Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

by Ishmael Reed

  What did you say Chief? Mustache Sal said, walking with her hands on her hips towards where the Indian sat.

  Nothing Mrs. Gibson.

  Mustache Sal slid down next to Chief Showcase. Call me Sal, Injun, she said her huge bright eyes shining behind her shades. What is that you’re smoking?

  The Chief handed his employer’s wife the water pipe. Mustache Sal’s brain began to tingle.

  Whew, what kind of tobaccy is this? Mustache Sal said closing her eyes.

  Tobaccy hell! Bought a mule caravan full of the stuff when I flew over to Nepal last year.

  You travels a lot Redskin.

  Sure do.

  Next time Drag calls you up to the Big House for one of those conferences he’s always having with you maybe you can drop in and tell me about your travels.

  Drop in like what you did to Drag’s cups with those little pills?

  Who told you about that?

  Just a half hour before you came downstairs you dropped them in his cups. I saw you on Drag’s closed circuit TV I routed through to that little teepee servant’s quarters they built for me down near the outhouse.

  You won’t tell will you? Mustache Sal pleaded, rubbing against Chief Showcase and starting to unbutton her blouse.

  What does white folks business have to do with me, Showcase said lifting her long black skirts and placing his hand upon her creamy thighs. The white man has the brain of Aristotle, the body of Michelangelo’s David and the shining spirit of the Prime-mover, how would it look for a lowly savage and wretch such as me meddling in his noble affairs? Showcase said piledriving into Sal so that her spine rammed up against the wall of the porch banner and her legs wrapped about Showcase’s hips.

  O pump me until your marvelous dick turns to gold…

  Showcase put his hand over the boss’s wife’s mouth. Be quiet and deal, Showcase said rolling from side to side and pushing deeper.

  Mustache Sal lay in her bed silly and mumbling in euphoria from the all night love-making she’d received in Chief Showcase’s arms. The heathen had told her to deal and deal she did until the good good loving had spread throughout her body so that her blood throbbed at his touch. When he came he shouted war whoops. That was something. They had screwed over and over again until exhausted and spent they could get at it no more. Showcase had dragged himself to his little Teepee and she had somehow managed to get upstairs.

  She glanced at the clock on the dresser which stood in front of her grand four poster with brass rails. Funny that they had coupled on the porch and no one could hear them. That made it even more exciting balling while at any moment some cowpoke would stumble upon them.

  It was seven o’clock, time to get up. The birds were chirping and she could hear the chinaboys downstairs preparing pancakes. Her thoughts returned to Chief Showcase. Where did he learn that little trick he pulled on her after the fifth orgasm? He had called it the little man in the canoe. Something else, this Indian. For the first time she understood where Tonto was at. And the reason for the white man’s mask or as high-falutin’ folks say, persona. They ought to change his name to Chief Feelgood.

  That’s it, Chief Feelgood the Hawk in a Woman’s Valley. She’d have to ask Spooky Situation to do it—since Showcase was his ward there’d be no problem.

  Spooky Situation—the arsenic!

  She put a robe around her nakedness clutching the collar around her neck so as to conceal the impressions made by the redskin’s teeth. She ran into her husband’s room.

  Sure enough Drag had kicked the bucket and the milk was drying in the dirt. Green all over. Mustache Sal pulled the sheet over his head and ran downstairs to the kitchen where the chinee servants were preparing breakfast.

  Ring the bell for the cowpokes. My husband is dead!

  Mustache Sal ran upstairs to put on some clothes. Confetti dropped from the kitchen windows while the servants did a little jig and popped balloons. They rang the come-and-get-her-while-she’s-juicy-and-hot bell.

  Once inside the cowpokes sat down at the table. Mustache Sal was all in black and had her face screwed up in a widow’s pose. A high collar covered her previous night’s passion.

  Gentlemen I’m afraid my husband’s dead. From now on I’ll pretty much run things around here—so all of you who work on the Purple Bar-B will have to answer to me. I’m sorry to have to bring you such negative news so early in the morning.

  That’s all right Missy, the chinaboy said his legs crossed and his eyes closed in merriment.

  Suddenly Spook-Off appeared at the top of the steps snatched in the nick of time from the jaws of death, as it were.

  Negative, I got your negative, Drag said holding up some undeveloped snapshots.

  You put arsenic in my milk you fucking cow. It’s all on tape. You and that nigger out in the woods doing the mambo some kind of new licentious filthy dance and hollering Chief Showcase’s name so loud last night I couldn’t sleep and even dropping your funky drawers to my visitors.

  Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mind all of you guys getting laid but she is so cruel that she wouldn’t even allow me to come and look through the keyhole. I played dead and put some green paint on my face so’s I’d catch you in the act.

  Grab hold of her boys.

  The two cowpunches grabbed her arms. She tried to twist from their grasp.

  I’m not licked yet, Drag said.

  Yeah we knew she’d been running around on you boss, that’s the spirit.

  Put her in the swine pit.

  Upon hearing this instruction, as cold-blooded a varmit as Skinny McCullough was, the rolled cigarette fell from his lips and he stepped back a few paces along with the other hands.

