Bug Jack Barron

by Norman Spinrad

  “Well, Mr. Johnson, we’re about to do a little hunting on our own,” he said. “Let Mr. Howards shoot himself a moose, and we’ll shoot ourselves the truth.”

  “Who’s this Yarborough?” asked Rufus W. Johnson.

  “John Yarborough is Public Relations Director for the Foundation,” Barron answered. “We’re the public, and we’re gonna see what we can get him to like relate.” Barron’s number two vidphone showed a sallow balding man. Barron foot-signaled, and the left side of the monitor screen was shared by Johnson (top) Yarborough (bottom), Barron looming twice their size to the right, living-color Big Daddy. “And here’s Mr. John Yarborough now.

  “Mr. Yarborough, this is Jack Barron calling, and I’d like you to meet Mr. Rufus W. Johnson. Mr. Johnson, to belabor the obvious, is a Negro. He claims that the Foundation refused him a Freeze Contract. (Play that non sequitur gambit, Jack, baby.) A hundred million Americans would like to know if that’s true. They’d like to know why the Foundation for Human Immortality, with a Public Charter as a tax-exempt foundation, refused an American citizen his chance at immortality just because that citizen happens to be a Negro.” (Have you stopped beating your wife yet, Mr. Yarborough?)

  “I’m sure there must be some misunderstanding that we can easily clear up,” Yarborough said smoothly. “As you know—”

  “I don’t know anything, Mr. Yarborough,” Barron cut in. “Nothing but what people tell me. I don’t even believe the baloney I see on television. I know what Mr. Johnson told me, though, and a hundred million Americans know it too. Mr. Johnson, did you apply for a Freeze Contract?”

  “I did, Jack.”

  “Did you agree to assign all your assets to the Foundation upon your clinical death?”

  “You know I did.”

  “Did those assets exceed $50,000?”

  “Sixty or seventy grand, easy,” said Rufus W. Johnson.

  “And were you refused a Freeze Contract, Mr. Johnson?”

  “I sure was.”

  Barron paused, grimaced, lowered his head to catch reflected ominous flashes from the backdrop off the shiny desk-arm in his eyes. “And you are a Negro, I notice, aren’t you, Mr. Johnson? Now, Mr. Yarborough, you were saying something about a misunderstanding—something that can be easily cleared up? Suppose you explain the hard facts. Suppose you explain to the American people why Mr. Johnson was refused a Freeze Contract.”

  Start digging out from under, Dad, Barron thought as he tapped his right foot-button three times, calling for a commercial in three minutes (just a few shovelfuls so I can throw on more).

  “But it is all quite simple, Mr. Barron,” Yarborough said, voice and face dead earnest, put visually in the dock, as Gelardi cut out Johnson’s image, left Yarborough tiny black and white, surrounded on three sides, all but engulfed by close-up (backdrop darkness shadows swirling behind) of Jack Barron.

  “The basic long-range goal of the Foundation is to support research that will lead to a time when all men will live forever. This requires money, a great deal of money. And the more money we have to spend on research, the sooner will that day arrive. The Foundation for Human Immortality has only one source of capital: its National Freezer Program. The bodies of a limited number of Americans are frozen and preserved in liquid helium upon clinical death so that they may be revived when research, Foundation research, provides the answers to—”

  “Aw, we know all this bull!” exclaimed Rufus W. Johnson (still off-screen). “You freeze fat cats, shade fat cats, that is, and while they’re on ice you get all their money and stocks and whatever they have, and they don’t get it back till they’re alive again, if they ever are. That’s cool, I mean, you can’t take it with you, might as well gamble, got nothing to lose but a fancy funeral.” (Keeping his face somber and glowering, Barron let the unseen voice rave on and waited for the pounce-moment.) “Okay, that’s what you’re selling, that’s what Rufus W. Johnson is buying. Only you ain’t selling to no nig—”

  “Watch it, Mr. Johnson!” Barron cut in, and Vince, thinking along with him, cut Johnson’s audio as the promptboard flashed “2 Minutes.” “You see, Mr. Yarborough, Mr. Johnson is overwrought, and with good reason. He’s got a house that cost him $15,000, $5,000 in the bank, and over $50,000 in trucks, and I’m no Einstein, but by my reckoning, $50,000 plus $20,000 is more than $50,000. Is it not true that the minimum net worth that’s supposed to be assigned to the Foundation upon clinical death in order for the Foundation to issue a Freeze Contract is $50,000?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Barron. But, you see, the $50,000 must be in liquid—”

