Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

From ‘Blowin’ the Blues'

#When a woman gets the blues, she hangs her head and cries, when a man gets the blues, he boards a train and rides ... # (traditional blues song, author unknown)

Down in the Deep South, it can take three days to even SEE a train going through a station. Let alone have one stop there.

I guess his story started on that fateful night back in sixty-three. Someone had just killed Kennedy. John F, that is. He was shot while driving in a motor cavalcade down in Dallas. It sparked off a whole lot of conspiracy theories for decades to come. Even after the death of J.Edgar. Maybe he took the truth to the grave with him! Who knows?
I never really knew him then; I was but a little picca ninny on my momma’s knee, down on the plantation.  Barely finished suckling on her teaties. Papa said he was ‘nothing but a no-good nigre,’ and wouldn’t mount to a pile of beans. Just goes to show how wrong some people can be.

Sometimes Life can deal people a low card.
With him it had thrown away the rest of the pack and was only using a deck of deuces and threes with an occasional four. And it wasn't shuffling them, too well or too often.

He was what the white folk call 'coloured' not 'Black'. A mulatto and an albino one to boot. It was probably down to the unfortunate circumstances of his conception. His mother was 'Red' from Rhode Island. An 'easy lay' or so they say. But that was no good reason for her being gang-raped on the streets of Harlem now, was it?
His startling appearance often provoked a strange reaction in most people. Raised eyebrows, spinal shudder and shoulder shrug of revulsion, or a sharp intake of breath on initial sighting were common.

Standing a shade under seven feet, even with the stooping shoulders and strange way of holding his head slightly forward and lent to the left. Developed from years of attempting to listen with his good ear to what lesser sized folk were trying to tell him. His two hundred and sixty pound plus of bone and sinew barely covered by his leathery weather-wizened skin that had been exposed to the extremes of the elements for far too long. 
Long days of toiling at whatever work he could get. Bitterly cold nights spent in any shelter he could find. There wasn't any fat on that frame. Thirty-seven years of constant shortage of food had seen to that.
Cody Jarrel, cut a vision once seen, that few would forget easily. If ever....

Cody sat slowly drinking the dregs from the bottom of the empty bottles left by paying patrons of the bar.
He shuddered so violently, it wracked his frame to it's very core.
Sheltering on the back-stoop of the Shanty Shack, from the rain that had been incessant in its task of soaking him while he tried to seek some sleep to rest his weary body throughout last night.
It had succeeded, so he let out another shiver that clinked his spine.
Down in the doldrums, yet again, the future was looking real bad for him. And little did he realise it then, but it was going to get even worse before it could get better. Much worse.


Dusti Rodes (2007)