It didn’t matter; I was in no hurry to get back. The tank was heavy laden with holiday melancholy and I felt better being outside. The woods had become a refuge. I pulled Big Bertha off the road and walked her through the sparse timberline of spruce and speckled ash. Deeper into the woods, I came upon a little stream and stopped.
I saw movement in front of the small brush pile on the other side, a brown cottontail. I shut the engine down to low idle and quickly got my three-foot rabbit stick from behind the seat. I eased out of the cab onto the dozer track. Just as it jumped, I threw my stick and turned it a flip. I was on it like a duck on a June bug. From the cache of tools in my toolbox, I soon had it skinned, gutted, and washed in the stream. Seasoned with the salt and pepper packets I stockpiled from my sack lunches, it was roasting on a tree-branch rotisserie in no time.
Leaving my fire, I crossed the stream and got on the dozer to walk it over. Pausing for a moment, I looked at the picturesque winter wonderland and felt like I was in the middle of a Christmas card. The crystallized flakes splashed off the naked branches and sparkled like Roman candles before joining their snowflake pals blanketing the forest floor. I didn’t want to disrupt the little stream’s serenity and decided to leave Big Bertha where she was and walked back.
Occasionally, one of the icy pellets found its way down my shirt collar, but for the most part the yellow slicker suit kept me dry. I squatted, turning my rabbit slowly over the flames. A break in the silence. Squinting, I saw a white man approaching on horseback.
He stopped his horse eight or ten feet from the fire and said amicably, “Hello there, how you doin? I could smell it cookin all over the woods.” Smiling, “All I had to do was follow my nose. Got enough to share?”
“Sure, come on an pull up a chair. It’s almost ready,” I answered, surprised that anyone was nearby but glad to have his company, even though I’d never seen him before. Noticing the long hair under his cowboy hat, I wondered how in the hell he managed to wear it that length when all the other cons at the unit had short GI haircuts like mine.
Finished with tying the reins around a spruce, he came over and squatted beside me, ungloved his hands and warmed them over the fire. “Merry Christmas to you, pardner,” he said.
“Same to ya.”
“Is that your dozer parked over yonder?”
“Yep. That’s Big Bertha.” He looked so familiar I had to ask, “You ever been to Longview?”
“A time or two.”
“How long you been down here?” I asked.
“Too long.”
We gazed into the flames and took turns picking off bits of the rabbit. “I thought everybody was in watchin the football game,” I said. “What’re you doin out here in the snow?”
“Roundin up some strays.”
“If you hadn’ smelled this rabbit, you might’ve missed one,” I joked.
I liked his easy-going style and got around to telling him about being out nine months earlier for my mother’s funeral, and “I talked to the parole man back in September but ain’t heard nothin yet. They get somebody all werewolfed up, then nothin. Nada. Zilch.”
He stopped chewing and said with an air of certainty, “Don’t worry bout a thang. You’ll make it.” We finished our rabbit feast. Putting his gloves back on, “I thank you for sharin with me. I guess I better be movin on. So long, pardner.”
“Yeah,” I said, “good luck with yo roundup.”
He mounted and headed back through the thicket. Stomping out the fire, I hollered out, “What’s yo name? What buildin you on?”
I guess he didn’t hear me, I thought, and resumed my fire stomping. It started snowing much harder so I climbed on Big Bertha waited until the boss came and took me in.
Monday evening when I got to the building, an inner-unit truck-mail envelope was on my bunk. When I opened it and saw the parole release slip inside, I got weak in the knees. The gift of gifts—I’d be out in less than a month.
Every morning when the trusties went out, I watched for my rabbit eating “pardner” to tell him the good news, but never did see him again. I finally gave up trying to find the ghost rider in the snow.
The day before my release I arrived at the Walls, and was ready for shakedown. The bunch of us who came in on Black Betty was quickly herded into the security station for the strip search, jammed inside the little room like cattle. Naked, we squirmed closer and closer to the doorway of a larger room where we would be searched. The guard stationed near the entry door hollered, “You bastards scrouge up in thar! I got sum more people waitin to git in heah.” Black Bettys were bringing them from other units to be released, transferred to a different unit, or assigned to this one.
