Witness Prep

“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes, they forgive them.”

                       Oscar Wilde –
            The Picture of Dorian Gray - 1891

Darryl ushered him down the hallway, while Fred held Aunt Lafonda’s hand.  The walls were off-white, bare, cracked in some places, and his new shoes squeaked as they shuffled across the industrial carpet.  The ceiling was much higher than the one at his house, and the bright lights made him blink.

“Fred, this is Walter.  Walter, this is Fred.”

Darryl walked back to his office while Fred put his hands his pockets and looked up at the broadly smiling white face behind the desk.

“Come in Fred, come in!  Sit down.”  And Walter motioned him in.

Fred climbed up into the wooden chair in front of Walter’s desk as if it were a ladder, turned around, and sat down hard on his rear.  He placed his arms up on the armrests, up by his ears and swung his little legs in front of him, looking around.

“I like your shirt, Fred.  Who is that on it?”

Fred pulled his shirt out from across his belly, and looked at it upside down.

“Spiderman.”

“Spiderman?  Wow!  That is so cool! Spiderman was around when I was little.”

“Really?”

“Yep.  I used to read about him in comic books.  Do you know what those are?”

“No.”

“That’s ok.  They were around when I was a kid.  I guess you watch him on tv?”

“Yeah.  I like watching tv.  We have a big tv in our apartment.”

Silence.  Fred looked at the pile of papers on Walter’s desk, the out of style ties crumpled across the back of the door, the diploma hung haphazardly right above Walter’s shiny head.  Walter fumbled around for something else lighthearted to ease into it.

“What do you like to do other than watch Spiderman?”

“I like to ride my bicycle.”

“Does your Aunt Lafonda take you to the park to ride your bicycle?”

“She says not to go to the park.  There are bad people there.  I just ride it in front of our apartment?”

“In the parking lot?”

“Yeah….Do you ever go out and play, Mr. Walter?”

“Sure.  I was little once like you.  And I used to go out and play.  But then I got big.  And it’s a lot more fun being little than it is being big.”

Fred furrowed his brow for a minute, but didn’t agree with Walter.

“Fred, do you like to color?”

“Yeah.”

“I bought you some coloring books.  Would you like to color with me?”

Walter placed a new Dora the Explorer coloring book on his desk.  Fred slid down the chair, scooted it forward with a couple uneven tugs, and clambered his pudgy little body back up.  He picked up a red crayon and began scratching away.  It broke in his hand because he was pressing too hard.

“Do you know what else I like Mr. Walter?”

“What’s that Fred?”

“McDonalds.”

“I like McDonalds too.  So do my kids.  They love McDonalds here in Clarksdale a lot.  They have a big slide and a helicopter. I can’t get them to eat all their chicken nuggets because they are too busy playing on the slide.”

“You only have two kids?  You look old.”

“Well, it took us a little while to get started on kids.”

“Do you like football?”

“Yes.  What is your favorite team?”

“I like baseball.”

“Do you play with a wiffle ball or a real baseball?  I don’t like playing with a real baseball because it hurts my hand.”

Fred put down the two pieces of his red crayon and picked up a brown one.

“I’m going to color me and you.”

Fred wrote his name above Dora and began to shade it in with his crayon.  Then he paused for a minute, looked at his brown crayon, and put it down.

“What color should I color you?”

“Um, Fred, do you want some peanut butter crackers?”

“Sure.”

“Will you walk to the machine with me to get some?”

“Ok.”

“Do you want to meet the other people I work with on our way?”

And he took Fred by the hand and helped him out of the chair.

“This is Mr. Mike.”

I quickly minimized her autopsy photos on my computer screen and smiled as big as I could manage.

“Hey Little Fred!”

“Mr. Mike works across the hall from me.”

“He’s got more hair than you do, Mr. Walter”

“He sure does.”

I waived and watched them walk down the hall, then shut my door when they returned. 

“What are you going to do this afternoon, Fred?  Color some more?”

“Yes.”

“That sounds good.”  And Fred was quiet.

“Mr. Walter, will you come over to my house?”

“Sure….um, I can’t come today, but I will come over soon.”

“My house is right over there.  You just turn this way and that way and then that way and then you are there.”  And he motioned with his hand in the air.

