Mokotux Charlie climbed the stairs like a calliper with his clipboard, mop and megaphone. The old bush coolie ran the place with the rep n’-grace of a gamblers’ tears. Molasses black with a face like an unfinished woodcarving, tight brown suit, cockroach killer boots, white handle razor behind an ear for peeling more than toecorns and a voice that suggested a rusty trachea. Charlie liked to grin in that ol’island pimp style, revealing 10 teeth brown from 55 years of Trini pepper, chewing nush and home-rolled cigars. He also ran severe erotique noir upstairs where the rooms smell like dried pussy, where cum crusted facerags lay under the beds, where the curtains felt dank and butter greased. His ladies charged by the pound; your weight plus theirs in cash!
Charlie hummed as he shovelled spum from teledildonic booths and wiped his pros with paraffin, prime pros with lineage to Aboboville, Iere; pork legged jammettes and melon swallowing domestic cleaner types with devious profiles, big bone dada mamas whose hips re-tuned bedsprings to the B flat of authentic colonial brothels. Some wore names like Yvette, Rose, Daphne and Gemma who’d just arrived on Kunu Supia from some floating island behind God’s back. She would even let you lick her mastectomy scar.
2. Joe Sambucus Nigra
Joe Sam was so bad even catfish shaved to meet him: a man so fierce he wore his boots inside out African spaceboots, Nigerians used them for terraforming, Joe Sam used his to kick afrosaxons and smuggled his black butter irregardless. Bad like crab an’ spoken of with contempt in multiple dialects of intergalactic niggaspeak, banned from six floating isles for ultraviolence, subversive texts and possession of genetic contraband, upright and devious, with a stare that saw through bones—his instantaneous cuss was so cantankerous it would cause concussions! So gifted in the throat with a Baptist minister’s grimy tone, his aural pyrotechnics would hypnotize negroes. He manipulated deft verbs and lingual tourniquets with ferocious grace, supplying palefolk and tourists with prime niggum vitae. A callous, transgalactic pusherman, suave an so slick with a flick he filled veins stiff with liquidessence and drove a chrome Mesakin Congo Pump with antimatic injection. Ever dapper in devious strides and astrocamouflage dashikis, Joe Sam’s hustle was the cusp of voodoo funk technology: bootleg melanin to keep pale niggers ticking on Kunu Supia!
Joe swore lineage to Ierean ancestors who were rois and dauphins in secret slave militias, belly marinated with the bile of urban revolutionary badjohns from Corbeau town and Cuttyville Junction. Men with wooden carbuncles and full heads of hair, they shaved with cutlass blades. Copacetic men who could nyam pigfat, mandrake root and forceripe tamarind for breakfast then buck waist and break fast an spit/revolutionary spunk in your sisters eye from a radius of 360 Uncle Ben Blacks, coming from the genus of mythical beasts from back in old Iere when stickfighters still ruled the ancient barrackyards. Hill-born soldiers with cast iron gorgon organs and bois dipped in asifetida sulphate, underarm renk with rancid paraffin copper.
Saliva trickles from the lisp of a 12-fingered manchild tugging a kite in Aranguez savannah with a razorbladed tail to cut and send other kites over the Samaan trees then run home watch: Electric Company, Love American Style, Carnabas Bollins and Puffin’ Stuff, Voyage to the bottom of the sea—they had no broughtupsy; would suck pus an hit big man mad bullpistle then rub stinging nettle on dey prick, hunt snakes and whip lizards in half against orange trees with masonry twine. Soulman pusherman skank to Mikey Dread, bust Carbide and smoke tampi, bust cow face with broomstick, hog head with tree-trunk, looting the city while the revolution blazed. Grow dread/upset the old lady. Convinced Gallstones Grandfatha Buckmouth that drinking lil’boy urine would cure his cataract but then put mentholated spirit in the old mans’ hibiscus tea and grew up to be legends with monikers as sublime as Dr Rat, Cutouter, Gooter, Siparia Scipio, Catpiss Pepper, whatever happened to Newland Blake? or anyone a dem rubber wristed bois swingers with hollow scars stolen from the gayelle.
