The Minister Primarily

by John Oliver Killens

  * * *

  Just as His Excellency came out of the powder room, he noticed uneasily a new person in the Tavern Room, one he had not remembered being present when he had gone to check the Tavern plumbing. He was dressed in a long flowing robe and was possessed of a long body and long face and long flowing beard, with a turban atop his wooly locks, long sideburns, everything about him of lengthy proportions. He was obviously an Arab, probably, but was apparently at the moment facing a severe identity crisis. He was confused as to his ethnicity, since before the fake PM could react, the strange one sailed through the air like he had supersonic wings, horizontally and lengthwise over the heads of those seated, dagger drawn and flashing, aiming directly at His Excellency, and screaming like a banshee and a karate black belt champion.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaah!”

  But His Excellency’s footwork was swifter than the accuracy of the Nippon-Arab assassin’s aim. The bogus PM sidestepped the would-be black belt fellow and Black Belt’s cranium went headlong into the doorknob of the powder room. He went crashing to the floor, mumbling.

  “Death to Jaja! Death to Jaja!”

  As immediately he lost touch with his consciousness.

  Suddenly and definitely, it was time to terminate the party.

  17

  On the following morning they flew to the City, along with their escorts, Parkington and Carlton Carson, and the colored government chauffeur, Horace Whitestick, who had been assigned to them to drive them wherever they went, including crazy, as he told them jokingly. But he meant it, doggedly. All the way to New York, Secret Service chief Carlton Carson, born in Lolliloppi of the ’Sippis, Near-the-Gulf, had tried in vain to convince the bogus PM that he did not really want to go to Lolliloppi, Mississippi.

  “You don’t really want to go down there, Your Excellency.”

  “Can you say Mister?” the PM asked him innocently, apropos of nothing in particular, apparently.

  The jet hit a heavy air pocket and bounced Jimmy Jay’s belly like an erratic football. Carlton Carson went white as a soda cracker; saltless, that is. “Can I say Mister?” he repeated two minutes later.

  “How would I know?” the fake PM said. “If I had known the answer, I would not have asked the question.”

  “What question?”

  “‘Can you say Mister.’”

  “Of course I can say Mister.”

  “Can you say ‘Mister Prime Minister’ instead of ‘Your Excellency’? Most people call me Mister Prime Minister.”

  Secret Service chief Carlton Carson of the ’Sippis swallowed his own bitter bitters and looked around for Parkington, but Parkington was preoccupied with his Guanayan counterpart, Foreign Minister Mamadou Tangi, and the only person’s face he saw was the smiling Black face of the presidential chauffeur, Horace Whitestick, a dark-brown face that forever held an improbable mixture of servility and sarcasm. Whitestick Horace was always like a bulldog that growled and wagged his tail in the selfsame motion. Carlton Carson looked back at His Excellency. He opened his mouth and finally the words issued forth. “Yes, Your Excellency. I can say Mister Prime Minister.”

  His Excellency smiled. “Don’t you mean ‘Yes, Mister Prime Minister’?”

  “Yes, Mister Prime Minister,” Carlton Carson mumbled weakly. Then he got back on the track from which he had been derailed, expertly, momentarily. “You don’t want to go to Lolliloppi, Mississippi, do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you, Mister Prime Minister?” Carlton Carson was sweating chinaberries.

  “And why wouldn’t I?”

  “Well—it’s so hot down there this time of the year.”

  His mind had wandered, remembering. And his memory sent a warmth throughout his body, remembering. A gentle warmth as he recalled the essence of her, Thelma Powell, n.k.a. (now known as) Aisha Umulubalu. In the confusion that followed the attempted assassination, she’d come close to him and whispered, “Your secret is entirely safe with me. Whatever you’re up to, I know it’s for a worthy cause. And, sweetheart, it had better be.” She slipped to him her business card. He wiped the perspiration from his brow and felt Maria’s large wide eyes heatedly upon the two of them. When he’d looked at it later, he’d read: AISHA UMULUBALU, COUNSELOR AT LAW, US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION. Damn! he’d thought, and double damn!

  Coming back now from his stream of consciousness, the bogus PM stared at carrot-colored Carson and laughed uproariously. Then he said, “I’m used to the hot weather. Bamakanougou is near the southern edge of the desert. As you down south folks would say, I’d be like a rabbit in the briar patch.”