Looking down the line while waiting my turn, I noticed those ahead inspected by the older guards moved through the line must faster. The younger bosses were more thorough. When my turn came, I stepped through and placed my belongings on the long counter in front of the young boss. As he watched I raised my arms, stuck out my tongue, turned around, bent over and spread my cheeks apart, and then turned back around to face him. He searched my clothes and shoved them aside, indicating it was okay to put them on. He banged my old brogans together and shoved them aside. I was almost finished buttoning my shirt and cramming my cigarettes and Zippo back in my pocket when he began to leaf through my composition tablets stacked on the counter.
“What’re these?” he asked.
“Just some tablets I’ve been keepin notes in, Boss.”
“How long you been here?”
“A long time, Boss, seventeen years altogether,” I answered on one foot, trying to hurry my other brogan on.
He read aloud from one of the tablets, “My life was spent in darkness. And then there was Light.” With a smart-ass smirk on his face, “Whut kinda shit is that?” he asked, and raked the tablets off the counter into the barrel with the rest of the things they’d confiscated. Then he tossed in the one he held in his hand. “You ought not have no trouble rememberin. Next!”
Five years of writing thrown in the trash. FUCK! But what could I do? I know what I wanted to do, leap across that table and kick his punk ass. With freedom only a day away, I sucked it up, shot him a “burnin hell” look and kept on stepping.
Chapter 20
January 12, 1972, 9:45 a.m.
The prison-made khaki pants and shirt I had been issued, which clearly told I was a newly released, didn’t provide much protection against the cold winter breeze as I walked through freedom’s gate. I turned my collar up and tucked my chin in to duck the biting wind, slid my hands inside my pants pockets and took off trotting for the Trailways Bus Station four blocks away, leaving all the lost time behind. I bought a four-dollar ticket to Houston and waited for the bus.
The whores were running in and out of the station like moths, trying to pick up whatever little change the newly released cons had after paying for their bus fare. Parolees received ten bucks mustering-out money, those discharged got fifty. Some cons didn’t even make it out of Huntsville, spent all their money on pussy and booze, got into trouble, ass thrown in jail, and were back in the Walls before they could get out of town.
Twenty-six days prior to my forty-second birthday, I was paroled to New Directions Ex-Offender Halfway House founded by Sonny Wells, a former Retrieve inmate. As I stared out the window at the Houston skyline, I wondered how I was going to get some money. After all those thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds of cotton I picked without even a belt to hold up my britches, I had six funky dollars to show for it.
That night after everyone went to bed, I eased the front door of the halfway house shut and stepped off the porch. I headed down the street and found a gambling shack not too far away. The crowd of crapshooters squatted and knelt beside the crap blanket on the floor. I squatted at the blanket’s edge waiting my turn. My shot came. I tossed my five-dollar bill to the center of the blanket.
Another five hit the blanket, “Shoot ‘em.”
I picked up
the dice and rolled. They stopped on five-deuce seven. I hadn’t lost the touch and went on a hot streak. After a couple hours of good, consistent rolling, I got up, stretched my legs and knelt back down. I asked one of them, “What time you got, man?”
“Two thirty.”
I pitched all the money I had won to the center of the blanket, “It’s time to say goodnight Irene. I snuck off from my o’ lady and gotta get back home.”
The houseman counted my money, “He got two sixty-five.” Somebody covered the bet and the houseman said, “Shoot ‘em.”
Quickly setting the dice as I picked them up, I gave the fake shake and rolled. They stopped on trey-deuce—five, my favorite point. Setting them again on the pick up, I rolled the dice across the blanket—trey-deuce. I gathered my winnings and trotted back to the halfway house.
The second day, I enrolled in night classes at the University of Houston, financed by the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation. The fifth day, I had an interview with Lenora “Doll” Carter, who owned and operated a weekly black newspaper called the Forward Times. She asked how long I had been in prison. When I told her, she exclaimed, “Seventeen years? That’s almost too long to stay in heaven! I’m just kidding. Can you write?”
