Hot Razor
by Gordon Laws
Favorite way to kill a man is wit a hot razor. Man don’t feel nothin—blade just glide across his throat, and then he got no voice and bleed out real quiet-like. But the razor gotta be sharp and better if it be hot.
The story you heard about me is that I was born free in Ohio and I went south into slavery cuz I wanted to. I let you think on that—what you believe say more about you than me.
Highest price I ever saw for a colored man my age was $1300–late in the war when southern money weren’t worth nothin. Know how to drive the price up? Start killin white folk, that’s how. Ten years after the war, price on my head was thirty thousand greenbacks.
I got good with razors on account of bein a slave. They made me into Massa’s body servant after his other escape. Course, Massa found him and Massa wudn’t havin no more escapes so he stake that fella over an ant hill and lef him in the sun till the vultures and crows done eat him.
I held a razor to Massa’s throat every other day. He kep a beard that had to be just so—he knowed every hair on his face and neck and I gots to where my cuts was so precise, so smooth, so even that Massa say he never had a cut like mine.
I cut him once. Drew blood. He didn’t feel nothin. I dabbed it with a cloth. I didn’t do it till I had practiced it on myself dozens of times. You can check my arms if you don’t believe me. I could get that blade so hot and sharp I couldn’t feel nothin as it open my skin and bleed me. I wanted Massa to know I could cut like that. He a hard man but he done say nothin to me.
I done kill my first man on a ferry boat. Same year the war ended and I was free again and got me a job. Crewman stole from me and he say, “What you gonna do about it, nigger?” While he drift to sleep that night, I heat my blade over a fire. I open his throat in silence and watch him bleed out in silence, his eyes wide.
“That’s what I done about it,” I tole him.
He done watch me take my stuff back. When the other crew found him in the mornin, they tole themselves he done it to his self cuz they didn’t never hear no noise.
I got on a different ferry boat. Man there accuse me of cheatin him at cards. Cuz you know a negro ain’t supposed to be good at cards. I done slice him open good in the night, open his belly up like he a dead deer, then threw him overboard by the paddle wheel. They never foun him. Crew thought he jump ship. Guess he did after a fashion.
Suppose my luck done run out on the next boat. First mate say he caught me stealin. Got sent to lock up in Louisiana for that then to slave work on the Paducah Railroad workin for General Forrest. Yeah, that Forrest. Y’all’s hero. Here’s a guy that done slaughter two hundred colored troops who had surrendered and y’all make him in charge of a railroad. Get caught lookin at a man’s razor kit and I get ten years hard labor. No suh. I escape that railroad and got me to Memphis.
More of the same in Memphis. Cut up a Irishman there. Bar fight of course. Price on my head fo him? $5000. In the street one day, I seen Mr. William H. Hansburough—respectable businessman to y’all but a planter with tons of colored people that he done whip, kill, and violate. He weren’t so brave when that hot razor slid across his throat. “Can’t no one hear you scream,” he say once to a colored lady he took to a barn. So I done tole him that, too. Price on my head fo him? $10,000.
When the sheriff finally run me down, they was one more I tole him: General Hindman. He be in his sittin room with his cigar when someone done blast him through the window. Folks says it were a shotgun, that it done tore open his throat and blowed off his hand. General Hindman wanted the black man to vote so it only make sense I done it. I tole the sheriff I use a Enfield rifle and he ate that up. Reward for Hindman was $15,000.
Those three make thirty thousand. Most I ever heard for a negro. If I could think of another to make it higher, I claim that one, too.
They gonna hang me here soon. They got a preacher man visitin me and learnin me Jesus. And maybe I gonna follow ole Jesus, maybe He gonna redeem my soul from hell. If He do and He bring me to heaven, I ain’t too worried about runnin into any of y’all. I don’t think heaven is full of generals and masters.
The story you heard about me is that I was born free in Ohio and I went south into slavery cuz I wanted to. I let you think on that—what you believe say more about you than me.
