The Minister Primarily

by John Oliver Killens

  “Your Excellency, she-she-she-she pu-pu-pu-pulled a gun on me and put me out bu-bu-bu-buck naked.”

  Two of the policemen were Black, and they doffed their caps, as they recognized they were in the august presence of the legendary Prime Minister of the Independent People’s Democratic Republic of Guanaya. “Your Majesty!” the lanky Black policeman exclaimed, worshipfully.

  The Minister Primarily took the two Black cops aside, and he explained the embarrassing predicament his official chauffeur found himself in, and, grinningly, they told him that they understood. They huddled hurriedly with the four white cops, and the tall Black cop came back to Jimmy Jay, along with the other one, and said, “Everything’s cool, Your Excellency. We’ll escort you back to town.”

  The Minister Primarily said, “How can I ever thank you brothers? Surely you understand the importance of keeping this incident hushed up. You can see how embarrassing and destructive it would be for the image and the dignity of our country and all of Africa.”

  They assured him that they understood. “Mum’s the word, Your Highness, sir. We’ll wait until your chauffeur gets dressed inside the car, and then we’ll escort you into town, in style.”

  “Thank you very much. And you have a standing invitation to visit our country, anytime your heart desires. The welcome mat will always be there waiting for you.” He gave each of them his card.

  They saluted him. “Your Majesty!” He returned their salute, smartly, and they went to their car and waited. The white policemen drove away.

  Cool Horace’s lips were bluish white with chill, as he dressed, trying at the same time to explain what had happened to him, teeth still chattering all the while. He got behind the wheel, started up the motor, but his hand was so chilled it could not take firm hold of the steering wheel. Jimmy Jay got out of the car again and went around to the other side of the long black limousine, and told Cool Horace to move over, he would drive. Jimmy got behind the wheel and signaled to the cops that they were ready to roll. They went through early-morning Jamaica, sirens blasting. “First time I ever chased a policeman’s car,” the PM remarked, sarcastically.

  Cool Horace trying to explain. “Mu-m-muman, she was my old lu-lu-lady, and I truly lu-lu-loved that woman. Thu-thu-thu-that’s how come I come up here to the Apple so damn often. She-sh-sh-she ain’t never acted up like this before.”

  “Does she know you’re married?”

  “Of course,” he declared, with indignation. “I’m an honorable man, even though I am a lady’s man. I can’t help it if I’m ir-ir-ir-resistible.”

  “You’re an honorable man,” His Excellency agreed.

  “An honorable man,” His Wife’s Bottom repeated, distinctly, instinctively.

  “An honorable man,” HIMSELF repeated. He could not restrain a snigger.

  “Yeah,” Cool Horace maintained righteously, “and I promised that woman I was going to get a divorce and do the right thing by her, as soon as I could spell able, for the longest kind of time, I told her. And she ain’t never acted up like this before.” Cool Horace was heating up now with a righteous indignation.

  “What happened, my main man?”

  “We-we-we had been out on the town, had dinner at one of them fine and fancy, what-I’m-talking-about, expensive Eyetalian restaurant, went to a club down in the Village, dug on bad Max Roach, came home, and she went into the bathroom and took her shower like she usually do, and she got into the bed just like she usually do, and me I got undressed just like I usually do, and she pulled a pistol out from under her pillow—”

  “Like she usually doesn’t do.” Jimmy Jay could not resist.

  “And put my bare ass out in chilly weather. Told me not to come back till I brought the papers with me. I—” The Cool One’s eyes and nose were running. He blew his pitiful nostrils.

  The Minister Primarily had felt the laughter building up inside him and now the tears were streaming down his cheeks. The car had begun to swerve from side to side in the crazy morning parkway traffic. Horns were blowing, drivers cursing. Up ahead the squad car with its siren blasting. He could not control the car for laughing. “Hold it, Horatio, I mean Horace, please, man. I can’t drive the . . .” He swerved into the middle lane and barely missed another car.

  “I don’t see a damn thing funny,” Horace mumbled. And he was no longer cool. “I mean she wouldn’t even let me get my clothes and put them on.” Cool Horace was no longer chilled. He was heatedly indignant.

  Jimmy Jay began to bang upon the steering wheel with laughter. “Please! No more! If you don’t want us to have a smashup on the Parkway. Save it till we reach the hotel. Please!”

