The Free-Lance Pallbearers

by Ishmael Reed

  “Next time you do that, I’m going to drown you in the Black Bay-preacher or no preacher,” the annoyed little man threatened.

  “Shaddup both of youse. One more crack and I’ll plug you,” SAM said. “Now, what’s the matter wit youse, preacher?”

  “Well, sniff, sniff,” answered the Bishop Nancy Spellman, “you said I could be the one allatime comment on ethics but each time I try to say somethin’, he’s always puttin’ his two cents in.”

  “Look, preacher, do you want to go back to Marble Collegiate and sell mustard seeds to a bunch of sexless Sunoco Oil widows?”

  “No, SAM. I’m very happy up here giving up strange and exotic recipes,” the Bishop replied.

  “That’s more like it,” said Sam. “Now where was I?” he said, turning once again to me.

  “You were talking about ethical neutrality,” I answered.

  “My philosophy,” SAM said, smashing his fist into his open palm, “is when they act up or give you some lip, bomb the fuken daylights out of um. When my ol man’s roosters give him some cackle, that would fix um every time. That’s the only thing they understand. And that goes for spicks and gooks and all the rest what ain’t like us. Why, it would be no skin off my nose if all the Chinamen in the world got stuck in a dumbwaiter. Saving face and fulfilling your commitments, making alliances with da Arabs and all dem other baggy pants you can trust is okay. But if you don’t stop the others where they are, before ya know it, they’ll be surrounding NOTHIN’ which is ME like a bunch of Free-Lance Pallbearers.

  “Step up here and feel that muscle, Bukka.” He rolled up his sleeve and revealed a lump nudging the crease at his elbow. I was a bit nervous but SAM assured me. I put my hand on the lump. It was as hard as a rock. “Gee SAM, that’s sure powerful,” I said.

  “Every night when we go to bed, we is thankful for that lump, boss,” the chorus said.

  “That is what you call ‘intestinal fortitude’ as we use to say down in the Republican Club in the perfumed stockade. But it won’t last. You see, I’m getting old, Bukka. Maybe forty years from now you can have the job. The top-secret specialty what keeps me alive is bound to run out but as long as I’m dictator of ME …” his voice rising and pounding his thumb into his chest so hard that the gas mask shuddered, “elected in free and democratic elections, I’ll do my best to improve NOTHING.

  “Now I been looking out these glasses at Soulsville and I’m not happy with what I see. The people seem to have a lot of FRUSTRATION, ANXIETY and DESPAIR down there. I know all about that; I read the ny whine every day. But this stuff is taken a nasty turn. Last week some hoodlums attacked my friend Eclair Porkchop and I had to bring him up here until the heat was off. They nearly kilt the preacher. He’s been on the phone upstairs trying to get Miles Davis to translate the Bible. But I don’t think that’s going to save his neck. Back in the old days he use to go out in the snow rounding up votes for old SAM. He use to spellbound them colored people saying ‘Glory’ and stuff-even taught me to say it-GLORY, GLORY, GLORY, GLORY, GLORY, JEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSUUUUUUSSSSSSSSUSSSSS. I SEE DAT OLE WHEEL TURNING IN THE SKY,” SAM said, waving his arms.

  “LET THE CHURCH SAY AMEN AND HELP ME LAWDY,” said the chorus.

  “But now I think he’s lost his drive, that certain spark. Seems a little gumless and stick-to-itiveness without. I want you to take that job. Go down there in Soulsville and tell them IT’S GOIN’ BE ALL RIGHT, BY AND BY IN THE SKY.”

  “Say it again, SAM,” I said, not wanting to jumble my first assignment as Nazarene Bishop. I was overjoyed!

  “Now we want you to have breakfast with us tomorrow and we can discuss the details. After which Lenore the maid will show you the grounds. Show him to a room,” SAM said to one of the Screws standing next to me.

  I rose and said, “Thank you, HARRY SAM, former Polish used-car salesman and barn burner.”

  “Don’t mention it, Bukka. I like your spunk. You remind me of myself. Why, I sit here all day readin’ Ernest Hemingway and practicing strange out-of-the-way dishes.”

