Chapter 2- Stevey

"What the hell done happened to ya'll?" Sissy voice echoes through the screen door as we get to her house.

Sissy's voice echoes through the house.  My sister's birth name wasn't Cecilia.  It was Agnes.   Down in the south we usually called the oldest sister Sissy.  My younger sister Lena had gone off to live in the North.  She'd gone off to some good school or something of the sort.  Sissy stayed around.  She stayed around to take care of me after Mama died.

"Close the door," I state, "Goddam it, Beau, close the goddam door!"

We fall into the living room.  All four of us tired.  All four of us drained.  All four of us are scared for our goddam lives.

"Is that the four muskateers?" Sissy asks.

Sissy walks into the common area with a smile on her face.  Her cheeks are red and her eyes are big.  Everyday Sissy looks more and more like Mama.  Mama was slim even in her last days.  Sissy had her physique.  She was tall, slim and drop dead gorgeous.  Every suitor from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa had come trying to get to Sissy and she was never having it.  She gives them her warm friendly smile and deny them in the most lady-like way ever.

It's the same smile that she has when I see her walk into the room.  Her smile fades when she sees us breathless and collapsed on the floor.

"We're in trouble, Sissy," I tell my sister.

She'd never seen us like this.  She'd never seen me like this.  I watch how she studies my face.  She walks over to the door, locks the door for us and crosses her arms.

"Start from the beginning."

Four friends.  My sister Lena named us the four musketeers:  Shug, Little Lonny, Beau and me.  Lena was bougie and loved to read books.   No one knew who the hell the goddam Musketeers were but the name stuck somehow from her cracker books.   She used to pretend she was white or something, I guess.   The problem with the four musketeers though was they were three white boys.  We weren't white.

And that one rule had been forgotten tonight.

"Stevey went outside to smoke," Shug states, "I know I should have left when he said.  I should have goddam listened."

"That white girl was trouble," Little Lonny adds, "She was trouble walking in there."

Shug could have any girl he wanted.  Him and his cousin Beau were two of the most handsome negro men in Birmingham and everyone knew it.  The girls went crazy for them.  Shug had fallen for my sister Lena.  They were engaged at one point and everything.  Something happened...I was never sure what.  All I know is that Lena left and moved up north.  Shug never settled down again.  It's times like this that I wish he had fallen.

"A white girl?"

"Carol Millwood," I tell my sister.

"Color Chasing Carol?"

We all knew the story.  Carol Millwood had a reputation amongst us the colored boys living in the city.  It's been told she'd spread her legs for every negro with a dick bigger than 7 inches no matter what they looked like.  I had seen Beau and Shug's dick.  They definitely exceeded her requirement if it was true.  Then there was Little Lonny.  He still had the baby face.  He has these tears in his eyes at that moment.  I can tell this all freaking him out.

"She wanted it," Shug states.

Shug is panicking.  I can tell he was.  He always has been.  His face is flushed.  Him and Beau both stood at 6'4".  They weren't just tall.  They were big.  They had muscles from working the field and they knew it.  Their hands were coarse but their faces maintained this neat, perfect juxtaposition.  Their skin was dark brown.  Both of them were like heated chocolate candy bars melted over a muscular frame.  Big lips, nappy hair, large hands and all these unapologetic negro features that got every girl's panties wet save Sissy who seemed to lack sexuality at all.   Their looks were the only thing they had in common.  Where as Shug was struggling with all of this, Beau sits quietly on Sissy's couch.  He hasn't moved.

"Wanted what?" Sissy asks.

The room gets quiet.

"She wanted the dick Sissy," Shug tells my sister.

I can see Sissy melt, "I can't deal with this.  I can't deal with this right now..."

She sits.

"Please tell me ya'll didn't fuck that white girl?" I ask Shug.

Shug gets quiet.  Lonny is crying.  He's crying so goddam hard.  Beau looks over at me.

"I ain't touch the bitch," Beau states.

I look over at Shug and Lonny.  They were both quiet.  Real fucking quiet.

