"Night of the Pick"

by Dot Smith

For the first few years of my existence, I was oblivious to the struggle, which took place around me. I blissfully went about the business of a child squeezing as much fun and playtime as could be had out of every waking moment. Adult concerns did not fall within my limited frame of reference, and making a marriage work with the union intact is definitely an adult concern. Well actually, it isn't solely an adult concern when the union produces offspring. The marriage business becomes the family enterprise, because every decision made affects every member intimately. But, while we are very young and functioning within a limited mental frame of reference, the problems of keeping the ties that bind forever tied do not intrude on our more personal pursuits of self- gratification.

Though reluctant to do so, I finally accepted the fact that my parents' marriage was not perfect. This realization occurred at the ripe old age of ten. As much as I would like to, I will probably never forget the events leading up to and culminating in what I refer to as "The Night of the Pick". It was a hot summer night that I found myself rudely thrust into the midst of my parents' imperfect union. Prior to that eventful evening, I turned a deaf ear to any criticism of my dad. I stubbornly refused to listen to or believe anything bad said about Fred. Besides, since "The Cock," he was my favorite parent as I was apparently his favorite child, at least I always thought so. Entertaining bad about a favorite was somehow disloyal, and I was loyal, holding steadfast to the belief that my daddy could do no wrong. Which just goes to show how wrong you can be, because nobody is perfect. And, daddy, flawed human that he was, was fated to fall from the lofty pedestal on which I had childishly placed him.

As much as I loved him, Fred was a flawed, he was a whore, the genuine article. There is just no other word that adequately describes his relentless lifelong pursuit of the opposite sex. I guess though today he could more accurately be described as a pussy chaser or something equally as crass, common and trashy. Monogamy seemed a foreign concept to be practiced only under duress. While he married based on Mississippi common law several times, there was never any honor and death do us part commitment to characterize those relationships, as evidenced by his numerous offspring born to the various women he did not remain faithful to.

Had he fully comprehended the nature of the commitment he made when marrying Ada, he would have run screaming in the opposite direction, because sharing her mate was not a part of Ada's makeup. Bad habits are difficult to break, and Fred had to be broken before he settled down to the serious business of a monogamous relationship. And, at the ripe old age of sixty-one, Fred was broken the summer of '61.

I recall the whispers, which abound for several weeks or more, about old Fred keeping company with a woman in our neighborhood. Rumor had it Fred was boldly conducting this adulterous affair literally right under Ada's unsuspecting nose. Our house was located in the middle of a short side street off one of the main thoroughfares running through the neighborhood. Our street dead-ended into an alley running parallel to the main thoroughfare, Farrington; the alley was used primarily for foot traffic. The object of Fred's fickle affection lived practically in our front door at the intersection of the alley and a larger street running perpendicular to it. The lady in question lived in a large house on the hill right at the end of the alley. One could see her house from our front porch. Rumor had it she was a widow.

Not much that happened in our neighborhood escaped Ada's attention. She was very active in the church and knew a lot of people. How Fred planned to keep his illicit affair a secret is a mystery, given the proximity of the two houses. So, eventually she got wind of the rumor. Exactly when Ada became privy to the damning information is unclear. I don't remember the source of her information whether she followed the bastard or someone told her where he was, but she chose the perfect moment to confront Fred with irrefutable evidence of his infidelity.

It was a sultry Friday night; Fred got paid. I remember the night in question as though it happened yesterday. Earlier in the evening, Fred came home from work and we received our weekly nickel allowance. For us, a nickel was a lot back then, and we considered ourselves fortunate to receive so much. Fred bathed, dressed and went out. Ada left shortly afterwards supposedly to visit a shut-in. We, the twins and I, hurried off to the neighborhood sundry to spend our nickels on candy and cookies. We ate our junk food and were watching television when Ada returned home; she was livid. Momma was so mad you could see it in her face. Her skin turned a deep brick red, and she appeared to be swollen somehow with the anger consuming her; she was fit to be tied. Confirming the vicious rumor, she cursed Fred to perdition and back, vowing "to confront the son of a bitch with his whore."

Her coarse uncharacteristic language alone was enough to instill fear in the bravest heart. But, when she stormed through the house and began rummaging through the cutlery tray in the kitchen cabinet, the blood in my veins ran cold. My fear was palatable; I knew in my heart that I would lose my daddy that night. It was common knowledge that momma did not take any shit off anybody. She demanded and got respect from everyone she dealt with from her thirteen children to the white folks she was forced to deal with in her struggles to survive in a white-ruled society.

