Wednesday, 08 July 2009

• A MINOR BLUES, CHAPTER SIX

  Reader's note: here is a link to all chapters that I have so far placed online.

  Chapter VI

   

  "Delano figured Spoonbill wanted to go quickly?" Jack asked the old man
  when he stopped to take a drink from the bottle of spring water. Tobias
  nodded as he drank.

  Then Jack remembered what else he had brought Tobias, at Burnside's
  suggestion. He pulled the half-pint of Wild Turkey out of his briefcase.
  "Let me top that off for you, fella." He looked to make sure Nurse
  Register, or any other busybody, wasn't watching. Nope just the old guy
  in the next bed, and he wasn't a snitch any more, if he ever was.

  Jack passed the open bottle under Tobias' nose before tipping a
  healthy slug into the water bottle.

  "Yes indeed, no doubt at all RL sent you, young man." Tobias took a long
  drink from the newly-fortified water. The man was near eighty, and Jack
  worried that maybe he wasn't supposed to be partaking of alcohol. But
  then again, the man was near eighty.

  "I don't get to do much drinkin' in here. What family comes to see me is
  religious. Not that I ain't, but a man got have his faults, right?
  Otherwise, we are presuming to be too Christlike, is my feelings. Isn't that so,
  Mr. Moonlight?"

  I never heard it put quite that way, Mr. Plimsoll. But it makes sense,
  of a sort."

  "Please, call me Tobias.", Tobias reminded his visitor.
  "Please, call me Jack."

  "Well then Jack, I suppose we are ready to continue the sad tale of
  Delano's incarceration."

  "I was told that you were wrongfully convicted, Tobias." You had to have
  been awfully young when you were in Cummins."

  "Yes, Tobias said. "I was young. And no, I was guilty as sin. I did
  have a temper as a young-un, and I did beat that bastard barber near to
  death."

  Jack started to ask for details, but he knew the clock was ticking.
  Thirty minutes had come and gone. The staff's laxity toward their
  charges worked in his favor, but it couldn't last.

  "Now, the 38 years at Parchman Farm? That was a miscarriage of justice.
  I was the closest black man to the scene, and the sheriff needed to find
  a culprit. They told the lady that I was the man who raped her, all she
  had to do was say so in court."

  Jack shook his head, it was a story similar to many he had heard over
  the years.

  "Those wonderful people at the Innocence Project, plus some local state
  lawyers, won me my freedom." Funny thing is, Jack, that the state was
  working to free me at the same time. I went blind two years ago, my
  arthritis got too bad to do work of any kind at Parchman. The state
  tired of paying my medical bills, so it was looking like I would be free
  by now anyhow. At least this way, with a wrongful conviction suit going
  forward, Mississippi will end up paying for my care after all. Should I
  live long enough to win it, that is. My lawyer is helping some, and she
  assures me that there will be a settlement soon."

  "It's funny that me and Delano got to be so tight, Tobias mused."

  Jack thought he had missed something, then realized Tobias was talking
  to himself.

  "What did you mean by that, Tobias?"

  "We both signed confessions to things we did not do, Jack ."
  -----------------------------------------

  Summer, 1941

  Delano had time to grieve between beatings. The first came at the hands
  of Tarver and his driver. Even though the man who shot Spoonbill said
  that Delano came from up the street, and was nowhere near the residence
  he fired at the crazy black man. For his part, Delano held no ill will
  towards the shooter. Spoonbill was looking to die, it seemed. Delano
  just wished his friend had waited until Delano was far enough away not
  to hear the shot.

  It took two days for the police to figure out what to charge Delano
  with. They settled on trespassing and attempted burglary. Had Delano
  been a local, had someone to vouch for him, he might have walked.

  Once the charges were filed, the detectives went to work convincing
  Delano that accessory to murder was the alternative to confessing to
  the trumped-up charges. A few cracked ribs and a dislocated shoulder
  later, Delano conceded their point. Then he was sent to hospital, taped
  up, cleaned up, and made ready for his plea date.

