TAR

TAR

Jerold came into by cube with some papers in his hand and very large eyes. Jerold has large eyes but now they somehow expanded to the extent that he scared me.

‘Jus look at this, B.’ he almost yelled, ‘Jus look at this. I can’t believe my eyes but what the fuck.’

My breathing returned and I stopped typing to turn and take his sheets. The title ran, The African Race. I looked back up at Jerold and hunched my shoulders as in, so what? Jerold always wanted to be my buddy. He was always inviting me for a drink after work, inviting me for dinner, he even introduced me to his girlfriend when she dropped lunch off for him once, made her come downstairs to the lunch room that day. I mean I liked the guy but we flew in different directions. I want a Porsche he would want a VW.

He nodded toward the papers for me to read on.

Proposal for a yacht race circumnavigating the Transatlantic Slave Route that starts in Nigeria and follows the Middle Passage to Brazil on to the United States of America then back across the Atlantic Ocean to Spain.

That struck my interest node but I immediately wondered how this got into Jerold’s cube. I wanted to continue reading the actual proposal but my curiosity slotted my thoughts in to why did he get this and not me?

‘How, who, why’ blurted out in my bit of confusion time. I paused. ‘Okay, I don’t understand, why do you have this?’

Jerold was smiling now. ‘That’s it, why was this sent to me?’

I looked at the first words of the text on the top sheet.

The African Race will promote a positive result of what we all agree to be a horrible episode in history. We…’

I looked back at Jerold, ‘Okay, I realise that you are a liberal and this sort of looks like a liberal thing and maybe you have been talking to some of your yachting buddies and this came up as some kind of day dream project, Jerrold?’

Jerold shook his head. ‘I don’t have any yachting buddies but I am a liberal, not sure if I should say that out loud these days.’

‘It’s okay with me. I won’t tell anybody that you are a liberal.’ I know my eyebrows were up. ‘Now, Jerrold why was this sent to you? How did you get it?’

‘Email.’

‘So, return email address? But, why? Is there…’ I started shuffling toward the end of the last sheet but stopped on a map, labelled, Currents of the Atlantic Ocean with lines showing currents. I hadn’t realised that Africa was so close to South America and that currents connected the two. I went threw the papers again to the last sheet and saw the name and address of the sender,

Please respond to :

B. Freeman, Chair

TAR Group

250 Texas Street

San Francisco

I looked back up at Jerrold, ‘Have you looked this company up?’

‘No, I just saw this and came to you.’

‘Okay,’ I frowned, ‘you came to me…why?’

‘Well, I thought you might know about this.’

I smiled, ‘Because I am Black?’

‘Well, yes. Is that a subconsciously racial nub?’

I nodded, ‘What is a nub? But yes, it has racial overload.’

‘Sorry. It looked interesting but you haven’t read it yet.’

‘Well, what Black folk do you know who sails? So, it is probably some white guy’s little project. Probably gonna have some little Black kids from the ghetto doing some kind of walk on for promotion or some shit. Probably…’

Jerold interrupted me, ‘No, it is from a Black guy who says he has a log of sailing experience along with the others in his group.’

‘Hunh?’ I sat up straight, still looking at Jerrold. ‘A Black guy who sails? Like a sailboat sails? He wrote that?’

‘Yeah. I thought you would be interested.’ Jerrold started getting into the liberal excited bounce from one foot to the other. ‘You should read it. They have a couple of boats already. They just want us to do their marketing to get more funding. They want to have stopovers at places along the route to give Black maritime history lessons to school children during the race. They…’

I interrupted him, ‘They want to race around the Atlantic Ocean and stop off to give school kids Black maritime history lessons? I am Black but I never heard about any Black sailors aside from the navy or merchant marines of something like that. Or maybe fishing. Black people don’t sail, Jerrold. How are we supposed to get some money to do a race for people who don’t have any history to teach about a history that doesn’t exist?’

‘Actually, he says in the proposal that he has a long list of references on the African Diaspora contribution to the development of sailing.’

‘What?’ I was surprised at a reference to something that I should know about but didn’t. ‘I guess I should read this thing since you are so puffed up about it.’ I looked back at my computer and the work I still had to do. ‘Look, you keep the papers for the moment. I have to finish this re-write of a re-write, then I will get my head completely into this The African Race proposal, okay?’

‘Why don’t I just leave it here on this chair?’ he smiled in his liberal way. ‘I know sometimes things get lost when we have to search for them.’

I was already thinking about the re-write on a famous artist we were arranging shows for and I knew he was right. It seemed like a good read but I still had doubts about taking it on even with references. There was no clear foundation to start from since nobody knew anything about us sailing. Hopefully I will get to it and maybe at least give these guys some advice. I really doubted that we would take it on though.