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Black and White Arithmetic
Black and White Arithmetic
Black and White Arithmetic
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Black and White Arithmetic

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Stanley T. Burns, a town bigot, witnesses the murder of a black man by a white man. The white man is Eddie Fulton, a local mechanic. At the time of the murder, Stanley T. Burns pledges loyalty to Eddie Fulton. A serial killer who’s now been set loose in the city of Summerville; who promises to kill all prominent black men. David Garcia, detective, and Mayor Eleanor Steele, mayor, will try their best to stop him. The letters mailed to the Summerville Journal, offer a vivid portrait of the killer’s psychological makeup. He makes no demands, but outlines relevant political issues as an American citizen that anger him. But the real tragedy to come down the road, is what Eddie Fulton does to Stanley T. Burns who remained loyal to him; who’d kept his silence during the gruesome murders.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherXlibris US
Release dateAug 27, 2021
ISBN9781664191983
Black and White Arithmetic
Author

Denis Gray

Denis Gray lives in Long Island, NY with his wife Barbara.

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    Book preview

    Black and White Arithmetic - Denis Gray

    Copyright © 2021 by Denis Gray.

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

    in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

    recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

    without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

    product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

    to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

    Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

    and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

    Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

    Rev. date: 09/14/2021

    Xlibris

    844-714-8691

    www.Xlibris.com

    827816

    CONTENTS

    Chapter 1

    Chapter 2

    Chapter 3

    Chapter 4

    Chapter 5

    Chapter 6

    Chapter 7

    Chapter 8

    Chapter 9

    Chapter 10

    Chapter 11

    Chapter 12

    Chapter 13

    Chapter 14

    Chapter 15

    Chapter 16

    Chapter 17

    Chapter 18

    Chapter 19

    CHAPTER 1

    The moon and gun beckoned his eyes.

    The moon full.

    The gun silent.

    A burlap sack was tied tightly over the man’s head. He was on his knees as if in ritual prayer.

    The silence was long.

    A shot clipped the air.

    The man with the burlap sack tied to his head was jerked forward and then slumped backward as if life’s air had whistled through his body and then out.

    The gun’s stainless-steel bullet had entered and exited the man’s brain.

    Patiently, the killer undid the brain-filled sack. He smiled. He was white. The man with no brain was black. Part of the man’s brain sat on his shoulders like a bloodied tree stump.

    He was a nigger!—He had to die sometime, Stan thought.

    Stanley T. Burns knew the killer. Their eyes greeted each other warmly in the moonlight as if they were at a prayer meeting. Stan looked at the killer like a brother, like someone who’d rid the world of one more nigger as Stan considered the victim. Stan congratulated the killer with a crinkled grin; his powder-blue eyes pledged his everlasting loyalty to this killer, who walked away with his gun’s muzzle heating the air.

    Stan walked from the bottom of the incline to street level to await Lil, who would pick him up in the family car. She was late. The killer’s car hissed coolly for a few seconds before he cruised down the road until it was blanketed by the black night.

    Stan stood in the area alone except for the man whose brains were in the burlap sack behind the big warehouse. Someone would locate the body in the morning, not that night, Stan thought. At night, the area was as empty as a desert, but in the morning, some horror-stricken, faint-hearted person would find the man and bits of his brains in the sack. The city of Summerville would find out that a black man had died the previous night.

    A car’s high beams hosed his eyes. Lil turned off the itchy engine. He got in the car. He slammed the car door energizing the silence.

    Sta—Stan? Y–you ain’t upset with me, are, are you—Stan? I—I know you said ten thirty, Stan, but I got to watching that show, you know, the one I—I like to watch so much, Stan. Y—yes, that one, and I forgot the time, Stan. Heh heh. D—didn’t mean to. Ain’t used to com—coming out at night like this, Stan. Heh heh. Y—you know I hate to drive at night. Stan. I—I hope you ain’t angry at me. You, you ain’t angry at me, a—are you, Stan?

    His sour eyes said one thing, but his mouth said, All right—I’m not angry, Lil. He relaxed. I wasn’t waiting long. I had to catch my breath from walking up the damned hill anyway.

    Stan isn’t angry? Lil Burns was stunned. He’d normally hand her head on a silver platter if she was a minute late for anything. He’d curse her until he’d practically foam at the mouth. He’d curse her until she wished he’d squished her with his foot, squished her like one of those water bugs that crawled across the basement floor at night. What’s come over him? He’s being too easy on me.

