Bob Hamm

I've been having that same dream at least once a year for over 40 years now. I'm always a teenager again, standing in front of the Community Center in the small Central Louisiana town where I grew up. Jimmy Lee comes riding by on his battered old bicycle that was built for someone younger than him and with much shorter legs, and that he put back together after it was thrown on the city dump.

He's still 16 years old, and wearing somebody's (maybe my dad's) discarded old pleated Sunday pants and a blue work shirt that was faded and patched when it was handed down to him. His skinny black body is a good 30 pounds shy of filling out the pitiful ensemble.

I try to run after Jimmy, but--you know how those dreams work--my legs won't move, and when I try to yell, nothing comes out. I try to scream, "It was the times Jimmy. That's the way things were then." But my voice doesn't work and Jimmy Lee keeps on riding, looking back over his shoulder at me with pain in his eyes. I can’t say I’m sorry. I try, but nothing comes out.

Then he's far, far away, but I can still see those big, round eyes, full of terrible hurt. I wake up then, but I can still see those eyes.

Jimmy Lee came with my dad's grocery store. When we moved to "Elleck" (which is what everybody called Alexandria, Louisiana) and Dad leased the little business in the "colored section," Jimmy was about twelve years old and had been working in the store three years already, during which time he had lost the index finger on his left hand in the meat grinder. (I say he was about twelve. Jimmy never knew when he was born, or who sired him, but I judged him to be a year older than I was at the time, which was the summer of 1945.)

Dad didn't actually hire him. He just showed up the first day, said, "I works here," and started sweeping out the store. Nobody argued with him, and he never argued about the two dollars he was paid on Saturday for working as janitor, stock boy, butcher's assistant, delivery boy and whatever else was needed of him.

I was a red-neck kid fresh out of the North Louisiana piney woods, and hadn't seen too many black people close up. But Jimmy had an open, engaging personality and a free, happy spirit that, along with the missing finger, I found irresistible. We lived in an apartment above the store, and there were no white people in the neighborhood other than the operators of other small businesses, so Jimmy Lee became my only companion in those early days as a new kid in town. Of course, living where we did, I wasn't a sought after companion for other white kids, so most of the time it was just me and Jimmy Lee.

The friendship was cemented when three tough white kids from a nearby neighborhood decided to beat me up, just for something to do on a hot summer afternoon. One of them was my size and the others were smaller, but I had never been in a fight before and I was scared silly. They started by shoving me from one to the other until I was stumbling and falling. Then the biggest one held me by my hair, slapped my face and tossed me over to the next one.

All of a sudden about 90 pounds of black fury appeared in the midst of the fracas, long arms swinging like rope in a windstorm. Jimmy Lee's punches seemed to come from all directions at once, and within minutes, two of my assailants were high- tailing it down the block, clutching their battered faces.

The biggest one was standing his ground, looking in amazement at the grinning black whirlwind. "Get him, Jimmy Lee," I shouted. Jimmy sort of let his body dissolve to the ground, where he lay back, grinning. "Naw, man. He yours. You got to whup him. Hi-yi-yo," he shouted happily.

Well, I didn't do it. But I gave pretty good for what I got, and the other kid couldn't have looked on it as a clear-cut victory. Jimmy Lee saved me from bitter humiliation, as well as a thorough butt-beating that day, but more importantly, he let me fight my first fight, and learn that getting punched wasn't necessarily fatal. I was damned proud of the bruises and lacerations, and my friendship with Jimmy Lee was cemented.

We had some wondrous adventures after that. Jimmy Lee had an inventive mind and a brash, cheerful sense of daring that generally kept us in some kind of mischief when we weren't working in the store. We stole watermelons from the street-side peddlers, swam naked in Bayou Rapides in the shadow of the "No Fishing or Swimming" sign, hopped slow moving freights and rode the four or five miles to the roundhouse, hunted rabbits with our slingshots (we both called them "niggershooters") on clearly posted property, and peeked in the windows of Big Irene's whorehouse.

