“How did you know?” he asked Barra when he got his breath together.
“I had my Juju working. I got a sudden message from the Man from cross the ocean. You are well protected,” Barra boasted, “whenever you’re close to me.” Barra began to laugh uproariously. Himself didn’t see a damn thing funny. He longed now for his own and personal “protection.”
He learned the next day that two SS men had been wounded. The KKK phoned him and the police and took full credit. They warned him that the worst was yet to come. The newspapers were appalled, but not appalled enough, Himself thought angrily, and with indignation, even. Later that night he’d gotten more than a dozen “crank” phone calls from different voices who knew his private phone number, the one that went directly to his room and bypassed the Great Waldorf switchboard. It was a number he hardly knew himself. He never could remember it.
“Next time we won’t miss,” a growling drawling voice promised faithfully. “You can’t keep a secret from us. We see all you do. We hear all you say. The FBI and Secret Service can’t save your Black ass, cause we got them all infiltrated. We even got the Black Alliance covered. We’re the invisible government.” A Voice that made his belly double into knots.
Another said, “We got your number, nigger, and your days are numbered.” Fear was making a gluttonous picnic of his entrails.
Another: “Prime Minister some stew beef! We know who you really are!” Live crabs clawed at his intestines. They knew who he really was!
Himself was getting rest broken and paranoiac. A nervous wreck, a living smashup. Day and night, every time the telephone rang, he jumped, as if the rings were pistol shots, as if Ma Bell could actually assassinate him.
At the President’s insistence, he spent a couple of nights at the White House. “Where could you be safer?” the President asked, rhetorically.
They had sneaked out of the Waldorf at four a.m. and flown from La Guardia down to Dulles Airport in Virginia. They had been helicoptered from the airport past the ominously white buildings of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, past the greatest of all phallic symbols on this earth, the Washington Monument, symbolic of the man who fathered an entire country, Himself thought, ironically, smilingly, and who fathered a whole heap of ‘cullud younguns.’ (How many white Washingtons do you know?) Losing altitude now, passing over the virginally white buildings glowing so lovely in the mellow moonlight, and finally alighting on the helicopter landing pad in the backyard of the White House. Then furtively they were ushered across the South Lawn and into the big and awesome White House.
“That’s the Diplomatic Reception Room,” one of the Afro-American security guides whispered to His (so-called) Excellency, as they moved through the entrance. Himself made, secretly, the sign of the cross. He felt like genuflecting.
* * *
And now they had met all day long, working out the details for a mutual understanding on who would get the cobanium out of the earth of the Northern Province, and how much would go to whom. Foreign Minister Mamadou Tangi was a tough negotiator, as was the gentle-voiced Minister of Education, Maria Efwa. They insisted that the cobanium would be equally divided between the four great powers, the United States, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and the People’s Independent Democratic Republic of Guanaya, then to be further divided equally among the “First World” countries, according to their population. The allotments would be overseen by the Guanayan government. Also, a treaty would be drawn up in which each nation receiving cobanium would have to agree to use it for peaceful purposes only. The President and his negotiating team had never encountered such impertinent noble savages in all their born and unborn days. It was unheard of. It was scandalous. It was un-American. It ultimately became a question of when and how the arrangements would redound to the benefit of all parties concerned, especially Guanaya.
After debating the question back and forth, it was clear that the Foreign Minister and the Education Minister (or is it Ministress?) were chief spokespersons for the Guanayan negotiators. Mamadou Tangi and Maria Efwa were the center of gravity. Where they led, His Excellency and the others would surely follow. The more he saw of them and discussed affairs of state with them, the more the President of the US became convinced that a change of strategy was required, if they were to win the Guanayan leaders’ confidence.
So that at one point during the discussion the President rose and said, “Well, lady and gentlemen, I think this has been a fruitful meeting. I believe in the capitalistic democratic law of diminishing returns. We’ve been at it all day long and far into the night. So why don’t we retire to the Diplomatic Reception Room, and drink to our mutual friendship and good health and to peace on earth and whatnot.”
Himself said, “Especially to whatnot.”
At which point they retired to the Reception Room and began to drink to everything under the sun and beneath the moon and likewise the stars. And stripes.
Essentially a “country boy,” Himself could not help himself from staring, slyly, almost clandestinely, at the decor and the color scheme of gold and white, and beneath his feet, the deeply plushed and woven oval rug, also of gold and white and pale blue, with the emblems of the fifty states incorporated around the carpet’s border. He could not help from staring openly at the panoramic mural on the wall of “Scenic America,” with Boston Harbor and Blacks in slavery-time attire and at what he assumed was Plymouth Rock. And the gleaming Regency chandelier above him. He thought, This is me, myself and I, from the Big Damn ’Sipp, Himself. He thought, This is the Biggest of all the Big Damn Houses. Big and white and awesome House. He could not keep himself from laughing. And he laughed aloud. They stared wonderingly at His (so-called) Excellency, who had not been tippling and toasting with them, yet.
“To the brotherhood of man!” From the tippling toasting President.
