by Ishmael Reed
CHAPTER 36
He was a blonde. He lay in the bed, tossing and turning. His room. What was that odor? The pungent odor of middle-class perfume making the air misty. He didn’t feel right. His hair. What on earth was the matter with his hair? It was long and was covering the pillow. The pillows? They had a flower print and were pink. Pink? He rose in his bed and his breasts jiggled. BREASTS? THE BREASTS?? He looked back into the mirror next to the bed and his mouth made a black hollow hole of horror. “O MY GOD. MY GOD.” He was a woman. You know what he said next, don’t you, reader? He’s from New York and so … you guessed it! “Kafka. Pure Kafka,” he said. A feeling crept over him. Tingly. What could he do? He felt like screaming, but he couldn’t scream. Was that someone coming down the hall? He ran and jumped back into the bed, pulled the covers up to his neck and pretended to be asleep. Someone was coming down the hall. They stood for a moment outside in the hall. And then the knob slowly turned. Someone was now in the room; a dark foreboding shadow crept to the foot of the bed. A giant colored man—an Olmecheaded giant wearing a chauffeur’s cap. Max started to really scream this time.
“Please, Ms. Dalton, you will wake the whole house,” the figure says. Look at that white bitch laying there. Sloppy drunk. Probably wants some peter too. That’s all they think about anyway. I’ll fuck her into a cunt energy crisis she mess with me. That’s probably what she wont. Been hittin on me all night. Probably pretending to be drunk. Wonts to see how far I go. I know Jan ain’t gettin any. One simple dude. Tried to give me that old PROGRESSIVE LABOR line. Who don’t know that? Who don’t know that old simple ass mutherfuckin bullshit? Them mens was working at the Ford plant. Had some good jobs too. Then here come this Progressive Labor bullshit and them niggers lost they job after it was over. Ha! When is this bitch going to go to sleep? I wont to take that dark blue Buick with steel spoke wheels over to the South Side. Man, will them mo ’fugs be mad when they see. Think I’m a pimp. Then I’ll go up to the counter and roll out my 75 dollars. Man, they think I’m one of them pimps. Then I go get me some rangs. Lots of them. Have them all shining on my fingers. Shining. Justa shining. Gee. Bet I could have me plenty ol stankin bitches. Commisstee. That shit ain’t nothin but some bunk. Roosia. Shhhhhhit. Started to bust that mo ’fug Jan right in the mouf. Must be a sissy. … The door opens and in comes a woman tapping a cane. Ahhhhshitt. Here come that other old crazy white woman down the hall. Look like Ms. Mary trying to say something. I better do something quick.
Max finally realized the situation. He made a futile effort to move his lips. “Bigggg. Bigggggg.” Meanwhile the cane tapping comes closer to the door. Bigger picks up the pillow and starts towards Mary Dalton when—
Max wakes up from the nightmare.
There was some bamming at the door real rough. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam, Bam! Max leaped out of his dream and rushed to the door. Who could this be bamming at his door this time of night? The woman, trembling, rushed into the room.
“What do you want? I told you to never come here.”
She wriggled out of her raincoat, then nervously wrung out a match after lighting a cigarette. She plopped down in a chair and drew her breath. It was Lisa, stripped of her Nanny’s rags; sharp, voluptuous.
“It’s LaBas. He called. He wants to talk about Ed’s killing. Suppose he starts to ask me a lot of questions? You know I can’t stand up under a lot of questions.”
“You fool. You come here for that? I told you never to contact me here on this assignment.”
“Look, you’ve only been here for a few years. I’ve been here more than ten, ever since his wife Ruby left. I’ve worked on that household and put my conjure all over the place. Then they sent you in to begin this organization to add to Ed’s problems. Just as I had worked hard to prepare Minnie to do that. We’ve done enough damage to that family. When will it end?”
“It will end when Solid Gumbo Works has folded.”
