The President mumbled, “Yes-yes,” like he was shouting softly from deep in the Amen Corner of Friendship Baptist Tabernacle. The President was a down-home boy from the Middle Belt, a natural rustic to the core. His religion was of the old-time variety. Always had been. Although oftentimes he tended to the Modern View.
“Our people,” the fake PM continued, “have suffered long, but now we are free, and just as your country has never ever done, we likewise will never follow the dictates of a foreign power—no matter how big that country might be—no matter how powerful—no matter how rich—” He felt his Vice-PM tugging anxiously at his boubou. “No matter how—no matter how—” A vicious jab in the ribs from Tangi this time, and his voice trailed off into nothingness. There was a great clamor of silence for a moment and Jimmy thought humbly of the Gettysburg Address, with all humility, naturally. Frederick Douglass’s Fourth of July speech was his favorite. Then came the wild thundering applause and the photographers taking more pictures and the perspiration of relief raining from all over him.
He needed a drink. Where was the palm wine?
And now the rest of the nation’s leaders were passing in review to be introduced to the PM and his entourage, the colored leaders last in line. Naturally? The pale-faced icy-eyed Undersecretary of State made Jimmy’s stomach turn head over heels (heels over head?), as he stood there shaking Jimmy’s hand and staring at the bogus PM and through him like he was looking for his chauffeur who had previously flown the coop. The last Negro leader also made him nervous. Gazing at him long and hard, as if to say, “Are you for real?” Suddenly Jimmy knew that one of the gravest dangers of discovery was that one of his own people, some African American, would see through his disguise and give him away, unintentionally or otherwise.
After the last colored leader came a chubby jovial round-faced man who extended his hand and spoke to Jimmy with a Russian accent. He was the jolly good Soviet ambassador, recently and fleetingly the object of the great crowd’s adulation, albeit short lived. And Jimmy thought to himself: Everybody’s getting into the act. I am an important colored man. Why fight it any longer? A Secret Service man almost knocked the friendly-faced Russian’s arm off, and two of them tried to hustle him away. But Jimmy’s fast footwork put him in good stead again, or bad stead, depending on your point of view. He moved quickly and pushed the panama-hatted serious-faced young SS gentleman gently but firmly away, and he took the Ambassador’s hand, took the red-faced President’s hand, and he put all three of their right hands together and raised them in an unmistakable sign of solidarity and fellowship and friendship and peace on earth and all the other platitudes. The cameras and the newsreels and the TV snapped and ground away again, the wonderful crowd applauded, knowing and mostly not knowing who the third party was. And caring less—what the hell—“A man ain’t nothing but a man—” Somebody said, sometimes some place. John Henry was a steel-driving man. Or was it Harry Belafonte? Paul Robeson perhaps?
Be that as it may, the next day the opposition party in the US Congress accused the guiltless President of open-faced appeasement. This infamous photo went out all over the world and caused a mild panic among the nations of NATO and SEATO, of the Warsaw Pact, and of the long-since forgotten Bandung Conference even. And the rumor ran wild that the USA and the USSR had concluded a unilateral treaty with Guanaya, which obviously created an ominous threat to the peace of the world. Wall Street went up and down and sideways. And the world went to the brink again.
Notwithstanding, after the infamous clench was over, the bands all played Yankee Doodle dandily, and the great crowd shouted and waved and jumped up and down and cheered, they were just tremendous; the President uncovered his wispy head and waved that famous hat of his and his party followed suit, and Jimmy wondered when in the hell he was going to get off this spot at the chilly sweaty airport (he needed a good stiff drink), but then the bands played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which was for some weird reason the American anthem (He preferred “My Country, ’Tis of Thee”), and the hats off again and over the heart, this time, and then the national anthem of Guanaya and hats off and over the heart one more time. And then it happened. One of the bands felt real down-home good and started playing DIXIE! And there was waving of hats and even throwing of hats up in the air this time, and boisterous rebel yells from the wonderfully responsive crowd, temporarily gone wild with their enthusiasm now. What love they had for dear old Dixie! One Caucasian lady threw her brand-new baby in the air like it was up for grabs. Everybody singing, excepting most of the colored people, who acted as if they’d never heard the song.
