by Darius James
As was the habit of his kind, Zambo was lying.
While his mammy howled like a horse-whipped hound, Zambo took his plate of pancakes and marched from the hut with a pout. He was in a huff.
“Shoot! I’m gone git me some hot yellow butter! Sittin’ ’round whinin’ fo’ d’rich whyte folks t’come civilize us pickin’ cotton wif Aunt Jemima an’ welfare checks ain’t gone git me no hot yellow butter! What cotton anyway? Shoot!”
Zambo walked through deep, dark jungle with the pancakes stacked high on his plate. Suddenly, a Tiger sprang out from behind a coconut tree. “Hey boy! Can’t you read the sign? It says, no darkies allowed!”
“No,” said Zambo. “I can’t read. I ain’t been civilized. What’s a ‘darkie’?”
“Don’t talk smart at me, boy!” said the Tiger. “We eat little darkies like you where I come from!”
“You does?” Zambo trembled, his eyes wide with fear.
“Yes. I ‘does,’ ” said the Tiger with considerable condescension. “Like hell you does!” Zambo zipped to the top of the coconut tree, trailing a plume of dust.
The Tiger was confounded by the little nigger boy’s speed.
“You sneaky little burrhead! Come down here this instant!”
Zambo stared down at the Tiger from the top of the coconut tree with the plate of pancakes balanced on his lap. He looked like a lump of coal.
“Is you out yo’ rat mind? Does you think I’m gonna climb down there jus’ ‘cause you say so? An’ let you eat me, too? Dis might be d’Jungle, Mr. Tiger, but my mammy didn’t raise no fool!”
Zambo’s grin displayed a set of perfectly white teeth.
The Tiger’s face turned red with frustration. He stomped his paws and thrashed his tail.
“You insolent little ragoon!” the Tiger fumed. “We give you people all the mud and leaves you need for your roach-infested huts, plenty of open space to chuck your spears, all the monkeys and coconuts you can eat, and all I ask for in return is one lousy meal! Is this how you people show your gratitude?”
“What ‘graptitude,’ Mr. Tiger?” Zambo asked innocently.
The Tiger grew blind with rage at Zambo’s niggerheadedness. He rolled his paw into a ball and shook it at the sky.
“Just one woolhead little Jungle Bunny! That’s all I asked for! One kinky-haired little ink spot! Who’s going to miss him? His big, ugly, bone-through-the-nose, gorilla-lookin’ mammy? Not that fat, funky, watermelon and pancake eatin’ bitch! She done lost her mind and don’t know that’s gone yet!”
That made Zambo mad. The tiger was talking about his mammy! She might be big, black, and ugly with a bone through her nose but she was his mammy. What was wrong with that Tiger? Didn’t he have enough sense to know you didn’t go around talking about other people’s mammies like they were pellets of monkey doo-doo?
“You talkin’ junk now, sucka!” said Zambo. “Don’t lemme haf t’come down there an’ beat th’stripes off yo’ butt!”
The Tiger laughed. “I’ll slap the black out of you and that fat flapjack freak you live with! Now what you got to say to that, punk?”
Zambo hit the Tiger in the head with a coconut.
The coconut raised a big, throbbing lump between the Tiger’s ears. He staggered around the coconut tree with a circle of stars revolving around his head. Birds chirped tweet-tweet. An asteroid flashed past his eyes.
Upon recovery, the Tiger angrily shook his balled paw at Lil’ Black Zambo.
“I’m gonna put a hurtin’ on you now, you Uzi-armed little crackhead! When I get through with you, you’ll never listen to rap music again!”
The Tiger began running in circles around the coconut tree.
“I hope you enjoy the view up there, boy, ‘cause when I get my claws in you, you gonna be a dead nigger with an attitude!”
The Tiger ran faster and faster and faster. He ran so fast he looked like a yellow ring of swiftly spinning light.
“Burrhead!” the Tiger roared. “Jungle bunny! Ink spot!”
The Tiger ran faster still. “Spear-chucker! Mau-mau lips!”
Suddenly, there was the gleam of flame and the acrid smell of smoke. The glare hurt Zambo’s eyes. In an instant the Tiger was gone. Lil’ Black Zambo blinked in amazement.
