The streets of Marion were one way, even the alleys. If I went past the address, it would be a hassle. My GPS led me with its robotic commands like I was its mindless servant. That’s about the way I felt driving the Medicaid Taxi van, old No. 4, that smelled like a dirty laundry hamper. The so-called clients, “The Riders,” gave me a hard time if I showed up late for their free ride.
“They’re a bunch of deadbeats, Cal.” I said on our daily bullshit call.
Cal, who was always ranting about them, suddenly said, like a big company man, “Hey, don’t talk about our riders like that.” He was a fanatical Trumper too, hounding me to vote for the orange man. I almost did, thinking Trump was for Christian values, what a crock. Now I’m wondering about Biden and his senility.
On the one-way streets in a mixed neighborhood, I had the pleasure of picking up an unfriendly black man. Old No.4 pulled up to his dilapidated house, with the scrubby trees, not a minute to spare.
A muscle bound, brindle colored pit-bull barked nonstop. Later, I attributed this bark as racist—Like it was barking, “I’ll kill you, you white motherfucker!” There’s probably no such thing as a racist dog, but it seemed so, because of the dog’s owner. Also, for what he stapled to the telephone pole.
When I saw the atrocity. It smacked me out of the doldrums to full alert, almost like they meant it for me. I thought, What the hell did they do that for? What’s their game?
In the blown-up picture (that looked like an old newspaper article), two black men in rags hung slack-faced from stout tree limbs, surrounded by a bunch of white people, lit up like ghouls, in stark bright headlights. One man pointed for the camera at the two lynched black men with the most evil (this is what you get) look on his face. It said Marion, Indiana, August 7, 1930.
I would learn some ten thousand people flooded the town after hearing rumblings of a lynching. Three black men stood accused of murdering a white man. A false accusation made by a white woman would fan the flames.
I thought, Jesus, that happened here?
The black man and his white woman climbed into the van. I said, “Hi.” Like I hadn’t seen the picture. That was impossible to miss, and impossible to forget. No hello or hey—nothing. The stony expressions confirmed another rude day on the government’s dime. He signed the all important Medicaid voucher, followed by a wall of silence.
The man was fifty-something, wearing a light blue coat and jeans. His face was smooth and handsome, but mean. The type to put a cigarette out in your eye—a handsome cruelty—knew a little about that, myself.
I turned on the radio, conscious of playing something acceptable. My skin seemed to glow in its unholy whiteness. Like I was wearing a sheet, becoming some kind of ad hoc Klansman, and I’m not even a racist—that I’m aware. But my race had committed terrible crimes.
Considering the lynching image that burned into my mind, the music became a delicate race issue. If I played some Motown, he might think I was a phony kiss-ass, even though I liked Motown. If I played hard-rock, that’s white noise. I had a Snoop CD, Gin and Juice, but at the moment it sounded wildly inappropriate. I settled for a pop station, and we listened to some of Katie Perry’s bubbly bullshit. He frowned. I was glad, fuck him and her, too. I didn’t lynch anyone.
I found out later that Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” would have been the exact music for the occasion, because the 1930 Marion lynching inspired it. That day was the first time I learned anything about it, so I operated from what I gleaned from the newspaper clip on the telephone pole.
The photographer copied and sold it as a lascivious postcard the very next day—practically under the dead men’s dangling feet on the hot sun-soaked, courthouse square. The rottenness inside me, wondered how much I could get on my side hustle, eBay? Gold! if I could find one.
What was the point of the picture? To make me feel like shit? To educate me? It did both. Keeping quiet was the best tactic. I mean, what could I say? Hey, Mr. unfriendly black-man, why is that picture on your telephone pole of those black men being lynched? I glanced his way. The stony expression said, Just drive white-man, I’m glad it fucked you up, and I was glad to get rid of him and his woman.
The day became local run after local run all over Marion, and I had about a 10-minute window to eat, bathroom break, and google the lynching that never left my mind and still hasn’t. I quickly found out it happened on the Marion, Indiana courthouse square. So much for a fair trial. Then the awful phone rang, and the boss sent me to my next hectic pickup.
I picked up a white couple in some sleazy alley littered with garbage, with more dogs barking and they seemed like racist dogs, too, since their owners had a big confederate flag flying. Yeah, Mr. and Mrs. Jim Crow. I had the misfortune of their company sixty miles to Indianapolis and sixty back in old No. 4, the dirty laundry hamper.
Strange problems of self esteem arise when you work in service jobs. A people pleaser, one minute, then overtly defiant the next. Bouncing and blinking around all day—listening to gripes and groans—getting pissy if some backseat driver told me where to turn. Wanting to sound smart, laughing and joking, or falling into hateful silences—looking for some kind of validation instead of “Hey driver. Hey dumb fuck.”
The two ingrates riding the government’s dime didn’t even buy me a pop at McDonalds, eyeing me like a servant, stuffing their faces with dripping Bic Macs.
On the return trip, as the stoplight changed by the Marion courthouse, idle words slipped out of me, when I searched for the long dead lynching tree. (I found out later it was a maple tree.) A plaque took its place.
“That’s where they lynched those black guys.” It sounded very wrong—another red mark on my file against myself. Would I have said that if black people were with me? Fuck no!
The puffy woman, an evil stringy-haired idiot, jumped on those words, while her mate, a grungy bespeckled louse, waited in the wings in the backseat. She laughed and said, “Yeah, my great granddad, helped lynch those niggers…” Her nasty heft seemed to puff up even more. The louse, chuckled from the backseat.
