Hokum

by Paul Beatty

  Rev Afterfacts cracked, clapping his hands and pounding his feet; he hadn't seen anything so funny since the Irish brothers got fixed and Dago red was caught with the bitch.

  Susan B. helped him as best she could. The booze was messing with her head. She stuck her hand down around his behind and pulled his shirt up from the rear while he attacked it from the front. He did a funny kind of jig, real funky, like he had a lot of soul, and dropped his pants to the floor.

  "Max. You dun had it." Afterfacts again.

  Annette didn't even laugh. Spiders were her thing. And Max? Crazy motherfucker—really, really out of it. She got up and brushed past the two of them strugglin' in the aisle, bumped into Virginia and asked: "Where's the ladies' room, please?"

  "Straight ahead, to your right, in the rear. You can't miss it." She half riffed it, half biffed it, and half rocked and bopped it, all together in a Laura Nyro voice, her eyes following Annette's behind and thighs, down to her sandalled feet, trying to get a peek through the bells. Ding! Bong! Bong!

  She really went for the way Annette moved, reminded her of herself when she first got to Heaven and got tied up with the red men, going from one to the other, till she vanished on the train.

  Rev Afterfacts, who was all eyes anyway, was watching Virginia watching. He thought he detected a strange look in her eyes. But wasn't sure. He relaxed, rubbed his of lady's big fat, fine thigh underneath the table, and looked over at Max. He was still coughing and dancing in the aisles, trying to get his britches back up.

  Susan B. finally got him to down two Alka-Seltzers and a glass of water. His face had turned grey.

  The Governor called him over to have a seat opposite him. He spoke in a nasal voice. "Here, fella, come over here." He was a tall angular man, WASP written all over him, a pirate from the get-go, with manicured nails and sandy hair.

  "There's nothing to worry about, Max. I mean, your screwing around with that young doll. At least you're not like Ted. He can't even take a joke—thinks of it as an insult."

  "Oh, you talkin' 'bout the wray he had that Polish chick to go down on him and give him all that head." Afterfacts jes' had to git into white folks' bizness. I'm telling you, he couldn't let up for a second. He started laughing, "It got so good to him, next thing he was off the bridge and into the water. Then came back and lied to the press about the whole thing. Denied it. That's what he did."

  "Right." The Governor really didn't feel up to going into it, not with Afterfacts anyway. "But he's attempting to keep his image clean, no blemishes. That's how it is in this racket. Once they find out you're just as filthy, nasty and dirty as the next one, you wind up off the polls, or the low man thereon. Totem."

  Max was feelin' gloomy; hence, he said nothing.

  "Reach over in my bag and pull out that pound I brought back with me from Panama, willya, Pancho?" the Governor directed one of his aides. Then to Max, "This will get your head straight."

  The Mexican with a fuzzy black mustache, wearing two bandoliers of ammo crisscrossed across his chest, got up and followed the instructions: "Si, Senor. Excelente." He and Afterfacts winked at each other.

  "Ya." Afterfacts just couldn't let it go. "All that little jive-assed stud had to do was to get on TV and say: 'Yeah, motherfuckers, I got the pussy and you can believe it was good. She was the best gold digger around. Fact is, I got films of the shit, in case anyone is interested.' That's all he had to say. I mean everybody can get to that, can't they?"

  No one said a word. After all, it was the Governor's plane.

  "Look, I mean with all the noise being made about faggots wanting the world to know they're faggots, lesbians in the same act, why can't those who fuck, suck and ball, admit it to each other? Talking 'bout open societies, ever heard of Alex Bennett? My main man and Girodias was on that show in New York, show run by R. Peter, talkin' 'bout good loving and erotic art; next thing you knowed, the dude was offed. I mean, offed. But now he's back. But dun toned his thing down." Afterfacts laughed, but he was the only one who did.

  A red bantam rooster escaped out of the Governor's bag—a gift from Poppa Doc. Pancho chased it around the plane.

  It headed straight for the ladies' room.

  "Get that bird," the Governor shouted, his eyelids fluttering up and down. "Get him." He didn't know himself what he was so nervous about, 'less it was something that Duvalier had dropped on him about white zombies and Voo Doo dolls.

  Pancho hustled back towards the ladies' room, caught the bantam rooster by the neck and brought it back to the lounge. It pecked at the table, its eyes darting, staring him dead in the face.

