A Taste of Honey

by Jabari Asim

  “Commander, shouldn’t we be giving these out?”

  “Right. Hand ’em out. Right on.”

  Gabriel’s men fanned out and began to distribute the leaflets as they had been trained.

  “Good day, brother. Good day, sister,” they began in velvet tones. “We are the Warriors of Freedom and we would like to invite you to a rally …”

  The leaflets they dispensed asked the questions whispered in barbershops and shoeshine parlors and beauty salons all over the North Side. They were printed in bold black ink, surrounding the crosshaired image of a pig wearing a policeman’s hat: “How many good brothers must die before this bloody trend is reversed? Isn’t it time we offed the pigs?”

  Meanwhile, where to begin? Come live with me and be my love? Hell, no. Can I walk you home? Negro, please. After testing and discarding an overture or two, the Liberator made his move.

  “Sister, may I have a minute of your time? We could sure use a voice like yours.”

  Rose looked up to see a thin, brown-skinned man in army fatigues. His lips were full and sensitive; a wispy goatee coated his chin. She couldn’t see the eyes hidden behind his dark glasses, but he seemed handsome in a starving-poet kind of way. His back was strong and straight, and his hands looked quite capable. But his belt, wrapped nearly two times around his waist, was barely holding his pants up.

  “I only sing for the Lord, sir.” Rose thought she should keep moving. Where was Paul?

  “The Lord’s got plenty of angels he can count on, sister. The Warriors, on the other hand, we need all the help we can get. You oughta sing for us, sister. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “It’s Rose. Rose Whittier.”

  “Sister Rose. Like the rose of Sharon.”

  Rose cupped her hand above her brow to shield her eyes from the sun, but it was an affectation. Her hat was doing that job. She stole a glance at the man. He looked hungry. “You know the Word,” she said.

  “O my dove,” said Gabriel, “that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.”

  Rose smiled. “You really know the Word.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “You didn’t strike me as a man of faith.”

  Gabriel chuckled. “Judge not, my sister. I’m sure you know Luke.”

  “I apologize. I—”

  “No need, no need. I’m the one who should be sorry, sorry for not meeting you years ago.” He removed his glasses and extended his hand. His eyes looked surprisingly hopeful to Rose, sort of hazel, with flakes of gold. “Patterson, Gabriel. Also known as the Liberator.”

  Rose left him hanging. “Should I call you Mr. Patterson or Mr. Liberator?”

  “How about Gabriel?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m a married woman, Mr. Patterson.”

  “Of course you are.” He frowned, regained his composure, lost it again.

  Rose watched, embarrassed, as the Liberator appeared to argue with himself. “Stupid,” he muttered. “Shoulda checked for a ring. See what you get for thinking maybe this happened for a reason. Something like fate. Something like God. You silly silly fool.”

  He snapped out of it. “Forgive me,” he said, replacing his glasses with a snap. “If I could just impose upon you with a leaflet, then. We rally weekends at Franklin and Jefferson. Please join us when you can.” Their hands touched briefly when Rose reached for the leaflet. She felt heat rise in her cheeks.

  In time she tired of waiting. She rode home with the Joneses, climbed the stairs to her lonely flat. The leaflet, meant to be disposed of hours before, sat on the table next to the phone. As the day gave way to dusk, Rose played some Aretha and put Paul’s dinner in the oven to keep it warm.

  The leaflet would catch Paul’s eye later that night as he stomped through the narrow hallway, his chronic anger coming on. Glaring through his half-drunken haze at the swollen hog in a policeman’s hat, Paul would remember the humiliation he’d suffered earlier that day at the hands of Detective Mortimer. He would recall the way that disgusting pig had made him shuffle and sweat like he had all the time in the world. How the cop had made him stand lookout while he pissed all over Paul’s just-polished chrome. Seeing the leaflet would bring it all back: While he was kissing a cracker’s ass, Rose was shaking hers in front of the folks at that blind fool’s funeral. Paul would then remind her, as he often did, to keep her ass to herself.