  Boss don’t make us do that, Skinny said. As mean as I am I wouldn’t want that to happen to a dog. Those carnivorous and horrible critters whom even self-respecting hogs avoid. Trained by that alienated and Faustian hangman, they only prey on humans in that little yard of theirs behind the scaffold. Please boss don’t make us do it.

  YOU OLD FAT AND UGLY BASTARD IF YOU DO THAT TO ME MAY FAGGOTS MAKE YOU TRIP INTO HELL, Mustache Sal screamed.

  Ho hum, Drag thought, these prophecies was all over the joint these days. Seemed like every tramp off the street was trying to start some new fangled religion.

  Take her away.

  Some of the men reluctantly dragged the screaming woman out of the House and threw her into the buckboard for the trip to the swine pit behind the gallows.

  Rest of you guys come upstairs, Drag said inviting the rest of the cowpokes to his library for a confab. The shelves were full of yellow kivered books and volumes on the life of the benevolent despotess Catherine the Great whose manner of death made her heroine of cowboys all over the world.

  The calf thumpers reverently took their hats off and walked with great care upon the plush rugs that covered the stairs leading to the second floor.

  Once inside the library Drag addressed them: Men, as you know things have become outta sight around here. This black-as-the-ace-of-spades-monster-with-midnight-for-Shiva-arms is giving us such heebie jeebies that it’s not safe to water the cows, mine the minerals, and take care of business in the barnyard.

  Amen, said the cowpokes nodding their heads in agreement.

  But I want to tell you that we got a plan to get rid of this spook once and for all. Because in the other room there is the greatest ghost chaser of all the West. Some one of whom it was said, “that boy can handle a pistol fastern a frog can lick flies.”

  I give you, Drag said, rising to his feet, the baddest coon skinner of them all—killed many people. Many of them the meanest and baddest woogies. John Wesley Hardin.

  The men stood but nothing happened.

  I SAID COME IN JOHN WESLEY HARDIN.

  A tall man with a heavy mustache and blue eyes walked into the room to a full round of applause from the cowpokes, some of whom jumped up and down.

  Sorry I missed your cue there Drag but I was looking at your copy of the good book. Y
ou know St. John on how filthy and awful womens is. Reminds me of the time they put me in jail in Huntsville, Alabama and made me the Sunday school superintendent. I got so strung out behind the Bible that I went on to study Law. Got my degree in jail. I’ve always been on the side of the Word, killing only those who were the devil incarnate—you know—black fellows.

  But anyway Drag, to get to the business at hand, I understand you got some wild and woolly crow over here that’s about to worry you to death.

  You said it Johnny boy, why I think I’ll be roping the last Steer if he keeps it up.

  John Wesley Hardin felt the cap-ball .44 Coult stuffed under his shirt.

  Nothing to fear, John Wesley Hardin is here Drag. My contempt for niggers is very well known. When I was 15 which is about 60 years from now I killed some insolent devil who didn’t know his place. It was after the Civil War and the nigger was feeling good. Well they sent some Yankees and I blasted them over too. Next I found 5 of them coons swimming in a pond and shot them out of the water. I fired so fast the lake bounced up and down and the fish had to go to some kind of neptune analyst the next day, they couldn’t believe it.

  That’s all right, that is really choice, the cowpokes mumbled.

  By the time I was 17 I had wiped out 7 men. Decided to settle down, I married to raise stock. But by then it was too late. Broke out in sweats in the middle of the night. It had become an obsession. I went out and found me a black policeman and had him on the ground wriggling and convulsing from the lead I pumped into him.

  They put me into jail, them Yankees. But I sawed out of a jail in Texas and went and found me some more happenings and lynched a Negro because by this time that was more kicks than eating, fucking, or getting stoned.

  Just then a white python fell from the chandelier and coiled itself around John Wesley Hardin, its ruby red tongue and eyes staring directly into the famous gunslinger’s face.

  John Wesley Hardin began to wiggle and stagger around the room as Drag and the cowpokes looked on helplessly.

  Certain psychologists have said that human beings have a way of blocking experiences too awful for the senses to accommodate. So it was in the old West.

  John Wesley Hardin and the snake were now against the wall of the room sliding down to the floor.

  An unusual calling card don’t you think? Standing in the door was the Loop Garoo Kid.

  I told you, Drag Gibson, that no amount of romantic dosage is going to save your neck, dead man. Heroes given to hyperbole—I even chased the Marshal out of town! Besides, when you want me, come and get me yourself.

  The cowpokes were pretending to be in a dentist’s office of the mind. They had their heads buried in magazines.

  Loop went over to the corner and removed the python from the prostrate man’s body. John Wesley Hardin’s hair had turned completely white. His pupils were crosses.

  Dressed in his black shirt and pink fringed black buckskin, Loop coolly walked out of the room and down the stairs to the green horse waiting outside in the shadows.

  The men sat in silence and stared at their last hope, out cold and mad looking in the corner.

