by Ishmael Reed
“Raven Quickskill,” she said.
She recognized him as the fugitive slave writer. She was always haunting the bookstalls. Next to her bed was a tray of cherrystones, eggs benedict, a tall glass of grapefruit juice and a pot of coffee. She invited him to pull up a chair next to her bed and talk to her about poetry. She had begun to back up poets at public readings with her dances. He told her about the poem he was working on, “Flight to Canada,” and how he had submitted it to Beulahland Review.
She talked about her husband and what a good man he was, even though some people libeled him by calling him a pirate; and she talked about how her husband, the pirate, had taught her to see: “I mean, really see.”
And before you knew it, they were in bed together, in this slave castle, in this warm bed covered with silk-laced blankets; in this slave castle, floors above where his ancestors rotted in chains, in this pirate’s bed, in this slave castle with its stone floors and knights’ statues. A portrait of her husband done in Rembrandt style hung above them.
Was she a roadrunner? It was hard for her to catch up, but he wouldn’t call her a turtle because when she did catch up he had to hold on to her cheeks as though they were Spirit-of-St.-Louis’ seats in Lindbergh’s plane, the only thing between him and the Atlantic. Then it was rodeo; a lot of bucking and slipping out. It had gone that way for some time until they had fallen out of touch. They had an argument about the Kansas-Nebraska Act. She said that slavery was a state of mind, metaphysical. He told her to shut the fuck up.
“I’m glad to see you, Quaw Quaw; it’s been a few years.” She stared at him, waiting for him to hurt her, but he wasn’t going to. “I see you’re backing up that pirate, Captain Kidd, and his translations of Oceanic poetry. You’re a good dancer, what are you performing behind this character for?”
He was missing her. It showed when he was missing her. Sometimes they had drunk wine together in a café at a table covered with red-and-white-checkered cloth, where the bread was served in woven baskets. They’d rendezvous every time her husband went to those conventions on trade routes he was always attending. Sometimes he was in New York, looking in on his galleries and jewelry stores.
“It’s none of your business, Raven. Times have changed. I’m not your squaw any more. And speaking of squaw, Captain Kidd was the hit of the Squaw Valley writers’ conference last year. People just adored his translations.”
She was getting mad. She was spoiled, often swimming all the way out, teasing the undercurrent of things. She played hard and came from a line of lean, hard players. Her father fought the U.S. Cavalry to a draw. Her grandfather never made peace with the white man and never surrendered and is remembered by a high boulder which sits in the middle of the Colorado River. The only real hard thing he knew about her were her nipples, hot little plums when his tongue would dart over there and give them instructions. When he was lizard-licking those titties, she’d grunt then. “You’re just not broad enough, Quickskill. You’re … you’re too … too ethnic. You should be more universal. More universal.”
“How can I be universal with a steel collar around my neck and my hands cuffed all the time and my feet bound? I can’t be universal, gagged. Look, Quaw Quaw, they want your Indian; that’s what they want, and you’re giving it to them. You’re the exotic of the new feudalism. For what Camelot can’t win on the battlefield it’ll continue in poetry. Nobody starts a war with poetry for fear of being made to look like a philistine. Look, I dip my spoon into the pot. Sometimes my shoestrings break, and I go a long time without buying new ones. I’m coarse, I’m rude, but that’s the democrat’s style. That’s why they’re calling Abe the Illinois Ape. He’s standing up to them. The South can’t continue Camelot. That’s what it’s all about. Effete men leaving the management of their plantations to uncles; the women playthings; popinjays partying endlessly, flowery waistcoats. And their poetry—gentlemen’s gardening triviality. If they love birds so much, why are they killing them off? But your friends, and their exotic dabbling—their babbas, their yogi—are on the same trip. They’re going to get your Indian and my Slave on microfilm and in sociology books; then they’re going to put them in a space ship and send them to the moon. And then they’re going to put you on the nickel and put me on a stamp, and that’ll be the end of it. They’re as Feudalist and Arthurian as Davis, but whereas he sees it as a political movement, they see it as a poetry movement.”
“There you go with that race stuff again. Politics. Race. People write and paint about politics because they have nothing else to say.”
