The Busting Out of an Ordinary Man by Odie Hawkins

siftin’ diamonds up big as your fist, turnin’ each ’n everyone into the Baas, ’til one day my dirty, treacherous, U-nited States nigger mind started shootin’ off sparks. I knew, from havin’ watched it, that some of the dudes managed to get away with a tiny bit o’ stuff every month, industrial type diamonds, mostly. What I wanted to do was cop some authentic gems, some real stones.
    â€œSo, I got to work. It was really hard for awhile, to get my organization together. I mean, like a few of the more unsophisticated African brothers didn’t even feel that it was right to steal from the Baas.”
    â€œBuddha! you gotta be jivin’!”
    â€œI wouldn’t jive you, youngblood,” he answered his critic with a deadpan under his cap.
    â€œBut you see, their minds were formed in a tribal mold, they didn’t think it was right to steal from any-body , and to lots of them, despite the fact that they suffered under him, the white man was still a human being.
    Deep, huh? probably one of the main reasons why all those black folks over there haven’t lynched all those white folks. At any rate, after a lil’ bit, I escaped from the mines.…”
    â€œEscaped?” Brian asked.
    â€œUhhhh huhhhnnn, E-scaped. You see, at that time, you signed a contract for two years, one year or whatever, and the only way you could break your contract was to E-scape. I escaped and became a fence for the dudes I had organized in the mines.
    â€œMy thang went a lil’ bit like this, I’d pay about fifty dollars for a helluva gem, one-hundred, U.S. rates, for a fantastic gem and two-hundred, at least, for one of those overwhelming pinkie rings that you sometimes see on the small fingers of eminent sissies and stark ravin’ rich Harlem pimps.”
    His audience held onto each other, their attention to his tale forcing them to disregard customary no-nos.
    â€œI moved fast, bought everything that I could get my hands on, dealt with a rich ol’ Jewish diamond merchant who had an interest in the mines that the stones were being ripped off from. Now he really had a thang goin’ on. He couldn’t lose for winnin’ makin’ dough out of both ends.
    â€œYou dudes ever see a diamond merchant?”
    The three men mechanically nodded no in unison.
    â€œWell, take my word for it, they, ’long with the diamond cutters, are weird lookin’ lil’ bitty dudes. They all got pointed heads, they’re usually bald and they don’t have no emotion whatsoever and would do anything I mean, anything for diamonds. The dude I was dealin’ with, tryin’ to pull a super-grand stake together, in order to split the scene, tried to have me arrested a couple times, and when that didn’t work, tried to have me assassinated. All he cared about was the diamonds yeah, that’s all.”
    He stood up to stretch his legs and eased back down into position, his belly hanging over his belt, Sumo style. “Anyway, within six months I had scrounged up ’bout $600,000 worth o’ diamonds, some really good ’n some really bad, and I was gettin’ ready to hat up but, as Lady Luck would have it, the night before I got ready to split, I was leavin’ a Xosa lady’s crib, a too-fine fine lady named Christa, at 12:30 a.m., and got picked up for a pass violation and that’s when the shit hit the fan.”
    Buddha paused to nod solemnly to six members of a Chicano group to whom he had given a Third World talk to, the day before. “Yeahhh, the shit sho’ ’nuff hit the fan,” he continued. “Number one, the police must’ve spent three or four months grillin’ me, tryin’ to make me tell them who the white man was behind my organization. The more I told them that I was, the less they believed me.
    â€œFinally, it dawned on one of those superduper crackers that I was actually the Head Nigger in Charge.