by Ian Wallace
Seeking insights, he began to stay out at night, haunting lower-class white taverns, with his wife’s worried consent: she accepted the night-owling and even the possible wenching-entailment, but the dangers for him bugged her. “Look, hun: keep your eye sharp for predatory men and unsanitary women. Promise?”
I followed him…
Lassiter learned little. Sensing his social class, they avoided him.
Eventually, desperate, he allowed a whore to pick him up. I noted that Lassiter was discerning: avoiding the nubile youngsters, he surrendered to a well-groomed twenty-five-ish woman who was experienced enough to take care of herself yet not old enough to have grown careless.
As he started to leave the saloon with the woman, Lassiter felt a heavy hand on his arm. He turned: it was Willy. Shaking his head decisively, Willy said: “Uh—uh.”
“Why not?” Lassiter demanded, flush-faced, while the woman stood angrily at bay. “You gonna talk about me, Willy?”
“Not me,” said Willy, thoughtfully avoiding mention of Lassiter’s name. “But don’t go with her. Come with me.”
The whore started to screech. A menacing crowd began to gather. Willy said: “Pay her off.” Lassiter handed her a ten. She shrugged, took it, and melted into background. The crowd stayed but made no move.
Willy hooked Lassiter’s arm and drew him outside. They walked rapidly a few minutes in silence; then Willy led him into another tavern…
In a second-row seat that he couldn’t afford, Lassiter watched the flurrying third round in which, surprisingly, Willy tried to knock out Brownie. Five times Willy had Brownie on the ropes, three of these occasions in a corner; four more times Willy had Brownie tied up in bruising infighting. Over and over the crowd was on its feet.
It wasn’t exactly that Brownie withstood it—rather, it was that Willy hardly touched him except during the infighting. At the ropes, a touch was all that the slaughtering ham-fist of Willy ended up conferring, because of a last instant Brownie evasion…
“It’s like this,” Willy told Lassiter in a booth over beer. “I know you’re a right guy, but they don’t. I know that chick, she’da said she’d tell on you, dug your roll for blackmail, then blabbed anyway—an’ you’da hadda dosa clap, man. Wrong chick, man. Hey, man—you need t’come down here after chicks? You need ta come here?” He was talking in the old slave-based bianco-lingo that was hardly Paladian; in school he did better, though you wouldn’t call him a purist.
Lassiter decided to level with him—wasn’t he allowing one of his own students to drink illegally with him? He said: “I do need to come here—but not for that.”
“So why do you go for that?”
“Anything at all to get some insights. But scandal and clap my wife can do without—so thanks, Willy.”
“You said insights?”
“Know what that is?”
“Not exactly.” Willy had slipped into decently average Paladian.
For Lassiter the word labeled undefined comprehension, and he struggled for a simple definition. “Getting insight is getting to dig another guy’s mind. Or your own. Follow?”
“All right—”
“I’m not getting anywhere with you classroom freaks. You don’t trust me. You ought to, but you don’t. So I figure I need some insights, so I can dig you, so you can dig me. I picked that chick because I figured I could pump her for some helpful atmosphere.”
Willy’s face spread in a rare grin. “She’da dug you—all the way!”
Lassiter smiled rueful-small. “Thanks, Willy. This ain’t my dish.”
Willy’s face went ferocious. “Don’t say ain’t!”
Lassiter went sober. “My friends and I don’t mind saying ain’t—”
Glower: “This is different.”
“Okay—”
Apologetic softening: “I don’t mean you ain’t a friend—”
“I know.”
“You—do?”
“I mean—I think I dig.”
Willy pouted at the table. Abruptly he slugged a ham-fist down upon it, spilling beer. He looked up and waved frantically for a barmaid, ordered more beer, and turned concerned to Lassiter: “You mean—you’d leave your park and prowl this crappy area for the sake of—”
Lassiter waited.
Willy went wondering. “You know, Mr. Lassiter—I think I dig you Sort of—” His face went vacuous, and he lurched at his new beer.
“I gotta tellya,” Willy said presently, into jargon again. “Brownie an’ me, we droppin’ out.”
“Why?” Lassiter’s eyes narrowed.
