The Minister Primarily

by John Oliver Killens

  Jimmy Johnson joshed him. “What do you mean—your own people? You’re no Guanayan, you’re an American. You’re no African.”

  Which was when he thought he heard the little man say, “You ain’t no Guanayan neither.”

  Then he knew he heard the little man say, “If I ain’t African, you ain’t Guanayan, the pope ain’t Catholic, grits ain’t groceries, and Mona Lisa was a natural lesbianese faggot.” He began that crazy contagious laugh again. Before he knew it, Jimmy found himself laughing now without restraint, as were the members of the cabinet of the Independent People’ s Democratic Republic of Guanaya, albeit tentatively. The living room erupted with their laughter. Jimmy Johnson laughed so hard he snatched off his phony beard and threw it on the floor. Suddenly there was a roaring silence in the room.

  Whereupon Horace Whitestick began to shout, “I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!”

  “What do you mean, you knew it?” the fake PM demanded, after he had gotten himself together and donned his phony beard again.

  Horace began to slap his thighs. “I knew there was something about you damn familiar. I just couldn’t put my fingers on it. Your walk, your voice. I just couldn’t place it. Then when you asked the President could you go to Lolliloppi, I knew there was something about you Lolliloppian. I’m from Lolliloppi my own damn self, Hot Shot. I mean Mr. Prime Minister, Your Excellency, sir.” And he began to laugh that crazy laugh again.

  “Hot Shot?” The fake PM almost went into shock. He rose from his chair and went over to Horace Whitestick and shook the little man by his shoulders. “Where did you get that ‘Hot Shot’ bit from?”

  Old Horace said, “When I saw you without that shit all over your face, I knew where I knowed you from. Excuse my French, Miss Efwa, please ma’am. Out at the golf course when they used to call you ‘Hot Shot.’ After you cut from Lolliloppi, I got the job as caddy for old Hubert Herbert, better known those days as ‘Snot Rag.’ When he got elected to the White House, he brought me to Washington with him.”

  “Snot Rag?” Jimmy cracked up laughing. “I had forgotten old Hubert’s nickname. ‘President Snot Rag Hubert!’” He began to laugh again. He couldn’t stop laughing, tears streaming. Between the fits of laughter, he explained to Horace all about the Minister Primarily caper, the whereas and the wherefore and the how come, even, of this outrageous escapade. He swore his fellow Lolliloppian to absolute secrecy.

  “Don’t worry about a thing. If I were to betray my African brothers, I hope that my right hand loses its cunning and my tongue be cleaved to the roof of my mouth.” Even in his great joyfulness, the PM noticed that the more the little man relaxed, the more he spoke in unbroken English—Afro-Americanese, that is. They gave each other the African handshake, with hand and thumb and elbows, and finally he embraced old Horace and kissed him on each side of his grizzly cheeks. It was as if he had at long last found his father.

  He turned to the doubtful faces that belonged to the cabinet members. “Don’t worry about a thing,” he said offhandedly. “Everything is copasetic.”

  No matter, the Guanayan cabinet of the Independent People’s Democratic Republic was definitely worried.

  * * *

  That night old Horace called the special number that connected him directly with the President in the White House. “Everything is copasetic, Mr. President.”

  “Copasetic?”

  “Everything going according to plan. I’m going in the executive suite with them now. I’m in their confidence already.”

  “Good fucking boy! I knew I could depend on you to fucking outfox them fucking Africans.”

  Horace Whitestick said, “God bless fuh-fabulous America.”

  * * *

  Between Horace and the bogus PM, they figured out a plan to sneak out of the hotel without his bogus beard. It took a lot of convincing to get his cabinet to go along with the plan.

  Finally, His Excellency put it up to them. They either went with him or he and Horace went alone, together. Faced with these alternatives, they decided to go along. You would have thought they still didn’t trust our hero.

  In any event, one early afternoon, they piled out of the executive suite with the PM in the midst without beard and made it down a back elevator and exited on Lexington Avenue. They were dressed up like Americans. Even His Wife’s Bottom was. It was the day Maria Efwa was in bed with a slight temperature. They left her in the care of an official nurse who had come with them from Guanaya.

  “I’m going to take you cats to see the greatest show on earth. I’m going to Americanize you, culturate you.”

