Chapter Five: The Lesser Kind

 

Chapter Five: The Lesser Kind

            Alicia didn’t think she had to use her TARDIS’s DNA locator-sequencer to pinpoint a precise African American community in Baton Rouge to begin her Cthulhu investigation. She discovered from the TARDIS computer that they landed in Louisiana in the year 1929, which verified Newt’s suspicions. Not that Alicia needed the verification, after the racism she was subjected to by that man in the Ford Model T.

            No, what she needed was a change of clothes to replace the tobacco-stained ones she had on. After a quick shower, she swapped them out for a pink dress, an outfit she felt was the closest to being “era-appropriate” (even though its design was something out of the 1950s).

            Her TARDIS ultimately brought her and Eleven near a low-class community in the boonies, which mostly consisted of blacks. It was exactly where Alicia wanted to be, leaving the TARDIS (camouflaged deep within the woods) along with Eleven to meet with the locals. It was by then Alicia started to feel guilty wearing her flashy pink dress, as most of the people in the lowly neighborhood were barefoot and dressed in old and ragged clothes.

            Alicia and Eleven happened upon one local – a black man who had been chopping wood behind the old shack that was his home. He was barely able to lift the axe with his crippled body, locked in a hunched position.

            “Lemme help you out with that, sir,” Alicia volunteered, rushing over to lift the axe herself and chop the block of wood with hardly any effort.

            “My goodness,” the man exclaimed with amazement. “I ain’t ever seen a colored gurl built like you b’fore! Yer momma and daddy mustuh fed you ‘til you ate ‘em out of house and home! What’s yer name?”

            “It’s Alicia, sir.”

“Well, Miss Alicia, I be Amos Crook.” He suddenly noticed Eleven standing beside Alicia. His disposition changed in a heartbeat, switching from open and friendly to guarded and apprehensive. “This white gurl wit you?”

Glancing at Eleven, Alicia confirmed, “Yeah, why?”

            “She ain’t a runaway, is she?”

            “Kinda.”

            Amos got even cagier in his demeanor. “Best not let them white folks find you wit her,” he advised Alicia. “They might think you kidnapped her. May even try to lynch ya fer it!”

            “They can try,” Alicia challenged.

            Her boldness didn’t amuse Amos. “Folks down ‘ere don’t take too kindly to folks like us, gurl.”

            Alicia scoffed. “Believe me, I know. I met one of them earlier.”

            That news seemed to have astounded Amos. “How did you survive?!”

            His surprise baffled Alicia. “Has it gotten that bad down in these parts?”

            “They’ve gotten worse since ol’ Lucius Malfoy came to town, offerin’ poor, able-bodied young colored boys tuh work on his plantation in exchange fer wealth and pride.”

            “Lucius Malfoy?” a stunned Alicia whispered.

            The last time she heard that name was when she was in her “Maureen” regeneration, in which she spent years studying magic in Hogwarts. But that was beside the point of her concern. Lucius Malfoy, father of Draco Malfoy, was there in 1929 Louisiana.

            How did he make it here in this specific time, place, and dimension?!

            Her pondering over the matter was interrupted by the roaring engine of a vehicle approaching the area. She looked away from Amos to see an A-Model pickup truck rolling in a distance away, a group of vicious-looking white men serving as its passengers.

            “Who’re those guys?” Alicia queried.

            “That be Bubba Joe and his posse – they work fer Lucius Malfoy,” Amos said, his voice quivering with fear. “Get yo’self and yer friend inside my shack now. If them boys find ya wit that gurl, you gonna find yo’self at the end of a noose!”

            Alicia did as Amos suggest, not wanting to attract any more trouble. She and Eleven rushed into Amos’s shack, leaving the front door slightly creaked open to look and listen in on the men that arrived into the town. They saw the pickup truck stop right in front of Amos’s shack. The men, led by Bubba Joe (a man with a black handlebar mustache, wearing a bowler hat and overalls), climbed out.

            “Afternoon, Amos,” Bubba Joe greeted. Alicia saw right through his phony sociable approach, which might as well have been betrayed by the loaded shotgun he carried. “How you been keepin’ yerself?”

            “As well as I can be wit this ol’ broken back of mine,” Amos said.

            “Well, I sure hate tuh bother you and these pleasant folks on this nice day,” Bubba Joe gestured to the audience of curious townsfolk, unnervingly observing the scene, “but I got word about a tall colored girl with hair long and blonde like a white woman’s, stirrin’ up trouble in these parts.”

            Alicia gulped, realizing that she perfectly fit the description.

            “Ya got me on that one, boss,” Amos played dumb, much to Alicia’s gratitude. “I ain’t ever seen a colored gurl like that. Didn’t think one like that even existed.”

            “You know, Amos, I said the exact same thing when Vincent Rollins reported it to me,” Bubba Joe concurred. “But, sure enough, ol’ Vince said that it was a tall, blonde negro girl and a lil’ white girl that made his car fall to pieces – and, get this, it was the white girl who did it with her mind!”

            Alicia glimpsed over at Eleven, who looked back at her in panic.

            “If ya ask me, I think ol’ Vince’s been hittin’ the sauce at the bar in town again,” Bubba Joe said. “Yet I wouldn’t be a good Samaritan if I didn’t bother to look up on it.”

            “You ain’t su’pose tuh be here.”

            Another voice spoke up, this one coming from inside Amos’s shack and right beside Alicia and Eleven. Both of them looked down to see a small black boy curiously gawking at them. Undoubtedly, he was Amos’s son. Alicia and Eleven gestured for him to keep quiet.

            “What ya’ll doin’ in here?!”

            Amos’s wife. Her yelling unfortunately blew Alicia and Eleven’s cover, as Bubba Joe heard her. “Is that you in there, Sheila?”

            Amos did his best to continue being a distraction. “That be my wife, fo sure, boss. Probably caught herself a couple o’ mice. You know how they be this time of thuh year.”

            “A couple of mice, huh?” Bubba Joe said, clearly not buying Amos’s fibbing. “Well, good thing for ya’ll there are some exterminators around.” They brushed right past Amos, making their way for his front door.

            Alicia acted fast. The best thing she could’ve done was hiding Eleven underneath the Crooks’ dinner table. It was a perfect spot for her, considering her small stature and how well the tablecloth obscured her from view.

            But it was too late for Alicia.

            Bubba Joe and his posse barged in, breaking the old, rusty wooden door clear off its hinges. Alicia gulped again, staring down a double-barreled shotgun and the collection of faces that looked as hungry as a pack of wolves.

            “Well, lookie here,” Bubba Joe tormented, walking right up to Alicia. “Turns out ol’ Vince Rollins wasn’t drunk after all.”

            She practically shadowed him and his men with her substantial height, but they welcomed it as a challenge, some of them hoping she would put up a struggle. However, Alicia gave herself up willingly; she rose up her hands as a show of submission. “No need for this to get ugly inside this nice family’s home, fellas,” she said. “I’ll go quietly.”

            “Smart move,” Bubba Joe cited. “Now where’s yer lil’ friend with the mind powers.”

            Alicia shrugged. “Not sure what you’re talking about. I’ve been traveling alone.”

            “That ain’t what I heard,” Bubba Joe argued.

            “Well, maybe Vince Rollins was a lot drunker than you figured,” Alicia said.

            That witty remark, unfortunately, got her knocked out by the butt of Bubba Joe’s shotgun. The last thing she saw before blacking out was the hidden Eleven’s deeply worried face.