A Black and White Story

A Black and White Story

He was perfect in an ‘all parts fit together into one picture’ way. He was a big, tall Black man standing in the snow beside the laundromat, leaning on his dark car. What really made for the completion of the image was the long, fat cigar that he held in his left hand. It smoked like a gun just fired. The words ‘Big Daddy’ sprang into my mind like a long forgotten song title. 

           We walked up to him and complimented him on having the biggest cigar that we had seen in a long, long time. We had recently looked for and failed to find just such a cigar for a performance I was engaged in as ‘Bad Santa’ at the local Seniors Centre. We introduced ourselves as Fred and Alice. He was called Darnel. We had never met anyone by that name before. Maybe he was the youngest of a large family, and they ran out of ordinary names. It was late Sunday morning and we were on our way to our favourite restaurant for breakfast. We were in no hurry.

           He smiled big and spoke with a southern accent when we asked him where he managed to get a big cigar like that. He looked at it with undisguised pride, as he told of the only place he knew where such cigars were available, and how he had looked long and hard to find it. Almost needless to say the store was outside of our town. After a short conversation we were on our way, and bid him adieu.  He stayed outside the laundromat. He said that he figured that the cigar and his wash would probably take about the same time to complete.

           We talked about Darnel all the way to the restaurant. Ours is a northern, white town, and a man such as he was a rare sight for us except on television. or in a movie It was like going on a short vacation to another part of the world and visiting with one of the locals.

Later That Same Week

           On Friday, the local paper was thrown at the end of our driveway, wrapped up with flyers that tripled its mass, all contained in a blue see-through plastic bag.   I picked it up when I came back with the dog from our morning walk. Alice and I were having coffee when I looked on the second page of the paper and saw Darnel’s picture splashed all over it like a spilled dark fluid from an ink well. It took up more space than the front page illustration of the opening of a new “chic” restaurant owned by someone with a lot of local connections.

           Darnel had been arrested later on the Sunday that we had met him. He was called a ‘suspected drug dealer’ in the line of text below the picture. We knew that the laundromat was a hangout for teenage pot smokers, and a few light weight dealers (we had turned down several offers). Its hangout status was well known in town.

Fortunately, when he got to the police station, handcuffed, and they pulled out the wallet that contained his ID, the cops saw his business card identifying him as a criminal lawyer. They let him go, but not before a local reporter had snapped his picture and heard the accusations but not his story.

           Next Sunday, we saw Darnel again outside the laundromat. We congratulated him on his victory over local prejudice. We weren’t big fans of the small-mindedness that sometimes plagued our town.  

We apologized on behalf of the town. You have to take some ownership of where you live. He nodded his head in thanks. Then we discovered that he had a truly wicked sense of humour. 

He shook our hands and said that if we needed some recreational drugs, and wanted a good contact, he knew some white dealers in the area that he had successfully defended in court.  He would guarantee that we could get a good deal. Foolishly, we thought that he was being serious. When he saw the look on our faces, he smiled, and almost literally exploded with laughter, and said “Gotcha.”  We laughed along with him, but came to think after we had parted company with him, that we had nearly fallen into the same black and white trap as the informer, the police, and the photographer.

Several Weeks Later

At first it looked like a big, fat dog turd that someone had accidently stepped and maybe slid on. We both reacted in the same way – giving it space like it was a snake that could leap up and bite us.

When I investigated the imagined turd a little more carefully, I discovered that it was something else. It was the kind of giant stogie cigar smoked by the big man we met here by the laundromat some weeks back. The crushed cigar and the two of us were in front of that laundromat now. It was odd that he had stepped on so much of his own enjoyment, as the cigar had been barely smoked. It was like it had somehow offended him and he had punished it severely with his snowshoe-sized number 13s. What could ever possess him to do that?

           Our eyes being now focused on the pavement, we started to see pieces of evidence that led to an unexpected and dreadful story. There were spots of red -clearly blood- and two shreds of cloth that looked like they were torn from the lapel of a light blue shirt. The last time that we had seen Darnel our cigar-smoking friend, he had been wearing such a shirt with wide lapels. There were nearly-parallel foot-drag trails in the leaves and dirt on the pavement. We followed both blood and drag trails like we were hounds using our eyes instead of our noses. Suddenly the trails stopped.

           Here is the story that we put together at this point. Someone, more likely several big and nasty someones, given our buddy’s size and strength, had surprised him, grabbed his cigar, threw it on the pavement and stomped on it in anger, then dragged him to a vehicle. We suspected it was a white van like we had often seen on television mysteries. Then they drove off with their kidnapped prisoner likely now tied up with a gag across his mouth.

