So if a man, or a woman, has been on the gang for petty-thieving and mere mayhem, and is green with jealousy of the others who did the same amount of time for a killing and had something to brag about, why not look around for an easy victim and become a hero, too? I was nominated like that once in Polk County, Florida, and the only reason that I was not elected, was because a friend got in there and staved off old club-footed Death.
Polk County! Ah!
Where the water tastes like cherry wine.
Where they fell great trees with axe and muscle.
These poets of the swinging blade! The brief, but infinitely graceful, dance of body and axe-head as it lifts over the head in a fluid arc, dances in air and rushes down to bite into the tree, all in beauty. Where the logs march into the mill with its smokestacks disputing with the elements, its boiler room reddening the sky, and its great circular saw screaming arrogantly as it attacks the tree like a lion making its kill. The log on the carriage coming to the saw. A growling grumble. Then contact! Yeelld-u-u-ow! And a board is laid shining and new on a pile. All day, all night. Rumble, thunder and grumble. Yee-ee-ow! Sweating black bodies, muscled like gods, working to feed the hunger of the great tooth. Polk County!
Polk County. Black men laughing and singing. They go down in the phosphate mines and bring up the wet dust of the bones of pre-historic monsters, to make rich land in far places, so that people can eat. But, all of it is not dust. Huge ribs, twenty feet from belly to back bone. Some old-time sea monster caught in the shallows in that morning when God said, “Let’s make some more dry land. Stay there, great Leviathan! Stay there as a memory and a monument to Time.” Shark-teeth as wide as the hand of a working man. Joints of backbone three feet high, bearing witness to the mighty monster of the deep when the Painted Land rose up and did her first dance with the morning sun. Gazing on these relics, forty thousand years old and more, one visualizes the great surrender to chance and change when these creatures were rocked to sleep and slumber by the birth of land.
Polk County. Black men from tree to tree among the lordly pines, a swift, slanting stroke to bleed the trees for gum. Paint, explosives, marine stores, flavors, perfumes, tone for a violin bow, and many other things which the black men who bleed the trees never heard about.
Polk County. The clang of nine-pound hammers on railroad steel. The world must ride.
Hah! A rhythmic swing of the body, hammer falls, and another spike driven to the head in the tie.
Oh, Mobile! Hank!
Oh, Alabama! Hank!
Oh, Fort Myers! Hank!
Oh, in Florida! Hank!
Oh, let’s shake it! Hank!
Oh, let’s break it! Hank!
Oh, let’s shake it! Hank!
Oh, just a hair! Hank!
The singing-liner cuts short his chant. The straw-boss relaxes with a gesture of his hand. Another rail spiked down. Another offering to the soul of civilization whose other name is travel.
Evalina! Make your dress a little longer, hark!
Oh Evalina! Make your dress a little longer, hark!
I see your thighs—
Lawd, Lawd, I see your thighs!
Oh, Angeline! Oh Angeline!
Oh, Angeline dat great, great gal of mine
And when she walks
And when she walks
And when she walks, she rocks and rolls behind!
You feel her legs
You feel her legs
You feel her legs
Then you want to feel her thighs.
Polk County. Black men scrambling up ladders into orange trees. Singing, laughing, cursing, boasting of last night’s love, and looking forward to the darkness again. They do not say embrace when they mean that they slept with a woman. A behind is a behind and not a form. Nobody says anything about incompatability when they mean it does not suit. No bones are made about being fed up.
I got up this morning, and I knowed I didn’t want it,
’Cause I slept last night with my hand all on it.
Yea! Polk County!
You don’t know Polk County like I do
Anybody been there, tell you the same thing, too.
Eh, rider, rider!
Polk County, where the water tastes like cherry wine.
Polk County. After dark, the jooks. Songs are born out of feelings with an old beat-up piano, or a guitar for a mid-wife. Love made and unmade. Who put out dat lie, it was supposed to last forever? Love is when it is. No more here? Plenty more down the road. Take you where I’m going, woman? Hell no! Let every town furnish its own. Yeah, I’m going. Who care anything about no train fare? The railroad track is there, ain’t it? I can count tires just like I been doing. I can ride de blind, can’t I?
