from the small town of Marvell, Arkansas, one of those vanishing communities in the Arkansas Delta that sits forlorn and forgotten in these post-industrial days. It is the home area of singer Levon Helm.

 Brenda and her mom were searching for the graves of relatives and I noticed a small headstone. As soon as I saw “U. S. Marine Corps” and “1966,” I knew who rested there.

For some reason, I photographed the marker. Later I looked up the name, Perry Lee Poole. I found it, alongside a photo that could be used as a stereotype shot of the All-American Boy. From the few comments I’ve found, he was. A friend said he loved to fish and hunt and, as a youth, had dreamed of joining the Marines.

In his last letter home to his friend, after recovering from wounds he received, he commented that war was not like it was shown in the movies. He returned to action upon recovery. His name appears on Panel 11E Line 80 of the Vietnam Memorial Wall. Semper Fi, Perry.

Floyd L. Reed, Jr. of Heth, Arkansas was born on 3 November 1938 and was killed in action on 15 November 1965 in the battle of the Ia Drang valley. They say he, “died through hostile action, multiple fragmentation wounds. Incident location: Landing Zone X-ray Ia Drang Valley, South Vietnam, Pleiku province. His unit, commanded by LTC Hal more, stood off an army of North Vietnamese regulars seven times its size for three days, as immortalized in the book and film We Were Soldiers Once, and Young. Reed, is memorialized on the Vietnam Memorial Wall, Panel 03E Line 061.

I never knew him either. I read about his last battle and looked him up. I didn’t know him, but he was a brother. I hope to visit his grave at Edmonson, Arkansas on my next road trip east.

Memorial day makes me think of these two whom, as I say, I never met. I think fellow Arkansan Johnny Cash expressed it best. They are the kind of people who make America great, not those clowns who claim to be running our country now. Talk all you want about “The Greatest Generation,” and they were great. They came home, those from the Pacific Theater, through the Golden Gate, where grateful citizens had moved huge stones into position on the hills in Marin County and painted them white. The stones spelled, for those on the incoming transport ships, “Welcome Home Boys.”

When the men from the European Theater came home, women kissed them in the streets of New York.

Perry Lee Poole and Floyd L. Reed came home quietly to a divided country that has never reconciled itself with their service. It doesn’t matter. The two represent a higher form of greatness, the ultimate sacrifice, offered voluntarily, for an ungrateful nation. We are so fortunate to live in a country that produced such men. It is already great. Let’s keep it that way.

Theology Time

I suspect that you could chase a die-hard fundamentalist with a copy of The Beatitudes. I doubt that many would even believe that it was taken from the Bible they claim to love so well. In short, those teachings lie far from accepted Christian dogma for many, some quite prominent, Americans. As the book in question also warns against the futility of serving two masters, one cannot serve the Galilean of The Sermon on the Mount and Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged, the modern guide for many conservative brothers and sisters.

This brings us to the study of the next of the “blessings” as espoused on that mount: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

To grasp fully the importance of this, the eighth on the list, it would be instructive to review the past seven. If you remember, the Galilean is reported to have said

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven;

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted;

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth;

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied;

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy;

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God; and

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

So far.

As we contemplate the first seven “blessings,” let’s just imagine what the followers of the current American president would call those who make an honest effort, in their daily lives, to adhere to the words of our beloved Rabbi. Some terms come to mind.

Libtard

Snowflake

Taker

Bleeding heart

Socialist

Do-gooder

Peace dove

Of course, in direct opposition to the current popular term “nationalists,” there is an overarching term for our Beatitudinists. That would be “humanists.” Franklin Graham once said that they are “worse than Communists.” There is a wall somewhere that bears the names of 57,939 Americans who might disagree. They rest in peace among others that we honor this weekend as we hope for no more wars. Yes, the peacemakers these days run the risk of being called “surrender monkeys,” but we accept it. The Galilean would not have it otherwise.

So there we are. Of course, being called names is in no way comparable to being marched off to gas chambers. As we are told from birth, though, mighty oaks from little acorns grow. Maybe the Galilean remembered that long ago on that hill surrounded by crowds of followers. Mighty Oaks are mighty trees that know nothing of their final purpose. Mighty evil is mighty evil. Mighty good is mighty good, even if we receive the condemnation of others for pursuing it.

Maybe this came to mind in a later moment described by Matthew, when a disciple asked the Galilean, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” 22:36-40 ESV

I don’t think we’ll see that on Twitter this Memorial Day weekend.

In Memorium

All alone this morn thinking about Memorial Day Weekend. I don’t have a picnic or anything planned, just a quiet time to give a little thanks for the fact that I’m not one of the ones being remembered.

I’ve only known one person who was killed in our country’s wars. He was a high-school classmate. He and I were not close friends, but he served honorably and had a great future ahead. His name is now among the 57,939 carved into the black granite monument known as the Vietnam Memorial.

Another classmate died recently from duty in that war, this one from the delayed effects of Agent Orange. They say that everyone in the country, during the time the chemical was used, was exposed. I don’t imagine that the names of its victims will be carved on The Wall, not even the American ones.

Those who forgive, or even support, the warmongers may not understand the long-term effects of battle. I’ve learned recently that experts still consider the earth at such places as Belleau Wood (1918) and Normandy (1944) toxic. Well known, but unverified, anecdotes claim that as late as the 1960s trees in some areas of France retained enough mustard gas residue to injure farmers or construction workers who were clearing them. I’ve read about secluded and undisturbed valleys that still retain pockets of deadly gas.

In America, 50 years later, Vietnam veterans still bear the stereotype of sociopathic ne’er-do-wells, the one tragedy avoided by those with their names on The Wall.

They don’t mention these things when they whoop it up about invading some country or other.

