The King of Colored Town

by Darryl Wimberley

  “Flex your knees,” Juanita commanded. “Flex ’em.”

  “I’m scared!” I wailed as I tried to comply.

  “Everybody’s scared. But you are not alone out here, Cilla. We are a band. All of us. Just follow Rodney.”

  Her ponytail tossed with the bob of her head.

  “Here we go,” our section leader hefted his trombone.

  Then the rap, rap, rap of a snare drum.

  A public-address system cursed with feedback echoed over the field. A garland of girls twirled batons out front, like slave women sent to precede the arrival of royalty. I dressed and covered on my section leader. The chalk lines gridding the field had already compromised the shine of my black leather shoes. I located the Drum Major centered before us, our general on the field. Ryan Tunney was our major domo, our metronome, the brother of the man who would later bury Joe Billy.

  He raised his silver staff.

  Three quick blasts on a silver whistle.

  We were on the field.

  Ball players talk about how scared they are until that first hit, that first contact with an opposing player. You endure that initial jarring collision, players will say, and generally things settle down. Marching in a band is similar. It’s a rack of nerves until you get on the field, until you make that first beat, execute that first left or right face. Then a thousand separate gears go into play requiring such coordination and concentration that you don’t have time to be scared.

  We only had three formations to choreograph. I found my spot in the “H” of lhs, that was easy enough. Pellicore placed me at the hub of a wheel for the “Oklahoma” feature. No problem with dress and cover from there. I was, however, slightly out of step on the final march of saints—

  “Cilla. On me,” Rodney commanded loudly and I recovered.

  When the Saints/Go Marching In/Oh, when the Saints go marching in…

  Then we peeled off the field in compact ranks and that was it, my first performance before a large and hostile audience. I retired from the field with my eyes searching the bleachers for Miss Chandler.

  “We’re not done yet, people,” Pellicore herded us to our sideline seats. “Keep moving.”

  We were filtering off the gridiron and milling toward our seats in the bleachers when the players of both teams galloped out of their lockers. I was still on the sideline trailing the trombones and trumpets when Cody Hewitt stepped directly into my path.

  His uniform was damp and stained from a halftime of troubles, a handsome, angry surfer-boy in pads and helmet. I could not avoid him; I was crowded by other band members within the length of his arms.

  “Bitch,” he challenged me.

  I think it was only at that moment I fully realized that there would always be a Cody Hewitt in my life, and people like him. That for those people nothing I accomplished would count for shit. No trophy would ever come untarnished. Miss Chandler came down from her seat in the bleachers afterwards.

  “What did he say to you?”

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t listen to that boy, Cilla,” she seized my arm. “You looked wonderful out there. You did us proud!”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. Now go on. Enjoy yourself. Have some fun.”

  For a moment I thought I actually could enjoy myself. After all, you can’t find better camaraderie at any football game than among members of a band. Those kids were funny and fun-loving. They were smart and sassy and obnoxious. But they were not colored. It quickly became apparent that my white companions had plans for the night that could not include me, boys and girls drifting off in twos and threes to some destination communicated as if by telepathy.

  Rodney did bring me a coke before he left with his girlfriend. That was nice. And Juanita squealed over and over how well I’d done. How proud she was of me. I didn’t feel abandoned by them, nor even by the other departing Saints. It was my Kerbo companions who deserted me that night. Who did not come to me in the stands or at the end of the game to tell me how perfectly I hubbed my wheel on the football field. How well I played “Oklahoma”.

  “You need a ride home, Cilla?” Juanita asked when we’d hung our uniforms.

  “Yes,” I admitted. “Please. If you don’ mind.”

  I had already gotten into her truck when I saw Joe Billy’s two-toned ’56 pull up, Joe Billy himself slumped low, in the posture now associated with gang-bangers. Pudding and Chicken crowded in the back seat.

  “’S’matter, Cilla? Too good for yo friends?”

  “Got that kind of attitude you ain’ no frenna mine,” I snapped back.

  Give Pudding credit for intervening. “Cilla, he din’ mean nuthin’.”

  “Sure he did.”

  “Naw, he din’. He proud of you, girl. We all proud. You looked good out there.”

  “You did, Cilla,” this from Chicken. “Now, come on and go wit us.”

  “‘Wit’ you where?”

  “Live Oak. Mama’s Store. Man there playin’s got one of Joe Billy’s guitars.”

  “Guitar?” Juanita perked up. “JayBee plays the guitar?”

  “You’re welcome to come,” Joe Billy offered politely, though all of us knew Mr. Land’s daughter could not possibly accept.

  “No, thank you,” Juanita tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. “Got somebody I’m ’sposed to meet. Says he’s got plans.”

  Juanita winked at me. “Can’t imagine what.”

  I waved goodbye to Mr. Land’s daughter before dropping into the seat made available beside Joe Billy.

  “I’m gonna have me some friends, Joe Billy,” I declared without a hint of deference.

  He ran his hand over the arc of the steering wheel.