    A strange smiled cracked Stan’s usually deadpan face. But then as oddly and mysteriously, his eyes darted back to dead in some calm, unorthodox, secret way. That comforted Lil Burns; he looked like her Stan again.

    Lil started the car. The motor shut off. Lil started it again. It cut off again. Stan had told her that he’d get under the hood to fix the mechanical problem one day soon. The sixth time was the charm. The engine revved up in a roar, and the car ground down the road the killer had cruised with its persistent high beams peeling away the layers of thick dark with relative ease.

    "You men. Heh heh. I, I couldn’t, you hear me, Sta–Stan? I—I couldn’t stand out in the dark like that. Alone. All alone l—like you, Stan. It’d give, give me the willies, S—Stan. Heh heh. No way. No way.

    Heh heh. All … all you men—all of you are the same. Shirley tells me all about her Arnold. And I see it on TV all the time, Stan. You men think nothing’s ever gonna happen to you. Not you, Stan. Heh heh. You men are so stubborn. Never get sick or nothing. Never carry an umbrella when it’s rainy out no matter how hard it’s raining. Pouring down. Heh heh. You men think doctors and, and nurses are put in the hospital for … for babies or … or women and children. Heh heh. Well … well let me tell you St—Stan. Let me tell you what I think. I … I think—

    Stan looked at Lil’s mousy mouth moving faster than the car. She’s a pain in the ass! He slumped down in the seat and thought about the black man with no brains any longer. Anything, anything was better than listening to her mousy mouth whining.

    Lil looked over to Stan and saw him smiling the same weird smile she’d not seen until just then. She felt uncomfortable being in its company. She looked away from Stan; what she’d seen had given her the willies.

    CHAPTER 2

    They got home. Lil turned off the high beams and tried to park without creaming the bush at the edge of the driveway. Stan got out feeling whiplashed. Lil put the grinding car in reverse and tried to steer it up the slanting driveway without hitting the shrub Stan had just kicked. Lil could take her time. There was nothing on TV for her to watch. The eleven o’clock news was on.

    A dim, jittery light filtered out of Junior’s window and onto the driveway. The rest of the house was dim. Stan went in. He had no problems navigating in the dark. A short hall angled off to where Junior’s room was. Junior was fourteen. He was a typical teenager. Baseball cards tiled his floor. Stan’s old Willie Mays glove, the one he’d given Junior, lay folded on a chair. Some gibberish came out of the TV with the jumpy screen. Stan had been promising Junior he’d repair it for some time. Junior lay shirtless across the messy bed. His sandy-brown, close-cropped hair lay on the pillow. Stan sensed that Junior must’ve had one hell of a day that day too.

    Stan flipped off the TV and then Junior’s light. In the dark, he laughed. Only a fucking nigger died tonight, Junior. Only a fucking nigger.

    Lil turned the car’s high beams back on. Double lights swelled over the smallish windows of the matchbox house with the inverted V-shaped roof slanting down on each side like a short sliding pool. She continued to labor with the car. She kept trying not to hit the bushy bush at the edge of the driveway.

    Lil was up.

    The morning’s cool air blew the overnight’s sticky residue out the kitchen’s two open windows. Lil stood by one of the windows as if praying for rain. I, I remember packing the can of coffee in … in the shopping bag at the supermarket, she thought. I—I know I ain’t going crazy or nothing. Lil … Lil … you, you ain’t going crazy, Lil! She knew she’d bought the coffee at the supermarket. Lil’s body bunched. Stan would be furious with her if he didn’t have his first cup of strong black coffee in the morning. He’s gonna be just furious!

    She fumbled through her handbag to get the car keys. She pulled out the key ring with the rabbit’s foot. She breathed in, paused, and checked the kitchen cabinets once again and came up empty. She stole out of the house and went to the car like a drunk with crooked eyes. She opened the trunk and searched through what junk was in it with quickened eyes. She saw no coffee. She figured that it had fallen silently out of shopping bag and was somewhere on the ground. But where?

    She scratched her slackly rolled hair rollers bobbing down and up like buoys on top of her head. She was about to give up. She bit her nails as if to punish them as she would when her small body turned sick—when she thought of Stan and heard the words he had nailed into her ears. Why do such small things bring with them such enormous panic, terror, and complications?