Those I know who have worn the uniform don’t seem to get as agitated over such things as wearing a flag-decal on their lapel. Just in the last couple of days, I’ve also seen some posts by some who are exercised over regulations limiting the size of flags and the height of flagpoles. How silly. It reminds me of a comment of a close friend, fellow vet, and Iraqi invasion participant. He’s quite high up in the military now, and he once made a very pertinent observation.

“The American Flag is not an advertising gimmick.”

Love of country and all its people is a wonderful emotion. Patriotism represents a more slippery term. It has been called, with some justification, “the last refuge of a scoundrel,” (Samuel Johnson) and “often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles” (George Jean Nathan). Used in earnest and with propriety, it brings out the best in us. Used for immoral purposes, it creates monuments bearing the names of war’s victims.

In my day, some of those victims didn’t ask for the chance to add their names to such monuments. During the Vietnam War era, they tell us that one-third of veterans entered the military through the draft. By contrast, WWII saw a draft rate of 66 percent. These figures can be a bit misleading. They don’t take into account the number of those who enlisted simply to avoid being drafted into the infantry. Trust me on that one.

No matter. The fact remains that many of the names on The Wall are those of individuals drafted into the service. They include some who fought alongside Hal Moore in the Ia Drang Valley, a few who had only a few weeks left “in-country,” the term that held so many different meanings for those of us who served in that sad war.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll go to the annual Flag Day celebration in Little Rock on the grounds of the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History. There will be music, free ice cream, and a flag for each person there. At some point, the band will play The Armed Forces Medley. When it reaches Anchors Aweigh, I’ll stand and wave my flag. Last year, there weren’t any young shipmates standing. Of those of us who did, more than a few required a little extra effort in making it erect. We did it though. If for no other reason, we had to in honor of those shipmates with their names on the wall.

Dancing and Death

It's Fiction Friday. This week I ventured into Lower Arkansas for the funeral of a cousin. Motoring through the woodland of LA brought back a torrent of memories, one that had formed this story a few years ago. It is an embellished version of one my Sainted Mother told me once.

The Charleston

By Jimmie von Tungeln

  

The younger girl held the matchbox steady as the older bored through one side and out the other an inch or so from the front. Using a rusted ice pick, she carefully pierced the cardboard without caving in the side. Her eyes narrowed from the concentration and her tongue curled against her upper lip. Together, they repeated the process at the rear and the girl held it up for inspection. “Now for the axles,” she said.

The younger picked up two slender twigs whittled to a near cylindrical shape and handed them to her sister. She stuck the twigs from side to side through the box. “Wheels,” she said. The other reached into her dress pocket and handed her four large buttons retrieved from a discarded coat. Taking them, she held them to the sky for inspection. There were four holes in each button, pre-cut for accepting thread. In the center, the girls had bored a single, larger hole. Through this hole, she pushed one of the buttons, then the rest, onto the sticks protruding from the sides of the box.

“Won’t be long, now,” the girl said. As she positioned each wheel, she stuck straight pins adjacent to the sides of the buttons to hold them in place. Finished, she held the completed apparatus up for inspection and then rolled it along the ground. The younger girl watched in admiration.

“Works good Essie,” she said. “Works real good.”

“We got us a wagon, Mabel,” the other said. She rolled the toy along the ground twice more and then held it up. “Now we’ll work on the axle.”

“Let’s check on the team,” Mabel said.

“Let’s,” said Essie as she rose from her squatting position. She placed the toy wagon against a great oak tree rising from the front yard. She took the younger girl’s hand and they ran to a place under the porch of the house. There they had built a small lean-to a foot-square in the shade.

A woman in her mid-fifties sat on the porch in an aged rocking chair watching the girls and moving in slow rhythm as she fanned herself with a fan that proudly announced its source as The Buie Funeral Home, Rison, Arkansas. The house was a modest structure of maybe 20-feet in width. Like many others of its type, it had three rooms, one behind the other with a back door leading to a well in the back yard for drawing water. Other than the rocking chair, the only embellishments visible on the front porch were a piece of broken mirror hanging from a string and a calendar by the door outlining the year 1920.

The woman stopped her rocking and fanning long enough to bend toward where the girls were crouched. “I’m a’tellin’ you girls them baby rats ain’t gonna live the day out so you moughts well bury them now.”

Neither girl replied. The had removed a piece of filthy blanket covering a small nest of hay and twigs that furnished the bed for four recently born rats. The tiny pink things were curled into tight balls and quivered as the air hit them.

“How long afore they’s big enough to pull the wagon?” asked Mabel.

“Couple of weeks, I reckon.”

“Hot damn.”

“I heard that,” the woman yelled from the porch. “Now y’all quit tormentin’ them babies or I’m gonna whup somebody’s ass.”

Essie giggled and covered the babies. “When we get the axles and tongue finished, we’ll start on the harnesses.”

“You still got them shoe laces?”

“All we’ll need.”

The girls withdrew from under the porch and stretched in the morning sun. Both were thin. Essie was six inches taller than the younger girl with jet-black hair that contrasted with the auburn hair of her sister. Both had bobbed coiffures, apparently fashioned at home. They each wore thin, simple dresses that draped over their bodies like clothes hanging from a line. They were barefooted.

“Mama, you said Uncle Frank used to make wagons out of match boxes and hook them up to rats. Why you fussin’ at us?” Essie said.

“Them rats was growed. He didn’t use no baby rats.”

“Ours gonna be growed in a couple of weeks if you give us some milk to feed them.”

The woman rocked back. “Now you girls shut up and come on around here. We got some washin’ to do.”

“Aw Mama. Can’t we play awhile?” Mabel said.

“You can play when I tell you to,” she said, but the girls didn’t hear. Their attention had centered on a distant sound, one unusual but familiar. They both walked to the edge of the cleared area that served as a front yard.

“Hear that?” Essie said nudging Mabel. “It’s car, and it’s headed this way.”

