Alabama Noir

by Don Noble

  "The white man," Dr. Blackwood said as he rolled the knuckles of one boney hand within the palm of the other, "has but one reason to oppress the Negro"—he lowered, shook his head, and recited—"Black as the night is black, / Black like the depths of my Africa."

  "Yass," Mr. Snodgrass drawled. My father nodded in agreement.

  "They deem to assert a hideous hegemony over us for their parasitic profit. But the Klansman is a white man who has no reason, none other than to brutalize. I am put in mind of Mr. Justice. The pitiable soul."

  Mr. Snodgrass folded his arms across his chest. As he was the south-facing point of the triangle, the pistol he held, also a take-home from war service, pointed briefly in my direction. "Reginald, it was."

  "Roland, if memory serves me well."

  "I knew his Daddy from when I worked over at TCI." Mr. Snodgrass leaned toward Dr. Blackwood, but kept his arms folded around himself. TCI was a blast furnace, one of several which, though diminished, still sooted the skyline. "It was Reginald. He wasn't doing nothing. Just walking down the road."

  "Black as the night is black."

  "Just minding his own business," my father said, and let out a long sigh.

  "And what they did to him, I didn't see in Korea. And I saw a lot I won't even tell 'bout. But they sliced him like a pig farmer take a razor to a shoat. Clean off. Then stuck 'em down his throat. What the purpose of that? Boy nearly choked to death and would have too." For a long moment all that could be heard were the grinding screeches of the last of the cicadas. I turned away from the window, an ache from my navel to my knee, remembering the story of Ronald Justice and questioning my future as darkness swelled in me.

  It was several minutes before the conversation picked up again, as if they were all lost in contemplation. I, too, was full of worried thoughts. I was twelve and beginning to feel the sap of manhood springing in my limbs, and with it, not so much a greening, but a blackening of expectations. What had happened to Ronald could happen to any black boy. I would have gone to bed at that point, but Mr. Snodgrass asked, "Whatever happened to Reginald? Did he go up north or something?"

  "I never heard. Not even that," Dr. Blackwood said.

  I moved back to my peephole behind the curtain and saw that the men seemed to have drawn closer together, forming a conspiratorial circle cut across by the rectangle of light that came through the door. I put my ear closer to the window screen.

  "There was that so-called reporter, an investigatory journalist from one of the Northern papers, he said. Philadelphia, he said."

  "Oh, yass. I do remember that fellow. Nosier than a six-toed mole. Come snooping around the yard at TCI asking about the boy. It was the end of late shift and that probably was the reason he snuck by the gate. He asking about Justice. By then they was gone. Where, I don't know. Up north, I guess. But he come asking and nobody, and I mean nobody, would speak a word to him. You never seen so many shoulder-shrugging Step'n Fetchits shuffling through the smoke and shadows. No suh, boss, I don' know nuffin' 'bout what choo talking 'bout. Flares were going off and throwing that red light on them, and they looked like they just raised from the grave. The cub come round to me. First I act like he wasn't even there. But then I said to myself that I wasn't fixin' to play no bug-eyed Sambo. I looked him right in the face, his eyes in shadow but somehow still sparking when those flares goes off. Do you know where the hell you is? Asking 'bout that boy? Do you even know where the hell you is? His mouth opened wider than a cow with a cattle prod up her ass. Too flabbergasted to get out more than a whoosh. He was a young fellow, Irish by the looks of him."

  "Yes. Yes. But of course, I recall him well. A scarlet-haired, freckled-face youth. A so-called all-American visage. His name was O'Brien. Thomas O'Brien."

  "O'Brien is right—nah!—Brown. Timmy—Timothy Brown it was. I know 'cause he followed me home. I was living round Avenue A in Fairfield then, not a quarter-mile from the furnace. Air in the house got so smoky you couldn't sleep some days and for the clanking and clunking too. But not a minute after I got home I heard the dogs barking and growling and come a knock at the door. Sun not even up yet. Cracked the door and there he was standing in the slit of light and looking like a chicken. Hair standing up like a rooster. Asked if the dogs gone bite. What choo want? I said it just like that. I didn't cotton to no white man. Them ain't my dogs anyway. He mumbled out something 'bout the Inquisitor. 'Bout then, one of the dogs took a snap at him and I pulled him on in. Don't need no white man bit up in my yard. What choo want?