This angry woman, momma, grabbed a large kitchen knife from the tray; I grabbed the hem of her dress. She wore one of her print work dresses, a plain cotton affair that buttoned down the front and belted at the waist. It was summer time so on her feet she wore a pair of thin-soled flats without hose. I tugged at the dress to get her attention, because she did not seem to realize that we were there afraid for her and afraid for the man, our father, whom she was bent on teaching a lesson. The knife seemed to signify that the lesson to be learned was a harsh one, because the pupil could possibly die from the discourse. When I called her name, she seemed to recall us still there, if only briefly. Once her attention was snagged, I began to beg for his worthless life. He was the only father I had, and by my standards he had been a pretty good one. My pleas must have had some impact, because she threw the knife back into the drawer. She shifted some more through the items in the drawer and finally withdrew a deadly looking red-handled ice pick.

At the sight of the deadly weapon, rusty from exposure to water and infrequent usage, my eyes grew larger than fear had already rendered them. One of my twin brothers, Rob, already reduced to tears, sniveled even louder when he spied momma's weapon of choice. As usual, the other twin, Ray, looked on obviously afraid too, but saying nothing, refusing to shed useless tears. Of the two, if any crying was done, it was generally left to Rob to do the bawling. I grabbed momma around the legs, pressing my face to her abdomen. I was a short kid; she was a tall big boned woman, but I hugged her around her ample hips with both arms and pleaded into her mid-section.

"Momma please don't kill my daddy, please momma," I begged with tears streaming down my cheeks. Rob and I were both sissies; we couldn't seem to stem the flow of tears.

Momma removed my arms from around her hips and said, "Don't you worry about him. He's not worth it. Everything is going to be all right." She moved me away from her tucking that deadly pick in the pocket of her dress. She then made her way back through the house and out the front door. I cried harder, knowing I would never see my daddy alive again, because momma was going to teach him a lesson using an ice pick. It never occurred to me that momma would ply that pick to the widow woman. I only saw her killing my daddy. He may have been a whore, as momma said, but that in no way diminished him in my eyes, at least not right then.

The twins and I were a bundle of raw nerves by the time momma came back home. She appeared calmer for having "killed" daddy. Her skin tone more closely resembled its natural reddish hue, evidence of her mixed-up native Indian and African ancestry, and she did not appear to be inflated with anger. She said nothing, going into the kitchen and putting her "bloody" weapon into the cutlery drawer. We followed her every move. She shut the drawer; we opened it examining the infamous pick. There was no blood on it; in fact, it looked about the same as it did when she took it out of the drawer before leaving, rusty.

Momma calmly looked at us sort of pitying like, and said, "Don't worry I didn't kill 'im even if he deserved it. There's no sense in damning myself to hell for murder."

Well, we agreed with her, but, what did she do to daddy? She was far too quiet to calm our fears; we assumed she did something. We just knew the police would soon be knocking at the door. We waited now afraid for what would happen to momma, because we just knew she vented some anger on somebody with that deadly weapon.

The police never showed up, though daddy failed to come home that night. Momma didn't say anything else about the incident, but we heard things and eventually learned that no one was picked to death or picked at all for that matter. Momma temporarily banished daddy from her presence, relegating him to the status of estranged spouse. He fended for himself outside our house. This sorry state of affairs lasted for a few day, ending with daddy returning home looking like a whipped puppy. Nothing more was said about the night of the ice pick as things returned to normal.

One fine Sunday morning several weeks later, momma, the twins and I were headed to church when we chance to encounter the widow woman. She was a few yards ahead of us when we emerged from the alley. Though dressed in tight skirt and heels, she nonetheless picked up her pace on realizing we were behind her. Obviously nervous, she dropped her purse, and rather than taking her time to retrieve all the articles that spilled from the purse when she dropped it, she hastily grabbed most of it. Leaving some lose change on the ground, she scurried away before we reached her. The twins and I retrieved the coins intent on returning them to the woman, as would have been our normal response. Instead, momma told us to keep the money calling the widow woman a coward loud enough for her to hear.

Later, we laughed about the incident while enjoying an additional Sunday treat at the widow woman's expense. Now, we knew for sure that momma only talked tough and scared the hell out of the widow woman and daddy. With ice cream dripping from our chins, we hoped momma would soon scare the hell out of the widow woman on the way to church again.