The Minister Primarily

by John Oliver Killens

  Jimmy said, “You got to be out of your fucking mind.”

  Jimmy turned to leave the kitchen. The last glimpse he had of Old Blue Eyes, the pretty blue-eyed lad was moving toward him with a hurtful expression, the white boy on the floor following him on his knees still gurgling, Blue Eyes calling after him, “Where’s your sense of humor, baby? Like an Afro-American spook without a sense of humor. An unheard-of phenomenon. A contradiction in terms. I love it!”

  Jimmy responded, “Your pale-asses mammy is a contradiction and an unheard-of phenomenon!”

  Blue Eyes shouted, “I love it! I love it! I love it!”

  * * *

  Later that night, just before the Western world was about to see a new day dawning, Jimmy went to bed with Daphne, and as they reached the outskirts of the city and she began to get the message, and he was sending her the message as he never had before, she rose to meet the postman. She went into a spiraling motion, and Jimmy went into an action, as if he would grind this thing that they said made the World go around, this sweet mystery of life, right down to the nitty-gritty, as she sang “We Shall Overcome.” Laid back. And with feeling yet. Both of them had to make the great scene this night, desperately had to, like combatants in the combat zone. Jimmy was Jody-the-Grinder for mama-mucking real. As they came into the home stretch this sweet girl went singingly for bloody broke, and she wrapped her long legs around him, like she would never ever let him go, and she almost broke our hero’s back. He thought he heard something snap—Pow! And thought he felt it. But he did not desert the saddle. Our hero was too gallant.

  “Fuck me!” sweet darling gentle proper Daphne shouted. “Fuck me! Fuck me, my big black stud! My big black stud—My big—black—stud!” He told himself he imagined the “big black stud” part of it. It was the cat from Chi Town’s fault.

  Even as she sang, “DEEP IN MY HEART, I DO BELIEVE.”

  Her backside left the bed again. “Big black stud!” she shouted. “Big black stud—Big—black—motherfuckering stud!”

  His love muscle knew he hadn’t imagined it. He went limp inside her, but she hardly noticed the difference, as she scaled the heights one more time. And fell asleep immediately afterward.

  He got up and stared down at her sleeping with no pain or apprehension but with a smile of sweet contentment on her face as if she were an angel resting on the bosom of Jesus.

  He had been “had” one more time.

  But he had also done himself some “having,” he told himself, without conviction.

  He swore softly now, as he dressed quietly and took a walk across dark and foggy London as day came slowly out of China. And by the time he reached his flat the mist had cleared completely.

  And he saw London clearly for the first time.

  And eight days later he took flight to Mother Africa.

  To find himself.

  Which was his everlasting mission.

  Right?

  Wrong!

  Per-damn-haps.

  10

  The plane was descending now, and his heart descended into his stomach and God knows where his stomach went, but he felt queasy in his buttocks, and the doubts began to rise in him and multiply. In a few minutes he would be face-to-face with the President of the United States, the greatest of all the Great White Fathers, and the Grand Deception would be on, and there would be no turning off or turning back, and how in the hell had he let these slick-talking Africans talk him into this helluvamess? And without “protection” even! He hadn’t brought his Juju with him. Stupidly he’d refused it. He’d let his big mouth and his sense of humor and adventure get him into trouble again, and his rabid nationalism and his love of Mother Africa and his goddamn swaggering bravado. And the champagne. And Maria Efwa’s smile. He was no hero. He was no fighter, or he would not have run from ’Sippi to California to New York City and across the sea to London Town. All the way to Africa. That’s why he hadn’t made it with sweet Sandra of his London days. He’d always believed in the pious proverb “A good nun is a whole heap better than a bad damn stand.” The universal motto of guerilla fighters, he rationalized. And what the hell made him think he could get away with hoodwinking the whole great powerful United States of Caucasian America? They would probably get wise to him pronto and exile him forever, and two or three years longer just for good measure, and he would be a fool without a country, and jolly England wouldn’t let him in again. Guanaya would disown him even. He was the Great Goof of the nineteen eighties. They would slap him in jail and throw the key away, or tie it to a rabbit’s tail and shoot at Brer Rabbit out on the wide Sahara, and charge Jimmy with espionage and sabotage and put him in the electric chair and sentence his dead body to life imprisonment—and—and—

