Southern Nights by Barry Gifford

Author:Barry Gifford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: literary fiction, noir, novels, fiction books, fiction, literature, realistic fiction books, books fiction, short stories, anthology, american literature, classic, halloween, mystery, anthologies, collection, gothic, americana, art, marketing, music, king, dark, drugs, satire, western, southern, writing, postmodern, historical, essays, drama, philosophy, love, fairy tales, animals, dogs, magic, ghosts, school, costumes, crime, obsession, thriller, death, suspense, relationships, supernatural, werewolves, pulp fiction, appalachia, family
ISBN: 9781609808594
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2018-12-18T18:00:00+00:00

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO D

in the prison library, where he had worked for several months, Ice D had read in S. W. Harman’s book, Hell on the Border, about Rufus Buck, a black outlaw whose band of desperadoes terrorized Oklahoma and Arkansas during the middle part of the last decade of the nineteenth century. Buck and four members of his gang—Lewis and Lucky Davis, Sam Sampson, and Maoma July—were apprehended in August of 1895 and taken to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where they were formally charged with raping a white woman named Rosetta Hassan. Buck’s band had been hunted by a force of hundreds of men, including whites, Indians, and blacks. The outlaws’ trail of terror encompassed rape, residential burglary, horse theft, and highway robbery. Four women in all were violated sexually, one of them an Indian girl, who died. The white women survived and testified at the trial.

Ice D, whose reading matter heretofore had been limited to comic books and karate magazines, had heard El-Majik refer in one of his speeches to the ‘frame-up’ and subsequent execution of Rufus Buck and his men as an unjust action by whites against blacks. When a copy of Hell on the Border fell to the floor from one of the library carts, Ice D picked it up and the name Rufus Buck caught his eye. According to the author, Buck’s crimes, D learned, had been perpetrated on persons of all races; when it came to victims, the man did not discriminate. The convict began to suspect that El-Majik was not above manipulating the facts of history for his own purposes.

An item Ice D found fascinating was a strange poem Rufus Buck had written just before his execution on the back of a photograph of his mother he had always carried with him. Decorated with a cross and a drawing of Jesus Christ, the farewell poem impressed Ice D in a way he could not properly explain, even to himself. He had copied it from the book and kept it with him ever since. Before falling asleep in a cardboard box under a stairwell in an abandoned building on LaSalle Street the night he and Spit stole the pistols, Ice D lit a match and studied the poem for perhaps the fiftieth time.

My, dream,—1896

I, dreampt, I was, in, heaven,

Among, the, angels, fair;

i’d, near, seen, non, so handsome,

that, twine, in, golden, hair;

they, looked, so, neat, and, sang, so, sweet

and, play’d, the, golden harp,

i, was, about, to pick, an angel, out,

and, take, her, to my, heart;

but, the, moment, i, began, to plea,

i, thought, of, you, my love,

there, was none, i’d, seen, so, beautifull,

on, earth, or heaven, above,

good, bye, my, dear, wife, and, mother

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