The Minister Primarily

by John Oliver Killens

  He felt very sorry for his brand-new buddy the President; at the same time, he relished the Great White Father’s keen discomfort. It was his duality acting up again. Du Bois had written of it in The Souls of Black Folk. He smiled sweetly at the Prexy, and underneath the smile, he sneered at his Great White Father. “We all have our indigenous Juju, Mr. President. Believe me, we marvel at some of the naive superstitions of the natives in America. You believe that black is bad, and white is good. For example, you never have elected a Black man president, have you old chap, not even Jesse Jackson.”

  “No, we haven’t,” the President admitted, smiling weakly and wondering what cul-de-sac this crafty naive “noble savage” was leading him up, and wishing he’d never brought up the question of superstition.

  The PM had developed a mannerism of laughing quietly before he delivered his punch lines. “It couldn’t be because you’re not in favor of Black people, yes?”

  “No, it definitely couldn’t.” The President’s voice got progressively weaker.

  “Americans have a tradition of always being for the underdog, no?”

  “Yes,” the President answered very weakly.

  “Well then you see it must be just a silly superstition, no?”

  “Yes,” the President admitted, grudgingly.

  The PM gave his funny laugh again. “By Jove, that is a bizarre superstition. And you also believe that quantity is quality, the bigger the better, whatever. And you people actually believe that in order to preserve the peace you must prepare for war.” He laughed his quick short laugh again. “That’s a jolly good idiocy, eh? But we don’t hold your culture against you, old boy. Every man to his own Juju, we democratic Guanayans always say.” He laughed and slapped the Prexy’s back and almost knocked the breath and false teeth out of the by-now bewildered gentleman.

  “WE SHALL OVERCOME SOME DAY,” Jimmy heard the voices outside singing now, and he was almost overcome himself with pride and sorrow, even as he wondered when that “some day” they would overcome was coming. They might be the very last folk on earth to overcome, he thought, whatever overcoming meant. At the moment they were his Black and distant brothers in the American diaspora (a term of recent Afro vintage, co-opted from the Jewish people for whatever reason), where he was visiting, and he, himself, was His Excellency, Prime Minister of the Independent People’s Democratic Republic of Guanaya, and he was their Great Black Brother image from across the ocean in Mother Africa. “I’m the Messiah they have waited for,” he told himself, almost aloud. He felt his face filling up and tears were in his eyes now, almost, but just in time it came to him exactly who he really was. He was one of them outside the White House. And he’d better never ever forget it. He managed a straight face for the President, as he turned and started for the northern portico again.

  The President was up a tree without a shotgun. Clearly, he could not force the PM to go out of a side door against his will. It certainly would not be the diplomatic thing to do, and furthermore, these Africans were hypersensitive. That was quite clear to him now, so he went along with the PM, who had quickened his pace. Needless to say, the others followed suit.

  Outside Jimmy saw a mammoth picket line, mostly Afro, with picket signs and slogans. From where he was, he could not make out the wording on the signs. He didn’t need to, because he knew somehow it had to do with why he’d left America. He knew the picket line bit by heart. He had paid his dues in so many of them from California to Manhattan Island. He got a brief glimpse only, because they hustled him into a big black Cadillac limousine and took off swiftly down the driveway from the White House and before they reached the avenue, instead of continuing straight ahead and turning rightward, which would have taken them in the direction of the hotel, but which would have also taken him within spitting range of the picket line, the chauffeur did a totally impossible rear-maneuvered U-turn and went around the side of the White House and departed through the East Gate across from the Treasury Department. Looking back at the picket line through the back of the car, Jimmy could barely make out the large letters at the top of most of the picket signs. He rubbed his eyes. Surely his eyes were deceiving him. The word on the top of the signs was, or at least it seemed to be

  C R A P

  and in big bold letters.

  C R A P

  That evening all the papers carried variation of the same headline:

  N E W Y O R K C R A P

  IN FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE

  It was a real peculiar country, Jimmy Johnson thought to himself. But later that evening the mystery was solved. CRAP was the acronym of a newly formed civil rights organization that called itself the Committee for the Rights of All the People.

  Hence CRAP.