He couldn’t believe what his eyes had just seen. He rubbed them with his tiny fists and blinked again. It was true. The Tiger had vanished.
And directly below him, in a bright puddle circling the foot of the coconut tree, was seven-hundred pounds of hot yellow butter.
Lil’ Black Zambo smacked his lips.
His last thought, just before he shimmied down the trunk of the coconut tree, was how he’d like, with his pancakes, to sink his freshly filed teeth into a string of sizzling missionary sausage.
THE END
Closing the book, Bubbles discovers the Talking Dreads pacing the octagonal floor with the agitation of a caged panther.
TALKING DREADS
That’s how my image filtered back into your world. Nothing in this woman’s frame of cultural reference allowed for any comprehension of my presence in her psyche. She couldn’t imagine the existence of things outside her sum of knowledge. She resorted to what she knew—puckish dark-skinned boys and authoritarian tigers—to explain the confusion caused by my presence. If it had been otherwise, she would’ve experienced a mystical conversion of untold depth, and been deemed a prophet in your world.
I didn’t anticipate the cumulative results of this woman’s confusion. In fact, I was startled. I was appearing in storybooks, comic strips, and animated cartoons! My face adorned bags of flour, postcards, bottles of molasses, bed sheets, and rolls of wallpaper! I was even given to children as a windup, spring-action tin toy!
Though my intelligence is superior to the best minds on earth, I didn’t understand it. I’m an extraterrestrial being, not an all-purpose cosmic Sambo! I come from another planet! I have technological capabilities your world won’t realize for at least another two thousand years! You don’t waste that kind of potential by reducing it to a graphic on a box of bleach!
Of course, I made attempts to rectify the situation. One transmission, the very same message I broadcast to the woman in India, in fact, was intercepted by a psychiatrist, who gave your world a work entitled Peau Noire, Masques Blancs, or Black Skin, White Masks.
Once, I tap-danced in the dreams of a filmmaker known for animating urban animal fables of a pornographic nature. I sang to him in a whisper, “I’m a nigger man. Watch me dance.”
My most successful try was with a musician who named himself after an Egyptian deity. He proved to be an excellent receptor. Eventually, though, he began leading an orchestra of drug-addled horn players through his arrangements of “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” and “Zippity Doo Dah.” It was then I realized it was all quite futile and gave up on the idea. Intelligent communication is not a quality your world is known for in this or any other galaxy. Instead, I’ve decided to take over your planet and treat you like the cattle you are.
As Bubbles considers the gravity of the Talking Dreads’ decision, he dissolves into a blurred, lavender-colored mist, his suit crumpling into a limp pile on the floor.
The mist wafts toward the ceiling and molds into a humanoid oval, inflating to enormous size. A disembodied, dread-locked head bobs in the air with Tenniel’s vanishing Cheshire Cat grin.
TALKING DREADS
Yes, Ms. Brazil, the Cosmic Sambo has plans for the degenerate whyte man . . .
The Talking Dreads’ white-gloved hands bookend the words:
THE ULTIMATE PLAN FOR THE DEGENERATE WHITE MAN
The walls of the image chamber spin with light and color, projecting a holographic mirage of a small rural town in midair suspension.
Circled by a nimbus of phosphorescent murk, the Talking Dreads’ disembodied head speaks in a smug, no-nonsense voice.
TALKING DREADS
On the surface, “Garvey’s Corner” is a town as typical and serene as any othe
r on the golden plains of America’s wheat belt.
CUT TO:
Dawn. The sun rises over the small midwestern town of Garvey’s Corner. A wizened BLACK MAN in blue denim overalls pushes a junk cart strung with clanging pots and pans. He drums his wares with two metal spoons, calling out in bluesy singsong.
JUNK MAN
Rags! Old iron!
Raaags! And
Old iron!
The JUNK MAN rolls his cart past the war hero’s statue erected in the town square, his song echoing in the alleys. An American flag undulates in the morning breeze. A handbill blown through the streets is caught in the grate of a curbside gutter. It reads:
TOWN BAR-B-Q TONITE!
COME ONE! COME ALL!