Big strong cocoa-prick man like Joe Sam so could sit in a brimfully stink hot funky latrine in a canecutter shirt, sun cutting through galvanize like Michael X pelting chop and smoke basiments of caustic ses’ an’ sip flour-porridge. Bus’ toe bounce steppers who had afros since the 1940s and would catch bullets there-much hair. Sharpboned jaw box go crack cocoa pod and coconut, bust tamboo bamboo, strip cane, shake skulls and squeeze out butterwax, break man back with 2x4 pine, restore blacknuss, plot guerrilla ballistics, peel back bullshit, stew black justice, high browed on Ju Ju physics, sip breast milk, cowmilk, duck egg and oyster, grow gut and full Pharaoh Saunders beard ’til it grew grey and long so would wrap around standpipes and Baptist flagpoles, but by then coming down from hill to town to tumble in teargas became impractical, and bad for bunions, body weak from revolution. But in Toucan Bay Joe Sam could induce spontaneous coitus in Bahama mamas and men who yet knew not their thermal deathpoints and thought themselves impervious would buck and cringe like Barbadian foil and surrender their deepest compunctions.
3. Secret Underlung
But there were haters who grumbled at Joe’s return. And in the brisk underbelly of night, savage native neck lockers crept in shadows with sharkbone daggers, in lurk for Joe arriving. They snuck and steupsed ’round Houdini’s, peepin ’neat the dank stairwells, grinding malice for Joe.
To blow his soul. To bust
his secret underlung.
His modus upset most post-earth negroes who believed in a disembodied blacknuss and they bemoaned Joe for his blackdada retrograde. They claimed that ‘blackness’ was only relevant on Earth and even then was suspected as the mindset of a con that pat afros down and kept negroes terra bound to suffer when we coulda been interplanetary from way back. Black was dead they said. ‘Black as in the tones of Nuyorican niggerpoets ranting militant in ancient days, earth long, livin’ in cold water Brooklyn warehouse space, no food but Fanon, no cash but Jackson, back then their essential essence preservation by poetic testifying was hip and on the one ’cause subversive boots and dreader guerrillas were needed on the urban battlefields and word was sword, shield and dagger, even ancient Iere had gun in Dashiki and afro intellects bust plenty police head with oratorical gas but not now we swimming in heaven.’
With such consummate scripts these anti-essentialists wished to reverse polarities. But blackpeople didn’t want to hear that shit ’cause underneath these negros appeared impervious to funk. The ONE would hit them in the chest like this “!” and they wouldn’t understand it. Prone to pork they’d lick pigfat off the floor when no one was looking but they wouldn’t understand it. Their ears would ring with transgenetic faxes and they wouldn’t understand it. Drums would tumble with insecret textures and they wouldn’t understand it. But they crept light round Houdini’s in long black muslin reciting intimate textology, so damn vex they could eradicate Joe. Or blow his soul or bust his secret underlung.
But the Blackerblacks, them was ultraviolent spooks. Shoe shine black from scalp to sole with skin the texture of calfskin leather, they were the mutant progeny of Kunu Supia’s original terraformers, who churned in geothermal mines till sun bust their genome codes in the Kilgodey desert. Imperviously black their eyes shone like sunbeams through smooth onyx bone. They wanted to hurt Joe. Real bad. For heresy. Envious of the slick ease with which he rolled billfolds in Toucan Bay from a hustle they saw as rightfully theirs.
Two them were rappin’ in a gully ’neat Houdini’s in a crude basilect.
“I hear Joe Sam kill 20 man with Idi Amin jawbone, all was Spyro Gyra fans.”
“Is so? Well, Laro, if ah dead bury meh clothes.”
Joe Sam arrives with immaculate precision, stepping tough through the muscle funk as slick as vampire brows, 6 ft 6 of rigorous black muscle in an oxblood ceramic polyester suit cut sharp with grey paramilitary pimpstripe, secret pockets packed with bootleg melanin to keep pale niggers ticking on Kunu Supia and glory rolls of edible money concealed in his bullet-proof waistcoat. As he soulfull strides, slappin’ palms with the rugged grace of a southern Ethiopian cowboy, he
ad hard with nigger knots, with battle scars on both cheeks and a 3-canal cutlass tucked in his waist. Mokotux Charlie comes calliping down from his jamette harem to grin like horseteeth and embrace him.