  “Please, just answer the questions for a moment,” Barron cut in loudly. Don’t let him explain, keep him bogey-man, he thought, noting wryly that Vince had granted the gray-on-gray image of Yarborough three-quarters of the screen, pale, unreal Goliath versus full-color David effect. “It all seems simple to me. $50,000 is supposed to buy any American a Freeze. Mr. Johnson offered you his total net worth, which exceeds $50,000. Mr. Johnson is an American citizen. Mr. Johnson was refused a Freeze Contract. Mr. Johnson is a Negro. What conclusion can you expect the American people to draw? Facts are facts.”

  “But race has nothing to do with it!” Yarborough answered shrilly, and Barron frowned publicly, and grinned inwardly as he saw Yarborough finally blow his cool. “The $50,000 must be in liquid assets—cash, stocks, negotiable property. Any man, regardless of race, who has $50,000 in liquid—”

  Barron crossed his legs, signal to cut Yarborough off the air, as the promptboard flashed “60 seconds,” said: “And, of course, we all know it’s the Foundation that decides whether a man’s assets are…liquid enough. Makes it nice and cozy, eh, folks? The Foundation doesn’t want to freeze a man, just tells him his assets are ‘frozen’, no pun intended. Wonder how many Negroes have frozen assets, and how many have frozen bodies? Well, maybe we can find out from a man who’s got some strong opinions about the current proposal in Congress to grant this—shall we say whimsical?—outfit that calls itself the Foundation for Human Immortality a monopoly on all cryogenic freezing in the United States—the Social Justice Governor of Mississippi, Lukas Greene. So hang on, folks, and hang on, Mr. Johnson. We’ll be talking to the Governor of your home state right after this attempt to…unfreeze your pocketbooks by our sponsor.”

  Hope you’re watching this, Howards, you schmuck you, Barron thought as they rolled the commercial. See what happens when you mickey mouse Jack Barron! He thumbed the intercom button said: “Let me have a couple private moments on the line with Luke.”

  “Hey what you want from this po’ black boy, you big bad shade you?” Lukas Greene (one eye on the Acapulco Golds commercial, the other on the vidphone image of Jack Barron) said. “Isn’t shafting Bennie Howards enough for one night? Gotta pick on us Crusaders for Social Justice too?”

  “Relax, Lothar,” Jack Barron said. “This is you-and-me-stomp-the-Foundation night. This time good old Jack Barron’s playing ball with you, dig?”

  Well, that’s a relief, provided I can trust Jack, Greene thought. But what’s all this race-flak with the Foundation? “Dig,” said Greene. “But we both know Bennie’d freeze Chairman Wang himself, if the cat coughed up the bread, let alone some poor buck. Why the knife? You comin’ home to the S.J.C., Claude?”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Jack Barron told him. “I’m just showing Howards what happens to a vip thinks he can be out to Jack Barron. Observe and learn, Amos, case you ever decide to be away from your vidphone some Wednesday night. But, cool it; we’re about to go on the air again.”

  Same goddamn Jack Barron, Greene thought as Barron made with the introduction. (“…Governor of Mississippi and leading national figure in the Social Justice Coalition…”) Sell his mother for three points in the ratings, Howards could be eating babies raw and it’d be no sweat, no heat, too much power for the balless wonder, but don’t answer that phone and you get the knife, Bennie boy. (“…your constituent has charged…”) Okay, we pl
ay Jack’s game tonight, both shaft Howards maybe helped kill the Freezer Utility Bill, and so what if Jack has asshole reasons.

  “…and it is well-known that the Foundation has been refused permission to build a freezer in Mississippi, Governor Greene,” Jack was saying. “Is this because the Mississippi Social Justice Coalition suspects, as Mr. Johnson charges, that the Foundation discriminates against Negroes?”

  Well, here goes nothing, thought Greene. Let’s see how much S.J.C. flak he lets me get away with. “Leaving aside the racial question for a moment, Mr. Barron,” Greene said into his vidphone, noting that Generous Jack was granting him half the TV screen at the moment, angular black face sharply handsome in black and white, “we would not permit the Foundation to build a Freezer in Mississippi if Mr. Howards and every single one of his employees were as black as the proverbial ace of spades. The Social Justice Coalition stands firmly for a free Public Freezer Policy. We believe that no individual, corporation, or so-called non-profit foundation should have the right to decide who will have a chance to live again and who will not. We believe that all freezers should be publicly owned and financed, and that the choice of who is to be Frozen and who is not should be determined by the drawing of lots. We believe—”

  “Your position on the Freezer Utility Bill versus the Public Freezer proposal is all too well known,” Jack Barron interrupted dryly, and Greene’s TV screen now showed him scrunched down in the lower lefthand corner (gentle reminder as to who was running things from old Berkeley buddy Jack Barron).