  He tried to shoo it away. Nothing was happening. It stood there all proud and arrogant, like it knew the whole score, and stared. Pancho picked it up again and put it on the floor. It tipped around the lounge looking from one to the other.

  "That's quite a bird you got there, Max. Where did you pick her up?

  The girl I mean . . . where did you find her?"

  "She found me, Rocky. You might say . . ."

  "On the floor at Marie's Secret Ceremony. He was down on the ground with his tongue sticking out. Getting wid it." Afterfacts socked it to the Governor, watching the Cardinal blush, slapping his knees and haw-haw-hawing all over the place.

  By this time, Max was fuming. But just turned red, like folks do when they ain't got the power.

  Even the Governor had to grin. "Well, I guess that's better than robbing the cradle in an orphanage."

  "I had to tell you something," Max blurted.

  The whole plane cracked up behind that one. Even Pancho, who had gotten the bag of reefer and placed it near the Governor's right hand. "Id, Senor." He spoke French-Spanish.

  Virginia and Susan B. served drinks all around. Afterfacts had a glass of port with lemon. His wife—gin, on the rocks. Max stuck to coffee and brandy, and the Mexican and Cuban had their own brown bags. Tequila and rum. The Governor had sarsaparilla. He was on the wagon.

  Susan B. poured herself four fingers of Scotch with crushed ice and sat on the arm of the Governor's chair. She started rolling joints, licking the papers and passing them around. Bombers.

  The Governor dealt the cards, palming aces and spades, sipped his drink and looked at Max.

  The Cardinal felt tired, dejected and drugged with the whole set. He wished the Pope would let him have his own plane so he could really go into his act, instead of having to beg, borrow or steal a ride with these clowns, Rocky and Afterfacts.

  "I still say that's a nice young piece of ass you got there. What happened, the nuns cut you off?" Rocky grinned, showing rotten black teeth in the back of his mouth. Route canals. "Fella?"

  Max gave him the evil eye. (He was part Jewish, you see.) "At least I'm not getting my jollies from checking out Screw, Evergreen and Playboy magazine, or getting the hot towel treatment, like some people I know."

  Afterfacts had to let Max have that one. "Lawd! Lawd! Lawd! Go 'head, Max."

  "You don't have to get personal, Bishop. After all, I was only joking with you on a friendly basis. Bitch."

  (How low can you go?)

  This changed the mood of the entire plane. Someone turned on the sound system, images of Sly and the Family Stone appeared on the miniature TV screens, the sound blasted out the walls.

  The Governor cut the cards himself. And while Susan B. passed out the smoke, giving one to each of the aides, two to Max, and three to Afterfacts (he let his wife have one), and lighting one for herself, the Governor dealt.

  Max inhaled on the reefer, his mind still on the conversation which had just gone down. His stomach muscles tightened and his throat contracted as images of eating pussy flashed through his mind. He thought about Annette.

  RIFFS: TO Be Blown on Meat Flutes or Piped-In Organs

  Chorus: Take Four

  The big plane soared higher into the black night, climbing past the tropopause into the stratosphere, the whole Earth catalogued in blackness with networks of lights far down below. The plane humme
d along at cruising speed as if made of fluid—gone with the wind.

  Estavanico sat at the controls in the Flight Engineer's cabin. He picked up a moving vision on the radar screen. It seemed to be rising from the Equator, south of New Orleans. He took off his sunglasses, dropped the pipe of hashish out of his mouth and put on his earphones. Space-science music on cosmic frequencies echoed through his skull. He took a fresh plug of American-grown marijuana and chewed on it for a while. The spot drifted like some glob, there and not there, all at the same time. Like some giant shadow. He swiveled in his chair, chewing the smoke, pressed a button and picked up Virginia with her tall self, entering the ladies' room where Annette stood before the mirror. First words to run through his mind were: "Who's the fine sister? WOW." He pressed another button and the picture on the screen changed to a view of the lounge.

  He laughed to himself when he dug the rooster pecking corn on the floor, jump back on the table and stare Rocky down.