  “Thanks again, SAM,” I said, following the Screws into the mobile library.

  “Don’t take no wooden nickels and if you do, name him after me, har, har, har, har, har, har, har …” was the last thing HARRY SAM said as the bookshelf moved from the side of the wall.

  “Honest to Pete, boss. You’re a regular summer festival,” said the chorus.

  The ascent, unlike the trip down, took about five minutes. The Screws led me out of the library into the hall near the ballroom. The thunder streaked into the trees which, gnarled and macabre, stood outside the garden doors. The shutters slammed violently throughout the house. The hoopla hoops bounced against the wall. Eerie organ music came somewhere from the very roof of the house. There was no sign of the gay crowd. Having stomped up a storm the party guests had flit.

  Upstairs in the huge guest room I decided to spend the night going over lines to be delivered to the audience of Soulsville. “IT’S GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT, BY AND BY IN THE SKY. … IT’S GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT, BY AND BY IN THE SKY.”

  But I couldn’t concentrate; my mind was still aglow from the wonderful news from the summer’s festival. I lay in the bed with my hands supporting my head, dreaming about what direction my career would take. What would the other Nazarene apprentices think of me now? A Bishop of Soulsville and only twenty-three. I would be one of the youngest, if not the youngest, Bishop in the history of out-of-sight. I rose and went to a mirror. Primping and preening myself I reflected on what kind of Bishop I would be.

  Would I be stern and aloof but benevolent to my constituency? Or would I be the gregarious type, indiscriminately mingling with all sections of the population, dipping my fork into their pots of collard greens and hog maws-to show how, after all, I too was of humble origins and had “soul”?

  SAM had no real hard-and-fast rule about celibacy. In fact most of the Nazarene Bishops were celibate by inclination rather than by dogma or coercion. Think of the international beauties on my arm as I strolled through Soulsville telling everyone, “IT’S GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT, BY AND BY IN THE SKY. … IT’S GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT, BY AND BY IN THE SKY!”

  I was lost in thought as the shadows gave way to complete darkness and the wind rustled through the yellow-eyed trees. The moonlight bathed the room.

  At first it was a short irregular noise somewhat like a whimper; a muffled quick moan. Then it became louder, adding wails and high-pitched screams-like the night sounds of the tropics. Someone was in trouble, I thought, removing a turkey musket from a rack on the wall of the guest room.

  Tying the rope of my robe around me, I rushed into the hall. The noise seemed to be emanating from below the first floor of the building. I ran down the stairs past the ballroom and parted the curtains in front of the library. But instead of a door there was a solid mass of steel. At the other end of the hall there were four other doors, all marked “classified.”

  I opened the one nearest to me, and out walked Waldo and Matthew, who continued arm in arm gently up the stairs, Waldo saying to Matthew, “Not since the Tu Fu dynasty has there been such an outpouring of creativity, such a potpourri of form; and those monsoons are worth more than twenty volumes of haiku, and all of Snyder and Williamsville, New York, are full of the pixie-quick tracks of their sandals. There is no hope for the Pope. O, what is to become of us?”

  “Hey, can’t you hear that person screaming downstairs? THIS IS NO TIME TO BE TALKING ABOUT PERMS.”

  But the men had disappeared at the top of the steps. I pulled at the door of the next room as grunts, groans and squeals continued to come from below. The door slowly opened, its rusty hinges squeaking. Before me were concrete steps that disappeared into the hollow of an abysmal throat. The moans were definitely coming from that oval-shaped darkness.

  Putting my finger on the trigger of the turkey musket I started down the endless steps. Through the soles of my shoes I could feel the concrete; the slime of tiny animals squashed underf
oot and rats dashed across my shoestrings. Wispy spider webs brushed against my face as I pushed on-my ankles moving through sludge-until I came nearer to the gasps and snorts echoing through the dank ol house steeped in mildew. When I came to the middle landing an awful stench attacked my brain that smelled of the very putrescence of mass graves. I took a handkerchief and held it to my nose as I ran through the passageways and past propped-up human skeletons in chains. I finally came to a door, behind which, shouts and wails nearly burst my eardrums. I broke it open and saw on the tiled floor men in grotesque pretzel-shaped poses. It was a kind of underground cockfight. One man jumped up and covering his face ran and hid under the sink.