“Ai, Joe, when you reach? When you going back?”
Joe just grinned. He must’ve been aware of motives installed in many devious assassins for his demise, but as he moves through the crowd his jaw is locked rigid and reveals no fear.
In the basement bluesdance, more mellow the texture, old blue funk in abstract contortions; Swamp Dogg, Solomon Burke, soft lights and dopesmoke, lovers kept the walls erect, citrus pungent drunks lay sprung on silk cotton sofas cradling demijohns of mountain dew. Pious old Iereans with grey long beards shuffled cards with feeling, they sucked bongfulls of black Tobago gungeon, sat round plywood tables slapping harsh cards down.
“High low jack game!”
“Who draw jack a dimes?”
In a back room, a Buddha-belly pot of smoked Manicou soup sat bubbling on a pitchpine fire. An old ragged dread with a prosthetic tongue bent prodding lumps of pumpkin, yamatuta, cowtongue dumplings and green banana with a wooden spoon and the scent of lime, wild thyme, shadon beni and congo pepper rises from the broth, oozing its bushmeat sweetness round the crowded room. Joe Sam stakes a corner. He pulls two vials from an inside pocket, lays them to light and a dozen hungerers peep round his halo. The mere sight of the serum causes some to salivate and somersault in their skins. Joe Sam takes his stand on a powdermilk pan and with a gutty growl, the supacoon began to testify.
THE ASTRAL VISITOR DELTA BLUES
Robert Fleming
(2000)
Alligator, Mississippi—July 11, 1961
Frank Boles wasn’t thinking about aliens, spaceships, or anything else extraterrestrial on that hot moonlit Delta night he went to Minnie’s jook joint. He shrugged his broad John Henry shoulders and went upstairs, past the frowning, bent man who checked him in at the door. Not tonight. No, he wouldn’t think about the chits he owed at Mister Wiley’s store, or whether his daughter Bue got herself knocked up by that Dixon boy or if Mister Tyree was going to throw him off his place for hitting the peckerwood down at the feed shed over in Oriole. Not tonight. Tonight he was going to raise hell and worry about heaven tomorrow. The rocking sound of music could be heard through the beaverboard walls, good down-home blues. A few people standing at the entrance stepped aside to let the tall gaunt sharecropper pass. After a brief survey of the dance floor, Frank decided that he didn’t know anyone there, not even the sad-faced man sitting by the window, dispensing paper cups of corn whiskey. No, he didn’t know anyone, but he could be wrong in the dim light.
Inside, a bright-skinned man bobbed his head as he pounded a piano into joyous submission, accompanied by another blue-black man playing a harmonica and a tricky-fingered guitarist, who looked sleepy. Stationed in front of the musicians were two singers, a couple, slickly dressed. Frank chuckled as he maneuvered his way through the tightly packed tables, noting how the lights caught the glimmer of the male singer’s head. Both entertainers seemed drunk or close to it, and Frank was in the mood to follow.
He chose a rickety seat in a corner, not too close to the stage, but far enough so that he could get a good view of the room. He ordered a whiskey and surveyed the club. Everybody was talking, singing, and dancing all at once. Among the revelers, Frank spotted a few of the Holiness people, the backsliders, several drifters, two or three medicine men from the Dixie road show parked just outside of town, and a couple of odd-looking strangers in snow-white suits. They were on the other side of the room, but nobody paid them no mind. Frank searched the mob for a glimpse of his old friend Isaac, but the joker was nowhere to be found.
Frank settled back and let the whiskey and the music wash over him. Every tune sounded faster than the one before it, and the crowd wasted no time catching up. One woman in a low-cut dress was snapping her long fingers over her pretty head. Frank grinned as she shook her wide hips to the steady beat. Many of the old heads there did a dated shuffle, nothing to work up a sweat, though. Once and awhile, someone would step out from the group, do some spins and twists to leave the others wanting more.
