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“Go play Trudy

And take Martin with ya.

Like I was saying, Theda,

they lynched that sixteen year old Davis boy over in Marion County

just last weekend.”

“What?”

“Thought you heard.

White woman say she was raped.

Say all niggers smell the same

no matter what time of day or night they funkin through air.”

“So her nose can tell a man’s color?”

“The sheriff didn’t dispute it,

as pitch black as it was at eleven past midnight.

She swore it was a nigger entered her from her poo poo hole.”

“How she figure a nigger?

Under all that stringy hair,

You mean to tell me,

white women got eyes in the back of their

heads too? And how she know the time?”

“She was wearing her woolworth watch.

That watch, according to her, is less than six months old

it keeps time, better than god in heaven ever could

her words to the picayune not mine.

Say the man who climbed on topa her back side

smell like mothballs and cheap cigars.

The kinda unfancified cigars niggers slip tween their lips,

when they playing with themselves over in juke joints corners,

all while sweating under a haze

of chitterlings/collards and cornbread

grinding to Bessie Smith’s Backwater Blues.”

“Cracker showl know a awful lot bout niggerisms.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“She that Martha Jane Marlow?”

“The one and only.”

“Heard she was onea them

well to do white women.

Don’t own a bit of common sense though,

Fickle in the head.

Got that syndrome,

the one keep her face looking smug;

And on top of that

she born with a water head.

Ain’t that something?

God don’t even give crackers everything.”

“Nonetheless, her blonde hair and blue eyes is enough to keep the white men looking.”

“Her money, Lucille, is what keep them squinting past all her imperfections.

Believe that, nothing more.

She was born into more money than she could spend in ten lifetimes.

Heard she get off on sliding up and down black johnsons.

A game of cat and mouse.”

“Heard her husband like to peep through holes.

On his knees masturbating, one hand on his vienna sausage.

The other on his shotgun.

Cat and mouse my ass, Theda, mo like

cat trapped in the outhouse.

But that aint all;

she said her rapist had a crooked dick.

So they bent his’n (the sixteen year old’s) till it broke.

So they wouldn’t have to go running round

in the dark chasing phantom dicks with crooks in their neck.

Hold up a minute Theda.

Gurrrrrl!

Didn’t I tell you to go on and play?

This grown folk talk!

That grandbaby of mine,

nine going on thirty-nine

her eyes forever crawling down my throat.

Where your rag doll

and that boys marbles?

Go on now gal, bring that baby over yonda

fore I put this fly swatter to yo backside.”

“Lucille, I can’t believe that sixteen-year-old chile was made to fuck that hag-bitch.”

“Got tired of kidnapping drunk black men/I suppose.”

“He ain’t had a chance in hell.

What was they doing in the woods anyway?

I always heard they seek out motels

on the outskirts.”

“Got tired of motels, I reckon Theda.

Heard she liked the youngness of the boy,

more than she shoulda let on.

Moaned one refrain too long.”

“She musta been beat

to the point of going

color-blind.”

“If she had been born with sense, hed’a done beat it out of her, by the third lick.

White boy use to be a prizefighter somewhere in Germany.

Now how true that is, I don’t know.

I heard, she took that ass whipping though like she was his sparring partner,

just closed her eyes and grinned.

Simple minded bitch.

That’s bout the time the truth scurried way from the scene

seeping into the creeks of that sycamore.”

“Heard, they had to go to the hospital.

Had to explain the bruises that came with their own set of matching bruises.

Had to doctor the truth, when they should been doctoring her woman parts.”

“Go on play Trudy!

Go on over by the sycamore tree.

Take your lil brother with ya.

No, I changed my mind.

Go play by the azaleas.

Truth like sap, Theda.

If you tap a tree at just the right height of day

its temperament will allow it to flow uncontrollably.

That’s truth, once it starts running,

It only knows one speed -fast.”

l“You talking mo science

than hoodoo-trees and sap.”

“Think what you will.

Me and trees,

we don’t have the same relationship we use to.

