Bug Jack Barron

by Norman Spinrad

  And an answering sound-collage as camera holds on the title: students heckling People’s America agitator, amens to hardrock Baptist preacher, mothers crying soldiers griping sour losers outside the two-dollar window. Barroom voice in cynically hopeful tone: “Then go bug Jack Barron!”

  Title becomes head and shoulders shot of man against uncomfortable dark background (semisubliminal whirling moire pattern flashes seem to hang on brink of visibility like black India ink over kinesthop underpattern effect). The man is wearing fawn-yellow collarless sportjac over tieless open-necked red velour dress shirt. He looks about forty? thirty? twenty-five?—anyway, over twenty-one. His complexion seems to hover between fair and gray, like a harried romantic poet; his face is composed of strangely hard-edged softnesses, tapestry of stalemated battle. His hair is reminiscent of dead men—sandy JFK cut about to grow down the back of his neck, flank his ears, spring wild curls upward, and become Dylan-like unmade-bed halo. His brat-eyes (knowing eyes) smolder with amused detachment as his full lips smile, making the smile a private in-group, I-know-you-know-I-know thing with latest Bracket Audience Count estimated hundred million people.

  Jack Barron smiles, nods, becomes Acapulco Golds commercial:

  Mexican peon leading burro up winding trail on jungle-covered volcanic mountain, a fruity-authoritative Encyclopedia-Britannica voice over: “In the high country of Mexico evolved a savory strain of marijuana which came to be known as Acapulco Gold in the days of the contraband trade.”

  Cut to same peon cutting a stand of marijuana with a sickle and loading it onto burro: “Prized for its superior flavor and properties, Acapulco Gold was available only to the favored few due to its rarity and…”

  Roll to border patrolman frisking unsavory Pancho Villa type Mexican: “…the difficulties involved in importation.”

  Aerial view of huge field of geometrically-rowed marijuana: “But now the finest strain of Mexican seeds, combined with American agricultural skill and carefully controlled growing conditions, produce a pure strain of marijuana unequalled in flavor, mildness…and relaxing properties. Now available in thirty-seven states: (Cut to close-up of red and gold Acapulco Golds pack.) Acapulco Golds, America’s premium quality marijuana cigarette—and, of course, totally noncarcinogenic.”

  Back on screen comes Jack Barron, seated on old school armrest-desk type chair, desk of which holds two standard white Bell vidphones; white chair and white phones against black wash over moire pattern background make Barron look like knight in front of forms of darkness dancing.

  “What’s bugging you tonight?” Jack Barron asks in a voice that knows it all—knows Harlem, Alabama, Berkeley, North side, Strip City, knows it all knows clean-painted cement walls of a thousand Golden Age Projects urine inside jail cell knows check twice a month just enough to keep on dying (Social Security, A.I.D., Unemployment, Guaranteed Annual wage pale-blue-cyanide Government check), knows it all and knows what the fuck but can’t stop caring, the outsider’s insider.

  “What bugs you, bugs Jack Barron.” Barron pauses, smiles basilisk smile, dark eyes seem to pick up moving shadows off kinesthop-through-black background, Dylan-JFK-Bobby-punkid-Buddha. “And we all know what happens when you bug Jack Barron. Call collect. The number is Area Code 212, 969-6969 (six-month fight with Bell-F.C.C. over special mnemonic number), and we’ll take the first call right…now!”

  Jack Barron reached out, thumbs audio of vidphone (vidphone camera and screen face away from studio camera). A hundred million television screens split. Lower lefthand quarter shows standard black and white vidphone image of white-shirted, white-haired Negro, vague gray vidphone-washed-out background; the remaining three-quarters of the screen is occupied in living color by Jack Barron.

  “This is Bug Jack Barron, and you’re on the air, friend. It’s all yours until I say stop. A hundred million fellow Americans, and all of ’em waiting to hear who you are and where you’re from and what’s bugging you, man. This is your moment in the old spotlight—your turn to bug whoever’s bugging you. You’re plugged into me, and I’m plugged into the whole goofy country. So go ahead, man, high from the image of white-shirted, white-haired Negro, vague gray lip, and damn the torpedoes—bug Jack Barron,” says Jack Barron reeling it off with a big let’s-you-and-me-stomp-the-mothers smile.