“I can’t wait any longer. Since Wolf was killed, she’s brought those Moochers into the household. I have to shuffle about like Hattie McDaniel to take care of their needs. They write slogans all over the walls and sleep on stained mattresses. They leave rings in the bathtub. They’ve been up all night with the mimeograph machine, trying to free Kingfish and Andy.”
“Yes, I know,” Max said. “I wrote the copy.”
“I have to fix breakfast and clean up their mess. You know how Moochers are, never clean up after themselves, always expect someone else to do their cleaning for them. I told you not to draw the girl into that organization. I was doing O.K. All I needed was some more time.”
“You were taking too long. Besides, the Moochers provided us with the numbers to wear down Solid Gumbo Works.”
“Well, I still maintain that if it had been left to me, I would have put her on Ed. I never did go along with his killing.”
“It was necessary. You know that. If we hadn’t butchered him that night, he would have discovered the cure for heroin addiction. That was the industrial secret you passed on to me; the papers of his you Xeroxed. We had to do it. If he had found a legitimate cure, our quack operation would have shut down: the southern mailhouse empire we built would shut down. Heroin, jukeboxes, our black record company in the east, The House of Cocaine. Everybody would have been asking for Ed’s Gumbo. Wasn’t it enough that he found a cure for cancer?”
“You thought you’d gotten rid of that threat when you killed that Chinese acupuncturist, but Ed found different means.”
“You always respected him a bit, didn’t you?”
“He was a man. Ed was a hard-working man. Sometimes I wanted to tell him who I was, where I was from, and what was wrong with me. That I had been sent into his house to train his child to drive him crazy.”
“You can’t quit. I received orders from Louisiana Red that we have one more job. You think you have problems. Do you think I like posing as a visiting lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley? The way the women in the English Department office whisper about my lack of potency and sometimes refuse to file for my office post box.
“Do you think that I enjoy it when they refuse to mimeograph copies of lecture notes for my students? Why, this campus reminds me of the set of I Was a Teenage Werewolf. If Louisiana Red hadn’t promised me this one-million-dollar retirement money, I never would have taken care of this assignment. I was doing all right with my New York industrial spy firm. But you, you have to stay until it’s over. They have you where they want you.”
“I’m leaving.”
Max pulls out a sheet of paper from a desk drawer. “You know that Louisiana Red doesn’t play. They will get to you through your police record. You are a fugitive from justice, you know, you bag woman. (Reads) ‘Real name: The Hammerhead Shark.’ The title you picked up in that caper when you hit a man on the head with a hammer, put a hex on a congressman, double-crossed Jack Johnson, stabbed Martin Luther King, brought charges against Father Divine, brought down Sam Cooke in a blaze of gunfire and bad-mouthed Joe Louis. They know your penchant for Coon-Can and about your scar too. Not only are the law enforcement bureaus after you, but you know the consequences of crossing the Louisiana Red Corporation.”
“I’m not frightened any more. I’ve sent a message to the Red Rooster and told him that I want out, Max.”
“I’ve thought about leaving myself.”
“You have? Why, Max, we can leave together, go to Reno; why, I can get a job as a waitress, you can deal blackjack.”
“But they’ll follow us.”
“Not if we move fast enough.”
“Maybe we ought to. You know how I missed you during those long days. When you couldn’t be with me in my arms. How we had to limit ourselves to meeting every other Thursday, your day off. There must be thousands of us all over the country, meeting like this out of public view.
“Yes, my dearest, the American underground of Desire, the name of the first American slaver; we know each other on the street and recognize each other’s
signals. How we pay subscriptions to our propaganda organs which convince the public that it’s only the Jim Brown and Racquel Welch bedroom scene that’s the problem. We rule America, all of it, my Nanny and me. The ‘Every Other Thursday Society.’ Yes, I want to leave, Lisa. My cover is getting to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That book I’m doing—the one on Richard Wright’s book.” He rushes to the bar, makes a drink and gulps it down. Then he slams the empty glass on the bar. “It’s getting to me. I’m having these dreams. Just before you knocked on the door, I had one. I was the murder victim and this big brute was coming towards me with a pillow.”
