The Galvin Hat, Part III. . .

(For Part I, click here)
(For Part II, click here)

The angry voice again, "I said who dat white boy, homes?"

Hearing those words was like a kick to the stomach. I was twisted in knots with tension, my heart pounding in my temples, tunnel vision closing in, I kept my eyes on Galvin's back as we marched forward towards the entrance. And hopefully, safety.

I never turned to look at who spoke and Galvin never acknowledged the comments as we made it to the door. Several scurrilous looking fellow were congregating in the parking lot, smoking, drinking and it felt, burning a hole in the back of my head. We kept moving.

There was a rather large individual guarding the doorway of the club which was bordered by two large windows allowing a glimpse inside. I could see masses of people and loud music thumped through the doorway. The bouncer made no mention of identification as we passed through and he bumped elbows with Galvin as he passed; cold, dark eyes for me. To the left of the door was a long counter and behind it, a gigantic, friendly-faced woman and a couple of men handing out beer and taking money.

Galvin stepped forward and greeted her with his toothy grin, "Hey Shirl, whassup you big momma!"

Shirley, it turned out was one half of the "S&B" and laughed as she replied, "Bigger is better for skinny little bonesacks like you! What can I get y'all to drink?"

Galvin grinned at me. "I'll take a Bud and my boy here, he'll have a. . ."

"Uh, a Heineken please ma'am," I stumbled.

"Ain't gots no Heineken. All we gots is Bud, Bud Light, King Cobra and Colt 45." she said.

"Bud'll be fine ma'am, thank you."

Shirley reached beneath the counter and pulled out two 40 ounce bottles of screwtop Budweiser from the ice. We paid and carried our giant bottles into the next room.

I was still suffering from a tremendously debilitating case of tunnel vision and I could only hope that everyone else's vision was just as poor as mine. I wanted to vanish into the darkest corner and just fade away, molecule by molecule. I was in, but now what?

Galvin and I forced our way through the dance floor, attempting to dodge the dense universe of wildly gyrating and thrusting, sweaty bodies. More than once, I made contact with a flowing hip and was sent hurtling into some other throbbing body. For a moment in my mind's eye, I sadistically imagined myself as a helpless pinball bouncing uncontrollably among the flippers and bumpers of a vast pinball machine racking up thousands of points. Yet, no one seemed to notice me even though I floundered and bounced my way over, through and around various body parts trying to escape the throbbing mass.

I orbited out the other side of the dancing, my beer sloshing, to find Galvin sitting at a table with three other men and no other seats available. As I approached timidly, one of the men rose and offered his seat with a smile. He stumbled away at odd angles with no particular destination in mind and I sat, bewildered, shaking and disturbed. From here it was an endless series of introductions to uncles and cousins whose names I would never remember and I'm sure I met everyone within earshot at least once, if not twice. And, wait a minute, didn't Galvin just introduce that guy as an uncle a while ago? Now he's Cousin Lamar? I guess it didn't matter.

What mattered in that moment was the beer in my hand. I needed it and I had no choice but to dive into the bubbly goodness with superhuman zeal in an attempt to retake my emotional faculties, which were on full speed ahead, red alert, uncontrollable autopilot. I put the giant bottle to my lips and chugged.

I slurped down the crisp, hoppy brew feverishly, my stomach stretching as the frothy liquid ounces flowed down. I let out a muffled belch, not that anyone could hear it over the ever-growing din of music and loud voices. My eyes watered and I wiped them dry to take a clearer look around.

The place was jumping for a Sunday night. The men were dressed to the nines in their ghetto-wear and the ladies looking crisp and shapely in too-tight blue jeans and occasional mu-mu top. I was beginning to come down from the precipice of high anxiety and the outlook was seemingly brighter. It no longer appeared, at least in my narrow mind, that I was going to be knifed, beat up, stomped or run out on a rail and shot to pieces in the street. My pulse steadied as I took in more of my beer.

Galvin and his "cuzuncles" were hooting and hollering about Lord knows what, but they seemed to be having a good time and were generally ignoring the white interloper that Galvin had brought along. And this was fine by me. I've never been the life of the party by any stretch of the imagination and in a case like this, far away from any comfortable element of security, I was quite content with clamming the hell up, observing the goings-on, and being largely ignored.

I took a few more draws of beer when Galvin wandered away from the table leaving me with, who was it? Uncle Lamar? Cousin Quentin? Who are these people?

I drank faster.