  “I know what you mean,” His Wife’s Bottom boasted. “You mean the three-ring circus.” He bragged proudly of his obvious sophistication. “Three-ring circus. Bailey and Barnum.”

  Jimmy Johnson said, “Three-ring circus is absolutely right. But this one is not underneath a tent. This is in the natural streets. This is the avenue I’m taking you to,” he sang. Ever since he had reached the Big Apple, he had wanted to see Times Square one more time. He wanted to compare it with Piccadilly Circus.

  They caught a bus and went across town to the West Side on Forty-Ninth Street. “Use the transportation of the masses.” They got off the bus near a sign that said on one side of the street, BROADWAY and TIMES SQUARE on the other side.

  “Is this it?” His Wife’s Bottom inquired, nervously.

  “We’re getting warm.” His Wife’s Bottom’s eyes were as large as saucers, the flying kind, UFOs. It was a madhouse. Everybody and his grandmother’s grandmother were out on the streets. They halted in front of a demurely gaudy place, the Rue de la Femmes. The cabinet members hesitated. Then Jimmy Jay grabbed His Wife’s Bottom by the arm. “All right, come on, country cousin. Might as well—”

  Inside there were winsome young ladies dancing on a long counter. It wasn’t till they reached the counter that the Vice-PM realized that these women were dancing in the attire of their nativity. Even then, he thought his eyes must certainly be betraying him, deliberately. Surely, he thought, they must have some of those skin-tight skin-colored things on. They wouldn’t be stark naked. Not even in New York City! Men were seated on stools with the supposed-to-be naked young lassies dancing innocently above them. They looked so virtuous and guileless, these soft-faced demivirgins, so sweet, so pure, so white as the driven snow, and it wasn’t even snowing outside. His Wife’s Bottom just knew they couldn’t possibly be naked. After all, wasn’t that a blue-suited member of the New York constabulary standing calmly at the entrance?

  A long-legged, blond, gentle-faced lady danced in front of a bearded gentleman seated at the counter next to the Vice-PM, drinking beer. She was grinding and twisting her seemingly nude backside in front of the gentleman.

  If he’d been naive and easily fooled, he would have sworn that the lady was naked. But His Wife’s Bottom was too worldly wise to be beguiled so easily. He turned to Jimmy Jay and boasted, “I’m too sophisticated to be deceived by an optical illusion. I knew she’s wearing some of those skin-colored undergarments.”

  Barra Abingiba said, “Tell me about it. Say it isn’t so. Talk that talk!”

  Jimmy Jay stared at His Wife’s Bottom. “Hey! My man is the hippest dude that ever came out of Bamakanougou! How you get so hip so quick? You is the horse’s ass. You just can’t shit running.”

  His Wife’s Bottom smiled broadly, proudly. “I always was sophisticated ever since I can remember.”

  The blushing fair young maiden squatted down in front of the Caucasian gentleman with his head between her legs. He flicked out his devilish tongue. The lady said, “Naughty-naughty! Mustn’t touch. Mustn’t touch. A snake might bite you.”

  The Vice-PM could not believe his ears let alone his eyes. He imagined he heard the sweet young lass say, blushingly and playfully, “It’ll cost you a dollar to feel my pussy.” These people in New York City talked so swiftly and with such strange accents. He could not have possibly heard what he was absolutely sure he heard.

&nbs
p; The Vice-PM knew he must be mistaken, but his eyes almost popped out of their sockets, when he saw the gentleman next to him reach into his pocket, give the winsome lass a dollar, and saw his hand disappear along with the green stuff of the realm somewhere between those glowing nubile thighs and just beneath the mound of her downy blond profusion. An upside-down triangle of it.

  He looked up and around and noticed another lady just above him who also seemed to be unclothed. She was petite, brunette, and as pretty as a sunset out on the faraway horizon just outside Bamakanougou. She squatted down above him and almost concealed his perspiring head from view. And he could smell the perspiration exuding from the middle of her, like fresh shrimps right out of the open sea. He thought surely he would suffocate. He began to cough and sneeze. “Aaa-chew!” Spraying the lady’s in-between. “Aaa-chew!” He sprayed the lady one more time. He was perspiring. And he was finally convinced that the lady was totally ungarmented because he could see the darkly sprinkled dewy down of her pubescence stick out from between her legs as it hadn’t seen a comb or hairbrush for several fortnights. His Wife’s Bottom was utterly speechless. Jimmy Jay’s stomach was in an awful hurt, as he fought to keep from breaking up with laughter.

