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" 'Cause he gone now, chief. Like it's a black people's club, like he figured that out, you understand what I'm sayin'?"
"What'd this guy look like?" I said.
"White. He look white. That he'p you out?" he said, tossed a towel into the tin sink, and walked down the duck-boards toward the far end of the bar.
Finally Hogman slipped his harmonica brace and guitar strap off his neck, looked directly at me, and went through a curtained door into a back storage room. I followed him inside. He sat on a wood chair, among stacks of beer cases, and had alread
y started eating a dinner of pork chops, greens, and cornbread from a tin plate that rested on another chair.
"I ain't had a chance to eat today. This movie-star life is gettin' rough on my time. You want some?" he said.
"No, thanks." I leaned against a stack of beer cartons.
"The lady fix me these chops don't know how to season, but they ain't too bad."
"You want to get to it, Sam?"
"You t'ink I just messin' with you, huh? All right, this is how it play. A long time ago up at Angola I got into trouble over a punk. Not my punk, you understand, I didn't do none of that unnatural kind of stuff, a punk that belong to a guy name Big Melon. Big Melon was growin' and sellin' dope for a couple of the hacks. Him and his punk had a whole truck patch of it behind the cornfield."
"Hogman, I'm afraid this sounds a little remote."
"You always know, you always got somet'ing smart to say. That's why you runnin' around in circles, that's why them men laughin' at you."
"Which men?"
"The ones who killed that nigger you dug up in the Atchafalaya. You gonna be patient now, or you want to go back to doin' it your way?"
"I'm looking forward to hearing your story, Hogman."
"See, these two hacks had them a good bidness. Big Melon and the punk growed the dope, cured it, bagged it all up, and the hacks sold it in Lafayette. They carried it down there themselves sometimes, or the executioner and another cop picked it up for them. They didn't let nobody get back there by that cornfield. But I was half-trusty then, livin' in Camp I, and I used to cut across the field to get to the hog lot. That's how come I found out they was growin' dope back there. So Big Melon tole the hack I knowed what they was doin', that I was gonna snitch them off, and then the punk planted a jar of julep under my bunk so I'd lose my trusty job and my good-time.
"I tole the hack it ain't right, I earn my job. He say, 'Hogman, you fuck with the wrong people in here, you goin' in the box and you goin' stay in there till you come out a white man.' That's what the bossman say. I tole him it don't matter how long they keep me in there, it still ain't right. They wrote me up for sassin' and put me to pickin' cotton. When I get down in a thin patch and come up short, they make me stand up all night on an oil barrel, dirty and smellin' bad and without no supper.
"I went to the bossman in the field, say I don't care what Big Melon do, what them hacks do, it ain't my bidness, I just want my job back on the hog lot. He say, 'You better keep shut, boy, you better fill that bag, you better not put no dirt clods in it when you weigh in, neither, like you tried to do yesterday.' I say, 'Boss, what's I gonna do? I ain't put no dirt clods in my bag, I ain't give nobody trouble, I don't be carin' Big Melon want to grow dope for the hacks.' He knock me down with a horse quirt and put me in the sweat-box on Camp A for three days, in August, with the sun boilin' off them iron sides, with a bucket between my knees to go to the bat'room in."
He had stopped eating now and his face looked solitary and bemused, as though his own experience had become strange and unfamiliar in his recounting of it.
"You were a standup guy, Hogman. I always admired your courage," I said.
"No, I was scared of them people, 'cause when I come out of the box I knowed the gunbulls was gonna kill me. I seen them do it befo', up on the levee, where they work them Red Hat boys double-time from cain't-see to cain't-see. They shot and buried them po' boys without never missin' a beat, just the way somebody run over a dog with a truck and keep right on goin'.
"I had me a big Stella twelve-string guitar, bought it off a Mexican on Congress Street in Houston. I used to keep it in the count-man's cage so nobody wouldn't be foolin' with it while I was workin' or sleepin'. When I come out of the box and taken a shower and eat a big plate of rice and beans, I ax the count-man first thing for my guitar. He say, 'I'm sorry, Sam, but the bossman let Big Melon take it while you was in the box.'
"I waited till that night and went to Big Melon's 'hunk,' that's what we call the place where a wolf stay with his punk. There's that big fat nigger sittin' naked on his mattress, like a big pile of black inner tubes, while the punk is playin' my guitar on the floor, lipstick and rouge all over his face and pink panties on his li'l ass.
"I say, 'Melon, you or your punk fuck wit' my guitar again and I gone cut that black dick off. It don't matter if I go to the electric chair for it or not. I'm gonna joog you in the shower, in the chow line, or while you pumpin' your poke chops here. They's gonna be one fat nigger they gonna have to haul in a piano crate down to the graveyard.'
"Melon smile at me and say, 'We just borrowed it, Hogman. We was gonna give it back. Here, you want Pookie to rub your back for you?'
"But I knowed they was comin'. Two nights later, right befo' lockup, I was goin' to the toilet and I turn around and his punk is standin' in the do'. I say, 'What you want, Pookie?' He say, 'I'm sorry I was playin' your guitar, Hogman. I wants be yo' friend, maybe come stay up at your hunk some nights.'
"When I reached down to pull up my britches, he come outta his back pocket with a dirk and aim it right at my heart. I catched him around the neck and bent him backwards, then I kept bendin' him backwards and squeezin' acrost his windpipe, and he was floppin' real hard, shakin' all over, he shit in his pants, 'cause I could smell it, then it went snap, just like you bust a real dry piece of firewood acrost your knee.
"I look up and there's one of the hacks who's selling the dope. He say, 'Hogman, we ain't gonna let this be a problem. We'll just stuff this li'l bitch out yonder in the levee with them others. Won't nobody care, won't make no difference to nobody, not even to Big Melon. It'll just be our secret.'
"All that time they'd been smarter than me. They sent Pookie to joog me, but they didn't care if he killed me or if I killed him. It worked out for them just fine. They knew I'd never cause them no trouble. They was right, too. I didn't sass, I done what they tole me, I even he'ped hoe them dope plants a couple of times."
"I don't understand, Sam. You're telling me that the lynched black man was killed by one of these guards?"