           We turned around to look for more clues, when we saw him. Bigger than life and then some, it was our friend Darnel looking down at the crushed cigar. We rushed to him, so glad that he was okay. But the look on his face told a tale of sadness. He began his story with two words, “My client.”

           “My client is a young black boy who was beaten up by some white boys, a local gang. We were going to discuss the court case against his attackers. He was going to meet me here by the laundromat.”

           We told our story of what we thought had happened. He agreed, except for our automatic suspicion of white vans – “although I have learned not to trust things white in this town. We smiled.

           Then he asked “Where do tough guys hang out in this town?”

There is one bar that we thought of right away. It’s down by the river, where many a bar fight has ended with a big splash and a loud curse. It is called the Main Street Station, but it is locally known as the Mean Street Station, with good reason.

Come Nightfall

Come nightfall all three of us headed downtown. My wife and I were dressed as tough as two aging folks (old leathers and jeans) can and put our grumpy old people faces on. Before going inside, we checked the parking lot, seeking out a white van. There were none in sight. But there was a black van, with darkened windows and expensive hub caps, that looked particularly suspicious. We checked it out using the small flashlights we had attached to our key chains so that we can better unlock our front door at night rather than fumbling in the dark as we so often did.

We looked inside the black van through the back window, our key-chain flashlights penetrating the darkness with narrow streams of light. Eventually we saw a young Black man, obviously Darnel’s clien,t tightly-bound and gagged beside the front inside wall of the van. We couldn’t break our way inside the van, as we had not thought to bring appropriate tools with us. Even if we had, we might have done more harm than goods. Darnel felt that if we called the police, our story would be discounted. We were a black lawyer who had caused them some embarrassment when the second article on his false arrest had come out about in the paper  and an old white couple who had given them trouble before, when a schizophrenic man had been shot after running away, after a local person had said that he was ‘acting aggressively. Any story we would tell would sound suspicious to them.

I came up with an alternative plan. It was a little crazy, but I felt confident that it might work. I had looked for and discovered where the security cameras were around the Main Street Station. They covered the alleyway between the bar and a place that used to sell musical instruments. As well, they filmed (if they were working) a short area just behind the bar. That covered right up to the windshield of the black van, but no farther back. I led my two accomplices to the river, where I picked up a few rocks, heavy enough to do damage, but light enough to be thrown a decent distance by some trouble-makers wanting to set off the alarm. We wore gloves.

           Beyond camera view we started to toss our projectiles. My wife and Darnel hit and broke the windshield. I missed. The van’s alarm system went off sure enough. It might be loud enough to be heard at the police station two town blocks away, but we could not depend on that for officers to arrive. It didn’t take much for car alarms to shriek their warning. So we called the police and said that we had just seen some suspicious-looking people breaking into a black van. We thought that if we had used the word ‘kidnapping’ there would be too much explaining to do.

           To insure that the criminals would be there to be picked up by the police, My wife and I went into the bar and announced to the patrons that the alarm of a black van had just gone off. They might not have heard it through the thick walls and windows of the bar, but we wanted the van owners to know that the alarm was theirs. Four mean-looking, skull-and-cross-bone tatted fellows got up quickly and rushed to the front door, not thanking us of course.

           The police were there in minutes, just in time to observe the gang of four looking suspicious outside their van. One officer approached the obvious leader and a fist-fight broke out between the two, the first blow coming from the gang leader. The fight was halted by a well-aimed rock coming from the region of the river. It smacked into the side of the head of the gang leader. We would learn later on that Darnell had for some years been a Little League pitcher

The local police, for once, asked no questions when a large black man wearing a suit and smoking a recently-lit cigar came out of the woods. They were just glad he could throw so well.

The kidnappers were arrested, and Darnel’s client was released. My wife and I did not reveal ourselves to the police, too much explanation would be necessary, but we accepted a call in the bar from Darnel at little later. He would pay for the next round.

A Change Takes Place

           Much to our surprise, some positive changes took place in our conservative, very white town. The police announced through the local paper that they would try to refrain from making assumptions of criminality based on race. They had asked Darnel to give them some sessions that would help them in that record. He was becoming a popular speaker in town. The paper apologized for the first article they had printed about Darnel, and for making such assumptions without factual evidence. And our neighbour, who had reported the suspicious nature of Darnel ‘hanging around’ the laundromat, confessed to us that she had some learning to do.

           I still don’t really trust people who drive white vans, but I am ready to change, based on the evidence or real and not fictional people.