Mabel didn’t answer. She turned to look at her mother for confirmation. The woman had heard the sound as well. She raised a hand to her mouth and Mabel could see concern on her face. “Mama, somebody’s …,” she began but the woman motioned for her to be quiet.

“You girls come up here,” she said.

The girls obeyed and stood by their mother as the automobile came closer. They heard a rattling sound that seemed to echo from the large oaks that ringed the house. Had it not been for the fact that only one road led by their home, Mabel thought that it would have been hard to tell from which direction the sound came. It just came, that was all, growing louder until they could hear, among the sounds of the engine, the squeaking of the car’s body as it labored along the ruts and crevasse making up the dirt road.

“Reckon who it is, Mama?” Essie said.

“Hush now, you girls be quiet.”

Then there was a flash as sunlight bounced off glass and the girls could see snatches of a dark form moving through the woods like an animal on the prowl. The two moved closer to their mother.

The form then burst from the darkness of the woods and a complete automobile emerged. A faded black shape marked with large rings of rust and dents bounced into view and headed straight for the house.

Instinctively, the mother shooed her daughters behind her, ready to absorb the first shock if the shape didn’t stop before it reached them.

It swerved, though, just as it reached the edge of the front yard and came to a sudden stop parallel to the front porch. The front end dipped twice as if bowing in deference and then the entire apparatus was still.

Essie peered from behind her mother. “Look, Mama, it’s Carl and Fred.” She laughed at the thought of their being frightened. “It’s just Carl and Fred. They done got themselves a car.”

Sure enough, the driver was the woman’s oldest son Fred and behind him sat her next oldest, Carl. Those in the porch couldn’t see them well, but to the right of each of the men sat others who appeared to be female.

“How you, Mama?” Fred yelled.

The woman didn’t answer. She looked at the car and its occupants as if they had dropped into her yard from another world.

“We come by to see you,” the man said. “How you like my car?”

The woman looked the car over from end to end. “What you boys up to?” she said.

“I done told you, Mama,” Fred said. “We come by to see you.”

“Why ain’t you boys workin’?”

The man in the rear spoke to the other who replied and then turned to face his mother again. “We off today.”

“Who’s that in the car with you?” she said as if noticing them for the first time.

“They’s some friends Mama.” He turned to the passengers and said, “You girls git out and meet our mama.”

He turned to his mother again and opened the door of the car. “They comin’ around to meet you, Mama.”

With that, those in the car emerged one by one, straightening their clothes and slapping away the dust that had covered them. As the women came around the car, the girls stepped from behind their mother and stared.

“Would you look at that?” Mabel said.

“You girls hush,” their mother said.

The women did present a spectacle for two young girls in the backwoods. Both wore similar dresses that hung straight from their shoulders and ended midways between their hips and knees and were joined by a row of fringe that ended six inches above the knee. The girls watched entranced as the fringe jiggled as the women walked toward the front porch, each on the arms of one of the men.

Fred and his companion stopped halfway across the yard. Carl took an extra step as he and his girl bumped the other two from behind. Recovering, they all stood at attention as if on review before those on the porch.

“Mama,” Fred began.

“Where’d you git that car?” His mother interrupted him and glared.

“Hit’s mine,” Fred said. “I bought it last week. Now Mama,” he began.
            “Where’d you git the money?” she said.

“I hauled some hogs for old man Atkins,” he said. “Now Mama …”

“Hit must have been one big load of hogs.”

“Mama, this here is Adele,” Fred said, proud of his persistence. “And back ‘air is Bobbie June. They’s friends of ours.”

“Why ain’t y’all haulin’ some more hogs if’n it’s yore day off? Can’t you use some extra money? I know we could.”

“Now Mama,” Carl said from behind Fred. “That’s what we need to talk to you about.”

“Shut up, Carl,” Fred said. “Mama, can we come in and talk to you a minute?”

The woman deliberated, still ignoring the two other women. Finally, she turned to the door, “Come on in, then. You girls stay out here.” She didn’t specify which girls so the two younger ones remained on the porch staring at the two women. They heard a door slam in the back of the house and Mabel knew they had gone all the way to the kitchen to talk. It must be serious.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” the one named Adele said to Essie.

“Esther Mae,” she replied.

“That’s a right pretty name,” Adele said. “And what’s yours?” she said, turning to Mabel.

Mabel didn’t speak. She just turned toward Essie who nodded. “Mabel,” she said, finally.

“Well I’ll swan. Ain’t you the cutest two girls in Cleveland County?”

Before they could respond, loud voices roared from behind the closed door. The girls could only make out a word or two but they could tell it had something to do with liquor. Before they could hear more, the woman named Bobbie June spoke in a loud voice.

“Hey girls, come down here and let us show you something.”

They looked at one another. Again, Essie nodded and the two descended from the porch, one behind the other.

When they reached the two women, the one named Adele placed her hand on Mabel’s shoulder. She started to speak but sounds of loud voices from the back of the house attracted their attention. Mabel only caught the phrase “comin’ in here drunk” in the mixed confusion.

Suddenly Adele spoke. “I bet you girls don’t know how to do the Charleston, do you?”

Essie and Mabel both looked at her. “The what?” Essie said.

“The Charleston,” Adele said. “It’s the latest dance. You do know how to dance don’t you?”

“No ma’am,” said Essie. “We ain’t allowed to.”

“Not allowed to?” said Bobbie June, moving to draw their attention away from the house. “Why, you should, and I bet we can teach you in a sec.”

“You bet,” said Adele. “We been all the way to Dallas, Texas to learn it. You know where Dallas is?”

“No ma’am,” said Essie.

“Well, it’s a long way from Cleveland County, I’ll tell you that. Come here and look.”

She led the girls a few steps farther from the house and then turned to Bobbie June. “Let’s teach these girls a thing or two,” she said.

