THE JOLLY LOANSHARK


THE JOLLY LOANSHARK


The second time I met
Tyrone Delphinius Jackson
he was crawling out of
a bar I was crawling into

Ever after we would argue over
whether it was a white bar with
black customers or a black bar
with white bartenders but

we agreed that the house trio
would be playing their satiny
modern jazz in a better burg
than Liberty New York if

the horn man hadn't been
putting his lips to glass
as often as brass

I spent a full minute
which only lasts ten seconds
when you're blasted
watching an ebony face
stare into both of our
fuzzy memories

"I know you" he mused in
that river soft voice common
to philosophers contemplating
the existential significance
of their fourth whiskey
"Tuscatani County Jail"

We leaned across the light
spilling from the barroom door
shook hands and stood up
offering one another anchors
against the wobbling sidewalk

		* * *

Ty spent eighteen months in stir
seven days of that with me
for cutting open a white chest in
a white bar in a white redneck town
two thousand miles from the streets
and scenes of his hometown Harlem

until the man who owned the chest
confessed on his deathbed that
he'd started it and didn't want
to see anybody else going down
for his own sloppy left guard

So they cut Ty loose on
a claim of self-defense
then he shaved his head
stuck a gold pirate's ring
in his left ear and took off
for better ports of call

As a weightlifter blessed
with steel-steady nerves
and cursed with a quick wit
Ty liked tweaking folks noses
with their own tweezers

Once in a Kentucky truck stop
he turned to a farm boy who was
cussing out the waitress and said

"you know young man I nearly
understood what you were saying
perchance do you have any
royal African blood in you?"

That was back when he drove
a suped-up '76 Mustang that went
from 0-60 before you could say
"let's get the dogs Clem"

		* * *

I really needed a job and
our midnight porter shift
at the Liberty Resort Hotel
was only a paycheck

But Ty and I had some
cash in our pockets and
knew too many co-workers
who drank up their checks
before the next ones arrived

since the only thing
big city boys can do
in the Southern Catskills
is drink gamble fight and
at least try to chase women

So we went into the
loansharking business

Small-time and strictly civilized
we never loaned more than we felt
safe carrying in our pockets

and at Ty's insistence never
broke a late customer's kneecaps
simply loaning it back at our
regular 100% weekly interest
and damming up the gravy train

In a discreet and serious industry
Ty kept hitting me over the head
with the big wads of cash we
might have made if I hadn't
enjoyed my work so much

always chatting up the business
with customers too nervous to
stop smiling and nodding at my
jolly little white boy jokes
and eventually that's what
they ended up calling me
The Jolly Loanshark

Lady Luck rarely smiles for long
so we finally lost our nest egg
when T-Bone Stewart won
fifteen hundred at low-ball
then split for the Delta

Of course Ty just figured that Jesus
had it planned but wasn't talking
while I figured that Big Mama was
telling me to stick to straight jobs

		* * *

Ty wore a small gold cross
around his thick neck
which is the main reason why
he never broke any kneecaps

and one of the reasons why he
turned down a marriage proposal
from a young redheaded widow
with half a million in bonds

the other reason being
pirates don't marry
they just brag about
the battles they've won

I remember sitting outside
of the porter's bunkhouse
watching the trees grow with Ty
and with Lionel the ex-boxer
and Old Mister Parker who still
loved the late Old Mrs. Parker

all expatriates from Harlem
hearing them sort out who
died of a bad liver at twenty
got thrown off a roof at thirty
or got himself sent up the river
for fifty years at forty which
they figure is the same as dying

of how when you reach forty you
look around the neighborhood and
realize you're the only one left

of how the youth gangs in the 50's
fought with chains pipes blades fists
but never guns because that's when
the cops took a big interest in you

of how some Irish boys
(or was it the Italians)
once stopped a city bus
filled with blacks
and set it on fire

and I mused how funny it was
that I'd read all about freeing
the slaves but I'd never heard
this story before and they just
smiled oh so silently at hearing 
the blonde kid learn his ABC's

		*  *  *

The last time I saw
Tyrone Delphinius Jackson
was a thousand miles and
as many lines of verse away

"So God bless you Jolly and
please don't make any more loans"

"May the moon light your way Ty
and cover your tracks too"

He had taken to dealing
weed and I had taken to
no longer smoking it

"You still doing that Pagan trip?"

"Yea Jesus Man we dig our Mama"

but we still stood on
common ground because
we both still traveled and
had both lost twenty pounds
we couldn't afford to lose

"Well I'll tell Papa I saw you"

and we always seemed to meet
where shadows boxed and prayed
in that midnight hour where
the darkness had forgotten
the dawn

and because we would
always have to wonder if
we would ever meet again
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