  “How y’all doing, handsome?” the blushing lady asked the Vice-PM in a strong southern accent.

  “Just fine,” Jimmy answered, for His Wife’s Bottom, as he pulled the perspiring HWB from beneath the funky dewy down, and he looked back on their way out of the door. His cabinet members came behind him, hurriedly. His Wife’s Bottom seemed in shock.

  “What’s the matter, His Wife’s Bottom,” Jimmy teased. “You scared of white women?” Sometimes he called the Vice-PM “HWB.”

  “Those ladies are a little on the swift side, don’t you imagine?”

  Jimmy Jay stared at Mr. Lloyd with feigned amazement. “Now whatever on earth could have given you such an idea, HWB?”

  “Well I didn’t say the young ladies were harlots or anything like that, but after all—”

  Jimmy Jay said, “Those ladies are in the very finest tradition of southern womanhood. That was a southern nudist colony.”

  Horace Whitestick began his crazy giggle. Barra Abingiba laughed aloud.

  HWB said, “But—”

  And that was as far as HWB got, because they had been walking while they were talking, and there on a corner was a chocolate-brown-skinned Black man with a crowd of people, mostly white, surrounding him, and Jimmy thought, Lynch mob! . . . race riot! But as they came up close, they saw that the brother was some kind of a magician.

  He seemed to be pulling handkerchiefs out of his fingernails, but Jimmy Jay knew better than that. The hand’s quicker than the eye, right? He obviously had things up his sleeve. The only trouble, the cat was wearing a short-sleeved shirt.

  The throng was staring at him owl-eyed as he chattered away and did his thing.

  “You can do it too; you can do it too. Just a little legerdemain. Just a little old legerdemain. My father taught me, way down yonder in Chittling Switch, Louisiana.”

  A white boy in the crowd asked, “What’s legerdemain, sir?”

  “Just a little old Black magic, but you can do it too. Black magic. No racial implications implicated. All men and women are equal, legerdemainwise. If I can do it, you can surely do it too.”

  They were walking away from the crowd now. Jimmy Jay said to Horace Whitestick, “Damn, my man, I’m a little old country boy myself, but I know sleight of hand when I see it. Don’t these so-called hep New Yorkers know the hand is quicker than the eye?”

  Old Horace said, “Yeah. But they don’t know which hand to watch.”

  Jimmy said, “That’s easy. Watch both of them. That’s what I was doing.”

  Horace came back with, “Now that’s just where you’re wrong, bro, Your Highness, Hot Shot, Himself, or whatsoever. My man had ten hands or twenty or maybe even thirty working for him, that nobody was watching. You dig? I know what I’m talking about. I’m up here every time I get a day off, digging on this crazy scene. The Apple is a mama-jabber.”

  Jimmy had been learning all that brand-new jive talk. So he said, in real hip rhythm, “That’s heav—veee!”

  Horace agreed, “They are some heavy-handed mama-jabbers, but they are light-fingered too. You dig where I’m coming from?”

  Jimmy Jay said, “I dig where you coming from, I’ll be damn if I know where in the hell you’re headed. What is all this heavy-handed light-fingered bullshit all about?”

  His Excellency’s cabinet members were completely out of it as far as this crazy heavy-handed light-fingered conversation was concerned. And they’d thought they knew the English language.

  Horace broke it down for Jimmy. “While the masses are watching both of my man’s hands, three or four or five of his com-rads are picking pockets like a mama-jabber—for the revolution,” Horace added with a roguish grin.

  Well. After the southern nudist colony at the Rue de la Femmes, who knew what to believe?

  Horace said, “I figure they average about two or three hundred of that green stuff every day a goose goes barefooted.” Then he added, “For the revolution.” Then, “It sure ain’t for to buy the goose no new pair of shoes.”

  Jimmy Jay looked around at his astonished cabinet members. “You all getting hungry?” They were silent, shell-shocked. He guided them across the street to a place called NATHAN’S. “Take you over to eat with the masses.” A dollar and fifty cents for a hot dog? But they’re the best dogs he’d ever tasted. Mustard relish, coleslaw, everything including the kitchen sink. After the warm canines, they went downstairs and downed a couple of stiff ones. After that, they were ready for Freddy.