  Carlton Carson tried again. “And furthermore, the people ain’t used to Africans down there. They’ve never seen any.”

  Horace Whitestick erupted with a loud and raucous laughter and stared at his comic book. Not because he was an arrogant colored man, but because his sense of humor would not hold still, could not withstand the irony of Mississippi people being unused to Africans. It was a bit much. And so, he laughed till his stomach hurt him. Then he quickly assumed his servile posture. He always carried a Pogo comic book around with him, so that when he wanted to laugh at the ridiculous ways of white folks, white folks could never be absolutely sure that they were being laughed at. Pogo served his purpose admirably. Pogo was a tried and trusted friend of Horace Whitestick.

  It was like the legendary laughing barrels they used to have down home at each corner in the downtown districts in the little cracker towns, in Georgia, ’Sippi, Alabama, and points south. If Black persons saw, heard, or even thought of something humorous, they would have to run like hell to the nearest corner and stick their heads in the barrel and laugh their fool heads off. Black public laughter was against the law. Strictly prohibited and seriously enforced.

  “You mean there are no African Americans down in Lolliloppi?” the PM questioned Carlton Carson, searchingly.

  “Well, only a few from time to time,” Carson grudgingly admitted.

  Horace Whitestick flipped a Pogo page and began to giggle his crazy giggle. “Te-he-he-he-gi-gi-gi-gi-qua-qua-qua—”

  “What percentage of Mississippi is African American?” the PM inquired, as he reached for a book obviously titled Population Breakdown in the Southern USA and began to flip the pages. “’Sippi!” the bogus PM shouted softly, as if he had just struck gold, or diamonds.

  Horace slapped the comic book and giggled loudly at old Pogo. “You got him treed, Pogo,” Horace exhorted excitedly to the comic book. “You got that sucker up a tree!”

  Carson carroted behind the ears. “About twenty-five percent.” Carlton Carson turned and stared at the giggling comic-book-reading chauffeur and his white neck carroted. Carlton’s white neck, that is.

  The PM looked from the book to Carson and said aggressively, “How many?”

  The giggling signifying chauffeur’s black neck could not possibly redden.

  “About fifty percent,” Carson admitted, collecting heat around his collar.

  “Gi-gi-gi-gi-gi-gi-gi,” Horace giggled at the possum. “Git him, Pago, git him! You know all his tricks. You’re a possum your own damn self.”

  “The Southland is where my heart is yearning ever,” the fake PM said. “Where folk of African descent are happiest in this fair country.”

  “Yes sir, Mister Prime Minister,” Carlton Carson agreed, exuding nostalgia for the good ol’ days.

  “Like we see in all your movies like Gone with the Wind.” Jimmy closed his eyes nostalgically. “Cornbread and black-eyed peas and that’s what I like about the South.”

  “Yes! Yes! Amen and halleluyah!” Carson was on the verge of tears. And he had been suspicious of this wonderful African.

  “Where the living is easy and all the darkies ama weeping with plenty of nothing when old mass’r gets the cold cold ground that’s coming to him. Way down upon the Swampy River. And also, where my heart is burning ever. It must be that greasy cuisine.”

  Old tough-hided Carl
ton Carson wiped his eyes unashamedly.

  “Carry me back to Old Lolliloppi.” Jimmy Johnson was carried away now, almost singing. “That’s where the lady folks are never ever sloppy!”

  “Mister Prime Minister, Your Excellency, please Sir!” Carson said in a voice chock-full of deeply felt emotions. “I never dreamed you were so fond of dear old Dixie. You know so much about the true nature of our Southland. You know the Southern soul.”

  “I am a student of Dixicana,” Jimmy Jay responded with a very British accent. “It’s as if I actually lived it.” He closed his eyes in an overflow of ecstatic nostalgia. “I received my doctorate in Dixicology at the University of Bamakanougou. I can speak a Southern accent even, when the urge comes over me,” the fake PM said with a long thick Southern drawl, that came dangerously close to being too authentic, he realized belatedly.

  Carlton Carson could not believe any human being could be so wonderfully naive. But somehow he managed to believe it anyhow. He shook his head from side to side. His red face beamed. “Your Excellency, Mister Prime Minister Jaja Okwu Olivamaki, please Sir, you are a great man. You have a black skin, but you have a soul as white as newly picked cotton!”