"She wanted it Stevey.   Sissy, don't give me that look.  She wanted it!   She followed us into the men's bathroom.  We were just going to smoke a pipe.  That was it.  No one told the girl to follow us.  She comes in the bathroom.  She sits on the sink.  She didn't have no panties on.  Her pussy hairs were yellow like the goddam sun.  She wanted Beau and me."

"I didn't touch the bitch," Beau repeats himself, "Didn't even look at the bitch twice."

"You two did, didn't you?"

Shug stays quiet.

Little Lonny breaks out, "I never fucked a white girl Stevey.  I got so excited when she said she'd take me instead of Beau.  So we did it.  Shug got in there first.  I just got put it in her mouth while he was doing her from the back.  I just..."

"Goddam Lonny, you couldn't hold water in a Monsoon!" Shug barks at his friend.

He damn near lunges at Little Lonny who quickly retreats behind me.  Little Lonny just stood at 5'3".  He usually ran behind me when Beau or Shug went after him and they always respected me enough not to pass when he took his sanctuary.  Shug wasn't going to admit it.  The guy thought he was a player.  He thought he was so smooth.  Shug had a confidence when it came to the ladies.  Ever since Lena, he'd gone through girls faster than he had changed his drawers.  If the girls liked him, he'd give them what they came for, every single time and they always came back for more.

"You fucked her!"  I charge.

I walk over Shug and slap him upside the head as hard as I can.  I can see Sissy sitting there with this judgmental look on her face.

I'm so mad.  I'm so disappointed.  They knew where we lived.  They knew what risk they were taking.  They still did it.  They still fucking did it.

"I ain't rape her though," Shug pleads, "A white man walked into the bathroom. He was a businessman.  He had some business with the owner.  The girl just started flipping out.  She just started screaming rape.  She just..."

Shug is confused.  He doesn't get it.  He'd fucked white girls before.  At least that's what he told us.  Looking at his face now I wasn't sure if he was telling the truth or not.  Shug was always too cool.  He was always too cool for school.  Too cool to be touched.  That shit wasn't happening right now.

"That bitch is a goddam liar.   I should have snapped her fuckin' neck," Beau responds.

If Shug was too cool, Beau was too angry, especially when it came to white folk.  He was so goddam angry.  He was so goddam upset...all the time.  It never failed.

Sissy looks over at us, the four musketeers and she seems worried, "The cops were called?"

"We left before they got there," I state.

"And you bring them here?" Sissy asks.

"I had nowhere else to bring them."

I look at Sissy.  I had grown up with these boys.  She'd always called them trouble.  She always told me to stay away from them.  Little Lonny didn't have a backbone.  Shug was too much like a used car salesman.  There was an anger in Beau that scared her.  She had a million excuses for why I shouldn't be around these boys and none of them mattered.

Sissy pauses.

"They can lay low here...for now..." Sissy explains.

~

That night was one of the worst.  We were all young and I can tell everyone was just now really seeing their ages.  We all gather up in the living room sleeping on blankets like we used to do when we were kids.   Little Lonny cries himself to sleep.   The tall cousins seem to follow suit.  I stay up in the middle of the night just staring wondering what the hell we had just gotten ourselves into.

A white woman was saying she was raped by black men in the 60s.

This was bad.

And we all knew it.

"The skillet's getting hot..."  a voice says in the darkness of the night.

I turn behind me and see him.  Beau.  He's climbed over Little Lonny and is on the same blanket as me now.  I look behind me and see his dark silhouette in the darkness of the room.  The moonlight falls right on his face so that I see him.  I know what he's saying.  He's said it before.  It had been a code language between us since we were young.

"Not tonight," I respond.

"Tonight," he says, "I need it tonight."

He doesn't take no for an answer.  His gigantic hands cup my ass.  He squeezes my right butt cheek through my boxer shorts making soft circles as though trying to mold clay.  His fingers create pressure points as he continues to lower my boxers at that moment.  Slowly.  Slowly Beau starts to take my underwear off.

Just when he gets them off, I hear Shug moan noisily, "ERGH!"

Beau stops for a minute.  He looks over at Shug.  Shug turns over and goes back to sleep.  It's clear he's having some type of bad nightmare or something.  Maybe it's about Carol Millwood.