  Sweet Rose would pay for Mortimer’s arrogance. She would pay for her beauty and the voice that matched it. She would pay for Paul’s career struggles and his trifling brothers, who seldom got to rehearsal on time or sober. She would pay for imagined flirtations. She would pay like her Lord paid, with welts and thorns and bruises and the taste of blood in her mouth.

  It would end as it always ended, with Paul crying and Rose whimpering quietly. He would yank her from the floor, where she had curled into a ball, her head and shoulders crammed under the bed or the bureau. He would force her to her knees and make her pray beside him.

  “I don’t want to,” she would say, quietly. “Please. Please don’t make me.”

  “It’s not for me,” he would say through his tears. “It’s for Jesus. He wants you to know I’m sorry. He wants you to forgive me.”

  But that was hours away yet. Right then a warm breeze was tickling Rose’s face and a handsome stranger had just made her blush. The sun danced through the leaves and dappled the afternoon with bright flakes of gold, outside Good Samaritan.

  Zombies

  soon after my mom finally agreed to let me cross the street by myself, I forgot to look both ways while returning home and was nearly blindsided by a fast-moving Ford Fairlane. I escaped harm, though, until I reached our front porch. That’s when Pristine pulled me inside and commenced to clobbering me with the closest thing handy—a flip-flop that seconds before had been dangling from her foot. For a brief, merciful moment I was able to break free. I wrenched open the screen door and lunged for the porch, but Mom caught me by the ankles. Across the street, Petey and Choo-Choo bore astonished witness to the strange sight of me disappearing backward through the front door, an invisible force sucking me in like I was one of those anonymous doomed crewmen in a Star Trek episode. They got a final glimpse of my tear-streaked, horrified face frozen in mid yell before it vanished behind the screen door.

  Afterward, Petey told me that all he could make out through the mesh was the dim outline of my mother and “that flip-flop going up and down, up and down.”

  Buttwhippings were a common sight back then. Dal Frederick used to get thrashed from one end of our long block to the other about once a week. Lucky Simpson’s mom used to come looking for him with an ironing cord draped around her shoulders like a mink stole. Even so, when a buttwhipping goes public, it takes a while for the whippee to live it down. Folks called me Flip-Flop for weeks.

  Mom banned me from leaving the front lawn unaccompanied. The upside: my brother Schomburg had to escort me everywhere, including to and from school when it resumed that fall. The downside: I had to follow wherever he led, and his curious path to school always wound past Burk’s Funeral Home—just about the last place on earth that I wanted to be near. Shom knew this, and resenting my unavoidable presence at his side, he determined to punish me each morning. He took the long way, turning the corner at Vandeventer, sauntering past Teenie’s Lounge, and pausing to look for discarded bottle tops outside Hudson’s Package Liquor before crossing Ashland Ave. to walk by Burk’s.

  The place didn’t bother me until I came to realize there were dead bodies inside. Shom never failed to remind me of this grisly fact on our way to Farragut Elementary. Sometimes he made spooky, baying sounds as we passed its darkened windows, woo-woos teasing the back of my neck. Other times he’d laugh like Dracula and swear that the unfortunate folks who lived on Ashland had to put up with the sounds of corpses stirring about at night, banging on wind
ows and scratching at doors. Once in a while Shom would stop and say, “Shhh. Did you hear that?”

  “H-hear what?”

  He’d put his hand to his ear. “Sounded like scratching.”

  My bladder always swelled when I got scared. Or maybe it shrank.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t hear that, Crisp.”

  Then Shom would look over my shoulder in mock horror. “Oh my God,” he’d gasp. “Run!”

  It got me every time. He’d take off flying with me running behind him crying and stumbling, dropping my Captain Nice lunch box and refusing to go back and get it. Shom would put on the brakes near the end of the block, his All Stars skidding on the bumpy sidewalk. After laughing and catching his breath, he’d suddenly get serious and become disgusted with me. He knew that no amount of argument would persuade me to go get that lunch box, so he’d stomp back and retrieve it. We’d proceed in sullen silence, Shom keeping the lunch box until we reached the entrance to the school playground.

  Shom would go through the gates and sit my lunch box on a hopscotch grid.