    She wanted to give up her search, but she knew she mustn’t—not right then. There was one other place for her to look: the hedges. The hedges Stan said he would trim. Her eyes searched along the bush’s short-waisted tops like minesweepers, and she spotted a red and white tin of coffee tucked down in a split in the hedges looking up like the eyes of a lost child. She blushed a rainbow of reds with her dumpy, sad face finally settling on a tomato red. A tin of coffee meant that much to her.

    A gust of wind caught her flimsy duster smoothly riding her back into the matchbox house, riding her back to where Stan was waiting for his strong black coffee with no cream.

    What the hell’s going on, Lil? Where the hell’s my goddamned coffee?

    Lil knew not to answer, not to talk; to do so would only balloon his anger. Demonically, Lil got to the business of getting Stan’s coffee on the table where he sat in his short-backed chair with all his morning weight in his skeleton-thin face.

    Lil saw Stan flinch in disgust after glancing at his watch as if he wanted to curse her out. You’re about to make me late for work, dammit, Lil! Where’s my goddamned coffee?

    C—coming Sta—Stan. Heh heh. C—coming.

    It was okay for Lil to talk since she had the coffee pot in hand and was well within striking distance of Stan’s cup. Lil poured coffee into it, her hand trembling.

    Stan sipped his coffee.

    Lil smiled. Her face was a tomato red. She had prevented another crisis.

    Morning, Dad! Morning, Mom!

    Stan’s baggy eyes lifted when he saw what made the whole business of living, of rising in the morning each day, of existing in the world worth it. He saw what made him not puke his guts every morning at the sight of Lil in her flimsy house duster and slack rollers.

    Junior lifted his short leg over the back of the kitchen chair and plopped down on the sheenless vinyl seat.

    Lil spun around. Her rollers spun with her. When she got excited, her voice had what was a crazy person’s cackle and scratch to it.

    Junior, Junior, you left the TV going in your room last night. Your father was … was nice enough to turn it off when me and him got in last night. Lil’s head shook like a pepper shaker. How … how many times have I told you? Until I get blue in the face! That’s—that’s how many times. Until I get blue in the face, Junior!

    Her face was bluish. I—I told you when you get tired and your eyes stop from working and the TV’s looking at you instead of you looking at it—You, you got to get up and, and turn the TV off, Junior.

    I, I know, Mom. But—

    But nothing, Junior! Lil looked to Stan, who was looking into his coffee. Your father works too darn hard, Junior, for you to waste up the electricity the way you do around here. You—your father don’t go to work five days a week so … so you can run up the electric bill like crazy, Junior. You—your father don’t go to work for none of that.

    I, I know, Mom, it’s just that I—

    That you ain’t listening to me. ’Cause if, ’cause if you was, you wouldn’t be burning the electricity like crazy by keeping the TV on all, all night till your father and me turn it—

    Turn it off, Lil. Turn your damn mouth off. Rattling your mouth off. And you leave Junior the hell alone!

    Stan was glaring at her. Lil’s body stopped working. I pay the bills around here, Lil! Yours truly. So go back to whatever the hell you were doing, dammit. I pay the damned bills around here—and don’t you forget it. Not you, Lil. Me!

    That was the end of it. No one was to bug Junior. No one.

    Stan knew that Lil’s heavy eyes had seen the light burning from Junior’s TV when they had gotten home the night before. Her TV-watching eyes had not missed that. They knew how to grab onto anything to do with a goddamned TV. She’s a royal pain in my ass!

    Junior extended himself to Lil. Aww … come on, Mom. He winked at Stan. Come on. You know I was running around all day yesterday with my algebra test and baseball practice and all, Mom. And … and then when I got home, Junior laughed, I went and helped you carry them heavy grocery bags when you got in from the supermarket last night. Remember, Mom? Ha ha!

    Junior knew quite well his mother would laugh since he knew quite well and she knew quite well that he had carried just one bag into the house, and that bag had held just two loaves of bread. Junior knew quite well that his mother would laugh at his jesting.

    Heh heh, heh heh!

    His mom, Junior knew quite well, had been trained that way.

    Yeah, Mom, that bag sure was heavy!

    Heh heh heh!