One of the great joys was going to church with Jimmy Lee on Sunday night at Brother Andrew's Pure Gospel Tabernacle, a run- down wooden building (that had formerly housed a saloon, among other businesses) on a terrible little dirt street behind the sawmill. Brother Andrew played the guitar while he preached. When he prayed, he picked out a lively old hymn and did a wonderful little dance at the same time. Once a guitar string broke just as he ended his prayer and he said "Amen, aw shit."

On Saturday night, I would snitch a quarter from my dad's cash register to give to Jimmy Lee for church. He wouldn't steal from Dad, but he was willing to accept my booty, since it went to the Lord anyway. Jimmy would spend a goodly part of Sunday morning polishing that quarter to a brilliant shine, then when the collection plate came around that night at church he would hold it up as if studying it, letting it shine there at the end of his long arm while he cleared his throat vigorously to attract attention. In those days in the black community, not many grown people had a quarter for the collection plate, so it created interest every time. You could hear the rustling and whispering and the good sisters saying, "umm-umm."

Then Jimmy would let it drop about a foot to the metal plate where it would ring like a ten penny nail and Jimmy's shiny face would beam as brightly as the coin while the faithful mumbled acknowledgment. (Jimmy was content they were acknowledging his affluence and generosity, but "thieving little nigger" was softly mentioned by some of the mumblers.)

I've heard the tale of Gabriel's horn told by many people and attributed to various pranksters over the years, but it was Jimmy Lee who pulled it, and I was there to see it. The old timers in the Sonnier Quarters in Elleck will tell you Jimmy Lee did it.

Brother Andrew had a standard routine for working the collection. He approached it with a magnificent fire-and- brimstone sermon that would have put the fear of hell into anybody. Then he went into his Gabriel routine, telling the congregation that "the archangel's lips are to the trumpet and that mighty horn could sound in the next hour or the next minute or the next second."

"When it does, brothers and sisters, (the guitar was wailing now) judgment will come upon you with the speed of Jehovah's wrathful sword, and those who are sinful, hallelujah, or greedy, hallelujah, or did not share their blessings with the Lord-- everybody here say 'amen'-- shall be plucked from your pew, hallelujah, and sent spinning and screaming off into darkness and damnation and flesh-scorching fire. Brethren and sistren, Gabriel's lips are to the horn."

Motivated by the Reverend's vivid picture of Gabriel about to sound the trumpet, everybody found something to put in the plate. It worked every Sunday night. Old Gabriel got the coin purses open for Brother Andrew.

Jimmy Lee and I had the Gabriel pitch memorized and Jimmy could deliver it exactly like Brother Andrew. He knew the inflections and the tones. He knew precisely when it was that the picture of Gabriel putting his lips to the trumpet became most vivid in the minds of the faithful.

And one Sunday night, he hid in a little closet behind the choir loft with a tin dime-store horn, and blew it magnificently at that very instant. The congregation panicked. People ran all over each other trying to get out the door and away from the sound of Gabriel calling judgment down on them. Brother Andrew was in the middle of the mob, scrambling with the rest, when Jimmy Lee caught up with him and blew the little horn right in his ear.

Brother Andrew whirled around in mid stride, his switch blade open in his hand. "Don't fuck with me, Gabriel," he shouted. "I'm gonna cut you bad."

There were three glorious summers with Jimmy Lee, filled with the most improbable of adventures. The only real damage we ever did was the flooding of Big Irene's Whorehouse. We used to hide in the bushes behind the big old two- story house and watch some of Elleck's finest citizens come wheeling into the parking lot, hats low over their eyes, and zip through the back door to the delights beyond.

We knew what went on at Big Irene's. Jimmy Lee had first hand experience with the pleasures of the flesh. (I knew it was true because my older brother had on a couple of occasions driven Jimmy and others from the neighborhood to Charity Hospital for penicillin shots at the request of the public health doctor.)

