The Busting Out of an Ordinary Man by Odie Hawkins Page A

Now that really twisted their lil’ ol’ hate-filled minds around. Me, Chester L. Simmons from Miss’ssippi, one of their sister states, had actually been behind some grand theft action it was too much for ’em!
    â€œNow what they did, some bureaucrat in the Racial Determination section, was this. Since it was obvious that no black man could possibly have schemed himself into the kind of dough I was into, or created the kind of structured stealin’ that I had created, then I must be a white man.”
    â€œWowwww! Talk about goin’ through changes!” Marcus burst out, eyes digging the Great Lawd.
    â€œHmf! Changes you say? Uhhn huh, as good a word for it as you could hope to use. What was happenin’, aside from all the money I was usin’ to bribe everybody and his brother with, was this. On the socio-political propaganda side, the authorities didn’t want any kind of word to leak out officially about my gettin’ past the diamond mine check system. Me, a black dude! I mean, like, after all, that would give a lot o’ people big ideas. So, therefore, in that typical iron-headed way they have of doin’ things in that fucked up country, they had me declared a white man. Can you git ready for that?”
    â€œYou a bad dude, Buddha,” Donnell assured him.
    â€œBy this time I’d been in the slams, in solitary for about six months, but my money was workin’ for me. I managed to stick coin to the Prime Minister’s uncle even … anything to get out. Now, young brothers, I’ll tell you the truth, if I’m lyin’ I hope God’ll strike me dead.”
    He paused for a cigarette and a light, dragged in.
    â€œI don’t know who really decided that the best thing to do was deport me, but I sho’ wanna thank him. Aside from my bribery, they wanted to get rid of me for political reasons. They didn’t want a declared white man that looked kind o’ black in jail creating some weird kind of martyr for the black people, so they forced me to agree to a deportation scene.
    â€œWell, heyyy, you can imagine how I felt. I would’ve agreed to anything to get out of that place. Anything!”
    â€œRight on, brother!” Brian cued in.
    â€œWell, you can believe they fucked me over a lil’ bit before I was finally released. One day the guard would announce that I was leavin’ that evenin’, then turn right back around and tell me to forget about it … as well as your other kinds of regular torture. The South African white man is a stranger to most of the rest of the human race, him and the rednecked Mississippian. I don’t really know what happened to them durin’ the evolutionary process, but I do know this, a special kind of sickness settled into them hundreds of years ago and they’ve never been close to being healthy.”
    The Great Lawd Buddha pursed his lips reflectively and slowly stood, his eyes following the lazy flight of a pigeon. Marcus, Donnell and Brian followed the direction of his eyes.
    Brian, impatiently wanting to hear the end of Buddha’s story before lockup, asked “Uhh, so they booted you out, huh?”
    â€œIn the dead of night, my friend, in the dead of night,” he continued, snapping his eyes away from the pigeon’s flight, “me and three other undesirable aliens. However, I could say, as a history maker, that I had had the opportunity to be a black white man in one of the most prejudiced white places on earth, and you can believe me, that takes some doin’.
    â€œAwright, deported, hardshippin’ and in Zambia, tryin’ to shit out a few of these gems I’d stuffed away in my precious lil’ body.”
    â€œYou got away with some?”
    â€œClean as a whistle! They’d made me take some laxatives ’n shit, but years ago, in India, that’s another whole story, a great Yoga man taught me how to control my bowels. I mean,