July 1999, Fort Avenue
|
F |
our figures sat in the tiny lunch
room:
Smart Stuff was a skinny little long-haired white man who
didn’t even drive and had somehow written a book that was getting published by
a “How to Make Bombs in Your Basement” publishing house. This fellow and Israel had been on the same
crew since 1995 and had never said a word to one another, him being the frozen
foods man until recently and lowdown white besides.
Then there was Flood, who no one in this company had ever
called Israel. They just all liked that
Flood—liked the biblical significance he supposed, of his family name. Other than Curtis Green, the Little League
baseball umpire who cleaned their floors at night, Flood had been the only
black man at this store, ever and he had been the night captain until very
recently, when he had opted to go to part time due to his advancing age.
Then there was Ralph, a small, skinny, red-headed bitch-made
redneck who had been promoted to night captain when Flood stepped down. Unlike Flood, Ralph’s idea of being in charge
was all about having everybody else do all the work and him do nothing. Ralph, knowing that he was in charge and yet
not the smartest white man on the crew, had a deep hatred for Smart Stuff, for
the very sensible reason, that a scrawny little white man in charge only has
one thing going for him—smarts—and Smart Stuff owned that. Where Big Negro concerns applied, Ralph made
himself scarce, afraid, apparently, of being trampled in the throes of the
dominance display.
But on this occasion, Ralph had no choice but to stay pinned
in the ringside seat of peril, for he sat in the back corner, with Flood next
and Smart Stuff, his cold paranoid self always sitting close to the door and
carrying a screwdriver he didn’t need for opening boxes in his back right
pocket…
The fourth man entered, Big Boy, who called himself “The Mac
Daddy,” like he was a clown wrestler on TV. He was a former minor league linebacker who
only stood 5’ 11” but scaled 350 to Flood’s 6’ 1” and 280 pounds. More importantly, this reprobate, who forever
thirsted for white women in an unseemly and open way, and threatened all the
white men except for the diabolically evil Smart Stuff [1], who he seemed to
consult like some Spartan Ephor approaching the Delphic Oracle of old, was only
36 years of age to Flood’s 60.
Time has its way of elevating the low and levelling the
high.
Big Boy was likable after his fashion. Heck, he got kicked out of the football league
for excessive contact against teams composed of police—who couldn’t get behind
that?
But his arrogance, talking about his fists calling them
“chump hammers” and throwing his weight around wore thin when a man was old and
had long ago been told not to let some fool bring you down.
Big Boy came into the breakroom, only six feet wide and 12
feet deep and leaned right into Flood’s face and menaced, “Flood, who’s the
HNC! You know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout! There can only be one! Who’s the Head Nigger in Charge on this
crew!?”
Flood tried not to get angry and parried, “Keep on jawin’
Chomp [2]. Keep pluckin’ a nerve ‘till a
real man give you dat woopin’ dat yo Daddy should ‘ave!”
Ralph looked frightened, like he might get squished.
Smart Stuff leaned back in his chair and grinned his wicked
grin.
Big Boy pressed his five-gallon bucket of a head against
Israel’s head—it were Israel now, old time Israel being bullied for the first time
in his heart—and he stood up and faced that hulk of a chump.
Ralph cringed in the corner like a rat in the dog pound
cage.
Flood stood and looked down into the needle-green eyes of
that light-skinned chump and snarled, “You about ta cross da line, Slick!”
The “ghetto-bragging man,” always talking about how tough
Washington D.C. was, disparaging Baltimore folks as soft—it made Israel’s blood
boil that this fool didn’t know he was messing with a Country Boy from
Downhome!
Big Boy pressed his forehead against Flood’s chin and
growled, “What is it Flood, Baltimore or D.C.? Who’s the Head Nigger in Charge
at Store Forty-Five! [3]”
That was about all of this crowding he could take and Flood
slapped that pumpkin headed clown so that it echoed through the store and out
the front door and Smart Stuff darted like the serpent he was out onto the
sales floor, back to work 15-minutes early, unpaid and off of the clock.
Now, there is an old saying in Baltimore town, that when the
smartest man in the room up and in a hurry leaves, that some stupid shit is
about to go down.
That lazy faggot Ralph was trapped.
Big Boy then body-locked Flood, hauled his big ass off of
his size-14 feet, slammed him into the soda machine, which rocked and cracked
the dry-wall behind it, then snarled and turned again and slammed Flood’s back
into the time clock, and was about to slam Flood into the water fountain which
had a real ceramic encasement…
This was not the only fight between night crew employees witnessed
in this tiny lunchroom…
…
A minute later Big Boy stalked out onto the sales floor, one
would think victorious, his massive arms flexing out of his green wife-beater
as he stalked down the aisle to Smart Stuff, who was facing up the pickles on
his own time as he stood on a milk crate. He then fumed, his massive chest heaving below
the skinny man unnaturally elevated upon his milk crate prop and said, “Jimmy,
you see what dat nigga Flood done ta me!?!”
The forensic anthropologist of the night crew at Store 45
then peered down at Big Boy’s massive trapezius muscle, between his corded neck
and the strap on his wife beater and reported, “I see three blood-filled holes,
two low, one high. The upper wound I
would suggest is Flood’s final front top tooth and the two lower wounds their
dental companions.”
“Bleeding?”
“Yep.”
“That dirty mutherfucker—and he was pulling out his case
cutter goin’ ta cut my throat!”
“Can we call it a draw?”
“You call it. I ain’t
goin’ nowhere near his old ass. Imagine
if you had a hundred a them rising up on a plantation in the middle of the
night—fuck that!”
…
Big Boy and Israel never got into it again, although Israel
forever called Big Boy, to his face “Boy,” “Chump,” “Chomp,” “Slick” and even
“Slack,” if it could passably be made to rhyme with “you ain’t comin’ back!”
But when Big Boy was out of ear shot, Flood later confided
in the author, “I ‘bout shit maself when he picked me up—it was on then! Dats a big boy!”
Somehow, this event ended up bringing Flood and Smart Stuff
(the author) into our few conversations in our last two years working together.
I would also later referee a fight
between Big Boy and a huge security guard [6’ 5” 450-lbs] of his same ethnicity
over the HNC title for Store #45, a bare knuckle affair conducted in the dairy
box, so the timeclock didn’t get ripped off the break room wall…
Notes
-1. Smart Stuff was Flood’s pet nickname for me.
-2. When Flood was having fun baiting a younger crew member,
he would often pronounce Chump “Chomp.”
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