  “My name is Rufus W. Johnson, Jack,” the old Negro says, “and as you and the rest of the country can see, out there on television, I am black. I mean, there’s no getting away from it, Jack. I’m black. You dig? I’m not colored, I’m not of dark complexion, not a mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, bassoon, or baboon. Rufus W. Johnson is a black nig—”

  “Cool it,” interrupts the voice of Jack Barron, authoritative as a knife; but with a tiny hunch of his shoulders, a little smile, really cools it as Rufus W. Johnson smiles, hunches back.

  “Yeah,” says Rufus W. Johnson, “we mustn’t use that word, man. Uptights all them Afro-Americans, colored folk. American Negroes, what you call ’em? But we know what you call ’em…Not you, Jack. (Rufus W. Johnson laughs a little laugh.) You a shade, but you a black shade.”

  “Well, maybe let’s make that sepia,” says Jack Barron. “Wouldn’t want to get me canceled in Bugaloosa. But what’s happening, Mr. Johnson? I hope you didn’t call me just to compare complexions.”

  “But that’s where it’s at, ain’t it man?” says Rufus W. Johnson, no longer smiling. “That’s where it’s at for me anyway. That’s where it’s at for all us Afro-Americans. You black, even down here in Mississippi, what’s supposed to be black man’s country, that’s where life is at. Ain’t nothing but what you call it—a comparison of complexions. Wish you could vidphone in color, then I could go to my TV set, screw around with the color controls, and see myself for once as red or green or purple——colored folk, y’know?”

  “When do we get to the nitty-gritty, Mr. Johnson?” Jack Barron asks, a shade of a degree colder. “Just what is bugging you?”

  “We is at the nitty-gritty,” answers Rufus W. Johnson, gray-on-gray image of black face—lined, hurt, scowling—expanding to fill three-quarters of the screen, with Jack Barron in upper righthand catbird-seat corner.

  “When you is black only one thing bugging you, and it bugs you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, time you’re born time you die. Or anyway, once was a time when being black was over when you died. Not no more. Now we got that medical science. We got that Foundation for Human Immortality. Freezes them dead bodies like instant pizza till them medical scientists get enough smarts to defrost ’em, fix ’em up and make ’em live till Judgment Day. What they say, that Howards cat and his flunkies, ‘Someday all men will live forever through the Foundations for Human Immortality!’

  “Yeah, we the leading country in the world, we got ourselves a Foundation for Human Immortality. Make that the Foundation for Shade Immortality. ’Course we got plenty cats around like old George and Bennie Howards think it all amounts to the same thing. Solve the Negro problem the easy way—get rid of the Negroes. Too messy—why, then, just fix it so the shades live forever. Let them black men have their three score and ten, who cares, when a shade can live forever, long as he can pony up that $50,000.”

  Tiny cold tension lines appear at the corners of Jack Barron’s eyes as the screen splits even down the middle, faded black and white image of Rufus W. Johnson facing living-color reality of Jack Barron, as Barron says hard but quiet: “You’re talking around something that’s bugging you, Mr. Johnson. How about letting us in on it? Riff it out. So long as you don’t talk about any intimate parts of the human anatomy don’t use four-letter words, we’re still on the air and plugged in, no matter what you say. That’s what Bug Jack Barron’s all about. It’s hit-back time, worm-turning time, and if you got a real bind on any powers that be, this is the time they gotta sit there and take it while the you-know-what hits the fan.”

  “Yeah, man,” says Rufus W. Johnson. “I’m talking about that there Foundation for Human Immortality. Hey, man,
Rufus W. Johnson is like human. Bleach me white, do a plastic job on my nose, and why, every shade looks at me and says, ‘There goes that Rufus W. Johnson, regular pillar of the community. Got himself a successful trucking business, new car, own house, sent three kids right through college. Regular model citizen.’ Was Rufus W. Johnson white instead of black, why, that there Benedict Howards’d be more than pleased to give him a contract for a freeze when he flakes out and have the chance to collect the interest on every dime Rufe’s got till that Big Defrost Day comes—was Rufus W. Johnson a shade, that is. Know what they say down here in Mississippi, Harlem, out there in Watts? They say, ‘You a shade, you got forever made, but, baby, if you’re black, when you go, you don’t come back.’”

  Back to the upper right-hand corner catbird-seat goes living-color Jack Barron. “Are you charging the Foundation for Human Immortality with racial discrimination?” he asks, dancing black semivisible moire pattern flashes from backdrop off white desk-chair in his slightly downturned eye-hollows turning his face to a mask of smoldering danger, suddenly solemn and sinister.