  “MAN, AM I THE ORIGINAL FALL GUY? I GOT A GOOD MIND TO BLAST YOU MOTHAFUKAS RAT SMACK INTO THOSE CRYSTALS WHIRLING ABOVE OUR HEADS.”

  HARRY SAM jumped to his feet and hobbled toward me. Wiping his lips with the back of his hand and zipping up his fly, he shouted, “WHAT-IS-DA MEANIN’ OF INTERRUPTIN’ MY GOAT-SHE-ATE-SHUNS?”

  “Get over there against the wall, SAM,” I said, banging the barrel of the gun against his stomach.

  “NOW SEE HERE, WISE GUY, I’M DA BOSS UP HERE. I GIVE DA ORDERS.”

  I lifted the musket and aimed for the area between his eyes.

  “BUT I’M ALWAYS WILLING TO COMPROMISE SO I’LL GET MY TAIL OVER THERE AGAINST THAT WALL. JUST THIS ONCE.”

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” I said to the first nude man who sat on the cold tile.

  bong bong bong bong

  “Well, Bukka, it kinda go like this-C E G D. I was up here ‘gotiatin’ one night when the sweet old man put his hot hand on my knee. Before I knew it, it had gotten good to me and I was on my hands and knees doing the salty dog with all my might.”

  “Okay, Eclair Porkchop,” I said to the first man. “I can forgive passion. What are you doing up here turning tricks? You’re supposed to be a CREATOR,” I said to the second man.

  “It’s like this, Bukka,” the man answered. “These tricks pay more than my hoopla hoops so I come up here once in a while and give up some head. No big thing. I never said those hoopla hoops were art. It was SAM who made it art. He and his washroom attendants control the museums so as long as they were forking over the bread I made them hoopla hoops. The only reason I got into the business was that one day the hoopla hoops were sliding down over my thighs and SAM was digging through the telescope gettin’ his jollies. That night a limousine came to my loft and brought me up here where SAM introduced me to some of the most powerful people in art circles. Finally I had such a demand for hoopla hoops that they began selling them in the A&P.”

  I sensed something creeping up behind me. I swung around bashing SAM on the head so hard that he dropped the toilet chain he held in his hand and fell against the wall. He slumped unconscious to the tile, his tongue sticking out and his eyes crossed. Turning from Cipher I walked over to the sink where another man was cowering beneath its base near the plumbing. I forced his hand from his face. It couldn’t be-NOSETROUBLE?

  “O, BUKKA, MERCY, SPARE ME. I ALWAYS WANTED TO DO IT, SEE HOW IT FELT AND WHEN THEY SENT ME UP HERE TO NEGOTIATE FOR THE MISSING TOTS I JUMPED AT THE CHANCE. O, BUKKA, I TOSSED AND TURNED IN MY BED FOR YEARS AND YEARS AND FINALLY THE DAY ARRIVED AND I CAME UP TO MEET THIS DIRTY OLD MAN IN PERSON AND HE JUST SENT THRILLS ALL UP AND DOWN MY SPINE AND MADE ME SCREAM WITH ALL MY BEING.”

  I started to blow the mothafuka to kingdom come but suddenly the house shook at its very roots. I turned and saw that HARRY SAM, having recovered, was pulling a cord that hung near the door. He then screamed in rhythmic incantation: “Enter-Wand and Wayside; Up-Warrior Watchman and Wing; Up-Witness; Run-Digest Dazzle Deacon and Debut; Rush-Drummer Dresser and Dasher.”

  The doors of the little johns swung open and the gnomes began to rise from their seats. I started for the exit, backpedaling with my turkey musket until I came to the door where SAM was crouched on the floor.

