KING BIRD

 

Years passed since events sealed Carls fate. He sat smoking a cigarette looking out from the window in a two story tenement on Morven St in Wadesboro. A blank lot adjoined the building, plenty of time to think about what could have been. 

He was old now, but his size and strength once predominate still showed shadows of itself. He has acquired the nick name King Bird during a stint in jail for robbery. Carl duked it out with a security guard that was roughing up inmates for no reason. It bought him more time, but respect.

Carl thought how ironic the Morven street name was. He had grown up in a town on the Pee Dee River named the same. The south was deep there. He’d heard all the stories local whites like to tell. How slave barges were brought all the way up the river from the coast. How the best slaves were always taken in the towns south of Morven.

Prejudice leaves stains. Like a frame where you can change the picture but the frame is still there. A bitterness still burned in him to make things right, to stand up. 

After jail, things went well for a time. Money overcame reason though and he fell in with bad people pushing drugs. He never did but provided enforcement when needed. When the gang was arrested, he managed to evade. You are never at peace though when a warrant hangs over you.

Still he found odd jobs in Atlanta and other cities. The day always seem to come though when someone recognized him and shouted out “hey King Bird.” You just moved on and tried to start again. The runway doesn’t go for ever though.

You find yourself in some small dark apartment, with only the barest of life. You look out the window and smoke a cigarette. All on Morven Street, named after the place where the slave barge stopped.