The King of Colored Town

by Darryl Wimberley

  “Ah juss wan go ohm,” I said.

  Joe Billy took a drag on his Marlboro. A flame fueled on tar and tobacco glowed quick and bright in an effluvium of oxygen.

  “Go home? You mean right now?”

  The smoke from his cigarette rose in sylvan tendrils to cling on the heavy air like grapevines, like vines winding in and out of each other, their vagaries reminding me of the steam rising from the boilers at the hospital.

  “I wuz juzz leveng,” I answered.

  (I was just leaving.)

  “How ’bout I drive you, then?” he asked. “Maybe just a quick stop at the park?”

  Joe Billy opened the passenger door of his Fairlane and let me in. The engine coughed once or twice.

  “Sorry,” he said tightly. “Needs a tune.”

  But with a little encouragement the engine turned over, the transmission thudded gently to engage and we drove the short distance, probably no more than a hundred yards, that separated Betty’s Café from Town Park and the pregnant swell of its silver tower. There was no moon that night and a canopy of oaks and moss blocked the stars. There were no street lights, of course, so when Joe Billy finally killed his headlights there was an immediate, almost claustrophobic sensation of darkness. The press of air against your face, like a velvet hand.

  We were parked beneath the water tower. That landmark, at least, was visible, red lights placed at intervals on its towering legs. The scrawl of graffiti on the tank above. Like lipstick on a crazy woman. The ground beneath piled deep with the leavings of oak trees.

  “Why you been avoidin’ me?” Joe Billy asked.

  Just like that. Out of nowhere.

  I tried to form my lips with my thoughts in reply.

  (What are you talking about?) I stalled.

  “You know what I mean. They cut off my balls, girl, not my brain.”

  (You think you’re the only one got hurt? Feels hurt? Feels like she got part of herself cut off that won’t grow back?)

  “I’m a man. Was a man.”

  (The hell has that got to do with anything?)

  “It’s different.”

  (Hell it is! You wanting somebody to hold your hand? Tell you how sorry she is you lost your balls?)

  “You got no right to say that!”

  (Hell, I don’t! You said not to let anything drag me down, you remember? Well, I’m not. Not no Klansman. And not you, Joe Billy. You want pity, go back to Mama Fanny. Go back to Frenchtown!)

  “You should’n say that, Cilla. You should’n!”

  (Kiss my ass.)

  “Say again?”

  “Kith mah ath!”

  He got it that time.

  I jammed myself as far on my side of the car as I could, refusing to speak, to acknowledge him at all. But then I heard something like a croak on the far side of the bench seat and when I finally deigned to look I could see his shoulders shaking over the steering wheel.

  (Oh, Jesus. Joe Billy—)

  “Leave me be!”

  He shoved me away, fumbling for the latch of his door.

  (Where are you going?)

  “Away from you!”

  (Let me come.)

  “NO! No, you sit right there.”

  (Joe Billy, I care about you. You know I do. You pulled me out of a pit, you know you did.)

  “What about me?” he slobbered like an old man. “What about my pit?”

  That was the heart of it. That was the thing.

  (I’m sorry)

  I slid across to the steering wheel.

  (I see what you’re saying, I do. And I am sorry. What can I tell you? I’m just a selfish bitch.)

  “No!” he nearly stumbled, his shoes slick on the polished leaves.

  (Just take a minute.) I urged. (Take some time. I’ll wait. We’ll talk as long as you want.)

  He steadied himself on the side of a tree, then, a water oak. He reached into his pocket, I saw a pint come out.

  (Joe Billy, don’t!)

  “Just stay in the car.” He wiped his nose across the sleeve of his new blazer. Took a swig. “Give me a minute.”

  He then lurched around to the far side of the tree, and within seconds was invisible. A black man swallowed up in a black place.

  I was tempted to follow, to coax him and bring him back, but did not.

  He had told me to wait, for one thing. For another, I wasn’t sure I could track him in the dark, certainly not without yelling and raising a ruckus. It was clear that he’d been drinking. He probably did need just a little time alone. To piss, maybe. Certainly, to recover his dignity, his composure.

  Everyone needs privacy. If I learned nothing else at the hospital I did learn that. So I decided I would simply honor Joe Billy’s request. I was fine in the car and I knew that as soon as he was composed he would return. I had no doubt about that. The keys were still in the ignition. I would just listen to the radio. That’s what I would do. I would tune in KOMA or some other common-carried super station. Maybe catch the Wolf Man from the aether.

  I slipped beneath the steering wheel, turned the key back hard. Then I switched on the radio. I listened to the circuits heat, saw the faint glow on the dial’s rectangular face. I could not get Oklahoma City with clarity but The Temptations came in just fine on Jacksonville’s Mighty 690. I was settling down to some Motown when through the open window I heard shoes shuffling over oak leaves.

  (I’m glad you’re back) I said, reaching over to turn down the volume.