Frank wasn’t much of a dancer himself, but he loved to watch. Lovers were snuggled up, belly to belly, whispering hotly in each other’s ears. He sat safely off to the side, grinning. Often, in the middle of a tune, some bad bucks would start cussing loudly, pushing and shoving, or going for the pistols. Frank wanted no part of that, so he preferred to watch. Most players that worked at Minnie’s knew its rowdy reputation and usually set up on a stage near a window, ensuring their escape if the crowd got out of hand. Word was out about the gunplay and knife-throwing that sometimes took place. Veterans said it was a tradition carried from slavery times, the wild and raunchy weekend rumble. Onliest thing Frank did exciting on a Friday night before he came to Clarksdale was throwing a brick at a guy who cheated him at cards.
Glass in hand, the male singer swept back a couple strands of processed hair from his glassy eyes and sauntered across the stage, wiggling his hips to the ladies’ delight. The band switched to a slow, simmering blues. The singer paused, feeling out his audience, but Clarksdale was like most towns in Mississippi and he knew the routine well. Just then a shout from the back of the room sent heads spinning. Frank’s lanky back stiffened, but the scrawny singer went on with his introduction to the next song, a suggestive ditty by Tampa. By the volume of noise from the cheers, Frank could tell it was a house favorite.
As more stragglers were coming in the door, humming along, the male singer rocked back on his heels and sang the bass part of the song, while the woman did the falsetto.
“I’ve got a gal, she’s low and squatty,
I mean boys, she’ll suit anybody.
And everybody likes her, ’cause she loves so good.”
The paper cups were making rounds in the crowd as the couple cut up something awful, bumping and grinding against each other. Frank surmised that the mean-looking crooner was riding her when they weren’t doing the shows, probably a nice roll, too. People on the floor loved their insinuating antics and singing, clapping and stomping in tune to the sizzling words of the song.
Then the woman broke in moaning, twisting, and wringing her hands, stroking the man all over, then stroking herself. The crowd whooped in excitement. Frank sat up straight when the woman gapped her legs while telling the crowd just how she loves so good.
After she ended her solo, her partner came back to wrap it up, beckoning to her suggestively, his conk hair flying behind him.
The audience sang along, chuckling at the lyrics as if it were their first time hearing them. Frank drank glass after glass, enjoying the ruckus. On through the night, the singers and their musicians worked the audience to a fever pitch, with no letup. Frank got into the spirit of things, doing his old buck-and-wing dance, rocking back and forth on one leg while the crowd egged him on. He leapt high and came down into a dancer’s split with both legs straight out under him like the stretched arms of a clock. The folks loved the jig and gave him a round of clapping. He took an uneven bow, swaying dangerously. Lawd, he loved a good time.
“Big man, you put on quite a show out there,” said a gal Frank knew from a juke near Drew. “You shore got big hands, look like you could break a tree in half with them.”
“That ain’t all that’s big,” he flirted, after his vision cleared enough for him to see her seductive smile, watching her soft brown eyes and dark purple face, the soft curves barely concealed under a tight yellow skirt.
“You plumb crazy, fool,” she said, and laughed. “I’m here with some hick from over in Jackson, but mebbe we can get together.” She nodded toward the door.
Frank was tempted for a hot moment, but as the room wavered around him, he knew he was in no condition to fight his way out of the club. He turned her down and watched her wiggle away from him into the crowd, before he tossed down one last gulp of his brew. He had reached his limit of dri
nk about an hour ago, but he stayed on to the last, tossing down cup after cup of the clear, burning liquid. Shortly before three in the morning, he tried to make it home, staggering in the street under the power of the alcohol. His head was throbbing. Finally, he wobbled into the hallway of the colored hotel where he had a room. He pulled himself painfully up the stairs, one step at a time, until he got to his floor.
Once inside, Frank stumbled to a rickety chair and sat on it, with his aching head in his large, calloused hands. Everything on his body pained him, like he had just finished a long day in the fields with his old white cracker boss standing up over him. That peckerwood had a way of getting his goat more than anybody else in the world. Frank was slumped in the chair, just staring into space when it happened, his eyes wide open.
The light was coming from behind him at first, outlining a shape, forming a silhouette. What attracted his stare was the silvery glow around the figure, the pulsating center of it. Blinding light. Then a voice called to him from somewhere out there, and a paralysis crept over Frank, rooting him to his chair. The voice faded back into the blackness where it had come from, the light broke apart and bounced back and forth, then the luminous face of a man dressed in a white suit, a bright white suit like those strangers at the jook, appeared from within the glow.
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