“I think I can.”
“You sure ought to know a lot to write about prison. Tell you what, you write something about prisons. Let me see it. If I like it, I’ll give you a job.”
“Thank you.” She left from behind her desk, walked me to the door and opened it. “Can I use a typewriter?” I asked.
Surprised, “You’re going to write it now?”
“If that’s okay with you.”
She hollered out the door to the newsroom, “Someone show Mr. Sample a typewriter he can use.”
I sat down at the typewriter. What the fuck do I write? I started typing “Crime vs. Punishment vs. Rehabilitation. What do you expect from your prison system?” I got the job, a hundred bucks a week. Two of my parole criteria had been satisfied; I had a place to stay and a job.
The dice “started hittin.” After a month I moved out of the halfway house into my own apartment. I had never been in a newspaper plant before, let alone worked in on. But in about a year and a half, Ms. Carter promoted me to General Manager, knowing I had no previous experience. I could do the job, no problem; however, I had an unexplainable feeling something else was going on, even if I had worked my butt off at everything from reporter to accountant. In the meanwhile, I’d put together a very decent wardrobe and bought a new car.
I was sitting in my office, busy as hell, with deadlines to meet. It was county election time and the politicians had been coming and going all day, each hoping to garner the newspaper’s support. They knew the Forward Times packed plenty of clout in Houston’s black community, and they shook hands with everybody they met along their course to Ms. Carter’s office.
Looking out my glass-walled office, I saw him when he came in and watched him take the same handshaking, handing-out-pamphlets route as the rest. He worked his way to my office. With a light rap on the glass door, it was my turn. He opened the door part ways and poked his head in, glanced at the nameplate on my desk, “Mr. Sample, can I bother you for a minute or two?”
“Sure, c’mon in and have a seat.”
He extended his hand and we gripped. After he took a seat and looked at my name on the nameplate again, which was followed by General Manager, “I know you’re a busy man so I’ll get straight to the point.” He handed me one of his pamphlets that I didn’t bother to look at and put on my desk. “I’m Jack Heard. I’m runnin for Sheriff of Harris County and I’d like your support,” garnishing it off with a great big politician smile.
I leaned back in my chair and stared at him for so long he began to get a little uneasy. “I know who you are,” I said, “but you don’t know who I am, do you?”
Looking me over more closely (a cop look), “Nope, can’t say that I do,” he replied with a hint of a smile. “Guess you got me there.”
“You were Assistant Director at the state prison. Your office was in Huntsville at the Walls, right?”
He nodded in silence.
“You remember that time the convicts had a sit-down strike in the cane field at Retrieve? They flew you down in a state plane. You stood on a trailer bed and asked the cons to tell you why they refused to work. I was the first man who stood up and showed you my bloody palms.” I held my palms up the same as I had done in the cane field. He looked at them and his eyes lit up, astonished.
“Ol’ Racehoss, they called you … I think.”
“That’s right. That was a long time ago.”
With a genuinely cordial smile he stuck out his hand and we shook again, this time with much more gusto. Still at a loss for words, “Well, I’ll just be damned,” he said with an astonished look on his face, seeing me in a place where I ought not to be.
“You got my vote, Mr. Heard,” albeit I couldn’t at the time, “but as for the newspaper endorsing you, you’ll have to talk to Ms. Carter about that. But I’ll sure put a good word in for you.”
“’Preciate it.”
“Now that you’re here, Mr. Heard, would you like to know the rest of the story about that cane strike?”
“I sure would.”
“After you chewed the warden’s ass out and flew off, that night we had pork chops and all the apple pie we could eat,” I said chuckling and he laughed. “You really got the warden’s attention.”
“Did you ever get those gloves?”
“The very next morning.”
He laughed again. Glancing at the nameplate, “Sure looks like you’ve been doing all right for yourself. When did you get out?”
“A little over two years ago.”
