HATTIE McDANIEL'S GRAVE by lou bardel
I walked down Adams Boulevard, past the Black faces, some of whom were very surprised to see me. The girls were beautiful. Some wore heels and leaned into car windows talking to men. A couple of guys huddled on the corner but didn’t pay me no mind.
I walked into this place called The Time Zone. The neon sign was bright red and had a martini glass tipping over.
The place wasn’t too crowded. I looked around for a good spot to sit.
She was tall with a big butt. Café au lait colored and if she lived down in N’Awlins she’d be called Creole. She peered at me over her glasses as I sidled up next to her at the bar.
I wasn’t dressed to impress. I was down on my luck. Bills were piling up. All I wanted was a stiff drink. I had enough money in my pocket to get drunk.
I lit up a cigarette and puffed hard. I liked the way a cigarette went down with a drink.
It was about that time that she talked to me.
“What are you smoking?”
“Kools.”
“Can I have one?”
I smiled at her and opened the box in her direction. She held my hand and reached in to take one. Her hands were soft and gave me a chill. They were warm. Her fingernails were polished perfectly red. She smelled good too.
I lit the cigarette for her.
We talked for a good long time. She listened to me intently. Sometimes she’d put her hand on my lap and look directly into my eyes. She made me feel like a man.
I bought her another drink. I bought us another pack of Kools and we smoked the night away.
“You know my great-grandma was Hattie McDaniel,” she told me as the clock hit about 1:30 AM.
“Who?”
“Did you ever watch Gone with the Wind?”
“Nah. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
She laughed, knowing that I was playing on Clark Gable’s famous line.
“Yeah, she’s the family’s pride and joy.”
“What did she do?”
“She won the Academy Award. She was an actress in that movie”
By this time Sheryll, that was her name, was starting to get tipsy. She was starting to whisper into my ear. I could feel the tender wetness of her lips touching my ear.
“You know, they said she died penniless. But that’s not true,” she said. “She didn’t want to pay taxes.”
“Really.”
“Yeahhhh.”
“What did she do?”
“She buried it with her.”
“What?”
“Cash, jewels, gold. You name it.”
“Why’d she bury all that stuff with her?”
“She left strict instructions with her husband what to do. See….”
I was hanging on her every word. I was poor and talk about buried treasure made my ears perk up. But she was really getting drunk. The crowd in the bar wasn’t getting any quieter either. The place was packed to the gills now. People were hooting and hollering, singing and drinking. One young lady got up and stood on top of the bar, raised her hands up and danced a slow groove, much to the delight of the men around her.
Sherryl started laughing.
“Go ‘head, baby!”
“What’s the matter, boy, you don’t dance?” she asked me.
“Finish your story.”
“Which one? ‘Cause I got lots of stories.”
She laughed hard at her own jokes. Her laugh was raspy. She lit up another cigarette. Then miraculously she started to talk again.
“See, just before she died she changed her will. She only left her husband Larry a penny. One red cent. She knew they were gonna bury her in Rosedale, over by Normandie and Washington, but eventually she was gonna be moved to Hollywood Forever so she could be buried next to Rudy Valentino.”
“Why bury her twice?”
“ ‘Cause the White people didn’t let her into Hollywood Forever. Actually it was the owner, guy by the name of Lasalle, didn’t like Blacks. But somebody promised her they’d get her into Hollywood Forever. The plan was to get all the stuff out of her casket when they moved her, you see?”
By this time my head was spinning. I could only focus on how pretty she looked. I felt like an animal and my blood was coursing through my veins. My hand was resting on her ample thigh. I tried to kiss her. She pulled back slightly out of reach.
“You need to buy me another drink, boy.”
I reached into my empty pockets. I was empty like the gas tank of a car stuck out in the desert. Another man moved in to talk to her. She held onto him like she knew him. He glanced at me like I was yesterday’s trash. I watched her walk out with him too. She never said goodbye. She just left me with this crazy story about Hattie McDaniel’s grave.
PART II
A blue moon shines.
The sidewalk doesn’t forgive my stumbling. In the distance is a neon sign, a hazy red sign that says “SUSHI”.
My friends, I am royally drunk.
I crawl from one stray neon sign to the next, or fall towards the beacon of a lonely streetlamp.
I crawl up the stairs to my apartment.
Inside feels like an oven in a concentration camp so I rip off all my clothes, standing in the center of the room like a wild banshee.
Looking back now at how I used to live, it is a wonder how I survived. Did you ever look back and wonder? It’s funny but I can recall this story with striking clarity and feel it in my bones…
I lunge my head out of the bathroom window for fresh air.
Fire running down the San Gabriel Mountains – reddish, orange and wild like hair blowing in the wind.
I collapse into my bed...the bed sheets cool my skin.
I light my last Kool.
