Free The Amalgamation Polka by Stephen Wright

one another into the shadows of the woods. Liberty paused to retrieve a fallen branch which he waved dramatically about in the air as he walked. The boys vanished around a bend, and when Liberty caught up he discovered them posed on the front porch of a weathered frame house, one on either side of a lean, red-faced woman who was regarding him with the severe look normally reserved for cheating husbands, disobedient children and bad dogs. Bravely, Liberty approached. The boys looked expectantly at their mother. A large yellow hound slunk out from beneath the boards of the house and began to bark. “Hush!” snapped the woman, and the animal instantly stopped, sat back on its haunches and assumed a canine version of the same suspicious gaze mother and sons were directing at Liberty.
    “What do you want?” the woman called harshly.
    Ever the mannerly youth, Liberty replied politely, “I’ve come to play.”
    “Well, you get along now and go play somewhere else. We don’t want your kind playing around here.”
    Each of the boys had taken hold of one of their mother’s hands.
    “Now go on from here before I sic Chester on you.”
    “Go back to your nigger hotel!” yelled the taller of the boys.
    The smaller boy stepped down off the porch, picked up a rock and threw it at Liberty, which missile he easily dodged. But never having encountered such puzzling hostility, Liberty remained temporarily paralyzed, unable to move, unable to think.
    The older boy was looking for a good-sized rock for himself when suddenly the woman shrieked, “Get him, Chester!” and in an instant the hound was up and bounding forward in a furry streak of fangs and claws, followed closely by the boys who, gathering stones as they ran, proceeded to let fly an erratic barrage at Liberty, now several hundred yards down the road, the maddened hound yelping, foaming, snapping at Liberty’s feet and hands until one of the boys’ rocks came sailing in directly on the pointed peak of its head and the animal dropped to the dirt like a bag of seed, horrified mother and howling sons gathered about the unmoving carcass as Liberty, with hardly a backward glance, flew over a hill and was gone.
    For all its enthusiastic ferocity the dog had failed to even penetrate Liberty’s skin. His wounds consisted of a couple bruises and a few angry-looking scratches which Thatcher washed and dutifully kissed, and then, sitting attentively in his study, with Liberty perched on a pillow in a chair opposite, listened to the sorry tale of his son’s morning adventure. When Liberty finished Thatcher said not word, simply watched the boy’s flushed face for a long minute. Then, sighing, he placed his hands on his knees, leaned forward and said:
    “Now, Liberty, I have something of grave importance to convey to you and I would urge you to pay close attention. Are you listening?”
    The boy nodded solemnly.
    “Good. Now first, as an experiment, I want you to say the word ‘nigger’ for me.”
    Liberty stared blankly at his father.
    “Go ahead, it’s all right. I want you to say it for me.”
    “Nigger,” Liberty said in a near whisper.
    “Louder. Say it the way the boy said it today.”
    “Nigger,” he repeated with a certain force and heat.
    “Listen,” Thatcher advised. “Listen to how you sound when you voice those syllables. See how the word seems to naturally lend itself to being pronounced with anger. Now say it again and notice how your lips, the muscles of your face, feel. To even mouth the word is to shape your countenance into a leering mask of ugliness and hatred. Now, most importantly, observe how you feel deep inside when speaking such a word, the ugly shape it makes of your insides, and imagine also what it is doing to the insides of the person so addressed. How did you feel when you heard your home called a ‘nigger hotel’?”
    “Bad.”
    “Yes, and though you didn’t even really know exactly what the word meant, yet still it produced its