  “You’re a punk, you know that?”

  “Am not.”

  “‘Am not.’ Listen to you. Remember, you don’t know me.”

  He’d spin on his heels and strut over to the seventh-grade portables, where he was a line monitor and a big shot.

  That was on school days. When summer vacation came in ’67, I was able to go weeks without having to think of Burk’s, much less go near it. One July day, I finagled an invite to Shom’s baseball practice. I had talked my mom nearly under the table, irritating her so much that she bribed Shom to take me along. On the way back from the park we stopped at Chink’s with Flukey Williams, the team’s fast-talking shortstop. He was so cool that he took infield grounders wearing Hush Puppies and a Big Apple cap.

  Chink’s was the confectionery on Lexington, across the alley from Burk’s. Flukey bought a bag of barbecued Fiesta corn chips and a sixteen-ounce bottle of Vess Orange Whistle. It was the most popular soda in those days, although I preferred Tahitian Treat myself. Shom got ten oatmeal cookies for himself and a sour apple Bub’s Daddy for me. In exchange I agreed not to talk for a whole block.

  The deal seemed easy enough. As we strolled along I imagined myself in my room, reclining in front of the fan smacking away at my gum, green-tongued and lazily adrift on a daydream. Until a voice startled me.

  “Afternoon, boys.”

  It was Mr. Burk. He was fond of sitting outside on hot days, waving at passersby and catching catnaps in his wide porch chair. His building had no porch to speak of, just a stoop. He sat yards in front of that, near the edge of the sidewalk. The front door of Burk’s faced the street on a diagonal, and there was no parking lot at all. An alley ramp led to double doors in the back, through which the bodies were brought in. Mr. Burk shared an apartment above the parlor with his creepy son, Austin, whom I felt a little sorry for. I couldn’t begin to imagine actually having to go to sleep above a bunch of dead people, especially dead people who liked to get up and go places at night. Mr. Burk was a round man, from the top of his bald brown dome, past the crest of his bulbous belly, down to his shoes, which had round knob toes. None of that made him bad-looking or even scary, however. His voice was kindly enough, and he even reminded me of pictures I’d seen of the man who used to sing with Count Basie’s band, the man my father fondly called Mr. Five by Five. It was Mr. Burk’s eyes that gave most of us trouble.

  We kids were used to unusual eyes and as a matter of course bestowed suitable nicknames upon folks who had them. Shade Eye had a muscle problem that made one lid droop. Beer Eyes had peepers that were unnaturally yellow. There was even a pair of light-skinned twins who lived near the Catholic school and were known as Green Eyes and Brown Eyes. Mr. Burk’s eyeballs were a cloudy gray and strangely glassy, so we called him Zombie Eyes. Behind his back, of course.

  “Hi, Mr. Burk,” Shom said.

  “Hey, Mr. Burk,” said Flukey.

  I nodded, remembering my bargain with Shom. Mr. Burk leaned forward and looked at me. With his face so close to mine, it was hard to avoid his eyes. They were cloudy as always and looked hard as glass. I didn’t wonder how they ended up like that. I already knew how, and I also knew that they were fake. They were fake and yet he could still see.

  I don’t know exactly who started the rumor, but it was confirmed by the fifteen Finger kids, who lived two doors west of Burk’s. One day at recess, they told us it was true that the fat funeral director dealt in the underground eye market.

  “Haven’t you noticed how little white folks’ eyes are?” Eric Finger asked.

  “Yeah,” Big Hen said. “They do have some little bitty eyes.”

  A bunch of boys were sitting on the rail surrounding the swings on the playground. Being a little kid, I hung around in back, but close enough to hear everything. The white person I was most familiar with was Ed Sullivan, and I had to agree: he had tiny eyes.

  “Well,” Eric said. “They like to buy black folks’ eyes because ours are so much bigger and better-looking. You know how rich white folks are. When black folks die they pay for their eyes. Mr. Burk’s been dealing for a long time. He takes the eyes out the bodies and keeps ’em in a cooler in the back. Late at night a white dude comes by and takes ’em out in a metal box.”

