I stared idly at the tiny black fingers gripping the worn sill of the railcar window. Soon a round, black, wide-eyed face appeared over them. And broke into a gap-toothed grin. Then, somewhat like a setting black sun, it disappeared from sight – along with the tiny fingers. But not for long – the sun rose again this time with the help it seemed of just one hand, and the other hand rose over the sill to offer me a tiny slice of …watermelon! Almost reflexively, I snatched it and nodded my thanks. And this time I happened to count the tiny black fingers – and there were five of them! – five tiny fingers growing out of the hand, and a tiny black opposable thumb to boot!

“Polydactyly!” I thought to myself. “This kid’s a polydactyl!” (Many digits).

“What did you say?”, said my buddy in the seat opposite. “What did you say – somebody Polly?”

“I didn’t say anything,” I said. But then I added – rather smugly – “I think I know where we are!”

“God damn, Powell. You are a regular freakin’ genius you are – with that ‘I know where we are’ shit all the time…. Like when you told us Washintun ‘cause of that stone thing sticking up in the air and 'reflector' pond and all. God damn! Everyone says you were right (that had been the day before when I smugly identified the Washington Monument from afar - having seen it of course only in my highschool history books heretofore. But to this crowd I was the Wizard of Oz incarnate...). Maybe so – but me, I think you just got lucky is all…”

This, all more in exasperation and weariness, not truculence.

I waited.

“Well, so then… where in hell are we?” (By now several others sitting nearby had moved over and the little group was all sitting waiting expectantly for me - their self-appointed Oracle to speak).

I savored the moment.

“We are somewhere in Georgia,” I said. “Maybe North Coastal Georgia.”

“Georgia?” someone breathed. “Georgia – that’s way down South or somewhere ain’t it? And how you know this anyhow?”

“Simple,” I said, “’cause these little black kids handing up this watermelon here all got six fingers on their hands.”

“WHAT?” they all cried. “Are you nuts?” But then almost immediately one of their number said, “Jeezul! He’s right! Right about the fingers anyway: looka here at this pickaninny’s hands…”

Heads popped from several windows. A shout went up from the small black multitude shuffling on the rail platform. Like a scene out of Porgy and Bess it was… elders in bright bandanas and field clothes and all these little kids running to and fro with slices of watermelon and occasional candies and flowers and even just plain ice cubes and they were all handing this largesse up to the “sojers” in the train – baked dry in the unfamiliar stifling Southern heat and on their way to they knew not where. It’s a scene I can never forget.

Gunga Din.... (R. Kipling)

Suddenly our long troop train jerked into motion and slowly we began to move off down the single track. Ahead lay a dense woods, and Spanish moss hung down from every tree. Cinders and smoke began blowing in at the open windows…

My listeners demanded more.

“Okay,” I said, “but you got to promise to hear me out – and don’t ask so many god-damn questions when I am done ‘cause actually I don’t know all that much more than you. (I was a highschool graduate and they – the most of them – were gradeschool dropouts at best – some had never known school at all but had gone straight to work in the mines of Eastern Pennsylvania and West Virginia…).

“I think this is Georgia because we been heading South ever since Washington, D.C. yesterday and it is hotter and hotter and all this moss on these trees. That’s what they have down South you know. (I did not tell them I had actually grown up in Texas and so was familiar with the Gulf Coast there and the moss on the trees. This might just have been too much to absorb – and wizards shouldn’t give away all their secrets anyhow).

“But what about the six fingers thing?,” they all clamored. “Why in hell do they all have six fingers on each hand?”

I said, “Listen! It’s called polydactyly and it means “many fingers or toes” - at least one extra one for sure. And it occurs everywhere on earth from time to time but it is known to be fairly common down here among these seacoast southern Negros you see because of all their inbreeding and what not over the years. I think I must have read about it once somewhere – maybe in Readers’ Digest or something.” (This was long years before my love affair with archeology and anthropology so there is no possible way I could have very well known this disembodied fact at this tender age…). Still, my penchant in life has been mainly for “useless” and disconnected “facts,” whenever and however obtained...

Anyhow, that’s how it was. Everywhere that summer as our train rolled slowly on South, through a now largely vanished Southern landscape, we stopped at whistlestops and places that even then were disappearing from the map. Farmers, and plowmen and their wives and kids came down to the little, wooden, shack-like stations and waved and waved at us as our train ground over their only dirt road into and out of town with the oldtime crossed X warning signs: “Railroad Crossing” prominently displayed on either side of the tracks – sometimes accompanied by a weathered old electric bell pinging out its warning nearby. They brought us candy bars, and sandwiches, and cold soda pop (Nehi and Dr. Peppers mostly) and they wished us luck.

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