Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

by Ishmael Reed

  Mop this up and bury it on the hillside. Crops looked a little weak up there this year, Drag said pointing to the bubbling mass on the rug and spitting tobacco on his wife’s remains. Drag hobbled over to the fireplace. He threw some pieces which lay on the floor into the fire, ran his hands across the sticky yellow patch of bull’s sperm on his head and put on a dressing gown. The Great House was empty except for Drag.

  Guess I’ll go upstairs now and burn the marriage stiffycate, Drag thought, climbing into the portable elevator attached to the side of the winding staircase. He ascended to the second story of the building.

  Once upstairs Drag removed the marriage certificate from the wall and put it into the fire. He then sat down and drank some whiskey.

  Suddenly something black jumped out of the closet, leaped through the window into the yard. What the? Drag thought, a cigar falling from his lips and onto the floor.

  At Big Lizzy’s Rabid Black Cougar, Drag was being discussed in earnest by the foreman and two cowhands from his ranch.

  A daffy cat a really daffy cat, started saying spooky things about magic.

  The foreman stared at the plump pink of nude dangling a flower between her teeth painted in an oil portrait above two moose horns hanging behind the bar.

  Those kids said some nasty things about the six gun, the foreman addressed the bartender. Said we ought to unzip our pants and draw it from there. Them smart alecks good riddance.

  Just then a tall mustached man walked into the bar. He wore a slouch hat single breasted black frock coat and flowing black tie. A star rested near his right breast.

  Boys, the Marshal said, putting a hand on Skinny’s shoulders, thought you might want to know that the middle aged of Yellow Back Radio voted to commend you for saving the town from them kids who had it under siege. Didn’t even need the Preacher and his hazel wand this time. Just talked fast and said freedom every three words. They said they were grateful to you and the boys for freeing Yellow Back Radio from the kids. They’re glad you got rid of those brats who were being influenced with Spirit. Everybody take their hats off.

  The bartender removed his Straw, the Marshal his Slouch and the foreman his Stetson and the cowpokes seated at the tables their battered and beat up Ten Gallons.

  The Preacher Rev. Boyd, who was down at the other end of the bar, kept still. He was crying into his beer. Tears covered the froth of the stein.

  I did everything, sponsored light shows, took them off the streets and nothing worked. O what am I going to do? What the Church lacked in aesthetic it couldn’t even make up in pyrotechnics.

  The Marshal and foreman and the bartender winked all around as the Preacher turned a greedy trembling hand up to his lips and drank down the two bits a throw of Red-Eye whiskey.

  What’s going on tonight boys?

  There’s a lecture room over at the Hotel, Marshal, Skinny said. Got some bandits’ heads in jars preserved in alcohol—we saw it last night. It was good and nasty, not like a necktie party which at best gives only a few epiphanous and titillating moments but long, sustained. Eyes were bulging and we stood there with our glimmers hypnotized like the jars were a pair of rep-towls. The faces were wet and covered with a red silky substance. It was better than that dog fight where the one hound ate into the other pooch’s maw. But not as good as those scalps belonging to one hundred injun children and squaws that they exhibited last week.

  Outside it began to rain on the rooftops of the Hat and Boot store, the Feed store. Their tops, reflecting the heaven’s disturbance, went on and off like blue tubes.

  Marshal what are you going to do if the Loop Garoo Kid develops some kind of specialized mystique and comes hunting for us because we burned down the party? How are you going to get him shoved into the pokey? Into the hoosegow? Into the dim, dark sneezers?

  No problem, the Marshal said putting a boot on the rail of the bar. Me and Kit Carson use to kill an injun every morning before hoecake and salty dog. He loved violence so we buried him with his shotgun, case he ran into some persnickety spooks beyond the Great Divide. I’m sure I can handle the Kid if he rises from some remote crypt and hangs out horrific super-hero shingles with a side dish of unusual origin process.

  Haw haw, Skinny the foreman laughed. Marshal you ain’t nothin but an old hoss-eater. How’s about a taste of Red-Eye all around.

  Where’s Big Lizzy, bartender? the Marshal asked.

  She’s up in the hills hunting for meese.

  You mean moose don’t you bartender? the Marshal asked.

  No, Marshal, meese. Goose is to geese as moose is to meese. I know we’re out in the old frontier but everything can’t be in a state of anarchy, I mean how will we communicate?

  You got a point there, Skinny added, but we cowpokes make up language as we go along. Compare our names for landscape, towns, industry, with those of tenderfoots back East—Syracuse, Troy, Ithaca, not to mention all those towns with names ending in yorks, burghs, villes—they got some inferiority thing back East. Seem to worship Europe. Why there’s a whole school in New York of poets writing like Frenchmen. But when you get out here, except for those names given by injuns and Spaniards, cowpoke genius takes over—Milk River, Hangtown, Poker Flats, Tombstone, Boot Hill. On and on. I heard that one of them dudes back there named Webster wants everybody to speak Hebrew.

  Har har, the Marshal said, you can’t be for real.

  No, Skinny said, I heard it over the radio.