  “What’s bugging Mr. Johnson, what’s bugging me, what’s bugging a hundred million viewers tonight is not the theoretical question of private versus public Freezing, but the practical question: does the Foundation discriminate against Negroes? Is Benedict Howards abusing his economic and social power?”

  Old college try, thought Greene. “That’s what I was getting at, Mr. Barron,” he said, deliberately great-man-testy. “When a private company or foundation acquires the enormous power that the Foundation for Human Immortality has, abuses of one kind or another become inevitable. Should the Foundation succeed in getting its Utility Bill through Congress, and should the President sign it, this life-and-death power will be written into law, backed by the Federal Government, and at that point the Foundation can discriminate against Negroes, Republicans, sha—er, Caucasians or anyone else who refuses to play Howards’ game with impunity. That’s why—”

  “Please, Governor Greene,” Jack Barron said with a put-on jaded grimace. “We’re all on the side of the angels. But you know the equal-time laws as well as I do, and you can’t make political speeches on this show.” Jack paused and smiled a just-for-him for-chrissakes-Luke smile, Greene saw. “I’d ruin this groovy sportjac if I got canceled and had to go out and dig ditches. The question is, is the Foundation now discriminating against Negroes?”

  Well, that’s where it’s at, Greene thought. I want to make points on Howards, all I can do is help make it look like he’s playing the Wallacite game, Jack’s hobbyhorse for the night, and we both know he’s not that loopy. But those hundred million voters Jack mentions every other sentence maybe don’t, maybe can bug enough Congressmen to get them to vote the other way, kill Howards’ bill if we make the right waves. So, Bennie Howards, yo’ is a big, bad nigger-hating shade fo’ the duration, sorry about that, chief.

  “Well,” Greene replied, “the record shows that although Negroes are roughly twenty per cent of the population, less than two per cent of the bodies in the Foundation’s Freezers are Negroes…”

  “And the Foundation has never explained this discrepancy?” Jack asked, and gave Greene back full half-screen for playing ball.

  You know the reason you sly shade mother, Greene thought. How many of us in the good old U.S. of A. buzz off worth fifty thou? Foundation don’t discriminate more than everyone else. Why should it be different when a black man dies than when he’s alive—“You a shade, you got forever made, but if you’re black, when you go you don’t come back.” Even though Malcolm planted that one don’t stop it from being gut-truth, shade-buddy Jack. Foundation’s cleaner than G.M., unions, bossman vip bastards—only color Howards digs is green-money color—but gotta squash the mother like a bug any way you can…

  “Never heard of one,” Greene said, “I mean, what can they say, those are the figures in black and white (he smiled wanly)—sorry about that. Even if there’s no conscious racial bias, the Foundation, set up as it is on the basis of who can pay, must in fact discriminate because everyone knows that the average income of a black man in this country is about half that of the average white. The Foundation, by its very existence, helps perpetuate the inferior position of the Negro—even beyond the grave. In fact it’s getting so’s a gravestone instead of a Freeze’s gonna become a black thing, like nappy hair, before too long.

  “I’m not accusing any man of anything. But I do accuse the society—and the Foundation swings an awful lot of weight in the society. And if Howards isn’t exercising the social responsibility that should go with social power…well, then, he’s copping-out. And we both know, Mr. Barron (sickly-sweet smile for cop-out Jack), that a cop-out’s just as guilty as the Wallacites and Withers’ that his irresponsible indifference allows to flourish.” Two points on Howards, Greene thought, and two points on you, Jack.

  Jack Barron smiled what Greene recognized as his words-in-your-mouth smile. And sure enough, he saw that Jack had now given him three quarters of the screen: Prols see Luke Greene while hearing words of Jack Barron schtick and why don’t you use that sly shade brain of yours for something that counts, you cop-out you.

