Chicken by David Henry Sterry Page A

guy’s feet. He says it was a good business lesson, because he didn’t want to do it, so he kept saying no, and the more he said no, the more money the trick offered him, until suddenly he was at three Gs, and he said yes. Turns out it was the easiest money he ever made: He rubbed it on the trick’s feet for about thirty seconds, the freak cums, and that’s it. He says he felt so bad taking all that money he almost gave some of it back.
    Almost.
    He waits a long time for the second ‘almost,’ and he gets the big laugh.
    â€˜Three grand for thirty seconds’ work … damn, my mama’d be proud. She always said I’d make it in the white man’s world.’
    I saw Horse years later on the box of a pornographic movie, dressed as an old-time king surrounded by five or six very big-haired big-breasted babes staring struck dumb at his monument to manhood. He was wearing a crown, and that same sad sly crooked smile I saw that night in 3-D.
    I smiled when I saw that box. There’s Horse, making it in the white man’s world. And the name of the movie, I believe, was King Dong .
    Turns out Horse’s real name is Gordon.
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    I’m nine. Lulu’s our maid in Hueytown. She’s a deep-black woman with a molasses heart, and a warm well of patience, good sense,and human kindness. She introduces us to the rapture of barbecued chicken, the smoldering majesty of black-eyed peas, and the soothing beauty of sweet potato pie.
    Lulu brings us baked goodies that make you glad you were born, and my mom gives her clothes and books for her kids. The other families make their maids take the bus home, but my mom drives Lulu in our faux-wood-paneled station wagon.
    When we cross the railroad tracks into Coon Town, as my schoolmates at George Wallace Elementary School call it, I see big huge cars parked in front of crippled shanties with FOR RENT signs on them. Looking at those beat-to-shit, ramshackle shacks, I think, ‘Who in their right mind would want to rent a place like that, and why is there a shiny new car in front of it?’
    Row after row of busted-up hovels and barefoot chilluns running with scrawny chickens pecking in dusty front yards next to nasty-looking skinny-ribbed dogs sniffing around for something to eat. When I see footage years later of Shantytown in apartheid-era South Africa, I’m reminded of taking Lulu home to the wrong side of the tracks.
    My mom loved Lulu because Lulu was a remarkable woman who was managing to thrive in a hostile environment. It never dawned on my mother to consider what color Lulu was.
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    Jade wears a red leather micromini and a tiny red T that stops two inches above her belly button. She wears no shoes. Her hair is long and straight and shines like midnight oil. She’s little, but she takes up a lot of room dancing in the corner by herself, doing a hybrid Kabuki-geisha-hustle as Jimi Hendrix plays ‘Foxy Lady.’ She looks tough, like she doesn’t need anything or anyone, but freaky, like you could ask her to blow you on the White House lawn, and if she was in the right mood she’d do it. Turns out this is very close to the truth. She materialized out of the thinnest air. I don’t know anything about her, but I’ve already fallen deeply sweetly madly in love with her.
    Kristy can’t dance like that.
    When Sunny witnesses my Jade swoon, he leans in way close, puts his hand on my chest above my heart, his lips sucking distance from my ear, and whispers like my guardian devil:
    â€˜Don’t even think ’boutit, boy!’
    â€˜Who is she?’ I’m a man hearing what he wants to hear and disregarding the rest.
    â€˜No, baby. Ah know my lips was movin’, but somehow the woids didn’t make it to your ears. Ah said, “Don’t. Even. Think. “Boutit.”’
    He gets his Serious Sunny face on. It’s the same face he put on when he told me not to pull