“You’re so fucking glib. People have nothing else to do my ass. You’ve been hanging out with the Apostles of Aesthetics and you like them because you think they want to put you in a tower and fight dragons over you. You don’t look like Guenevere to me. You want some punk to strum on a mandolin some old knightly song while you flutter your eyes and sip martinis. Well, drat your universality. We slaves don’t have time to be sitting around on velvet-cushioned couches contemplating ‘dragonflies moving with the wings of gauze’ all day and shit.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t understand. You’re so … so savage.”
He turned around and hurried away. He glanced at Carpenter in the front room and pumped his hand. “Maybe I’ll run into you in Canada,” he said, but Carpenter didn’t hear him.
He was about to open the white picket gate when Quaw Quaw called, “Don’t be mad, Quickskill. Don’t leave so soon. I was just trying to communicate.”
“Communicate what?”
“You know how non-verbal I am.”
“I don’t get you. Listen, I have to go home and pack.”
“Pack? You taking a trip, Quickskill?”
“Yeah, I’m going to Canada.”
“Is that a permanent move?”
When he said yes, there was a glint of sadness in her eyes. Sure, they had discontinued their playing around, but it was nice to know that they were in the same town.
She started to pout, real cute, though she got all suffragette and curt when he called her “cute.” She held her hands behind her back and began to look disappointed. “Quickskill, there’s a den downstairs; let’s go down and have a drink. There’s a television set. I will never forget how much you like television. You would keep it on without even looking at it.”
“I’m glad to know it’s there. The world will disappear if it’s not there.”
“Come on, Quickskill.” She led him by the hand.
“I can’t stay long.”
They entered the house and walked back, passing Carpenter and his guests.
They made drinks in the den. She had a double vodka on the rocks with a twist of lemon; he, some red wine. He got up and turned on the television set. This was a nice room that Carpenter had made in the basement of his house. Around the walls were photos of African architecture. There was a conference table where he held meetings for his Carpenter Company. They restored log cabins. Not the usual log cabins but ones with space and light; peaceful log cabins. There was an educational television play on. It was being presented live from Washington. The opening shots showed dignitaries arriving. Searchlights. The carriages were pulling up, and people were standing outside the Ford Theatre.
The play’s audience was giving President Lincoln a standing ovation; his white wife, Mary Todd, stood next to him. They were beaming. He could see her eyes glistening. People in Emancipation liked her. A most unusual First Lady. She said what was on her mind, sometimes embarrassing her husband.
The audience was applauding wildly. Lincoln, a twinkle in his eyes, was waving back.
“It’s the President,” Quaw Quaw said. “That hick. I didn’t know he went in for culture. I read in The Realist that back in Illinois he operated a still. You should have heard the way my professors at Columbia talked about him. They made fun of his Corn Belt accent and that stupid stovepipe. They are so urbane. Many of them have published poems in The New Yorker.
“Yeah, they all read as if they were w
ritten in a summer home on Long Island, about three o’clock in the morning, with many things yet unpacked.”
She stood up, balling her fist. “Now, they’re wonderful writers. How dare you attack my sensibilities? This race talk all the time …”
“You’ll never change. Daughter of the West. Pocahontas rushing to place her body between the white man and the arrow intended for him. You and your Anglican Injuns.”
“I knew it would be savage out here. My teachers at Columbia said so. I plan to go back there. I miss the teas and hanging out in the bookstalls.”
“Camelot. Camelot West, Camelot East, Camelot South. One big fucking Camelot. With darkies and Injuns to set places, pour and serve at the Round Table. Playing on the lute and reciting verse, doing court dances. Do you know how your husband treats that swami he’s bought? He’s nothing but a houseboy. ‘Vill Mr. Jack need somring?’ ‘Is Mr. Jack’s footrest not high?’ He locks him in a closet, and told the dog trainer to sniff the swami’s clothes in case the swami got ideas. When the swami did manage to free himself and found a phone, he tried to get some poets to organize a benefit for him, only to discover that your husband, Yankee Jack, had warned them if they tried to help him, he’d cut off their grant money. He can’t even raise carfare to return to India, the poor chap. And that’s not all, there’s rumors going around what he’s done to you, I … I …”
“What rumors, Quickskill?”