  “Then what you’re saying in essence, Governor Greene,” Jack said, in what Greene recognized as the sum-up-kiss-good-bye-here-comes-the-commercial pounce, “is that the very character of the Foundation for Human Immortality itself creates a de facto policy of racial discrimination, whether this is official Foundation policy or not, right? That whether Mr. Johnson was refused a Freeze Contract because he was a Negro, or whether his assets are actually insufficient by Foundation standards, those very financial standards arbitrarily set by Mr. Benedict Howards himself are actually a form of built-in racial discrimination? That—”

  “One hundred per cent right!” Lukas Greene said loudly. (You may get the last word, but you don’t put it in this black boy’s mouth, Jack!) “So far as you’ve gone (and fence-sitting Jack cuts me down to quarter screen but lets me babble got extra brains where his balls should be). But not only discrimination against Negroes. The existence of a private, high-priced Freezing Company discriminates against black men, white men, the poor, the indigent, six million unemployed and twenty million underemployed Americans. It places a dollar value on immortality, on human life, as if Saint Peter suddenly put up a toll booth in front of those Pearly Gates. What right does anyone have to look into a man’s finances and say, ‘You, sir, may have life eternal. But you, you pauper, when you die, you die forever’? Every American—”

  Abruptly, Greene saw that his face and voice were no longer on the air. His TV screen was now filled with a close-up of earnest-lipped, sly-eyed Jack Barron. (Oh, well, thought Greene, at least we made some points.)

  “Thank you, Governor Greene,” said Jack Barron. “We sure know what’s bugging you now. And you’ve given us all food for thought. And speaking of food, it’s that time again for a few words from them that pay for my groceries. But hang on, America, ’cause we’ll be right back with the other side in the hotseat——Senator Theodore Hennering, coauthor of the Hennering-Bernstein Freezer Utility Bill, who’s on record as thinking that the Foundation for Human Immortality’s just fine and dandy as it is, and would like to see the Foundation granted a legal monopoly. We’ll try to see where the good Senator’s head is at, after this word from our sponsor.”

  Hey, Greene thought excitedly as a Chevy commercial came on, if he knifes Hennering on the bill that could be it! Jack could cut Hopeful Henny to dog meat he wanted to, shift ten votes
in the Senate, or thirty in the House and the bill’s dead.

  “What in hell you trying to do, Luke?” Jack Barron’s vidphone image said. “Screw me good with the F.C.C.? Howards’s got two commissioners in his hip pocket; we both know that.”

  “I’m trying to kill the Freezer Utility Bill, and we both know that too, Percy,” Greene told him. “You the cat decided to knife Bennie, remember? And you can do it, Jack. You can kill the bill right now by slaughtering Teddy Hennering. Nail him to the wall, man, and put in a few extra spikes for me.”

  “Nail him to the wall?” Jack Barron shouted. “You’re out of your gourd, Rastus! I want Howards to bleed a little, teach him a lesson, but not in the gut, Kingfish, just a couple flesh wounds. Howards can murder me if I hit him too hard where he lives. I gotta play pussycat with Hennering, let him make up some points the Foundation’s lost, or I’m in goddamned politics. Better I should get a dose of clap than a dose of that.”

  “Don’t you ever remember what you were, Jack?” Greene sighed.

  “Every time my gut rumbles, man.”

  “Win one, lose one, eh, Jack? Back then you had balls but no power. Now you got power and no—”

  “Screw you, Luke,” said Jack Barron. “You got your nice little bag down there in coon country, let me keep mine.”

  “Fuck you too, Jack,” Greene said, breaking the vidphone connection. Fuck you, Jack Barron good old Jack Barron, what in hell happened to the good old Berkeley-Jack-and-Sara Montgomery Meridian sign-waving caring, black shade committed Jack Barron?

  Greene sighed, knowing what happened…what happened to all no-more-war nigger-loving peace-loving happy got nothing need nothing love-truth-and-beauty against the night Baby Bolshevik Galahads. Years happened, hunger happened, Lyndon happened, and one day, age-thirty happened, no more kids, time-to-get-ours happened and them that could, went and got.

  Jack got Bug Jack Barron (losing Sara, poor-couldn’t-cut-it good-heart good fuck Peter Pan living relic of what we all lost making it all a silly-ass-lie Sara), and you got this gig in Evers, Mississippi, you white nigger you. Schmuck you are to think anyone could bring it all back, bring back youth truth don’t give a shit close to the blood happy balling days when we knew we could do it all if only we had the power. Now we got the power, I got the power, Jack got the power, and to get it we paid our balls, is all.