Yellow Mama E zine

Moderation

 

by C. Inanen

 

 

         I glanced over at the man in the passenger seat. I didn’t know him very well, Hurricane Cain, a former boxer and now Freeman Sweet’s muscle in 1930 Birmingham. Tall and powerful, with the longest arms I’d ever seen, he carried himself with a certain dignity, a man who respected himself and who was respected by others.

        Freeman Sweet ran some of the black criminal elements in Birmingham including the bootlegging and illegal liquor sales in the black parts of town. My boss, Boss Hodges, did pretty much the same thing in the more affluent white parts of the city. Freeman Sweet also had significant legitimate business interests which Boss Hodges didn’t, although he carried some political clout. They’d teamed up recently when an outside group from Louisiana had begun muscling in on their respective territories. I guess it only made sense Hurricane and I were teamed up together tonight.

        His voice was deep and resonant in the darkness. “Buster tells me you did all right in the ambush,” he told me. Buster was Freeman Sweet’s gunman, a twitchy light skinned black man who made me nervous because he was so hopped up and jittery. He looked like he was 14 years old and had a preference for sawed-off automatic shotguns.

        “I did what I had to do, I guess.”

        “Buster says you made sure we got Cletus’ body back to his family and we got the Studebaker truck back when it couldn’t drive anymore. We need all the trucks we got. You didn’t have to do those things.”

        “I was just the driver,” I told him as I steered the Model A down the moonlit gravel road.            “Raymond and Carl ran that whole ambush,” I explained.

        “Buster says you stood right in there with your pistol too.” I nodded, I guess I had. I was getting way deeper into this moonshine war than I ever wanted to. “He told Mr. Sweet you’re a man he can count on. That’s why we asked for you tonight.” That explained how I’d ended up driving Hurricane Cain out to a black speakeasy outside of Irondale. They’d asked for me. I had wondered.

         It was quiet inside the car for a while. I don’t mind quiet. The tires made noise on the gravel, the four cylinder engine hummed along; you could hear crickets and sometimes frogs outside.

        “You know that Carl very long?” Hurricane asked me.

        “Not long but he’s a friend of mine,” I told him. “I like him.”

        “Back in ’24 over in Augusta he knocked me out in the 6th round. I’ve never been hit so hard in my life.” I looked over at him and he grinned at me. “Man’s got a powerful left hook.”

        “He’s pretty strong,” I agreed.

        “He is,” Hurricane said. “Takes more than strong to be a successful boxer, though, speed and smarts figure in, too.” I could feel his eyes on me. “You’ve got to want, too. That counts for a lot.” He was quiet for a while. I topped one of the little hills. “Luck does too but you can’t count on that.”

       “Were you successful?”

        He considered that before he answered. “I guess I was. I made some money and saved it. I’m still healthy, not like some stumblebums.” He leaned back in the seat, about as much as he could. He was so big he took up quite a bit of room. “I went as far as I could with the desire I had and the gifts god gave me. Fought for the title in New Jersey in 1922, saw my name in lights.” He smiled, apparently at the memory. “Yeah, I guess you’d say I was successful.”

        “How’d that go?” I asked. “If you don’t mind saying.”

        “Oh, I don’t mind, it’s public record. I appreciate your asking that way, though, giving me the choice to tell you. I lost, TKO in the 4th round. The referee stopped the fight when a cut above my left eye opened up again. I was willing to keep fighting, one-eyed, but they wouldn’t let me.” He shifted to face me. The springs in the seat compressed when he did. I could feel it. “I’m not complaining. He’d hit me hard in the 3rd round when I was bulling in but the cut man should have been able to stop it between rounds. He didn’t, though. Never even got hit there in the 4th, it just opened up again.”

          “The cut man is like the trainer, in the corner with you?” I asked.