Den I wish I was in Dixie
Away away
In Dixieland I took my stand
To live and die in Dixie—
Confused now, the members of the Prime Minister’s party uncovered their heads again, as did the American President and all of his party excepting one embarrassed Negro leader. But the bogus PM’s fez remained stubbornly on his own head. His Wife’s Bottom, Mr. Lloyd, the very nervous Vice-PM, tried slyly to remove the PM’s elegant fez and got his hand slapped hard for his trouble. This far Jimmy Johnson would not go, not for all of Africa’s Uhuru. The embarrassed Negro leader of the American President’s party cased the situation and trotted nervously from the back of the contingent toward his beloved Prexy. Jimmy Johnson leaned toward the President and said, “What nation’s anthem is that, Your Highness? What and who and where is Dixie? And why does everybody want to go there? And why don’t they if they really do?”
Before his red-faced majesty could answer Jimmy, the un-uncovered colored leader reached him. But the ever-vigilant SS men intercepted him and might have roughed him up a bit, had not the President interceded.
“Let him through,” the President ordered. “That’s Mr. Percy.”
Mr. Percy finally bared his head and whispered to the great man, suggesting politely that maybe and perhaps this was possibly not quite the kind of song the PM of Guanaya would most probably appreciate, didn’t he think or didn’t he? Witness the circumstantial evidence of the PM’s head remaining covered. The President thanked Mr. Percy and turned and witnessed. Then he put his hat back on his head and sent one of his SS men a-running toward the “Dixie”-playing bands. After that, Dixie’d had it, and the bands jumped lively into the BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. At which time Jimmy forgot again who he was supposed to be and started singing in his very best voice a powerfully robust JOHN BROWN’S BODY. The President was startled for a moment. Who wouldn’t be? But then the PM leaned toward him and said smilingly, “One of our favorite freedom songs in Guanaya. Yes indeed, we really like your ‘John Brown’s Body.’” And the President joined in, to the best of his ability, which wasn’t much, but sincerity he certainly had his portion of it, and the rest of his party sang nervously and tentatively about old John Brown, their faces carrot colored with embarrassment, excepting of course, the colored contingent, whose faces did not could not turn the color of overripened carrots at the singing of JOHN BROWN’S BODY, for various and diverse reasons, most of them rather obvious. The PM’s party also sang, which feat was miraculous, since they’d never heard the song before.
And now they were in the long limousines, Secret Service men in the first car, the PM and the Prexy in the second car, which was an open convertible, SS, men alongside on custom-made running boards, driving a cross the bridge toward Washington, where the great cheering waving crowds of jubilant Americans lined both sides of the broad boulevard. Particularly the girls and women folk.
“There he is—Mr. Maki!”
“Ooh!—Looka there—ain’t he pretty!”
“Just as cute as a speckled puppy!”
“Can I have him for Christmas, Daddy?” a little lady of the middle ages screamed to no one in particular.
“Handsome as a moom pitcha star!”
One colored lady waved her hand and shouted proudly, “He is Black and sure is comely, oh you pale-faced Jezebels! Hands off that pretty colored man!”
“Your eyes may shine. Your teeth may grit. But none of that pretty man will you git!”
The PM and the Prexy smiling and waving back at the crowd as they rode down Fourteenth Street past the Bureau of Engraving buildings, where they made those little pieces of paper coated with chlorophyll each with a pretty picture of a past American President.
Jimmy forgot who he was again and said to the great man sotto voce, “Like where’re we going now, old baby?” He really needed a drink now. And bad!
The great man stared at Jimmy with a shocked expression. Jimmy laughed and poked the Prexy in the ribs, playfully, with his elbow. “I’m only kidding, Your Majesty, Your Grace. We see a lot of your Hollywood movies, old chap, and read too many of your beatnik novels, I suspect. That is the thing.”
