February was Black History Month, and so is every month that follows! This fictional story is based on an actual lynching, and it reminds us how pernicious, horrible, and hateful white people in Mississippi (and elsewhere) were to African Americans, and what ungodly obstacles they had to overcome, and still do!

::::::::

Over yonder, God was watching us. He farm the land. We grow like cotton. He knowed what we was doing. But nuthin' don't change here in Mississippi. A hot night that's all it was when I saw his Face. Crosses was burning somewhere with white folk dressing up in their sheets reminding us of our place here like we don't already know it. Right now, they doing what they've always done: They banging on whatever they could get their filthy hands on playing banjoes and fiddles at KingsTavern while drinking those devilish spirits from stills. They stomp their feet, sing like ugly hogs knee deep in the mud, and dances with each other. But things are melting like butter 'round here. The wooden shacks nailed together. The outhouses smelling to high Heavens. The motor carriages that had just started coming down the highway. The fine horses we still had that got spooked for no reason - they was all dripping like one of 'em fancy European paintings, not yet done.

They knowed what was coming. I mean, the horses know when an earthquake comes before it hits. Heck, even the ladies' were melting, too. Their heads, arms, breasts and backsides jiggling 'n writhing. The Holy Spirit got hold of 'em. You needed a deaf ear. Even the Southern Magnolias was melting into pools of whites, greens, and yellows. God bless 'em. The green grass was burnt crisp, too. The South was a damn crucible where Lucifer and his hellish legions ran the roost where they lynched some for looking the wrong way. I once saw them with out of the corner of my eyes when I was working in a field of cotton. I wasn't even a man back then, just a terrible scarecrow that only said, "Yessire, lemme git dat for y'all."

All's I wanted was to be a man.

To guide my own Ship to 'nuther shore.

Is that too much?

But God listens. He knows. He stay working. The gray men flourish like weeds here. There's only tiny patches of green grass growing in them tormented fields. And the clouds are blowing across this horrible place whispering terrible things. Can't you hear 'em?

"Where's you at?"

"I'm heres."

"They crazy."

"I knows."

"Somethin' needs to be done."

"That's just the way it bees."

God's gonna smite this place with the back of his Hand like Sodom and Gomorrah. It's gonna be the way you might kill a bug-eyed fly during a summer picnic. The stars are his eyes. He sees everything, and damn if his face ain't stretched across the dark sky and then some. I even heard him guffaw when I told him a joke 'bout how he needs to get his black ass down here among these white folk. He got it. The stars smiled. Twinkled. God ain't no dummy even though white folks think he's stupid and gonna git amnesia and forget their own bad deeds after a shot of whiskey or two.

Don't nobody know the answer.

Why?

Cause none of 'em ask the right question.

I've been living here darn near my whole life. And I'm taar in my bones of being a share cropper with high rents and low pay. Can only make a dyin'. Not a livin'. Times, I bees scared like a witch-hazel tree shaking its mighty leaves in a storm. But the white folks scared, too. They just don't show it. Y'all know what I'm talking 'bout. A different kinda fear that makes you lose your mind over a long period of time and you wind up doing mean things like when they gone and lynched Danny Davis over rumors that he raped a white woman. Fresh smelly horse manure, I called it. The Devil's got a rich sugary tongue for words while the Truth gives out bitter words, sometimes. Nuthin' but the furies and a terrible witch hunt when that happened as the white folk have their own strange way of doin' things even if they don't make sense to everyone else.

Danny been running hisself all day like I done told 'em before. He was hot as molasses on a fire stove wanting a cool drink. That's all. He's not a monster. But they chased him down like blood hounds and grabbed him running through a bunch of pines. Truth be told, it was nuthin' but a damn whistle. But the white folk told him this woman wasn't his'n. They drug him back and told him they don't want none of their blood mixing with the color folk, so they takes him and they drug him to a large oak tree.

They built a fire like no one never seen. They git it going. The red and orange flames licking the dark skies. Poor Danny was tied like a Negro slave in the old days when you was whupped with forty lashes before you had to walk to Cavalry. But the crowd was disappointed he wasn't burning fast enough. They howled. Booed like at a baseball game gone bad. Cursed Mr. Harper for his work in making a too small wood pile as his smoking shoes just weren't enough for 'em to feast on. "Damn, n-word. He was late for work every day tending my fields." "Now, he's late for his funeral, too!" "Gonna burn and peel the blackness right off of him like catfish overcooked." "Teach the others a lesson, too." "Finishing the work that Nathan Bedford Forest started after the Civil War when he got the Klan goin'." "By God, he'd be proud of us, all of us, along with Stonewall Jackson before they brought old Dixie down to her knees."