I think this will scare Beau off to go to bed.  Usually, if someone seems like they aren't sound asleep he would stop.  Tonight is different.  Tonight I feel his stubble on my asscheeks.  Tonight I feel his tongue press inside of my asshole.  He begins to lick, slowly but desperately trying to taste every part of me.  He hungrily eats me out using his hands to scale up the side of my waist.

"Not...tonight..." I state.

He ignores me again.   I watch him climb on top of me.  He's so horny that I can feel his precum drip out of his dick and onto the sides of my ass as he attempts to slowly press his piece into my hole.  I don't let him in.  I clench my hole as tight as I can and no matter how hard he pushes he doesn't even get anywhere close.

"I need you tonight Stevey.  I just need to feel you.  If these white folks get me, I'll never be able to feel you again.  You know that."

"You didn't do anything right?"

He sighs, "You going to depend on that lying bitch, to tell the truth?"

"Beau, we'll find a way to fix this situation.  I work at the Crawford's.  The Millwood girl has been staying with them while her father was away on business.  I'll find things out.  You just need to hide here.  You boys can't leave the house."

"I ain't do shit, why can't I leave the house?"

Beau was stubborn.  He was so goddam stubborn.

"Beau.  Please."

"If they come for me I'll kill them all," Beau tells me, "Every single last one of them crackers.  I'll kill every last one of them.  You know that?"

He's scaring me.  It's that darkness.  There was a time I had thought that darkness was the sexiest thing in the world.  He was confident but not in the same way as Shug.  Beau didn't have to be this showy guy.  Girls flocked to him as much as Shug but it was because of his cold, dark and powerful demeanor.

"Beau, please just behave...for me."

"For you?  You won't even let me make love to you."

I can feel him staring at me.  He wants to know why.  He wants to figure it out.

"Beau..."

"There's someone else isn't there."

I don't answer his question.

Beau shakes his head.  He rolls off of me, "Yeah...there's someone else."

I hear him in the darkness and I pretend to go to sleep but for the next few minutes, I can feel his eyes staring at me as he jerks his dick into the darkness.  He cums all over himself and heads to the bathroom to clean it up.

I didn't know what Beau ever really felt about me.  A part of me felt like it was just sex but other times he'd say weird things like "make love" or act jealous with the idea that I was with someone else when I denied him.

Beau was right though.  There was someone else.

~

It's the next day.  Sissy and I get to the Crawford house.  Mom had got us the job.  Sissy worked in the kitchen and I worked the gardens.  My family had always worked for the Crawfords.   Mom said it went back to slavery, as though that was something to be proud of or something.  When we arrive the first thing we notice are the police cars outside.

"You don't know nothin', you hear me, Stevey?" Sissy states, "What do you know Stevey?"

I'm spooked by the police vehicles.  There are more than I had ever seen.   My heart is racing as fast as I can.

"I don't know nothin'."

I walk in the house.  Usually, I go to the backroom of the house to get the keys to the shack.   When I walk in the house it seems like there is a big conversation going on in the grand living room.  These white folks had this big house for no goddam reason.  It didn't make any damn sense for them to have all of these rooms and somehow they talked so loud that at times it seemed like Sissy's little hole in the wall was quieter.

"You're OK?" a voice states.

I'm trying to get my tools when I turn around and see the eyes of August Crawford.  He is a relative of the Crawford family here to visit.  He is an attractive white boy with a very tailored face.  When I look at him I can't help but stare into his eyes.  They were so full of color and life.  He stares at me the same way that he stared at me outside the bar.

It's hard to explain the look.

It's the look of someone who wants something from you, but I don't quite seem to get it.  What could I possibly offer a rich white boy who had it all?

"Is she OK, suh?" I ask, "Ms. Carol, I mean."

"She's fine.  She's upstairs with my cousin's fiancée and I guess she is playing...sad or...something," he states.

The way he says it seems to have all of this intention behind it.  I caught the intention as well.  It's very weird he would say those words in that way.

"I'm glad to hear it."

"You guys shouldn't have run.  It made you look suspicious," August responds.

He attempts to put his hand on me.  I don't get it.  I pull back in the fastest way possible.