  Max. The Governor. Afterfacts and his fat wife. Susan B. soused. And the two aides. He shook his head and grinned again. Actually he was mad about some shit that had gone down centuries before, when the Spaniards had him working as an Indian scout; he'd escaped, caught up with Virginia Dare who was running from the Indians, then when the technology got right, pulled this gig and brought her along. She and Buck, his main man. Zonked. He chewed.

  His sonic-visual radar showed a visionary blip about the size of Africa rising with the speed of light somewhere on the left of the screen. He locked his sights. The image danced, sang, rocked back and forth, then became a huge drum. It vibrated like the Earth around the Sun, the Sun around this Galaxy, the whole Universe one pulsating rhythm inside Space. He flashed a message: EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING.

  Annette listened to the brash metallic sound of the technological monster, the primordial machine as it slid through the darkness which encompassed that part of planet Earth.

  Signs: Cornbread 2002, Kilroy killed 1947, moved to the sub-Urbs, War Babies. Liberation! Black. Loves. And So Forth were smudged with red lipstick around the sides of the John. No dirty pictures. Just dirty thoughts. Words!

  She slowly undid the handkerchief, wondering about Marie, the changes at her parents' house, the Jive Five—it all seemed like it had happened in some unknown world—and then Max. "What a dip," slipped from her lips. Wondering what they, those she had left behind, would think of her now. She was glad she was gone. In more ways than one.

  Inside the red handkerchief was a black cat bone and some goofer dust, taken from a recently made grave. A note was attached on catgut. It read:

  Be Ware of Snakes no matter what Color.

  Signed,

  M.L.

  Annette was more than a little puzzled. She quickly retied the handkerchief, leaving everything as it was, and was about to drop it down in her purse when she heard a noise at the door.

  She quickly wiped her behind; the shit was black. (I don't know what the broad had been eating.) Stood before the mirror pulling up her drawers when in walked Virginia. She strolled in swaying her hips to the movement of the craft, her eyes slits, like she was high behind some good smoke. She eyed Annette's fine round young thighs.

  Annette was wise to her eyes. She pulled up the bell-bottoms and tipped as the plane bounced, rocked and shook, moved towards the bowl and began combing her wig.

  Virginia gave her a sidelong glance, dropped her drawers, lifted her skirt and sat down on the John. A quick glance told Annette that the bitch had black hair on her pussy and blonde hair on her head, "I've been holding this in since we left the airport. Feel like I'm about to burst." She splattered what sounded like a gallon of water into the commode.

  Annette was always shy around people she didn't know. And . . . er . . . white folks, well, to her, let's face it, they smelled. (Of what? She never explained to me.) She gave Virginia a thin-lipped smile and concentrated on the tune going through her mind:

  Runnin' thru the city goin' nowhere fast

  You're on your own at last

  "Man, you sure did tell that Max off, honey." Virginia finished peeing, didn't even wipe herself and pulled up her pink panties. She rubbed her tanned thighs—so unblemished, they looked like mannequin legs sitting in a Surrealist Pop-Art Trash Can. "Served him right, he ain't had no bizness telling that lie on you, honey. Served him right."

  Annette glanced at her. Blonde hair on her head? Black hair around a pink-lipped pussy? Annette was having her troubles putting it all together. Virginia looked up and caught her looking at her thighs, then shot a message through her eyes. It hit Annette in the pit of her stomach, dropped to her womb and made her ass feel good. She quickly turned her head and continued to comb her blonde wig. "Damn, I'm hungry. Is there any food on this thing?" She talked to herself in the mirror.

  Virginia acted as though she hadn't heard. She continued with her own line of questioning, dropping her skirt down over her twat. "You from Hoo Doo, right?"

  A pain penetrated right above Annette's heart, right between her two lovely breasts. "Huh?"

  Annette checked out Virginia's pinkish-brown, red face; the blue eyes and false eyelashes, and the arched eyebrows which had been plucked into crescent moons; the straight nose which might have been hooked in the first generation, and the thin, thin, red, painted orange lips. Virginia let her tongue roll slowly across her lips as she eyed Annette's hips.

  "I was asking if you come from down there? You know, Gumbo?" Virginia moved closer to Annette, Annette could smell the best and worst of American beauty perfumes, colognes and bath oils emanating from her body.

  Annette had to get the associations straight in her head before she answered. "Gurt Town. The projects."

  The plane humped about ten thousand feet altitude, like flying over a big-titty woman. Annette held onto the wash basin. "Why?"

