by Odie Hawkins
The two figures studied each other for a few long minutes, an existentialistic dilemma hanging them both up.
She moved back from the window and lasciviously crooked her forefinger at him, “Come,” it said, “come and play games.”
Chili, equal to the moment, backed up a few steps himself, dropped his robe from his shoulders, sensually gripped his semi-erect penis with his right hand and beckoned with its head “You come, over here,” it said, and then he quickly closed the drapes.
He hurried over to the record player, reloaded the spindle with Miles’ “New Directions,” rushed to the toilet to brush his teeth and comb his hair.
Nawwww, fuck it! he decided when he got to his Afro, that’s what the bitch is on her way over here for, to dig her fingers into my nappy ass hair.
Teeth brushed, a lil’ cologne slapped on his jaws, he coolly unlocked the front door and returned to his bedroom to smoke a joint while he waited for the freak bitch from across the street.
Which one was it? He tried to place her. Which one was it? He had seen about five altogether, but she didn’t seem to be one of them New blood then, what the fuck!
Could Jake’s scheme work? Yeah, yeah it could work if Cynthia wrote the kind of proposal they needed, an airtight, fantastic piece of bureaucratic bullshit mau-maued into place by the right kind of militant niggerism. Say a hundred grand split six ways. Cynthia?
Nawwww, what the hell would she do with more money?
Two-hundred grand that’d be more like it. The more you ask for, the more you get. Yeahhhh, it would work, but all of us would have to be triple quick ’n slick on our jobs.
His heart thumped a couple odd times as the tall blond girl appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. “You lock the door behind you?” he asked coldly, masking his nerves.
She nodded yes and asked with a sly smile, in a deep Southern drawl, “What’s your name?”
“Did you come over here to interview me or gimme some pussy?”
She blinked uncontrollably a few times and broke into a long toothed, Fly Me, Glistereen toothpaste smile. “Dorothy and Susanne and Barbara and, ohh, ahl the gurls have been tellin’ me how crazy you were, lak, how you leave the blinds of your bedroom winder open ’n stuff.”
Chili gazed evenly into her face. Big ol’ lush cornfed blond bitch, magnolia blossoms dripping from her jibs. “Yeah, I be doin’ shit like that ’cause I be tryin’ to thrill the whole neighborhood. Come over here, I know you get high, don’t you?” He shoved the half-smoked joint out to her.
“Nawwww,” she drawled softly, digging down into her coat pocket, “I don’t rally care too much for grass, I kinda lak coke a lil’ bit more. You?”
Chili moved with a supercasual air to flick the fire at the end of the joint out in his swan-shaped ashtray. Welllll, welllll, welll … look what the wind just blew in, from right across the street too.
He nodded yes, yes, I dig coke and scooched himself up in bed, nostrils flared for the cocaine’s reception. “Yeah, I dig coke. Here, put a lil’ bit right here before we snort.” He cupped his member up between his hands at her.
The blonde smiled lazily, stepped out of her shoes, pulled a vial of cocaine out of her pocket and slid her coat off of her naked shoulders.
Chili’s penis twitched and throbbed, receiving the stimuli.
“You musta damned near froze walkin’ over here,” he observed.
“No, no way, not hot as ah’m feelin’,” she replied, already loaded, and bent over to smear the alkaloid crystals around the ridges of his penis, carefully wedging a few grains into the tip and opening.
Chili watched the whole operation with cold, analytical eyes. Wowww, this bitch is really on her job. Yeahhh, Jake’s thing would work, a really hip nigger could practically get white folks to do anything, if he was willing to act crazy enough.
I have to put Cynthia’s educated ass on that proposal tomorrow. Yeahhh, a couple hundred grand would sho’ ’nuff be a nice sting. He stared, fascinated at the sight of the naked woman sitting on the side of the bed snorting from a tiny spoon.
“Why haven’t your girlfriends taken up my invite? I’ve been holdin’ it out to ’em for a lil’ while now.”
“Maybe they don’t know how good dark meat rally is,” she replied and passed the spoon under his left nostril.