  "The fellow still looked shaken to me. Had that look like he got surprised one day and his face never went back. He wanted to ask me questions about that boy, and was it a better place here than at the plant.

  "Ain't no one damn place better than the other. You can get killed any damn place.

  "He sat down like a fat man with broke legs. Heard my kitchen chair squeak. Wife gone to work, though. Day work over the mountain. She had left me a pot of greens, cornbread, and a little fried meat. I always ate my supper in the morning. So I offered the man some to be polite, never expecting he would say yes. So I fixed it up the best I could and served it to him. And he ate too. Right slow at first, like he had to smell it, and then a little piece and a little piece more. Then he was smiling and shoving it on in, chewing and grinning, ring pinkie in the air, like he always ate this way. Ain't this one hell of a strange thing to see? I was thinking. A white man, sitting and eating at my table, eating greens and cornbread for breakfast. I had to shake my head.

  "Then he took a pencil and a little pad of paper out of the breast pocket of his jacket and set them down on the table beside his plate. He looked up and smiled, but his eyes darted around like he was nervous too. You know Reginald Justice? he asked me.

  "Naw, I said, I didn't know the boy. Seen him once or twice, but can't say I know him. I worked with his daddy, though.

  "Well, tell me about his daddy. I told him what little I knew, but it wasn't enough to get a story out of. Then he say, Did the daddy ever mention that the boy had been seeing anybody? A girlfriend?

  "If he did, I don't remember. I guess the boy was normal and that would have been a normal thing.

  "A white girl. Girl the name of Ella Grimes.

  "Damn! Bread dropped out of my mouth it hit me so hard. Grimes. That Grimes gal. I started to say I didn't know a thing he was talking about—and truth be told, I didn't. But I did know that Grimes gal, 'cause her daddy worked the snort valve just a way 'cross from where I was on the slag pot. Won't let no colored work the valve. Thought we wasn't smart enough. We shovel the coke and sinter. Pour off the slag. The gritty work. Controlling the valve was hot work too, but that was a white man's job only. He had to be right up next to them air heaters. Likely, it would cook him if he wasn't careful. But Grimes, as far as I knew, was a decent white fellow. He never said a word to me, but he never said a word against me, either. But you don't know what a man will do if you mess with his daughter.

  "When I got my tongue back I ask how he knew this. He said he had been investigating over in Hueytown. Talk was the boy and the gal had been seen together outside the plant gate. More than once. She would bring her daddy some lunch. But that would have been about midnight. What kind of gal be hanging around a plant yard at midnight?"

  The glider squeaked as Mr. Snodgrass leaned over the arm to pick up his bean can. Dr. Blackwood cleared his throat, apparently to interject, but Mr. Snodgrass held up an index finger with the hand that still held the revolver. "I asked him how he knew. Who he talking to? I was hoping against hope it wasn't Grimes. But no, it was some of them rough boys, three or four of them, over at Hueytown High School.

  "He looked kind of nervous when he said it and run his fingers through that stiff lock of hair on his head. Then he said, and he looked down, They told me the girl liked the nigger—then he looked up—That's their word, sir—he called me sir, but he might as well had kept it at nigger. No offense. I don't talk like that. Then he stared at me, that surprised lo
ok on his face. I could have slapped him into next week.

  "But I bit down hard and said, And then what?

  "The girl said that she liked the boy.

  "I snorted I was so mad. But they didn't do nothing to the girl. They just cut up the boy?

  "Well, one of them said that the girl was his girl and he was glad somebody taught the, uh . . . well . . . the, uh, Negro a lesson he won't forget.