    Stan’s drab cheeks reddened. He winked at Junior. Pride swept over his face like the plague. Junior was a hell of a con artist. A real smoothie. A hell of a charmer. He’d taught his son well how to maneuver himself like that; he’d taught him the ropes. Stan senior had taught Stan junior the ropes like any good father would. Stan smirked.

    What he’d taught Junior though more definitively was the power of persuasion. What he’d taught Junior was all about power and how to take it, grab it from the schleps who thought they had it. Relaxing them. Distracting them. Disarming them by setting them up—and then conning the hell out of them. It was in that narrow moment, in that nuance, that the schlep’s power was removed, transferred to you for you to turn against them. It always contains a split-second, subtle transition; it was always a passive transfer of power.

    Excuse me for a second, Dad.

    Stan glanced at his watch. What? Ha ha! Stan saw the messed look on Junior’s face. What, you have to wee-wee, Junior?

    Yeah, Dad. It, it always seems to happen every morning right about now, don’t it, Dad? Junior held onto his crotch and ran off to the bathroom.

    All Stan had to look at then was Lil with her stringy, wired hair with an egg-soft brain inside. She was good fodder for Junior he thought, not him. For him, Lil was an empty-headed piece of blubber. For him, there was nothing he wanted to con her out of. She had no power. She was intellectually unattractive. A bag of sour wind blowing out like a cheap candle at day’s end when she turned off the TV before the eleven o’clock news came on to confuse her more. She was an imbecile, one he let exist as long as she stayed out his way.

    You … you want more coffee, Stan? Heh heh …

    Lil had the coffee pot in her hand and again was in striking distance of his cup.

    Stan brushed Lil’s hand aside. He slid back into his thoughts. Lil was not his cup of tea or coffee or any other thing he could imagine for that matter. Only smart-asses appealed to him. When it came to those smart-asses, it was a horse of a different color. He’d put those smart-asses through what he called the Stanley T. Burns test. He was focused and keen as a needle when it came to them. The smart-asses were under siege to what he called his psychological deceptions then.

    It was great fun. He would set mental traps for those smart-asses’ psyches. He theorized that being a smart-ass (defined by him as someone with above-average intelligence) was all peachy creamy. But with their presumed smartness, could he manipulate and redirect them? Did this herd of self-described smart-asses when maneuvered understand the specifics of power they’d transferred subtly and passively to Stanley T. Burns? Or for that matter, how their yielded domain of power could be sovereignly directed to him, who could decide what was to be their total and complete annihilation?

    Lil’s head shot out of the open refrigerator. Meat prices, meat prices, S—Stan, are soaring at the supermarket. S—soaring. Up. They’re sky high. I’ve decided I’m going to have to make more stew for you and—and Junior and me, S—Stan. T—to save on meat during the week, S—Stan. Heh heh, heh heh. That’s final, Stan!

    Oh how those smart-asses put themselves at perfect risk. Oh how they put themselves at the mercy of another person’s predilections. Shit! Stan cursed. This is why I love Adolf Hitler so fucking much. Fuck the Jews! Those dirty, knee-quaking, kike bastards. Fuck the world! Hitler showed them, those filthy hymies! Hitler showed those carpet-bagging Jew bastards. Hitler showed that stench of the earth!

    Sta—Stan, I fixed you a nice egg sandwich for your lunch. Stan—I fixed you your favorite.

    And Hitler, Hitler not only showed the Jew bastards, but all of them. Hitler grabbed the whole world by its hairy little balls until they chimed like goddamned church bells!

    St—Stan, even eggs are going up, s—soaring. F—for your egg sandwiches.

    Hitler bent those sorry asses to his way of thinking, to his ideas, predilections, his will. Hitler put the whole fucking world at risk. Stan ranted to himself. It’s what superior intellect does. It’s what evil intellect does: bends smart-asses in subliminal ways. It destroys people and nations. Seig heil!

    Sta—Stan, the gas tank is down to almost nothing. I saw that when I parked last night.

    He considered himself and Hitler superior to all the smart-asses in the world who would fail the Stanley T. Burns test. Stan and Hitler were the only ones who’d make a perfect grade.

    Junior was back from the bathroom.

    You have a good wee-wee, son? Stan asked pleasantly.

    Oh, yeah, Dad, Junior replied with what seemed tickled delight, a real good wee-wee.

    Shit, yeah! Lil’s damned good fodder for Junior!

    Stan got up from the table.