The Honorable Reverend Father Love stretched himself on the long, low, plush sofa in his dressing room, crossing his legs from time to time as Marvin Weinstock, his accountant, agent, lay attorney, valet, boon cool companion and hip aide-de-camp doused his mind with figures, twenty minutes before his Wednesday evening telecast. “So, there it is, Daddy,” Marvin concluded. “You’re way ahead of the game, you could split the scene tomorrow and live happily ever after, wherever.”
“Marvin!” Father Love chastized him in a friendly-furious fashion, “I’ll thank you to leave off with that ‘Daddy’ shit, and those absurd remarks you’re always makin’ about me splittin’. How could I leave all of my loyal followers in such a bind?”
“And all that gravy you’d be missing.”
“Right on! And all that unsopped up gravy.”
The two men exchanged warm, confidential smiles.
“Oh yeah, Dad uhh Reverend Love, I forgot to tell you, we’ve lined up a really great Swahili teacher for you.”
“Beautiful! beautiful! That’s wonderful. I was beginning to get worried. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than an East African tour not knowing how to rap. How long do you think it’ll take me to learn the language?”
“For anybody else, I’d say six months, for you three.”
Once again they exchanged their special set of smiles.
A rapid clack of knocks on the door froze them both into more serious expressions.
“Yes!” Father Love boomed out.
“Ten minutes, sir!” a harried, metallic voice squeaked from the other side of the door.
“Thank you, Bobby!” Father Love called back and turned to Marvin. “You’ll have to leave me now, Marv I must meditate at this time, get my thoughts together.”
Marvin Weinstock stood, clutching a sheaf of financial statements, and smirked knowingly Meditation shit! Cocaine or maybe a dexi was more like it. “O.k., Father, I’ll see you after the show. Don’t forget about those people we have to talk to tonight about the southern tour.” The self proclaimed Honorable Reverend Father Love waved him out of the door with a gracious gesture and folded his hands on his ample belly, eyes closed.
God! life sho’ is sweet.
He nodded for a few quick moments, unable to forget the tiresome Sunday afternoons of being forced to visit widows and talk shit, to fuck ’em whenever it became necessary, evade hip, militant young motherfuckers who were always trying to mess his thang up, git on! Yeahhh, life sho’ was sweet.
He clenched his eyelids tightly, trying to remember the last time he had had an authentically good time. What is it the old ladies used to say God don’t love ugly? Sister Sadie was a good feeling. Just feeling her titties could make you come and fuckin’ her was like melting into a bowl of fat meat, but she was always good for a tenspot or a twenny if she had gotten her check or if Baby June hadn’t beaten her out of it.
“Five minutes to go, Father Love, will you please come and take your place, sir?”
Father Love looked at the small girlish figure leaning around the corner of the doorway and smiled roguishly.
White folks love money so much they’ll even kiss a nigger’s ass if he gets enough of it Look at this punk ass “Son, you may not know it but I’m in my place right now.”
The “gopher” shook his head, puzzled, unaccustomed to the ways of sharp black prophets.
Father Love, enjoying the bewildered expression on the young man’s pale face, held a hand crusted with jewels out to him. “Gimme a hand here, young stuff … you may not know where I’m comin’ from, but I sho’ in hell do.”
Bobby rushed over to the side of the sofa and helped Father Love s
it up, feeling, as usual, under his spell.
“We have to hurry, sir The director likes to have everyone in place well before t.v.t., as you uhh know.”
“Fuck Arthur J. Bowers in his left nut! He can’t have no television time unless I’m here. I am the Honorable Reverend Father Love, the First, and none of this shit would be happenin’ if it wasn’t for me. Can you dig where I’m comin’ from, young stuff?”
Bobby the Gopher reddened slightly and helped the good Father drape a Liberace-lame cape over his shoulders.
“Now then, let’s git it on,” he said, and placed his left hand on Bobby’s right shoulder, to be led, as though he were some sort of potentate, onto the set.
Bobby almost enjoyed the job of leading Father Love to his place on the set, that is, when there weren’t any strangers around, people who didn’t understand. One day his parents had come to a taping of the show and, his Dad especially, had gotten highly pissed, seeing Father Love’s arrogance at work on their only son.
