Devil Town
In Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 1964, two young Black men attempt to scratch out a living working on a sweet potato farm. Jeb and Rat fight through poverty and racism, while protecting themselves from the demons of their past. While doing extra work for the local juke joint owner, they find themselves in a perilous predicament. Their troubles are advanced when one of them falls for the boss's White daughter. The journey will leave you "out of breath, out of body, out of mind."
“Well, well; if it ain’t Quimbo and Sambo. Whay’s Uncle Tom?” Flint said in his slave voice.
“Standin’ right next to you, boss,” Jeb grinned.
“Actually, if’n you two had read the book, you’d know that it was really Quimbo and Sambo who was the sellouts,” Rat corrected Flint.
“Well, excuse me, college boy. Now, what are you two porch monkeys looking at my house for? You see something up there you want to get your dirty nigger hands on?”
“No, sir,” Jeb started working furiously.
“What if we did see sumthin’ that we liked? What would you do ‘bout it?” Rat spat on the ground.
“Why, I suppose I’d have to beat the black off of you!”
“You?” Rat scoffed. “Why, this big over-stuffed, swole-neck, house nigga here couldn’t beat my little buddy here. Much less you.”
“What!?” Jeb showed his concern.
“Is that so?” Flint sized Jeb up.
“Thassa fact, Mr. Flint. In fact, we’s willin’ to wager double or nuthin’ our day’s pay on my pal here, winnin’ the fight.”
“Now, wait a minute!” Jeb could barely get his two cents in.
“We’ll take that bet!” Flint shook Rat’s hand. “Five minutes from now, your friend here fights Mongo. My father built me a boxing ring out back. Straight boxing rules, except no rounds. Fight continues until one of you can’t get up any more. Mongo, if you lose, no pay for today.”
“I will kill him!”
​
∞
They walked along to the back of the Robertson mansion.
“Are you crazy, Rat? I can’t beat that big gorilla of a man! Look at him!”
Rat urged him on, “I thought Flint would fight you, hisself. I once see’d you whoop a guy twice yo’ size and age when you was only twelve. You can take him. You is Kid Slick!!”
“Kid who? Kid Slick?”
“Yeah, I know he’s bigger, stronger, and part hippo. But you’s Kid Slick; wiry, quick, lean, and deceivingly strong. Just use your brains and outwit him. Be…well…slick.”
Mongo was, perhaps, the biggest natural specimen of a beast to never lift weights. No one knew much more about him. He had no parents that anyone in town knew of. Mongo was merely ten years old when he arrived in Hattiesburg in 1953, though he had the body of a twenty-five-year-old heavyweight boxer. By 1964, he had grown to two heavyweights. Though he never stood on any man’s scales (none could have weighed him), he was at least four hundred pounds of rawhide and muscle. No one had seen any two men come close to whooping him, even when he was ten. Now, he would face a man who was a lightweight at best.
“How is it you always get me in fixes like this?”
“Practice, I guess,” Rat laughed.
Jeb was not amused, “What would you do if you were in my shoes?”
“Me?” Rat slipped on Jeb’s gloves. “Why, I’d bust out his teef; I’d dent his chest; I’d… Well,” he slipped a mouthpiece into Jeb’s mouth, “I s’pose I’d do what any man your size with even a tenth of a brain would do.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?” Jeb asked as Rat pushed him toward the center of the ring.
“Easy,” Rat smiled, “run!”