“Ok, that sounds good.”

More coloring.

“Mr. Walter, where did Aunt Lafonda go?”

“She went to the store. She’ll be back soon.”

“She sure is taking a long time at the store.”

“Maybe she likes shopping.  My wife likes shopping, but I don’t.  Do you like shopping little Fred?”

“Yep.”

“What if you go shopping for something you don’t like?”

“I always like going shopping.”

“What’s Diego doing in that picture?”

(inaudible)

“That looks like fun.”

After a few more minutes of coloring, Walter realized he had had too much Diet Coke.

“Fred, I have to go to the bathroom.”  Walter got up from his desk.  Fred dropped his brown crayon, and followed Walter down the hall to the bathroom.  Squeak squeak.

“Um, but you’ve got to wait outside the door, ok Fred?

“Ok.”

Flush.

“Now I’ve got to go to the bathroom.  Will you come with me?”

“Um, I’ll wait outside the door.  Is that ok?”

“Sure.”

And Fred closed the door.  He opened it after a bit.

“Did you flush?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”  Fred looked at the floor, and put one new shoe on top of the other.

“Why don’t you try one more time?  You just push this lever and it flushes.  Here, you do it.”

Back to the office.  Fred banged his left knee trying to squeeze between the chair and the desk to get to his Dora picture.

“Can I take these colors home?”

“But if you take them home, how are you going to color here?”

“But I ain’t got no colors at home.”

“Will you bring them back with you the next time you come?

“How old are your kids?”

“They are five and two.”

“Five is just one more than I am….will you ever bring them over to play?”

“Do you want to play with my kids?”

“Sure.”

“Well, they are at the academy right now, but maybe one day after school I will bring them over.”

“Ok, that would be fun.  We can ride bicycles at my house.”

Quiet.

“So, little Fred….do you want to go see the courtroom with me?”

“Sure.”

And he took little Fred’s hand, and led him back down the colorless hall, up the winding steps to Courtroom I.  The solid oak doors were heavy, and Walter had to pull the polished brass handle with both hands to open it.

The door slapped shut.  Fred breathed in the musty smell of oiled wood and dusty drapes. 

“They sure have a lot of chairs in here.  Looks like when I go to church.”

“You see that big chair up there?  That’s where the judge sits.  Have you ever seen a judge before, Fred?”

“I saw one on tv before.”

“He wears this big black robe.  And he talks into this microphone and he tells people what to do.”

Fred thought that was pretty cool.

“Fred, if the judge ever told you what to do, would you do it?”

“Uh huh.”

“Ok…you see this chair over there next to the big chair?  That’s called a witness chair.  People sit in that chair, and they tell the judge their stories….do you want to go sit in that chair, Fred?”

“Yeah.  That looks big!”

“Come on.  Let’s go sit in it!  I’ll race you!”

And they ran down the aisle, past the bar, up the steps, and Walter let Fred win.

“Whew!  You sure are fast!”

Still breathing heavy, (since it had been a good while since Walter had run, well, anywhere) he picked up Fred, put him in the soft leather chair, latched the gate in front, and took five steps back to sit on the prosecutor’s table.

“I’m just going to stay down here and I’m going to talk to you.  Is that ok?”

“Uh huh”

“So, Fred, what are your brother and sister’s names?”

“Jazlyn Young, Shy’Anna Gillespie, Montavius Webb, and Deyonte Young.”

“Sorry Fred, I can’t hear you.  You have to speak up really loud.”

And Fred repeated the names best he could remember.

“See, that’s better.  Because down here, I could hear you unless you talked really loud.”

Walter then moved to where there were a bunch of chairs on the side of the courtroom, where the choir probably sang, and sat down in the one farthest away from Fred. 

“Fred, can you say those names again?  I want to see if you can make me hear you when I am sitting over here.”

Fred said the names again at the top of his little voice.

“Good job Fred!  Do you think you could do that again another day, maybe when there are other people in here besides me?”

“Uh huh.”  And he nodded.  He was fidgeting in his seat, thinking about his bicycle.

