HANK TESTIFIES HOW HE MET CHUBBY ...
HE’S IN THE CROWD, WHEN THEY BRING
me in. We looks at each other, but he pretends; nothing to see, or remember. These masks sure do change things. I think I can recognize most people, mostly by their clothes, some just wear the same thing day after day. Eyes. You gotta look a lot closer now, ’cause you just see their eyes. But – him? His walk alone tells you it’s him, long, striding with a little bop in it, some kind of internal rhythm generated flex, and he is sure as black as black can be, even through his hat, mega-mask, and wrap-around sunglasses. I turn away, look again, and he is gone. Well, this fast-talking Island brother – so black, you’d think he was African – he told me Bart knows, but is pretending he doesn’t, at least not in the way he really knows. Of course, I know Bart and he knows me – he and Granddad had a go-around a few years back. I suppose he is wondering if I am gonna let on. Easy Peasy. I let my eyes dart around, about – five people watching me. Well, I guess I caused quite a stir. There is no way out. How much more time have I left? That Island blood told me that Bart is counting on me, I’ll not let him down, no matter. Point of pride, he understands it, although I am sure in the back of his mind he wonders what will make me break and call him out. But I won’t, no matter. They might think I am slow, but I know what’s going on. I am never getting out of here. I can’t. Nothing’s gonna change that.
I know this sounds funny, but there is a lot of strange stuff I really wanted to do. I mean when I am out on my raft, I think about a lot of things. On a hot summer day, when the river isn’t really running high or fast, it is so easy to float out there, and I wonder about the stars, and ancient stuff, like who built the pyramids? Maybe we have done all this before? Maybe somebody like me thought all this before. Nothing’s new, I know that. I know this stuff with Real-Prez – it’s old hat, everybody knows that. This ain’t the first time somebody like him took over. I read about how the Romans just gave up and let Caesar run things. Or maybe it was the other guy? Anyway, I know we have all been here before, and will again too. Probably. Maybe – if we even get that far.
But now things are getting really strange. Mind-reading machines. I hear about them and I want to try it myself. I thought about that whole deal once, and had it all figured out. If we could really see what was in people’s mind, wouldn’t that fix so much? We would see what really bad people was thinking, even if they seemed to be acting good, and the other way too. I hear people are “hooking up” – that’s what they say – with that C2B, or See-to-Be, whatever it’s called, advertisements for it all over, everywhere. People just lettin’ it take over their mind. Supposed to be those guys in turbans playing the flute for cobra snakes that do it, combined with some techno gizmo. Well, now that I think about it, it might be bad too – ’cause what if what you think is good is what is against the bad people?
And they find out that I’m against ’em? ’Cause I am. They say they’re gonna hook me up, to find out what I know, who helped me. Still, C2B sounds pretty interesting, gotta admit I am curious. Oh I am not afraid neither, my mind is my own, they can’t take it. But I’ll probably never get to find out. It’s supposed to let you learn a whole college book in a couple of hours, or so they say. Learn a foreign language in a week – parley voo fransay, hab low esplanada – at least that is what they say. I saw people up in St Loo last week toting a box around in a backpack, connected to one of those sticky hats of criss-crossed plastic on their heads, staring off in their own world, barely able to avoid running into people. I’d like to try it.
But they’re talking about hooking me up, to see if the gizmo can tell if I am lying. Shit, if they beat me, I’ll tell something, but I ain’t gonna really say nothing. They is looking at me as if I was a catfish, stinkin’ in the sun.
I see a lot of other faces too, a woman dressed nice, a couple others mostly angry and ugly. That’s just the audience. Well whatever they are gonna do to me, they probably won’t do it here, at least. Might as well enjoy what time I got left.
“How did you know when to be there?”
“Be where? You mean with my boat? I don’t got no fone no more, but I still get messages and check them once or twice a week on the pooter in the library. Lots of people seen me there. I still need to pay my fone bill, and I will, and get my fone back, because after 90 days they take away your messages, and I need that. That is how I get business. I get the messages to pick up guys, stuff, do shit around the river. I could make a lot more money than I do, you know. I turn down a lot of work.”
“We checked your messages, Hank, and there was no message from anyone named ‘Chubby’ or anybody else who wanted to hire you to take them up the river.”
“I know. I delete my messages as soon as I hear them. I am really sorry I did pick him up.”
“Why?”
“Why do I delete them? ’Cause I don’t want the phone company to know I am getting messages I ain’t paying for. I always delete ’em permanent too. Gone.”