“That dream will come true if you won’t move over to the wall.”
The startled couple turned around to see the gunman standing in the doorway.
“Son of a bitch. So you were going to take it on the lam and leave me stranded now that the assignment has heated up.”
“T, take it easy, have a drink.”
“No thanks, I’m not thirsty. Here I have been playing the fool for these past years, helping you set up Ed Yellings, and now you are going to drop me. Years of swallowing my pride and acting like a kookie rookie when all along you two were carrying on. I’m finished with this assignment. I feel sick about what has happened to Minnie. She wants more power now than Marie Laveau, and you two did it to her. I’m going to call the Director of Louisiana Red Corporation, the Red Rooster, and tell him everything I know about you two. You see, it’s all over. That’s what I came up here to tell you about.”
“What’s all over?” Lisa says. “You don’t make sense.”
“About an hour ago Minnie busted George Kingfish Stevens and Andy Brown out of jail and then commandeered an airplane after miraculously evading San Francisco security, which was as tight as a drum. You don’t have anything else to use against Solid Gumbo Works because Minnie has been shot.”
“Shot,” both Lisa and Max exclaim.
“Yes, she was shot by a passenger. The poor child was rushed to a New York hospital. It sickens me, my part in this whole thing.”
He walks over to the telephone and dials.
“Hello operator, give me Louisiana Red Corporation in New Orleans, person to person to the Red Rooster, the number is area code 504—” but before he could say anything Max lunged for him and with incredible strength wrestled him to the floor. The gun went off, killing T Feeler.
“Max, let’s get out of here. We really must go now.”
Max slowly looked up from where he knelt over the corpse. “Who you callin Max, bitch? I’ll whip you into bad health.”
“Max, what’s the matter with you? Why are you talking that way?”
“I’m gone fix you good. Killing you won’t count. Not even the best critics will notice it. I’m going to kill you.” He walks towards her. She screams.
“Max! Stop!”
“Max? Who Max? I’m Bigger,” Max growls.
CHAPTER 37
Chorus received the good news that morning. Yes, he had been ejected from a recital hall but he was still in demand. Another had called the day after his dismissal. His agent wanted him to fly to New York to check out its dimensions, its acoustics. His voice had been stifled so much over the years through bad distribution, poor and often hostile salesmen, indifference from those at the top that he insisted a clause be added to his contract giving him the right to satisfactory acoustics.
Chorus fed the cats, cleaned his apartment and was soon packing his white tuxedos. He drove to the San Francisco Airport and before long was airborne.
About ten minutes out, the stewardess asked him if he wanted to have a cocktail. He sipped his Bloody Mary and gazed out over some dry-looking mountains. He read a magazine. He napped for about a half-hour. He got up and walked down the aisle towards the bilingual toilet. He noticed a woman and two companions. He recognized her from her picture that had appeared in the Berkeley Barb and the San Francisco Chronicle. He recalled she made Herb Caen’s column regarding some Moochers’ benefit in which she shared the platform with Rev. Rookie.
He returned to his seat and read some more.
One of the woman’s companions rose and went towards the cockpit. Sky-jack! The man addressed the passengers telling them that no one would be hurt.
The two men, now wearing terrorist masks which looked like big woolen socks with two slits for eyes, walked down the aisle, putting the passengers’ valuables into some sacks while the skinny woman with them, quite fashionably dressed, began making some kind of speech to the passengers. She went on and on, and the more she talked, the more Chorus became enraged.
Chorus went along with it, though. He didn’t want any hassle. When they came to him, he would gladly give them whatever cash he had.
Fish came to Chorus and spoke sarcastically through his mouth opening.
“Well, what do we have here? Mr. Superstar. Big Nigger. I seen your picture in Jet. Some kind of actor you is.”
Chorus fumed.
“Sell-out, oreo niggers like you—I can’t stand. Fork over some of that money, you minstrel.” He laughed. “Hey, Andy, look what we have here. A minstrel all decked out in a white tuxedo.”