Saturday afternoon was a busy time at Big Irene's, and the clientele was pretty high class. I suppose professional people and elected officials were the only ones who could slip off from work on Saturdays. One particular Saturday afternoon, the city was draining a fire hydrant outside Big Irene's place. I never knew why they did it, but occasionally, they would hook a fire hose up to the hydrant and turn the water on, letting it run for long periods into the sewer system.

Jimmy Lee and I cooled off in the flowing water for a while, then he enlisted my aid in lugging the big heavy hose up to the side of the whorehouse. It was tough going, but the water was just sort of flowing out--not blasting out in a powerful stream like for fighting fires-- so it didn't buck and kick the way they do when the firemen are using them in ernest.

Big Irene's wasn't air conditioned so the windows were open, and only frilly drapes guarded against prying eyes. We stacked some apple crates up to the sill of one window, then wrestled the hose up and rested it on them, letting the water flow down the side of the house.

"Can you get the nozzle the rest of the way into the window?" Jimmy asked. I assured him I could.

"When you hear me holler 'Hi-yi- yo,' you whup it right against the screen," he ordered.

Then, to my amazement, he went dashing right in through the back door, into Big Irene's kitchen. "The levee's busted," I heard him holler. "The water's coming up and its done washed away Mr. Cangelosi's fruit stand next door. Hi-yi-yo."

I shoved the big nozzle to the window and let it fly.

The exodus was better than the flight from Gabriel at Brother Andrew's church. Some of Elleck's best known people came running out putting on their shirts and zipping their pants. Unfortunately, one of them was a city policeman, and he got a good look at Jimmy Lee and also saw the red headed white kid taking flight with him. The next day, he came and got us. Of course, whorehouses aren't into filing charges or suing for damages. But the officer was pretty high-ranking and he wanted satisfaction for his personal inconvenience. He took me into a small room and gave me a good talking to. Then he took Jimmy Lee in and beat the hell out of him.

I learned that day, from the bruises on Jimmy's lanky body, that there were certain standards for whites and different ones for blacks. Jimmy had never really come face to face with it to that degree before, either. He was never quite the same after that.

And that was our final summer.

The grocery store failed, and Dad went to work for the government. We moved out of the black section of town into a lower middle class white area, and I started junior high. I was a pretty good speech student, and in the debate club and the dramatics club, I found a circle of white friends for the first time. They were different. All of them had good clothes and good teeth, and played tennis and knew which fork to use. Their fathers were mostly professional people, and their mothers belonged to clubs and went to New Orleans for classical music performances. I was enthralled by this new world.

I had fully intended to maintain my friendship with Jimmy Lee, but somehow I just had no time to go back to the old neighborhood. Then one day I was coming out of the (whites only) community center with several of my new friends, when I heard a loud and happy "Hi-yi-yo" ringing down the street. Jimmy Lee was riding by on his battered old bicycle. His shirt was tattered and the old pants that had once been part of a Sunday suit flapped ridiculously around his skinny legs as he peddled. For the first time, I saw him as a ragged black kid on a too-small bicycle instead of a boon companion, confidante and co- conspirator against the world.

"Hi-yi-yo," he shouted again, his face shining with happy expectancy. I turned away from him, looked at my friends and shrugged, my expression saying, "I wonder who that is?" I looked again just as he was riding out of sight. His face was still turned toward me but the look of happiness was gone. His big black eyes were full of hurt.

I never saw Jimmy Lee again after that. I didn't like to think about him, because when I did I felt a terrible sense of shame and guilt, which eventually turned to anger at him for making me feel that way.

I'm told he went to work in a sawmill that year. They say his lanky frame filled out and he became a giant of a man. And they say he turned mean. People were afraid of him, particularly when he was drinking. Eventually, a bar owner blew him away with a .12 gauge shotgun on a Saturday night when he was crazy drunk and hurting people.

I think about Jimmy Lee now when I see southern white kids and black kids going to school together, and double-dating and partying together and eating together in restaurants. (It came too late for us, Jimmy Lee.) And at least once a year I have the dream where I try to shout that it was just the times...just the way things were. And I wake up still seeing the hurt in Jimmy Lee's eyes.