“To the womanhood of sisters too!” Himself suggested raucously.
They had been going at it steadily for more than half an hour, when Himself caught on to the fact that the President only pretended to be drinking. He was holding the liquor in his mouth. Himself was also faking it. Each of them had caught on to the other and was aware that the other was faking and each was aware of the other’s awareness. It was the surest way on this earth to get completely stoned out of your skull. Except that Himself was only faking that he was faking. It could really get confusing. Somewhere along the way the President slyly signaled his extra VIPs to depart surreptitiously and without fanfare. But Himself’s retinue did not leave, reluctant as they were to leave Himself in the clutches of the most powerful personage on this earth. After hints and signifying did not suffice to get rid of them, Himself finally became indignant.
“And whasamatter with you sisser and brussers? You don’t truss your Prime Minaceter? You don’t think I can hold my own with this old presdence here? This old precidence of the Uniney Snakes? Hohn? Answer me quession. You don’ truss me, why you lect me?” He leaned over and whispered aloud to Abingiba, “I gots my jug working, Bro. You think I come way over here in this Uniney Snakes of a Milk The Cow without going to see my head bad Juju man? I’ll juju the shit out of him, he try mess with me. He snice fella anyhow. He’s very snice man.” He lowered his voice and winked his eye at his buddy, even as his tongue grew thicker, even also as he insisted he had not been drinking. “Smatter with you sissers and brussers. Oh, you of little face. If you all have so little face in me, I’m going to tender my resignation tomorror mornin’, to become ’fective as of the day before yesterday, ex post facto, retroactively, redundantly!”
He came so close to Abingiba’s ear he almost nibbled it as he whispered. “He thinks I’ve been drinking, but I’ve been only pretending to be drinking, like he’s only pretending. He’s been trying to hold all that whiskey in his mouth, which is impossible, while I’ve been pouring mine in this spittoon down here beneath the chair. The President must be a modern hipster. He dips snuff like all the young folks do these days
. Snuff-dipping is hip. The President’s getting as drunk as a skunk in the ’Sippi bayous.” Himself’s eyes were crossing. Maria Efwa stared at Himself, anxiously. Obviously, some of the whiskey he’d been drinking did not get poured into the hip spittoon. In the tradition of Cool Horace, the fingers of both of Himself’s hands were crossed.
In any event and notwithstanding, Himself’s retinue was finally convinced that Himself would be perfectly safe in the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House. “What place on this earth can be more safer than the White House in the United States?” the drunken President demanded indignantly. They grudgingly agreed with the President. So far as they knew, in the entire history of this whitest of white houses, no would-be-assassins had ever reached the upper floors of this historic edifice. They were overawed by the sense of history and Caucasian power, the like of which the world had never known. And if they had known, they had certainly forgotten. Or wouldn’t dare to mention, even to themselves.
And so, they watched Himself and the beloved President go (arms around each other’s shoulders) and get swallowed up by the presidential elevator. They were escorted out of the big White House across the way to Blair House for their diplomatic lodgings.
“You’re going slip in Lincoln’s Bedroom. It’s very pissful place to slip in there with Lincoln. Its room I always slip in when Mrs. Hubert is out of town visiting her ailing mother, or whatever. I always feel at piss with myself in old Abe’s bedroom. Mrs. Hubert can’t stand the place. Her pappy was a slave master.” They were in the hall in front of the room where Lincoln slept. The drunken president put his arms around Himself’s shoulders again and started singing, off key.
Pish on earth and mushy mile,
God and sinners rest awhile—
He hiccupped and giggled. “If it wasn’t for ol’ Abie boy, you might’ve been my slave, Your Excellency.” He stated it almost wistfully. “How about that?”
Himself feigned a drunken hiccup. “And I might have done a Nat Turner on your arse and slit your presidential throat.”
The President put his hand around his throat and howled with laughter.
* * *
It was not easy for Himself to fall asleep, sleeping there in Lincoln’s bed. The bedroom smelled anciently and moldishly of olden times, of civil war and intrigue and chewing tobacco and presidential nightmares; it was redolent with age and historic frames of references. He knew that the ancient smells were more figments of his imagination than real, since it was obvious that they kept all the landmarks in the White House sterile and immaculate. Notwithstanding, the imagined ancient smells were overwhelming to his senses. In fact, the knowledge that his imagination was playing tricks on his senses made the situation even more frightening. Himself did not believe in ghosts, and yet he wished fervently he’d taken Barra Abingiba’s advice and gotten himself some real “protection” before he’d left the Motherland. Himself was a young man inordinately awed by history and by myth and legend. And he was lying there in the same bed slept in so many many times by the legendary Great Emancipator.