Got on de train didn’t have no fare
But I rode some
Yes I rode some
Got on de train didn’t have no fare
Conductor ast me what I’m doing there
But I rode some
Yes I rode some.
Well, he grabbed me by de collar and he led me to de door
But I rode some
Yes I rode some.
Well, he grabbed me by de collar and he led me to de door
He rapped me over de head with a forty-four
But I rode some
Yes I rode some.
Polk County in the jooks. Dancing the square dance. Dancing the scroush. Dancing the belly-rub. Knocking the right hat off the wrong head, and backing it up with a switch-blade.
“Fan-foot, what you doing with my man’s hat cocked on your nappy head? I know you want to see your Jesus. Who’s a whore? Yeah I sleeps with my mens, but they pays me. I wouldn’t be a fan-foot like you—just on de road somewhere. Runs up and down de road from job to job making pay-days and don’t git a thing for but wet drawers. You kiss my black, independent, money-making ass! Fool wid me and I’ll cut all your holes into one. Don’t nobody hold her! Let her jump on me! She pay her way on me, and I’ll pay it off. Make time in old Bartow jail for her.”
Maybe somebody stops the fight before the two switch-blades go together. Maybe nobody can. A short, swift dash in. A lucky jab by one opponent and the other one is dead. Maybe one gets a chill in the feet and leaps out of the door. Maybe both get cut badly and back off. Anyhow, the fun of the place goes on. More dancing and singing and buying of drinks, parched peanuts, fried rabbit. Full drummy bass from the piano with weepy, intricate right hand stuff. Singing the memories of Ella Wall, the Queen of love in the jooks of Polk County. Ella Wall, Plauchita, nothin’ Liza.
Honey, let your draws hang low
It is a sad, parting song. Each verse ends up with “It’s de last time, shaking in de bed with you.”
More dancing, drinks, peanuts, singing
Roll me with your stomach, baby.
Feed me with your tongue
Do it a long time, baby
Till you make me—
Quarters Boss! High Sheriff? Lemme git gone from here!
Cold, rainy day, some old cold, rainy day
I’ll be back, some old cold, rainy day.
Oh de rocks may be my pillow, Lawd!
De sand may be my bed
I’ll be back some old cold, rainy day.
“Who run? What you running from the man for, nigger? Me, I don’t aim to run a step. I ain’t going to run unless they run me. Dat white man come messing with me and I’ll cut him a brand new butt-hole. I’m going to live anyhow until I die. Play me some music so I can dance! Aw, spank dat box, man!! Them white folks don’t care nothing bout no nigger getting cut and kilt, nohow. They ain’t coming in here. I done kilt me four and they ain’t hung me yet. Beat dat box!”
“Yeah, but you ain’t kilt no women, yet. They’s mighty particular ’bout you killing up women.”
“And I ain’t killing none neither. I ain’t crazy in de head. Nigger woman can kill all us men she wants to and they don’t care. Leave us kill a woman and they’ll run you just as long as you can
find something to step on. I got good sense. I know I ain’t got no show. De white mens and de nigger women is running this thing. Sing about old Georgy Buck and let’s dance off of it. Hit dat box!”
Old Georgy Buck is dead
Last word he said
I don’t want no shortening in my bread.
Rabbit on de log
Ain’t got no dog
Shoot him wid my rifle, bam! bam!
And the night, the pay night rocks on with music and gambling and laughter and dancing and fights. The big pile of cross-ties burning out in front simmers down to low ashes before sun-up, so then it is time to throw up all the likker you can’t keep down and go somewhere and sleep the rest off, whether your knife has blood on it or not. That is, unless some strange, low member of your own race has gone and pumped to the white folks about something getting hurt. Very few of those kind are to be found.
That is the primeval flavor of the place. and as I said before, out of this primitive approach to things, I all but lost my life.