Bobbie June began to clap her hands in rhythm and, much to the delight of the girls, sang in a husky voice.

“Five foot two…

Eyes of blue..

But oh, what those five feet could do…”

They giggled when Adele began to move forward and backward in pace with singing, placing one foot in front of the other and then in back of it with arms swinging in perfect rhythm.

“Turned up nose…

Turned down hose…

Never had no other beaus…”

“Now come on, you do it do,” said Adele, grabbing Essie’s arm.

When Essie drew away, Adele said, “Don’t be afraid. It’s easy. Give it a try.”

She continued to dance and motioned for the other two to join her.

“See, just put one foot here, one foot there.”

Bobby June was joining her now, continuing to sing.

“Now if you run into…”

Suddenly Adele cried. “Look at that child.”

Three of them turned to watch Mabel who was now beginning to move in perfect imitation of Adele. She stumbled once, missed a beat, but soon was bouncing on her feet in complete harmony with the music.

“Look at that bearcat go. Kick them gams, you darb you,” said Adele. She stopped herself and joined Adele in singing and clapping as Mabel began to move in frenzied ecstasy. He eyes grew wide and her face contorted from concentration. Essie looked at her in amazement.

“But could she love…

Could she woo…

Could she, could she, could she coo?”

Bobbie June stopped singing then. Mabel continued do pour every bit of energy into dancing though there was no more music. The two women had turned toward the house when Carl came quick-stepping through front door toward the steps. As Mabel raged forwards and backwards, sounds of broken glass flew from the house and Fred came running out, dodging blows from a broom wielded by his mother. He crashed into Carl, who was halfway down the steps and the two went flying together into the two women standing in the yard.

It was only then that Mabel stopped dancing.

“And take them whores with you,” her mother shouted.

She needn’t have worried. The two women were already in car by then and before anyone else could move, Fred had joined them. Carl was already in front of the car violently spinning a starting crank. The engine stared immediately and he ran to the back door, crank in hand, and dove in as the car began to move. In a moment, they were gone.

Mabel and Essie didn’t move. They had seen storms before and knew that the best defense was no defense at all. Essie simply looked a Mabel in amazement. Without changing expression, Mabel winked at her.

“You girls start gettin’ ready,” their mother said. “We got to go pick up Mizz Reed’s washin’.”

The girls walked back to the house holding hands. Without speaking to one another, they walked to the spot under the porch where they had left the baby rats. Essie squatted and removed the cover. She watched the babies for a minute or so, it seemed to Mabel. She poked them with a finger.

“Mama, I think our babies died,” she said.

“I done told you they would. Now you girls git rid of them and git ready to go.” She turned and, broom in hand, went back into the house.

“Bring me our wagon,” Essie said.

Mabel turned without a word and went to the base of the tree where the matchbox wagon lay. She picked it up and returned with it to where Essie still squatted quietly. She handed the box to her sister.

“We ain’t got time to bury them now,” Essie said. She folded the rag that covered the tiny creatures and placed it in the box as a liner. Then she picked up the tiny objects one by one and placed them in a row upon the cloth. She rose slowly and showed the box to Mabel who simply nodded.

Holding the box in front of her, Essie started walking to a copse of trees just beyond the edge of the front yard, in the direction from which the car had appeared. That now seemed like years ago to Mabel. As they moved from the clearing, the trees made shadows cross their forms and then they were in the cool darkness out of sight from the house.

Essie began to sing as they walked, and after a few more steps, Mabel began to sway with the music. Now Essie did the same, still holding the matchbox coffin before her as they walked farther into the cool, dark woods.

“Five foot two…

Eyes of blue…”

She tried once to teach
me to "Charleston."
She failed.

The Cruelest Mistress

This year has made me think a lot about death. For example: one of the more interesting, though lesser known, figures in the Civil War, I think, was Major General Israel B. Richardson of the United States army. Evidently, he was quite a character. Called “Fighting Dick” by his fellow officers, he was known to be one of the most profane yet aggressive men in the Army of the Potomac. There was talk that he would surely be promoted to higher command. From accounts, he was a solder’s general and respected by this troops.

Most know the facts of the Battle of Antietam, how Robert E. Lee led a largely unsupplied army into Maryland, falsely assuming the populace would embrace and succor it. We know how members of the Union army discovered a copy of Lee’s battle plans and how the northern army outnumbered the southern. We know how General McClellan refused to believe facts and mishandled a battle full of mistakes and unsecured opportunities, allowing Lee to escape back to Virginia. It turned into a horrible fiasco, Lee’s army being saved only by decisive and courageous actions by its generals and the incompetence of some Union generals like Ambrose E. Burnside.

Oh and one other thing. There was this division commanded by Major General Israel Richards. It was about to cut the Confederate army in half, near what is known as “Bloody Lane.” We’ve all seen the horrific photograph of the bodies laid like chord wood along a picket fence along that infamous lane. It was there that it almost happened. Had the division succeeded, Lee’s army may have been divided and destroyed.

It was not to be. On that day, September 17^th, 1862, a bullet from the Confederate corps of Richardson’s close friend James Longstreet ended Richardson’s career and the aggressive charge that might have changed the course of history. Confused and slowed by the loss of its leader, the Union men faltered and the Confederates drove them back.

They took Richardson from the field, reportedly after saying, “Tell General McClellan I have been doing a Colonel’s work all day, and I’m now too badly hurt to do a General’s.” He lived until November 3, 1862. On October 4, 1862, President Lincoln visited Richardson in the house where he lay. According to a member of Richardson’s staff who was injured and present in the room, the president told Richardson that if he recovered, he would be selected as General McClellan’s successor.

That’s how history turns, a bullet here, a shell fragment there, a step in the wrong direction and the tape of history plays a different track. They say that General Douglas MacArthur, later in different wars, would knowingly walk into danger, seeming to understand that he was protected from the vicissitudes of normal mortals.