  15

  In the late late of that same afternoon, one of the President’s secretaries called Lolliloppi, Mississippi, with great trepidations and posed the question. And the mayor said, “How come you people pickin on us? We ain’t done nothing. We got the happiest colored folks anywhere in Dixie, in the whole wide world. We support the Supreme Coat one hunnert percent, when we got to it, when it catches up with us, when our nigrahs find out about it. We got a human relations committee making a survey on the problem. Our folks in Lolliloppi have learned to live together separately, even though we are desegregated.”

  “Good!” the president’s third secretary said. “Glad to hear it. They’ll be arriving there on the twenty-second.”

  “GreatGodA’mighty!” Mayor Hardtack said. “You can’t do that to me. It’s unconstitutional!” He jumped up and down. “It’s un-American!” His false teeth fell out and bounced on the desk. “It’s against all the rules of Southern hospitality. I mean hostility. It’s even outrageous!” He lost his voice and found it again. “And besides, I’m running for reelection in a couple of months. And the nigrahs deep down here in the delta don’t know they got a right to vote. The news ain’t reached um yet.”

  Lolliloppi was proudly famous for being the only “city” in the Southland that was more segregated than it had been before that infamous day in May 1954. The Supreme Court be damned! They were “anti-Commonist patriotic American born-again Christian of the first magnitude. Let George Wallace betray the sacred cause of Southern Womanhood. Let him meet his God on Judgment Day.”

  “They’ll only be down there for two or three days,” the presidential secretary said patiently. “What’s the matter, Mister Mayor? Do you hate colored people so much?”

  “No, sir!” Mayor Hardtack answered with righteous indignation. “Some of my best friends and so forth and so on, including my dear old colored mammy by which I was successfully suckled.” He smacked his lips, nostalgically. “I can almost taste them brown-skinned titties even now. It’s just that we got such a big powerful White Citizens Council here in town. It’s the biggest one in Mississippi. It’s the only one in Mississippi, I reckon.” His specs had fallen from his face, and he was feeling frantically over the desk for them—and for his almost brand-new choppers.

  “You’ll have to sit down and talk with the president of the council and tell him the facts of life, Mister Mayor. The Supreme Court outlawed segregation more than twenty years ago.”

  “It won’t do a bitter good,” Mayor Hardtack said bitterly.

  “Who is he, Mayor Hardtack? What’s his name?”

  “Who is who?” the Mayor asked, stalling, reddening everywhere. “What’s who’s name?” Losing color now. He could not locate his choppers since he couldn’t see without his glasses and he could not locate his glasses because he could not see without his glasses.

  Now the secretary was losing patience and perspective. “You know what whose I’m whoozing!” the president’s third secretary shouted.

  “I can’t make heads or tails of what you talking about,” the mayor said. “And I don’t believe anybody as confused as you could possibly be third secretary to the President of the Uniney States.”

  By now the third secretary to the president was hopelessly
confused. “Who’s the President of the United States?” he screamed. “That’s who’s whose I’m whoozing!”

  “If you don’t know, son, you must not be his third secretary,” Mayor Hardtack said almost with sympathy, certainly with tolerance. Cagily. He had his glasses now.

  The secretary said, “Just a minute, Mr. Mayor.”

  “That’s all right with me, son,” the mayor said. “Long as you didn’t make this call collect.” Now he put his teeth back into place.

  The third secretary got himself a drink of Scotch and water, sniffed a little white powder, put a dip of snuff in his lower lip, in order to get himself together for one more go at it. Now he was ready. “You have a big White Citizens Council down there in Lolliloppi?”

  “All day long and halfway through the night,” Mayor Hardtack answered patiently. “I told you that when you first drove up. You got a bad memory, Mister Third Secretary-to-the-President, if you really is who you say you is.”

  “Never mind,” the secretary said, “What is the name of the president of the White Citizens Council?”

  “Which White Citizens Council you talking about, Mister Third Secretary to the President of the Uniney States?” Richard Rufus Rastus inquired, drawlingly.

  The third secretary responded, “What is the name of the president of the White Citizens Council of Lolliloppi, Mississippi?”

  “Oh, you meant that outstanding upstanding, and understanding gentleman?”

  “The very same. What’s his name?”

  The mayor said clearly and distinctly, “Richard Rufus Rastus Hardtack Jr. is his name.”

  The third secretary repeated wearily, “Richard Rufus Rastus Hardtack Jr.—why—why that’s your name, isn’t it, Mister Mayor?”

