Thanks, Thomas
Cappy Jack ©2004
“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.