September 17^th, 1862 proved to be the bloodiest day in American history. The Battle of Antietam would constitute, though, enough of a “non-loss” that Abraham Lincoln used it as a support for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. History sometimes turns that way, despite the efforts of the likes of Israel B. Richardson, men once destined for greatness and now largely forgotten by history, their good “interred with their bones.”

America could use citizens like Israel B. Richardson again.

Bone spurs could not
have stopped his man.

Which side?

We were talking, seriously I thought, B and I, at one of our classic Happy Hour chats a few days ago. We spoke of many things. Somehow the talk got around to people we know. It turned to good people we know. I’m talking about really fine people, the kind who provide foster care for babies that no one else would have, and then adopt them. I’m talking about the kind of people who will get up in the middle of the night to go and care for the ill and needy. I’m talking about people who bear nary a blemish on the record of their life.

“Oh well,” I said. “I try but fall short.”

She comforted me. She’s good at that.

“No, really,” I said. “I try to be good but the bright lights and alluring colors of sin have always had a strong attraction for me.”

She comforted me again. She’s very patient.

“If I were to have it to do over, I’d try to do better.”

She looked off, then back at me. “You know,” she said. “You were just a big lump of dough and we all just had to wait and see if the yeast would make it rise.”

I’ve been thinking about that all week. I seem to think it was a compliment. She refused to elaborate. She’s like that. Once she makes a decree, there is no “instant replay.”

I guess there is room in a person’s life for redemption, if they don’t wait too long. That’s why I have hopes for the so many of the politicians we have in our state. Thomas Becket found it. Saul of Tarsus found it, redemption that is. Can you imagine the impact it would have on one of those who have voted for every piece of hateful and mean-spirited legislation in recent years to say, of a sudden, “I once was blind but now I see?” Gosh, how the Galilean would smile. How the Forces of Darkness would wail and gnash their teeth. I can only imagine.

People like Libby Phelps-Alvarez did it. As the granddaughter of Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) founder Fred Phelps, she was raised to picket soldiers’ funerals, carry homophobic signs, and rain down fire and brimstone on anyone who didn’t agree with the WBC’s extremist ideologies. But since leaving in 2009, Phelps-Alvarez has publicly apologized to the family of a dead soldier whose funeral she picketed. Now she also supports Planting Peace, an LGBT organization whose rainbow-painted headquarters is located right across from the WBC.

Right across the street? Get that? You know, it seems that the step from the wrong side of history to the right side is a short one. It can be as short as right across the street.

Today, I’ll concentrate on the good. First thing I’ll do is go wake her up and tell her that the dough is rising. She’ll be glad I did, just you wait.

Precious Memories ...

It’s been the Year of Funerals, it has. Headed for another today, a cousin, Rodgers Harris the son of my Sainted Mother’s brother Ed Harris. Uncle Ed was an awfully good man whose first wife, Ethel, died young. I don’t remember her too well. He had two others, wives that is. Outlived them both.

I do remember staying with Uncle Ed and Aunt Ethel one day on their farm in Cleveland County. I was maybe four or five. She took me walking down to their pond, where Rodgers, his brother Kenneth, and a bunch of other teen-aged boys were swimming.

That wasn’t odd. What was odd was than not a one of them wore a stitch of clothes. They were enjoying themselves so much that they completely ignored Aunt Ethel, and she them. I just gawked, not for the last time in my life.

I knew Rodgers afterwards from visits and funerals. He and his wife Eloise would show for gatherings or stop at our store. I never heard a bad word about either. They were just a couple who married and had kids and grew old between visits and funerals. You never thought of them as a couple as much as a single entity named RodgersandEoise.  Lower Arkansas (LA) is full of such folks.

Here’s an odd story about his parents. It involves the mother of our clan, Grandmother Vicie Coats Harris, the mother of eight. Her husband, Sainted Mother’s father, died when SM was three, the baby of the family. The only thing she remembered about him was when the oldest son, Holland Harris shimmied up a pole to ring a bell letting the community know something bad had happened.

It left Grandma Harris with two young girls still at home, alone and destitute, relying on friends, relatives, and pennies picked up from washing clothes for sustenance. When the local church acquired new curtains, she begged them for the old and made underclothes for my mother from them. It might even make an arch-conservative moist up to have heard how the children laughed when she fell at school and revealed her shame. Poor wasn’t the word for it. There were no safety nets then, a libertarian’s paradise.

Back to Uncle Ed and Aunt Ethel. They had married and were eking a living from the harsh land. She was the daughter of a widower, Fletcher Rodgers, the father of, if I remember right, 13 children, a number of them still living at home at the time. This must have spawned an idea on someone’s part, for soon, Ed and Ethel were delivering messages between widower and widow.

One can guess the result. We had cousins and step-cousins all over LA as we grew up. Rodgers and Eloise, as a couple, represented both. Someone told the story once of how a relative carried Sainted Mother and her sister Essie from the wedding to their new home in an automobile, maybe their first ride in one, ever. The person telling it recalled how Mother was grinning at folks from the car window as if she new that the days of hunger were over.

I’ll go down into the Fatherland today to say goodbye to Rodgers. I’ll pass near to the cemetery where Grandpa Harris lies, near to the grave of his father, George W. Harris of the First Indiana Cavalry, U.S.A and the father of his wife, William Coats, 26^th Arkansas Infantry, C.S.A.

Yep, it’s always been a mixed-up sort of family. The woods down in LA have always been full of them. Most were fine American citizens like Rodgers Harris, a veteran of the United States Air Force. You know, you first lose your grandparents. Then you lose your parents. Then there are the aunts and uncles. But when the cousins start to go, you begin to think seriously about this mortality thing.

So long George Rodgers Harris.
I wish I had known you better.

Peace, Honor, Country ....

