9627. I ENJOYED THE SHAKESPEARE FRUIT

I ENJOYED THE 

SHAKESPEARE FRUIT

Yes; the moment they took it down from the wall

and passed it around as a cocktail, I thought to

myself, 'Hmmm. This is good!' But then, just

as much, I had to say, 'What am I doing here,

in such a place as this, where they serve

these things?' Right after that, the black girl

came over and wanted to talk, and that was

the end of the evening for me. Her father, it

seemed had been Minister Alton Jeffries, who'd

been killed by the cops in old Atlanta over 

fifty years before. As she put it, 'Back then,

before that, Atlanta hadn't even been the big

city you know of now  -  it was just a pilgrimage

along the way, Ted Turner and all that white 

crap. They all just keep expanding the city 

limits to engulf the plantations lands and

little black villages all around it. What they

'wanted' this Atlanta to be. They never cared

who they hurt, hell, who they killed. Just

buy up the shacks, or take them, and build

up the city around them. And they did. And

they killed my father, as an 'obstructionist,'

a black leader of no cooperation and a bad

attitude. I was 9 then. No one was ever 

charged, it was all squashed, and my father

ended up, of course, looking like the bad

guy, the black, evil one, the renegade church

leader. Everyone made their money, the

city expanded, and they just kept building.

Their ball teams, stadiums, academies and

arenas. I still get angry thinking about it, and

I make sure my kids get it all too. It's not

going to die with me, I'll make sure of that.'

-

Man, how do you reply to words such as 

those? She held an impression that maybe I

could help her, write this up, report on the

old scene. I think she misunderstood what I

was. Someone must have foolishly said to her

that I was a writer, newspaper, maybe, she 

thought. Whatever, As I figured what she

needed more than a crazy poet type was a

mystery writer, a whodunit guy, some sort

of a legal thriller like they sell in airports.