  His Wife’s Bottom’s only quiet comment was, “Quite obviously. An honorable man.”

  Cool Horace, who (repeat) was no longer cool, repeated, “I don’t see a damn thing funny.” Which made the PM roar with laughter, dangerously.

  When they arrived back at the Waldorf, the hotel was surrounded by squad cars. SS men were everywhere. TV folks all over the place. He recognized Bob Teague, a Black TV reporter who used to be an anchorman, whom Jimmy Jay had always admired for the dignity with which he enhanced the job of TV anchoring and reporting. The newspaper and TV folks surged toward them.

  “Where were you?”

  “What happened?”

  “Were you abducted?” “Kidnapped?” “Assassinated?”

  “No comment,” he repeated over and over. Then finally he told them, “I was abducted, kidnapped, and assassinated,” as he was escorted forcibly by SS persons. As he was passing Bob Teague, forgetting who he, Himself, was, or was supposed to be, he reached out and shook his hand. He put his arm around Bob Teague’s shoulders, and he mumbled, “My main man.”

  When they reached the executive suite, the place was bedlam, two times over. The others of the cabinet bombarded them with questions. They had awakened as usual for regular chitchat before breakfast, for a run-through of the program for the day. When they missed His (so-called) Excellency and His Wife’s Bottom, they had checked with the guards outside, who were ready to swear on a stack of Bibles that no one had come past them. They had not known what to do. Finally, they had had to notify the police that the Prime Minister was missing. And then the deluge. Panic! Hey!

  “How could you do this to us?” Maria Efwa angrily demanded.

  “Totally irresponsible,” Mamadou Tangi asserted, firmly, agitatedly.

  Meanwhile His Excellency had thrown himself upon the silken downy couch, unrestrained laughter erupting from him. “Now,” he said to uncool Cool Horace when he could get himself together. “Begin all over again and tell us the story from start to finish.” As again he burst forth into roars of laughter. Amidst the bedlam of excited talking and intermittent eruptions of laughing, Cool Horace told, unsmilingly, his tale of aggravated woe, seriously.

  It seemed that his lady friend, his New York mistress, if you please, the really great love of his romantically eventful life, and he had had a healthy uncomplicated ongoing love affair, him and his lady, for four or five years, much to their mutual joy and euphoristic satisfaction, until recently, perhaps about a year ago, when his “old lady” began to raise the question of getting married every time he looked around, knowing all the while that he was a married man already, with several children. By now they were no longer children; all of them were graduated by this time. Perhaps it was when the last boy reached twenty-one when his “old lady” really started to get marriage happy.

  “But you know how it is. Like I was always on the up-and-up with Sherry Charlene Jamison. That’s my old lady’s maiden name. She’s a widow woman.”

  Jimmy Jay began to snigger.

