Good Old Luther
by William 'Cully' Bryant
Luther was
some sort of a mechanic, or glorified repair man.
He always stayed around the shop and worked on
equipment, fixed tires, loafed, and talked to
me…non-stop.
When I first
started working, I was fourteen - didn’t yet
know how to drive a tractor. So they stuck me in
the shop with Luther. I remember two things about
Luther particularly well. First, he had killed
his wife several years ago and somehow had only
spent four years in prison. I remember him saying,
“Sugar was mean. And one night she got drunk
and broke a bottle over the sink and told me she
was gonna kill me. So naturally I shot her.”
“Naturally”,
I thought.
But more
intriguing than Luther being a murderer - or
“manslaughterer” or whatever you call
it when you shoot someone named Sugar who is
trying to kill you with a broken bottle of Grape
Crush – was his craving for women. Haitian
women.
Every year,
when the sweet corn was ready, the Haitian
migrant workers would arrive. It was easy to know
when they had landed. One day you’d look up
and see two or three jet-black women walking down
the road toward the river…naked from the
waist up. They were headed to the river to bathe.
I never saw any of the men with them. I guess
they didn’t worry so much about hygiene.
As soon as the
Haitians would appear, Luther would go wild. Two
or three – sometimes more – Haitian
women would come around the shop every day to get
water. They never asked permission. They’d
just wander right up, walk right past us, turn on
the spigot and take whatever they wanted. We
never tried to stop them. But, it was a little
disconcerting to note that they would carry the
water off in empty herbicide jugs. Me and Luther
would try to stop them. “Poison!” we
would say real loud and slow, like people do when
they are talking to someone who doesn’t
speak English and believes that volume and
careful pronunciation will help. “Deadly
Poison!” we’d say again. But they
couldn’t understand. They’d just jabber
back in that weird, sounding French they speak.
In the end, we’d let them take the poison
water and go on their way. To my knowledge, none
of them ever died from it.
They may not
have understood us when it came to safety
warnings, but somehow Luther had no problem
communicating with them when it came to matters
of a more physical nature. He’d come to work
in the morning and tell me – fourteen year
old me – about his previous night’s
exploits. I’d listen with my mouth wide open
and I wouldn’t breathe for about a half an
hour.
“Ten
dollars!” he’d say. “They only
want ten dollars! Ten dollars and you can have
whatever you want. I tell you, I wish I could
move to Haiti today!”
Even though I
was only fourteen, I could read, and I did have
ears and a television set, and I was pretty sure
that having “relations” with a Haitian
was at least as risky as trying to do the same
with a rhinoceros. I don’t know if
Luther’s days of lasciviousness ever caught
up with him or not. But I do know that he’s
dead.
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