I was doing my best to remain invisible as I admired the incredible gyrations on the dance floor when I felt a huge hand clamp down heavily on my shoulder. I looked up to see a behemoth of a man wearing a fedora, a long, black trench coat with a purple satin shirt underneath and a brilliant, metallic smile. All teeth top and bottom were capped with gold and even in the dim, smoky darkness of the club they shone brightly emitting an eerie glow from his mouth.

"Lemme tell you sumthin' boy," he grunted. I craned my neck around looking up behind me at a crazy angle, nodding submissively in the affirmitive. "If any of dees muthafuckas messes wit' you, you lets me know. I gots yo back." And with that, he was gone, disappearing through the crowd on the dancefloor, untouched.

My mind erupted! "Who the hell was that! What is this place? I must be out of my mind coming in this joint! I'm getting the hell out of here! Does this place have a back door?"

Galvin appeared with another round of "forties" and sat down at the table just as I was about to run`away somewhere, anywhere. Agitated, I told him of my encounter. He feigned concern with a straight face, but couldn't contain himself any longer. He exploded with laughter!.

"Yeah man, dat's Boozie! Shirley's old man, he my cousin too! Ain't nothin' to worry about man, we got you. We got you."

I took the fresh beer from him and drained about half of the cold liquid. My nerves settled a little bit and I could feel the familiar numbness in my face from the alcohol. I was feeling better now, slightly, but still jumpy and the tightness in my stomach still twisting and clenching.

The men around the table continued to laugh; myself, a total wreck. A calamity of stone cold emotional breakdown on the inside, yet I felt for certain that my exterior exuded the same calm, cool and collected Brett. All I could do was drink. And I did. A lot.

Two and a half forty ounce Budweisers later I felt like a new man. My anxiety had waned and in the passing half hour or so I was making friends quick. The clients of the club, Galvin's friends and "family", all seemed genuinely delighted to meet me. My simple charm amplified by the beer, I even managed to make one of the two young women who joined us giggle with my wit. I was having a grand time and in my reverie I turned to Galvin, slapping a flailing arm around his neck and proclaming that the only difference between the white clubs and the black clubs was that, "they give y'all bigger bottles to fight with!"

Laughter!

Galvin turned to me and to this day I'll swear with a tiny tear in his eye, put his arm around me and said, "Bricks, you da best friend a drunk ol' nigga ever had. Take this."

He reached up, pulled of his ugly, corded ski cap and handed it to me.

"I want you to have this," he said.

Our friendship was cemented right then and there as I put on his ugly hat.

I didn't know what time it was and frankly didn't care by then, but Galvin decided we need to leave and in retrospect, I later realized he was saving me the embarrassment of trying to dance with one of the girls in our company. He must have overheard my reply to the young lady's question about whether I could dance or not. My exact words, painfully remembered, were, "I can shake my booty."

Galvin seized me by the arm, navigated us through the dance floor notably easier than when we arrived, bidding fairwell to Shirley, Boozie, a gaggle of my new friends who's names I couldn't remember and out the door we went.

Galvin and I staggered through the parking lot, around the corner to the car and slumped ourselves inside. Galvin, always the good friend, offered to drive. I waved him off with a chuckle; he didn't have a license anyway. I felt good. Not just from the beer, but from the friendship, the camaraderie and the togetherness. I had overcome a great fear and there was nothing to it. They were people too, sociable, out for a good time, inviting and without discrimination.

I started the car and began to back up through the dark parking lot when a short gentlemen close to sixty years of age stumbled over to Galvin's window making a roll down motion with his arm. I stopped the car and the glassy eyed man spoke, "G, roll yo glasses down." Galvin lowered the window.

"G, I needs me a ride home man, can I go wit you?" Glavin turned and asked if we could give a ride to his cousin, he lived in the same complex. I agreed reluctantly and the inebriated fellow climbed in the back seat, sat directly in the middle of the seat with his feet on the hump. He mumbled something incoherent that I ignored and we were on our way.

I pulled out on the main street and kept an eye on our passenger in the rear view mirror. I couldn't see what he was doing, but I kept hearing the rattling of plastic. I had to remind myself to watch the road and guided our way down the deserted street through one blurry eye. I was being mindful of the speed and of keeping the car straight down the road. Galvin reminded me to make a right turn at the four-way stop ahead.

As we approached the stop sign, a police car glided up to the stop sign from the right. My heart sank into my stomach at the sight of the police cruiser and a tiny voice in my head was thinking, "One white guy, two black guys, nice car, ghetto, bad."