Walter took a minute to look at Fred sitting there in his Spiderman t-shirt, brown eyes slightly wide looking around at all the different things in this big room, swinging his legs in this much more comfortable chair, and digging in his ear with his left hand at something that itched.  He hadn’t asked for it.  He hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

Walter reached in his shirt pocket, and unfolded a piece of paper.  He walked towards the child slowly, and held it up for Fred to see.

“Can you tell me who is in that picture?”

“Yes.”

“Here, you hold it and tell me who it is.”  Fred took it in his little hands, looked at it, and after a moment, set it face down on his lap. 

Walter watched intently for any hint of expression.

“That’s me.”

“Is there anybody else in that picture?”

“Aunt Lafondra.”

Walter paused for a minute.  It was only Fred’s first day.  There would be three or four more visits after this before it was time, before it mattered.  But he pushed on.

“Is there a there a third person in this picture, Fred?”

“I don’t want to do this any more.  I want to go color.”

“We’ll go color in a minute.  Right now, I need you to tell me if you recognize that third person in the picture with you.”

“I don’t know.”

“Try really hard, Fred.”  Walter leaned in closer to him.

And Fred was quiet and he looked down in his lap.  He thought of the yelling, the smell of  her perfume and axel grease, the trunk of his momma’s Cadillac, the sticky stuff on his face and on his momma’s face and on the back of his momma’s head and how her hair was all stuck in it, how the wire hurt his hands and feet, how the mosquitoes bit him on his neck and his belly when he was in the bushes behind the church, how his momma had taught him to find a toilet when he needed to go but he couldn’t find one and couldn’t move and how he just went on himself and how warm it was and that his momma was going to be mad and that he was going to get a spanking…how his momma wouldn’t answer him and she just laid there while he laid there on her and peed on her and how his daddy told his momma that she wasn’t supposed to have other boyfriends and she wouldn’t listen and how she told him to call the men uncle and he had so many uncles and how his daddy was mad that he had so many uncles.

Fred looked up at Mr. Walter.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s fine Fred.  That’s fine…..Will you come see me next week?”

“Can we have peanut butter crackers again?”

“Yes.”  Walter nodded. “We can have peanut butter crackers.”



Harvard Law & Merigold, MS

“Jook” is a word for “Negro pleasure house”, often a “bawdy house” where black workers “dance, drink and gamble”.

                                                            -Zora Neale Hurston

“Juke” - Gullah, meaning “disorderly” or “wicked”

Ely was sitting on his couch at the Cuckoo’s Nest, playing Call of Duty, and had just put a new log in the wood burning stove when Roach walked in with a tallboy.

“What’s up man, what you doin’?”

“Nothing.”

 “Let’s go over to Crawdads and see if they got some girls.”

Ely was pissed anyway because some ten year old kid from Rhode Island had been whipping his ass for the past hour, so he threw his headset on the coffee table, picked up his .45 laying right next to it (“cause they don’t make a .46”) and shoved it down the front of his Levis.  Grabbed a new pack of cigarettes and downed the last of his beer.

Followed Roach out of the heavy warehouse door that served as the entrance to the Nest, and as they passed Ely’s 2500 Super Duty, he reached in, laid the gun on the console, and rummaged around the empty boxes of Marlboro 72s, dried up pouched of Levi Garrett, and empty Nabs packs until he found his Zippo.

Crawdads was across the street.  Gravel parking lot with dirty brand new pick up trucks.  Only Fords and Chevys.  Farmers.  SUVs for the females with stickers of the private academies their kids attended on the backs, vanity plates on the fronts supporting the crop their husbands or their daddys grew.

A lawn sprinkler sat on top of the building, run during the summer, fanning right to left, keeping the tin roof cool.  But no need now in the middle of deer season.  The smell of grilled red meat filled the air, and slapped them in the face when they walked inside.  Manager politely saying hello, though he had asked Ely before not to come back.  Fuck him. 

Walk down a couple of narrow halls, and then the room opened up to the bar and dance floor.  Neon signs for Miller and Bud.  Skinny white boys in Columbia shirts and Polo hats with the wrap-around hair bartending just because they were Pikes and making mixed drinks to their best guess.  Calling the drinks stupid names like “Delta Martini” and “Merigold Mint Julep” and “Mississippi Mud Slide”.  Women in their mid 30’s and early 40’s, tight jeans and tops made to hide their bellies but enhance their boobs, mad cause their husbands are at hunting camp and won’t have sex with them anymore and looking for greener grass that would be nice to their kids.  Men in Mossy Oak hats and four-day growth and muddy boots hunting for a version of what their wife used to look like so they could take her back to hunting camp and justify why he wasn’t ever killing anything.