  “I heard the glad part.”

  The voice was familiar. But it was not Joe Billy’s. I jerked away from the driver’s side, seeing the torso of a man filling the open window. He was tall, that fact registered, his waist higher than the door’s side panel. A country-western shirt tucked into a pair of jeans. And then there was the belt, the same belt I had seen before, its cheaply plated buckle shaped like the head of a snake.

  “Yea Dee—?!”

  A cigarette lowered into view, tracing a lazy, amber arc through the window’s frame. That’s all I could see at first, the torso, the cigarette, a pale, unhealthy hand. Then the cigarette dropped past the ledge of the door and out of sight, like a tiny aircraft plunging at a distance from heaven to earth. I heard a long, low chuckle. Then the smoker bent down and leaned in and I saw his face.

  “Nigger bitch. You glad to see me?”

  But it was not J.T. Hewitt.

  He was tall, all right. And he was dark-haired. And he now sported the same mail-order belt made chic by Garner’s oldest son. But he was not J.T. Hewitt. The door opened and I sat like a deer caught in headlights as Monk Folsom slid in on the driver’s side of Joe Billy’s well-used car.

  “Come here.”

  That command broke the spell. To that point I had been charmed like a cat before a snake. Paralyzed. Immobile. But when he spoke the stench of whiskey jarred me from that catalepsy and I reared back and kicked as hard as I could. I kicked. I kicked again. But I got more of the steering wheel than I did of the Klansman who cut my lips at Fort McKoon.

  He jerked the door open and grabbed my legs.

  “I said come here, bitch.”

  The smell of rotgut on him. I screamed for Joe Billy and he laughed at my cotton-mouthed attempt.

  “Don’t go lookin’ for help there.”

  Had he hurt him? I babbled. Had he hurt Joe Billy?

  “Not much, he’ll get over it. So will you.”

  I kicked again, but he was already between my knees.

  (Not again. Oh, God.)

  He slapped me once, hard across the face.

  “Watn’t for that goddamn nigger teacher I’d be sheriff! I could throw your ass in my cruiser and fuck you any way I want and not a goddamn thing you could do about it. You or your jungle bunny boyfriend!”

  He was putrid.

  “Goddamn nigger thief, if I’d of known he was in that Zion church I’d of burned his ass with the rest, I can tell you that. Burned him and a hundred other niggers in that goddamn churchhouse.”

/>   I jammed up against my own door and he smiled boozily.

  “You thought it was Cody did that work? Or J.T.? Naw. Them boys is all talk. We just borrowed their truck, is all. Like I told Collard, it was in my shop. And we were doin’ just fine ’till your boyfriend sees the truck. Even then we’d of been all right if he’d stayed in goddamn French Town. But, no, the little nigger comes running down here for Collard to pick up. Next thing you know we got the fucking FBI breathing down our necks.

  “I should of killed that boy when I had him on the river. Killed you both.”

  His hand dipped into his pocket and when it came out I saw the moon sliding along a mother of pearl handle and I tried to scream.

  There was air in my throat, waffling air, and nothing more.

  He cackled.

  “Naw, naw. I already cut what I wanted to cut on you! This here? Is just a reminder. So if you tell anybody anything, if you breathe a goddamn word to Collard, your preacher, your teacher. Your nutless boyfriend. Anybody. You know what I’m’a gone do. Don’t you? Sure you do. And it’ll make our last little time look like somethin’ to cherish.”

  He reached back to carefully place the razor on the dashboard, then snaked a filthy hand up my blouse.

  “You think you’re good as anybody, but you ain’t. And there’s plenty like me gone make sure you keep your place. We’re strong, no mixed blood. And we’re organized. I could die tomorrah, they’d be twenty taking my place. There—!”

  He fondled my breasts. First one. Then the other.

  “See this is all I want, this time,” he promised me. “Maybe some other time we can do more. But this ain’t so bad. Is it?”

  Then he pinched a nipple. My knee came up in reflex, just snapped up and banged into the dash so hard the glove compartment spilled open. I cried out, tried to reach for my kneecap. He slapped my hand to the floorboard. Something cool, down there in the velvet dark. Something cool and hard that along with a crumpled wad of cellophane and a book of matches spilled with weight from the glove’s shallow keep.

  He let go my breast, finally. That drunk he probably couldn’t get an erection. Could barely sit up on his own. Had to grab the steering wheel to accomplish that chore.

  “You think going to college makes you white?” His breath was labored. “Think a education makes you anything but a polecat nigger? Shit!”

  He retrieved his straight razor from the dashboard.

  I let him get out of the car. In fact, I made sure he was out of the car with his back turned and his pearlhandled blade well pocketed before I slid across the seat, and throwing my feet to the ground, steadied my extended arms inside the car window’s sheetmetal frame. The door hinge complained with that effort. Monk turned sloppily in mid-stride.