“It’s not permanent, Hank. But regardless – why are you sorry you picked him up?”
“Why? What am I gonna do? I left my raft docked upriver by the Randall bend. I am gonna lose it for sure. Who is gonna pay for that?”
I know, I know, you all are wondering why I worry ’bout that? Who gives a floating turd about the raft with a tin wigwam right? Yeah, maybe, but I don’t want these people thinking they have me figured out, ’cause, see, I’m “touched” a bit. Sometimes it pays to be misunder-estimated.
Somebody in the back said, “We don’t have time for this.”
“Hank, why don’t you just tell us in your own words what happened.”
I just stared at him, like I didn’t hear him correctly.
“We will make sure you get your raft back, when this is over,
if, as you say, you are innocent.”
“My boat and my raft. That’s all I wanted to hear. OK?”
“And your boat too.”
They look at me all sad like I don’t even know what is going on.
“I had been pushed up on the beach there for about an hour when I heard the shouting. I was scared to bejeezus, because I wasn’t at all sure if I was doing something right or not. I mean, maybe I am not – I mean, I didn’t mean anything bad to happen. I lived around the Cape all my life, and I knew how people think. Not everybody, but most of them. Mostly good people. Right? I just thought this guy was like everybody else.”
“So who told you to wait there?”
“Who told me? Nobody actually, I mean, I have been talking to people for quite a while about this Real-Prez business, and then I get a message saying they need my help, so I said I would do what I can…”
“Who gave you the message?”
Who? You did, Bart, you sneaky bastard. That’s how that Island dude who never told me his name got me in on it! You, Bart – you who tried to shut my granddad down for putting that Klan bastard on his show. Is that why Granddaddy don’t talk to Momma no more? Bart was sweet on Momma when they was in high school, she said. Granddaddy liked him too much though, so she and my real daddy made me. Bart went away then comes back all lawyer-like, but he don’t like Granddaddy no more. Granddaddy don’t like him. Don’t like me neither. Twice he offered me money to leave town for good. I try not to smile. Momma is his only child and I am hers. He told Momma he is giving everything to the church.
Bart, not even smiling a little – this was kinda fun, ’cause I knows he knows and him knowing I knows, but nobody else knowing we both know – my Island buddy said never, ever tell anyone who or how or what.
“I shoulda suspected then,” I says out loud, “I know. I had no notion about this thing happen outside Hot Shots.”
“This thing?”
“You know, the toorrist bombing.” I look around at their blank stares. “I didn’t know.”
“Uh huh,” said his interrogator, who stopped and just stared at Hank.
“What are we doing?” Alvin Hinkle, who owns a shitty landscape company I worked for years ago, and who accused me of stealing a lawn mower, when I didn’t, is talking now. “This is a waste of time. I got a rope in my truck.” It don’t matter now, he said it, and everyone heard it. A rope. That Island black dude, who I never seen before and who set this up, said Bart would be there to help, and now, he’s leading the investigation. So, I figure I have to be scared and sorry about it all, but really, I ain’t. If they is that good, maybe I got a chance! Or maybe I get sacrificed. Like Abraham was fixing to do, when the Lord stayed his hand. Maybe this time, I’m just like Abraham’s son, only maybe God don’t call it off at the last minute. I just gotta lie here like Eye-zac. What if I slip up or get really scared? It’s all on me. But, then, Bart is in as much danger as I am. Stick together – I hope we are together – and hope for a sign – that’s my ticket! Lay it on Hanky boy!
“Oh, no, no, Oh God, please don’t, I am telling you the truth!”
Got dem tears coming!
I see Bart look at Dumphy, and point at Hinkle. Deputy Dumphy walks over and touches him on the shoulder and signals him to leave. He does, shaking his head ’bout “wasting county money on a half-breed parasite.”
I do admit after he accused me of stealing his lawnmower, I sugared the tank of his backhoe. He never mentioned it that I know of, but I heard he sold it to Matt Honeycutt’s outfit and they had a ruckus about it.
“Well, we aren’t going to hang you, Hank. Or torture you.”
He signals for the other deputy (who I don’t know, but his name tag says “Black”) to remove my handcuffs. I do know that he is the only black working for Sheriff Garrett. “Would you like something to eat, Hank?”
I shake my head. I was playing a game with myself, gotta make me forget what I know. Keep control, stay in my own mind. Sob a little, Hank. “On second thought, yee-ah, maybe a cheeseburger. You got any of that good catsup?”