  It was more than a whole year, Cool Horace grindingly admitted, that he had promised the lady that now that the children were up and out of the way, he would do the right thing by her. Just give him time and take it easy. What with first one thing and then another, being awfully busy and whatnot, he had never gotten around to doing anything about it.
Giving her one excuse after another. Every time he saw her here lately, she seemed to get seriouser and seriouser about it. She began to hint about things, and signifying, saying things like “Fish or cut hook” or “Piss or get off the pot.” And time before last she’d told him flatly, “Shit or get off the goddamn pot!” Which was not like her to use that kind of language. She was a lady up and down. Went to church every Sunday and prayer meeting every Wednesday night. A deaconess, don’t you know, chairperson of the deaconess board, she was. And so he still didn’t pay her much never mind, because all he ever had to do was to throw some sweet talk at her, she would always get weak for him, when it got down to the nitty-gritty. He was irresistible when he started his sweet-talking. He was a natural rhapsodizer. Always had been. Anyhow, last night, after they’d did it up, the town that is, they got home about three thirty in the morning. “My old lady took a shower like she always do, came back and got between the sheets, as usually. She watched me as I took off my clothes and stood in front of her buck naked, like I always did, profiling, don’t you know, and letting her dig my physique, get her kicks, turning my old lady on as usually. Just as I was getting into bed, she pulled a pistol from under her pillow and pointed it dead at my whatsoname. She says, ‘Where’s the papers?’ I say, ‘What papers, baby darling?’ And she says, ‘If you don’t know what papers, get your black ass outa my apartment.’ Then I says, ‘You got to be kidding, sugar pie.’ But her eyes told me she won’t kidding, not a pound. Her eyes were closed almost, but she could see me, cause they were flashing like a tiger’s eyes. I grinned at her and started to get into the bed, when she cocked the pistol in my face, a long black roscoe with a silencer already. I knew the lady was as serious as a massive heart attack. I started to the other side of the room to get my clothes. ‘I want you to get your ass outa my apartment just like you came into the world, in your natural birthday suit.’ Then I says to her, like sugar wouldn’t melt in my natural mouth, I says, ‘You have got to be kidding, sugar dumpling.’ And kept on walking to my clothes. That’s when she started shooting up the lint from the carpet ’round my feet. Came so close it gave me a hotfoot. I looked down and saw the smoking holes in the rug. I could smell the carpet burning. I says to her, ‘It’s chilly out there, honey bunch. Have pity on poor me. Jesus Himself says always have mercy.’ She says, ‘Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord.’ I says, ‘I just know you gon at least let me put on my drawers. A sweet little woman like you wouldn’t never be that hard-hearted. After all we been to one another.’ She smiled and I knew I had her going my way then. I reached down for my underwear again. Then she says, ‘You won’t born with no drawers on. Let the doorknob hit you where the bad dog bit you.’ And kept shooting down around my feet. I says, ‘But ain’t no bad dog bit me, darling.’ She says, ‘This bad dog I got in my hand gon bite you, you don’t get your black ass outa here, I mean in a hurry.’ And she started shooting all around me. For some reason or other, all of a sudden, I found myself outside the door in the hall, and hear her inside putting all of them locks on the door, about a dozen of them. Here I am out there naked with my bare ass out and knocking on her door begging her to let me in and at least let me get my clothes and put them on. People started opening doors and looking out in the hall at me buck naked. I ran to the elevator, but it looked like it was never coming up. Finally, I gets on the elevator with no clothes on, and look like to me the damn thing stopped on every floor from the tenth floor all the way down. The door would open, and people would start to get on, and see me naked and step back off and run down the hallway screaming like hell to beat the band. Three or four times it was womenfolks dressed up like they work in service. It was a holy mess, I’m telling you. When I finally got downstairs, I had to go outside in the chilly weather and walk buck naked clear across the quadrangle about a block long, I mean I was naked as a ragged-ass jaybird all the way to the phone-damn-booth. I mean, my ass was freezing. Wasn’t long before the police come.”

  By the time Cool Horace finished his tale of agonizing woe, the Minister Primarily had fallen off the couch with laughter. Even dignified Maria Efwa broke up with laughter. Abingiba was also on the floor kicking up his heels and howling.

  But Cool Horace could not see a damn thing funny.

  21

  A new thing was developing. Every time he came outside the Waldorf, there were thousands standing there in wait, just for a fleeting glimpse of Himself. Indeed, some actually sought and fought just to touch the hem of his garment. His immaculate boubou.

  White and Black, they dearly loved His (so-called) Excellency. The uncanny aspect of it was that they seemed always to know each time he had an appointment that would require him leaving the hotel. They would begin to collect about an hour ahead of time. They would begin to gather slowly, at first, then more and more, ultimately pouring from the buses and the subway, a feverish and disgorged humanity, flooding the streets across Park Avenue, jamming the traffic. Horn blowing. Shouted oaths. You could set your watch by it. You could make book on it. An hour or so after the crowds began to gather, about the time the street was jammed with people, Himself, as Abingiba had begun to call the Minister Primarily regularly, affectionately, would make his appearance, or disappearance, if you will. It was eerie how they gathered in anticipation. It sort of got to Himself, who, no matter how they loved him and adored him, no matter also that the venerable New York Times called him the most urbane, the most articulate, the most debonair head of state it had been their good fortune to encounter, with all that savoir faire to spare, notwithstanding, he was no more no less, at his heart of hearts, a country boy, a strapping rustic from the backwoods of the ’Sippis. And like the man said, you can get them out of the country, but you cannot get the country out of them. Face it, it got to our man, and why shouldn’t it? Then suddenly all that changed, and qualitatively.