  By the time they came out of NATHAN’S, there was a colored lady outside preaching the word of God, like they did down there in Lolliloppi. She was a real fine sister. Constructed like a brick shed house, Jimmy Jay thought, when bricks were inexpensive. Many years before inflation.

  “Bring your burdens to the Lord and leave it there. Come, before it’s too late. Jesus is your only salvation.” The lovely sister was marching up and down.

  “Only He can save you. Open your arms to Him and he will take you in and save you. Let Him be your lover.” Her eyes were closed now. Breathing deeply. She had gotten carried away now by her own gospel rhetoric. “Jesus is my lover.” She was in the arms of Jesus now. “Let Jesus be your lover! Let Christ be your lover. Walk in the Garden alone with Him, while the dew is still on the roses.” She was swaying from side to side in the throes of ecstasy.

  “You’ve tried whiskey. Did it save you? Ah-hanh!” She moaned.

  “You’ve tried grass. Did it help you to get over? Ah-hanh!” She groaned.

  “I know it didn’t, cause I tried it too. Ah-hanh!” Breathless.

  “But I tried Jesus and look at me now.”

  A brother from the gathering crowd said, “You don’t look so cool to me. If you’re all that together, what you doing out here in Times Square bullshitting?”

  “That’s an easy question, brother.”

  “Answer it then.”

  “I’m out here because Jesus teaches us not to be selfish. Didn’t he teach us to go into the highways and byways preaching the word of God?”

  “Did He?”

  “Didn’t He give his own life for us?”

  “Did He?” The Afro-bushed brother stepped closer to the sister.

  “Sister, are you advocating Christian faggotism? What I look like letting Jesus be my lover? JC dug women the natural most. How you sound? Jesus was a revolutionary, a wino, and a womanizer. Mary and Martha almost came to blows over the dude. Why you think he changed all that water into wine? Check it out. He was a wino and a lady’s man. A man of the people. Furthermore he was a soul brother. The Bible states it plain as the nose on your face or anybody else’s face. He had hair like lamb’s wool. It’s right there in the Good Book. Old JC had to be a man of color. Why you think they did him in? The only Caucasians in that part o
f the world were the Roman colonizers. What does that make Jesus? A nappy-headed freedom fighter.”

  The crowd was giggling and laughing now.

  “Teach! Teach!”

  “Right on!”

  “Tell it like it is!”

  “A nappy-headed freedom fighter—damn I reckin!”

  The sister began to preach again. “He died to save us from sin and damnation—Yes! Jesus died to set us free from the evils of reefer and poppies and acid—Yes, he did! And whiskey—Onh-honh!”

  Her asthmatic histrionics reminded Jimmy of a Black Baptist preacher at Big Meeting time in the little old country towns in the backwoods of old ’Sipp. Her rhythms and the way she drew her breath at the end of every sentence.

  Jimmy told Horace, “That lady can preach her ass off.”

  One of her lovely disciples came over toward Horace, a slim pretty brown-skinned lady with a mouth full of thirty-two pearly whites, and they all looked like they belonged to her, originally. She came toward them, smilingly and Jimmy Jay knew a sudden fearful sense of déjà vu. She was some lovely body out of his past who recognized him. He sweated; his stomach percolated. Instead of speaking to him, however she said to Horace, “How you doing, my main man?” It was obvious that Horace and the lady were at least on speaking terms.

  “What’s happening, brother?” Even as she spoke to Horace, she was sizing up the Minister Primarily.

  Horace Whitestick answered, “I’m happening, baby. I’m the only thing that’s happening.”

  The slim pretty bright-eyed sister, staring at nervous Jimmy Jay, came back with: “You’re not happening, brother. There isn’t but one happening, and that’s the Lord God Jehovah. Do you want to find the light?” There was definitely something familiar about the pretty lady who eyed Jimmy Jay up and down even as she ran her dialogue with Cool Horace. Jimmy panicked momentarily. Was she one of the chickadees of his former iniquitous existence come home suddenly to roost? Then he got himself together. He was letting his imagination get the better of him. The stress and strain of his Prime Ministership primarily was getting to him. He told himself, Be cool! Be nonchalant! But the squeamish feeling in his queasy buttocks would not leave him.