With its circa 1920s architecture, Garvey’s Corner is the town that Norman Rockwell and his brother George might have built for their boyhood train set. In a well-ordered, tree-laden product of municipal planning stands a town hall, a post office, a church, a little red schoolhouse, a sheriff’s office, and a train depot. It’s a town so staunchly American and small town in its values and thinking it could be called the Town That Made Frank Capra Throw Up! Portly SHOPKEEPERS open the doors to their stores. The gray-haired SCHOOL MARM climbs the steps to the schoolhouse. The postman waves good-day to the depot’s STATIONMASTER. The SHERIFF chats with the junkman.
SHERIFF
You’re sure you got enough horse sense to understand what I’m sayin’ to you now, Joe?
The Junk Man whinnies and stomps his foot. The Sheriff pats the old man’s bald, black pate, flipping the OLD MAN a sugar cube. The Junk Man intercepts it with his tongue.
SHERIFF
I like it when you use your tongue like that. You’re quick as a bullfrog, Joe, and a real credit to your kind.
TALKING DREADS
(v.o.)
A town where the air is sweetened by the warm aroma of a hot apple pie cooling in the window of a humble white frame house.
*Editor’s Note: “That nigga can play his ass off!”
EXT.—One-Family House—Backyard—Morning.
Crouching beneath the open back window, TWO FRECKLE-FACED BOYS steal a deep-dish apple pie from the windowsill.
TALKING DREADS
(v.o.)
It’s the kind of town where grizzled menfolk sit around the pickle barrel in the general store and hack gobs of chewing tobacco into the brine of phlegm-filled spittoons, cracking off-color jokes about their swarthy, sweat-secreting hired help.
EXT.—General Store—Late Morning.
FIRST MAN
That there’s a luger.
SECOND MAN
Yup.
FIRST MAN
Big, red, slimy sucker.
SECOND MAN
Yup.
FIRST MAN
Looks like a squid.
SECOND MAN
Yup.
FIRST MAN
Figger we can sell it to the dagos?
SECOND MAN
Yup.
FIRST MAN
Taste real good to ’em, too. Fry it up with garlic, be real tasty.
SECOND MAN
Yup.
FIRST MAN
Make a great pizza topping.
SECOND MAN
Yup.
FIRST MAN
Make a fortune off them wetbacks.
SECOND MAN
Yup.
FIRST MAN
Niggers, too.
SECOND MAN
Yup.
FIRST MAN
. . .
SECOND MAN
Starin’ at that sucker makes me kinda hungry.
TALKING DREADS
(v.o.)
It’s a town where busty blond girls and square-jawed boys tool down Main Street, USA, in souped-up jalopies, jitterbug to big-band swing, and drink nothing stronger than bottled pop in the local malt shoppe.
EXT.—Main Street—High noon.
A pudgy-faced, gap-toothed, tousled-haired TEEN behind the steering wheel of a sputtering roadster turns to the big-busted, pale-haired GIRL beside him:
BOY
Say, Judy, howsabout drivin’ over to the bad part of town* so you can give me a blowjob in the back seat?
JUDY
Neatto, Andy!
INT.—Back Seat of Andy’s Car—Bad Part of Garvey’s Corner—Midafternoon.
JUDY puffs her cheeks and blows a stream of air on the smegma-webbed projectile pulsing in ANDY’s lap.
ANDY
Gee, Judy, this is swell! Can I come in your mouth?
TALKING DREADS
(v.o.)
Garvey’s Corner is the kind of old-fashioned American town that still knows the value of a day’s hard work, the colors of its country’s flag, and the Lord’s commandments.
EXT.—Outskirts of Garvey’s Corner—Late Afternoon.
As the sun sinks below the horizon, the TOWNSPEOPLE march to the edge of town armed with hoes, pickaxes, coils of rope, and an American flag. The TOWN PASTOR leads the parade with a gold-crossed, leather-bound Bible clutched to his heart, his eyes aimed piously at the sky.
Suddenly, in a billowing trail of dust, the Junk Man zips ahead of the pack, zooming past the sign
NIGGER! DON’T LET THE SUN SET!
EXT.—Town Square—Dusk.
A bonfire blazes. The townspeople, convened at the war statute, dab their tearing eyes, their hearts swollen with reverential emotion. Just below the American flag, swinging sadly at the end of an oiled rope, is the Junk Man’s tarred corpse with the “TOWN BAR-B-Q” handbill pinned to his flannel shirt.
