Well remember at the end of the Nataraj Mundunga I said I'd add some more stories to the world? Ready? I don't know how often im going to kick out a piece but enjoy the ride : )
“Never thought I’d be glad to see this again” Hosea thought
as he bent over to pull another fluffy piece free from the razor sharp plant
that protected its’ prize production zealously.
He was happy though, more happy to be back on the Mississippi delta
picking cotton than he had been 3 years ago when he left it for France and the
crusade for liberty that he saw first hand as a litter bearer.
They weren’t too happy to let the Negroes have guns but they
were alright with letting them dance among the shells to pull back the wounded. Hosea felt like he had pulled as many wounded
and dead as he had cotton bolls, and now he was just happy to liberate the
plants for the White family his people had worked for less than more willingly
for 100 years as he was to escape the smell of the gas of France .
He even let himself smile when the last plant he was going
to pick after the horn sounded to bring the days haul to the family gin sounded
cut him to the white meat. He and the
other families sang sweetly in the manner that would have been familiar to
waves of their ancestors who worked these fields since the cotton engine Eli
Whitney developed made the plant easy to clean and Negroes valuable.
The ride in on the wagon stacked high with unrefined cotton
bales was made even easier with the jug one of the cousins was passing around
and Hosea drank easily from it. Hosea
was satisfied at the near conclusion of a long day that didn’t include anyone
being shot through the neck. He almost
didn’t notice the first tug on his right arm as he was throwing a bale into the
teeth of the machine designed to remove the cotton from it’s boll and spill out
nothing but clean cotton at the other end.
It wasn’t until his forearm exploded in pain that he realized that he
had let his hand slip into the input hopper of the gin where one of the
preliminary teeth had quickly chewed his fingers then hand and was merrily
working on his forearm when he finally thought to scream and pull back.
As he watched the newly made stump of his right arm spurt
his blood into the gin he thought about how many times he’d seen such a wound
in France and thought, “huh lucky bastard if he don’t die of infection they can
clamp that off right clean” then it occurred to him it was his own arm and by
the time Blake the current young Mister from the family got to his side and
made him sit down and began placing his own belt around his arm the pain and
loss began to hit and the day became much worse than France.
Meanwhile in Pittsburgh the
Amalgamated Tool and Die Company the exclusive supplier of automotive parts to
the Dusenberg Automobile and Motors Company of Indianapolis Indiana
There were similar stories like in Texas where the ranch
that produced the leather lost a Negro hand in a routine loading accident, and
from Guyana where the new rubber plantation seemed to have a bit of bother with
a group of Negroes loading tires for shipment.
The Dusenberg Automobile and Motors Company of Indianapolis did not
employ Negroes. They had previously produced aircraft and marine engines and
the struggle the company was experiencing in producing it’s first models did
not include worrying what happened along it’s various supply chains, and so car
36 was born. The seats made with
beautiful Texas leather and cotton from the
heartland of Mississippi . The mechanicals and engine parts lovingly
cast from America ’s new
industrial might and engineered with America ’s new thoughts number 36
didn’t need a buyer. Such things would
literally fly off the shelves and so it was produced.
The Day number 36 was finished it was left outside as part
of the advertisement the company did.
Lola a beautiful little Negro girl of maybe 9 being escorted by her
older relations asked the man in charge of the display if she might touch it’s
shiny red fender, a request the man happily allowed. It cut her to the white meat.
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