Forward to Glory

by Brian Paul Bach

‘Oh, but how she mattered…! How much she mattered…!’ he whispered, then felt TABP’s comforting hand on his shoulder.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote the moving eulogy, and read it with utmost elegance and respect.

  Following a short intermission, a presentation of the second part of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, with TABP as Doctor Marianus, and Aretha, Sistah, and Special Guest Maya Angelou as high-juice soloists. Quincy Jones conducted, with heavy and purposeful weeping.

  Then Jessye Norman emerged from behind a gothic cenotaph and sang the entire Ababalogue from TABP’s own Wrappa-cantata, ‘She–Search–Sky’, with heartbreaking soulfulness.

  It was a great and powerful send-off for Vonda into the ages. Nothing was better than the modern horizons tone-painted by the Second Viennese School and the cosmic strands of a consummate wrap-up to usher one’s shuffle off this mortal coil, regardless of former hip-hop, or gangsta, or drugga-hugga-bug associations.

  And dim was the tinted spectacle-retreat from the sepulcher, though not simply because of smoked glass covering eyes. Erratic air currents far above (possibly caused by the Departed’s upward thrust toward cosmics unknown – maybe?) and grids of atmospheric occlusion had conspired to produce a particularly nasty miasma of pollutants.

  Albert Whitlock might have painted it! John Fulton could have projected it! Vonda Van Den Dell, in chartreuse and electro-red makeup, might have danced in front of it!

  Oh God… Gone! Truly, she is no more!

  The assertive pall from these uninformed skies, worthy of Timişoara under Ceauşescu, mixed charcoal color with intensely straw-hued light, creating a heavyweight symbolism most appropriate for the funereal occasion underneath. Though there were shinsplints from banging into walkway pilasters, and stubbed toes due to WadeBootz tangling with embossed epitaphs on The Builder’s distinctive flat grave markers, no one in that stricken party yielded their shades to disrespect.

  Pausing at the portal where the last LeBaron limo set sail from the scene, one of Da Broze looked up through his glasses darkly at the brooding mass and muttered:

  ‘With the VVDD outa here, it’s twilight time from now on…’

  The two sat on a cemeterial hillock, the dark moil of troubled sky behind them, and the silent populace before. It was in the after-hours, when all of consequence had moved on, and only a lonely Miles-ian trumpeter played a few contemplative licks, as to a scaffold, as he wandered to the exit, away down there somewhere.

  ‘Son-son, in the faraway past history of this vale, this was no spot of somberness, I can tell you that, right now. Did you know that the Cheecheeneechee tribe used to hold a winter carnival here, man?’

  TABP took a draw on his long-nine cigar before sipping his nipperkin of BlaxRelax Mauritanian liqueur.

  Butterbugs had come down off of his limo-high completely now, and nursed a small keg of bubble water.

  ‘TABP, you’re a priest. Is Miss Vonda – Where –? Is she, you know, OK?’

  ‘Shit man, you would ask me that. This here dusty blue clerical collar betrays my august calling at all times. Would that I could…’ Then he added, wistfully, ‘Dusty blue was her fave color…’

  ‘Is she –’

  ‘I will not speak it. Not in this place, or even within this life. Death’s a trip, man. I’ll let you know. Fuckin’ email/texting… from the… beyond, I s’pose…’

  ‘TABP, I have to ask, what happened to those who did the deed of tragedy? Do you know? Can you speak it?’

  ‘I get you. I hear you. Why, you’re using that too-polite language, man. To respect Miss Vonda, yeah? Das cool. So I will, too. You know, this funeral, just concluded? They tell me, and you know who, that those that did it, as you say… Well, if they would have been worthy, well, they would need the same kind of ceremony. That is, if anyone cared about such human rubbish.’

  ‘You mean, they – someone – …got… them?’

  ‘About an hour after our Miss V lost it. In the hills about Port-au-Prince, man. You don’t know this.’

  ‘I swear not. On Miss Vonda!’

  A comforting elation stirred in the depths of his sorrow.

  ‘On Miss Vonda,’ echoed TABP quietly.

  ‘Our Miss Vonda.’

  9.

  The Acolyte

  These were indeed the days of The Angry Black Priest, when TABP dominated the delicate actor’s very being.

