Short Story 1

In His Solitude By Charly Palmer

The leaves of the southern magnolia tree tickled the skin on mah face dearly, and remind me of gentler times on this god for sackin’ cement pavement version of a baskitball court. Them mangolia’s lined the court ever since I was a wee child, and muh daddeh showed me how’ta shoot the baskitball from the three pointer line. He’d been the only one who’d believe’d in me succeedin’ in baskitball, and I whole-heartidly gave everythin’ I had to improve. It was sure difficult at first, them white boys at school beat me for sometime, for using the baskitball court to get better. But all them saw was some negro who could potentially been bett’r than them. So they made sure that I knew to back down. But come high school, I growned far over them white boys heads and two times over again, by now I was in muh last year of schoolin’ and as far as I knew, I’d been the best in muh school. Or at least by muh daddeh and mine eyes. Bu’ lil did we know what muh true potential was.

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In the last few months of muh last year in school, scouts came to see how good the athelets at muh school were. And if them be good ’nough, they’d get a sports scholarship to any college them get accepted to. And possibly securin’ a spot on the school’s sports team, o’ course it depended on what team they wanted to go out fer. I was especially excited for when the famous Rad Ronnie Johnson came from the University of North Carolina to see how well the boys could play baskitball. I saw this as muh opportune time to show them white boys who’s really gonna get a woopin’.


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This is muh first time bein’ in the locker room at the muh school. As I walked in and dropped muh bags, a lot of the white boys looked at me in some funny way, and would whisper to one eachother, n would laugh as I passed. I changed inta muh good sneakahs, and slipped out of that god-damned locker room as fast as muh legs allowed me ta. When I opened the door leading to the auditorium, I eyed muh competition; I wanted this scholarship award much more than them boys, and I wanted ta show them what I could do.
A big black man in a fancy suit n a “University of North Carolina” clipboard clutched to him called for our attention. He was a very profound talker I mus’ say, he talked about potential, dissapline, and hard workin’ before he introduced himself as Ronnie Johnson. I sware them mouths on them boys dropped down like an apple off a tree durin’ pickin’ season. He called out names to n fro, and assigned us inta different teams, exercises, and stations.
I sware I almost crawled muhself off of tha’ court I was so tired. I gave all I had for every damn exercise n I refused to give up. Mr. Johnson said “If you feel like you coulda done better, dun’ be expectin’ a call back”, and then he left. I’d been the last to leave that night, and as I was walkin’ home a heard a car creepily slowin’ down behind me. I walked faster and when I got home, the car parked in da driveway. I ran inside and told muh daddy it was probably the other boys coming to kill muh cause I done good on the court. But when he got to look over out the windo’ he said to muh, “Son, there’s just a gentleman out side in a suit, no boys from da school”. An a secon’ lata, Mr. Johnson was proudly shaken muh daddies hand tellin’ him, “Hello sauh, the name’s Ronnie Johnson from University of North Carolina. N I want your son on our basketball team”. Good Lordah, I almost died of happiness, n muh daddehy hugged me through tears of joy.

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