"Wait."

"Sorry I didn't mean to startle you."

"It's not that," I state before shaking my head and dismissing the thought, "Nothing.   Listen.  I don't know nothin'."

"I saw you run off with those three boys.  Do you know what happened?"

"No."

"You can tell me," he explains, before giving me a smile, "I won't tell anyone. Trust me."

That's the thing.  I didn't trust him.  Not even in the slightest.   He had this handsome face.  It was so clean.  His hands were soft, unlike mine.  They were unlike Beau and Shug.  He didn't have to work a day in his life.   What did he know about work?  What did he know about trust?

"I just want to get back to my garden."

"I'm not your enemy."

"You're not my friend," I respond.

Just at that moment, we are interrupted.  Someone is standing at the end of the hallway.

"Negro," the person says.

I recognize the voice almost immediately.  Chuck Crawford.  He stands on the other side of the hallway.  His features are darker then August Crawford.  His skin is paler but his hair is darker.  Also, he just had pitch dark eyes that seem to go on forever.  Sometimes when he looks at me with that kind of eyes it's straight up terrifying, to say the least.  It makes my hair stand on ends.

I'm guessing he's referring to me as Negro, since I'm the only one here.  The shame is Chuck knew my name.  He'd always known my name.  I grew up working in his gardens.

"Yes suh?" I ask.

They don't want you to say, sir.  They want you say suh.  I'd said sir once.  Charlie Crawford, the patriarch of the Crawford family was sure to remind me that I'd never finished high school and I needed to stop acting like a "northern nigga".

"We need you in here," Chuck states.

"I was just going to start workin' my garden, suh," I state, "I hear it's fixing rain outside.  Wanna get it all done before that rain come down, suh."

"Now. Stevey," Chuck Crawford states, "I ain't gonna to tell you twice boy.  August,  do you mind coming in as well?"

August and I look at one another.  We both knew what this was about.  We both knew why Chuck was calling us in here right now.   As we walk into the main room I see my sister Sissy at first.  She is one of the housemaids in the house.  She has on her uniform.  I watch as Sissy starts pouring water for some of the policemen.   She is so shocked when I walk into the room that she damn near spills the water all over the policeman.

"Goddam it woman!"  the policeman barks.

"I'm so sorry, suh," Sissy immediately bows to him, "So sorry!"

"I apologize, Al," Chuck states, "You know their kind is so damn clumsy."

I pretend like I don't hear the words from Chuck.  Muhammed Ali was the best boxer in the world yet somehow white folk still forgot about him or Joe Louis, or Jackie Robinson or a bunch of other black athletes that put that stereotype to shame.   It's easy for them to just call us clumsy niggas.  I guess it makes them feel better.

"Is this your boy?" the policeman officers look at me.

His boy?  Did I belong to the Crawfords now?

"This is him," Charlie Crawford states, "Stevey I need you to sit there.  I need you to answer all the questions you are asked.  You hear me?"

"Yes suh."

"We hear you frequent a bar named Corby's place?"

I'm nervous.  So nervous.   There are at least 8 white men in the room including the four Crawford men.  Here they were all staring at me, measuring my face for lies.  I had to lie.  I had to act ignorant.  This was for Beau, Shug and Little Lonny.

"Yes suh."

"Were you there last night?"

"Yes suh.  Partly after my shift here at the Crawford's gardens."

The stares get harder.  They are watching me.  They are judging me.  My heart is beating.  I watch how disgusted some of the officers look.  They look at me like I'm less than a human being.  They look at me as though everything I am saying is a lie based solely on the color of my skin.

"Did you see anything?"

"No, sir.  Why do you ask?"

"A girl was raped.  She was raped by three colored boys," he explains to me, "I'm going to ask you this question and this question only once Stevie.  Were you somehow involved in this?"

I sit there and I'm shaking.

"No sir."

"How is it possible that you are in a bar at closing and you didn't see any of this?" the police officer asks me.

I'm surprised when June Crawford defends me, "In Stevey's defense, Carol has been to this house multiple times.  She knows Stevey.  If he was one of the boys who attacked her, she would have already named him.  She didn't know these boys that raped her."