  Big Hen shook his head. “That’s messed up, man. People’s gettin’ buried without they eyes.”

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “He puts marbles in and nobody notices because the eyelids are sewed shut.”

  “Wait a minute,” Big Hen said. “What about Miss Gordon? She don’t have little eyes.”

  Miss Gordon was the only white teacher at our school. Eric must have heard this question before.

  “She used to when she first came here. Then when she came back from summer vacation, she had new eyes. I bet she bought ’em from old man Burk.”

  After absorbing Eric’s wisdom, I brought my new knowledge to my oldest brother, Ed. He knew all about Burk.

  “That’s no secret,” he said. “But it sounds like that Finger kid told you only half the story. The worst part was when Burk took this one dude’s eyes out and put in marbles in their place. Turns out the dude was a zombie and he was really pissed when he woke up and found out what Burk had done. The old man had been sleeping when he heard a noise in the middle of the night. He opened his eyes and found the zombie standing right over him. They got to fighting, knocking over furniture and stuff. The two of them made so much noise that somebody ran across Vandeventer and pulled the firebox. It might have been Austin, because he took off butt naked, hotfooting it all the way to Fairgrounds Park.”

  I knew I would have trouble getting to sleep, but I had to hear it all. “Then what happened?”

  “Nobody knows for sure. The firemen came with a lot of loud sirens and stuff, but it took them a while to get in the door. The zombie must have taken Burk’s eyes and stuck the marbles in their place. The firemen found the old man on the floor blinking them strange gray eyes. The zombie was gone. They didn’t find Austin until the next morning. He was way up a telephone pole, still naked and foaming at the mouth. They had to get him down with a cherry picker, and he stayed in the hospital for six weeks. He won’t talk about that night.”

  “But how can Mr. Burk see with those marbles?”

  Ed smiled. I appreciated how patient he was with me. He was the only member of the family who never told me that I talked too much, and I loved him for that. “The zombie had the power to come back from the dead, right? That means he also had the power to make dead things live. When he touched the marbles, he gave them energy, and that energy is what makes Mr. Burk able to see.”

  It felt like Mr. Burk could see right through me when he leaned close. I wondered why he found me so interesting when Flukey was standing next to me in that cool Big Apple cap. “How about you, young man? Cat got your tongue?”

  I shrugged helplessly and looked at Shom. “It’s all right, Crispus,” he said. “
You can talk.”

  I didn’t want to be rude, but I wanted no part of those eyes. So I concentrated on Mr. Burk’s forehead. “I’m fine,” I whispered.

  He reached out and rubbed my head. The round man had square fingers and nails, like the characters in those Jack Kirby comic books that Ed used to love so much. His hand smelled strange, vaguely unnatural. He leaned back and addressed all of us.

  “You kids want to see something interesting?”

  “Like what?” Flukey asked.

  “Like a dead body,” Mr. Burk replied.

  Flukey and Shom exchanged excited glances. “You got one in there right now?” Shom asked.

  Mr. Burk nodded. “Cooling on the slab.”

  “Well, maybe just a little look,” Shom said breathlessly.

  The chair squeaked and groaned as Mr. Burk adjusted his bulk. Slowly he rose and gestured toward the door behind him. “After you,” he said.

  Flukey and Shom stepped toward the door. I remained where I was. Shom turned to me. “What?” I said.

  “You coming?”

  “Nope. I’m waiting right here.” I folded my arms.

  Shom turned and faced me so that Mr. Burk couldn’t see his expression. “You’re a punk,” he hissed. “You know that, right?”

  “Aw, leave him alone. Just wait right there, Crisp. We’ll be right back.”

  I always liked Flukey. I hoped that I would get to see him again as I watched the three of them vanish into the darkness of the funeral parlor. I waited for what seemed like forever, shifting from one foot to the other and trying not to think about restless corpses or the fact that Flukey and Shom had such young, healthy-looking eyes. I pictured a man in a dusky parking lot, standing next to a car with an open trunk. The trunk contained a small metal box. A long line of rich white people were queuing up next to the car. A snotty-looking woman in fancy clothes was asking the man if he had anything in brown.