Highest price I ever saw for a colored man my age was $1300–late in the war when southern money weren’t worth nothin. Know how to drive the price up? Start killin white folk, that’s how. Ten years after the war, price on my head was thirty thousand greenbacks.
I got good with razors on account of bein a slave. They made me into Massa’s body servant after his other escape. Course, Massa found him and Massa wudn’t havin no more escapes so he stake that fella over an ant hill and lef him in the sun till the vultures and crows done eat him.
I held a razor to Massa’s throat every other day. He kep a beard that had to be just so—he knowed every hair on his face and neck and I gots to where my cuts was so precise, so smooth, so even that Massa say he never had a cut like mine.
I cut him once. Drew blood. He didn’t feel nothin. I dabbed it with a cloth. I didn’t do it till I had practiced it on myself dozens of times. You can check my arms if you don’t believe me. I could get that blade so hot and sharp I couldn’t feel nothin as it open my skin and bleed me. I wanted Massa to know I could cut like that. He a hard man but he done say nothin to me.
I done kill my first man on a ferry boat. Same year the war ended and I was free again and got me a job. Crewman stole from me and he say, “What you gonna do about it, nigger?” While he drift to sleep that night, I heat my blade over a fire. I open his throat in silence and watch him bleed out in silence, his eyes wide.
“That’s what I done about it,” I tole him.
He done watch me take my stuff back. When the other crew found him in the mornin, they tole themselves he done it to his self cuz they didn’t never hear no noise.
I got on a different ferry boat. Man there accuse me of cheatin him at cards. Cuz you know a negro ain’t supposed to be good at cards. I done slice him open good in the night, open his belly up like he a dead deer, then threw him overboard by the paddle wheel. They never foun him. Crew thought he jump ship. Guess he did after a fashion.
Suppose my luck done run out on the next boat. First mate say he caught me stealin. Got sent to lock up in Louisiana for that then to slave work on the Paducah Railroad workin for General Forrest. Yeah, that Forrest. Y’all’s hero. Here’s a guy that done slaughter two hundred colored troops who had surrendered and y’all make him in charge of a railroad. Get caught lookin at a man’s razor kit and I get ten years hard labor. No suh. I escape that railroad and got me to Memphis.
More of the same in Memphis. Cut up a Irishman there. Bar fight of course. Price on my head fo him? $5000. In the street one day, I seen Mr. William H. Hansburough—respectable businessman to y’all but a planter with tons of colored people that he done whip, kill, and violate. He weren’t so brave when that hot razor slid across his throat. “Can’t no one hear you scream,” he say once to a colored lady he took to a barn. So I done tole him that, too. Price on my head fo him? $10,000.
When the sheriff finally run me down, they was one more I tole him: General Hindman. He be in his sittin room with his cigar when someone done blast him through the window. Folks says it were a shotgun, that it done tore open his throat and blowed off his hand. General Hindman wanted the black man to vote so it only make sense I done it. I tole the sheriff I use a Enfield rifle and he ate that up. Reward for Hindman was $15,000.
Those three make thirty thousand. Most I ever heard for a negro. If I could think of another to make it higher, I claim that one, too.
They gonna hang me here soon. They got a preacher man visitin me and learnin me Jesus. And maybe I gonna follow ole Jesus, maybe He gonna redeem my soul from hell. If He do and He bring me to heaven, I ain’t too worried about runnin into any of y’all. I don’t think heaven is full of generals and masters.
Author's Note: This story is loosely based on a man who was wrongly arrested for the murder of General Thomas Hindman following the Civil War. An unnamed white supremacist almost certainly murdered Hindman. The story contains period-accurate racial language integral to the character’s experience and the historical setting. Its inclusion is purposeful, reflecting the realities of the time and underscoring the story’s themes of oppression and resistance.
Gordon Laws's fiction has appeared in Irreantum, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, The Line of Advance, The Word's Faire, and Cutthroat, and Military Experience and the Arts recently selected another of his works. Born in Virginia and raised in Texas, he now lives in Massachusetts, where he oversees curriculum development for Coursera.