Back 40 was the band.  Coupled with the occasional yell and drunken request for “Free Bird”, it was a typical Thursday night.

There were three girls sitting off at a table to the right by a stuffed loggerhead turtle.  One black, one white, and one half black with a little Jap off in her or something.  Ely wasn’t real sure, even the next day.  But she was the hottest one out of all of them, which pissed the mid-30s & 40s former beauty queens.  Coupled with their short hair, lack of makeup, and the fact that no men were talking to them despite their relative attractiveness, one could tell these three weren’t southern women.

Southern women carry themselves a certain way.  They do not chase men.  They are taught that by their mothers and grandmothers.  Instead, they attract men.  A proper southern woman, if she just looks at him right, can pull a man from a group of friends, through clouds of blue smoke, over two tables and maybe even cause him to spill his beer.  This has happened more times than I care to acknowledge.

They are queens of flattery, both to men and to each other.  They can say things that sometimes take you two or three minutes (or up until the next day) to figure out the meaning of.  At that point you decide whether it was genuine or doublespeak.  Flattery is a sacredly held art form, developed in a southern woman’s early years at debutante balls and cotillions and pilgrimages and given its final touches during the four (or five) years of sorority life. 

Southern women flirt, and do it quietly and well.  They touch you lightly on your shoulder, laugh at your jokes while locking eyes just for a moment then look away and intentionally give you the impression that you are the most interesting man in the world.  And you walk away feeling that you are.

Southern women sit whenever they can.  They do not stand up to talk to you.  When they must walk, they walk with their shoulders back and their chin up, exposing their throat, eyes just a little above the horizon.  They do this not just to establish dominance among other men and women but also often to prominently display whatever shiny thing they likely have around their neck which keeps us lesser creatures in check, and slightly envious.  

They wrap a napkin around the label of their bottled light beer, if that’s what they choose to drink. They don’t stand when they smoke, and they can make a cigarette look delicious, even though it is not.   

They don’t discuss politics or religion, but not because they can’t.  And when you talk about the War, they get quiet. 

Though a lot of attributes of southern women have been lost through the generations, such as cooking or sewing or other assorted antiquated attributes…propriety in public is not one of them.

And when a southern woman turns the lights off, so is her propriety. 

But it is proper not to discuss it. 

Ely played it cool as he always did.  Walked to the bar, took his cigarettes out of his front pocket, lit one and ordered a Bud Light.  Nodded to the bartender in a plume of blue smoke, knowing that he used to beat his ass and chase him through the mud with his own truck back during hell week when he was a Pike.  Nothing needed to be said.  The fraternal feeling was already there.  Ely got his beer for free.  Roach, however, being from New York and therefore not as coached in the cat and mouse game of meeting women, couldn’t help himself and immediately tromped his way over to the three foreigners.  After about ten minutes, and ordering them shots he couldn’t afford, he motioned for Ely to come join them.

They girls were from Harvard Law.  Brittney (black), Aeriel (white) and Natasha (the one that was half black half something).  The girls were working in Clarksdale, as part of the Innocence Project.  Proud of it too, as if all we did around here was throw them in jail for being B.I.P.  Or as if the prosecutors had some racist agenda or were trying to get their numbers up.  Hell, they couldn’t understand that we were lucky to even get a conviction here in the Delta with some of our jury pools and outstanding police work.  But as the night wore on, and the cheap beer and shots flowed, the topics of conversation went from serious to sundry things, and finally the girls let on that they wanted to go to Monkey’s.

Every tourist wants to go to Monkey’s. Every one.  Ever since it appeared in the March 2, 2007 edition of the New York Times, we’ve had all kinds down here.  One night, I was sitting in there a few summers ago…hot…steamy…a blues band rocking at full blast, the place kept flipping the circuit breaker due to the window units running at big snowflake.  Finally, Mr. Monkey announced in the pitch black we could either have air or turn the band down, and the whole place yelled fuck that and we sweated on.  That’s the kind of place it was.