  "But the boy you talk to, he didn't do it?

  "The cub shook his head. Said the rumor was the Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy. He said it like that was funny. I just grunted. I knew who they was. Those gray-sheet-wearing sonofabit'. Don't wear white like the regular Klan and the meanest sonofabit' there is. They the ones beat up Nat King Cole. Beat Shuttlesworth and his girls too.

  "Then he wanted to know if I could confirm the relationship. What relationship? A colored boy don't have no relationship with a white girl. A white girl is death to a colored boy and any colored boy with a grain of sense know that, so unless Reginald had himself a death wish—" Mr. Snodgrass was shouting, realized it and quieted. "But had I ever seen the boy with the girl? he wanted to know. And what if I had? Seeing them together don't mean they was together. Lots of people wait by the plant gate if they know somebody that work up in there. And then, I noticed he hadn't wrote a word on that tablet. Not one scratch. Something don't smell right here, I thought. What paper you say you work for? He said again something about the Inquisitor. Something close to that. I said, And you ain't gone use my name?

  "Confidential, he said.

  "Well, confidential or confounded, I told him just like that, I'm done.

  "But did you see the two of the together?

  "You need to leave.

  "Just answer the question.

  "You need to leave, right now.

  "But what about the dogs?

  "I got a dog, I told him. It'll bark over here and bite over yonder. Now get! I stood up and made like I was reaching for my pocket. He got my meaning and soon went on out. I watched him from the door as he was sidestepping the mud like a sneak dragging his shadow behind him." Mr. Snodgrass spat a big plug of tobacco into the bean can.

  A car accelerated on a nearby street, its engine rising to a whine nearly as loud as the cicadas. The men sat up, looking out from our hilltop porch into the darkness where neither streetlights nor moonlight shone, to TV-lighted windows and the rooftops of Titusville. After a moment they relaxed, the sound of the car muted by distance.

  Dr. Blackwood let out a curt sigh and reached into his jacket's side pocket and took out a shiny flask. "I believe that deserves an ameliorative."

  "And a drink too," Mr. Snodgrass said. The men passed the flask among them sipping and coughing. Out of the same pocket, Dr. Blackwood took a matching cigarette case, triggered a switch that popped it open, and offered it to the other men. Neither of them took a cigarette and he asked if they were "quite certain," and picked a thin hand-rolled cigarette out of the case and placed it at the corner of his mouth. He snapped open a shiny lighter which flared blue, casting momentary light on his bony face. He blew out smoke through his nostrils.

  "Snodgrass," he said to my father, "is a highly imaginative narrator. I doubt if any fact in his tale is accurate. Ah yes, To make a poet black, and bid him sing! Snodgrass sings like a whip-poor-will." Dr. Blackwood's lips twitched. My father broke into a broad smile. Mr. Snodgrass spat into the bean can. "Yours was not the only encounter with that intrepid investigator. He ventured onto the campus and somehow found directions to my office in the basement of Ramsay Hall. It's a close, windowless room, so damp at times that the covers of my books curl. But it is the garret from which I launch like Daedalus. Yes. Yes. I know why the caged bird beats his wing / Till its blood is red on the cruel bars. Barely did he knock before poking that scarlet pompadour into my sanctuary. My goodness, I rarely let my dear students in, and here he is, a white man, broadcasting imperium with a swagger as if he were the primogeniture of Czar Nicolas and Cleopatra. I can't say I wasn't startled, but I restrained from outburst and continued to jot down the rhyme which he had nearly joggled out of my head. I made him stand for a minute, before I looked up.

  "May I help you? I inquired.

  "He dragged my bergère, my good reading chair, from its place in the corner to the front of my desk. He made some hasty, excited introductions, and I was to believe that he was an investigative journalist from Philadelphia. The Inquirer, he said. But something was distinctly off about him, and every hair on my head prickled. Fill-er-delf-ia, he said. Not Fila-dail-fia or FIL-de-fia, as natives might say.