I can still see her yellow teeth chomping on those ugly words, blue eyes sparkling with delight. Then she needed help to get out of the van and I offered my hand; she took it and gave me the dirtiest look, like touching me was nasty.
It was the last time I ever spoke to any Marion residents about the picture on the telephone pole. THE LYNCHING. I was afraid of what they might say?
THE END
Christopher J Ananias
Saragun Springs 
CJA
Truly a brave and honest story. Quite often publishers are cowards, which causes writers to back off of language. That is a form of censorship in which everyone involved congratulates themseives on their sensitivity as they spit on truth’s grave. Fuck em.
Great work!
Leila
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Hi Leila
I’ve sent this story out to a few of those publishers… I’m glad you found it worthy for your site.
Yes, agreed, the truth should never be changed to fulfill an agenda. That’s how society becomes a lie.
Thanks
CJA
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Hi CJA
I know a few of those publishers. Lilly-livered trendoids who sniff the air and take the Instagram pulse before goof-stepping to the popular trope of the news-cycle.
I have deliberately offended some. I excel at expressing scorn and anger. God himself can damn me to hell before I encourage sniveling in the key of fear.
Keep swinging from your heels!
Leila
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Hi Leila
Wow that was said with POWER!
Trendoids a new word for the day. So apt!
Fear doesn’t gain a person much.
I think God would be proud of you. He likes people who tell the truth.
CJA
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CJA
This essay reminds me of the searing essays on race relations by James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, except you’re writing at it from the other side of the racial divide. And that is great, as well as brave, courageous, and needed. Race relations in America are a great chasm. It cannot be denied, and should never be denied, that America, and only America, created the (by far) worst system of slavery ever known to humankind.
It had no end in sight for the enslaved (unlike indentured servitude for white people). It was based on nothing but skin color so people couldn’t escape. And it was enforced with a heartless brutality that would make a starving pack of hyenas look like gentle giants. The whites were also extremely good at slaughtering one another in Europe with their canons and guns – just ask Napolean and his crew.
I was reading about Nat Turner the other day, the slave who led the biggest slave revolt ever in the USA. The things the slaves did that day to the whites who were “above” them are horrific in the extreme. But anyone who thinks those men (those slaves) were not DRIVEN to do what they did by the madness and hopeless horror of their situation is kidding themselves, very gravely. America is a land covered in blood. The great historian and biographer (and white Southerner), John Meacham, recently pointed out that representative democracy in America is NOT 250 years old. It’s a mere 60 years old, since blacks did not receive the vote until sixty years ago in the middle of the 1960s.
Your essay also reminds me of Norman Mailer’s controversial essays and statements and interviews, where he was never afraid to go against the grain in order to try and get at the truth. His essay “The White Negro,” from the 1950s, was decades ahead of its time. Eminem couldn’t exist without this essay.
Every single American who can read, write, or think at all should be forced to write this kind of essay, maybe just once, to see where they fall on the spectrum of their own racism or lack of it.
This is another great addition to your canon! Very, very few writers today have your kind of courage! This is writing designed for Revelation, not mere entertainment value (although the personal nature of the voice is entertaining, too).
Dale
PS
Great photography for this essay too. It looms like Melville’s Moby Dick, about to devour America.
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Hi Dale
I’m a big fan of James Baldwin. “Sonny’s Blues” is a good one. He moved to Europe, knowing he couldn’t get a fair shake here.
I like how you point out that our democracy isn’t that old. A powerful statement–truth. Democracy and all out Fascism at the same time, until about 1965.
Nat Turner is an interesting figure in American History. Hero or villain? Who could stand those conditions without killing someone? John Brown is a brother from another mother–he wasn’t exactly wrong either.
I love the movie “Django Unchained.”
You’re right, this kind of slavery based on a salient pigment is the worst. Using skin color to power and justify an entire economy is sickening.
America is covered in sin and blood. I would be very leery of meeting God, if I mistreated people like that.
I don’t know what a black person would see in this essay or what they might think of me. One thing I know is that skin color in this country gives you an advantage if you’re white. It may not seem that way, but that’s the way it is.
Thanks for your great comments
CJA
Glad you like the picture!
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CJA, a brave piece that shouldn’t be ignored by squeamish editors.
I was also very taken by your observation that ‘strange problems of self-esteem arise when you work in service jobs.’ It reminded me of the two summers I worked as a bus conductor, especially working on the late shift when the pubs are closing. bw mick
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Hi Mick
Glad you saw the value in this piece!
I was hoping that observation might engage the reader. Service jobs do a number on your self worth.
I could only imagine the drunken people you had to deal with as a night bus conductor. Drunks are the worst. lol.
“The Night Bus Conductor” sounds like a cool title for a short story.
Thanks!
CJA
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PS
After watching a few minutes of the Fat Man’s so-called speech last night (or maybe we should call him the world’s largest carnival barker), I noticed that he has the eyes of a great white shark – or a Komodo dragon.
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Good description of him “Carnival Barker” lol. He has ruined our democratic process.
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…and the two white bros sitting behind him and constantly applauding (while dressed almost exactly like him) have the eyes of sycophantic weasels…
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It’s almost demonic! “sycophantic weasels…” No doubts!
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Intense, heartfelt, and the banner image, in context, is chilling.
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Thanks David!
CJA
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