  The plane dropped a couple hundred yards straight down. Now that he was arriving, he had not only gotten cold feet, his entire body was freezing and covered with a damp cold sweat. He felt faint and nauseated like a pregnant woman’s morning sickness—perhaps? The tip of his arse (as they would say in London) nibbled angrily at the airplane seat. His ass sucked wind (as they’d say in dear old ’Sippi). Could bite a ten-penny nail in two, his scared ass could have. If he’d had a parachute, he would’ve busted the damn window open and trusted his miserable luck. In any event he could not go through with this unpatriotic masquerade, this unconscionable treasonable sabotage. He felt his deeply loyal, often-flagging, red-blooded, Boy Scout American Legion–type born-again Christian Americans fiercely and profoundly now all inside him and choking him. He wanted to join up with Billy Graham, saintly singing in his choir. He wanted to wave the dear star-spangled banner so badly, he could hardly breathe. He looked sideways at Foreign Minister Mamadou Tangi’s adamant face lost in his own deep thoughts, and the sarcastic smile that always seemed to lurk just beneath the surface of his polished ebony skin. Jimmy shook his head and shouted softly, without knowing, “No! No! I can’t do it! Hell naw! I can’t do it!”

  Tangi stared out of his daydream at the bogus and fainthearted PM. “What is the problem, Your Excellency?”

  “I can’t go through with it! I can’t go through with it! I must’ve been completely out of my cotton-picking mind to—!”

  Mamadou Tangi said, without raising his voice, “You are out of your mind, if you think you can turn back at this late date, unless you leap out of that window.”

  Jimmy stared pleadfully almost tearfully at Tangi. Then the bogus PM looked out of the window. The city was below them now. White on white. Looming larger every second. Dollhouses becoming doghouses, becoming human dwelling places. Ants becoming cockroaches, becoming automobiles. But it was still too high for Jimmy Jay to jump.

  * * *

  The President of the USA stood there bravely in the cool breeze with the rest of his contingent, smiling with all his great benevolence. As the plane came in to land at the airport across the bridge in Virginia, Jimmy thought ironically about the colored poem. He could not remember the poet’s name. “Carry me back to ol’ Virginny. That’s the only way you’ll get me there.” He grinned courageously.

  On the ground a band started playing the people started cheering, but instead of sitting down and standing still, the plane sashayed way out on one of the landing strips and sat out there indifferently, snorting and puffing and blowing off steam, dust, and gravel, and then, and finally, it turned around and headed toward the place where all the thousands of people had gathered. The motor off, the steps put up, the red velvet carpet rolled out, and the President and his party stood there smiling and expectant. A couple of bands began to play “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” The stage was set.

  The door to the airplane opened and cheers went up from the wonderful American crowd of happily contented government workers, who had sacrificed an entire day from governmenting, but the first face at the door was a white one, and likewise was the second face (what tribe of African were these?) and then came the bewildered face of the Soviet ambassador. (He never got such a stateside welcome before in all
his diplomatic life; he never had it so good, before or after.) But the fellows were good sports about it and continued to play “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” which he obviously was. Some were puzzled by the strange lettering on the side of the monstrous airliner, which looked like Greek to them, and the hammer-and-sickled insignia, but what the hell—In any event he stood there living it up while he could, and smiling gaily and waving his big hat, which reminded you of Texas. Suddenly the welcome party of VIPs, including the especially beloved President, started moving swiftly toward another plane taxiing in from another landing strip. The crowds broke through the ropes and almost trampled the Soviet jolly-good fellow. Adulation is a many-fleeting-fickle-minded-thing, or something or other, as the saying used to go. And so be it.

