“Now let’s drink to Jimmy Johnson. He’s our man without a shadow of a doubt.” Jimmy protested his innocence again and name-dropped Ernest Bamaku. A steward poured up the champagne for all of them excepting Olivamaki, who was a teetotaler. He drank ginger ale instead. Tangi stood again. “To Jimmy Johnson, African American, folk singer par excellence, expert on European psychology, and a dedicated and loyal friend of Pan-Africanism and African independence.” They all stood up, excepting the PM, who sat there staring from Tangi to Johnson and back again.
“I’ll drink to that,” Jimmy said humbly, in all humility, and downed the champagne with one swallow. They sat again and Tangi poured Jimmy another drink and turned to his colleagues. “Mr. Jimmy Johnson can warn us of the pitfalls as we go out into the Western world. He’s invaluable to our historic journey.”
Jimmy gulped another glass of champagne. “You ain’t just whistling Dixie, comrades. I can give it to you straight from the horse’s hindparts. I know the white man backward, forward, and sideways. Better than he knows himself. I had to know him to survive. I really should be going with you distinguished people as your adviser. One thing you’d better do when you go out into that other world, you’d better look those gift horses in the mouth, down the throat, and up their royal pink posteriors. Say, I even made up a tender little lyric about the rear view of a white gift horse. You want to hear it, gentlemen—I mean, Your Highnesses?”
The Ministers were delighted with Jimmy. But what point was Tangi making? Jimmy rambled on in high gear. “You know what happened to the Indians, don’t you? And they weren’t even Indians yet. So when an American shakes your hand, count your fingers afterward in his presence. It’s the custom. It’s expected.” He took another swig of champagne. “And be mistrustful, even as you pretend not to be. They’ll respect you for it, even as they pretend to be indignant. And don’t ever act straightforward, however else you act. Never ever act straightforward or altruistic. They don’t trust an altruistic or straightforward chap at all. They’ll think you are either a damn fool or that you have something up your sleeve, even though you’re shirtless. Always pretend you’re sly and cunning and not to be trusted, and they’ll welcome you with open arms and believe that they can trust you. Honest-to-goodness con men and hustlers are the most respected and trusted men in the good old USA, and the richest and the most successful. All you remember Ronald Reagan—”
He was running off at the mouth and downhill all the way with a good wind at his tail. And the Guanayan Ministers stared at him open-mouthed and could not believe their ears, but they believed that he was serious, even if he was not sincere.
His Wife’s Bottom, Mr. Lloyd, said, awestruck, “But surely, Mister Jimmy Johnson, you are not serious. You are, how do you Americans say it? You are jerking our legs?”
Jimmy took another drink. “You’d better believe I’m serious, Your Excellencies. And another thing, whatever an American tells you, believe the exact opposite. Listen, take politics, for example. An honest politician doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance in the USA. Nobody’d believe anything he had to say. That rarest of birds, an honest politician would have to pretend he’s dishonest before anybody would believe in him or trust him.”
“By Jove!” Mr. Lloyd (or His Wife’s Bottom, or HWB, if it pleases you) said. “The chap is serious.”
Jimmy was more than serious, he was actually sincere.
Jimmy went on and on and on. “The raison d’être for government in the US of A simply stated, the entire hullabaloo of an election campaign is to determine who will be in charge of equitably distributing the graft and keeping the Black man in his place. It is rumored that an elected official takes two separate oaths of office, one publicly and the other one in private. In the latter oath, he or she swears on a stack of Bibles, that he or she will be completely racist and as corrupt and as cynical as he can possibly be. That he will honestly and deliberately steal everything and anything that is not nailed down. But don’t get me wrong, Your Excellencies, I love the beloved country, the good old USA.”
Mr. Lloyd, His Wife’s Bottom, said, “We understand your bitterness as a Black man in a white land, and we sympathize, we empathize, indeed, but surely, sir, I can’t believe, I mean—you are exaggerating!”