After taking Chorus’ money, they moved on, robbing some of the other passengers.
Minnie moved down the aisle as the men kept an eye on the passengers. She caught Chorus’ eye. She paused in front of him. She said she had seen his last performance. She said that she didn’t think it was “relevant.” She started calling him obscene names, standing in the aisle with her hands on her hips. She went on and on, and every time he tried to get a word in edgewise, she would scream, “YOU LISTEN TO ME, NIGGER. YOU LISTEN TO ME. LET ME FINISH. LET ME FINISH!”
Chorus knew what he had to do because he’d be damned if he was going through this scene again.
CHAPTER 38
They are dining at Spenger’s Seafood Restaurant. Ernest Hemingway dined here and after talking to Frank Spenger went on to write The Old Man and the Sea. Frank Spenger remembered a time when there were so many crabs in the Bay they made a nuisance of themselves.
LaBas is glum; he is eating a prawn. Ms. Better Weather is sobbing; she hasn’t touched her food.
“That poor child.”
“Will you control yourself, Better Weather, and continue with the report.”
“After she busted Kingfish and Andy out of jail, they commandeered a car and somehow evaded the security at the San Francisco Airport.”
“Amazing!”
“Anyway, they sky-jacked the plane, but then something happened. She was talking to one of the passengers; he jumped her and holding her with a gun to her back he was able to disarm Andy and Kingfish. He screamed, ‘I’m sick of you cutting into my lines, bitch.’ The captain rushed in upon the situation and mistaking the stranger for one of the sky-jackers killed him, but he got … he got—”
“O Better Weather, brace yourself. Tell me the rest.”
“They took her to the hospital, and that was the last I heard from New York. As soon as I heard, I came right down. They told me you were eating here. What are you going to do?”
“What can I do? There’s nothing they would do to reverse what has happened. The Board of Directors has made the decision. I have no vote.”
“But you just told me she couldn’t help herself. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Better Weather, you know how the Corporation works. It is an individual with its own laws, an uncharacterized character like the Greek Chorus, a fictitious person. Once it moves, it moves by its own by-laws. Did you tell Sister?”
“I called her, but she had been told already. I think we ought to go up and see how she’s doing.”
“That’s a good idea.” LaBas paid the check, and he and Ms. Better Weather left.
CHAPTER 39
The Solid Gumbo Works’ car pulls up in front of the Yellings’ house. Sister opens the door and tearfully rushes into Ms. Better Weather’s arms. Ms. Better Weather comforts her.
Sister’s Nigerian friend approaches the door.
“She’s really upset, LaBas. She was packing her clothes to go to New York to be with Minnie when she heard about Lisa.”
“Lisa, what happened to Lisa?”
“Come in, I’ll tell.”
Ms. Better Weather walks to a sofa and sits down with Sister, who is still shaken.
“This man with the African name,” he smirks, “this critic—Maxwell Kasavubu; he went berserk and was found running through the Berkeley Hills. People became suspicious when they saw him running around the same block over and over again. Of course, he could have been lost in the maze of cattle trails, but they phoned the police anyway because he had a negro accent characterized by a high falsetto laugh. There have been instances of robberies up there and so anything resembling black is suspect. Well, they found that he wasn’t black at all. They arrested him in front of a linguist’s house, and the linguist traced his dialect to Mississippi/Chicago, 1940s. The linguist had just finished a study on Black English. Maxwell Kasavubu was dressed in a chauffeur’s outfit.”
“How curious.”
“When they broke into his house, they found T Feeler and Nanny Lisa dead. She didn’t even look like the Nanny. She looked more like a glamorous streetwalker, and they saw her mammy’s costume in the bedroom. She had dropped her mammy guise.”
“So they were the three. It’s all so clear now.”
“What do you mean, LaBas?”
“The three industrial spies the messenger was talking about.”
“The messenger? Spies?”
“Skip it.”
“You’re a curious man, LaBas. America is curious. I’m taking Sister away from this city. As soon as we fly to New York and see about Minnie, we’re going to Lagos.”