He, an orphaned Black dude from the cypressed swamp woods of the ’Sippis! How in the hell could he be expected to fall asleep easily behind all that heavy history? He told himself he was too hip, too irreverent to be awed by old Abe Lincoln. “I got my shit together,” he told himself. “I hang too tough to be impressed.” And yet he wished now he had actually been drinking all that booze instead of faking it, pouring it into that goddamn spittoon! In which case he could have slept it off. He lay there staring at the terrifying darkness. “Let old Abe come. Let him come! We’ll see who’s bad!” He heard noises that he didn’t hear. He’d show Abe Lincoln who was boss. He imagined he heard somebody breathing deeply, laboredly, asthmatically. Perhaps the Big White House itself had been infiltrated, he thought, Lincoln’s bedroom. Perhaps the CIA had hired a Juju hit man to scare him so badly his heart would cease to function. A Juju hit man! With the heavy breathing and the wheezing. A clear case of assassination, clear and clean, leaving no traces. Ghosts never did leave fingerprints. The perfect crime! Then again, he thought, perhaps it was himself he heard, his own frightened bated breathing. He tried to think of funny things to amuse him out of the nonsense of his nervousness, to exorcize his stupid fear, so he could fall asleep. He made himself remember a funny little ditty.
The other day upon the stair,
I saw a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
Gee, I wish he’d stay away.
He smiled to himself. It hadn’t helped exorcize the ghost who wasn’t there. The heavy labored breathing started up again. Probably lanky Lincoln in his death throes. Breathing, gasping. He wasn’t scared, he told himself. Hell no. He started whistling Dixie. He wasn’t scared. Hell naw. He was terrified! He swallowed the imagined thick decaying smell of the ancient bedroom. Then he remembered Lincoln had not died in the White House. The knowledge of it didn’t help. Ghosts were never noted for being logical. It was not one of their stronger points. The breathing continued louder than ever. Trembling chills moved over his shoulders back and forth. He sat up in bed with his fists balled up. He wasn’t scared. His body was raining perspiration. He got up and fumbled around the room looking desperately for the light switch. Forgotten completely were the lamps on the night tables on both sides of the bed. He tried to remember where things were in the carpeted room. His mind was able to fashion the carpet with its patterns of apricot and bright olive colors, even as his knee came into sharp contact with the marble-topped rosewood table in the middle of the room. “Shit! Damn! Hell!” The pain shot through his knee and down his leg, as he limped about blindly and fell upon the now-remembered apricot-colored love seat.
He got up again and put his hand before him till he reached the treacherous marble-topped rosewood table again. Stumbling around there in the darkness, he expected that any moment something would reach out and touch him on his shoulder. And when it happened, he knew he would disgrace the executive pajamas they had provided him.
Ultimately, he found the wall switch. The lights were on now and he looked furtively around the room. Nobody was there for him to see, because it was common knowledge that ghosts always disappear when the lights come on. He stared at the imposing awe-compelling rosewood bed with its bedclothing of yellowish pink, the antique rocker and boudoir chair on one side and the green upholstered antique chair on the other side. The walls of pinkish yellow with pictures, he imagined, of past presidents whom he did not recognize staring at him from all sides. He switched off the lights and made his way back to the bed.
He lay there now in Lincoln’s rosewood bed, thinking, if old Abe was the Great Emancipator, how come he didn’t feel emancipated? He turned and twisted, got entangled in the bedclothing. And wrestled with a ghost who tried to give him death by strangulation. Ultimately, he fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. A presence in the room awoke him shortly afterward. It was a presence more felt than seen, but no less a presence notwithstanding. A frigid presence. His entire body knew a chilly perspiration, as the icy presence slowly materialized into a visible apparition clothed immaculately in white. He knew a prickling in the nape of his head “back in the kitchen,” where the baby hair grew, and his being knew a vertiginous sensation, as the gliding apparition loomed nearer and nearer clearer and clearer. Hovering above him now. All in white. He closed his eyes momentarily, and he imagined the unearthly apparition got into bed with him. His sense of humor won out over his great fear, as he thought, Damn! That’s one part of the Lincoln legend they left out about old Abe, the switch-hitting aspect. An AC-DC gentleperson. How about that mess! He was immobilized by fear, or else he would have told the ghost, “I don’t play that he-ing and she-ing shit.” It was not in his repertoire. Definitely it was not. He swung right-handed all the way. Then suddenly he came back to earth thinking that the hands of ghosts were supposed to be bony and without flesh. But these were soft and gentle hands that made contact with his perspiring body. Was h
e dreaming? Were ghosts tactile? Did they possess physical ties that were tangible? He’d never slept with a ghost before. And he wished for his African “protection,” but vainly and belatedly.
The tingling sensation started again when he realized this particular apparition obviously believed in faith healing and the laying on of hands, soft and gentle hands, powerful juju, soothing juju, overcoming fear and trepidations. Moving ever downward toward his supple nervous and witch-crafted member (of the wedding), this apparition, murmuring now in unknown tongues fluttering sounds of desires fulfilled and excitation. The ghost was purring like a pampered kitten. And suddenly he realized his apparition was softly round and amply breasted, and of a decidedly different sexual construction and proclivity. He was not abed with old Abe Lincoln! Perhaps this was an ethereal visitation from one of old Abe’s young mistresses!
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