“I’m just flabbergasted at how far you’ve come since the cane field days.” He leaned forward in his chair and said in a serious vein, “Let me ask you something. No offense and I’m just being curious, what do you think it was that turned you around?”
A few seconds later, “That cotton sack!” He really cracked up this time. I felt compelled to tell him, “Mr. Heard, it would have turned out different in that cane patch if it wasn’t for you. Thank you for what you did for us.”
“Well, you’re certainly welcome, Raceh …” He looked at my nameplate, “Albert.”
Then he continued on his way to Ms. Carter’s office. What were the odds of something like this happening? Jack Heard seeking my help just as I had hoped for his long ago in a cane patch—a billion to one probably. I did everything in my power to gain his endorsement from the newspaper. He won the election by a landslide.
I could hardly wait for the weekends. Soon as five o’clock Friday came, I headed for Longview to be with Pat. We had been apart for too many years. With each visit we grew closer and closer. We were the only family left, and really enjoyed each other.
She had managed to go to cosmetology school and ran a beauty shop in her house. But like Emma, she also ran dice games on the weekends. I usually managed to arrive right in the middle of the crap game, but she’d leave the table and we’d sit in the living room talking and laughing until we both got in the game.
During one of my weekend visits, it was nearing dawn and the crap game had finally ended. All the players were gone, except the few who couldn’t make it. Three of them were piled up on the daybed in the back room. After losing all their money, they filled their bellies with Pat’s collard greens and ham hocks, fried fish, and hot-water cornbread. They were drunk and sleeping peacefully.
Pat and I sat talking at the crap table. “Bubba, since it done boiled down to jes me an you, whut you want me to do bout yo funeral an stuff in case I outlive you?”
“Well, you can make sure I got my shoes on. I don’t wanna be tippin around on them hot coals barefooted.”
“C’mon, be serious, Bubba.” I saw the deep concern in her face.
“Awright, just see that they don’t cut up my clothes and spread ‘em out over me. Have
‘em put ‘em on me. I don’t wanna meet my maker with my ass out behind.”
“Okay,” laughing a little, “you got it. I give you my word that’s the way it’ll be done.” Then, out of the clear blue she asked, “Bubba, you scared of dyin?”
“No, but it sure ain’t sump’n I’m lookin forward to. Why all this talk about death and dyin and shit? I know we got sump’n else we can talk about besides that.”
“I know, but I wanna talk bout it. That’s whut’s wrong with people today. They don’t ever talk bout things like this. Then when the time come, they don’t know whut to do. Anyway, we can’t quit talkin bout it. I ain’t had my turn yet.”
“You ain’t plannin on leavin no time soon, are you?” I kidded.
“But jes in case, Bubba,” she said without a smile, “I want you to say everything at my funeral. And I don’t want it in no church. The funeral parlor’s good enuff. Most of all, I wanna be buried close to Mama.”
I was quiet.
“Are you listenin to me?”
“Yeah, I’m listenin.”
“Okay, promise me you’ll do it.”
“I promise.”
She kept on talking, explaining the relationship she had with her ex-husband, King, as well as the one she had with Carl. She interrupted herself, “Boy, am I glad I got a big Bubba I can tell all my secrets to, the way they do in them love story magazines I read all the time.”
She started crying. I walked over and put my arms around her. With her head buried against me, she whimpered like a little child, “Bubba, I want you to always know one thing, I love you with all my heart.” Crying more profusely, “We’re all we got.” After blowing her nose and wiping away some of the tears with the hankie I’d handed her, “God, I miss Mama. Sometimes I feel so all alone, Bubba.”
Holding my sister close and crying too, “You’re not alone, Pat. I’m right here with you. C’mon, cheer up. We’re gon make it jus fine. Watch an see. C’mon now,” I urged, “let’s stop cryin an have a drink together.”
After sharing a small shot of Vodka, “I’m okay now,” she said. “I guess we been needin to cry together for a long, long time. Bubba, lemme ask you sump’n. Have you seen Mama? You know, like in a spirit or a dream?”
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