“Oh, I … don’t want to say.”
“Quickskill, you generalize so.”
“Come on, Quaw Quaw, let’s stop arguing.” He grabbed her hand. He was pulling her toward the sofa. She was between him and the television set. He could hear from the stillness of the audience that Tom Tyler’s new play was about to begin.
She was resisting. “It’s been a long time, Raven. I have to get used to you again.”
Before he knew it he had a tiny nipple in his mouth. Her sweater was pulled up about her neck. It was a soft purring sweater made of lamb’s wool, a rose-colored sweater. She was wearing some kind of hip Bohemian college-women’s scent, Bonnard ’60. The kind of women who studied under teachers who scolded them for not being able to identify more than twenty-five spices, or not being able to walk right. They never walked splayfooted and bowlegged, with their necks lowered. It had a French name—posture.
DUN: Miss Florence, will you be kind enough to tell Miss Georgina all about that American relative of yours.
FLO: Oh, about my American cousin; certainly. (Aside to Harry) Let’s have some fun. Well, he’s about seventeen feet high.
DUN: Good gracious! Seventeen feet high!
FLO: They are all seventeen feet high in America, ain’t they, Mr. Vernon?
VER: Yes, that’s about the average height.
FLO: And they have long black hair that reaches down to their heels; they have dark copper-colored skin, and they fight with—What do they fight with, Mr. Vernon?
VER: Tomahawks and scalping knives.
FLO: Yes; and you’d better take care, Miss Georgina, or he’ll take his tomahawk and scalping knife and scalp you immediately.
He let his tongue linger there for a while, darting, taking long agonizing strokes, moving like a feather.
ASA: There was no soft soap.
DEB: Soft soap!
AUG: Soft soap!
VER: Soft soap!
MRS. M: Soft soap!
FLO: Soft soap!
GEO (on sofa): Soft soap!
DUN: Thoft Thoap?
ASA: Yes, soft soap. I reckon you know what that is. However, I struck a pump in the kitchen, slicked my hair down a little, gave my boots a lick of grease, and now I feel quite handsome; but I’m everlastingly dry.
FLO: You’ll find ale, wine and luncheon on the side table.
ASA: Wal, I don’t know as I’ve got any appetite. You see, comin along on the cars I worried down half a dozen ham sandwiches, eight or ten boiled eggs, two or three pumpkin pies and a strong of cold sausages—and—Wal, I guess I can hold on till dinnertime.
DUN: Did that illustrious exile eat all that? I wonder where he put it.
ASA: I’m as dry as a sap-tree in August.
Her head was lying back. Her black hair was hanging over the couch. His dick was hard and was trying to break out of his pants. He had removed that left white cup from over her breast mound, and now his fingers moved the other white cup up. And he slithered across her chest till he reached that one. Then he went to town, his free finger bringing down that zipper. “Oh, Quickskill,” she was saying. “Oh, Quickskiiiillll.” She’d draw it out. His finger moved underneath her short white panties, which were embroidered around the edges with lily designs. He dug that, the contrast. Those denims and those panties. The denims now down over her ankles.
She started breathing real hard; he was, too, and she helped relieve him by zipping down his pants and taking out his dick. She was moving the brown skin up and down with her hand. He was moving his finger into the vagina crescent. They started to move in a seesaw fashion. Then there was some hip-swiveling and bending backwards.
AUG: Oh, Mr. Trenchard, why did you not bring me one of those lovely Indian’s dresses of your boundless prairie?
MRS. M.: Yes, one of those dresses in which you hunt the buffalo.
AUG (extravagantly): Yes, in which you hunt the buffalo.
ASA (imitating): In which I hunt the buffalo. (Aside) Buffaloes down in Vermont. (Aloud) Wal, you see, them dresses are principally the nateral skin, tipped off with paint, and the Indians object to parting with them.
She got up and took her clothes off, threw them on a chair, removed the pins from her hair and let it down. He was trembling, removing his shoes. He was always trembling at this point. He would tie his shoelaces in knots, or he’d spend time trying to put his clothes in one place so that he wouldn’t be missing a sock or having his host find the wrong thing underneath his couch or caught under the seat of a chair.