Just at that moment, Sissy pours water into June's cup almost as hidden thank you for standing up for me.  A part of me is angry, just like Beau.  Why was I here being questioned at all?

"Well, he at least must know what happened..."

"He doesn't," August interrupts, "He was outside.  He was outside with me."

"You two were together?"  Chuck asks raising an eyebrow when August.

"Yes," August states and then says something weird.  It's something that catches me off guard, "He's was great company."

I can tell from the looks everyone's faces that this was odd.   It was odd for Carol to be in the men's bathroom at a black establishment, but no one was questioning Carol on why she was even in the area.  They were just interested in our stories.

"Any other questions you have for me?" I ask smiling at the group, "If not I would love to go and begin my garden work."

The room looks irritated.  I clearly had a bit of a sass in my trunk.  I definitely had a bit of an attitude.  I never let it show, especially around white folk.  I can see how their eyes watch me right now. They are offended or at least getting offended.  So I smile.  I smile warmly.  I hope this does the trick.  In the next few seconds, I realize that it has done the trick...at least for now.

"You may go," Charlie Crawford directs me.

I get up and walk out of the room.  I stand by the door.  I'm taking a deep breath.  That's when I hear them talking about me from behind the door.

"He sounds like he's hiding something," a police officer states.

"He's not," August Crawford assures them, "He was with me the whole time."

"I know you're from the North, August," another policeman states, "But you have to learn that you can't trust a nigger.  They are a bunch of liars."

"Sure are," Chuck adds in, "I hope once you get those boys they pay for what they did to poor Carol.  Life in prison."

"If they make it that far," one policeman states.

The tone of his voice is frightening.  If they made it that far?  If they made it that far!   Did they plan on doing something to my friends if they caught them?

~

I'm in the garden.  I work the garden so late and hard that I'm sweating.  I can't get my mind off of the fact that these people here were really upset.  I knew I had to get him to Beau and the others to warn them of the danger they were in.  Maybe it's time they left Birmingham.  Maybe it's time they did something else.

I return to the shack to put away my tool when I feel someone sneaking up behind me.

"I know who you are from a mile away."

"Did you miss me?" he asks.

"No," I tell the boy approaching me from behind.

He knows I'm lying.  He presses up behind me.  He begins to kiss my neck.  He doesn't mind the sweat.  Matter of fact it seems to turn him on.  His tongue licks my sweat.  Soon he begins to lower my pants.

Before I know it I'm bent over a shelf in the tool shed.  His dick penetrates me raw using nothing but spit.  I hold onto the toolbox in front of me.  My ass cheeks separate.  I feel him beginning to press inside of me pushing as hard as he can getting every last inch of him inside of me.

"I've missed you so much.  Damn, I missed THIS so much," he explains to me.

His stroke is amazing!  It's as though he's stretching me out from the inside.  I call God so much that I feel like a sinner as he violates my hole over and over.  His thumping reaches parts of me that makes my body just shake violently.   He's panting over me, grabbing my dick and jerking it off the entire time.

I am the first to nut and he captures every last big of it and puts it in his pink lips sucking it up as though it was honey between his fingertips.

"Tastes like you," he assures me, "I love how you taste.  I'm going to cum.  Yeah.  Mhmm...I want to cum to the taste of you."

He sucks on his fingers as he sprays his own cum deep inside my gapping hole.  When he's done he collapses on top of me.  I slide from underneath him quietly.  A part of me knows that if Beau knew I was having sex with this man he'd probably kill us both.

"Did you get what you want?" I ask him, "Are you satisfied?"

"Why are you being like that?"

"I heard what you said."

"I have to be like that," he explains, "That's what is expected of me here.  You know how things are, Stevey.  That has nothing to do with us."

"Us?  There is no us."

"Don't say that Stevey.   Don't I take care of you?  Didn't I get your sister that house?"

I look back at him.  He looks at me.  He had a point.  The things he said was problematic.  Even a majority of his actions were also problematic.  But at the same time, he was who he was and right now I may need to use this as an advantage to help my friends.

"Ok Chuck," I tell him, "I apologize for overreacting..."

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