Theology Time: There’s an old saw concerning the point at which a preacher quits preaching and starts meddling. According to early Christian writers, and my opinion, the Galilean reached that point nearly 2,000 years ago. He said, standing on that rocky mount in remote Judea, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

Say what?

It doesn’t make much sense does it? According to most research, there have been less than a couple dozen years since America’s founding that it hasn’t been at war, at least for one day. A Christian nation? I report. Ya’ll decide. For a complete listing of America’s warlike excursions, click here.

What would the Galilean say about all this? I can only imagine. He might want to see some of the folks at the top. He might say something couched in modern phrasing, like, “What part of ‘peacemakers’ did you not understand?”

He might say something like, “You didn’t listen to me about divorces. Why should I expect any more from you?”

He might say something like, “That’s the silliest-looking mustache I’ve ever seen. Do you really expect people to take you seriously?”

He might say something like, “You graduated from West Point. Duty? Honor? Country? Destruction? You should know better. And please quit with the ‘rapture’ stuff. I don’t even know what you are talking about.”

He might say, “Please show me where I said anything like ‘blessed are the makers of aircraft carriers,’ if you would please.”

He might say, “Would you please show me where I ever called the makers of guns ‘the least of those among us’—the ones most in need of our love and succor?”

He might say. “Did I ever instruct my disciples to go forth and slay those whom they didn’t love?”

He might say, “Oh, and while I am at it, I never liked those Nazis. Sad to say, some of those they murdered were distant, far distant, relatives of mine. I approved that war, but I never called their descendants ‘fine people’ that I can recall.”

He might say, “Ya’ll better start paying attention to ya’ll are listening to.” (I think he was from Southern Galilee, wasn’t he?)

He might say, “You people give me a colossal headache. Don't make me come back down there.”

Well, he might say a lot of things. What he did say was, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” Neither Rupert Murdoch nor his prancing imps can change that.

If it sticks in your craw, and you consider it meddling, you might better start paying attention to whom you listen.

Blessed are the Bomb Makers?
I can't find it.

Desperado Days ...

A hideout, now there was a childhood treasure. They usually weren’t too far down in the woods, just far enough for a juvenile outlaw gang to gather out of sight from overly-inquisitive adults. They didn’t require a lot of preparation, at least ours didn’t. A few downed Sweetgum saplings and a space free of weeds and stickers. Over time, an industrious outlaw gang could pilfer some crude furniture and storage bins for the necessities of a life of adventure. The hideout was our little “postage stamp of native soil,” as William Faulkner would have phrased it.

Necessities were few. First, we needed a good supply of Genuine Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco. Too bad for us, my daddy possessed a suspicious nature. I was certain that he was keeping a careful count of all smoking material in his store. We didn’t dare risk it, filching a bag from him, that is. I did dare relieve him of some penny matches, though. There was nothing suspicious about that. A good hideout needed a good fire at times.

It needed smoking material too, and we needed to solve that problem. Robbing banks and trains required thought and thought required smokes. That’s all there was to it. Lucky for us, Boogie Shannon’s daddy came home drunk once too often. Everyone knows that drunk men tend to lose things. Boogie’s daddy, for example, lost a brand-new bag of Bull Durham. As we understood later, he had to go for a whole week without a smoke. They say that he cut down on his drinking after that, so some good came out of his bad luck.

We were set to be the baddest outlaw gang in or around Pine Bluff, Arkansas now. I guess we were the only one, and we really weren’t that bad. We mostly just worked on our hideout and sat around. Oh, we talked about how much fun it would be to rustle cattle, but none of us even owned a horse. We mostly just smoked and talked.

Then something happened that foretold an end to our outlaw days. It started when Mrs. Harkins had a baby. Of course none of us had a clue it was coming. Who could foretell something like that? Were we in for a surprise or two. Boogie said his mamma had mentioned it to him before it happened but he paid little attention. How had she known?

Some older boys let us in on it, to our everlasting confoundment. It was Jim Fletcher and Sonny Boy Nathaniel who enlightened us. They were two “colored boys” who joined our gang when they weren’t sent off chopping or picking cotton. They were a year or so older in age and maybe a decade older in maturity. When the discussion turned to babies one sultry summer afternoon, they proceeded to tell us the most disgusting things.

We listened in utter amazement. Our response was, “Ya’ll may do things like that but we sure don’t.”

They assured us that white folks did it too.

Boogie Shannon just shook his head back and forth.

The Hester twins, Robert and Bobby Joe looked at one another and almost started crying.

The rest of us just gaped in wonderment. Sure, the news made us nauseated, but there was some other sensation trying to work its way loose, one we had never felt before. It would ultimately lead us far away from our outlaw ways.

They’ve never developed that patch of woods where our hideout lay, where so much innocent thought took place. I sometimes wonder if some vestige of it might remain.

How we viewed ourselves.

The Assignment

Fiction Friday: Only a slightly fictionalized account of something that happened to me years ago.

The Assignment

By Jimmie von Tungeln

         

Truth be known, I didn’t want to do the piece in the first place. Hell, I wasn’t even a journalist. I was a consultant, a pretty good one, and should have stuck to it. But I had been doing these modest little columns for a Little Rock quarterly that promoted historic preservation. I was acquainted with the editor, I lived in a so-called historic district, and I knew most of the people who lived there. So, I agreed to help.

 It was a good fit. People associated living in historic neighborhoods with eccentricity back in those days. Things that supported that viewpoint were always welcome. So, folks liked my little “human interest” pieces. As for me, I was happy to stick to them. There was no chance of running out of characters, and I didn’t have to travel.

            Then the editor called me one day and asked me to stop by. When I got there, she up and gave me an assignment. Just like that, like I was some cub reporter or something. This posed a noticeable departure from the usual process whereby I just picked out some local oddball and wrote about how they had adjusted to living in an old house.