I kept hearing that over and over as we rolled to a stop. The police officer had the right-of-way to go, but he didn't, forcing me to turn. And after a complete stop I did. We turned right and he didn't even look at us as we passed him. As we drove away I felt an anvil's worth of weight lifting from my shoulders as I saw the policeman move forward as if to drive away, that is until he spun his car around in the intersection, flipped on his lights and sped towards us.

"Oh fuck," I blurted.

"Keep cool, keep cool Bricks, you didn't do nothing, you didn't do nothing," Galvin reassured.

Cuzuncle no-name in the back seat, fumbling with his plastic rapidly, starting hurling insane obscenities telling me to outrun the police, which in the moment didn't seem like such a bad idea, but I knew inside I wasn't doing any such thing. We were done. It was over.

The police car roared up behind us, squawking the siren as the blue lights coated us with a sickening, strobing beat; the spotlight pointed in the sideview mirror blinding me. I eased the car over and stopped. My heart was racing and putrid waves of nausea were washing over my entire body. Galvin remained calm and Cuzuncle no-name stopped with the plastic noise.

The cop stepped out and walked towards the car. I rolled the window down.

"Let me see your license," he said flatly as he shined his flashlight in our faces and around the interior of the car. My hands rumbling with fear I produced my license from my wallet and gave it to the officer. He studied it for a moment and said nothing, continuing his search of the car and our faces with his light.

"Mr. Brett, do you know these gentlemen in your car?

"Of course I do, this is my friend Galvin and his uncle."

The cop chuckled, "Yes, I know Galvin, but I don't seem to know this fellow back here. Glavin, is this your uncle?"

Galvin responded with his toothy grin, "Well, you see, he's mo like a cousin. You know how it is."

"Indeed I do." He grabbed his walkie-talkie mic and spoke some police jargon about a potential 10-55 and 502, assistance needed.

The officer switched the flashlight from face to face calmly.

"Where y'all going?"

I explained to him our evening of food, family and quick jaunt to S&B's for a beer or two, nothing special, just going home.

"How much have you had to drink?"

Oh, the dreaded question. I thought fast for a simple lie, but I felt my world slipping away and said, "I've had a few."

"Step out of the car please."

Please Lord, please Lord, please Lord. . .

(to be continued)

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The Galvin Hat, Part II. . .

(For Part I, click here)

Galvin turned to me as he flipped a few steaks around and spoke casually, "Bricks," which was how he pronounced my name, "You need to come on up wit me in my club."

I turned, frozen, a handful of hot fries for a plate sizzling in my fingers, "Well, uh, that's nice of you and all, but uh. . ."

Galvin smiled through his crooked teeth, continuing to work his steaks around the grill, marking them on the hot spots and finishing them on the cooler spots. He stared straight ahead at the tiled wall behind the grills as if seeing right through it.

"Yeah man, come on over to the house on Sunday, we can have dinner with the family, I'll cook, then we'll skip on down to S&B's nightclub and have a few beers," he said.

My mind was going a million miles a minute. How in the hell was I going to get out of this? I formulated and destroyed volumes of excuses by the second, felt lousy for doing so, but I simply couldn't fathom walking up into an all-black nightclub with Galvin. I knew S&B's club. So, did the cops. Talk about standing out in a crowd. A tall, skinny, 130 pound wet weight, white boy had no business going into S&B's Nightclub.

Profusely, I made some lousy excuse about being busy, when Galvin cut his eyes to me with a sharp grin, "You ain't got nothing to worry about. You're my boy, ain't nobody gonna fuck wit you up in there! You have my word."

I couldn't refuse. I'd be a hypocrite, and a miserable excuse for a friend if I backed out, even though my rational mind told me that going to S&B's was a bad idea. The deal was sealed. Our friendship ruled and I was at the mercy of the judgement.

The next few days were like always. Tiny little dramas played out on the small stage of our restaurant. Shondra came to work trying to scalp her food stamps. Maggie, the head chef, raising hell because the meat order was wrong. James, the butcher, hiding out in the butcher's room, cutting meat, and staying away from the 'heat' of the kitchen, mainly Maggie's wrath. Galvin and I sweating over the hot line. I tried not to think of what the future held for Sunday or let my mind work itself up with it's wild, fantastical acts that play out in my skullbone daily.

Sunday finally came. I sat on my old couch in my shabby little apartment dreading the evening. And I hated myself for it. This should be a happy time, a good time with a good friend who was kind enough to invite me into his home and life. I was going to meet his kids and his wife, who I had only seen from a distance, waving every time as I backed out of the apartment's parking lot.

I felt like a shithead. I grabbed my 12-pack of Heineken, the 12-pack of Bud for Galvin and headed out the door, to the ghetto, to the great unknown. I felt sick and shameful.