    Lil put a bag with his sandwich on the table. Y—you got enough gas money, Stan? she asked as she put a plastic bowl full of cereal on the table for Junior.

    See you when I get in this evening, Junior.

    Yeah, Dad. Cool.

    Stan, Stan, there’s enough gas to get you to work with, but not enough to get home t—tonight. You’re going to need gas f—for that, Stan. Back home.

    Stan was out the back door by then.

    Junior ate his cereal out of the bowl.

    Lil hoped she hadn’t yakked too much before when Stan was in deep thought. When his eyes appeared dead to the world. She hoped she’d not been a bother talking about such routine things as grocery prices going sky high while Stan was doing his serious thinking at the kitchen table.

    Maybe, Lil thought, Stan hadn’t heard me. Tha—that maybe would have been better.

    The back of the warehouse was a mob scene. There was an acre of folk packed back there at the crime scene, and each person was laying claim to his or her preeminence.

    Stan was at the crime scene. His car moved as if it were bleeding gas out of its rusted tank. He parked the shopworn car wherever he could amid the chaos. He watched the visible hysterics from the car window. They’ve definitely located the headless nigger, Stan joked. The black tar baby. The nigger was dead as a door nail. Stan laughed.

    He thought that the smart-asses would be guessing wholesale from then until doomsday about what had happened to the black tar baby. He knew there’d be a hundred stories about the murder, and they’d all be dead wrong.

    Smart-ass guesses. Stan wouldn’t have to guess. He had the upper hand as always. He could give a firsthand account of the murder. He and his killer brother knew what had happened. He was thankful to his killer brother for treating him to the scene of a white man executing a black man even though it had been done behind an empty warehouse rather than in a public square. If you asked Stan, he’d say the country had lost something good, it had gone goddamned soft, to pot, to hell in a handbasket. Last night stood as testament, a reminder to him of what his country once was, of what had made it great.

    Stan got out and wove his way through the sea of humanity. He wished he could splatter them with the spitball massed and waiting in his mouth. Or at the very least get back in his car and plow into them. Like tiny reptiles, his fingers squeezed his paper bag.

    He went up to the warehouse’s second floor. He went through the half-moon door with a metallic peephole, the one he’d been walking through for the past twenty-three years. And how many sick days had he taken in those twenty-three years of service to his company? One could count them on one hand. Stan was a bookkeeper and a damned good one he would say if anyone asked him. He loved numbers. He reveled in their cold logic, their perfection, their indisputability.

    Morning, Stan. Did you hear about it? Louise Joyce excitedly asked getting up from her clean desk and sashaying to the window. She pinched the dusty blinds and peeked out the dirty window. The police found a black man shot behind Harry Merchant’s place last night. Ain’t that scary?

    Uh, yeah, yeah—I know all about it, Stan said. I got wind of it outside.

    Stan unlocked his office door. The hinges squeaked hideously as they had been doing for the previous nineteen mornings. He was good with numbers all right; he’d been counting the days. Bill—that lazy bastard! Stan thought. The damned Polish porter they called a maintenance engineer hasn’t oiled the hinges even after one request and five reminders. It’s all the damned hinges need—A pinch of oil! That goddamned procrastinator!

    Stan shut the door. Squeak! He always was the first one in the office and at his desk. He always was leading the pack. Everyone but Louise. But to Stan, Louise didn’t count: She’s a goddamned woman! Stan was an example to the other workers in the office according to Stan. He set the office’s tone. He sounded the bugle. He led the charge. The first one up the hill.

    Stan’s office challenged smallness. He shared the tiny space with four junior bookkeepers. Stan was the low man in the hierarchy. He had hacked out a living for twenty-three years in the tiniest of offices.

    Stan positioned the sun-bleached shades half-mast. Squeak!

    Louise poked her head into the room. She was tall. Looked like a whooping crane in yellow heels. She was a combination of glow-red lipstick that complemented the red streaks in her blond, frizzed hair. She had on powdery makeup, fake eyelashes, thick eyeliner, lushly painted-on eyebrows, and a fake mole above her lip that looked like the dark side of the moon. She looked like an out-of-work clown in search of a Barnum and Bailey circus troupe.

    She sashayed over to Stan, her cheap earrings swinging like cowbells. Who told you about it, hon? Louise asked as her clean, white teeth scissored through a wad of chewing gum.

