Flood No. 14: Big Boy

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.”

-3. I found out a few years later when I coached his son and friends and neighbor men [the fathers of two of his son’s friends] that Big Boy was a huge pro wrestling fan and was just playing the heel script not realizing he was triggering some Park Heights PTSD.

Flood No. 13: The Mark

 Eldorado Lounge, Baltimore Street, 1994

 

H

e was getting somewhat long in the tooth, but still liked to impress the young ladies, and more than that liked their tender company.  The girls at the Old Eldorado Lounge on Baltimore Streetn, before it moved out to Lombard Street in Highlandtown, had the finest little dancers in town, all of them part black, part Asian and part something special—like they was built in a factory that had his particular taste in mind.  They were pale like white women, but round like black women and had those soft features halfway between the two.  He just always thought a white woman looked like a wicked witch in the face.  So this Asian-Negro mixing seemed to be the one case were miscegenation made some kind of sense, in breeding strippers.  He supposed it was some hard-working GIs that had done it overseas…

As he walked past Tito, the heavyweight boxer who did not frisk him—he now being an elder statesman of sorts—he looked over the seated thugs in their athletic wear and gold chains, past Jeremy the barkeep in his tuxedo and into the mirror and saw… well it could have been worse: Rosie Greer dressed up like Richard Roundtree for a TV movie about Shaft trying to lose weight while he solves crimes…

While he didn’t look like a creature any of these fine girls would want as a boyfriend—and he didn’t pay for no pussy, no-siree—he did at least look like a dude that chumps would not trifle with.  He was feeling his age at 51, just maintaining his properties and working on the night crew for that smart old Hebrew, having left Mister Baines about a decade ago on good terms in need of some union insurance benefits.

He sure hoped that all the violent challenges of the past were behind him.  He just wanted some work, some money, some loving and a warm home… and he had all of it—just wanted to keep what he had earned.  But he knew in his heart, that that’s when The Rotten Snooping World could smell you, when its hunger to bring a man down started gurgling in the belly of misfortune…

The night was grand, the girls crowding each other out for a spot on his lap on this Thursday night.  But the night had to end and it came time for him to leave, having drunk a little too much.  Tito helped him get his long leather coat back on and fixed on his head that lucky leather slick hat won in battle some three decades gone, set it on his old head just right.  As he did so, the lightest skinned girl, with the biggest ass—how could you go wrong there—pranced up to him and placed a napkin with her phone number and an impression of her lips in purple lipstick, folded neatly in the chest pocket of his silk button shirt.

Tito grinned, “Big Izz hasn’t lost it.  You be careful out there, big brother.  There’s been some bad shit goin’ down.”

“You got it, Tank,” he said to the impressive heavyweight boxer, and headed on out the door with a wave to Jeremy.

He made a left down the sidewalk past the various knots of young hoppers, everyone there seemingly half his age or less.

He just had to make the left, turn up the way and, there they were, two tall strong bucks of about thirty years, both his height and no doubt quicker by a lighting strike.  The lighter-skinned one stepped out towards the curb as the darker one stayed center and said, “Oh, its’ Mista knot roll a cash.”

He stopped, realizing that these guys were completely sober and put up his hands and said, “Look, fellas, I don’t want no trouble.”

The dark-skinned one sneered, “A course yo ole ass don’ wan no—”

People were disappearing and Tito was—oh thank God!

“Kooorack!” sounded the fist of the bouncer, whose head slid up behind and past him—and the big eyes of the dark-skinned bruiser rolled back in their coconut husk head and then that head bounced off of the concrete and split all open into a red mess in the cold February night.

The light-skinned mugger was now darting across the street, beating feet, with fearful looks over his shoulder at Tito, who lumbered after him in a fashion that authoritatively assured the onlookers that Tito never had an athletic option other than boxing.

And, as Israel stood in just-been-saved amazement at Tito lumbering after the fleet-footed fiend, he saw a plan in action, saw that the bouncers on the street were working together as the skeevy white doorman from the Club Pussy Cat—who wore light slacks and Hawaiian shirts even in winter time and the wicked little Porto Rican from the Titty bar where the skinny white bitches with plastic tits danced, converged on his would-be mugger.

“Oooo!” screamed a bitch-made man next to him.

“Awe, fuck!” shouted the more masculine fellow to his left, “this is like a martial arts movie where only the bad guys know kung fu and the director decided to make it into a zombie flick!”

“Oh, Yo is fucked!” exclaimed another one of the upstanding onlookers.

Israel was a little drunk and did not understand half the shit that the two evil little bouncers did to the light-skinned criminal in the black leather jacket before Tito got to him—but that shit he understood—Koooo-rack!  And another body decorated Baltimore Street for the cops to come clean up.

Israel looked down at a soft hand that had appeared on his shoulder and saw it was the girl who had put her number in his pocket.  Somehow she had gotten a hold of his keys—“Oh, whatever ole fool gave you da keys to ma conversion van, Baby?”  he heard an old man drawl as she pulled him by the hand around the corner, past the stretched out mugger with blood pooling around his head, as two slicksters in bright athletic attire and gold chains around their neck stood over him and the smart one wondered, “Is dis nigga dead?” and the genius of the two answered, “Oh, he jus’ knocked da fuck out!”  

And her little hands were as soft as all get out. 

Flood No. 12

1980, Lombard Street Store

Israel had gotten to know Mister Santoni from delivering and picking up drop shipments in the company truck, a panel truck, not the old van from back in the day.  This was the flagship store down in Highlandtown.  He got along well enough with the receiver, Ed, as well.  The closer, Stump, who was an assistant store manager and the produce manager, resented the drop shipments, because they were ordered directly by Mister Santoni himself, meaning that Stump did not get any kickbacks or tickets to the ballgame from the deliveries and Stump’s grifting ass did not like that…

And there was another thing, something not suitable for polite conversation, that he had on Stump quite by accident.  So, one Friday afternoon, when Israel made that delivery while Mister Santoni was at another store overseeing the set-up, Stump shouldered Ed aside on the dock and the following conversation ensued:

Stump:  I didn’t order this shit.

Israel:  Your boss did.

Stump:  I’m not signing for this.

Israel:  I think ya are.

Stump:  How ’bout I beat the black off you?

Israel:  How ’bout you try?

Stump:  You know I had four fights back in the day, as a pro.

Israel:  Is dat so, Slick?  Well, one: dat were back in the day, and two, dey gots somethin’ in boxin’ called weight classes, and they gots rules—so let’s have at it.  Ed, you da ref!

Stump:  How ‘bout I call the police?

Israel:  Bet you would if you was white—but you Eye-talian!

Stump:  Look, I’m jus’ not signing for it.

Israel:  Okay, Ed, you know what I seen one day when I was puttin’ da lemon juice order away, in the produce box?

Stump:  What?—no…

Israel:  Well, I didn’t see much, ‘cause dat produce girl had a big fat ass en Stump, so it turns out is not named Stump for his five foot of height!

Stump:  Really, Flood, I was just joking with you.  I was goin’ ta sign you in!

Israel:  Oh, in dat case, I apologize fo noticin’.  You didn’ hear nothing Ed.

Stump:  Fuck you and get the fuck back to the jungle that spat you out!

They all three laughed and went on their respective ways.