Father Love swept his cape back from his left shoulder, Vincent Price playing Cyrano de Bergerac. “Lead on, young blood,” Father cooed to Robert Hirshfeld, would-be television producer. “Lead on, lead me back in front of that pot o’ gold again tonight.”
Bobby walked slowly, anxiety crinkling his brow, Father Love’s hand surprisingly heavy on his shoulder, through the corridor leading to the set, trying to figure out how one could gain control of a black shyster prophet-preacher who was netting something like a mil a year. Maybe I should talk to Marvin, get the ins ’n outs of it.
Father Love pinched his shoulder, “Think ye not evil thoughts, young stuff for it has been written that only the Lawd giveth and only the Lawd have the power to taketh it away.”
“Amen!” Bobby seconded his sarcasm with a taste of his own and led him to his aluminum coated throne, a sparkling feast on television.
“Places everybody!” the producer yelled, followed by the director screaming the same thing.
Father Love slowly fixed his face into the expression he wanted it to be when he channeled into ten-million lonely, religious women and confused, blundering men.
Yessss, Lawd a’mighty, life sho’ is sweet … he mumbled to himself as he watched the announcer begin his buildup-intro. Yessss, Lawd a’mighty, life sho’ is sweet!!
The Great Lawd Buddha buttoned the top button of his rough, heavy woolen pajamas, pulled his blankets up under his chin and laced his hands behind his head, gazing through the barred cell window at the bristling stars beyond. He shivered slightly, not from actual cold, but from the thought of it.
Never could stand the cold too well, always loved the warm more than the cold.
He looked away from the squared-off picture of the bright moon and stars, over to his writing table, a small wooden version of a card table, ignoring the loud, snuffly noises of his cellmate, Ranklin C. Jones, holdup man, dreaming on his bunk against the opposite wall.
Buddha lay, wide awake, filtering the hundreds of midnight jail sounds the snoring, whispered escape plans, blues hummers, coughers, the squealings of homosexual assaults, the groan and grunt of homosexual relations, the dazzling array of mad sounds that could only come from caged men.
He sat up on the side of his bunk, feeling restless, feeling the urge to write.
Wonder what kind of bullshit Daddy Love laid on the spellbound American public this evening? Oh well, guess I’ll have to wait for the grapevine edition at breakfast.
He smiled at the thought as he pulled the table across the narrow distance to his knees, draped his blankets over his shoulders, across his knees and sat, alternately staring through the window and down at the notebook and pencils on the table in front of him.
He finally opened the notebook, frowned at the smudge marks on the first five pages, a legacy of Ranklin C. Jones’ surreptitious interest, and read up to where he had stopped writing the night before. “I think the geography book is what carried me off into fantasia, in the Beginning.”
He picked up one of the pencils beside the notebook, checked the point in the bright glare of the moonshine and began to write, the moon and stars seeming to offer more light with the formation of each word. “How could I not be carried off, in the Beginning, down there in that racial swamp?”
He stirred his pencil around in midair for a few seconds, mentally reviewing the six lynchings he had watched from a distance in his boyhood, and the far more numerous ones he had managed to escape from actin’ uppidy in Mississippi, America.
“Yeah, it was the geography book that carried me off,” he continued, “reading about far away places and other kinds of people. Anything would have done it,” he thought as he wrote, “anything at all, a soft word, a gentle look, electric lights, an indoor toilet, maybe the hooting of a midnight flyer, but it was none of those, it was the geography book.”
Settling into stride, he crossed his ankles and pulled the blankets tighter around his shoulders.
“God only knows how I came across the damned thing. If my memory serves me correctly, we only had twelve books in our whole big one room schoolhouse, and none of them had a range of thought beyond “Lil’ Black Sambo,” the “Family in the Cotton Fields” and such like, but one day, as such things do happen there it was tattered, battered and readable, with pictures yet.
“I can recall even now, oh so clearly, how pissed off I was to come to the African section of the book and find all the people, looking so black and strange. But that was years ago, thank God! And I’ve since developed a more sophisticated view of blackness.”
