My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 15

Fon

By

HENRY DUMAS

A short story, from Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction
of Henry Dumas

From the sky. A fragment of black rock about the
size of a fist, sailing, sailing….craack! The rear
windshield breaks.
Nilmon snaps his head to the rearview
mirror, wheeling the car off the road.
“Goddammit!” He leaps from the car,
leaving the door open. He examines
the break, whirls around and scans the
evening countryside with squinting eyes.
The distant mooing of cattle blends
with the sharp yap of a dog.
And then he catches a movement.

14

Through the trees behind him — past
a large billboard with the picture of
Uncle Sam saying I Want You, over and
down a rocky incline, toward a final
rise at the top of the levee — Nillmon
thinks he sees several pairs of legs
scurrying away.

“Niggers!” He steps back to the car,
leans across the seat, jerks open the
glove compartment, snatches up a
pistol lying between a half-bottle of
whiskey and a stick of dynamite,
and crosses the torn asphalt in four
quick strides. Pieces of pavement
scatter beneath his feet. The road is
in disuse except for an occasional
car and a few cattle cro ssings.
He runs toward a path by the billboard.
As he loses sight of the point in the
distance where he thinks the figures
disappeared, he runs faster. He reaches
the beams supporting the billboard.
The area behind the sign is a large
network of angled shafts and platforms.
He follows the path, stooping his
shoulders and grunting. He lurches
through an opening, twisting his way
from the entanglement of wooden
beams. He curses. Then he slows his
pace, realizing that he’s chasing children.

EDITED BY EUGENE B. REDMOND,
PUBLISHED BY COFFEE HOUSE PRESS
IN 2003.

He slips the pistol in his belt. He clears
his throat and spits at the long edge of
the billboard’s fading shadow. Then he
resumes his march up the hill.
He looks over the countryside. No
niggers running. Across a thin stretch
of young cotton three shacks lean back
on their shadows, and the shadows,
bending at every bank and growth
of the land, poke at the muddy inlet
of a Mississippi tributary. The only
movements are the lazy wag of tattered
clothes on the back porch of one shack,
the minute shifts of what looks like
chickens scratching in a bare yard, the
illusory tilt of a cross barely gleaming
on top of a tiny wooden church far
away, and the fragmentary lines of black
smoke climbing lazily but steadily
higher and higher.Nillmon peers. He
thinks he sees a figure rocking slowly
back and forth on the porch of the
third shack. Probably an old granny.
A cowbell jangles in the distance, and
from the shacks Nillmon thinks he
hears an angry voice rise and fall
amidst a scurry of noises, and then
trail off in a series of loud whacks and
screams. He tries to locate that shack.
He is about to descend.