“At the time, no one made any account of the circumstance…”

-Herodotus, Book 1, Title Cleo, on the accidental burning of the Temple of Athena at Milesia

…

From a dream of such as plague a failed man nightly upon the road he was broken.

…

He did not wake from a dream, rather into that keen sensible space. He knew this to be the case, for he was not groggy, befuddled or otherwise addled. His mind was right—but there was a baba in his mouth!

Out he drew it from between his lips and noted it was a carving of ivory, depicting a sailor in white cap winking and playing a fife. It hung from a leather cord upon his neck. As he let it hang there, looking down, he noticed that he was wearing a skirt made of scalps. The scalps were woven about a leather belt and were colored blond, brown, red, one only of kinky wool—and his bare legs and feet were ebony brown, glossy in the falling sun.

“Oh no!” he hissed, and sounded as though he had some pretty thick lips. Touching his face with his left hand, for a machete rode in his right hand, Addler Banes, or so he fancied himself, felt a broad flat nose, with a bone through it, thick lips and teeth within filed to points. Then upwards his hand searched for what he dreaded to find, a woolly-to nappy mass of African hair.

‘Oh,’ he mused, my hygiene must be atrocious,’ and he could smell the uric acid sweating through his skin despite the snow on the ground. To his back was a stand of cedar out of which he had seemingly run down the rutted trail where his feet now melted snow, fresh snow, only a few inches deep. To his right was a barn, from whence sounded the groan of a man and the curse of another, “Anotha slice o’ bacon off ye self-stole flank,” and the crack of a whip sounded, a short, sharp whip, not a bull whip.

Ahead he saw the Planter’s house, knowing it to be the home of a certain Tobias, who had regarded him in his Caucasian form as a bringer of news, teller of tales, and seller of rare lady-like wares.

‘Is the carpetbag in the house or the barn?’

‘The house, of course.’

A crack of the whip drew him with neck hair prickly on end towards the barn door. The was a lamp light within the door, which was not shut tight, but slightly unlatched. There he crept, his sweat dripping in the snow as he skulked, machete in hand.

He paused as a groan turned into a hiss—“That’s all you got!”

The whip cracked again.

Sensing he had an ally tied to that post, and with knowledge of where that transmogrific bag might reside, Black Banes, as he fancied himself resignedly, rushed in. With a rustle of scalps and the creak of the heavy barn door he was in, machete in hand, a snarl on his lips—his eyes wide with amazement.

“What?” he stalled, as he saw a tall black man, a short black leather whip in hand, wearing a good flannel shirt and canvas overalls, hard shoes on his feet, who looked at him in like amazement. His mouth hung slack in disbelief.

A more astonished figure, welts upon his bare, freckled back, his hair as red as those raised weals, looked at him with glassy green eyes, “Boss,” he said to the black man, “a true juju maroon! It were he mus’ o’ stole Mistress Stansbury’s silver.”

The black overseer, sprang to life, drew a hook knife and cut the tethers that bound the hands of the rough-looking Irishman. Now knife and whip to hand, the big man turned beside the late object of his cruel attention as he undid his leather bound wrists and grinned.

Black Banes stammered, began to speak, saw the Irishman grin and take up a felling ax, and let out an unmanly squeak, as he buck-like turned and ran.

A whoop from the ungrateful white slave was joined by a whistle from the tall, older, Negro overseer. This whistle was answered by the baying of two large dogs from up at the house! The machete slipped from his hand as he ran at full, feral African speed across the carriage way and down the trail between the towering cedars. The Irishman howled like a gleeful demon, the overseer barking, “Rack and Razor,” and the hounds barked louder, closer, their great paws racking the snowy dirt road as tears of defeat played down his ebony cheeks.

The whistle was there but bounced off his breast and was hard to catch without slowing down. Too coward to stop running, too afraid to be caught climbing some tree and dragged down, Black Banes ran and grabbed at the bouncing whistle as the hounds drew rapidly closer. The last streaking of the sun lit the way before him, a way he would never traverse, he knew, as the hounds drew closer.

At last the whistle, bounced from his nose and fell into his hand. There he felt the winking face of the harping sailor, placed it to his mouth, and blew…

…

He fell at full stride upon his chest, fortunate that the old bomber jacket protected him from road rash as its plastic buttons scraped on the asphalt.

He was looking down the last leg of Frankford Avenue, his boot toes scraped open on this their last night in years run. It was near midnight, the lights of Pulaski Highway and I-895 ahead over the next hill. The low rise brick projects next to the power line cut that had been leveled 18 years ago, were still there.

Yet he was not addled, no longer the Addler.

‘When am I?’

The sound of two dogs panting, padding heavily, hurriedly, their choke chains jangling, brought him with a lunging push-up to his feet, his old jeans splitting on the right thigh where he had rested tens of thousands of boxes picked from the floor. His utility knife was in his right, razor blade sliding open.

Looking down before him he saw the two brown pit bulls charging, three strides away. A straight razor opened in his left hand, a hand that had not been broken yet and still worked in fine motor mode—a hand that was pale.

His nasal voice barked, “I’m not black!”

The dogs stopped as if on command, looking at him and back at their master, a tall middle aged Negro in slacks, and jacket, who stood at the corner of Sinclair Lane and answered, “A coarse you ain’t black—Karazee NIGGER!”

He then looked at the man who pulled aside his shirt to show a handgun, an auto, and clicked with his tongue, to which the two 80-pound munching machines returned eagerly, like puppies, paws scarping up the sidewalk, leaving him low down in the gutter. Hitching them to his leashes the man, tall and with an older voice, advised, “Next time, take yo cracka ass around!”

Banes, not at all addled, saluted, turned and walked along, thrice thrilled; to be young and able to run, to be uneaten by dogs, and to be righteous, hated, white trash again—the racial civility of his waning years having robbed him of the greatest angel of his nature.

He sauntered on, in flapping boots and tattered threads, overdressed in August, feeling the cool sweat of his long hair on the back of his neck for the first time since he met The Dreamer.

‘I had a whistle, didn’t I?’

A pick up truck flew by him, the mirror clipping his right shoulder. It was occupied by three large rednecks, who all yelled derogatory words that he failed to register; so happy he was to walk on down the road of broken dreams with an idiot smile on his unlined face, ignorant once again of the woe that awaited him with hope-eating grin.