“Sure, Hank.” He looks around and I see him signal Dumphy to take care of it. Everybody around here knows what the good catsup is!“The more you tell us about this guy you say gave you the message the – know what I am saying, Hank?”
“I don’t know who it was.”
“Was he white?”
“I don’t know – he sounded foreign. I never seen him – never seen his face I mean.”
“What?”
“Long brown pants, long-sleeve bright green shirt with flowers on it. Looked nylon or something flimsy. Wore a hat and a big white hospital mask, I mean it covered almost everything. And sunglasses. Just glanced at him, and he was gone. Listen, some of you, you know me. I do a little independent business, you all know that. I move up and down the river, sometimes up above St. Loo…”
“How about Minneapolis?”
“Naw, that be up a tributary. I stay on the main river. My raft’s been to Kansas City. Maybe someday, I go to Montana.”
There was laughter in the room.
“And sometimes down to Memphis too, right?” Bart snapped as the laughter subsided.
“Not lately.”
“What do you mean, when were you last in Memphis?”
“Well, you know, since the trouble down there, not much traffic going down or coming up, and you know how the – I don’t want to say who asked me, but I brought back a few cases of that good, that real good bourbon, and up and sold it. Couple months ago. Before all that hecka-booloo out in Or-ee-gon I mean.”
“Meet anybody there about this thing here? About meeting this ‘Chubby,’ as you call him?”
“Hell no! Just some man at that distillery on the river from, what’s it called, ‘Blue Note’?”
“How long it take you?”
“Going down river, about two days. Coming back, almost a week. River was running high last June. I had a breakdown too.”
“So you take ten days to float down the river, and back, to pick up a couple cases of whiskey, to sell? How much did you make?”
“Maybe fifty bucks. That covered my gas, which was almost that much, I guess it’s hard to get good bourbon. Anyways, you know I just like being on the river.”
“OK. So you met nobody in Memphis except some guy at the bourbon distiller. Did you go out, drink, eat?”
“No. I ate on the raft.” I can’t do more than shrug. They don’t believe me. Maybe one or two do, but I need mo’! I just know they gonna beat me later.
“Well, Hank, you think about it. We will come back to talk about your Memphis business more thoroughly later.”
Oh, later! I doubt there will be a later.
“So you say you get this call to meet a guy near the Shawnee Bridge?”
“Yeah, he said he give me fifty bucks.”
“Again, fifty bucks. Is that your going rate?” This gets a laugh. I smile too, at first.
“At least it ain’t thirty pieces of silver!” A bunch of ’em laugh even more. Maybe I shouldn’t a said that.
“Where were you supposed to take him?”
“Down the river, that is what he seemed to mean. Just a short trip.”
“Down the river – you mean across, to Illinois. And this was right near the bridge?”
I give them all a dumb look, like that was the first time I had thought it odd. I shake my head. “He never said across. I took him down to Gray’s Point. Let him out by that bit of beach near Nash Road.
He seen some headlights flash and run to it.”
“OK. What happened next?”
“I head back up the river to my raft parked up by Bainbridge Creek.”
“About 8 miles upriver from the Cape here, right?”
“That’s right. I been parking the raft there for years. Sometimes I go across to Illinois, but I stay there mostly.”
“Bart, he is stalling!” I look over at Deputy Dumphy. He’s been riding me since grammar school.
“Darryl, where’s that hamburger I asked about?” Bart, he looks hard at Dumphy.
“Cheeseburger,” I say quietly. I was gonna say something about the catsup too, but the good lord mercifully put a stop in my mouth.
“Yes, cheeseburger,” says Bart, and everybody laughs quiet-like. Darryl leaves the room, shakin’ his head. “How did you know to pick him up, Hank?”
“So I gets this call,” I says, “he said his name was Chubby. That he would pay $50 to pick him up just before sundown at the base of Morgan Oaks Street, where the levee breaks off, and you can walk from Water Street to the beach. Just upriver from the Shawnee Bridge.”
“It was getting dark about then, right?”
“Nearly.”
“Did you hear the explosion?”
“I sure did. I expect everybody in town did.”
“And when did this ‘Chubby’ fellow…”
“That’s what he said – to call him, ‘Chubby.’ He was pretty – pretty big, as they say. Every part of him was pretty thick. Not exactly fat though.”
“What else?”
“His hair was real short, like he shaved his head not too long ago. Missing a tooth. Weird beard, long stash – sideburns – old-timey looking.”