  "Then that means you must know something about the Dark. Er . . . I mean mysteries—Voo Doo, the Occult. But that's what that word means, isn't it? Occult? Dark?"

  "Beats me, Bones." Annette couldn't help but laugh, as the image of Marie in the coffin slipped back into her mind, candles burning upside-down, black snakes, the eternal, Sun, Moon and children of the night. Infidels. All this ran through her mind along with spirits, natural and supernatural, two heads ha'nts and curses. "Just that they kin put the badmouth on you, that's all."

  Virginia was originally from the South. But in those days there wasn't such a thing. When she was a little baby, her father had abandoned her little ass and sailed back to England, left her to be attended by the Indians, then the Blacks took her and made her sell pussy; afterwards she went back to her own people and got a permanent position on the Governor's line. This way she didn't have to wash drawers, be humiliated and stuff, just push products instead. Autos, washers, vaginal sprays, cigarettes and Dope.

  But she was a firm believer in the dark forces of the Universe, the Indians and Negroes had taught her all that, but when it came to Hoo Doo and root American lore, she was just as dumb as the rest of'em, believing that everything good came from Europe, and everything that was homegrown was rotten to the core. She'd accept seaweed from China, pearls from Africa and everything from Latin America, before she'd buy dis folklore.

  So when she heard Annette put those two words together, use that syntax, bad-mouth, her body started aching, her loins trembled, her box got hot, and her tongue was heavy, dripping saliva.

  She grabbed Annette from the rear, cupped her breasts and kissed her on the neck.

  "Hey, wait a minute, bitch." Annette turned and pushed her off to the side. "I don't play that shit."

  Virginia hit the floor and her skirt came up. Red splotches showed on the crotch of her panties. Black hairs sticking out the sides.

  Virginia got herself together off the floor and eased up a second time, talking in a low sensuous voice, almost blurring her words. "I think that you are the most beautiful colored girl. . . black . . . I mean dinge that I've ever seen. And really . . ."
<
br />   At this point she placed her arms around Annette's waist; Annette struggled to get free. But Virginia had her in a clinch, breathing hard: "All I want is to suck and tongue-kiss your bad mouth. Is that how you say it? The one between your thighs? Nothing would turn me on more than that, huh?"

  Strange creatures. STRANGE. The bitch wanted to play with her poodle but had to call it something else.

  Mixed emotions swelled in her chest while Virginia, as best she could, felt her breasts. She smelled like she had been dumped in a vat of perfume with stagnating shit at the bottom. Bull's shit. Suddenly the thought occurred to her, since this was a one-way trip, no coming back this way, not really, suddenly she asked herself, why not? And turned, shoving piles of tongue down Virginia's hot mouth.

  Virginia held her tightly, rubbing her stomach against Annette's, feeling her breasts with hers, hips crushing against one another. Annette closed her eyes and was still able to see Marie in the coffin. She opened them, looked at the black roots of Virginia's blonde hair, the freckles on her neck, and felt Virginia's wet tongue on her cheeks and in her ears—sending chills down her spine, her core touching her, boxes boxing and rubbing against one another.

  Still they clung to one another, Virginia running the palms of her hands over Annette's well-curved hips and fat ass, feeling up her thighs; they swayed in the middle of the floor, listening to their own breathing and the plane's drone.

  Annette dropped her hands around Virginia's hips, clutched the flesh of her behind, reached down, pulled up her skirt and felt the soft flesh between her thighs. Virginia opened her eyes, closed them real fast, saw images of nightingales dancing on stairs, then felt Annette's fingers inside the lips of her cunt, working slowly, faster, then slowly, and Annette was staring her in the eyes. They were in utter communication, two bodies moving as one; Virginia continued to rub her legs, thighs and wiggle her hips. The hot gushy liquids flowed slowly down her thighs. She grabbed Annette tightly around the waist, ran her hand up and down her spine, rubbed her shoulders and pulled her even closer to her. Being the taller of the two, Virginia leaned her head down and kissed Annette on the cheeks, the eyelids, all over her face. She whimpered softly in the shorter girl's ear: "Oh, baby, baby, darling, you're so beautiful. I could just love you each and every day. Up here in the airways, down there on the ground, you're the best finger-fucker around."