The same night, a charter bus pulled up from North Carolina containing giggling little white girls and half the Wake Forest basketball team.  They were doing a two week tour on poverty in the south for some class that was supposed to make a difference, and they were driving from New Orleans to Chicago, basically stopping along the way just to look at poor people.  So they stopped in to take a look at us.  I stayed in the corner and sipped my beer, and they didn’t speak to me, as if I was some white oppressor monitoring my flock.  The basketball guys just shot pool, thanking god they didn’t grow up around here.  And after about an hour of the white girls taking party pics with random old black and broken field hands, clutching their just purchased 32 oz beers, I, while slightly blinded by the flashes, realized why orangutans throw their own shit back at you when you are at the zoo.

But now it was Thursday night, and therefore Family Night, so it was a good time to head out there.  Ely, Roach, and Harvard Law loaded up in Ely’s truck, parked back in front of the Nest, and they swung by One Stop to get a twelve pack. 

HotRod was standing out front by the “No Loitering” sign, with his M&M’s jacket on and skull cap, smoking a Newport and  being everybody’s “partna” just trying to “hold a dolla” when he recognized Ely walking in and asked him what’s going on.

“Whattup Sly?”

“Shit, nothing to it.  Got some girls in the truck.  We about to go to Monkey’s.  They wanna get naked.”

“Fo real?”

“Yeah, fo real.  You ought to slide past there.  Maybe get you a little something something.”

“They down to give it up?”

“Yeah, they with me, ain’t they?”

“Aight then.  Cool cool.  I’ll be out that way.”

The girls had stayed in the truck. Who was that? Aw just a guy who used to work on my daddy’s farm, and we used to pay his wages in cornmeal.  They got wide eyed and quiet.  Ely’s daddy built custom cabinets.  Ely worked with him too.  Always had.  They never had no farm.  And his daddy never spent any money.  Hence the “My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter” sticker on the back window of the 2500.  The girls had thought he was Church of Christ or something.

The glass packs roared south down Hwy 61 and turned right by the Pemble Farms sign.  Then they cut left and hit gravel, spinnin and spraying and winding down next to the bayou where the cypress knees stuck out of the icy water.  Monkey’s was right there on the left, under the orange sodium light.  It was cold, and no one was outside, despite the hoopties and occasional Cadillac clogging up the limited parking.  The music was spilling out of the cracks and patches of the clapboard building.  Ely pulled up in the field next to it, and went ahead and put the truck in 4H so they could get out when it was time to go.

They walked up to the front, girls wide-eyed.  Ely held the door open for them, his lone stretch on being a southern gentleman, but Harvard Law collectively motioned for him to go in first.  They could hold the door themselves.  It slapped behind them.

Monkeys was dark and the ceiling low, toy monkeys hanging everywhere.  Posters for beer commercials, old blues concerts, and Elvis.  The DJ was spinning Bobby Bland, there wasn’t a live band tonight.  But the girls were into it anyway.  Everyone went up to the counter which separates the juke joint from his bedroom, and Mr. Monkey was leaned over the front of the bar in his red and white suit with matching hat, whiskey glass by his hand and cheroot  pinched in the side of his mouth.  He smiled, recognizing Ely as “good people”, asked them what they wanted.  Couple of 32oz Bud Lights. 

They sat in an old airplane seat off to the side, and just watched.  Skinny old black men in caps and hats with feathers out the top and collars that were in style thirty years ago.  Large black women who knew they looked good, gyrating and grinding both on the dance floor and at the tables.  It didn’t matter. 

Music pumping, vibrating, mouths moving but hearing no speech, smiles, gold and silver flashing, grease running down cheeks and across foreheads, sweat, bodies, stink.  One got down on all fours on the dance floor, drawing attention from Harvard Law, while two men took turns sliding their bodies back and forth behind her.  Black fat looking better than white fat.  Cold on the outside, hot on the inside, steam rising from the roof into the orange night light.  Ely smoked in the dark, the ember periodically showing a flash of his face.  Grinning.

HotRod slid in the side door to avoid the five dollar cover, brushed his waves forward one last time, winked at the airplane seat, and strutted onto the dance floor to take his turn.