  I think maybe he’s right Marshal, the barkeep said. One of them historians remarked at a recent convention that we’re the only Americans or something like that. Said the real American personality begins with the frontier.

  There was silence as the barkeep poured the boys some brandy on the house.

  Big Lizzy said she found a necklace up there in the mountains—strung together with human teeth—and she found some odd arrowheads, and fish hooks.

  Some kind of injuns we missed, barkeep? the foreman asked.

  We got em all, Skinny. Left old Sitting Bull down at the Oklahoma Fair selling porny postcards. Must be some kind of mystery peculiar to Yellow Back Radio. These are certainly weird times. The old Woman on the talk show said we shouldn’t relax our vigilance one bit—she expects an invasion any day.

  The door swung open and the shotgun messenger from the Black Swan Stagecoach burst into the room.

  Gimmie a drink, gimmie a drink of Red-Nose quick! The man’s hands trembled as the shot glass touched his lips.

  What’s wrong Zeke? the Marshal asked.

  He took a long swig then slammed the glass down on the bar. He spoke through an opening in the white hair which covered his face:

  Town lying about fifty miles from here—Video Junction. Everybody dead except for the kids up in the mountains dancing and smoking injun tobaccy and some women arriving to a shindig on the backs of obscene goats. Without no floogers on. Nekkid. Was bettern a topless. One of them hookers had knockers on her that was biggern a heliummed grapefruit. Three black cowboys were seated on tree stumps drinking from some wooden bowl and grinning. One of ’em was playing the slide trombone.

  Then everybody got on the ground. They was gnashing their teeth and rolling over each other and the air got all hot and funky. Finally they took some woman and put her on a platform on a log, then this one black cowboy took a Bowie and jugged the woman in the chest. She didn’t even yell but said some furriner jaw-breaking word, exquisite exquisite, said it over and over again.

  We skedaddled out of there fast. And when we reached the Hotel we found dead men everywhere. Dead men in the streets dead men in the rain barrels dead men hanging from lampposts—why the whole town was one big dead. There were little black caskets covered with skulls and crossbones all over the steps of the main buildings.

  You sure you wasn’t drinking Zeke? the Marshal asked.

  No I seed it, I seed it it was awful, the shotgun messenger said, just as the sun went out a trail of razzberry over Yellow Back Radio.

  The Dr.
sat across from Drag. He raised his cup to his lips, then spat out the contents. How many times have I told you I take two lumps in my java Chinaboy? he said, biffing the man on the head with his cane.

  Chinaboy let loose and splurched the Dr. in the smush.

  Take that, you solly looking cleep!

  Why you, Dr. said wiping the crust from his face and reaching for his gun. I’m going to plug you, you little varmit.

  Haw haw don’t let him upset you, Drag consoled, let all the little yellow infidels sass you. I run a democratic household, all the oppressed people, those carrying trays, hog sloppers, cow milkers, fruit pickers and miners are allowed to insult me—like the celebrated nigger dwarf Zip of Barnum Bailey fame. Little minority thought he owned the sideshow and had hired everybody in it. Nobody let him know any better. Longest freak show to run in the history of the circus.

  Watch this, Doc, from the talking box, Drag said removing his princess phone from its cradle and giving it to the Dr. Listen to this recorded message.

  Your world Drag Gibson, definitely your world. The white man is smarter than God.

  Hear that injun, that’s my injun.

  Chief Cochise’s cousin? asked the Dr. dabbing the last few pieces of crust from his face, tasting some of the icing on his fingers.

  No Chief Cochise’s stand-in, Chief Showcase.

  Maybe you got something there Drag, maybe I’ll try that on my household staff.

  I give him imported hookahs, Pierre Cardin originals, moccasins decorated with rhinestones, aqua-blue headdress, world-wide aeroplane credit.

  By the way why did you call me up here Drag?

  O routine thing Doc. See that huge damp spot on the rug? I just bumped off my old lady. I want you to get me a death stiffycate, you know the Great White Father, or shall I say the President in the East, is probably getting jealous of me cause I’m so fine and the top man and all. They just need an excuse to get the cavalry in here and start up a grand jury.

  Sure Drag that’s a simple matter, but don’t you think people are going to get suspicious? That makes the sixth tomato who’s come in with the harvest. Look Drag, you remember that boar we were cooking at last year’s corn festival? That boar moved its lips, Drag. The Doc dropped to his knees and weeping, tugged at Drag’s pajamas.

  Aw Doc you’ve been hitting the morphine again, said Drag, giving him a go-on wave. You sound like them iggnerant herdsmen, animals talking, omens.

  Drag, the Dr. continued, Yellow Back Radio is breaking down. Why Drag, today the sun turned off and the barnyard is going backwards. Geese bark like dogs and feathered horses are a-quacking.

  Aw take this towel and honk your snozzle Dr. You’ve been under pressure or something, right?

  The Dr. screamed when he saw the hand roll out from the towel.

  The chinee couldn’t clean up the last dame thoroughly, the little whippersnapper. I’m going to complain to the agency, Drag said, tossing the hand into the fire, causing a small explosion.

  They peeked over the sofa after the smoke had died down.

