Nathan Phuong, “100% Cotton”

Inspired by Nathaniel Rich’s February 8, 2017 New York Times Magazine article “The Preacher and the Sheriff”

his name was Victor White, black

whose great-grandmother watched fluffy white

pods float by as she ached cotton

from the sweaty soil of a white man’s plantation. he

lived in New Iberia, Louisiana, a town where

‘pepper’ was ground spheres of black peppercorn adding heat

to spiced crawfish gumbo, was a black man

peppered with gunshot wounds and clubbed to death.

the rusted railroad tracks to the north —

bisecting this little town with its long history of bigotry —

might as easily have been prison bars pressed flat.

 

his name was Victor White, but everyone called him

Little Vic. as a child,

he would get into trouble

when his brothers misbehaved, a constant

scapegoat.

but he stayed in New Iberia and his

newborn daughter was his little vic-

tory against the black-blood blooms

marring prison cell walls, the tear

gas ghosting over Brown Sugar Festivals,

the discrimination in all respects — without respect.

 

since his arrest at the railroad crossing,

Little Vic has had his hands cuffed

behind him, wrists locked together

between dual loops of steel. he sits in

the back row of the police cruiser,

the mesh divider between him

and the two police officers in front

rattling with the links of his handcuffs. the black-and-white

guzzles off in the garage of the local patrol

center. the driver slaps his hands on the steering

wheel and curses under his breath.

 

Little Vic nervously shifts in his seat

and watches the policemen slide out of the car,

their gun holsters flipped casually open…

the police account is soon released:

‘Victor White committed suicide…’

 

there were no surveillance cameras in the parking lot where Victor White died.

‘…using a concealed firearm that had slipped past a police pat-down…’

the camera installed in the police cruiser had been turned off.

‘…Mr. White fired a .25-caliber pistol, sending a bullet through his back…’

autopsy of the corpse revealed that Little Vic had been shot through the side.

 

in the morgue, Little Vic lies —

another victim of an unseeing white

oblivion. the detectives only permit the viewing of his face.

his parents know him last

as shattered black-

and-blue cheekbones, a crushed eye but never

a crushed ‘I,’

dusky death daring past the creases

of the morgue’s bleached white sheet.

 

And there stands Victor White Sr. he is Little

Vic’s father, the Reverend

revered to no end

by his congregation, who pulls together

a petition to bring change to a corrupt police department.

he gathers signatures to ensure that Little

Vic won’t be just a footnote in a police report, so that other

black parents won’t have to sort

through glossed public announcements looking

for answers to their worst nightmares.

 

the Reverend wears a simple white shirt with

Little Vic’s profile splayed over its front. the shirt is

a sweat-soaked memorial to Little Vic

and it is of the most pure

cotton.