“Nothin’ t’ do with you. School ain’t for us. Brownie an’ me, we been fightin’ some. Brownie’s a natural, an’ I’m winnin’ a few. We goin’ pro.”
Lassiter sipped. “Well, I have to admit it’s a job opening for a white. Good luck, Willy. I don’t recommend it, but I don’t suppose I’ll change your mind.”
“Maybe I can change yours?”
“How do you mean?”
“If ya quit tryin’ t’ make good Paladians outa them freaks, maybe they’ll settle down an’ learn some history.”
Lassiter scratched the bridge of his nose.
“Look, Mr. Lassiter. Brownie hates your guts, but I dig you. You were a bianco like the rest of us, but you had good brains an’ you worked hard, an’ here you are, a class cat. You got reason t’ be a good Paladian, even fightin’ tha goddam prejudice, because you’re doin’ all right. But tha rest of us got no reason. But a lot of us do want some education, not t’ be good Paladians, but just t’ get ahead a little maybe. You just teach history, forget that rememberin’ bit: whadda we got t’ remember, Lassiter? whadda we got? You just teach history, maybe half of us will learn somp’n about half of it, so you pass us with D’s—okay: we got somp’n under our belts, an’ maybe it will help us get t’ be good Paladians if Blackie will give us half a chance. You dig that?”
Lassiter brooded, clasping his beer with both hands. “If we had some damn other way—once over lightly the way you said—then through it again, but a little deeper—”
“Hell, man, you couldn’t keep their interest!”
Lassiter leaned forward. “Willy—do you dig the remembering?”
Willy glared at him. Willy nodded once. “Drink your beer,” said Willy, “an’ I’ll steer you out of here and start you home.”
The fourth and fifth rounds were more of the same—Brownie dancing and flicking, Willy the Villain shambling and boring and jabbing; the crowd was growing restive; one loudmouth got a laugh with “DIG THEM DANCING BROTHERS!”
I was haunting Lassiter—who was profoundly worried, rooting heavily for Willy yet dead sure that Willy would lose…
Backtracking some more, I found in Lassiter a brilliant memory-trace of scared-courageous Lassiter skulking in a back row of a deep-ghetto white church where World Champion Brownie Brown was the Speaker of Honor; and Brownie was preaching a sermon. Minimizing the Amens and Hallelujahs from the passionate congregation, here is the gist of Brownie: “You cats listen now! We white! They black! They yanked us out of our homeland and brought us over here into slavery! Then they said they were freeing us, but we weren’t free at all—they just stopped giving us handouts! But they found out we had some political power, so they figured out some new handouts to keep us quiet—you know?”
“WE KNOW, BROWNIE! AMEN! HALLELUJAH!”
“So now they got stuff like equal opportunity which is horse-shit, and Motheraid with the checks usually late and your mother has-to be a whore to get it! Blackie owns all the good stores in Blanco-town and bleeds us black! So then a bunch of high yaller white Judases go ’round preaching to us about integration. Integration—what in hell is it? It’s a scheme to make whites knuckle down to their black masters!
“That ain’t what we’re up to, brethren! We got tradition! We whites can make our own society here! Blackie brought us to Paladia—now Blackie can eat us! And we’re going to sandpaper Blackie’s black balls and burn his st
ores until he gives us what we really want—some pure white states! And when wt get them states— “WHITE IS BEAUTIFUL! WHITE IS BEAUTIFUL! GOD IS WHITE— ’
Bedlam. Lassiter made himself small…
But Willy the Villain, three rows from the back, stood up and made himself large. He bellowed deep: “Brother Brownie, do you dare let me talk a couple minutes?”
Brownie stared, gulped, stared, then grinned and hollered: “That’s my kid brother, he’s a lot whiter than I am. Ya wanna listen?”
The crowd sounded divided.