  The second plane turned out to be the one bearing the honest-to-goodness Africans and Jimmy Johnson, expatriate, Mississippi Negro, colored man, African American, bogus prime minister. Traitor? Assassin? Saboteur? Jimmy Johnson stood in the door of the cabin scared to death but smiling and hamming it up for the army of photographers and newsreel and television. Then he came jauntily down the steps flanked on one side by Lloyd and on the other by Tangi, as if they thought he might try to make a break and run for it, which was not a far-fetched possibility, but also which went to show you just how much they really trusted their dedicated Afro-American brother. He was highly indignant over that aspect of it. Insulted even. The rest of the party was a few inches behind him, alert and ever at the ready. The red carpet, which was literally pulled out from under the jolly good Soviet ambassador fellow’s feet, was hurriedly rolled out again. And all the bands were playing “Jolly Good Fellow” again and this time they were sincere. But Jimmy felt neither good nor jolly. He felt scared.

  The American government workers were cheering and waving again, the women oohing and the girls ahing, because the bogus PM, like the real McCoy, was dignifiedly handsome in any language in any culture. He was a cool kitty from the city, down with it and couldn’t quit it, even though he would have loved to split it (the scene, that is). Anyhow, the policemen and SS persons had their hands full keeping the screaming shrieking crowd in line, especially the younger women and particularly the older women and the middle-aged ones, and the girls. They were beside themselves was what they were. It was worse than when the Beatles landed. Michael Jackson couldn’t have topped it.

  A group of African students from the colleges in Washington began to beat out a message of welcome on their ethnic drums, and Jimmy forgot where he was or who he was supposed to be. It got very confusing sometimes. The drums reached him, and he started to go into his sexy swivel-hipped Afro American version of the highlife, à la Belafonte, at which point he felt the point of a hard jab in his ribs from Tangi, and he suddenly remembered time and place and circumstance. But just as he was striking a posture of profound excellency-type African dignity, the twenty-one-gun salute began and almost made him put a puddle in his trousers a split second before he jumped out of them. But generally speaking, he was cool. Laid way back. Because that’s the way he always was. Sangfroid every step of the way.

  Jimmy and the President stood there shaking hands like they were priming a pump, as they worked desperately to upstage each other before newsreel and photographers and television. But the fake PM was much younger and slimmer and far more athletic and agile and had much cleverer footwork than the jolly obese President. Jimmy was an ex-athlete, a singer, which also meant he’d always been a frustrated actor, and this moment was his finest hour. He introduced his party to the Last of the Great White Fathers, with the aplomb and urbanity of one used to introducing ministers of African states to presidents of the United States. In the midst of it all, he thought to himself, here he was, a black cat who had just a few years ago managed an escape from the carefree life of dear ol’ ’Sippi, where it was always easy-living summertime. Here he was matching wits and witticism with the Man Himself in person. If his poor dead Mama could see him now! Not to mention his poor lynched Papa. But why not mention his poor lynched Papa?

  The President posing with him again and cameras grinding and popping all over the place, and the shortsighted thick-lensed Great White Man began to read his speech of welcome, holding the paper so close to his face he seemed to be rubbing his bulbously pointed nose with it. Welcoming the distinguished Prime Minister and “your official fu-fu-fu-fabulous party who have come from the grateful respectful, I mean greatly respected nation inspiring freedom-loving people everywhere. Come all the way to the very fu-fu-fu-fu fabulous rock-bound shores of liberty as represented by that fu-fu-fu-fabulous government of the people by the people and for the people which shall now perish from the fu-fu-fu-fu-fabulous earth.” He held the paper away from his face, so that the photographers could shoot him. “I mean shall not fu-fu fu-fabulously perish, not now perish—”

  As he stared at the amiable President and listened to his simple peasant-like sincerity, Jimmy’s unpredictable sense of humor almost did him irreparable dirt. He had a way with him of looking you dead in the eye and mouth when you were talking to him, as if he saw every word as it left your brain and followed its course till it finally emerged from your lips. When you talked to him you were sure that you were being listened to. But he found it almost impossible to keep his eyes on the President’s sincere face. Jimmy kept thinking, You’re the President of the most powerful nation on earth and you don’t know the difference between an African Prime Minister and a hungry Negro from Lolliloppi, Mississippi. All of us colored look alike. He struggled desperately to keep a straight face as he watched his own beloved President struggling desperately with the printed word. Paper up against his pimply nose one moment and away from his face the next. Any moment Jimmy would howl with laughter and fall down on the ground and kick up his heel and laugh and laugh till the tears flowed like the River ’Sippi. Don’t let me laugh! Great God almighty from Lolliloppi, Near-the-Gulf! Don’t let me laugh! He was scared to death that he would break up there and then, and the great Black hoax would be over before it ever really started.