  “That is why we must go to Lolliloppi,” the bogus PM said quietly.

  And how could old dyed-in-the-cotton-patch Mississippi-born Carlton Carson fight such beautiful glorious sentiments? He got up from his seat and went reelingly to the powder room for whatever purpose.

  Before Carlton Carson’s seat got cold, State Department Parkington parked his carcass in it. Jimmy was staring across the aisle at Horace Whitestick, who had a nervous habit that he had developed, intentionally or otherwise, in addition to reading Pogo, of winking his eye when white folk’s backs were turned, and crossing his fingers when he talked, again when white folk’s backs were turned, and sometimes when they were not turned. Jimmy had a funny feeling that Horace Whitestick saw through him completely and even beyond him. He was forever winking an eye at Jimmy and crossing his index-and-his middle fingers. He told Jimmy one day, “When I, Horace Whitestick, talk with Mister Charlie, you better believe me, I got my fingers crossed, my eyes crossed, and my toes crossed. Sometimes my balls are even crossed, just to make sure everything is safe for democracy.” The PM had stared at the little Black man and had wanted to roar with laughter. He had wanted to throw his arms around the man with the little angry eyes and tell him he dug him the mother-mucking most, but he had to pretend he didn’t dig, dignifiedly. These days he had always to pretend he didn’t dig. He was after all, the great pretender.

  Parkington of the State Department broke into the phony PM’s meditations. “I couldn’t help overhearing your little chat with Mr. Carson, Your Ex—I mean—Mister Prime Minister, and I must tell you—your idyllic picture of the Southland is not entirely without a few, shall I say, fallacious impressions. Everything is not quite as rosy as Mr. Carson would have you believe.” Parkington was as gentle and as graceful as a well-bred boa constrictor, highly polished, well conditioned.

  “What do you mean?” the PM demanded, innocently. Beyond Parkington, Horace Whitestick had the fingers on both of his hands crossed and double-crossed, arms crossed, and he winked at the PM the most outrageous wink Jimmy had ever in his whole life witnessed. When the wink subsided, even his eyes were crossed, and an expression took over the Pogo-reading chauffeur’s face of rare satirical obsequiousness. Horace was a militant in the weird disguise of an Uncle Tom, or vice versa. What worried Jimmy most of all was that one day soon Horace would be caught by the white folks in his Pogo-giggling finger-crossing eye-winking act and that he, the PM, would be implicated. But what worried Jimmy even more than most-of-all was this unspoken simpatico Horace had gratuitously established with His Most Esteemed and Dignified Excellency and from the very moment they had met.

  Parkington stammered. “I mean, sir, that the southern picture, frankly sir, is not quite as white as Mr. Carson painted it.”

  Jimmy said, “Oh I understand, Parkington, that there are millions of Blacks in the southern picture, and even a few honest red men still on the old reservation. I know that much about Dixicana.”

  Parkington said, “Yes, quite. But what I mean is, that southerners are a bit backward, when it comes to race relations. They are—”

  “What do you mean, Parkington?” His Excellency demanded, indignantly. “Are you casting aspersions on my people? My hackles are up, sir.”

  “Your people, sir? Your hackles?” Parkington was obviously bewildered at this point.

  “The people of African descent, sir, who make up more than half of your population, in the State of Mississippi, for example. You were saying they are backward—”

  Horace Whitestick began slapping his Pogo comic book. “Whoo-whee! You got him where you want him, Pogo. He way out on that limb. Donchoo let him get away! Whoo—wheel Ah-gi-gi-gi-gi-gi-gi-gooh! Ah-gi-gi-gi-gi-gi-gi-gooh!”

  The bogus PM found it almost impossible to keep a straight face.

  Jimmy fastened his seat belt and turned on an angry look of scorn, partially pretended, partially felt, upon the softhearted liberal-minded Parkington. “You are repeating Communist propaganda, Parkington, and I’d rather hear no more of it. You mean to tell me there is some place in this homeland of the brave and free where a man from Mother Africa would not be welcome? I do not believe you, sir. People from our great continent helped to build this mighty land of yours and especially in dear old Dixie, and you are telling me we would not be welcome?” Tears stood in the PM’s eyes. “You are telling me I wouldn’t be welcome way down upon the Swanee River?”