Brownie nodded at Willy, holding the grin. Willy shambled down the aisle and up onto the platform. With a mockingly sweeping gesture, Brownie offered him the rostrum. Scorning it, Willy turned to the crowd: “Y’all know me,” he rumbled, his unmicrophoned voice easily penetrating to Lassiter at the rear. “I’m Willy the Villain. Brownie’s the World’s Champ, I’m the Number Three Challenger, I’m his brother. He thinks there’s a Blackie, an’ Blackie is a bastard. I don’t. I don’t think all blacks are alike, any more than I think all whites are alike. I think there are lots of blackies: some are bastards, some are good guys, most are nothin’ special. And I think there are lots of us whiteys: some are bastards, some are good guys, most of us are nothin’ special. How ’bout it?”
It drew some confused buzz. Willy lifted both hands for silence; Brownie studied him, his expression continuing to mock.
“Now listen,” commanded Willy, “because this is important. A bastard is a bastard. Whether he’s white or black, if he’s a bastard he’s gona kick the good guys an’ the nothin’ guys in the nuts. In this community, you know goddam well we got lotsa white bastards who are kickin’ all of us in the nuts! You set up a white state, first thing you know it’ll be run by white bastards who’ll be kickin’ the rest of us whites right—in—the—nuts!”
There was a kind of stupefied silence. Lassiter was gaping: Willy Brown had been a chronic flunker with an 84 IQ!
“So—so—so now let’s get realistic!” Willy was trying to say something very deep very simple for a crowd of ground-under whites who apart from their socially degraded cultural impoverishment had wholly human potencies and aspirations.
“Yeah, we’re second-class citizens; yeah, the blacks are on top; I ain’t tryin’ to blackwash history. But that’s just how it is, from history. That’s where we start from. I tell you what: we ain’t lookin’ for white leaders especially—we’re lookin’ for good leaders, white or black, who really dig the whole scene! I tell you what we’re lookin’ for among whites: we’re lookin’ for whites who have enough guts to work for equality or superiority—like my brother Brownie an’ me, even if we do see the ways different, an’ like a lot of you out there. I tell you what we’re lookin’ for among blacks: we’re lookin’ for blacks who’ll give us an honest chance for good jobs an’ accept us as honest competitors when we run for mayor an’ sit comfortable at the next table to us in restaurants an’ kid us for our whiteness while we kid ’em for their blackness an’ not move out just because we move in—an’ they don’t have to give us their daughters! An’ when we get all that, includin’ a hell of a lot more whites who’ll get the lead out o’ their pants an’ work—then you’re gona see a hell of a Paladia!”
There was rumbling. And then Brownie, situated tactically by a mike, murmured into it sb the whole hall heard: “Brother, ain’t you gonna let the lazy black folks do a little work too?”
It turned the hall noisily against Willy. He made several ineffectual attempts to quiet them. Then angrily he strode to the rostrum and bellowed to his brother: “I’ll take that mike now!” And he roared into it as gradually they semiquieted: “Now listen you guys! I know another planet, and I know an island right on this planet, where whites rule the roost and blacks are second-class citizens! Where in hell are your minds? Can’t you see that prejudice is human, black or white or red or yellow—and the guys with the short end of the stick always have to lick the prejudice by proving themselves? Oh, sure, we gotta have help—don’t spit on the help, Blanco: we gotta have help—but don’t you see that we couldn’t even be holding this meeting if there weren’t a hell of a lot of blacks who see it my way and are trying to open doors for us to go through on our own power?
“Blackie has a different background! Blackie knows he has to work! Four black guys out of five grow up expecting to work hard willing to work hard, knowing that it’s the only way to get ahead. How many white guys do the same? Maybe two white guys out of five—because the rest of us figure we can’t win anyway, an’ we’re past caring. Don’t you dopes dig the point? How are you ever gonna knock down the black belief that whites are lazy, except by working? working hard? What we gotta do is tear into our own white people so that four out of five of us expect to work hard just like blacks—or maybe more, maybe nine out of ten whites! An’ then, with a leadership of good whites an’ good blacks, we gotta see to it that Blackie recognizes our work! I tell you guys an’ chicks—when that happens, we’ll have a twenty-percent white Congress in ten years an’ a white President while a lot of us are still alive! An’ all of us who work hard will be rakin’ in good Paladian sugar! Now how ’bout it?”
Lassiter was in acute torment: courage and loyalty demanded that he get up and second Willy; discretion insisted that he was an alien among this category of his own race, that his support would only hurt Willy. Discretion kept him ulcerously in his seat.