I turned into Galvin's apartment complex and I could see his kids running around in the common area between two of the battered apartment buildings. His wife, Doreen, a beautiful and sedate woman, a christian, and the obvious rock of the family that everyone leaned upon, sat at the bottom of a stairwell, silently watching her children dart about.

His kids dashed over to me as I got out of the truck, "Hey Mr. Brett," the youngest two screamed in unison. The oldest son, aged about 13, quietly took one of the boxes of beer. He must take after his mother.

Galvin greeted me at the doorway, inviting me in and making sure all of my needs were accounted for. His children were well-behaved and his wife, natural in her homemaking, was setting the table and preparing for dinner.

I sat at the dinner table pushed up against the long wall near the kitchen where I could see everything in the kitchen. Galvin had an apron on and was tending to some braised pork in the oven. He had also prepared turnips greens, scalloped potatoes, cornbread and sweet potato pie.

We chatted and drank beer, laughed and played with the children. I could see that Galvin had been in the sauce pretty well, but no one seemed to mind, and now, in retrospect, I realize they were simply used to the drinking.

Dinner was fabulous, well-seasoned, and cooked perfectly. The pork turned out to be shoulder that Galvin braised in beer, a little whiskey, sage and something I couldn't place. I asked him for the secret, but he never divulged. I remembered this flavor years later when I was recounting some wild story of misadventures as a teen in Jamaica when my mother was in the Peace Corps there. It occurred to me that the flavor was pimento or what we commonly call allspice. The subtlety of it in Galvin's pork was mind-bending. Aromatic, sharp but sweet, savory and mild all in the same and in a instant, gone.

The sweet tea we drank with dinner was just how I liked it, not so sweet that your tooth enamel melted immediately upon contact, but blended perfectly so you could still taste the slight astringency of the tea. An excellent palette cleanser for such a heavy meal.

After dinner, the kids retreated to their rooms as Galvin, Doreen and I sat around the kitchen table, our bellies protruding, stupid smirks of satisfaction on our faces. Our conversations drifted wildly between my stories of childhood and their own, some of the troubles Doreen and Galvin have had with his drinking and pleasant memories of their children whom are fine, behaved kids growing up under tough circumstances.

Then, the whiskey bottle came out. Doreen excused herself and Galvin and I drank from the bottle, pulling long draws of the amber liquor between cigarette drags. We chatted as the whiskey set our full bellies on fire. A heavy, caustic digestive, but when in Rome. . .

My teeth began to feel numb with my brain not too far behind, and my stomach twisted in a knot from the burning whiskey, the heavy food, but mostly from the dreaded anticipation of our departure.

I was scared.

"Galvin," I asked, "are you sure everything is gonna be ok with me going up in this place?"

He stood up and moved over to my side of the table, grabbed my by the shoulder and promised, "Ain't no nigga gonna mess wit you up in there. I knows all them folks and they knows me. And that's it."

With that, we were out the door. The hot, whiskey soaked blood that had once been coursing through my body now sat cold and thick in my feet.

We got in the car, my sister's car which I had borrowed, and turned out of the complex towards S&B's. In my heart I was hoping that it would be a long drive and that when we arrived at 8:00 p.m. on a Sunday night, there wouldn't be much of a crowd. In both cases, I was sadly disappointed.

A four minute drive and when we arrived, there were scads of people spilling out of the building and dozens milling around the parking lot. On the surface, it couldn't have been a worse situation.

Galvin and I pulled around to the side of the building, sat in the car for a minute or two and with a last deep breath of desperation I opened the door and out we went. I walked behind Galvin and as we turned the corner of the building I felt a hundred eyes burning a hole into me. My skin tingled and flushed, my heart raced and I sweated. I heard from behind me a strange and angry voice, "Hey, who dat white boy?"

"Oh Lord. . ."

(. . .to be continued)

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The Galvin Hat, Part I. . .

Behold, the Galvin hat!


I had a friend many years ago, a co-worker, a brother in arms in the kitchen named Galvin. Galvin was a lean, lanky, sunken-eyed, black man who couldn't have been more than five years older than myself. He and I worked together in one of those steakhouses where you line up with a tray, order your steak by number and select your dessert from the plastic-wrapped slices of lemon meringue or chocolate pie. On occasion we had peach cobbler.