  “You sure do catch on mighty quick, son,” the mayor said proudly with a nervous giggle. Then he went off into gales of laughter, then subsided to his nervous giggle again. Then soberly he said, “At your service.”

  “Well, they’re coming down there, Mister Mayor or Mister President, whichever you are, and they are to get the full VIP treatment.”

  “No! No! Naw! Naw! Hell naw!” the mayor shouted. He almost lost his teeth again. They did the cha-cha-cha in his tender mouth. You could hear them clattering all the way to the nation’s capital.

  “They are coming down there, Mister Mayor, because our nation is the leader of the Free World and Mississippi is a part of our nation.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” the mayor asked, in all sincerity. “We ain’t done nothing. We support the Supreme Coat every day in the week and twice on Sunday.”

  “And Guanaya has one of the greatest potentials for being a democracy of any of the new nations in Africa and being friendly with the Free World and the West.”

  “What’s that got to do with Lolliloppi?” Mayor Hardtack seriously wanted to know. “We’re down deep here in the South. Lolliloppi ain’t even in Western Mississippi.”

  “And besides it’s one of the richest countries in Africa—maybe in the whole world. Cobanium is money, Mr. Mayor. Money-power-money-power-money! Loads and loads and loads of it. In a fundamental sense, Guanaya could well be the last frontier. Money, Mister Mayor!”

  “Now you’re talking!” Mayor Hardtack said with unreserved enthusiasm. When he heard the word “money,” his response was like a conditioned reflex. “And you tell them Ethiopes the Southland is the friendliest place on God’s little old green earth. Since when did the wild west get so goddamn hospitalitary?”

  The mayor’s question threw the third secretary off his horse for a moment, as he tried to figure out how the wild west had galloped into the picture. By the time he relocated the mayor in time and space, Mayor Hardtack had had time to look at visions of “Ethiopes” descending upon the peaceful town of Lolliloppi from every angle, and it damn near scared his brand-new choppers out of his quivering mouth again. And to hell with money! He was a man of high and Southern principles.

  He shouted, “No! No! No! It’s still no-go!”

  “Oh yes,” the secretary answered. “We’ll get back to you on this tomorrow.”

  And he hung up on Mayor Richard Rufus Rastus Hardtack Jr. And he went and reported his conversation to the President.

  The mayor called an emergency session of the city council and/or the White Citizens Council of Lolliloppi. Without a scorecard you could not tell the difference, since the membership was almost entirely the same, and the chairman of both was Richard Rufus Rastus Hardtack Jr. They jumped up and down. They ranted and raved. They picketed themselves. They demonstrated. They all sent telegrams to their congressman and to the President of the United States telling them that those African nigrahs were not welcome to Lolliloppi and if they came, the citizens council, oops, the city council could not be held responsible for what would happen. A more spirited group of loyal Lolliloppians you just could never have imagined.

  The President made much palava with his cabinet and some leaders of the House and Senate. After heated debate, the decision was to let the question ride for a couple of days. Maybe in the excitement of being in America and especially in a place like New York City, the Africans would forget all about their very twisted obsession with Lolliloppi, Mississippi.

  One senator suggested that if the Africans mentioned Lolliloppi again, “Maybe they could be persuaded instead to take a trip to Disneyland in California. Tell them, that way, they could steal a march on the Great White Father from the Kremlin.” A couple of the dignified gentlemen laughed, and everything got quiet and they let it go at that. For the time being, that is—hopefully.

  Meanwhile there were the embassy parties and receptions and drinking drinking everywhere. The bogus PM learned that the diplomatic circle was one great protracted drinking bout that went on and on and on and never ended. Hangoverville, everlastingly. And as much as this wearied him, he liked more and more the image of being prime minister, even as it scared the hell out of him, and he liked the oohs and ahs that grew larger louder longer every time out, as the crowds outside everywhere he went grew vaster and much wilder. And every moment inside their suite was spent with Maria Efwa, the lovely peripatetic perambulating encyclopedia of Guanayan lore and knowledge. They spent more time together than the rest of the PM’s party thought was necessary. But the fake PM insisted that every moment with her was essential to their noble mission, as in his eyes she became more beautiful by the moment. He was hooked, lined, and sunken. And she never gave him one title of encouragement. She was always business. She was the private tutor, the uchitel of His-Phony-Excellency Jimmy Johnson; she was the Minister of Education, Information, and Culture, a fact she did not hesitate to call to his attention whenever things got out of hand, or whenever he held her hands too long. Female rejection was not the kind of rejection he had been used to suffering. And he suffered painfully. He agonized. He sulked. He pouted. He actually lost his appetite.