TALKING DREADS
(v.o.)
But surfaces are deceiving. What looks like the familiar stars and stripes of Old Glory’s true red, white, and blue is, in reality . . .
The American flag smokes into flames. The Junk Man raises his head, opens his eyes, and laughs maniacally. A ripple shivers across the surface of the holographic mirage. A black, red, and green flag flies above a bronze statue of Marcus Garvey.
TALKING DREADS
(v.o.)
. . . the black, red, and green flag of the Black One World Government! Or Sambo’s World!
The CITIZENS of Garvey’s Corner aren’t crying at all. They are wiping off a peach-colored veneer of greasepaint because, underneath the grease, each inhabitant of Garvey’s Corner is black!
TALKING DREADS
(v.o.)
For underneath its folksy charm, Garvey’s Corner is as phony as a set on a Hollywood back lot!
Garvey’s Corner microscopes to toy dimensions.
Firebombed buildings, rubble-strewn lots, storefront churches, and iron-grated liquor stores encircle the “town’s” false facades. DESPERATE PEOPLE mill in the streets. A trio of stingy-brimmed COOLIES croon doo-wop under the billboard
WELCOME TO SAMBO’S WORLD!
TALKING DREADS
(v.o.)
Located at the heart of America’s most dangerous slum, Garvey’s Corner is a mock town where blacks are trained to look, act, and think like ordinary law-abiding white citizens in order to undermine all the rights and freedoms American society has to offer the white race without the slightest detection!
These agents of subversion are so expert in the chameleon’s art of camouflage they can even mimic the actual smell of whites by bathing in tubs of rancid milk!
Outlandish you say? A plot too farfetched for the average Negro mind to conceive? Stop a moment and think.
Have you ever felt personally embarrassed for someone who couldn’t dance? I mean someone who really couldn’t cut the carpet? And you, the very embodiment of style, fashion, and attitude, groaned that this goldfish-gobbling jackass in the raccoon coat is the reason why the white race has such a bad name in discotheques throughout the world? Think again!
That person was probably born and raised in Harlem—trained to make white people look bad!
INT.—The Sambo Institute for Artificial Caucasians (“White Today for a Black Tomorrow”)�
��Classroom—Night.
A TALL, ELEGANT BLACK MAN in floor-length white robe and a knit skull-cap stands at the blackboard.
INSTRUCTOR
Remember, class, Minister Louis Farrakhan once remarked, “You can make a whyte man out of a black man, but you can’t make a black man out of a whyte man,” so we made a whyte man out of Louis Farrakhan and got . . .
The video image of FRED MACMURRAY’S DOPPELGÄNGER flickers on a television monitor. The Doppelgänger peels the rubber prosthetic mask from its face. And LOUIS FARRAKHAN crocodile smiles from under the tufts of cotton and Band-Aid-colored latex. With a stick of white chalk, the instructor writes on the blackboard:
FRED “FARRAKHAN” MACMURRAY: THE FLUBBERIZED NUBIAN MAN
INSTRUCTOR
If we are to successfully subvert the soul of the whyte man and dominate the globe with our negritude, we must inhabit his being as if it were our own! We must think as he thinks! See as he sees! We must attack his mind, undermine his “will to whiteness,” and defeat him before the battle’s begun! In other words, we must drive the whyte man crazy!
Tearing the rubber prosthetic from his face, the Instructor, too, looks like Fred MacMurray.
CUT TO:
INT.—Image Chamber.
A pinwheel of black and white lines spins in darkness. With an eerie electrical hum, the Talking Dreads’ pinpoint pupils incandesce and expand in size. His words visibly vibrate from his mouth in squiggling phosphorescent circles.
TALKING DREADS
Whites are often, quite literally, blind to the physical presence of blacks. It’s as if a melanin bomb discharged in the unconscious of the white race and destroyed the whole of the world’s black population. Blacks have become an unseen entity in the distorted landscape of the white psyche. An absence. A void. We are now a race of invisibles.
As the Talking Dread’s vocal emanations orbit her head and dissipate into rings of smoke, Bubbles sinks into a deep hypnotic sleep. The soft evening song of crickets can be heard chirping from a suburban lawn.