FLO: What’s that, sir? Do you want to make me jealous?
ASA: Oh, no, you needn’t get your back up, you are the right sort too, but you must own you’re small potatoes, and few in a hill compared to a gal like that.
FLO: I’m what?
ASA: Small potatoes.
FLO: Will you be kind enough to translate that for me, for I don’t understand American yet.
ASA: Yes, I’ll put it in French for you, “petites pommes de terre.”
The lights went out. The television light was the only one in the room. It gave out a bluish haze.
ASA: Yes, about the ends they’re as black as a nigger’s in billing time, and near the roots they’re all speckled and streaked.
DUN (horror-struck): My whiskers speckled and streaked?
ASA (showing bottle): Now, this is a wonderful invention.
DUN: My hair dye. My dear sir.
ASA (squeezing his hand): How are you?
DUN: Dear Mr. Trenchard.
He could see her round red back reflected in the television screen. He was holding on to her. They were moving up and down. She was holding him around the neck. What they must mean when they say “cleaving.” He clove. She clove. She was in his mind; he in hers.
ASA: Wal, I guess shooting with bows and arrows is just about like most things in life, all you’ve got to do is to keep the sun out of your eyes, look straight—pull strong—calculate the distance, and you’re sure to hit the mark in most things …
They were as complex as the hedges trimmed by the Royal Gardener of London. They were underneath in a subaqueous city. If the Devil had reared this city, then the Devil was better than God. That’s why God always maintained a dour expression and the Devil was grinning all the time. This primitive act made them behave like children, and they began to giggle and tease and play hide and seek. There was a lot of hiding and seeking and seeking and hiding. They reached the hilt and then …
ASA: … You sockdologizing old mantrap!
Screams.
“What’s the matter, Quicksk
ill?” she whispered.
The cameras were focused upon the President’s box. Lincoln lay slumped to his left side, his arm dangling. The assassin must have been a Southerner, because he was dressed to kill. And before he hobbled off the stage he struck one of those old theatrical poses; his slicked hair gleaming, his weak spine curved, a hand to his chest, he yelled, “Sic semper Tyrannis” and “Revenge for the South.” Quickskill sat staring into the set; Quaw Quaw, aghast, her hand shielding her mouth, sitting next to him. Somebody from the party played around with the doorknob to the den, but then, realizing that it was locked, joined the commotion coming from the other room of this “Good Friday” party.
Quickskill recognized the famous actor who just a few weeks before had played Antony to the Cassius of Junius Brutus Booth and the Brutus of Edwin Booth, to “lavish applause of the audience mingled with the waving of handkerchiefs, and every mark of enthusiasm.”
Booth, America’s first Romantic Assassin. They replay the actual act, the derringer pointing through the curtains, the President leaning to one side, the First Lady standing, shocked, the Assassin leaping from the balcony, gracefully, beautifully, in slow motion. They promise to play it again on the Late News. When the cameras swing back to the balcony, Miss Laura Keene of Our American Cousin is at Lincoln’s side “live.” Her gown is spattered with brain tissue. A reporter has a microphone in Mary Todd’s face.
“Tell us, Mrs. Lincoln, how do you feel having just watched your husband’s brains blown out before your eyes?”
“Oh, turn it off,” Quaw Quaw says, holding her hands over her ears. “How can you watch that thing?”
They went out of the den. Back to the party. Some of the people who had often called Lincoln a “gorilla” and a “baboon” were now weeping in the arms of others. Some of the women were screaming. Others were huddled about a television set, watching the latest developments. He walked out of the party with Quaw Quaw.
As they drove toward Yankee Jack’s castle, people could be seen in the streets, weeping. Some were listening to their transistors. Crowds of people were standing on the corner, waiting for the papers. They reached her husband’s grounds, a huge gate with secret symbols carved on it. There was the wall surrounding it. Behind the gates he could see some of the Orientals sitting under trees, arms outstretched, eyes closed. Others were walking back and forth in monk’s robes in “meditation.” She got out of the car. Her eyes were red.
