Holy Day

In the early evening of 21 January, in the Year of Our Lord 2008, this truly happened.

My windshield was filthy from the things the winter road had splashed on it, and my windshield wiper fluid was empty. On the way home, I stopped at a convenience store to pick up a gallon of the blue stuff. There were several people in line ahead of me, and I watched them as I waited my turn.

The customer who really nabbed my attention was a young Negro, about 30 years old. His height and weight were average, but his hairstyle was not. He had those...things, things whose nomenclature is uncertain to me. Not cornrows...they weren’t braided. Not real dreadlocks...they were too small in diameter and too smooth. About as big around as a pencil, they were mostly black, but near the tips, they became a sickly yellowish brown, the same color one encounters when one opens a straining newborn’s diaper. Whatever the hair things are named, they made the Negro look as if he were wearing some horrific sea anemone on his skull.

He had a six-pack of malt liquor in his hand. When he approached the young (White) cashier, he thumped the six-pack onto the counter and stared at the employee. The young White man asked, “How’re you doing?” but received no reply from the Negro. Then the cashier asked, “What’s your birthday?” The Negro mumbled something, and the cashier punched the numbers into the cash register. I looked hard at the sign on the counter: “State law requires that we ID everyone who buys beer or tobacco products.” So is asking a birthday considered ‘IDing’ someone? I wondered.

The cashier announced a total, collected a bill from the customer, handed back some change, and said, “Thank you. Have a good evening.” The Negro never acknowledged the young White man; he turned and sauntered out of the store (one wishes for a more appropriate verb than “sauntered” when describing young Negroes - the common English word doesn’t quite capture the insolence and menace in their body movements).

A couple more customers paid for their purchases, and then the woman two customers in front of me was on deck. The middle-aged Negress placed a twelve-pack of beer and a six-pack of wine coolers on the counter and then asked for a pack of menthol cigarettes. I watched as the cashier greeted her (and was ignored), asked for her birthday, and poked the date into the cash register’s brain. The total was rung up and announced, the money was produced, the change was presented, the purchase was bagged up, the “Thank you, have a good evening” was offered (and ignored), and the Negress made her egress.

When the cashier began waiting on the man just in front of me, I ducked over to the beer cooler and took out a six-pack of cheap beer and then returned to my place at the end of the line before someone cut in front of me. The cashier was just finishing up his gas transaction with the customer, and then it was my turn. I was staring at the sign. I had read it correctly the first time. “State law requires that we ID everyone who buys beer or tobacco products.”

I put my jug of windshield cleaner on the counter and then set the beer next to it. The clerk didn’t smile at me or speak to me. He scanned the jug of blue fluid, set it aside, then picked up the beer. He looked at me.

“Can I see your ID?”

Ah, yes. “Sure, you can,” I said. “But could you tell me why you didn’t ask for the ID of the last two customers ahead of me who bought beer? Or cigarettes?”

The clerk flicked his gaze toward the door, then looked down at the beer. “I can’t sell you the beer without an ID.”

I held up my wallet. “I didn’t refuse to show you my ID, okay? I asked you why you didn’t ask for the ID of the two black people who bought beer and cigarettes just ahead of me.”

He never blinked. “Can I see your ID, then?”

I put my wallet back in my pocket and pushed the wiper fluid and the beer towards the young man. “Never mind,” I said. “I don’t want it anymore. But I bet I can answer my own question.”

No reply, no movement, not even much of a breath from the kid.

I finished my business. “I’ll bet you didn’t card those two because you’re worried that some African-American will just go off on you if you inconvenience him. But you don’t worry about that kind of thing from someone like me. Right?”

No reply, no movement, not even much of a breath from the kid.

When I left the store, I made sure to note the street address. I was mentally composing my letter of complaint. I was thinking of the death of nations. I was musing about how Lincoln’s armies had lived to make men free, and how Lincoln’s heirs had ensured that all men would one day be free of the memory of my noble ancestors. And I was remembering a man who was born some years ago on this day.

His name was Thomas J. Jackson.

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