  Drag had fallen from the chair. It looked as if the cattleman was about to give up the ghost. The cowpokes cried. Outside the night cried pouring down hard on the crying barnyard. The fruit on the trees was covered with icy fluid and the whole valley seemed to throw up its hands in despair.

  Loop Garoo, the python tucked away in his saddle bags, rode through the town of Yellow Back Radio towards the swine pit trough behind the gallows. He removed his black fedora and paused for a minute of silence.

  He tossed a red rose into the pit where hogs were chewing on their dessert—a black velvet dress covered with blood.

  That’s the breaks, Loop thought riding back to the cave to get on with the serious business of closing every conceivable repair shop available to Yellow Back Radio, whose signals were needless to say becoming very very faint. In fact it seemed that the whole valley would soon be off the air.

  Field Marshal Theda Doompussy Blackwell sat on a white crate in his office. The doorman’s coat covered his long johns to about two inches below his knees. A wig lay lopsided on his shivering head and his dentures were on the floor next to a bucket of hot water in which his feet rested.

  He was sobbing and listening to a recording of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” which came from a Victrola horn in the corner of the room. Besides the white crate it was almost the only other furnishing. Not quite. On a wall was the famous petrified moose head.

  Pete the Peek, Congressman, professional voyeur and Theda’s co-conspirator groucho marxed into the room, picked up Theda’s dentures and pushed them into the black hollow of the soldier’s mouth. He then fixed the wig which was about to fall from the Field Marshal’s head, and with a white monogrammed handkerchief dabbed at the tears rolling down his cheeks.

  Thanks honey I’m so cold I’d freeze if I picked them up myself.

  Think nothing of it, the Congressman said squatting in the corner.

  They both swung their heads in time to the music until the needle got stuck on macaroni macaroni macaroni macaroni…

  Pete lifted the arm from the record and returned to his place in the corner. It was close to 12 A.M.

  I just had enough time to take off my pajamas when I got your message Theda. Geez I was having dis nightmare about some Hoo-Doo nigger cowboy who took over a radio station and broadcast strange fixes, laying a trick on a Western town. I forget da name. Anyway it got so bad dey had to call in da Pope to straighten tings out. Da bad dream ended with pigs with scrap iron for teeth doing da re-cap. It really got into me. My lips were wet and was screaming, “Mama Mama Mom O Mom help your baby.” It was a deep trip Theda; it was as if I had to don a snorkel and rubber suit to go through da black pools of my shut-eye. I woke up on da floor in a heap of panties, bras, lipstick tubes strewed about my bedroom. See me and da guys had a caucus last night. After it was over I wuz stuck with dis real dog who remained when all da other guys got good lookin pancakes and left. I wuz about to stick da pig when I dozed off and dat’s when I had da dream. I had to go into da kitchen and have da maid prepare me a late snack out of da frig—Kentucky Bourbon chased with water.

  Well what about me? Field Marshal Doompussy Blackwell said squirming on his white crate. Does this look like my outfit to you? And why do you think my wig is all nappy and only a few patches of powder cover my decrepit yellow face? I didn’t even have time to place a mole on my cheek I rushed over in my carriage so fast. The doorman was doll enough to lend me his coat.

  What’s up, Theda, is Frenchy up to his old tricks again? Pete asked dipping into a snuff box and removing the funnel from his head.

  You said it Peter. O they treat me so mean—do you know what that child did this time?

  No Theda, what?

  Appropriated 2500 dollars so’s a couple of ruffians could go hunt mammoth’s bones and various botanical specimens to add to his Americana collection at Monticello. Can you get to that? Here I am in charge of Defense and I have to go around in ragged sneakers and borrow the doorman’s coat because to tell you the truth honey I was ashamed to wear my General’s outfit. I don’t even have enough money to take it to the cleaners. He said he didn’t believe in standing armies and that a good revolution from time to time is good.

  Did he say dat Theda?

  Said it as sure as you’re standing before my eyes. Why that’s why he got his ass out of Virginia that time when the British invaded and he was Governor. Said he was too busy inventing a cyptographic device called a wheel cypher to be concerned with force of arms.

  Yeah Theda, remember dat time he was almost busted when he was ambassador to France and he was recuperating from an ailment in Italy and was seen smuggling Po Valley rice so’s he could compare it to da rice grown in Carolina?

  Gossip has it that he spent most of his time learning the process by which parmesan cheese was made and learning how to make macaroni. And you know w
hat else, Pete?

  No, the Congressman answered, as Theda leaned over and whispered into his ear.

  Likes niggers a whole lot.

  You don’t mean it.

  I kid thee not. When he was Gov of Virginia he tried to have a law passed against slavery and then later on wanted to banish slavery in the territories.

  And he spends a lot of his time womanizing.

  And remember what he did to the old man John Quincy Adams, Pete? I won’t forgive him for that as long as I live. This impudent obscene underground pamphleteer accused the old man of giving all the baboons the original red ass and when the old man retaliated against all of those liberals, anarchists, beatniks and what have you by getting through the Alien and Sedition Acts, high and mighty couldn’t even be a loyal Vice President—he pushed through his Kentucky resolution which declared the President’s act illegal. Took it upon himself.