          “Nah, two different guys. The trainers are like coaches. The cut men are like doctors. My trainer was old Jimmy Fordham. He’s dead now but he was from right in Birmingham. The cut man was some local guy we picked up there. He was supposed to be good. We went up on the train. My cut man down here was Doc Markey. He was good, but we left him behind. Savin’ money on train tickets, you know?”

         I looked at him again. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

        “It surely does.” He repeated, “It surely does.” Hurricane pointed out the turn for me. A narrow tree and brush lined drive led to the speakeasy itself, which was in a little clearing. It was a small building about the size of a house. There were three cars and one pickup truck parked outside. I stepped out of the Ford and checked my thumb-buster Colt stuck down in my waistband. It’s a single action Army .45 revolver, very reliable gun. I could hear music. Hurricane Cain led the way. We walked into the dimly lit room. There was an improvised bar that ran along the back of the room with some bottles on a counter behind that. To our right a combo was playing, a guitar man, a fella with a big stand-up bass and a woman who was singing and playing a tambourine. Two couples were out on the dance floor, a man and a woman and two women dancing together. He pressed his hand against my back and said to me “In the corner,” as he guided me toward a vacant table. Mine was the only white face in the place. Everybody looked at us. I took a seat. Hurricane didn’t ask me what I wanted to drink; he just headed to the bar. There he talked with the man behind the bar for a couple of minutes and then he returned with 2 Coca-Colas.

       “Safe to drink this,” he said as he placed them on the table. I hadn’t seen any money change hands. He pulled out one of the mismatched chairs and sat down. The chair creaked when he did. “Owney, he’s the man behind the bar, tells me they haven’t shown up yet. He also says you aren’t going to blend in very well here.” He laughed a deep rolling laugh.

         I had to laugh too, Hurricane’s laughter was infectious. “What did you say?” I asked.

        “I asked him, he didn’t recognize my brother?” He gave me a smile. “Then I told him you weren’t here to be blendin’ in.” Our combined laughter and the fact we were just sitting there, apparently friendly seemed to loosen the room up a little bit. The music continued. Our plan was to confront two men who had been in last week and warned the owner of the place they would be back this week expecting $20 as a tax for not buying booze from them. A week had passed and he hadn’t bought, he was a regular Freeman Sweet customer.

        “I know you all like this one,” the female vocalist said. "Bo-Weevil Blues." She tapped her tambourine and counted down, “One-two-three-four.” The bass player picked up the beat and she sang, “Hey-hey-hey, bo-weevil don't sing them blues no more.” She was pretty good. I enjoyed the music. Nobody danced to that one. "Moonshine Blues" followed it. Hurricane Cain took a pair of black leather gloves out of his hip pocket and set them on the table then he reached into his right hand trouser pocket and brought out a pair of brass knuckles.

        “Tools of the trade,” he told me. I nodded. Openly displayed like that I wondered if I should lay my Colt out there too. I finally decided that was the right thing to do and drew it from my waistband and set it down next to my Coca-Cola bottle. There was a haze of smoke from cigars and cigarettes throughout the room.

         She was in the middle of "See See Rider Blues" when two swarthy white men walked in. I couldn’t quite figure what they were, Cuban, Mexican. Levantine, Gypsy, I just didn’t know. They walked straight to the bar, not even bothering to look around which told me they were stupid, if nothing else. Owney gave us the sign, these were the men. He backed away from the bar. Hurricane slipped his gloves on, and then the brass knuckles. He started to get up. I did too, Colt .45 in hand. The singer stopped singing and the music died out right after. Both men looked at the combo. They should have been looking at us. We walked right up behind them before they realized we were there. People who had been seated at tables began to scatter. One of them lay down on the floor.

         “You swamp rats are a long way from home,” Hurricane said. “Too far. You’re bound to get hurt here in Alabama.”

        “We’re here to collect what’s owed us,” the taller of the two said.