This time she picked the subject. Why? Beats me. Maybe I was getting stale or she was trying to sell more copies or something. Rather than speculate, I went along with her for the moment.

            Well guess what? You never know what dish life is going to serve up and what decisions are going to throw themselves in front of you, threatening your homeostasis like a group of western bandits with their pistols drawn and ready.

Here’s how it started.

            A local banker, known to us all as a neighbor and a nice guy, had bought one of the most historic homes in the city. It boasted such long-term ownerships that the house and grounds came with a caretaker who had worked there since the Depression. Mr. Pitts cared for the grounds and lived in a small apartment attached to the carriage house, a.k.a. the garage. He was a quiet little man of advanced age who lived alone and remained out of sight when not working. All the neighbors knew him to nod at, but none of us had ever talked to him.

            The editor explained the human-interest angle. Supposedly, a friendship had grown up between Mr. Pitts and the banker’s young son Alfie—Alfred Chidester LaRue was his full name—a little blond-haired kid from the high-rent side of life. Get it? Old black gardener and white heir apparent, the image of an odd couple as corny as it was appealing to our liberal audience. All I had to do was interview the old man, mine a few historic nuggets and take a picture of him and the kid together. It would produce enough “ain’t that cutes?” to make a tough man buy a round of drinks. There was no Pulitzer looming, but it would get me through until another deadline appeared, like a hungry tiger emerging from the mist. No problem.

Anyway, I didn’t have to. These columns represented a public service for me. In other words, I didn’t get paid. Seeing my words in print provided my only emolument. So, I had a degree of leverage unavailable to a poor inky wretch actually writing for a living.

I could have refused the assignment and interviewed, instead, a friend who was restoring a cottage near ours and who looked more like Charles Manson than Manson did himself. He played cello in the city’s symphony orchestra and would have been great material for a photo essay, the research being carried out over a couple of beers. Why should I spend a dry afternoon interviewing the town’s oldest gardener? It didn’t make a bit of sense. “To hell with the editor and her aspirations,” I kept telling myself. Was I my own man or what?

            Naturally, I took the assignment. I had to go through the banker himself and he pretty much outlined what he wanted the piece to say. Alfie was an only-child and, having few young friends in the neighborhood, he had taken up with Mr. Pitts. Followed him everywhere. Shared secrets with him. Even helped with the yard work. Well, maybe a little. The important thing was the friendship that had developed between man and boy. That was the angle.

            Sure. One of the greatest and most persistent dreams of American Caucasians is that, someday, an African-American will love them. But I could pretend with the best, so I pressed on to complete the assignment.

            I set up an appointment for the next Saturday afternoon. It was a nice autumn day that welcomed a person outdoors like an old friend wanting to show you his garden. I grabbed an ancient Rolliflex camera that I used for such work, made sure I had pen and paper, and walked the two blocks to the house.

The house sat on a half-block facing one of the two main streets leading directly to downtown. When it was built, wealth had followed the topography. The larger houses were on the highest ground and homes fell off in size and value as the topography dropped. It was never more than a short walk from the mansions to the homes from which domestic help could be hired, for practically nothing, in the good old days. In other words, urban form followed economic function. Households weren’t separated by income as they are now. That’s how, thanks to the historic preservation craze, I could afford to live near a bunch of mansions.

            Anyway, I arrived. Mr. Pitts had dressed up a bit. He always wore neat clothes with a narrow-brimmed dress hat. Today he had added a tie. He stood at attention with his hands to his side and presented a smile like a boot-camper at inspection. Alfie was bouncing a ball against a tree and the parents stood by with pride. All was set for this to be a painless adventure. Wham, bam, thank you m’aam and I meet my deadline.

            I called little Alfie over and made him sit for a picture with Mr. Pitts. As I lined it up, I pulled a few grunts out of the kid to the effect that he liked Mr. Pitts and enjoyed helping him with the yard work. Mr. Pitts sat smiling through thick eyeglass lenses that distorted his face to where it looked like one of those cartoon characters that has just seen something either real juicy or real dangerous.

            So far, so good.

            Figuring I had about all out of Alfie I was going to get, I excused him with “Now Alfie, why don’t you let Mr. Pitts and me visit while you get back to your yard work?” In other words, “Scram, kid!”

            Alfie was more than happy to be rid of adults so he walked to beyond the garage. There, someone had dug a shallow pit from which smoke was rising. Within the pit, I assumed from the smell, were dead leaves, trash, and some sort of organic waste. Alfie amused himself by kicking more leaves into the fire.

His mother saw the opportunity and appeared from nowhere with a tray of cookies and iced tea. She sat them on the bench between us and asked, sweetly, and devoid of sincerity, the way a southern woman can ask, if we were comfortable. After receiving affirmatives, she then swished away amid a crackling of petticoats and an almost audible smile. I pushed the tray toward Mr. Pitts. He smiled and pushed it back toward me.

            “No, please, go ahead,” I stammered, fumbling for my writing pen.

            “Thank you, suh,” he said. He exaggerated the “suh” so I—so we both—would know he didn’t attach any meaning to it. Then he took a cookie in one hand and a glass of tea in another. He neither drank nor ate right away, though. He rested the arm with the cookie on his leg and wrapped a hand around the glass of tea as if to keep it from flying away. He smiled at me. His eyes looked even larger than before.

            A breeze filled the yard and blew smoke from Alfie’s fire toward us. As it did, Mr. Pits finally raised the cookie in a soft arc to his mouth and took a small bite. He lowered it and raised his glass with the same grand gesture and sipped his tea.

            Hoping to get started, I asked him how long he had lived around there.

            “Oh, I was born around here,” he said. “I been here for as long as I can remember. We lived on Tenth Street but it went for the freeway. House ain’t there no more.”

            He chewed his cookie with what I thought was a grim expression. As he did, the smoke circled us and I caught the pleasant smell of burning leaves punctuated by the sharp odor of the other trash smoldering in the pit. Mr. Pitts stiffened slightly and his eyes retreated behind his thick glasses.

