Sweetback

Rais’n Up Catfish: Thirteen

Comfrey, Mississippi:  Summer, 1972

Zak and Mose were usually just arriving at work about the time I returned, soaking wet from my water sampling chores. Sleepy-eyed and still quiet, they would lethargically roll past the hatchery and park their '65 Impala at the far edge of the gravel lot, gunning its purring engine twice before rolling up their windows and turning off the key.

The car was a vision, light canary yellow with wide, chrome wheels, a welded-chain steering wheel and spotless vinyl upholstery, snow white.  

There were no fuzzy dice dangling from the rearview and no statue of Jesus on the dashboard, but a cheap, Kraco, eight-track on the floor and a bottle of ‘Jungle-Fever’ car deodorant provided more than enough tacky counterpoint to complete their swanky ride’s overall effect. Within their circle of friends such nifty accessories rated big mojo; hot-wired music and dollar store goo-gahs, local vernaculars for utter hip and cool.

Most mornings Mose drove, slow and regal, steering with his right hand and picking out his five inch afro with a comb in his left, all in perfect rhythm to scratchy eight-tracks, Sly and the Family Stone pounding away at the humid morning air. But on those mornings when Mose was too spawned out from an all-night nookie feed or just feeling generous he would relinquish driving rights to his laughing cousin and equal partner in the car, Zak. On those mornings you hardly noticed the car. Zak wore that kind of a smile.

Compared to smooth Mose, Zak was burlap next to silk. Thick and muscular, he wore short-sleeved shirts rolled up, and a pork-pie hat over receding, close-cropped hair. His strapping muscularity and childish innocence provided sharp contrast to Mose's detached, give-a-damn lethargy, making Mose seem even cooler by comparison.  

Zak was too simple and joyful to really even get the concept of cool, let alone worry over it, but that never seemed to hurt him any with the ladies. In fact, the local women actually took to him more readily than to Mose. His comic laugh and goodhearted politeness in alliance with the body of a rugged, young bull made Zak both desirable and harmless, a combination that many eligible beauties in the area found themselves drawn to.

You could tell this puzzled Mose, who thought himself much better looking, and probably was, but never enough to fret over or lose any sleep. Mose seemed content to play the hand he’d been dealt. Cool and detached came natural to him, and combined with his week's paycheck in a town where such things were rare, he was guaranteed all the pussy he could eat and diddle before his money ran out on Saturday night.