The great man was still speechless. And Jimmy thought, Mr. Charlie is trying to remember where he saw my face before. If he calls me “Hot Shot” I’m going to jump out of this car and catch the plane back to Guanaya, I mean the one that just left! Jimmy said, “What I mean, Your Majesty, is I should jolly well like very much to get to my hotel as quickly as possible. Fright fully bushed, don’t you know? The trip, and the emotional stress of just being here in your great country and the welcome at the airport and all that sort of thing. It’s something I would never have dreamed of three months ago in all my wildest nightmares.” The fake PM did not know what made him say to the President, “By the way, Mr. President, if there are any bugs in our lodgings, please have them removed tout suite, before we arrive. Fumigate exterminate the place for bugs. We get very very bugged with bugs. We go wild with anger. It’s a national superstition. If there’s a bug within a mile of the place, we will know it. Our nostrils are naturally radared for insects, man-made or otherwise.”
The simple-hearted president said, “But, Your Excellency, we wouldn’t think of bugging your fuh-fun-fun-fabulous lodgings. I can assure you. I mean—”
He was cut short by the expression on the PM’s face. He was gone. His eyes were glazed and yet opaque. As if he had suddenly left the presence of the President. Perhaps he was back in Africa. Listening absorbedly to a different drummer. The PM seemed possessed. Like “coming through” in the Friendship Baptist Tabernacle. Suddenly his eyes lit up. The President tried to continue. “Your fuck-fu-fu-fabulous Excellency, how could you think that—”
The PM shouted to the President, “Hold it! Shh! Quiet!” Then he said to the Invisible One, “You’re coming in loud and clear. Loud and clear! Like a Sunday church bell deep in the bush. You don’t mean! Just as I suspected. Well I declare! Ciao! Signing off. Uhuru.”
He turned to the befuddled President. “With all due respect, Mr. President. I just made contact with my Juju man back in Bamakanougou. The doctor tells me the suite is definitely bugged. You may be totally innocent and ignorant, of the fact, that is. But the suite is crawling with bugs, so much so that they may fly away with the place. It’s happened many times before.”
The President mopped his feverish brow. “Surely you don’t expect me to believe you were really in fu-fu-fu-fabulous communication with Africa?”
“You don’t believe me, Mr. President? You want me to put you on the phone with Him or Her, because it has no special gender? The ‘phone’ of course is an idiomatic euphemism for the direct connection. You want to speak to the baddest meanest one in Africa?”
The President was leaking perspiration. “No-no—Of course not. I do not doubt you for a single moment.”
The totally bewildered President reached for the telephone. “Carson, this is the President.”
“I’d be happy to connect you with the doctor, Mr. President. It wouldn’t take more than five minutes at the outside even through a harmattan. Just say the word.”
Sweat was foaming the President’s forehead. Obviously, he was frightened shitless. The President was screaming now. “See that His Excellency’s lodging accommodations are cleanly swept of any intelligence apparatus whatsoever. See to it immediately.” Not that a President of the United States would ever believe in Juju or Black magic or whatever, but just in case—
“But Mr. President!”
“No goddamn fucking bugs, Carson. Dammit! Get it done immediately!” The President turned to the fake PM and patted him on the knee assuringly.
“We also have our communication system.” Jimmy remembered Old Blue Eyes of his London days.
“Everybody to his own Juju, we always say back home.”
The President sat back partially relaxed. “Yes—yes, of course, of course.” Perspiration of relief was pouring from him. “You remind me so much of somebody I knew somewhere some fu-fu-fu-fabulous place sometime—” His voice trailed off. And Jimmy remembered the moment three-and-one-half months before, when he first set foot on African soil. He was forever reminding somebody of somebody else. It would one day be his great undoing. And maybe that day was not far off. He settled back in the limousine and closed his eyes. To hell with it.
In the car behind him Carlton Carson of the Secret Service shook his head and said to the Secretary of State, “I can’t put my finger on it but there’s something definitely fishy about that boy.”
The Secretary turned to him smilingly. “What boy?” he asked absentmindedly.