The fires lashed at Danny with a hot vengeance only white folks can give to 'nuther. I squinted some and could see that it was Satan's hungry tongue. His belly was stuffed with woebegone souls and was famished again. There was demons everywhere making hay and misery, and turning this world upside down in ways it wasn't meant to be.

"Why he ain't burning like he should be?

"Who the hell he think he is?"

Danny then said calmly as he might be a preacher in a Sunday mass - "I wish some of you gentlemen would be Christian enough to cut my throat."

The fires were burning down. They knowed what they was doing.

Many of the men were afraid of getting some more wood. They be missing the final act as though it might be holding an everlasting secret. Danny's clothes had been burnt off. He hung nude as a newborn as the rosy fingers of dawn had come to take him Home. Most of his flesh had been burnt off up to his thighs. The white folk roasted him like a chicken. Maybe I could try and stop it. But that wouldn't do no good.

The white folk had their blood up. The crowd jeered him. They made terrible shouts like those savage tribes down yonder, and yelped as they were dancin' and singin'. A few men rushed and got more wood as Danny still had his eyes open to the fury of hell.

They knowed what they was doing.

Fiddling with Black Magic.

They was fixin' to have Satan himself swallow this tiny earthy morsel whole.

The fires began leaping 'gain. Savaging poor Danny worse than any foul mouthed slave owner could've done. I saw those white folks doing a ragtime dance. The old Mr. Andrews with his jowls shaking like a pig's and shuffling his feet in his muddy pen. Ms. Louise Anne Jenson was shaking her bony backside tryingto get the men to notice her. She had less meat on her than a starved chicken. Annabelle Jackson began shouting like she was in church or somethin': "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" Then they began all chiming in 'n rollin' in the aisles like the Holy Spirit got hold of 'em. But when I squinted my eyes, I sees that they were all red-faced and wily demons and this place was Hell and Satan had his pitchfork. They was standin' there. They was fixin' to do this to all of us. I could go climb like Moses to Mt. Sinai hisself.

But I knowed that wouldn't do no good. I couldn't take it no more. So I ran into the fields. Got on my knees and I began prayin'. Like I never had before in my life. It was at a fever pitch. I lost myself. Regained it. Felt a surge of energy -and then I saw the stars and a myriad number of galaxies - and then I saws his face - the face of God, black as darkness can git and with the bright stars for his eyes.

He smiled at me. I knowed it was Him. It couldn't be no other. Then he said to me like the wind whisperin' through the sycamore trees that he would send his only begotten son.

A black boy came forth.

"I needs you to go to Cairo."

"Egypt?"

"No, Georgia."

"And den what?"

"Wears one of my uniforms."

"A rabbi's or a priest's."

"Nope. A Brooklyn Dodger's uniform."

"And den walk on water like Jesus hisself?"

"Nope."

"Part the Red Sea?"

"Nope, my Son."

"Well, den what?"

"Play baseball! Break the color barrier! Become Rookie of the Year! Six-time All Star might do and make sure you break dose hearts of da white massas down there when you at it!"

"Why, Diddy?"

"Cause when dey sees my Black Face up here after deys die, ain't so surprised."

"And?"

"Hit for da cycle, my Son. Steal Bases!"

"And?"

"I dunno. Make it up as you go. But a .311 Lifetime average wouldn't be bad for starters."

"Why?"

"Cause ever'where's da same these days. Da white man gots all da power."

"And what else, Diddy?"

"Baseball's da only game where a Black man can waves a stick at a white man down there and git away with it."

Authors Bio:

Kevin Marley has been studying the various world crises that have been hitting our shores like Hurricane-V storms, and in the process, has tackled these timely difficulties in 12 books. They are Nirvana, Day of Reckoning, Further, Seeking, Barack Obama, Common Sense, Kill Trump: Invoked the 25th -- a Revolution of the Human Spirit, Soul Kitchen, Notes from the Underground, Torn Veil, The Book of Life (The Body Electric), and Bastille Day.