Racism, What's it Get You?

It was late on a Sunday night. Rack sat in his newly remodeled office/garage watching the Iraq War on TV as the media and the American people wallowed in ecstasy with every bomb released when he saw headlights flash against the house wall. Who it could be so late was soon answered as the patio door slid open and Bubba and friend entered.

“Yo Rack! What’s happening? This here is Randyman, you remember him don’t you?”

A somewhat toothless Randy offered his tattooed “H-A-T-E” fingered hand while Rack looked to see if “L-O-V-E” was there on the other. Rack did remember him, an almost always drunken sometime drug dealer who last he had heard, was in trouble for shooting up his trailer park with a flare gun. “Hey Randyman, I remember you, staying away from flare guns?” Rack joked.
“He should’ve stuck with flare guns,” Bubba commented, “I just picked Randyman up at Huntsville State Pen, this is his first day out in two years!”

“Gosh Randyman, what did you do?” Randy walked to the bar and tossed a case of beer up on the bar.

“Shit, assault with a deadly weapon. I shot a couple people, but I only shot them a little!” He guffawed.

“Yeah,” Bubba followed up, “it was only a couple n-words and they’re okay now. Hey Randy, show Rack the gun.”

“Oh gosh.” Rack sighed as Randy reached behind him and pulled some sort of automatic pistol from his back pocket. Rack moved his attention back to the carnage on TV while Bubba and Randy fawned over the gun.

Rack thought how hypocritical it was that Americans wet their pants with flag waving glory jolts of glee when guns and bombs kill thousands of people in some far off land, but are horrified when some miserable screwed up American shoots another here at home.

“Woo-E!” Cried Randyman turning his attention from the gun on the bar to the carnage on the screen, “Look at that one go! Must a blown a hundred of dem sand-n-words all to Hell!”

“So how was it in Huntsville?” Rack asked wanting to get away from n-words-kill talk.”
“Lots of n-words up there! But I stayed away from the monkeys and spent my time reading the Bible. I have become Born again.” Randyman smiled with a toothless grin.

“Oh,” Rack said reaching behind him on his reference shelf grabbing a Bible and tossing it to the Randyman. “Show me where in here it talks about blowing sand-n-words away, shooting n-words or calling them monkeys?”

“Hey Rack, I’m not a racist, I just don’t like n-words.”

“Gosh... Just out of curiosity, how far you get in school?”

“Screw you Rack,” Bubba butted in, “Big college man hey, so Randy and I didn’t get out of High school, that has nothing to do with anything, we aren’t ignorant or racists, we just don’t like n-words. What’s the big deal?”

“Okay Bubba, hating n-words got Randyman two years in prison, what does it get you? Don’t you see?”

“Sure we see Rack, you’re a stuck up Yankee college boy calling us racists.”

“Gosh Bubba, tell you what, why not pack up your beer, your guns and your pal and leave me alone then.”

“We gotta go anyway, keep the beer for that crew tomorrow.”

The crew arrived with the equipment to begin the process of house leveling so many Houston home owners living on the gumbo usually put off until windows began shattering. Rack was surprised that the 12 man crew was Black rather than the usual Mexicans who did all the roofing-digging labor White Texans seldom did. He welcomed Eugene, the Black foreman, at the door only to hear the phone ring.

“Yeah.” He answered. “Yeah, the crew is here Bubba. I understand. No problem, they have the hydraulic coring equipment all over the yard and the foreman seems friendly enough. I am sure you can scarf all the information you need about the whole process and get out on your own in no time! Yeah, I’ll give them the beer.”

The crew worked fast, boring 25, 15’ deep three foot in diameter holes around the house with the wheel barrow men hoppin’ it out to the dump truck in no time.

Eugene came in to say it would be about an hour wait for the cement truck and asked if it would be okay if his crew sat around the yard and ate their lunch.
“No problem Eugene, in fact the air conditioning has been on in my party-room garage out there and my friend Bubba left a case a beer. If y’all want to sit in the garage and have a couple beers it’s fine with me.”

“We’ll take you up on that friend, thank you.”

Rack went back to work on his computer. Eugene came in after only a few minutes with a long level to note the tilt before the house was jacked which would come in a few days after the cement hardened. He was crawling around on the kitchen floor, unseen behind the dinning bar that opened into the living room when Bubba burst in through the front door.

“Damn Rack, there must be a dozen damn n-words in your garage! You can’t let n-words run wild on your property, they’ll steal you blind” Bubba stated.

“You know Bubba, we were just talking about this last night weren’t we? I tried my best to explain to you that racism and your dislike for people of color doesn’t get you anything. I have a suspicion that lesson is about to hit you square between the eyes. To no avail.”

As if taking a rehearsed cue, Eugene rose from behind the counter. “You listen to your friend here Bubba, he be telling you true.” He said nothing more and once again disappeared behind the counter.

Bubba stood embarrassed in the hallway, stammering for a way out. Realizing there was none, he left, $10 in the hole for the beer, and without the information he so wanted to get his business started.

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