  “I ain’t charging them with going through a red light,” drawls Rufus W. Johnson. “Look at my hair—that’s the only white part of me you’ll see. I’m sixty-seven years old and I about used up this one life I got. Even if I gotta live it all as a black man in white man’s country, I want to live forever. Bad as it may be to be alive and black, when you dead, man, you are like dead!

  “So I go to them Foundation shades, and I say, ‘Hand me one of them Freeze Contracts. Rufus W. Johnson is ready to sign up for Forever.’ Two weeks go by, and they sniff around my house, my business, my bank account. Then I get a real fancy letter on real fancy paper about three yards long, and what it says is, ‘Man, you do not make it.’

  “Well, you figure it out, Mr. Jack Barron. My house—it costs me $15,000, 1 got $5,000 in the bank. And, man, my trucks alone cost nearly fifty big ones. And Bennie Howards can have it all long as I’m on ice. But the Foundation for Human Immortality says I got ‘insufficient liquid assets for us to offer a Freeze Contract at this time.’ My money’s the same color as anyone else’s, Mr. Barron. Think it’s the color of my money they don’t like or could it just possibly be the color of my something else?”

  The screen snaps to a full close-up of the concerned flashing face of hard-jawed, kick-’em-in-the-ass Jack Barron. “Well, you certainly got something to be bugged at—if you’ve got your facts straight, Mr. Johnson. And you’ve sure bugged Jack Barron.”

  Barron rivets the camera with his eyes promising bottomless pools of earnest bad-boy, brick-throwing, thunder-and-lightning. “And how does it grab you out there, plugged into the two of us? How’s it grab you out there, Benedict Howards? What’s the scam from the powers that be? And speaking of the powers that be (abrupt facial shift to sardonic-shrug-inside-joke smile)—it’s about time to see what’s bugging our sponsor. You hang right on, Mr. Johnson, and you too out there, and we’ll be right back where it’s all happening—right here right now no-time-delay live, after this straight poop from whoever’s currently making the mistake of being our sponsor.”

  2

  Pretty good curve you got there, Vince, you smart-ass wop, Jack Barron thought, watching his image on the outsize studio monitor become image of new model Chevy.

  The moment he was off the air Barron was up on the edge of his chair, thumbing the intercom button on the number one vidphone, “Fun and games tonight, eh, paisan?”

  Behind the thick glass of the control-booth window, he saw Vince Gelardi smile, smugly cynical, then Vince’s voice filled the small spare studio: “Want Bennie Howards in the hotseat slot?”

  “Who else?” Jack Barron answered, repositioning himself in the chair. “With Teddy Hennering number two, and Luke Greene in the safety slot.” Barron thumbed off the intercom, read “60 seconds” flashing across the bulb grid of the promptboard, and poured his attention into the brief pause.

  Smart-ass Vince putting through a six-week dud like that Johnson (but every so often a dud becomes a potato even live one like tonight). Professional spade calls in every damn week new ethnic sob story and probably never got past the first monkey-block screen before. But add the latest dumb beef, against Foundation this time, to Freezer debate on the Hill, and you got a real hot potato (…you shade, you got Forever made…Wonder if Malcolm Shabazz & Co., are spreading that one?) Too hot to handle with Howards’ two tame schmucks sitting on the good old F.C.C. Can’t afford to make waves in that league for one lousy show, and Vince should’ve known that, it’s his job, that’s what I’ve got him running the monkey block for.

  But shit, Barron thought, as the promptboard flashed “30 seconds,” Vince did know it but got to give him credit, he saw beyond it, saw that Howards wouldn’t be pissed because the Foundation’ll freeze any Negro got $50,000 in liquid assets (liquid’s the kicker; liquid, not rotting old house not decaying trucks—liquid cash bonds negotiable securities negotiable power). Foundation’s got enough trouble with Republicans, S.J.C., Shabazz & Co., without buying race trouble. Foundation cares about only one color—green money color, crazy bastard Howards’ not that far ’round the bend. Yeah, Vince saw it all, saw Rufus W. Johnson full of it, saw whole countrys’ tongues hanging out, slavering over the Freezer Debate, saw good hot show but safe from tigers, with Howards happy to get free publicity with his big chestnuts in the Congressional fire, saw formula for next forty minutes: Howards squirming a bit in the hotseat, enough to make sparks without making waves because on the race thing (about the only thing) Foundation’s in the clear. Everyone makes points—Howards pushes his Freezer Bill, the Great Unwashed gets Jack Barron in top fun-and-games form, I look like champ and just flesh wounds, no one gets hurt enough to try to hurt back. Good old Vince knows how to walk that line!