  Horace Whitestick slapped the comic book repeatedly. “You got him, Pogo. You got that sucker where the short hair grows! Don’t turn that mama jabber loose!”

  “The Suwannee River is in Georgia, Your Excellency.”

  “Never mind,” the PM said with deep indignation, partially felt, partially faked. “Don’t change the subject. Mississippi is where the darkness is on the delta and all of God’s children got someone to love. And you, sir, would rob me and my colleagues of visiting the land of William Faulkner and Hattie McDaniels and—” His voice choked off. It was one of his great performances and he must not overdo it. Mr. Lloyd thought he had already. Jimmy heard His Wife’s Bottom clearing his scratchy throat as if he would scrape it through his mouth out onto the floor of the jet airliner.

  Parkington was helpless before this kind of approach. “I’m not prejudiced, sir. That is why I want to be honest with you—”

  “Try telling the truth then and cease at once this treasonous anti-American garbage! I’ll report you to the President myself. All of the ambassadors from your country to my country, all reliable State Department people, Black and white, have consistently assured me of the wonderful progress between the races, in this arsenal of democracy—this—this—this Bulwark Against Communism, leader of the Free World. And you, you, you, sir, in whom I had more confidence than the rest of them—well this is a shocking revelation, and you don’t even have a Russian accent either.”

  Parkington withered. He could only stammer at this point.

  “You don’t even have a southern accent, sir,” Jimmy repeated. “I relaxed with you, Sir. I thought you were out of the same progressive mold as Roosevelt and Kennedy and Eisenhower—and Johnson—and Adlai—and Hubert and—I didn’t even look upon you as a white man. I said to Mr. His Wife’s Bot—I mean Mr. Lloyd just the other day, I said, ‘His skin is white, but, by the Holy Gods of Africa, he has a heart as black and as beautiful as the nights of Bamakanougou. I was completely deceived by you, Sir!”

  “I am—I have, sir—Indeed I am—Indeed I have—as Black, I mean It’s just that—”

  Jimmy took one quick glance at the blankety-blank, blinkity-blink, eye-crossing, finger-crossing, Pogo-reading Whitestick and almost cracked up with laughter, which is why he looked swiftly toward Carlton Carson, who had come back from the powder room and stood nearby listening with his eyes and ears and nose
and throat. So engrossed was Carson he had forgotten to sit and fasten his seat belt. The airplane dropped straight down through several hundred feet of clouds and stretched him out onto the floor, but still he got up from the floor engrossed in Parkington and the Mister Prime Minister, His-Most-Noble-Esteemed-Excellency.

  Jimmy turned to Carson. “Mr. Carson, you’re a southerner, aren’t you?”

  “Born and bred in Mississippi, sir, Mister Prime Minister, Your Excellency. Please ma’am, and please sir!”

  “Where are African Americans happiest in this country?”

  “Mississippi, Mister Prime Minister, Your Excellency, sir.”

  “That being the case, is there any reason why an African should not visit Lolliloppi?”

  “I can’t rightly say, Mister Your Excellency, please sir.”

  Jimmy turned to Parkington triumphantly. “There you are. You see, Mr. Parkington. Carlton Carson is the true voice of the South, which is the true voice of America. So please, sir, no more of your subversive propaganda.”

  The plane made sudden contact with the earth, and Carson went smiling sprawling on his arse again, and Parkington hung his head in great confusion. Mister Prime Minister stared beyond him at the grimacing Horace Whitestick, and suddenly the ersatz PM’s hands went up in a kind of Eisenhower-type victory salute with fingers crossed on both hands, and his right eye did an outrageous wink, à la Mister Horace Whitestick. And Whitesticked Horace cracked up laughing over that crazy possum.

  They were getting off the plane now with the sound of music and gun salutes and the crowd of thousands gone completely mad, especially the young and middle-aged and elderly diddy boppers. Ooohing and aahing and screaming and screeching, they broke past the tight police guard. They mauled them and knocked them down and trampled them under, the poor downtrodden New York’s Finest. The mayor and borough presidents never had a chance. Not even the newly elected colored borough president. The first girl who reached the PM was a redheaded-blue-eyed one, about sixteen or thirty-five years of age, give or take, mostly give and chiefly take. She stripped off her clothing as she came toward him screaming, stripped down to her natural red-haired birthday suit.