            “I been here since when things were different than they are now,” he said. “Way different.”

Then, that far into the interview, he stopped talking. His voice didn’t exactly trail away as much as it fluttered beyond us like a feather caught in a whirlwind.

            I was losing him. I hurried back to work.

            “Different in what way?” I asked.

            He just looked at me. He seemed to struggle to respond and when he did, it wasn’t really to me but, it seemed, to the trees and the garden and maybe to the city itself with all its history and smoky secrets.

            “Way yonder different. Folks weren’t as good to you then.” He took another bite of cookie and drank from his glass. That energized him.

“My folks had it hard back then.”

            I tasted panic. Alfie had disappeared behind the garage and I felt as if I were on an asteroid hurtling through space with an alien. This affair wasn’t going according to plan. I nodded as if I understood and scratched on my pad without looking up. He continued.

            “The worse was what they done to Mr. Carter.”

            “Mr. Carter?” That was all I could manage.

            “Ain’t nobody should have had that done to them. Nobody. I don’t care if he was colored.”

            I gave up and stared at my pad. What was he saying, and where was he taking me? I stared right through my pad and into the ground. From therein oozed a memory. I met it halfway and solved the mystery.

Back in the 1920s, there had been a lynching in Little Rock, less than a half-mile from where we sat. It happened right in the middle of what was then the center of the “colored” commercial area, along West Ninth Street.

“Oh my god,” I thought. “This is where he is going.” I tried to raise my head but it took three attempts to overcome the gravity created by that realization. When I did manage to look up, Mr. Pitts was somewhere far away, and scared. I mean really scared. His hand was shaking so much the tea was spilling.

            “I remember that day like it was yesterday,” he continued. They made us all go inside, for they knew there was to be trouble. I was just a child, but the oldest. My Momma put the youngest under the bed and made me watch after them. She said the white folks had done killed Mr. Carter and was draggin’ him down Ninth Street behind a car. She was scared and she made us all cry.

“We could hear people yellin’. They was honkin’ their horns and yellin’ so loud we could hear them in the bedroom. Wasn’t no colored folks on the street, except Mr. Carter and he was dead. They hung him and beat him and drug him up and down Ninth Street. We was all hidin’ and cryin.’ My Momma was tellin’ us to be quiet.” He stopped, looked away and back, directly at me.

“They shouldn’t have done that.”

            Here I was. It was a nice brisk autumn day and I should have been somewhere else, but I was sitting in someone else’s yard listening to an old man reciting his version of our city’s most awful moment and I couldn’t escape.

            “They drug him and drug him. All back and forth on Ninth Street. We could hear the cars and them horns honkin’, the honkin,’ oh my lord, the honkin’. Ain’t nobody ought to have that done to them. We was still cryin’ when they built a fire at Ninth and Broadway and burned him up. We could smell the smoke and that made us cry harder. My momma had some cookies in her apron pocket and she gave one to the younger kids to hush them up. She broke one in half and gave me a piece. She took the other half and then she started cryin’ too.”

            He looked at the cookie in his hand, then returned to that awful day.

            “Somebody said they broke one of his arms off and waved it at the cars going down Broadway,” he said. “I don’t know. Nobody looked out the window the whole time, for we was too scared.”

            I pretended to write something.

            “Too bad,” he said so low I barely heard him. “Them was bad days. Bad for us all.”

            The smoke circled us and I sat as still as I could. Mr. Pitts stopped talking and sat with his hand with the cookie resting on his leg. As the fog of remembrance cleared, he began to smile. He didn’t say anything. He was done talking to white strangers for the day.

            He sat there proud and triumphant, a black-skinned Cicero having had his say, needing neither accolades nor approval. I thanked him, not sure at all whether he even heard me, and then eased away and headed home. I was all confusion, trying to sort out what had just happened. I still had an assignment but what the hell was I going to write? The truth about what happened? That would be the honest thing. It might even be a good piece. Shake the readers up a bit. Let them know that history wasn’t all about Victorian houses. Hell yes!

            Back home, I sat in the kitchen and stared through the window. When I tried, I could hear the shouts on the street, feel the throb of the car engines running, and smell the acrid smoke of man and wood burning.

Damn that old man!

Outside the afternoon was dissolving into evening. The shadows got longer and darker the way our thoughts will as we doze. Beyond the kitchen window, the air was still crisp and clear. Inside, it was dark and gloomy. The evening sky changed purposefully that time of year like a lover moving from caresses to kisses, and then to the dark undertones of passion. My thoughts moved that way, too, as I reflected on the day and what it was trying to tell me. Maybe it was trying to tell me to be brave, or truthful …, or honest. Maybe it was suggesting that I approach what I was doing with something a little deeper than just seeing my name in print. Maybe it was just trying to tell me to say something else entirely, before darkness came. Maybe. Maybe.

After a time, I stood and retrieved a beat-up Remington typewriter and package of paper from a closet and carried them, with as much gentleness as I could muster, into the kitchen. I placed the typewriter on the kitchen table so I could see beyond it into the deepening gloom. Then I slid a page of paper into it and turned the cylinder so the paper was position precisely across the top, aligned there neat and worthy of higher-level thought. I drew and released a long breath of sad air—air that had once moved through the city and down the streets and around the large oak trees past the moving cars and quaint old houses and had once even flowed around the twitching, smoking body of John Carter.

I didn’t want to, but I smelled that smoke.

Click, click, I advanced the paper.

I was ready. My mind was as clear as the way of a traveler making the last turn on the last curve before home. I rubbed my hands. I thought how funny it would be to make the Sign of the Cross.

Instead, I started to type: “Mr. Otis Pitts, age 70 and a lifelong resident of Little Rock, has a new best friend who is only five years old.”