  On Tuesday, August 12, 1941, Delano saw his new home for the first time.
  It was to be the last time he saw it from the outside. He was looking
  through a slit in the canvas cover of the transfer truck, saw flat
  fields of crops, then a guard tower. Neither prisoner to which he was
  chained, both white men, a pair of bank robbers, indicated any
  curiousity. They had only talked to him once, to see if he had a
  cigarette. They laughed when he said he had given up the habit years
  ago. "So did we.", said the one named Earl. "For the next five years."

  That was the extent of integration at Cummins. Once he was processed.
  Delano was walked, still in chains, to Block "D". The guards unshackled
  him, one handed him a blanket and sheet. Another slid open the door, and
  yet a fourth kicked him in the back, through the door, which shut behind
  him with the dreaded clang heard in so many prison movies. So began
  Delano's stay in Hell.

  He picked himself off the floor, looked around. He was in a room about
  80 feet long and 20 feet wide. Six-inch gaps every ten feet, between the
  walls and the roofline offered some daylight and the promise of cold
  winter nights.
  There was a double row of bunk beds with thin matresses, all unoccupied.
  He had been told by a trustee that he would be assigned to a work detail
  in the morning, and for now to enjoy the silence. "The men will be back
  at dusk. Your block boss is Bull Red. Best give him what he wants, cigs
  if your family sends any, extra biscuits from dinner, but.." He looked
  at Delano's relatively slim build. "He may want sumpin' extra from you."

  "What you mean?", Delano imitated the trustee's whisper, sure that the
  guards would hit them if they were overheard. But Delano knew what the
  trustee meant. Spoonbill had made him aware that some men were to be
  avoided, not to accept favors from them, not to hang around them, and
  not to back down from them. "I won't always be there to protect you, boy.
  That's why we're gonna teach you the sweet science, the pugilistic arts.
  There's some people you cain't win over with a song."

  Towards dusk, Delano was sitting on the edge of a bunk that had no look of
  occupation when he heard commotion outside. The door opened, men started
  filing in, some started talking with one another, but they all got quiet when
  they saw Delano sitting there. Some filed past him, one or two shook their
  heads as they passed. The door clanged shut, and Delano saw the one who
  had to be Bull Red take a piece of paper from a guard who passed it
  through the bars.

  Delano made him for a Redbone, a people of complicated ancestry also called
  Melungeons, who inhabit a portion of Southwest Louisiana. They are part
  Caucasian, part Indian, and part Negro. Most Redbones, like the one who was 
  walking towards Delano, had copper-hued skin, high cheekbones,
  and straight hair. Few were as bulky as Bull Red, neè Timothy Clark,
  but, as with him, English names were more common than French by a wide
  margin.

  Only one or two had gone into the shower room at the far end of the
  dorm; most waited to see how this was going to play out. Delano was
  curious as well, he made a quick calculation of pluses and minuses as
  Bull Red walked towards him.

  Delano was five-ten, Bull was a few inches over six feet. This was a
  plus, Spoonbill had taught him that punching upward gave one firmer
  footing. But the big man had a reach several inches longer than his. A minus
  for sure. Delano weighed one hundred and sixty pounds the last time he had
  used a scale. He probably had lost weight since his arrest. He estimated Bull
  Red to be close to twice that, not all of fat by a long shot. Another for the
  minus column.The fellow was walking slow, but he seemed to be sure-footed,
  not lumbering like a poorly-toned fake wrestler. Delano called that as an even,
  as he was tired of minuses.

  Delano figured he was faster, due to Spoonbill's constant training and
  demanding exercise regimen. He had kept it up in jail, as soon as his
  injuries allowed. Two hundred push-ups, then fifty one-handed with each
  arm. He had worked his way up to five hundred sit-ups the day they came
  to put him in the truck. He had found a fellow in jail who would practice
  sparring with him, letting Delano hit his hands, while Delano let him
  try to punch his face. It was the closest thing to fun he had experienced
  since Spoonbill's  death, and he hoped now that it made him faster than the
  adversary-to-be who was now standing in front of him. Delano had risen to
  his feet in a show of respect, also so he could move faster.