Jimmy stared at Mr. Lloyd and decided not to say what he started to decide to say. He cleared his throat. “Now,” Jimmy continued, “on the racial crisis in America, the longest crisis known to man. You will be told”—he mimics—“‘You’re not like our nigrahs at all, you know. You have industry, you have ambition. You are not lazy. You’re different, but we’re making progress.’ And that is supposed to explain away lynching, bombings, slavery, Hiroshima, the Ku Klux Klan, Birmingham, James Crow, discrimination, Watergate—everything. Nicaragua, Grenada. And remember, all colored folks are nigrahs to them, despite the fact that the Negro is a totally American invention.”
He paused again to catch up with his rapid breath and take another swig of champagne.
“This is very valuable information, I’m sure, Mr. Jimmy Johnson,” the Prime Minister interjected. And then the PM turned to Tangi. “This is all very well, but need I remind you, we have a grave situation on our hands? Kindly get to the point, if there is one.”
Tangi rose and took a phony beard out of his pocket and put it on Jimmy’s face, and Jimmy was immediately transformed into the PM’s spitting image. It was unbelievable. The PM stared at Jimmy like he’d seen a ghost, and the rest of the Ministers stared at the two of them open-mouthed and speechless.
Jimmy protested. He was sitting again. “Whatever it is, it’s a lie, I didn’t do it. I was framed. I demand to see my lawyer. I’m for Africa all the way. Uhuru! Uhuru! Uhuru!”
Tangi said quietly, “Half of us stay here with the Prime Minister,” pointing to Olivamaki, “and half of us go to the United States with the Prime Minister,” pointing to Jimmy Johnson.
“Oh no!” the Ministers shouted, unanimously and in unison even.
Jimmy said, “Would somebody be good enough to tell me what this is all about? Anyhow and regardless I demand to see my lawyer first. Any lawyer! And I refuse to answer on the grounds—that—that—”
Tangi took a mirror out of his attaché case and gave it to Jimmy, who stared into it and then at His Excellency and shook his head in disbelief. “My old man sure did get around,” he muttered, “or maybe vice versa, perhaps. Most likely,” he conceded.
It took a lot of talking but Tangi talked the PM and his Ministers into the idea, with the help of Jimmy Johnson. “Why not?” Jimmy demanded with self-righteous indignation. “Have you so little faith in your Afro-American brother? Does our mutual Negritude mean nothing after all?”
After hours of wrangling they agreed reluctantly with Tangi. But when they turned their eyes upon the smiling triumphant Jimmy, he seemed for the first time to grasp the enormity of the undertaking, and that, he, Jimmy Jay Leander Johnson, himself, in person, colored, Black, Negro, Afro, of Lolliloppi, ’Sippi, Near-the-Goddamn Gulf, in the United States of Dixiefied America, was to be the masquerader. The grandiose impersonator. And he said, “Oh, no!” He backed away from the table. He shouted, “Hell no! I haven’t had that much to drink. Excuse me, lady, please ma’am and please sirs!”
They cajoled the poor downtrodden colored Black Negro Afro-American fellow from Lolliloppi; they threatened him, played upon his suddenly flagging race pride, his Negritude, his colortude, his loyalty to Pan-Africanism, and to African independence, to the New World, to the Third World, to the First World, and the Really New Frontier, and on and on ad infinitum. “Here is your chance, comrade, to strike a blow for African freedom”—“You are a man of destiny”—“History has chosen you”—“You must rise to the occasion.”
“But they’ll be asking me all kind of questions. I don’t know enough African history. Especially Guanayan. I’ll be honest with you cats. I had never heard of you dudes before I landed here. And I’ll never get away with it. Somebody’s boun
d to recognize me. What? I mean—please!—I mean, I’m with you, but you must be kidding! Come on already!”
Tangi said calmly, “Her Excellency Miss Maria Efwa here is our Minister of Education and Culture and iInformation, our National Historian and Folklorist. Our national anthropologist. She’ll be making the trip with us and will fill you in en route, and she’ll be by your side while you’re there, as will the rest of us who go.” The Minister of Education’s full name actually was Maria Efwa Olivamaki Mamadou, but she had shortened it to Maria Efwa, professionally, in affirmation of her female independence, though she took great pride in her family name, which was revered throughout Guanaya and the entire continent.
All the while Jimmy shook his head as if he wished it would drop off.
