Aunt Bee told us why my daddy
killed the man in the bar, too.
I guess once secrets start coming out
they all get easier to tell.
My daddy’s best friend, Dave,
went on record to say the bartender
at the bar he and my daddy went to
the night my daddy died
refused to give Dave a drink
on account of his skin color.
The bartender was a white man.
My daddy told him,
Well, that ain’t right.
Black men deserve a drink
just the same as any white man.
What’s it matter what color his skin is?
This made some other
white men in the bar mad.
The bartender told my daddy
and Dave to leave the bar,
since he didn’t want any trouble.
But my daddy made
trouble anyway.
threatened Dave, said they’d
kill him if he didn’t get on out
and find himself a bar
that served his kind.
Aunt Bee said they’d probably
had too much to drink,
and that’s why they talked about killing.
But her eyes looked like
she didn’t quite believe it.
One of the white men
pulled a gun and pointed it at Dave,
and my daddy snapped, beat him up,
and then ran for his life.
Dave found my daddy’s tangled-up car
and the holes in his chest
and then he ran, too,
without telling anybody what he saw,
since he knew exactly what the police
would think if they found him beside
a white man who’d been shot.
best friend. My daddy died
defending his best friend.
It feels good to know that.