It was in a saw-mill jook in Polk County that I almost got cut to death.
Lucy really wanted to kill me. I didn’t mean any harm. All I was doing was collecting songs from Slim, who used to be her man back up in West Florida before he ran off from her. It is true that she found out where he was after nearly a year, and followed him to Polk County and he paid her some slight attention. He was knocking the pad with women, all around, and he seemed to want to sort of free-lance at it. But what he seemed to care most about was picking his guitar, and singing.
He was a valuable source of material to me, so I built him up a bit by buying him drinks and letting him ride in my car.
I figure that Lucy took a pick at me for three reasons. The first one was, her vanity was rubbed sore at not being able to hold her man. That was hard to own up to in a community where so much stress was laid on suiting. Nobody else had offered to shack up with her either. She was getting a very limited retail trade and Slim was ignoring the whole business. I had store-bought clothes, a lighter skin, and a shiny car, so she saw wherein she could use me for an alibi. So in spite of public knowledge of the situation for a year or more before I came, she was telling it around that I came and broke them up. She was going to cut everything off of me but “quit it.”
Her second reason was, because of my research methods I had dug in with the male community. Most of the women liked me, too. Especially her sworn enemy. Big Sweet. She was scared of Big Sweet, but she probably reasoned that if she cut Big Sweet’s protégée it would be a slam on Big Sweet and build up her own reputation. She was fighting Big Sweet through me.
Her third reason was, she had been in little scraps and been to jail off and on, but she could not swear that she had ever killed anybody. She was small potatoes and nobody was paying her any mind. I was easy. I had no gun, knife or any sort of weapon. I did not even know how to do that kind of fighting.
Lucky for me, I had friended with Big Sweet. She came to my notice within the first week that I arrived on location. I heard somebody, a woman’s voice “specifying” up this line of houses from where I lived and asked who it was.
“Dat’s Big Sweet,” my landlady told me. “She got her foot up on somebody. Ain’t she specifying?”
She was really giving the particulars. She was giving a “reading,” a word borrowed from the fortune-tellers. She was giving her opponent lurid data and bringing him up to date on his ancestry, his looks, smell, gait, clothes, and his route through Hell in the hereafter. My landlady went outside where nearly everybody else of the four or five hundred people on the “job” were to listen to the reading. Big Sweet broke the news to him, in one of her mildest bulletins that his pa was a double-humpted camel and his ma was a grass-gut cow, but even so, he tore her wide open in the act of getting born, and so on and so forth. He was a bitch’s baby out of a buzzard egg.
My landlady explained to me what was meant by “putting your foot up” on a person. If you are sufficiently armed—enough to stand off a panzer division—and know what to do with your weapons after you get ’em, it is all right to go to the house of your enemy, put one foot up on his steps, rest one elbow on your knee and play in the family. That is another way of saying play the dozens, which is a way of saying low-rate your enemy’s ancestors and him, down to the present moment for reference, and then go into his future as far as your imagination leads you. But if you have no faith in your personal courage and confidence in your arsenal, don’t try it. It is a risky pleasure. So then I had a measure of this Big Sweet.
“Hurt who?” Mrs. Bertha snorted at my fears. “Big Sweet? Humb! Tain’t a man, woman nor child on this job going to tackle Big Sweet. If God send her a pistol she’ll send him a man. She can handle a knife with anybody. She’ll join hands and cut a duel. Dat Cracker Quarters Boss wears two pistols round his waist and goes for bad, but he won’t break a breath with Big Sweet lessen he got his pistol in his hand. Cause if he start anything with her, he won’t never get a chance to draw it. She done kilt two mens on this job and they said she kilt some before she ever come here. She ain’t mean. She don’t bother nobody. She just don’t stand for no foolishness, dat’s all.”