  “In the name of the freedom-loving fu-fu-fu-fabulous people of the United States—I—” The PRESIDENT PAUSED. He had lost his place again on the piece of paper in his trembling hand. Doesn’t the poor chap know his own name? the bogus PM wondered. The Prexy found his name: “I, Hubert Herbert Hubert”—he glanced down at the paper again—“as President of the fu-fu-fu-fu-fabulous United States, welcome you to the community of the Free World and independent nations. I welcome you in the name of self-determination and brotherhood and the God in whom we trust.” Poor fellow, he lost his place on the intelligence sheet again. Up against his obeliscal nose one more time. “And may your stay in our great country be a joyful and fruitful—one—bringing our two countries closer together in a bond of fellowship against totillitary—I mean totallytiri—I mean totalitarianism.” The President took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the cold sweat from his brow.

  The laughter at the irony of the situation, which Jimmy had fought to keep inside him, had moved from his aching stomach up through his chest and shoulders into his face and was spilling from his eyes. Jimmy’s body began to shake, and he could not keep a smile from creasing his face, or the tears from spilling from his eyes. But he needn’t have worried, because it was impossible for the president to believe he was being laughed at by an African. The President never entertained evil thoughts about his fellow man, especially if he was an African. He thought the young PM was crying because he had been so deeply moved by his speech’s great sincerity and profundity. The President himself almost burst into tears. He thought: The Africans are such wonderful simple naive childish people. And so profoundly perceptive. Meanwhile Jimmy was getting himself together, and now he was alert and sharp as a double-edged blue-bladed safety razor (stainless steel), and he remembered that his great mission and his responsibility were much more important than his audacious sense of humor. He also remembered, belatedly, that when he was a boy a-way back yonder
in good old Lolliloppi, he had been this great man’s caddy, years before folks had known he was a great man. The President had called him “Hot Shot.” And “Hot Shot” he had been until he left Lolliloppi. They’d spent a few weekends on the golf course together on successive summers. The wind was biting now as it swept across the airport, and the President wondered at the PM’s perspiration-covered face. What was an African doing sweating in chilly weather? He also was trying to place the young Prime Minister’s familiar face. Where had they met before? If ever? The voice—the face—the manner—in Europe maybe? Paris? During the Great War? In London?

  Jimmy was tongue-tied for another moment as the whole world held its breath on radio and television. Finally, he said in accents more British than Guanayan (perhaps West Indian?), “I cannot find words to express how profoundly I was moved by the sincerity of your welcome to us, Mr. President.” And the President believed him with all his heart. (Bless his heart.) The Prexy’s problem was he was essentially a bashful man, shy and reticent, and full of that innate modesty that always characterized truly great men, like Julius Caesar and Napoleon and Stalin and Eisenhower and Churchill and Adam Clayton and, and never mind. He did not realize the power of his own words, his ability to move people deeply. He thought himself (and accurately) to be a horrible speaker, a terrible reader even, and did not like to speechify. But it was obvious even to this humble soul that he had reached a new plateau of depth this time. Let his cabinet members snicker in their hankies if it suited them. (Hide his dildo, would they?) Let Burt Lancaster lose his patience. (Lancaster was his speaking coach.) He thought, Let’s face it, Mr. President. You’re so modest you’re actually twice as good as you think you are.

  The fake PM continued, “To us the representatives of a great and proud people who realize, along with you, that the most impelling force on earth is human dignity. We come from a nation old in tradition but young in independence. The sky is the limit for our potentials, and though the road to progress will be rocky, we will inevitably find our way. With the help of Almighty God and the fellowship of nations, especially yours, and particularly all the others, and peace on earth, we shall ultimately triumph. And we shall triumph swiftly. We shall over—”