“No-no!” He stared at Maria Efwa, she smiled benignly at him, and his stomach flip-flopped. He shook his head again. “No-no—Hell no! The American white man may be crazy but he damn sure ain’t no fool.”
Tangi said, “Besides you know your white folk better than they know themselves, don’t you, Mr. Jimmy Johnson? You have just given us an outstanding dissertation on them.”
Jimmy looked at Maria Efwa again. The beautiful, smiling one said quietly, “And furthermore all colored folks look alike to Europeans don’t they? I’ve heard you sing about it at the Lido.”
“Yes,” he answered weakly. “Yes, but—No—no—no! Hell no!”
“How can you be discovered then?” Her voice was like sweet string music. Violins playing mellifluously.
The Lion said, “Our Afro-American brothers are great rhetoricians, wonderful singers, and excellent tap dancers, but when it comes to action—the European Americans have them quaking in their boots.”
Jimmy said, “Just a minute, Buster—I mean, of course, Your Excellency—Just a damn minute—”
“So it would appear.” From Maria Efwa and her silken voice.
Tangi smiled at him sarcastically. “Are you for Pan-Africanism or aren’t you? Do you not want to build a better world?”
Jimmy looked at the beautiful Maria Efwa again. He took another swig of champagne. “Yes,” he answered thickly, weakly. “Yes, but—”
Maria Efwa said, “What is the problem then? Do you stand in such awe of your great white father that you would spit into the face of history? Here is your chance to make history, Mister, and for history to make you. Will you turn your back on a great chance to get back at your great white father?”
Another glass of champagne another look at Maria Efwa and he hardly knew what he was saying. “Yes—I mean, hell no. Excuse me, I mean—let’s get the show on the road. I mean—what’s the holdup? Let’s drink to our magnificent venture.”
They all drank, excepting the PM, who kept staring doubtfully at his double, as if he didn’t believe what his eyes beheld.
The last drink gave Jimmy brand-new courage. The drink and Maria Efwa’s smile. “So what can they do to me anyhow, even if I am discovered?”
You could hear the quiet in the room. Then His Wife’s Bottom, Mr. Lloyd, the Vice–Prime Minister of the Independent People’s Democratic Republic of Guanaya, answered cheerfully, maybe even hopefully, “They could drum you out of your country, or hang you for conspiracy, shoot you as the sun comes up. Or is it electrocution in your country?”
Jimmy tried to laugh but it didn’t come off, as the champagne went down the wrong way and came back through his eyes and nose and throat, as if his plumbing were in disrepair. He almost died of strangulation. It might have been more merciful for him if he had.
5
As he rode in the jeep through the Bamakanougouan night with its symphony of sounds of giggling crickets and honking frogs, the fireflies blinking off and on, the sweeping fruit bats, thoughts of what had just transpired collided in his mixed-up mind with visions of what might lie ahead. He looked sideways at the little soft-faced Guanayan soldier who was his driver. They were moving him into the Executive Mansion suite. The new fake beard on his face had already begun to itch. Perhaps he should discuss the pros and cons with his driver, he thought desperately. At once he recognized the unwisdom of such a move, since, as far as the driver was concerned, he was, in fact, His Excellency Jaja Okwu Olivamaki himself. He laughed quietly at the irony of it.
He had made his pilgrimage to the Motherland to find himself, and now he found himself on his way back to the USA as somebody else. Life was an expert knuckleballer, a curve, a changeup, a fastball, and a slider.
“A truly lovely night, Sah,” the quiet-faced little driver said softly.
Before he could reply, Jimmy Johnson’s consciousness suddenly knew a heavy premonition. His heart began to pound away. He was lathered with his perspiration.
There was always a kind of prescience that traveled alongside Jimmy Johnson as far back as he remembered, a premonition that he had learned the hard way, through experience, to pay strict attention to. Sometimes the prescience came to him slowly, almost imperceptively. Sometimes it came as a growing uneasiness, sometimes as a vaguely remembered sound, sometimes magnolia scented, sometimes honeysuckled. There were times when he had pushed it aside as an absurd superstition unworthy of a man of his intelligence and sophistication.