  “Open line to Rockies’ Freezer” flashed across the prompt board, then, “Greene on line, Teddy H?” then, “On Air,” and Barron saw his face and shoulders on the big monitor below the promptboard, saw image of Rufus W. Johnson gray on gray in the lower lefthand corner of the monitor and on the number one vidphone screen; hard, prim, good-looking, tough piece of ass-secretary on number two vidphone, and we’re off and running at Hialeah, thought Jack Barron.

  “Okay, Mr. Johnson (you silly fucker you),” Jack Barron said. “We’re back on the air. You’re plugged into me, plugged into the whole United States and all hundred million of us, plugged right into a direct vidphone line to the headquarters of the Foundation for Human Immortality, the Rocky Mountain Freezer Complex outside Boulder, Colorado. We’re gonna find out whether the Foundation’s pushing postmortem segregation, right here right now no time-delay live from the man himself, the President and Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Human Immortality, the Barnum of the Bodysnatchers, your friend and mine, Mr. Benedict Howards.”

  Barron made the connection on his number two vidphone, saw the hard-looking (like to get into that) secretary chick’s image appear under him (ideal position) in lower right on the monitor, gave her a dangerous pussycat (claws behind velvet) smile and said, “This is Jack Barron calling Mr. Benedict Howards. A hundred million Americans are digging that gorgeous face of yours right now, baby, but what they really want to see is Bennie Howards. So let’s have the bossman.” Barron shrugged, grinned. “Sorry about that. But don’t worry, baby, you can leave your very own private phone number with my boy Vince Gelardi.” (Who knows?)

  The secretary stared through the smile like a lemur, her telephone-operator voice said, “Mr. Howards is in his private plane flying to Canada for a hunting and fishing vacation and cannot be reached. May I connect you with our Financial Director, Mr. De Silva. Or our—”

  “This is Jack Barron calling Benedict Howards,” Barron interrupted (what goes here?). “Of Bug Jack Barron. You do own a television set, don’t you? I have on the line a Mr. Rufus W. Johnson who’s mighty bugged at the Foundation, and I’m bugged, and so are a hundred million Americans, and we all want t
o talk to Bennie Howards, not some flunky. So I suggest you move that pretty thing of yours and get him on this line muy pronto, or I’ll just have to bat the breeze about Mr. Johnson’s public charge that the Foundation refuses to freeze Negroes with some cats who see things a little differently from the way the Foundation sees ’em, dig?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Barron, Mr. Howards is hundreds of miles from the nearest vidphone,” the secretary said. “Mr. De Silva, or Dr. Bruce, or Mr. Yarborough are all in intimate contact with the details of Foundation operation and would be happy to answer any questions.”

  Set spiel, thought Jack Barron. Chick doesn’t know which end’s up (like to demonstrate), parroting Howards’ bullshit, is all. Show the bastard what happens when he tries to hide from me. Horrible example, Mr. Howards. In instantaneous gestalt the rest of the show spread itself out before him: grill Howards’ flunky (Yarborough is the biggest foot-in-mouth man), second commercial, riff with Luke, third commercial, then ten minutes with Teddy Hennering to ease up a bit, then go out and get laid.

  “Okay,” Barron said, turning his smile into a vulpine leer. “If that’s the way Bennie wants to play it, that’s the way he’ll have it. Get me John Yarborough.” He crossed his legs, signaling Gelardi to cut the secretary’s image off the monitor, and the screen split evenly between Barron and Johnson as Barron tapped the button under his left foot twice. Barron smiled crookedly as he stared dead on at the camera, purposefully building himself up into the galloping nasties, and said, “I hope Bennie Howards catches himself a big one, eh? And I’m sure all hundred million of you out there, who Mr. Benedict Howards is too busy to talk to, wish him loads of luck too—and don’t you know, out there, that he’s gonna need it.”

  Barron saw the promptboard flash “Open Lines to Luke, Teddy.” Yessir, he thought, show that goddamned Howards it doesn’t pay to mickey mouse me—and really give ’em a show tonight.