“OK.”
Bart is writing something down, and there is a murmur and a bunch of whispering. A guy I don’t know whispers something to Bart, and Bart nods.
“Right, that fits with other descriptions we have. So how long after the explosion did he show up?”
“Five minutes. Maybe less.”
“Did you see him on a bicycle?”
“Bicycle? No.”
“Where did you go?”
“He said he wanted to go down a ways, down past town. He had one of them picture maps, a photo from high up in a plane and I recognize Gray’s Point.”
“You mean the big bend in the river south of town?”
“Well – yeah. It was just ’bout dark by then, but I knew the way. I let him off, and he gave me a hundred bucks. Five twenties. I wasn’t unhappy, I do say that, even though I sure am now.”
“You helped a terrorist escape. You know what that makes you?”
“Stupid, I suppose.”
No one answers that. Actually, we did go down to Gray’s Point, then we turned around and he pulled the tarp on his self and I crossed over and hugged the Illinois shore and took him about 8 miles up and I was fixin’ to let him off on the Illinois side. But he changed his mind, so we crossed back over and hid out inside my raft. Waited all night and all day, then the next night, I took him over to Illinois near Ware. And he was gone. If they catch him, they will put it together, and I will get the needle for sure. People been talking about hanging though, probably so they can all watch. Probably will anyway. Al Hinkle has a bunch of friends who would help hoist me up. So it don’t matter anymore. Probably pulled Momma in for it too, but Granddaddy will help her, at least I hope he will. Anyway, how did he – he did call his self? Dean, Dane? That Island blood did actually say his name real fast, but I could hardly understand him when he talked. Had all the cool – like a slick city brother, but more like a hippie, and then the Island too – Bob Marley but unplugged. He’s the one I met in Memphis and figured out somehow I was secretly for Colonel Coleman and the whole Memphis thing. Al Den. Albert Dennis? I really can’t remember, which is good, I guess. It was something like that. I suppose he looked at my skin tone. Or else he got a message from Bart here. I just gotta let it ride. Don’t wish for nothing, keep my mouth shut, see how it plays. Probably – I am dead. Nothing to be done. No point squealing, won’t help, besides. I have never tried to pass for white, even though I think I could, better than Michael Jackson anyway. Fuck, the older I get, the more happy I ain’t white! If anybody asks – I am glad to tell them my black daddy was Ezekial Moncrief, who everybody around here knows, or at least heard him play the saxophone a few times. And they also know my momma was the daughter of the owner of the local FOX station, as well as a number of other businesses, mostly to do with real estate and construction, and he was mayor some years back. When she went to the hospital, she said Jack Ford was my daddy. Jack’s a white man of course, or at least was. But Momma never married him, and he drowned when I was a baby. So everybody knows me, and they think I am touched, and I may well be. My granddaddy tried to get me to work for him, but he refuses to forgive Momma for making me the way she did. So I’ll be damned to hell and back if I am gonna work for him! Anyway, I know everything about that river, and have been from one end up in Minny-soda too, and yeah way up the Mizzoo too, down to Big Easy. I figured what else do I need? My dream – what I always thought maybe I could do someday is work on one of them barges, maybe be captain someday, but I know this stuff – this thing I did – well, I ain’t ever gonna get a job like that now. At least not the way things are now.
“Anyway, this guy, Chubby, the same man said for me to be at the levee directly by Morgan Oaks Street, before sundown, so I was. All Chubby said was, ‘Be ready,’ and I was. There was another man talked to me about it earlier, it’s true. He must of told Chubby, as good as I can figure.”
I looked out at all the faces, and they didn’t look too happy at all.
“Other man?”
“Yeah. A couple days ago. Said I could make some fast money if I want, take a guy down river some. A Black come up to me outside the Quick Mart, over on Townsend Street. I come in there mostly on Wednesday night to check on the Powerball numbers. And buy a ticket for next week.”
“Never seen this Black guy before?”
“Never in my life!”
“And that’s where you met this Chubby?”
“Yeah – told me to come back the next night. That’s where I first seen this Chubby.”
“So what were you doing when it happened, Hank? Didn’t it make you suspicious it being a rush job. And a secret?”
“Well I was there, expecting to make a little money, as I said. I thought maybe – I don’t really know what I think, except about the money. Anyway, I was waiting there on the beach near Morgan Oaks. I was dabbing some glue onto a patch of fiberglass I put on the bottom of my skiff when I heard the loudest explosion I ever known, felt real close too. Hurt my eardrums for a minute or two. Then, I don’t know – five minutes, maybe longer, I turn and this Chubby is walking real fast, right at me. Nobody behind him at least. He looked kind of funny, at the time anyway.”