  One early afternoon, he was due to leave for La Guardia Airport to take a quick trip southwardly as the crow flew for a meeting with the President. This time he went out of a back entrance on Lexington Avenue. It made no difference. His adoring public was out there in force. Somehow, they knew he would try to sneak out the back way unnoticed. And then he saw something slightly different from all that had transpired before. Across the street on the edge of the crowd about a dozen men all dressed in white-sheeted robes had gathered, and somehow, they did not look like angels to Himself. They were red-blooded, Mayflowered, superpatriotic born-again-Christian members of the Ku Klux Klan. For some unfathomable reason, Himself felt they had not gathered to adore him. With their pyramidal hoods covering their heads and faces, which made their heads to be shaped like steeples. He thought uneasily of them as the “steeple-headed people.” Three days later they gathered again and in larger numbers, this time with picket signs. Men, women, and even little children.

  WAKE UP WHITE AMERICA!

  STOP KISSING THIS NIGGER’S ASS!

  OLIVAMAKI IS A SAVAGE!

  BLACK BABOON, YOUR DAYS IS NUMBERED!

  BEWARE JAJA. KKK GOT HIS EYES ON YOU!

  It almost made Himself, himself, feel unwanted. Two days later members of the Black Alliance were out there also in force and ready for combat duty, as were hundreds of New York’s very very finest along with the Feebies (FBIs), the Alliance Blacks with gloves and mitts and baseball bats with picket signs and other items of amicable weaponry. The picket signs were memorable evidence of consummate artistry and esoteric subtlety.

  WE LOVE YOU, JAJA!

  LOVE YOU MADLY, JAJA!

  THE KKK BETTER KEEP THEIR ASS AWAY!

  IT’S ASS-KICKING TIME DOWN ON THE DELTA!

  YOU AIN’T IN ’SIPPI NOW, HUNKIE!

  The Black Alliance was not entirely Black. Here and there were sprinkled whites among the Black Alliance, with Afro-ed bouffants, yet, a few truly good white folks, like those who down home were known historically as “Freedom Fuckers,” in the glorious Movement of the sixties. Each time he left the hotel now there were small-size race riots, large-scal
e ones barely averted. The law-and-order folks kept cracked heads to a minimum. Nothing serious.

  The New York Times ran an editorial expressing its shame that such a thing could happen in this city of cities, this democratic melting pot.

  But in any event, it demonstrates unequivocally the absolute freedom of the First Amendment, that could happen only in a democracy like the USA. And in any other event, let no one misunderstand these unfortunate happenings and infer that these incidents are racially motivated.

  Perhaps, another daily newspaper which shall be nameless, suggested, His Excellency should move his circus away from the classy Waldorf. It was scandalous that these things should happen outside the vaunted Waldorf-Astoria in the equally vaunted affluence of Park Avenue.

  Whereupon Himself called a press conference and threatened to do the Castro on them and move his operation uptown to the Theresa. But of course, the Theresa no longer existed, as a hotel. “We wouldn’t be treated like this in the USSR,” His Excellency clearly enunciated his great displeasure. “Perhaps that is where we should have gone first in the first place,” he declared menacingly, and redundantly. “If there were not so many of us, we would do like Brother Jesse and go and live with our sisters and brothers in the projects.”

  Barra Abingiba kept reminding that he would have had nothing to worry about, had he taken his advice and gotten himself some “protection” before leaving the Motherland.

  One night they went under the protection of his own security people and the Feebies and the SS and the NYPD to a secret meeting at a hotel near the United Nations. When the meeting ended, they went down the back elevators to the basement of the hotel, then up a short flight of stairs out into a dark alley. Himself walked gingerly through the moonless midnight darkness in the midst of his security. He was so secure he could hardly catch up with his breath. There must have been more than fifty of them, stumbling over one another. It did not make him feel overconfident regarding his security. It was so black-dark he could not have seen a lightning bug had it been blinking directly on the tip of his nose. He walked carefully, putting one foot in front of the other like a blind man. Then suddenly his feet went out from under him, as he felt himself being rudely pushed forward. As he fell, a muffled shot went zinging by his ear so close that his ear was hot and tingling. The alley had been flooded instantly with light, then suddenly went out again. Several hands pulled him roughly from the ground and ran him toward the end of the alley. He could not see who held him. He hoped the hands were friendly ones. He didn’t even know who had pushed him. He suspected it was Abingiba. They made it to the end of the alley and into one of the waiting limos and sped off down the avenue. Himself was out of breath and leaking perspiration. Barra was seated next to him.