“Fuck off, apocalypse!”
Walls blur with the furniture. Smoke runs down my throat.
The orange tip has reached the filter. I'm throwing my hand into the ashtray, hoping for the best.
Eyes closing. Black, dreamless oblivion...
Holy shit! The sun. My nose burns. Cough. Cough. Cough.
I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.
My thoughts running to the woman from the bar...
“What was her name?”
I close my eyes.
I had been coming up empty for weeks, hadn’t sold a single piece of writing, and not recalling her name irritated me.
It was useless to think...
I fall to the floor. I look around the hopeless room.
I feel a twitch in my skull: HATTIE McDANIEL'S GRAVE
I lust for the coins and the stacks of cash buried next to her corpse.
I pull myself up to the window, peer out.
Skies over San Gabriel Mountains choke with smoke. Angelus Forest's been burning for the last two weeks.
I am numb.
Every year brings new flame.
Can one ever be passe about being surrounded by fire like an Angeleno is?
L.A. resembles Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Was this a bad time to go to the cemetery and search for Hattie McDaniel’s grave? What would I do if I found it? Would I actually rob a grave and take the gold and the jewels and whatever else was supposedly in the casket?
I pull on my pants, lace up my sneakers. I find an old t-shirt, grab my jacket and head out the door.
I walk along Washington Boulevard to the cemetery, interrogating myself.
“What the hell am I doing?”
“What was the name of that lady from the bar?”
“A-B-C-D-E….Q-R-S…Shaylene? Sheyla? Shirley?”
I'm running through all the letters of the alphabet, an old memory trick my Grandpa showed me when I was small.
“Sheryll!”
Not that her name means anything to me because I doubt I’ll ever see her sweet fat ass again.
Fires burning, the northern skies black as coal, but strangely the sun down here in Mid-City shines bright.
Cemetery gates. Wide open. No one is minding the place. Giant palm trees along the main road. My feet slipping in the dew-wet brown grass.
A hundred graves of children no more than five resting in peace... They all died in 1888.
I mosey. I don’t know where Hattie is.
"What, who the hell is he?"
Crouching on the ground before a grave, a thin man turning to look at me. Face is ancient, Asian. He's puffing on a cig. The smoke swirls from his mouth as if coming up from hell. I try not to stumble. I'm feeling paralyzed.
His crow's eyes are black as coal. He's staring directly into my brain, dissecting me. He knows I am down on my luck, a pauper, a wannabe pirate.
Down by his feet lay about twenty cigs. He takes a few puffs, puts it out on the grave. The name on the headstone reads KONG.
I'm moving on, pulling myself from the lock I have on his face.
I determine to walk up and down each row of graves until I come upon the one that reads McDaniel.
The cool morning air is turning hot fast so I take off my jacket. Sweat beading up on my brow. Finally...a pyramid-shaped crypt.
Hattie's Crypt
Gates locked. A bright pink and orange “GESO” is spraypainted on the crypt’s fine black marble. . Two Ionic pillars frame the entrance. Peer inside...
"Ahhhhh!" My eyes burn. I snap back.
Peer back in…"Ahhhhhhhh!!!"....a blinding light.
“I wouldn’t be doing that if I were you!” says a loud shrill voice as I fall to the floor.
A weird guy stands in front of me, reddish, with a beard and spaces between all his teeth. His fingernails are kind of long too, but very clean.
“They call me Coffin Joe,” he says.
“Why can’t I look in there?”
“Because that there is Hattie McDaniel’s grave and any damn fool knows that crypt is cursed with voodoo. Why you’re lucky you’re not blind right now!”
“I’m a big fan of hers”.
“Uh huh, I’ve heard that one before.”
“What? Who are you?”
“I’m the caretaker. Let me guess, some pretty lady with a sweet fat ass told you about this place.”
“Yeah…that’s true.”
Coffin Joe is wheezing with laughter.
“Boy, you must be about the tenth damn fool to come over here looking for the buried treasure inside Hattie’s grave.”
“Shut up! Just shut up!”
The world spins around me, nothing is real.
“Good luck, sonny. Say, what you know about voodoo?”
“Not much.”
“Now, son, I suggest you keep it that way. You hear me?”
“I guess.”
“I’ma head over to the crematory. They burned up a bunch of bodies last night. Most of the time you don’t find nothing but a bunch of screws and teeth and glass frames, but sometimes you discover a buried treasure. Yeah, I know it is a biohazard sifting through the dust of the dead, but I’ve found old coins and civil war buttons, all kind of shit.”
“Have fun.”
“No, you be careful! I suggest you get outta here!”
And with that Coffin Joe walks off.
I get up off the ground. I walk over to Hattie’s crypt. I pull on the padlock. It opens.
"I’ll be back tonight".
To be continued...