  “He knows, Cilla,” Pudding said. “It’s just hard, is all.”

  Things loosened up on the way to Mama’s. Chicken Swamp started things off with a six-pack.

  “I’m gone dance tonight!” he yelled, spraying beer all over the back seat.

  And, of course we had music.

  “Put on the radio,” Chicken yelled. “Let’s hear some rock and got-damn roll!”

  It’s over thirty miles to Live Oak. We had a run of Dionne Warwick and The Beatles and the Mamas and Papas so that by the time we got to Mama’s everybody had held everybody’s hand, everybody had walked on by, and we were all looking forward to dancing in the street, which, of course, was why we were going to Live Oak in the first place. You see, you couldn’t dance, at least not legally, inside Laureate’s city limits. Dancing of any kind was forbidden first of all by canon—

  Do you know why Baptists never fuck standing up? the tired joke went.

  No, why?

  ’Cause somebody might think they’re dancing.

  —and then by statute. The Laureate City Council initiated the statute, kowtowing to local clergy shortly after Elvis Presley thrust his pelvis on The Ed Sullivan Show . They passed an ordinance that made it illegal to “simulate sexual gyration” inside the city limits.

  Mama Snipes was free from canonic, statutory and most sexual repressions. Mama had a jukebox inside what was actually a garage that looked out onto the parking lot of an old Texaco gas station. The garage and attached house was what Mama called her store, one of the few places black teens could get a coke or hamburger and dance.

  In the bay, where the lifts used to be, was where you danced. Mama would just roll up those big doors, put on a fan and some music and let it rock. There were maybe twenty couples dancing at Mama’s when we pulled up that evening, with as many singles milling around. A live band was setting up beside a pair of Fender amps, but the Wurlitzer was filled with quarters. I could hear Little Anthony.

  “Come on, now,” JayBee pocketed the keys. “Let’s see can you dance.”

  Dancing is a lot easier than marching, especially with a little beer to go along. Maybe some weed. It was the first time I smelled marijuana. Smelled like dry weeds burning.

 
“Want some?” Joe Billy cupped a joint in his hand.

  “Is it like cigarettes?”

  “Naw. Makes you feel light. Goofy. Take a hit. Hard. Hold it.”

  I tried and when I did it felt like somebody shoved a poker down my throat. Seconds later I was coughing like a coal miner. And then a kind of fog seemed to clear.

  “Daaaaammmmn.”

  Joe Billy grinned. “Yeah.”

  Let me go on record to say that Joe Billy was one outa-sight dancer. He could twist, he could frug, he could Bosa the goddamned Nova. He could alligator, jerk, or shimmy and he could mash your sweet, sweet potatoes all night long.

  I gave myself up to the music and alcohol and grass. Let the cool evening air wash over. “I don’t give a shit if syrup goes to a dollar a sop,” I declared.

  Spreading my arms to heaven as if I were in a revival. Joe Billy sliding inside. I leaned on him heavily, content to follow along or be dragged.

  Then I began to notice the other couples dancing.

  There was this one girl, in particular, a black girl near us, who had a narrow waist, like Juanita’s, a white haltertop over tight jeans. Processed hair, all straight and nice. When she moved I could see the muscles in her back working. See her hair spilling down that long, long spine.

  She looked like a gypsy out there. Like Jezebel. Like one of those sirens my boyfriend put on his guitars. I was dancing with Joe Billy, but I could not take my eyes off the anonymous siren alongside. I began to move my legs the way she moved. And my hips. My pelvis.

  Let you backboooooone slip.

  My shirt began to stick to my skin and I was hot. I was hot, Mama. I gathered up my top and tied it off in a knot.

  “Lawd God O’Mighty!”

  Someone shouted.

  “Look at that tall girl dance!”

  It wasn’t too long before Joe Billy was telling Pudding and Chicken they were going to have to find their own ride home.

  “For somebody never danced before, you sure let the dogs out,” Joe Billy declared as he let me in his car.

  All trace of color bled from the scenery on our way back to Laureate. A full moon fluttered in and out of autumn clouds to paint the road in a chiaroscuro of light and shadow.

  “That girl next to us? At Mama’s?” Joe Billy broke the silence. “The one with the top?”

  “Mmm hmm,” I could see her still.

  “Her boyfriend checking you out.”

  “Her boyfriend?”

  That was unexpected.

  “Checkin’ me out?”w“Thought I’s gone have to kick his butt,” Joe Billy assured me and slipped a hand off the steering wheel.

  “Be nice, now,” I said. “Be nice.”

  “Oh, I will,” he promised.

  I coupled with Joe Billy once again that night in his rude loft. But I had Mama’s and the cloakroom between my legs, that black, nubile dancer, and Juanita.