   Bull Red spoke, reading from the paper that looked tiny in his hands.
  "Spoondog? Roosevelt? Spoonboy? Which do you prefer, slim?"

  "I prefer Delano."

  "I see, and you picked this bunk for yourself, did you?"

  "It was unoccupied..." Suddenly, Delano was flying across the room,
  grabbed and thrown before he saw the movement. So much for the speed
  advantage, he thought as he banged into a bunk on the opposite row and
  two beds down from his first choice.

  "I choose who sleeps where on this block. That's my bunk, and that's
  where you will sleep tonight. And I prefer to call you Pussy." Again he
  was standing inches from Delano,

  "Is that what you called your Mama?" Damned if the man didn't blink, and
  Delano punched upward, hitting Bull in the jaw. A piece of the giant's
  tongue flew out of his mouth, trailing blood and spit. Delano followed
  through with a left to his nose, savoring the crunch as his fist sunk
  in the meaty face.

  It wasn't over. Delano left arm was gripped by a vise disguised as a
  right arm, and he was pulled into Bull's chest, They were face-to-face,
  and Delano could see that he had shaken off the effects of his surprise
  attack. The contorted face, blood spewing down his chin split into a
  broken-toothed grin as Delano wriggled in his grasp. Bull Red pulled his
  left arm back in preparation for a powerful roundhouse that could surely
  put him in the same dimension as his mentor. The larger man turned to the
  wide-eyed crowd. "Guess I'll be screwing a corpse tonight, ladies."

  Delano hadn't been sitting on the bunk all afternoon. From tales heard
  around hobo campfires, he had learned that improvised weapons could be
  made and hidden in walls, ceilings, floors, bed frames, and bodily
  orifices. Lacking the availability of the latter, or a desire to conduct such a
  search anyway, Delano started feeling and scanning the former, checking
  every corner and surface of the concrete-block walls. He was rewarded when
  he found a tiny discolored circle in the cement where four blocks met. With
  his fingernail, he scraped away the powdered concrete dust some enterprising
  convict had used to cover a hole large enough to hide a sixteen-penny
  nail. And that was what Delano pulled out of its hiding place. The
  nail's business end had been sharpened almost to invisibility. He filled
  the hole back up with dust and cement scraped up with the weapon. The
  resulting patch would never pass close inspection, but he figured it
  would be good enough for the encounter he was sure would ensue when the
  crew returned from the fields.

  He placed the nail in his right armpit, under his tight t-shirt,
  thanking the Lord for the prison system's careless regard for sizing.
  Now, in Bull Red's grip, he wriggled it loose, felt it slide down his
  shirt, and into his hand. He slipped it between his middle and ring
  finger, the broad end of the head firmly against his palm, as he had
  practiced for most of the time since he found it. Just as Bull turned
  back from his aside to the audience, Delano punched it into the man's
  fat neck with all his might. He heard air hissing out of the wound as he
  was dropped, and the light-skinned ogre fell back, vainly plucking at
  the nail. His windpipe had been pierced, and blood ran out of his mouth
  and nose at an even faster pace than before.

  Delano took careful aim, and kicked the son of a bitch in the crotch to
  great effect. He decided against kicking the nail further into the man's
  nasal cavity. Turning to the open-mouthed crowd, he spoke calmly.

  "The name is Delano. Not Spoondog, not Spoonboy, not Spoon anything. Do
  not call me Roosevelt. Now someone call the guards, this poor man has
  fallen and hurt himself."

  Voices could be heard outside, getting closer. Delano motioned for two
  of the closest witnesses to help him pick Bull Red off the floor. He dipped
  his fingers into Bull Red's neck wound, flicked blood on their shirts, and
  whispered, "We all got a little messy helping him."

  "I didn't see nothin' boss. Mind if I call you boss? My name's Tobias,
  and I hate to be called Toby". Delano suppressed a laugh as the guards
  swarmed in.

   

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