Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

I looked at him, then held my cuffed wrist in front of his face. “Patrice, we’re chained together. I can’t leave you.”

“Oh, yeah.”

I tried to climb up on his shoulders, but his back just wouldn’t allow it. I leaned over and helped him step onto my shoulders, then I stood as tall as I could with my right arm raised as high as I could reach. Patrice reached up with his right hand, the chain pulling at his left. Mud fell down into my face. He grunted, a sound not so different from his talking, and swore, and finally said, “I got me sumpin’.” The sumpin’ turned out to be a root, and he managed to get his body out and clear. He grunted even louder, even screamed once as he pulled me up.

“We’d better get out of this road,” I said.

The rain let up, and the heat of Peckerwood County found its full form. Now, without the rain, I was as wet with perspiration. We staggered a mile or so away from the muddy pit and collapsed on our backs in high grass.

Patrice looked over at me and said, without provocation, “You know, I don’t like you. Nigger.”

“I can well imagine.”

“I don’t even like yer name. Potay.”

“That’s fine by me.”

“You makin’ fun of me, boy?” he asked.

“Nature beat me to that,” I said.

He hopped to his feet, and of course I did as well. We stood there staring at each other. I wish I could say I felt nothing, but I found a bit of hatred in myself for this redneck fool. I could see that he was not only ready to throw a punch, but that punch was forthcoming. I had seen the behavior so often in my life as a constant bully victim. I decided it was a good time to attempt to Fesmerize him. Up went one brow, and I leaned into my gaze.

“What you starin’ at, boy?”

I said nothing.

Then he punched me, a left to the face, that hurt much less than I imagined it would. We yanked at the chain back and forth, trading a couple of punches. Even while we rolled around in pathetic mortal combat I considered that the presence of at least a meager intellect was necessary for Fesmerian success.

Though I’d had much truck with being beaten up, I was not an experienced fighter. I was, however, more fit and slightly larger than my opponent, and it turned out that Raymond’s sadistic karate instruction had stayed with me more than it was reasonable to expect. I was able to block most of Patrice’s punches and keep him more or less off balance. However, what he lacked in skill and size he compensated for in stupidity, a stupidity that made his movements highly unpredictable. For example, a couple of times he tried to run away from me, forgetting that we were linked together, only to get yanked back like a dog on a long leash. He would then come flying back at me with the wildest roundhouse punch. I realized during the scuffle that my instinct to throw a blow was simply absent, and I realized as well that if I did hit him and managed to knock him silly or out, then I would be tethered to deadweight, a dumbbell, if you will. Finally, I was on top, straddling his torso with my knees pinning his shoulders to the ground.

That’s when the business end of a rifle was shoved in my face.

At the other end of the weapon was a singularly ugly redheaded boy of perhaps twelve years. I had never thought a child could be ugly, but his mouth was too small for his pie face, and yet his teeth were those of a larger person. All this set below a nose out of something by Erskine Caldwell. And all that on a head far too large for his scrawny body. Even with the gun pointed at me I wondered immediately how I could take in so many features so quickly and wondered further if he could close those lips over his bathroom-tile teeth.

“Y’all be careful wit dat peashooter naw, boy,” Patrice said.

I moved away from Patrice, and we slowly found our feet.

“Why you two chained up like dat?” The boy looked at Patrice, but kept the rifle pointed at me. “You takin’ him to jail?”

“Yeah, sumpin’ like that,” Patrice said. “You live round chere?”

“I lives over dat ridge, through the holla, up a hill, and past the branch.” He pointed. “Not far.”

“Who you live wit, boy?”

“My ma and my sister.”

“What ’bout yer pa?”

“Ain’t got no pa.”

“What ’bout neighbors? You got neighbors?”

“Ain’t got no neighbors.”

“What ’bout kin? Cousins? You got cousins?”

“Ain’t got no cousins.”

I watched and listened to those two idiots.

“What yo name?” Patrice asked.

“They call me Bobo.”

“Well, Bobo, you gots a spider on yer gun.” When the boy looked down, Patrice knocked the rifle away. He also managed to knock the boy to the ground. “Dumbass,” Patrice said.

I grabbed the rifle and realized that the boy was not moving. I put my hand behind his head and felt a rock there. “He hit his head,” I said.

“So what? Let’s go.”

“He might be hurt.” I touched the boy’s wide face and said his name a couple of times.

His eyes opened and he leaped up and away from me to hide behind the legs of Patrice.

“You got food at your house, boy?” Patrice asked.

“We got some.”

“Take us there.”

I kept the rifle.

It was no short walk to the boy’s house. As if the heat and humidity were not enough, it was dusk when we came to the branch, and mosquitoes were swarming. The house turned out to be a shack right out of every hillbilly’s origin fantasy. Had it been constructed of logs it might have had a rustic charm, but being made of clapboard and tin it had no charm at all. On a line hung from a post to a stunted tree hung clothes at wild and odd angles. Just in front of the porch was an open well surrounded by loose and broken bricks.

“Sis!” the boy called out.

A young woman stepped out onto the rickety porch. A look at her face left no doubt that she and the boy were related. The way she tilted her head to locate our sounds told me she was blind. “Bobo, who you got out dere wit y’all?”

“We don’t want no trouble, ma’am,” Patrice said, sounding almost human. “We just want some water and sumpin’ ta eat.”

“Dey’s chained together, Sis.”

“Do you have any tools?” I asked the boy, but he only looked at me and ignored my question. I glanced at Patrice.

“You got any tools?” Patrice asked.

“Yeah, we got some tools.”

“Go fetch us’all a chisel and a big hammer.”

“We gonna come in naw,” Patrice said to the woman. “You be a good girl and fix us up some food.”

The woman knocked over a chair on her way to the stove. “I gots some beans a-cookin’,” she said.

The place was a mess. Piles of clothes were everywhere. Clean or dirty, I couldn’t say. There was no fire burning in the place. The stones of the fireplace were thick with soot, and the timbers that held up the tin roof had been darkened by smoke as well.

The woman dropped a couple of bowls and spoons onto the table. We ate. The beans were awful, and they were cold. I looked and saw that there was no fire in the cookstove. But I knew I needed the energy if I was going to keep running, so I chewed and swallowed and tried to kill the taste with some very stale bread.

Patrice talked with his mouth full. “What yer name?”

“Sis,” she said.

“What that short fer?”

“Ain’t short fer nothin’.”

“Huh. Sis,” he said to himself. “That’s a purty name. Got any coffee?”

“I’ll git it.”

I looked up from my bowl at Patrice. “What does this taste like to you?”

“Taste like food, that how it taste.”

Sis came back with the coffee just as Bobo arrived with the mallet and chisel. Patrice and I jumped up for the tools and went and sat at the hearth. I put the chisel to his cuff and pounded it.