Right away, I decided that Big Sweet was going to be my friend. From what I had seen and heard in the short time I had been there, I felt as timid as an egg without a shell. So the next afternoon when she was pointed out to me, I waited until she was well up the sawdust road to the Commissary, then I got in my car and went that way as if by accident. When I pulled up beside her and offered her a ride, she frowned at me first, then looked puzzled, but finally broke into a smile and got in.
By the time we got to the Commissary post office we were getting along fine. She told everybody I was her friend. We did not go back to the Quarters at once. She carried me around to several places and showed me off. We made a date to go down to Lakeland come Saturday, which we did. By the time we sighted the Quarters on the way back from Lakeland, she had told me, “You sho is crazy!” Which is a way of saying I was witty. “I loves to friend with somebody like you. I aims to look out for you, too. Do your fighting for you. Nobody better not start nothing with you, do I’ll get my switch-blade and go round de ham-bone looking for meat.”
We shook hands and I gave her one of my bracelets. After that everything went well for me. Big Sweet helped me to collect material in a big way. She had no idea what I wanted with it, but if I wanted it, she meant to see to it that I got it. She pointed out people who knew songs and stories. She wouldn’t stand for balkiness on their part. We held two lying contests, story-telling contests to you, and Big Sweet passed on who rated the prizes. In that way, there was no arguments about it.
So when the word came to Big Sweet that Lucy was threatening me, she put her foot up on Lucy in a most particular manner and warned her against the try. I suggested buying a knife for defense, but she said I would certainly be killed that way.
“You don’t know how to handle no knife. You ain’t got dat kind of a sense. You wouldn’t even know how to hold it to de best advantage. You would draw your arm way back to stop her, and whilst you was doing all dat, Lucy would run in under your arm and be done cut you to death before you could touch her. And then again, when you sure ’nough fighting, it ain’t enough to just stick ’em wid your knife. You got to ram it in to de hilt, then you pull down. They ain’t no more trouble after dat. They’s dead. But don’t you bother ’bout no fighting. You ain’t like me. You don’t even sleep with no mens. I wanted to be a virgin one time, but I couldn’t keep it up. I needed the money too bad. But I think it’s nice for you to be like that. You just keep on writing down them lies. I’ll take care of all de fighting. Dat’ll make it more better, since we done made friends.”
She warned me that Lucy might try to “steal” me. That is, ambush me, or otherwise attack me without warning. So I was careful. I went nowhere on foot without Big Sweet.
Several weeks went by, then I ventured to the jook alone. Big Sweet
let it be known that she was not going. But later she came in and went over to the coon-can game in the corner. Thinking I was alone, Lucy waited until things were in full swing and then came in with the very man to whom Big Sweet had given the “reading.” There was only one door. I was far from it. I saw no escape for me when Lucy strode in, knife in hand. I saw sudden death very near that moment. I was paralyzed with fear. Big Sweet was in a crowd over in the corner, and did not see Lucy come in. But the sudden quiet of the place made her look around as Lucy charged. My friend was large and portly, but extremely light on her feet. She sprang like a lioness and I think the very surprise of Big Sweet being there when Lucy thought she was over to another party at the Pine Mill unnerved Lucy. She stopped abruptly as Big Sweet charged. The next moment, it was too late for Lucy to start again. The man who came in with Lucy tried to help her out, but two other men joined Big Sweet in the battle. It took on amazingly. It seemed that anybody who had any fighting to do, decided to settle-up then and there. Switch-blades, ice-picks and old-fashioned razors were out. One or two razors had already been bent back and thrown across the room, but our fight was the main attraction. Big Sweet yelled to me to run. I really ran, too. I ran out of the place, ran to my room, threw my things in the car and left the place. When the sun came up I was a hundred miles up the road, headed for New Orleans.
In New Orleans, I delved into Hoodoo, or sympathetic magic. I studied with the Frizzly Rooster, and all of the other noted “doctors.” I learned the routines for making and breaking marriages; driving off and punishing enemies; influencing the minds of judges and juries in favor of clients; killing by remote control and other things. In order to work with these “two-headed” doctors, I had to go through an initiation with each. The routine varied with each doctor.