  About six one evening they were having one of their private tutoring sessions in the midst of a bedlam of telephones ringing and Mr. Tobey banging away on a noiseless typewriter that made enough noise to wake up the dead, even a dead drunk, and Tangi and His Wife’s Bottom arguing a question of the New Cold War diplomacy. Détente, it seemed, was dead and buried, despite dear Hubert Herbert Hubert’s feeble efforts at resurrection. Maria Efwa was telling Jimmy the story of how the British conquered their great land with firepower against the proud but pitifully armed might of the Guanayans’ Spear-and-Arrow Regiments, at which point many Guanayans of long ago had been convinced that the white man had some powerful Juju working for him. Jimmy sat there near her across from her, their knees almost touching. He stared at her in open-mouthed fascination like a little boy listening to a fairy story before beddy-bye time. A black satin burnished doll face. Her lips were full and obvious and curvaceous and even more so when she talked that talk, and her eyes were large warm black shiny almond-shaped African midnights, in which he almost always lost his way. But not unwillingly. Sometimes he wandered aimle
ssly in the endless midnight of her lookers. She didn’t really ever look, she stared at people, from great depths and dimensions. Her lovely amply plenished mouth did sweet dimpled tricks when she talked that talk, whatever talk she talked.

  The telephone rang, and Mr. Tobey answered it and called to His Excellency, but he was gone, long gone, hopelessly lost in the lovely darkness again of the breathtaking African midnight of Maria Efwa’s eyes. Finally, Mr. Tobey came over and tapped him on the shoulder and brought him back among the living, and wide awake. And also brought Maria Efwa back to the here-and-now. Jimmy looked up at Mr. Tobey as if the PM’s secretary had committed some outrageous sacrilege like peeing in the Amen Corner during Lent.

  “Well?”

  “The United States Information Agency is on the phone, Your Excellency.” Mr. Tobey was always formal with him, as if he really believed in the reality of the fake PM. “They want you to speak on the Voice of America. Shall I make the arrangements?”

  Jimmy’s eyes lit up. The Voice of America! “I’ll take the call myself, Mr. Tobey.” He’d give the whole damn world the true voice of America. The Black man’s voice. Here was his great opportunity!

  Mr. Tobey brought the phone to him. The woman on the other end of the conversation cooed and purred as she explained to him that the Voice of America wanted him to do a program with them for overseas consumption. He said he’d be delighted. She cooed and purred and giggled. He was suddenly aware that Maria Efwa was watching him, as he spoke to the cooing-purring-giggler, sight unseen, and he grew warm under Maria’s midnight moonlit stare, warm all over, but when he looked toward her, he could never catch her watching him, which was awfully disconcerting.

  The lady giggler said, “I’ll let you speak to one of our program directors so that he can arrange an appointment directly with-with-with you.” She was making like an outboard motor.

  Jimmy stared deliberately at the live and breathing African carving that was Maria Efwa’s profile set in a burnished ebony, as he waited for the program director’s voice, and he knew Maria knew that he was staring at her, and brazenly. Her breathing, a little different somehow, told him she was not entirely unaware of him. He sighed a deep protracted sigh and noted that her face flushed warmly. He was lost again in the darkness of her beauty and the beauty of her darkness, and only half heard the male voice talking on the other end, at first. The familiar sound of the voice only partly reached into the buttocks of his great uneasiness. The man had talked for two or three minutes and the danger signals had flashed like crazy in the far comers of Jimmy’s consciousness, but he paid no heed at all, as he gave the USIA man a real short measure, mostly. “Yes—” . . . “Good.” “C’est ça, monsieur.” Why was he speaking his jive-ass French? Absent-mindedly, until the man repeated his name for the third or fourth time. “William Clarence Barnsfield the Fifth, Your Excellency. I believe I met you once while in your country—at the Ambassador Palace Hotel—I—”