        “Oh, you’ll get what’s owed you,” Hurricane told him. “Let’s take it outside.” The shorter man reached for something behind his back. Hurricane caught his arm and spun him so he faced us. “Cover me, Jones,” he told me. I pointed my revolver at first the short one and then the tall one.  Hurricane hit him in the midsection. The short man doubled over. Reaching behind the short man Hurricane came up with a nasty looking little pistol which he dropped behind the bar. The man wrapped his arms around Hurricane’s legs and was cold cocked on the side of his head. I watched the tall one. He looked at me. The short man was now on his hands and knees.   Hurricane delivered a rabbit punch to the back of his neck at the base of his skull. He wavered and then slowly fell to Hurricane’s feet. “Now which one of you is going to take a beating?” Hurricane asked the taller one.

         He looked alarmed, no, he looked scared, maybe both. I held the Colt on him. He kicked one of the short man’s legs. “Him,” he said.

         “OK, like I said, let’s take it outside.” Hurricane reached down and grabbed the man’s arms, dragging him toward the door. One of the customers got up from his table and ran to the door, holding it open for us all. I gestured with my pistol for the taller man to precede me. He did, following Hurricane and the feebly struggling short man outside. Methodically Hurricane Cain delivered a beating to the short man. He must have hit him thirty times or more. When he was done the little guy was bloody and unresponsive but still breathing. I could hear him rasping for air with each breath.

       Hurricane looked at the taller man and told him “You’re the messenger. He’s the message. Go back to Louisiana and don’t come back here. You got it?”

        The man nodded.

        “Let me hear you say it.”

        “Go back to Louisiana. Don’t come back here,” the man parroted.

        Hurricane Cain seemed satisfied. He turned to me, “You want to go home or go back in and finish our Co-Colas?”

       “Let’s go home,” I told him. Actually I would have liked to have listened to that woman sing some more but the feeling of being an outsider had been very strong. That combined with the idea my presence had been interfering with the customers’ ability to have a good time caused me to say I wanted to head back to Birmingham. I also thought Hurricane and I wouldn’t talk about that. I was right.

        Hurricane had gotten his breath back as we rolled through the dark Alabama night. It takes a lot of effort to hit someone really hard, like he had, for a long time. That’s why boxers sweat and work as hard as they do in training with the heavy bag, one of the reasons, anyway. We were both quiet. He peeled his gloves off, first of all holding them in his hand and then slipping them into his hip pocket. “You did good,” he told me.

        I glanced at him and nodded, acknowledging that. He seemed to treat violence differently than me but that wasn’t surprising considering his background and his experience. I was still somewhat shaken by the severity of the beating he’d administered.

        I asked him, “What do you think? Will they be back?”

        “Not those two,” he told me confidently. “You see how quickly the tall one was to give up his partner?”

        “Yeah, he didn’t think twice about it.”

        “You take the measure of a man in the boxing ring,” Hurricane told me. “Black or white, Louisiana or Alabama, that doesn’t make any difference. You see what he’s made out of and that tall man didn’t even answer the bell when the fight started.” He looked at me across the interior of the Model A. “Fight like that’s no different.”

        I thought about that, what would I have done if I had been in his shoes? I wasn’t sure.        “Pretty hard beating,” I finally said.

        “Could have been worse,” he told me. “Mr. Sweet could have sent Buster.”

 

                C. Inanen lives in the Midwest USA. His work has been most recently published in Yellow Mama magazine. During the upcoming months his crime, police procedural, and speculative fiction will appear in the Blue Lake Review, AntipodeanSF, Down in the Dirt, and Straylight Literary Arts Magazine. You can also look for it in the August issue (#117) of Yellow Mama magazine. He is a contributor to The Yard: Crime Blog.      

 

             Kevin D. Duncan was born 1958 in Alton, Illinois where he still resides. He has degrees in Political Science, Classics, and Art & Design. He has been freelancing illustration and cartoons for over 25 years. He has done editorial cartoons and editorial illustration for local and regional newspapers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His award-winning work has appeared in numerous small press zines, e-zines, and he has illustrated a few books.