Seem like every other day a black man or boy swaying in the wind

human chimes-I call em.

Now, when I see trees, I wanna spit at their roots.

Don’t wanna own they gossip.

Wanna walk by a field of trees one day and just breathe.

Got nough undernourishment in my life

Don’t need trees poking the daylights outa me.”

“ Lucille, can I borrow a few clothespins?”

“Yeah, here you go.”

“Sun coming out;

these clothes be dry in no time.”

“Look at my sheets Theda.

Don’t nothing clean cotton like a washboard and castile soap.”

“Lucille I’m still trippin off

This mess with you and trees…

Chile trees ain’t nothing but wood unpolished, unshellaced, raw.

I don’t pay trees no mind, Lucille.

Trees ain’t the enemy- white folks is.”

“Trees live like you and me, Theda

they hold onto memories worsen us human beings.

I walked down to the foot of that sycamore,

the one they hung the Davis boy from;

I put my ear to its bleeding heart…”

“Memories my ass,

trees don’t shit,

or hunger for their holy hole

to be explored.

They don’t pay bills.

So they is of no use to me,

other than to hold up my clothesline.”

“Listen, I heard that boy scream through the creeks in the wood.”

“What he scream Lucille?”

“The name of the man he saw step out the shadows,

“Gurl, you need to stay out yo husband’s shine!

Stop talking foolishness fore you have our necks committed to the ends of ropes or better yet have us’n locked away in the crazy house.

I’m worth more to my husband than any twenty dollars and a sack of flour.”

“That boy spirit say,

wasn’t no black man assault her poo poo hole.

Was a white face, with a gold badge.”

“What that boy stick around for Lucille.

He shoulda run on way from this town. Run and never look back.

My nephew Edwin got a job at sixteen,

working on the railroad

over in Jasper County.

So I don’t know

what that Davis boy stick around for.

He shoulda run,

sixteen is practically a man.”

“I heard from that boy’s mama’s lips

how her, the boy and his daddy was gon plead to pardon.

They was gon try and convince the husband that it was cause the boy was uncircumcised

that his wife took to finding pleasure when she shoulda found lust.

They thought they could convince him that the poor boy was too retarded

to remember the sin his johnson had committed.”

“That boy Lucille, was nowhere near crazy.

Lazy as all get up but crazy never.

What I remember bout him Lucille, was how he loved almanacs

stole a whole section of em from the library where I clean on evenings.

Snuck right in while I was on break, drinking my coca cola.

I ain’t care; shit they don’t allow us kind inside no ways

cept dust the shelves, wax the resource room floor and empty the trash.

So what I look like trying to rescue of all things white folks books.

That boy was a mess in a half,

could always find him-giggling under the sycamore trees,

reading and slapping his knee.

Shit, on second thought, maybe he was crazy.

I ain’t never found nothing funny in no almanac.

“Naw Theda, my thinking is he was planning some sort of escape from here.

He just needed to get his seasons right.

He was studying the patterns of the wind, chasing the moon while stalking the sun.”

“Naw Lucille, they was all crazy,

damned Benjamin Banneker Bible,

they shoulda all run. The whole house of em.”

“Too late now.”

“What’s done is done.”

“I just know what that boy scream through the creek in that tree.”

“Well, Lucille

what you gon do with that?

A Sheriff who rapes

his own kind.

Ain’t gon be no justice.

What the sheriff gon do; put his own self behind bars?”

“Listen, the boy say he was smelling the earth and tasting its leaves, so in roughly ten minutes after the husband hit him in the stomach with the butt of his shotgun he was running.”

“Not fast nor far enough, obviously.”

“Heard the wife whine then laugh. Heard the husband grunt and call her bitch, whore, slut, nigger fucker.

Then he heard the car door slam and drive away.

The wife never stop laughing, whining, rolling round in the mud,

then snorting-that was a new skill.

Didn’t matter how far the boy run, he said she just kept getting louder and louder

and her whining began to sound more like a cat in heat.”

“Like I said, not fast nor far nough.”