A long long time ago in ’Sippi, when he was a boy about eleven years of age, he had gone swimming with some of his buddies in an old swimming hole in the forested outskirts of Lolliloppi. Old Man Johnson’s place. NO TRESPASSING. THIS MEANS YOU! the sign read. It was a hot day in July, blazing hot, the hottest day on record at the Lolliloppi weather bureau.
“Damn!” Bruh Jamison said. “It’s so damn hot, our chickens laid some hard-boiled eggs this morning.”
They roared with laughter even as they undressed, leisurely. It was too hot to hurry.
Zeke Jefferson said, “It’s hot as hell out here today.”
Bruh Jamison said, “Where in the hell did you think hell was except in Mississippi?”
Bubber Broaders said, “Damn that! The last one in, I had they Mama last night, and it wasn’t too hot for her.” By the time he finished speaking he was running naked toward the swimming hole.
At which point Jimmy Johnson had a premonition, a heavy and funereal-scented premonition. “Hold it! Hold it!” he screamed. “Don’t jump in, Bubba! Don’t jump! Don’t jump!”
Bubber was at the very edge. He halted, momentarily, swiveling about. Jimmy picked up a big heavy rock and heaved it into the water hole. It made a loud splash as it struck the water, and the boys stood dumbfounded as they watched a den of water moccasins scooting here and there across the surface.
Bubber stood there chilled with fear, and shivering in blinding heat, urinating uncontrollably. It was common knowledge that if a water moccasin bit you, you had less than half an hour to prepare to meet your maker.
These premonitions came periodically, sometimes in tandem, once a decade, sometimes monthly, sometimes weekly. Even now, as he rode through the darkness toward the Lido in a jeep seated beside the little Guanayan driver, he recalled an episode in Vietnam. He’d had a buddy from his hometown with whom he played checkers every Wednesday night in his buddy’s company mess hall. G Company was fifteen miles up the road from his own Company H. It was one of those interregnums between actual combat. As he had driven that evening toward G Company in a Weapons Carrier, he had become suddenly aware of the nighttime sounds of giggling crickets, bullfrogs croaking, honking. Lightning bugs were blinking. A smell of forest wetness in the air, the imagined smell of Mississippi cypress swamps. And with all this his entire being knew a strange discomfort, an uneasiness he could not explain, as he drove into the night; he knew an awful sense of déjà vu.
He had been there more than an hour now, but the unease would not leave him, still persisted ominously.
Finally he gave into it and he said, “Hey, Bubber, why don’t you come down to my company sometimes? Why do I always have to make the trip up here?”
Bubber said, “Man! It’s so far down to your place.”
&nbs
p; Jimmy said, “It isn’t any farther from here to H Company than it is from H to G.”
Bubber said, “Yeah, but you travel in a Weapons Carrier. I ain’t got nothing but my two number tens.”
The evening blew cool breezes through the mess hall, but Jimmy was perspiring suddenly. He said, “Let’s get the hell out of here and go to my place.”
“Come on, man. We’re already here now. That don’t make no sense at all.”
There was a desperation in his voice now. The negative vibes he felt were overwhelming. “Let’s get the hell out of here and be quick about it!”
“Come on, soldier. What’s wrong with you?”
Jimmy said, “Something here just doesn’t feel right. I don’t know what it is.”
Bubber said, “Something don’t feel right—what’re you talking about? What’s the matter with you?”
Jimmy said, “Bubber, you remember that time we went swimming at Johnson’s hole in Lolliloppi?”
Bubber stared at Jimmy. “Swimming hole in Lolliloppi?”
“You remember the water moccasins?”
And then Bubber began to freely perspire. He said, quietly, “I remember.” And began to prepare to leave. He gathered the game up and looked around him. “Any of you soldiers want a ride down to Company H? They got a big happening down there tonight.” He went around desperately from table to table. Only three other soldiers were interested. They piled into the Weapons Carrier. They had been driving for about five or ten minutes when the night lit up with sirens blasting out an alert. Searchlights scoured the night from earth to sky. Hunt and destroy. Then there was the drone of motors coming in beneath the searching beams. A few minutes later they heard a deafening explosion. They learned later one of the planes from the North had laid a death egg in the middle of the mess hall. None were wounded, all were killed.
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