“That Prime Minister Olivamaki feller. There’s something about him not quite right. Something downright un-American.”
The Secretary said absently, “Un-American?”
Carson said, “He’s up there right now working some kind of voodoo or Black magic on our beloved President.”
11
JIMMY JOHNSON NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD. At the tough and tender age of twelve, to be an orphan without pot or window, chicken or child. (But enough of the pathos bit.) He would have none of it. He was made of the heroic stuff of the epic and the tragique, despite his latent chicken-heartedness, which would flare up, occasionally. He would have been an inspiration to Willy Shakespeare. Footballed and scholarshiped and sang and caddied and glibly bee-essed his way through high school and all the seats of higher learning. (He did time in three or four of them.) A long stretch here and a short stretch there. A touchdown here—a field goal there. A bases-loaded home run over there somewhere. Then he finally put those kinds of gigs down and did his doctoral work at the University of the Real World and often it was cold outside, from Mississippi to the Golden State of Hollywood to New York City to London Town. In between was Vietnam. Operation Boot Strap and Jockstrap too. Shamelessly, he jocked himself through quite a mess of lassies from the foggy smog of LA to the smoggy fog of London Town, as he looked for himself in all these far-flung widespread places. His machismo was more bluff than tough. But then, and ultimately, and maybe even inevitably, suddenly, all roads led to Africa. And Bam! Wham! Damn! Thank-you Mama! There was Bamakanougou all the while! And Club Lido! And, baby, baby, look at you now.
A suite that ran the length of the fifth floor in the posh and plush of the gaudiest most expensive hotel in Washington, Das Capital. There was no doubt about it, he was the most sought-after man in the USA. He thought, They’re soughting after you all right, Buster, and if and when they find you, you’ll be up six creeks without a paddle. Coming up on the hotel elevator he thought how easy it would be to give his everlasting uhuru-loving African brothers the everlasting slip. The show had just been put on the road and already he was beginning to feel the strain. He could feel his brothers and sister staring at him as they listened to the endless chatter of Carlton Carson of the Secret Service and Jack Parkington of the State Department, who would be their escorts everywhere they went during their sojourn in the USA. After the show out at the airport and the ride into the city, Jimmy had suddenly crawled into his shell and clammed up. But he was thinking. He was thinking. He could shed his disguise (dark glasses and phony beard) and his African brothers in the same breath and catch himself a whole heap of train ride and make it to the City, his city, favored tenderly by him above all other cities, with the possible exception of Bamakano
ugou. Despite the pain and disappointments he had known there, New York Town was still his city, and he could lose himself all over the place. The first chance he got, he would split the scene completely is what, and let these frantic ethnic cabinet ministers face these brass bands by themselves. He owed nothing to Guanaya. Repeat: He was no hero. He never ever claimed to be.
When they reached the suite, Carson and Parkington of the US government entered with them, bowing, and scraping like proper Uncle Toms or Hollywood yes-men (they were the same breed, only different colors), sycophants, all. Armed guards stood on each side of the entrance to the suite. Jimmy knew sycophancy in all colors and disguises. Having Uncle-Tommed once or twice himself in this life (show him a Black American who hadn’t), he had witnessed the white counterparts in the movie capital, where they were a couple hundred grand a dozen, the best arse-kissers that money could buy.
When they were inside the suite, the fake PM came back to life even as he witnessed the carryings-on of Carlton Carson, grinning and obsequious, unadulterated Southern drawl and “Anything we can do for y’all Excellencies. Just anything at all. We are entirely at y’all’s disposal.”
Jimmy spoke to Lloyd in some very rapid and raggedy-assed-makeshift Hausa. “Tell him he can order us some whiskey and soda on his way out. That’s what he can do for us. On his way out.” He always sprinkled his Hausa with a heavy portion of Americanese and Negritude. Afro-Americanese, Mr. Lloyd broke down a rough translation of some very rough Hausa and relayed it politely to Parkington and Carson. Always Mr. Lloyd was the epitome of courtesy. His Wife’s-Inevitable-Bottom.
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