“What did he say to you?”
“He said something that I couldn’t make out ’cause I think the explosion made my ears a little deef, just a little, you know, ’cause I was a good – well not a half mile away, if that, if it happened by Hot Shots, as I hear it happened. This Chubby fella, he just jumped into my boat and stared at me. “Let’s go!” he yelled, pointing downstream. I pulled the cord on my outboard and we took off headin’ down river. I decided to ride nice and slow. I stayed real close to the shore, riding under the bridge, right along the edge. Pretty soon sirens were going off and people were screaming, you could hear it all because sound travels really clear on the river. Nobody was paying any attention to me though. I just kept going.”
“Then what happened?”
“We got to the bend in 30–40 minutes or so. He paid me and runned off toward some flashing headlights.”
“It was pitch dark out.”
“Yeah, I know. No moon, neither. He was gone before I could say boo.”
“Then what?”
“Then I turned around, rode up past town. Sirens still going off as I passed town. I started wondering if I done a bad thing. I got to the raft and stayed there. I started thinking maybe I done a bad thing, like I said, so I stayed on the boat for a day, looking at my money, wondering if it really was like them thirty pieces of silver. I always wondered what they meant by pieces? Like little rocks or something? Anyhoo, I stayed on my raft all the next day, doing little chores. More and more though, I known I done wrong. So I came back to town, figuring I would tell somebody. Pulled into the Red Star ramp and then Darryl picked me up real quick. He threw me around hard, like I was trash. I suppose somebody seen me.”
“Did this Chubby say anything when you were on the boat?”
“He said some guys were looking for him ’cause he was lovin’ on one of their girlfriends.”
“You believe him?”
“Yeah, at first, ’cause I was – you know – I sure didn’t think he sploded that bomb and kilt people!”
“What’d you think the big noise was?”
“I asked him. He shook his head, said it sounded like a propane tank getting too close to a welding arc. I remember the McKee boys was putting up some iron struts in the warehouse up the block they was fixing to make into expensive apartments. I seen them work, and I knew they was foolish hiring them, so, yeah, I thought it might be that.”
“You really thought it was a propane tank?”
“More likely acetylene or one of them other arc-welding gases. Why not? How it make sense other-hoo? Who think somebody gonna do that? It kinda made sense – I figured a really ugly girl with a mean boyfriend mighta let him do some lovin’, ’cause he was pretty disturbing to see.”
“So you didn’t even consider the possibility that this Chubby, who you describe almost exactly like the other witnesses described the bomber – you didn’t even suspect he might have something to do with the bomb?”
“What bomb? How did I know it was a bomb when it went off? When this Chubby get on my boat, after he gived me fifty, he said the splosion must of been some kind of a gas leak or a maybe a gas tank, real casual. He acted like he had no idea either. Yeah, I believed him. Him being in a hurry and all, that did concern me, it’s true, but only later. He paid upfront in cash – and then after we got going he gave me another fifty, double what we agreed. That made me pretty happy. I really didn’t think he done something bad. What else could it be? He seemed a nice guy, funny. He said he was sorry about Coleman dying down in Memphis, I suppose ’cause he thought – I don’t know.”
“Because you’re Black.”
“I ain’t Black, I am cream, with a touch of coffee.” No one laughed. “Or the other way. No, I didn’t say nothing one way or the other about Coleman. When he paid me double, I admit I was pretty happy and didn’t think more about it. Hundred dollars a lot of money.”
Actually, me and Chubby spent the night in my tin wigwam on the raft and settle in for the night. Up north by Bainbridge Creek. He had some real good mara-jew-wanna, so we sparked up and that made sleep easier. That’s when he told me about killing those guys that killed Colonel Coleman. Boom! I knowd it was something like that. I knowd he did the bombing, sure, but not why he did it. They ran right next to his bomb and he fired it off with his fone. Showed me how it worked. He wanted me to come with him, and get out of the Cape. Leave my raft and boat? I suppose I should of listened to him. But since I knowd that Bart Jones, sitting right in front of me, introduced me to the Island brother, Adean, or whatever his name is, I figured I wouldn’t have no trouble. Now he is pretending to be against me. Maybe he can get me out of this. But I didn’t think it would be like this.
