Mississippi Red - short story - Black South Fiction, Art, Culture

African American Review, Summer, 1993 by Sam L. Grisham

Well you asked me, so I'll tell you. I'm a hustler. Nothing big-time or anything like that, just an ordinary colored fellow doing the best I can with the best I've got. And, that's all I got to say about that.

My daddy was a bail bondsman in Jackson, Mississippi, back in the thirties. Big, dark-skinned man with hands the size of those heavy iron skillets, the kind you cook cornbread in. He looked mad most of the time.

He was an all right colored man, bailed out the coloreds when they got arrested; and coloreds were always getting arrested, you know, because every week bad a Saturday in it and every Saturday night some fool was going upside some other fool's head and the white folks was calling my daddy.

See, my daddy had a reputation. Mostly because he made good money, but like I said, he was a big man and he was fair, but he could get mean enough to make a bull piss brown liquor or get the hell out of his way. You putting that in the book, too? Well, all right, don't misquote me now.

Anyway, I remember one time when Floyd Tatum was arrested for damn near beating his own cousin to death. Floyd was a white boxer with a body thick as a tree trunk and a head just as dense. Floyd's woman cried in my mama's chest all night long 'cause she didn't have no money and couldn't get old Jake Parsons, the white bail bondsman, to get Floyd out. So my daddy bailed him, and when Floyd got out, damned if he didn't turn tail and jump bond. Went all the way to Alabama.

Now, I know you don't know much about Alabama, but peckerwoods in Alabama would kill a colored man for waking up on Sunday. My daddy went over there anyway, and when he came home, he had Floyd with him. Had to break one of Floyd's legs and knock out all his teeth, but he brought him back. Yes sir, my daddy didn't take no stuff, but, you know, he kind of disappointed me that time, too.

I went with my daddy to take Floyd to the jailhouse, and when we showed up, old Judge Crenshaw slapped a fine against my daddy for hitting a white man. Told hirn to be grateful he didn't throw him in jail to boot. I thought my daddy would raise hell with old Judge Crenshaw, but he wouldn't even look him in the eyes. Just paid the fine and we went on home.

I asked my daddy why he let Crenshaw do him like that and all my daddy said to me was, "It's the law, son." Like that made everything all right. I knew right then that something was wrong with the law.

Anyway, since my people had money, they could afford for me to have schooling. That's why I talk better that most of these Negroes around here. I went to Tuskegee Agriculture School to study farming. Now, I don't believe they had real schools for colored then, and I only went because my mama was the sweetest woman on this earth and I would do anything my mama asked. But I couldn't stay at that farm school long. Farming didn't hold nothing for me. I couldn't stomach the smell of cow shit. So, I made my mama believe I got the "calling." My mama was a religious woman.

The only thing calling me was the streets. Shooting pool playing craps, living fast and sweet. I used to hang out at Pete Henson's place 'til the rooster crowed. Pete had a pool hall over on Sugar Creek. All the big-time gamblers and con men would come to Pete's, and I'd be right there, cutting my teeth watching that green pile up.

A smart player could turn as much green in one night sitting at a poker table as my daddy could make in one month going bail. Look a man right in his eyes while you doing it, too. Course, you could lose it just as fast, but that's part of the draw, see? When you gamble, you don't just play the hand, you play the man. You start with five. He starts with five. And that's the only law. Don't have to worry about no Crenshaw at the poker table. No, sir.

Now, there were rumors when I was a boy that my daddy wasn't my "real" daddy. That my real daddy was a white man and that's how I come to be so yellow with a daddy so black. My mama was pretty white-looking herself so ... I don't know. Sometimes, my daddy would look at me funny, like he was trying to see right inside me, and I could hear the rumors in my head like he was saying them out loud. I didn't get mad with him though because I'm a man, too.

My running partners knew better than to repeat that shit, but Jimmy Lee, this white boy I met in Pete's ... we used to hustle pocket change together. You know, Three Card Monty, 10/20 Switch, penny ante con, like that. Well, Jimmy Lee opened up his trash mouth one day and said the wrong thing, said I looked enough like the Wylers to be one of 'em and didn't my daddy do business with old man Wyler? Laughed like he thought he said something funny. Naturally, I went crazy on that boy. Went upside his head so fast that boy thought he'd been struck by lightning. But God wasn't doing the striking.

So I had to go. Even my daddy didn't have that much bank, and if the truth be known, I couldn't wait to leave Jackson. Get to the real cities: New York, Harlem, Chicago, Detroit. Man, you ain't seen ugly until you've seen Detroit, Michigan in the middle of winter, when traffic stops and the radiators wheeze and snort all night and you get trapped inside one of those little rooms with bare wood floors, where roaches drop dead from the cold and fall off the ceiling. I had days when a dollar wouldn't match a dime, but announced to the same thing, because I didn't have either one. But, like I said, I'm a hustler and a good hustler can talk honey-out-the-pocket, anybody's pocket. I shot pool played jack-legged poker and ran scam. Hell, I talked my way from a poor man's prayer to a rich man's Hallelujah.