  They headed across a heated, sloped plain of grass until they reached a lone palm tree with collapsed fronds – John Milton could have visualized it; John Martin could have made it work on canvas… Amongst its poverty of shade Butterbugs sought refuge, though TABP remained standing, and he looked out over the land.

  They had done this a number of times: an austere retreat from the madding metroplex, to retire, reflect, and renew. But was real renewal possible? Some semblance was, for they now embarked, with inexplicit motivation, on the first conversation that did not contain some element of tribute, review, or lamentation concerning Vonda Van Den Dell. Nevertheless, neither could bring himself to commence their discussion with:

  ‘Well, what now?’

  There was nothing out there but urban heat and sensed activity, kept at bay by this bare buffer-land, probably owned by Universal City. Or maybe even TABP. He was rumored to own several large estates hereabouts. But there were people down there making movies and music, as well as music for the movies, and both of them knew it.

  Notwithstanding this, and despite his keen interest in at least one of those Industrial activities, Butterbugs was noncommittal. If a lover had been taken away from him, could that vacuum not be filled by the emergence of a hero?

  ‘I want a hero – an uncommon want!’

  He looked up at TABP and thought, ‘I can’t wait for the first black president to save us all!’

  He knew how his idol would reply, too.

  ‘Barack’s only half-black, little one…’

  So he censured himself.

  In his stance and his outward gaze, The Angry Black Priest was no mere presidential figure. He was something far more. A superstar.

  ‘Will you serve?’ Butterbugs suddenly asked, with missionary fervor.

  ‘Listen man, before I was empowered, I wasn’t even a, you know, a waiter. I was a busboy. Right ovah there on Century Boolavard. At frikkin’ Southern Gentleman’s Blaze-Smeared Chicken Tub. That was even before I did all that rust-scraping shit in the Old South. Deeply ironic, yeah?’

  ‘No sir, I didn’t mean it that way.’

  ‘I know the way ya meant it.’

  Butterbugs was more than a tad bit in awe of TABP’s consistent performance in every endeavor. He had the impression that TABP had no desire to acknowledge this white boy’s appreciation of him, as ’twould be the custom along those racial lines, but TABP had the sneaking suspicion that the adulation was sincere. So, he was cool. Most definitely cool.

  TABP stood there, facing the soon-to-be-setting sun, which was reflected in his rad shades. His super custom-cut clerical collar, tropical mauve today, showed its carefully delineated castellation, which did not mock Catholicism or the Episcopalians, but the apparatus did not adhere to them in any way, either.

  Butterbugs was like a little kid in his admiration of the super-gifted star, who was positioned as if to command the fleeing sun to get the fuck back upstairs and be cool.

  ‘TABP, you have the thinnest lips I’ve ever seen on a black person.’

  TABP smacked those very features and stared at Butterbugs.

  The thrill of it all came when Butterbugs thought that, at any moment, searing beams of corrosive light would come plowing out from the infinite depths of those impassive shades, to demolish him utterly for his foolish and irreverent and racially-slurred and politically incorrect and alienating and dumb-ass critical statement towards one who obviously could beat the unholy living shit out of him. Tougher than Tyson, more of a bull than Evander Holyfield, scarier than Ali, TABP paused, but with a look of beatification. The expression was from
one who was a connoisseur of momentary pity, preceding apocalyptic justice.

  ‘This is IT!’ thought Butterbugs. ‘The smile before the death moment.’

  He actually would have felt honored to be destroyed by TABP right now. Better to have died pre-developed as an actor, rather than in Development Hell.

  The pause ended, and TABP parted his quite noticeably thin lips to say:

  ‘Shitshyes. That’s why everboddy’s so muthahfuckin’ scared a me!’

  And his gutsy baritone laughter, joined by Butterbugs’, filled the valley with so much weight that the barometric pressure rose a full point.

  ‘I don’t fit in to no category, basic-boy!’

  ‘Neither, I think, do I,’ added Butterbugs, boldly.

  ‘You know what some white chick said to me once? She was so attracted to me. You might say, appallingly attracted. And when white folks git attracted to black folks to that extent… Well, you jes gotta know that some elegant fakery is afoot.’

  ‘You mean, like I’m doing?’