  Chapter twelve

  “…Monk Folsom has declared he will oppose Collard Jackson for the office of County Sheriff. Mr. Folsom will run as a Republican in that race…”

  — The Clarion, Sept. 17, 1963

  B y the third week in September, Collard Jackson’s political future looked dim. By that time, everybody knew that Garner Hewitt had shifted his formidable weight to back Monk Folsom for sheriff. It was easy for Garner to dump Collard Jackson. In the twisted logic of that time and place, a lawman who broke up a mob intent on assaulting children was not a man you could count on. The word coming out of Monk’s Auto Shop was that Sheriff Jackson had metamorphosed into a “nigger-loving lackey” beholden to “outside agitators.”

  “Ain’t nobody gone believe that tripe,” Mr. Raymond dismissed the strategy early on. “Collard Jackson? A friend to colored folk? Man got to be a fool to believe that.”

  But the frictions erupting between black students and whites confirmed for bigoted voters that integration was a mistake and that those nigras wouldn’t be so uppity ’cept they thought the sheriff was in their corner. More tolerant voices were divided in opinion, those who believed Collard was not responsible for conflicts that were inevitable splitting with those who believed he greatly exacerbated the situation.

  “If the vote was taken today,” Garner crowed to his boys, “Collard would lose three to one.”

  Miss Chandler refused to let her students dwell on the turmoil roiling our community. We were in the middle of The Scarlet Letter and were not allowed to stray from discussions of Hawthorne and Hester. The tensions arising from integration were omnipresent, of course. But the local race for sheriff was not engaged. Questions related to the Sheriff’s affinities or future were nowhere assigned.

  In fact, a kind of doldrums fell over our small campus. September bled into October without a single fight or serious provocation. An early autumn chill gave way to a late Indian summer, a heat that in northern Florida pours over your skin like heated syrup. It is sticky. It is inescapable. Sweat stings your eyes and sticks to you in places you cannot politely scratch; your groin, your armpits, the wedge of your ass. It is a resurgence of humidity that makes you indolent and irascible.

  At least it came late. Boys donning short-sleeved madras shirts and girls retrenched in cotton blouses were thinking ahead to Homecoming Week and Lake Butler while little ones looked forward to Halloween, all in an interregnum characterized by what in comparison to the first weeks of the semester seemed a balmy truce between the races.

  In that false eddy I prepared for my audition at Florida State. Dr. Ransom had already received a tape recording that captured samples of my horn. Mr. Pellicore made the tape on his reel-to-reel and sent it by mail. It featured “Oklahoma” and other football-related fare.

  “We’ll be going up Thursday the fourteenth.” Miss Chandler brought the news to me in Mr. Pellicore’s presence. “There will be two faculty waiting, including Dr. Ransom.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “Your recital.”

  “Recital?”

  “Certainly, Cilla. They want to hear you play.”

  “But what? What will I play?”

  “The French horn, girl. One of the pieces you play at halftime will do. Anything familiar.”

  “I want to play more than ‘Oklahoma’,” I responded stubbornly. “And I want to play the piano, too, not just my horn.”

  “You play your horn and you play it safe,” Pellicore admonished. “They’re not looking for a symphony, Cilla. And don’t forget Lake Butler.”

  The Lake Butler Bulldogs were our conference nemesis. The entire student body was engaged in the construction of floats and paraphernalia associated with the traditional parade that would flatter the team and fire up the hometown crowd. The field behind Monk’s Auto Repair was stacked with flatbed trailers and littered with crepe paper and bunting and styrofoam. These constructions took enormous quantities of time and effort. Students spent hours stuffing tissue paper into the trailers’ chickenwire skirts. A small army of carpenters had invaded the school shop, turning out simulacra of Hornets and Bulldogs and goalposts.

  A kind of carnival atmosphere reigned in the school that absolutely amazed me and my Kerbo classmates.

  “Miss Hattie would of done whipped every one of these people,” Chicken declared, and he was right.

  Normal rules of behavior were suspended. There were pep rallies on a daily basis and gags in the hall. Boys painted their pale faces. Cheerleaders went to class in their short skirts. I saw Bonnie Hart in the hall with Cody, her tongue halfway down his throat. Schoolwork was ignored. You could cut class.

  You could kiss off studies.

  You could get away with murder.

  But for me the big game could not have come at a more inconvenient time. Mr. Pellicore, to start with, assigned the band new music in anticipation of the home team’s crusade against the reigning conference champion. I was certain that a halftime performance of “The Impossible Dream” would bring hoots of derision but was overruled.

  “The Impossible Dr
eam” demanded a new and elaborate choreography that had to be mastered, this at a time when I was preparing for my crucial recital in Tallahassee. I was also taking two days a week to bone up on reading and English skills in preparation for something called the sat. I had work at school, work at band, work at home.

  Without Miss Chandler’s help, and Joe Billy’s, I could not have done it. Every day after band practice Joe Billy drove me straight, and I mean straight, to Miss Chandler’s front porch, where she would coach me through the day’s homework, prepare me for quizzes and prep me for the Boards. Then she’d make me eat. That didn’t take much encouragement. I had pork chops and blackeyed peas five nights a week, the best week of eating I’d ever had in my life.