Uptown Bennie Brown's

It was my birthday, so Kemp told me we were going to eat at Uptown Bennie Brown’s over in Jonestown, a few miles outside of Clarksdale.  Makes Clarksdale look…well…developed.  Fifty-two percent of the population is below the poverty line.  The per capita annual income for the town was $8,528.00 in 2000.  Sheriff’s deputies don’t go alone at night.  No white people live there.  I don’t know if they ever did.  But Kemp said it was worth the fifteen minute drive to eat at Uptown’s.  Claimed I’d have the best fried pork chop I’d ever eaten.  So we went. 

            For the majority of Mississippi’s history, there were certain places where black folks couldn’t go.  Everyone knows that.  We learn it in school.  We’re reminded every February.  And there were some places I guess that were considered in-between, that is, blacks were allowed to be there, so long as a white person was at least present or accompanying them somehow.  Kind of like a chaperone or someone who could vouch for them or something. The unspoken “don’t worry, he’s not going to steal anything or hurt you.  He’s with me." But even then, the poor guy would get looks, like “What the hell does this black guy think he’s doing here?”  And people would make him feel as unwelcome as possible, so he would never want to come back, and the separate worlds would remain.  Still happens to this day. 

Well, Jonestown is the same way in reverse.  Kemp and I didn’t go without our chaperones, Chilean and Samson. Two of Kemp’s co-workers, nice guys, funny as hell, and, most importantly, they had the requisite blackness for us to enter Jonestown.  Yep, requisite blackness.  Street credit if you will. Chilean and Samson understood the rule.  We never talked about why.  

Since I started in the DA’s office I had heard about Jonestown, specifically not to pick a juror from there because they were always going to side with the defendant, who in this circuit court district was almost always black, or, more often than not, jurors from Jonestown were related somehow to the defendant we were trying.  Extended relationships which I didn’t understand.  Extended relationships they never revealed upon voir dire questioning.  Stereotype or not, it’s just one of those considerations you have to make. Even my DA, who was a black female, would tell me that.

But I had never been to the town itself.  Kemp said his co-worker, Fred, one of the few Jewish guys left in Clarksdale, found the place awhile back because he and a buddy were out dove hunting one afternoon and had run out of beer. Despite the seriousness of the no-beer situation, and balancing safety issues, Fred elected not to get on the highway but rather amble on in to Jonestown to get another case.  Uptown Bennie’s was the only place that sold beer and food.  Fred tried the food, liked it, and the hospitality was great.

This general store is the first thing you see in downtown, paint faded on the west side by years of the summer Delta sun beating on it.  Has an old mural of what purports to be the Jonestown skyline, paint flecking off in leaded confetti.  According to the mural, there were several skyscrapers in Jonestown.  Clearly I had missed its heyday.

 We pulled up to the side in Kemp’s F-250, nose out so we couldn’t get blocked in or needed to scat ass.  Just in case.  Hell, Chilean and Samson recommended it.  Newest truck on the lot by far.  As the dust settled around us and I got out, a man with no legs zipped on past in his powerchair, orange flag coming out of the top.  He didn’t look at us.  Just kept on pimpin by.

To my left, the lone Jonestown police officer had what appeared to be a ten year old kid pinned up against his patrol car zeroed in on him with a can of pepper spray.  I mean, getting in his face and really hollering at him.  I couldn’t hear the conversation, but I knew I wanted no part of it.  What was going on? Drugs? Burglary? Bennie told me later the kid had been skipping school. 

            We walked up on the sagging front porch, my leather boots resonating on the wood planks.  Clomp.  A broken old fellah man eyed us suspiciously as he leaned up against the side of the boarded-up building next door, then he spit on the ground.  I just nodded, grabbed for Bennie’s screen door, and walked in. 

“Alright now.”

“Alright.”

Bennie’s was busting at the seams with absolutely everything, from watermelons to school uniforms to imitation cologne and pirated CDs.  The seating area was the back where the food was served.  Like a Wal-Mart in the Congo.  Bennie greeted us with a big smile, wiping his hands on a dishrag.  Chilean was the first to speak.

            “Hey now Mr. Bennie.  What you know good?”