  “The hell you doin’, you muddy goddamn bitch?”

  Were the last words Monk Folsom said before I yanked on the trigger of Joe Billy’s revolver.

  An explosion, then, a physical concussion inside the car. My ears rang like bells. He squawked like a chicken ten, maybe fifteen feet before me. Spun around, like a drunk man. I shot him again. Then as he was fully turned I pulled the trigger again and Monk fell face first and limp as a sack to the damp and mossy carpet. The gun smoked at the barrel. Like a cigarette. Or like steam writhing upward from an angry boiler.

  The weapon dropped as if on its own accord from my hand and I retreated, screaming incomprehensibly, to the far side of the coupe’s interior.

  “HALB ME!!”

  “CILLA!”

  Joe Billy came staggering out of inky shadows.

  “HALB ME!”

  There was only the dome light of the car for illumination. But as Joe Billy pulled me from the front seat, I could see that his scalp was cut and bleeding.

  “Cilla! Cilla, you all right?”

  “I shod ’im! I shod ’im!”

  There were dogs barking, I realized. They must have heard the firearm’s discharge, because every backyard hound in Colored Town was baying for attention.

  “You what?” Joe Billy’s eyes went wide. “Shot who?!”

  I bent over and threw up on the side of his car. Joe Billy looked out over the hood.

  “My God, is that Monk Folsom?”

  I threw up again.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  (I had to! He was on me! He said he would kill me if I talked. Kill you!)

  I don’t know how much of what I said Joe Billy understood, but it didn’t take much conversation for him to interpret what had happened and to quickly learn that Monk was my rapist, was our cruel Inquisitor. And also the man who burned the Mount Zion church.

  The dogs were raising hell, now. Barking all around.

  “Jesus God,” Joe Billy pressed a hand to his forehead.

  (What are we going to do?)

  “Just hold what you got,” Joe Billy leaned on the car warily, as if it might suddenly jerk from beneath him.

  “Give me a minute. Let me think. Where’s the gun?”

  “I drobbed id.”

  “Dropped it. Where?”

  My pointed finger trembled like a wand, but with the help of the car’s interior light Joe Billy found his revolver.

  (We got to call the sheriff) I began to say over and over. (We got to call the sheriff).

  “Yes, Cilla. We gonna get the sheriff here soon as we can,” Joe Billy promised. “You wait here. I’m just goin’ to Monk. Just be two seconds.”

  My knees buckled as Joe Billy approached Monk Folsom, Laureate’s favorite mechanic still twitching on the ground like a chicken with his head chopped off. His fingers in particular, I remember, were fluttering like a butterfly’s wings, like when you straightpin a butterfly to a piece of cardboard. Joe Billy edged up to Monk as if the fallen man were a landmine, nudging him with his shoe, first. Then a kick to the armpit. Nothing. The fingers quit their nervous dance.

  (Is he dead?)

  Joe Billy dropped to a knee without reply and keeping the revolver in one hand, rolled the body face-up. Then he fished Monk’s razor from the pocket of those denim jeans. I watched as he wrapped Folsom’s pliant hand about the blade’s alabaster handle.

  That work done, he pushed himself erect. Backed off a pace or two.

  “You fucking bastard.”

  The handgun jumped in Joe Billy’s hand. Another violent concussion into the heavy air. Monk’s body jerked with the impact of a slug to his chest. I jumped like I been hit with a cattle prod.

  “JOE BIRREE?!!”

  “Be quiet, Cilla. Cilla, hush.”

  He returned to the car, his face going in and out of shadow as he dipped beneath the domed light into the interior, then up again.

  (What did you do that for?!)

  He displayed the handgun.

  “So when they look at me they’ll be powder burns on my hand and shirt. You shoot a gun they’s got to be some burn. Sheriff’s gonna wanna see that.”

  For a moment I did not comprehend his intention.

  (But you didn’t shoot him, Joe Billy! Didn’t kill him, anyway.

  I did!) “That’s not our story,” Joe Billy shook his head and I realized then, fully, what he had in mind.

  (Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord.)

  “It’ll be all right. I can claim self defense same as you.”

  (You can’t do this, Joe Billy. Joe Billy this isn’t right! I can tell them. I can tell them it was self defense.)

  “Drunk man shot by a Negro girl? With a round in his back? You ain’t hit. You ain’t cut. Or raped. Are you?”

  I shook my head, “Nah.”

  “Well, what white jury’s gonna let you skate on that ice, Cilla? You tell me.”

  (But you didn’t do it)

  “No, but at least I got a wound. And from behind, too.”

  I was wringing my hands like a washrag.

  (But you didn’t kill anybody. I did.)

  Dogs were barking all around. Raising hell.

  “We don’ have much time,” Joe Billy turned me around and point
ed me in the direction of the train station.

  “You go home. Just go home and don’t let anybody see you. I’ll be fine.”