He paused, smiling, as he watched Ranklin C. Jones moan and sensually rub his testicles.
“Everything was strange in that book, the people, the words (it took quite awhile to understand those), the statistics, the names, all of it! That is, ’til I began to make my own framework for all of it.
“I find myself constantly referring to something that I call the Beginning. For want of a better word, I guess I’ll have to stay there, for a few emotional beats, before I go on to the upper levels of purgatory. The strong, always tired, black, dirt-working robots who happened to be my parents and all of the relatives who looked and acted pretty much the way they did, were not the Beginning, nor was that clapboard shack with the old newspapers wadded into the cracks, nor was the white man who had the power of life and death over us, mostly death.
“No, it was the odor of places I’d never smelled, the look in a pair of eyes I’d never seen, the urge to wander around inside my soul that was the Beginning.
“Once released from my external bondage by the power of the book, I wandered around the world, doing the undoable; I slept with white women, blondes with skins so pale that they had to be pimped before you could believe that they were real, in defiance of all of Mississippi’s rules. I climbed Fujiyama, looked the sacred leopard on top of Kilimanjaro in the eye, I ran with the bulls in Pamplona, went off into fern coated shacks with Polynesian goddesses who nursed me through tropical fevers, killed lions and elephants for the favor of the hand of the Oba’s daughter. I emigrated to old China on a dilapidated freighter and found myself on the Southside of Chicago, in the middle of the ol’ wintertime.
“But what did it matter where I was whenever I closed the book? What did it matter? After I had found that the only thing I had to do was open up a dozen, a hundred, a thousand other books that would sweep me away just as quickly.”
A heavy bank of clouds oozed across the moon’s face, temporarily darkening his effort. He waited impatiently for it to pass, aware once again of the richness of night noises in the joint.
Somebody typing on the tier below, … must be Kwendi. Yeahhh, that would be him, young stud never sleeps it seems, but who am I to talk?
The clouds passed, leaving him temporarily blinded by the re-emergence of the moonlight.
“Leaving Mississippi three steps ahead of the lynch mob and working, bumming, conning, doing whatever else necessary to make life happen was a great book. I wish I had
the nerve to try and remember all of it. Starving almost to death in a hermit’s shack down in Cairo, Illinois. Why Cairo, Illinois? my imagination said to me. Why not Cairo, Egypt? And I was off the one room shack became a fifty room hash den owned by a funky-butt Ptolemaic aristocrat.
“It’s a very strange thing to admit to yourself, after so long, that you are a liar. But I wonder about me, specifically me, on this score. Have I been a liar all these years, or a geography teacher?”
He frowned at the sound of the toilet being flushed in the cell next to him.
“What does it really matter? After all is said and done about what you are, someone once said, it’s what you have done with what you are. And what was I before I was tamed? Before I had the iron doors slammed behind me and the key thrown away?”
The moon glared at the fierce smile he turned up to it.
“What was I? A question that not many men less wise than myself would even attempt to deal with.”
He paused, on the verge of writing a lie, before going on with the truth.
“I was a conning, cunning, scheming, dreaming, shrewd, slick, conniving beast, a miniature dinosaur with a brain a lecher, a consummate player. I was, at one time, the Great Lawd Buddha.”
He had to stop writing for a moment, to cool out the gush of egotism he felt rising within himself.
“Yes, at one time, I was the Great Lawd Buddha, a supersonic, geopolitical mac man. There’ve been times, many times, when I’ve found myself flashing across the face of the planet, taking those who could come with me, on the strength of a name Yemen, Jakarta, Hunza, Moeshoeshoe, Lhasa, Huatabampo, Mundina God! Whatever happened to Mundina? Yes, if not the name of a place, the name of a woman, or her perfume, or the shape of her earlobe.
“I was that, a lover of the lives of the women who thought that the greatest gift they had to offer was their bodies and all I really wanted, in most cases, was their stories.”
The sour-sweet memory of Heatwave set off a dull, achy feeling around the region of his heart.