  Butterbugs was only too aware, of a sudden, of his insipid-sounding hero-worship-scrounging behavior in front of this great star.

  ‘No, man. I would’na brought it up if I thought it applied to ya. Man, you’re an innocent. I don’t care how many lives ya lived so far. Yo is a innocent. Vonda knew it too. That’s why you two click-a-banged.’

  Butterbugs chuckled with true relief. He simply couldn’t believe his good fortune that an Angry Black was on his side. How he mourned for Vonda internally, though. And he knew TABP did too, and was covering the ache with cool.

  ‘You know, TABP, she talked to me of ‘Maybe-Love’.’

  ‘Ohhhh yeah,’ replied TABP, in I-know-ALL-about-THAT tones. ‘That ‘Maybe-Love’ thang. She wouldn’t let it go with me neither. I guess it’s because she never did find it.’

  ‘Or else she found it all the time,’ Butterbugs said quietly, reading a profundity in TABP’s shades that he could build on.

  ‘You cornered it right there, innocent child. Right there…’

  He drifted a bit. The innocent child’s humbleness truly impressed him, because he knew for a fact that Vonda had indeed found it – in Butterbugs.

  Then he got back.

  ‘But lemme tell ya. You know what that adoring chick, you know, the white babe I was tellin’ you ’bout? What she said to me, once we had our tops off? She sez, ‘You’re not black and icky like a monkey…’’

  Butterbugs gasped in disbelief, smiling.

  TABP snorted, and noted Butterbugs’ smile.

  ‘Ya see what I mean, man, by elegant fakery?’

  ‘Yeah! What a thing to say!’

  ‘No, I means you, my allegedly innocent associate.’

  ‘Wh–at?’

  ‘Inside, you’d think the same thing.’

  ‘But, sir. What about her?’

  ‘Well schit, man. She was an honest one. Pure and honest. Tellin’-it-like-was, man!’

  ‘You mean, you weren’t mad?’

  ‘Shitshyes I was. But I married her anyway. I dug her honesty.’

  ‘But TABP, I’m honest. I admire you, man.’

  ‘Yeah, I knows. I wasn’t layin’ ya out. You’re still an innocent. Jes don’t overdo it. I don’t wanna have to bust yer shoes.’

  Butterbugs admired him all the more, and he judiciously decided to, indeed, not overdo it.

  ‘Black and icky?’

  TABP smiled with amusement.

  ‘Yeah!’

  ‘But you black, sir!’

  ‘Yeah, but I wasn’t black and icky, man! Big difference.’

  They snuffled with quiet laughs.

  ‘TABP, how can I approach the kind of coolness that you have, so I can be cool myself in the same way?’

  ‘That’s fuckin’ impossible, man. You will never achieve it. Not in this universe.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Listen, I know ya look up to me. For all the right reasons. But you will never be like me. Too high a plane.’

  He smiled.

  ‘But, how can I be comfortable with not being cool, then?’

  ‘You ARE, cool, man. Otherwise you would not be here at this time at such a close proximity to me, with us hangin’ right now.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really, man. I got my kind of cool, and you got yours. You want mine, but you can’t have mine. So don’t ask for mine. Be cool about your own cool, man.’

  ‘I bet you tell all your fans that.’

  ‘Good subject for my next sermon. See? You cool. Gave me a fuckin’ wild idea to preach. I may even use the word ‘fuck’ in the sermon!’

  ‘TABP! Can I be there to see it? To hear it? Perhaps to sit in a side aisle, or even a lobby alcove?’

  ‘Up in the booth man, with the controllers. You IN.’

  Butterbugs had known it the first time he saw him. The power was apparent, and he knew that he would feel it. He knew that it had all been leading somewhere. Since Vegas: his agony, the Night of Power in the Recliner Chair, the slow return through the risky turmoil of streetside LA, the ebony angel who picked him up, his devotion, her ‘Maybe-into-For-Sure Love’, her passing, the heroism of The Angry Black Priest, his coolness, and then: his own coolness. It was foreign ground, but it felt like a smooth and polished mesa now.

  He reclined in the pale afterglow of even, and dropped off, into a peaceful, Priestly domain, full of resolve, and with a freedom from the blight of anyone not being accepted – for what they are.