            “Man, ever thang’s workin.  Who you got with you today?”

Kemp explained to me later that he always ask that question, because he’s got some illegal video poker upstairs that makes this place happening on Friday and Saturday nights.  Knowing the routine, Chilean just passed me off as on of their co-workers.  I don’t know if I would have gotten served otherwise.

“Ya’ll got any pork chops?

            “Fried about a half hour ago.”

            “Gimme one of them, some greens and some mac and cheese pleasesir.”

            “You want a side of cornbread?  Got butter beans in the back.”

            “Cornbread be fine.  No beans though. Got any peach cobbler today?”

            “Not today.”

            “Alright then.  That’d be fine.”

And Uptown went through the routine with each of us, all us wanting cornbread, none so big on the butterbeans.

            He slapped the food in a styrofoam go plate, with the pork chop taking up the top end and the greens and mac taking up the other side.  Dine in only in a take out box.  I had to carry it face open with both hands.  I went and got an RC out of the cooler next to the sweating High Life tall-boys. 

            When you’re a minority in a place like this, which for some reason gives you the feeling of invitation only, you’ve got to be conscious of how you sit.  You can’t sit segregated, you’ll look like you’re uppity or uncomfortable or flat don’t like black people.  So I sat with Chilean and Kemp sat with Samford.  The booths there in the dining area had been taken out of an old Pizza Inn or somewhere like that, maybe a McDonalds from back in the 1980’s – with burnt orange plastic seats bolted down to a metal frame which was supposed to be bolted to a concrete floor.  Uptown had oiled wood planks, with no bolts.  You had to be careful not to lean too hard one way or your food would slide clear on to the floor.

            The Louisiana hot sauce was passed around.  I doused my pork chop and dug in, grease running down the back of my hand making my fingers shiny.  No napkins.  Plastic forks.

            “Morning gentlemen!”

            I had my back to the door, which I generally try not to do anywhere since I was a prosecutor in this county.  Hell, last week I’d prosecuted an armed robber from here.  But with the somewhat authoritative voice, I thought the police had come in there after spraying down the ten year old.  So I turned.  A fellah had walked in, in a wife beater with suspenders and a sweat encrusted old bowler hat covering his jerry curls running down the back of his neck.  Not wanting to stare, or even look him in the eye, I looked down at my food but kept track of his feet.  He came in, skin so dark that when he smiled his head looked like a black dot with a strip of white-out splashed across the front of his face. Big as you please, but you could tell Bennie, up there by the cash register wiping his hands on his stained apron, wasn’t going to give him the same greeting he gave us. 

            “Hey Smurf.  How bout it?”

            “Aw doing good.  It’s all good.  Hey Miss Inez, howyoudoin?”

            And he reached forward to shake her hand, and when she held hers out, he grabbed it and kissed the top of it.  Like a chivalrous gentlemen from times of old.  She snatched it back.

            “Don’t be comin in here ‘Miss Inezing’ me! What you want Smurf?”

            “I just gettin’ one of these cold beers.  Ain’t nothing to it.”

White out smile again.

            “Yeah, well you better get one and be on your way.”

            “Aight I’m going I’m going”

            So he reached in and got a High Life, and he paid with quarters.  I looked down at my foot again as he strutted back past.  Miss Inez was hot.

            “Damn black ass think he can come in here and kiss me on the hand.  I’m gonna slap that stupid ass smile off his face one of these days.  Beat him down to the white meat.”

            “Stay cool Sha Baby.  He was just playin.”

            “Playin hell.  He was meddlin.”

            “Well, just let him go on and be.”

We didn’t say a thing except to compliment the foot.  Finished up, crunched up all the Styrofoam and threw it in the trash, thanked Bennie, no we don’t need any sunglasses or mosquito spray, and we hit the front door.

            “You boys are welcome back anytime.”

            He didn’t specify who he was talking to.

            “Appreciate it Mr. Benny.  We’ll holler at you later.  Good as usual.”

Stepped out on to the front porch, tried to avoid Smurf sitting down the other end, swinging his feet off the front, with his big ass smile, and asking if he could hold a dollar, and we went to the truck and headed back to the pavement.

In the side view mirror, a little orange flag poked out of the top of our dust trail.