“He figured he’d hide till morning, sleep in onea them hollowed out sycamores,

down by the river.

Just in case the husband was further on up the road,

waiting for him to leap outa the thicket.”

“Any fool be scared of being run over-I reckon.

What the trees say happened after he found a hollow spot?”

“He looked up and saw the moon was burnt orange.

Then he saw a car squeezing its frame through the darkness.”

“Was it the husband?”

“No, this car was patient like a bloodhound.

It was straining to identify a scent.”

“Then it was the SHERIFF!”

“The engine stalled then stopped

And that’s when he heard heavy strides shattering every twig and leaf they encountered.

Then he saw a dim-light, like –like from a flashlight

and heard the voice-act as if he were going to soothe the wife from the ground.

So the boy slid out the hollow tree, got down on his belly,

and slithered just close enough to see when the shirt,

with the badge fell from

the man’s hand to the earth.

“He shoulda stayed in that tree and went fast asleep.”

“Well Theda, he didn’t.

That’s how come he know the sheriff,

turned her on her back,

said he didn’t want what the nigger had.

He wanted something ain’t been touched.”

“The boy heard all that?”

“Saw the sheriff turn her over.

Saw him slap spit on his fingers

then up her ass hole they went.

Saw him put his vienna sausage in too.

And all the wife do was laugh and whine.”

“And the boy, what he do then?

“Slither back to his hole.”

“I bet the husband

told the sheriff where she was.”

“I heard the husband got scared, beat her longer than usual, thought she might have

suffered bleeding on her insides. The sheriff was probably there to clean it all up.”

“To legitimize the lie,

more like it.”

“The rest is the rest.”

“They never found his penis,

that’s what I heard.”

“Or his tongue, keepsakes taken before the lynching.”

“I heard, Theda, that white woman’s husband stood over across the street…”

“Yeah, Lucille that’s right, from where the funeral was held

and as the pallbearers were removing the body from the church…”

“Yeah Theda you right, he yelled, the husband did.

Theda, he yells, I got yawls nigger’s balls and Ima eat em.”

“Lucille, I heard he popped them in his mouth, gave one chew then swallowed.”

“Theda, I heard he laughed and then it happened….”

“What happened?

I ain’t heard bout no other happenings Lucille.”

“The sky turned burnt orange for sixty eight seconds,

and while everyone was watching the sky,

nobody was watching the husband except the boy’s mother…

“What happened to him, the husband I mean?”

“A sycamore swallowed him whole.

All they found of the husband

were his shoes, filled to the rim with gopher dust.”

“What! Lucille I told you to lay off that shine.”

“No word of lie, the boy’s spirit travels through them trees.

But not just his spirit,

It’s the spirit of all them black boys and men lynched.

They pulled him in just so’s they could rip his soul apart

and soon come they gon get that sheriff too.

Word on the street, he won’t even travel in the woods no more-the sheriff.

He knows his time is coming.

The boy told me he made it so,

every tree on the sheriff’s block opens its mouth

When he walks by.”

“What they say, Lucille?”

“The names of the lynched.

They scream and cry.

They laugh and wail.

They call him a dirty mutha fucker,

a white bastard,

cracker…

They talk and talk

all day and all night.

They never let up.

Spirits don’t get tired; they get even.”

“You and trees Lucille.

If you ain’t on that shine, you must be losing your mind.

Before you go completely crazy,

Can I have your bread pudding recipe?”

“Gurl Please.

Listen to me, mark my words.

Come on inside, I’ll pour you a cup of coffee.

Nough grown folk talk for one day.

Let’s eat bread pudding and relax by the fan.”

“Look at yo grandbaby Lucille talking to the sycamore.

I guess crazy runs in yawls blood.”

“Chile, leave her be.

I reckon what’s for her to hear, she gon hear.

Trees don’t keep secrets, can’t hold water.

Roots, too damned deep.

Shall we Theda?”

“After you.

You crazy ass fucker.”

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Mawiyah Kai EL-Jamah Bomani