  TABP looked down benevolently at the innocent, and stole away. Face in shadow, he bent his steps towards the slowly-appearing constellations of the east. His own mind dreamt of a similar world, every day, and though he thought it theoretically possible, he knew it would never exist.

  Not in this universe.

  Nevertheless, nothing was more apparent to TABP, who was so used to carrying the weight of being a hardass in the name of cool, than the fact that he was impressed and refreshed by the humanity and humbleness of this young Butterbugs. He knew he’d helped him, even though he hadn’t done one thing to get him into show business. And what was even more remarkable, the opposite was true as well. Butterbugs had indeed helped he himself, TABP – and show business wasn’t at all involved, either.

  Turning about and gazing at the dozing figure in the distance under the sketchy palm tree, he uttered:

  ‘You taught me not to live by cool alone, man…’

  That acknowledged, after this sustained interval of interracial linking, it was time he got back to his own familiar business of music, and the wrapping and unwrapping of the soul therein.

  Further into the twilight, he paused and looked at the darkling sky with more of a seeking sense.

  ‘Strange,’ he thought. ‘How there’s everything up there: crabs, lions, jewels and bears. But no faces. There should be faces. Faces we know…’

  The days of mourning were over.

  10.

  Butterbugs Will Be Your Server Today

  He serves!

  At what establishment?

  Яance’s Ravintola!

  Yeah, the ‘ЯR’.

  At 78000 Sankt Cristobal de Llurbá y Glossarrhœa Boulevard-Next-the-Sea.

  A grand address.

  A place of certain quality, frequented by Persons of the Industry for the most part, and particularly a great many successful technical people, such as aging John Dykstra and Douglas Trumbull. Bob Burks, Anne Bauchens, Stanley Cortez, Cyril Mockridge, Dorothy Spencer, Victor Baravalle, Bob Webb and Barbara McLean were known to hang on occasion, as were many other pros, too numerous to list.

  It had always been a question of time until Butterbugs would have had to take up a non-scaffolding job in order to make his way in the post-Vonda, post-TABP world. Yes, The Angry Black Priest had his priorities to attend to, and if his preoccupied staff had been in favor of phasing out this undeveloped, uncool kid from their boss’ presence, who’d acquired prestige just because the late great Vonda ha
d click-a-banged him, then there was every reason to move on. That’s what your typical human psyche does today anyway: move on, usually due to too much input, which always awaits. Too much product. Nimbleness of mind has very little to do with it.

  Caring and cool dude that he was, TABP felt a need to escort Butterbugs onto safe ground before returning to the high tone of Wrap mapping. Time had come to prove that the loss of Vonda had not been the solidarity factor in creating a guru/chela dynamic between TABP and Butterbugs after all. But there was no official statement regarding this matter.

  For Butterbugs, TABP wasn’t at all a guardian, couldn’t be considered a patron, and in no way a steward. The closest thing was as a sometime protector.

  What was concrete though, was TABP’s gift of delivering a rock-steady guarantee of employment. At Яance’s Ravintola.

  It was either a server gig at the ЯR, or a barkeep at Bob’s Keg ’n’ Cork, down on Figueroa (not far from Edie’s, in fact).

  Bob himself, who ran his joint, was nothing but benevolent, and immune from the politics of the place: one eye was on his pint and the other up the chimney.

  TABP’s interests in both concerns meant that he could easily dictate where to place the kid at a moment’s whim. But whereas Bob’s clientele were mainly boilermakers, twine-spinners and blue collar burnouts, and Яance’s were Industry people, TABP concluded (via cellphone call from his WrapJet en route to The Big Easy), that the ЯR probably had more to offer a person of his ilk. Tips would be way better, too. The damn thing was, Bob’s was ultimately more profitable, and the ambience homey, just-plain-folksy, and cheerful.

  It was an opportunity not to disregard, for an endowment from TABP, no matter how banal, could never be written off as unwanted, trivial, or left unattended. Besides, there was no doubt in this universe that TABP had been instrumental in restoring not only key aspects of Butterbugs’ confidence, but there was full evidence that the superstar’s towering strength had been responsible for the revision of his very soul. The exact perimeters of TABP’s priestliness may have been a very grey area, but the standards of his powers of revision were second to none.