Galvin was a long time cook, a longer time drunk, but a family man also. For heaven's sake, he rode a bicycle several miles to and from work to provide for his family. And his habit too, I suppose. Yet, at least he was holding down a job and making a living, which was much more than some people who worked at our restaurant could claim. A lot of them, out of wedlock mothers, welfare recipients, Section 8 dwellers, would come to work just long enough to qualify for unemployment benefits and then get themselves fired for some reason or another to get more free money.

My buddy Galvin, on the other hand, showed up for work every day and even though he had to sneak off the line during the middle of service to take a few draws from his whiskey bottle he stashed in the bushes, I could always rely on him when the going got tough in the kitchen.

As with all new jobs, the first few days were difficult as the new guy never knows where everything is; most effort wasted trying to learn and remember the location of everything. Galvin was cool to me at first, simple utterances to do stuff, not much conversation. Finally after a few days passed and I was beginning to hold my own as his prep/fry cook, he turned to me out of the blue and asked, "Are you a racist?"

I thought about that for a second, and after a minute of staring emptily at Galvin I responded, "Yeah, I'm a fucking racist. I hate everybody." Galvin's face seized up in surprise and then he let out a huge guffaw, followed by loud hooting and hollering as he danced around in laughter. I guess that broke our tension, if there ever was any.

From then on, Galvin and I made it along famously. We'd plow through our work daily, delicately grilling the #9, the #22 and the tasty #13. Every now and then, we'd intentionally screw up a #3 so we'd be assured of a night's meal to nibble on. He did the grilling and I did the frying, salads, and plating. We had some damn good times and could hammer out a couple hundred steaks or more without much trouble. Well, as long as Galvin had his bottle. Some days he didn't and the work was usually disastrous.

Every now and then after work, particularly the night shift, we'd toss his bike in the back of my pickup and I'd give him a ride home. We always got a couple of 40oz bottles of beer on the way and Galvin began to open up to me about his life.

He had three kids and a beautiful soft-spoken wife. His life had been one disaster after another, drugs, alcohol, countless incursions with the law, time in the county lockup. This explained his bicycle. I think the court has taken his license away for some considerable length of time and for as long as I knew him, he biked everywhere.

And I mean EVERYWHERE.

I'd see Galvin all over, many miles from home. Out at the new mall on the other side of town. Up around north Hattiesburg where he had some family. And of course, on his way to and from work. Some days he declined the offer for a ride home and I suspected that it was he had another woman. Or maybe it was drugs. He'd leave at night sometimes going in the opposite direction from his apartment, but how could I judge him. I never asked either.

As time went on and we had our after-work beer together, we'd get into long, rambling discussions about politics, life, women and invariably, race. Just as he had no idea what's it's like to be white, I had and still have no conception of the life of a black person. Especially a black in a place like Mississippi with such a sordid and violent past concerning race relations.

He would share anecdotes of blatant, anti-black racism and I could share my own versions of the reverse negative. We would laugh, scowl or chastise our respective race as required and in the end we agreed that we were far more alike than different. As best I could tell, our whiteness or blackness mattered nothing to us. We were just two men, struggling to earn a wage and trying our best to survive.

We had needs, we had families, we had problems. Just like everyone.

One evening at work, I invited Galvin to come with my friends and I out to our favorite dance club. All my friends knew Galvin, not personally, but from the stories I shared of our work life together. He was a figure of legend to them. Hammering out steaks in a flash and swilling whiskey by the bottle was Galvin. They, as much as me, wanted him to come along.

Galvin at first was skeptical of my offer and I could tell, a bit apprehensive. I can only speculate that in his mind he imagined a room full of burly rednecks, whoopin' and hollerin', half of them smashing each other over the head with whiskey bottles and the other half tying up nooses in the corner. Who knew what he thought, but I talked him into it anyway. He bravely went where he thought no black man had gone before.

We walked inside the club, Senor Frogs, and the surprise was evident as he saw hundreds of people milling about, throngs of them throbbing and gyrating on the dance floor, gaggles of them lined up at the bar. And not a bar full of burly rednecks, but a fair cross-section of the USM campus present; blacks, whites, Latinos, east Indians, even a one-armed girl who was just to die for.

And boy, once the tension wore off, we proceeded to drink. And drink. And drink.

I don't remember taking Galvin home, maybe a faint memory of him falling out of the truck. I do remember the next day, both of us sick, queasy and moving in slow-motion. We laughed about our great night together and pieced together the parts each of us could remember. Me dancing with the one-armed girl, Galvin doin' the humpty with some big sista! Man, it was a time and I don't think Galvin sneaked outside once that day. He had finally had enough for once.

And then, the inevitable happened.

Galvin invited me to his club.

(. . .to be continued)

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