Thanks Thomas

Thanks, Thomas

“I worked in a gin mill, I know about seeds. The farmers wanted their seeds back.” The sunlight through the large windows in the coffee house made the black man’s smile glisten, Tom smiled at the memory. His listeners all craned to look at the tourists peering at the marijuana plants in the window. But they were listening.

“Leroy called me ‘little boy’. I brought them up to the mill with the tractor. We worked at night after the farmers filled our field with their wagons. All numbered and run in order, seeds, you know. Well, one night Leroy promises me a chicken dinner in the morning, if we can get all the wagons run through. All night he’s saying, ‘Ahhh, little boy, we is going to eat good. Chicken and corn bread, hot out the oven. Can’t ya just smell it?’ Tom painted a picture with his big hands, covered in scars and rings, catching the pretty girl’s eye for a moment. The crowd in Sensi was young. The table of men where Tom sat mirrored his silver back status, dressed to ageless guesses by the women who stared at them.’ Nice parade of smiling, inviting young things’, thought Jack.

“How old were you, Tom?” Jack could sense another tall tale. Tom had some good ones.

“Fifteen. Still in Arkansas. But let me tell you what happened. We finish around seven and start to walk about a hundred yards to the house. Leroy says, ‘You smell any chicken, ‘little boy’?’ I just had to say, ‘No’. Well, we walk up and see his wife sitting on the front porch talking to another bitch; just jaw jacking away. She sees Leroy and gets up with a jump. He walks into the house. I stayed on the porch. I see him go down the hall into the kitchen. He opens the oven even though we knew there was no supper. Then he goes to the freezer and I see him take out a small chicken, look at it, put it back and take another one. Sort of hefts it. His wife sees that and starts to walk away. He comes out yelling, ‘I’m going to kill you, bitch!’

Tom is rocking back and forth as he talks, the other men are paying more attention now. The music breaks over them loud making Tom’s chuckle a beat.

“Leroy threw a pass Joe Namath would have been proud of. He grabs that chicken with the legs pointing back, fingers on the breast bone and just lets fly. Well, his wife had started running before he came back out. Just like a rabbit, zig zagging out the field. She must have been sixty yards away.”

"What happened? What happened?” All the men were laughing, looking at Tom pitched back as if to throw a Hail Mary.

“He hit her right here.” He put his head down a bit and banged the palm of his hand at the base of his head.

“Poof! She went down hard. Pole axed, face first and didn’t move. The police came because of the woman she was talking to but they didn’t do nothing. She had it coming.