    Told me what?

    Louise snapped her gum. About the black man getting all shot up last night?

    Louise’s gum snapped in Stan’s ears.

    You fucking gum-chewing idiot! You got him all shot up when it was one single, clean shot—you fucking moron. One single bullet split through the nigger’s gorilla skull. Like I said—Hell, that’s all they were jabbering about when I got in. I overheard one of the cops say it … Uh, the shot—that is, had to be one … one clean shot straight through the poor black guy’s –uh—thick skull. Can you imagine, Louise? Stan’s voice reeked with pity.

    How perfectly awful!

    He watched her frizzy hair flounce like a beach ball of obnoxious fluff. He yawned exposing his yellow teeth—years and years of permanent neglect.

    Louise shifted the ball of gum in her mouth. I guess it was a case of the poor man being at the wrong place at the wrong—

    Time! Stan said like he had sour milk between his gums. He hated clichés.

    Why, it could’ve been you or me who got shot last night. Why would anyone just shoot someone in cold blood like that?

    Stan’s red neck got redder. Why do I have to talk to her five days a week? The killer didn’t gun down the sap. He killed him execution style. One kills someone that way, you blind idiot, only if it’s premeditated. My killer brother had a brilliant plan.

    I’m going to get back to work, Stan.

    Yeah, you do that, Louise.

    I hope they catch the nut running around Summerville doing this and fast!

    Me too. Yeah … me too.

    Squeak!

    The nut? Hell, the city ought to give my killer brother a ticker-tape parade with all the fuckin’ works up Main Street. It’s what the city of Summerville ought to do for him. It’s how they should reward a fucking nigger killer.

    Squeak!

    Good morning, everyone.

    Good morning, Jerry, the five bookkeepers replied.

    Listen up, fellas. There’ll be a slew of police in the office soon to ask questions about the shooting last night. The murder I’m sure you’re aware of. The murder everyone’s talking about this—

    Hell yeah, Jer! Got you, my man! Stan said cutting Jerry off.

    The four bookkeepers nodded deferentially to Jerry and went back to crunching numbers on their adding machines.

    Jerry Williams was the accounting group’s supervisor. He supervised them plus a pool of six senior accountants on the third floor. Williams was big like a sack of Christmas mail and very black. He looked like a big black pot on top a stove that had burned too long.

    Jerry was on his way out the door.

    Hey, Jer, by the way—that Boyd kid goes tonight, right?

    Uh—right, Stan. Pretty sure it’s his rotation.

    The kid’s a … a strong son of a bitch, isn’t he? Stan asked with awe in his eyes.

    Man, Jer, that damned fastball of his is a hummer. A real-ass humdinger. Best I’ve seen since … since fucking Koufax threw his, my man!

    You think so, Stan? the much younger man asked.

    Hell yes!

    I’ll take your word for it. Know you’ve seen the great ones. If anyone should know, it’d be you, Stan.

    Why, hell yeah, Jer. Hell yeah, my man, I’d know.

    Jerry left the room with the four busy junior bookkeepers sporting smiles. Stan smiled his own kind of smile. It shivered through his white face. He tapped on his adding machine once, twice, and then twisted the pencil in his ear. Stan was smug; he’d pulled off another psychological coup. He’d made the big, burly, black blubber forget all about his brother. The dead as hell one. He’d hummed his fastballs at Jerry Williams and they’d all been strikes.

    The smart-ass. That black fucker Boyd had a hell of a fastball all right, but his black ass is getting bombed out after just a few innings. The fucker was throwing the same pitch at the hitters. In the minors, a pitcher can get away with that, but not in the majors. There, hitters start to time that fastball out. A major league pitcher’s got to have an arsenal of pitches, mix them up or else Bam!

    Stan took the pencil out his ear and snapped it in half. Roscoe Boyd and Jerry Williams are two of a special breed—two big, black watermelons. Watermelon was the word Stan used for blacks whenever he felt nigger was too good a word for them.

    Stan stood to close the door Williams had left open. He saw the two of them.

    It’s such a shame about that black man getting shot—ain’t it, Jerry? Louise had innocently put her long, thin arms around Jerry’s barrel-round shoulders.

    Yes it is, Louise. A shame.

    Stan saw something entirely different. Nigger lover! Black ass-kisser! Dick lover!

    Their commiserating

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