  Doc there’s nothing wrong with ladykilling. Why I don’t need em-I got Cowboy Mag. Man, did you see that polled Angus in there last month? Drag said wringing his right hand. Wow. Too much. And when I get tired of it I kiss my green horse.

  Well Drag here it is, the Doc said, handing him the certificate.

  Dr. walked through the pile of whiskey bottles which turned on their necks and clinked.

  Good night Doc, Drag said to his old friend.

  Good night Drag, the Doc responded heading towards his buckboard.

  The moon was so low Drag felt like reaching over his shoulder and bringing it down and would have too that is had he his back to it but that wouldn’t have worked seeing as how he needed his finger tips to scratch the intense itching now covering his body.

  Jeff Williams and Alcibiades Johnson, two horsemen wearing berets with their cowboy costumes, were riding towards the mouth of a cave tucked away in the Blackfoot Mountains not far from Drag’s spread. They dismounted and entered. They walked into its depths past stalagmites and other cave furnishings.

  Did you get the scarf? Alcibiades asked Jeff.

  Yeah man, does it stink too. Has some kind of perfume on it. I had to make a mad dash from the closet. Drag almost caught me.

  What is Loop going to do with this Jeff?

  Said he needed an item that came in bodily contact with the victim in order for the cross to work.

  Man, all this superstitious talk he’s always carrying on, sometimes he gives me the willies with his talk. The other night he was playing poker and talking to himself and giving himself advice. He’s always asking us to get things. Lucky you were able to lift that oil portrait from Drag’s house. Loop sticks pins into it.

  What is the meaning of it all Alcibiades?

  Says he’s practicing some religion that is so old that man left the caves with it. He said it’s a magic. He says he’s a sorcerer and that by making figures of his victims he entraps their spirits and is able to manipulate them—he said this is what early man did when hunting bison and elk. Don’t say anything about it Jeff, we don’t want to get my man uptight. We should be grateful to him for busting us out of jail in the last town where they were holding us on vag charges but I have to agree he’s a little odd. Those expressions of his, Great Legba! and those chickens he’s always sacrificing to crocodiles down at the marsh and the poems he’s always writing.

  He calls them curses.

  The pair moved on past old Buicks and skeletons of washing machines, tramping over stone-aged ornaments and coins belonging to those drowned in underground rivers. Coins with terrible and grotesque scenes on them.

  Alcibiades if we can hold on just a bit longer maybe we can fleece the cat of his money and make it on the Black Swan Stagecoach back to the East and write and paint some more. They don’t care how sensitive you are out here in the old West.

  I agree Jeff, this town Yellow Back Radio is weird and that Loop seems to have some gripe against society—see how he wasted the poor ranchers in the last town, kidnapped their wives’ minds and strung out the kids, made some kind of cave into an underground discothèque called The Fiberglass Bat. He said that was just a mock-up of what’s going to happen here. He is sho silly. Don’t even comb his hair. Looks like buckwheat or alfalfa. Kee kee.

  The men finally reached an opening in the cave. In the center of this area was a natural fire. Loop Garoo was dressed in a white smock. He wore glasses black skin-tight gloves and held a knife in his hand. On the floor lay a dead cock. Behind Loop stood an altar covered with cloth. It bore photographs of victims dead of strange whammies. Above this was a tapestry of a heart to each side of which were drawings of serpents.

  Loop had just fed thirty pieces of silver to his personal Loa, Judas Iscariot, the hero who put the finger on the devil.

  Did you get the item of clothing I requested? Loop asked of the men, removing his glasses and wiping them.

  We did that brother Loop, Jeff said, handing him the scarf, whereupon Loop placed it near some cow tallow that had been made into candles. He started sprinkling some black powder on the scarf and repeating strange oaths.

  Near some bottles set up on the altar was a small doll made of feathers, hair, snake skins and pieces of bone. It bore a resemblance to Drag.

  The men sat in the corner, grinning, as Loop went through his motions.

  The Loop Garoo Kid continued to sprinkle the black powder from his gloves.

  This will give Drag Gibson the retroactive itch. It has fired his nerve endings already. This is just a test of what’s to come. Testing…1…2…3…testing, Loop said, until the powder covered the entire neckerchief.

  The men looked at one another, placing their hands over their mouths to suppress their humor.

  O forgive me fellas, Loop said, there’s some roast chicken, rice, green peas and turnip greens in bowls in the corner.

  Thanks brother. We sure are hungry, Jeff said w
inking at Alcibiades.

  In the corner of the cave, food and white wine lay on top of a red and black checkered table cloth.

  This wangol will be so bad they will have to call in some of their top people, Loop murmured. It will be the strongest malice ever. Never again will they burn carnivals and murder children.

  Loop Garoo began his tailor made micro-Hoo-Doo mass to end 2000 years of bad news in a Bag! he had built in the corner of the cave. He placed offerings to his Loa near jugs resting on several altars under a laced canopy embroidered with such emblems as skulls, crossbones, swords, serpents and hearts. The Loa’s food, sea shells, playing cards, cigars, rum, thirty pieces of silver and oddest of all a pair of Everlast boxing gloves were neatly placed on the calabashes.