Having withdrawn from the lectern to the middle of the platform, Brownie was doing a languid soft-shoe dance, paying no attention either to Willy or to the crowd.
The crowd went, finally, against Willy—bayingly, irrevocably.
Shrugging large, Willy departed. He never saw Lassiter.
In the ring, again Brownie was doing a languid soft-shoe, staying well away from Willy, who kept coming on. It was round six. The crowd was peppering the ring with snide comment. Brownie kept shouting happy answers to the crowd like “I’m a-wearyin’ him!” They weren’t convinced, and neither was Willy.
So far, the fight had stayed right on Antan-track. Brownie was going to win on points: he would progressively increase pressure during the coming rounds, but cautiously, so as not to be tagged again by a bullrush; meanwhile Willy, having worked off his anger in the early rounds, would rush Brownie from time to time but never lethally: for Willy, brotherhood counted.
Seeing what I had to do, I entered Willy’s mind and activated an if-node—for Willy, for Brownie, for the arena crowd, for all Paladia. But it wasn’t going to go quite right…
All I did was to open up a system in Willy’s brain, flooding his consciousness with angry recall of Brownie’s perverse meaning for whites and for Paladia; and to fuel it, I stung Willy’s suprarenals.
The change was swift. Willy closed on Brownie and tied him up. Willy was glaring up into Brownie’s eyes; and Willy was muttering gutteral: “You listen Bro—you hurtin’ all of us—I gonna hurt you bad! You fight!” With that, Willy freed his right and jarred Brownie horrendously in the ribs; and I left him, to enter the brain of Lassiter at ringside.
Through Lassiter’s eyes, immersed in crowd noise through Lassiter’s ears, swept by Lassiter’s endocrine emotion, I watched the fight go to hell. Angry hurt Brownie lost his head and mixed; Willy slugged back; and for a minute and a half they treated each other like punching bags. Between the bags at round end, however, there was a visible difference. Brownie, tired and breathing hard in his comer, had big welts on belly and ribs but not a mark on his face. Willy’s face was almost pulpy.
I began to doubt the precision of my nudge, which had been intended to change history (on this parallel track, at least) by eventuating in a Willy-win…
Willy sailed into ring center at the seventh-round bell. Brownie, again self-possessed, danced languidly in. Willy drove hard; Brownie tied him up; in the clinch, Willy jabbed jokingly at Brownie’s ribs—but Brownie showed an astonishing ability to move his ribs away. I watched the referee closely: that one was toleran
t, a laissez-faire man; he made no move to break the clinch, as long as fists were making contact. Brownie got leverage and thrust Willy away. Willy charged in again: Brownie, dancing back, laced Willy’s face with half a dozen lefts and rights before the next clinch. Willy was bleeding heavily over the right eye.
Brownie broke loose. Willy bulled in, throwing a haymaker that caught Brownie on the chin point and sent him sprawling. The referee motioned Willy to his corner and started the count. Brownie took it to three and was on his feet, shaking his head, uncertainly dancing. The standing crowd was shouting—and nobody was mentioning brotherhood.
Now Brownie adopted an odd taunting tactic. He let his right arm fall so that it hung at his side; and he began dancing backward, poking with his left. Lassiter was yelling: “Easy, Willy! Cool, man! Watch him! Cool!” If Willy heard, it didn’t register: he kept coming, while Brownie bicycled away. But abruptly Brownie planted his feet solid and crashed a left between Willy’s eyes, shaking him. Brownie danced back; Willy, recovering, bored in; Brownie hit him between the eyes. It kept happening, like a stubborn bull being ended on by a two-by-four.
The bell rang. Brownie went to his corner. Willy stood there. A handler rushed out and took Willy to his corner. The referee seemed inattentive. A furious consultation developed among Willy’s handlers while they worked over him: one angrily waved a towel, another patted his face; Willy opened his eyes and shook his head and closed them…
And I knew what almost had to happen. Knew it with the dismay of realization that my failure was going to create cruelty and death. And I could not stop it: I was allowed one nudge, one only: after that, it had to be done by the souls themselves, or it was worthless.
But I might ameliorate the subjective tragedy…