  "The Inquirer? Oh, how prestigious, I said. I put my pen in the stand, and turned the pages of my cahier against the blotter. So kind of you to visit. He spoke rapidly enough for a Philadelphian, but there was a lilt that placed him farther south. Maryland, Virginia, perhaps. So I inquired, How does it go in the City of Brotherly Love?

  "Just great! he said.

  "I suppose they must be, this time of year, the weather so pleasant in the spring. And the Swann Fountain at Logan Square as lovely as Trevi, but much more restrained. It's called Swann Fountain, you know, but there isn't a swan to be found. Not a one. It's only named for a family called Swann, not the fowl.

  "His eyebrows arched, or at least one of them did—and he took on that look Snodgrass described. He suspected I was testing him. You've been to Fill-er-delf-ia?

  "Oh yes, I said. Mind if I smoke? I offered him one and he took it. I lit it for him, then my own. A minute passed as we took in our smoke, and not an iota of recognition from him of the trap. You see," Dr. Blackwood turned to Mr. Snodgrass, "The Inquirer building is located near Logan Square where there's quite a famous fountain, which is called Swann after the family and, incidentally, features many small figures of the bird, as well. But people get it the other way around, thinking the fountain is named for the birds. This urchin was an impostor."

  "I thought he was a rascal!" Mr. Snodgrass said.

  "And to close the trap, I asked if he would like a cup of tea, or a glass of water. Except, I didn't said wa-tah as a Southerner might, but wood-er as a Philadelphian would. And I observed him closely, and yes—not recognition, not familiarity, but the slightest crinkle of confusion on his brow. What should have sounded familiar to him did not! And so I leaned back in my desk chair, hoping my face did not show the smirk I bore toward him, and inquired as gentlemanly as I could muster, And how may I help you?

  "Oh, he said, and took a pad and stub of a pencil from his pocket. Something he had seen in a movie, no doubt. I wonder if he'd thought to wear a fedora with a placard marked Press stuck in the band. He meandered—groping like a man destitute of vision in a room full of knives. Some whites are that way. Afraid to say the obvious, as if to acknowledge that I am a Negro is an insult to me. So I said it for him. And that very same question he asked you, Snodgrass. Did I know the Justice boy? Suspecting his perfidy, I declared that I had never heard of him, or the incident in which the poor lad was injured.

  "You mean he was . . . what! I feigned shock. Eunuchized! Who would do such a thing? And in America too.

  "The coifed clown went on quite awhile, chattering now that the subject was open. He explained as he explained to you, Snodgrass, about his intelligence from the hooligans at Hueytown High and the KKK of the Confederacy emasculating the boy and leaving him for dead. He went on about the girl too, Emma, not Ella. Quite the Queen of Sparta. A willowy, smoky-eyed blonde by the way he described her, his eyes bright and a pearl of spittle at the corner of his mouth. He claimed the Justice lad met her at the plant gate every night, by arrangement. She pretending to bring supper to her father, and he—well, it was never clear what rationale he was to give. This he claimed the girl said, though he never talked to her directly, or so he told me. He went on in a loquacious stream that grew more rapids-filled as he went. I learned more and more about the qualities of young Emma, even details about her fetching eyes and her nymphet physique. All the time, I
remembered young Roland Justice, one of the few students I let into the office. Tall, he was, sepia, good-haired, and as athletic as a young John Henry. He would have been quite the ladies' man, but he was a dreamer. Though he had more than a few infelicities in his articulation, I enjoyed listening to his dreams. He wanted to be an astronaut, he said. He wanted to fly off to the planets." Dr. Blackwood paused, blew smoke through his nostrils, and added with a snort, "What Negro doesn't? But I encouraged him. To dream, even so quixotically, adds a glimmer to the gloom."

  Like many boys back then, I too wanted to fly off to the planets. It was the years of the Mercury program and five men, that is to say American men, had gone up into space in the past year and a half. Just two weeks earlier, Wally Schirra had completed six orbits around the earth and the president said we were going to the moon!