  “IT’S CURTAINS FOR YOU, BUSTER. YOU’LL NEVER GET AWAY FROM HERE! LISTEN AT DEM TROOPS COMIN’ DOWN DA STAIRS AND LOOK AT DEM GNOMES GETTING UP OFF THEIR RUMPS.” I hit him in the mouth and blood gushed out.

  I opened the door and shut it behind me. “If anyone follows me, I’ll blast them to bits,” I shouted.

  I ran up the steps to the middle ranges and hid in the shadows hoping that the stampede of footsteps now descending upon the bottoms would pass right by me. IT WORKED. Five hundred marines, five hundred navy personnel, five hundred coast guard and five hundred Green Berets plus one Arab, one Nationalist Chinese, one Rhodesian, one Peruvian and one Aussie sped by the middle range. It was a regular U.N. peace-keeping force.

  I headed up the steps until I came to the main floor. I ran to the third door marked “classified” and opened it, thinking of the door as a possible exit. Hundreds of tiny skulls poured out and knocked me off my feet. Skulls rolled through the halls and stacked against the walls to pile up slowly. A tide of gore was rising all around me. I heard the sound of tingly music coming from outside the house. I plodded through the skulls-still bouncing and rushing from the third room—and toward a window where the merry-go-round, connected to the cab of a big Mack truck, was winding around the path. Behind the merry-go-round were the rolling waters of the bay licking the top of the wall like black tongues. In the distance I could see another battleship head back toward HARRY SAM.

  HUNDREDS OF FOOTSTEPS WERE COMING FROM THE BOTTOMS. IT ALL BECAME CLEAR TO ME! THE LAST ONE ON THE BLOCK TO KNOW. I puked and fainted into the heap of bones, dead weight.

  When I awoke I found myself being carried down the path. I looked up into the face of my rescuer, Eclair Porkchop.

  “Man, you weigh as much as lead,” said the preacher, running down the path toward the high wall. We had passed the gnarled tree standing in the middle of the road when voices of the mob could be heard pouring out of the motel. The helicopters dipped and started toward us.

  “What are you doing rescuing me? You’re with them.”

  “No time to talk now. You have to get away from here,” he replied.

  We finally reached the Black Bay which had hungrily rose above Rutherford Birchard Hayes’s head and now was on level with the top of the wall.

  Suddenly two Screws came from out of the darkness.

  “JUMP, BOY, JUMP!” the preacher said.

  “But the Latin roots, those terrible man-eating plants and who knows what else,” I pleaded.

  He whispered into my ear and gave me a small bottle, just as two Screws grabbed him by the arms, then aimed two lugers at me. Pouring the bottle’s contents into the water before me, I dove into the Black Bay, which now showed crystal-clear, with brilliant-colored vegetation and fancy fish swimming at the bottom. Some distance out I turned over and began a backstroke. I could see the motel at the top of the mountain, its “EATS” sign blinking rapidly.

  On the oak tree which stood on the last bend of the pathway near the wall, a flaming figure swung back and forth. A mob had gathered below. They were playing dogbones and kazoos and blowing into jugs the popular American song “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” I wept; tears pouring down my cheeks and into the water, but having business to take care of I could not pause—I turned around and kept on swimming.

  I clutched the branch of a tree which drooped into the Black Bay. The ol men in the Emperor Franz Joseph Park scooped up arms full of film and slammed shut the bound copies of Harper’s Brothers Weekly. They sent clouds of dust and the musty smell of pulp up from the park.

  They said, “Whoopie, yeserie,” and jogging erlong, swapped “do-si-dos” and “I told you so’s” and they zigzagged, reeled and rocked in file all around the park until meeting two-by-two and side-by-side they marched into the tree-lined street of ol brownstones where an ol man was dropped at every stoop until there was only the bony-kneed soul with the bass drum—he boomed with a ragged soupbone—and then soon he too was gone as wheelbarrows of dentures, toupees, elevator shoes and sloppily lai
d corpses stood before each ol man’s home. [Da efficient widow executioners had raised dem black-checkered flags right on time, baby. And dat was all she wrote cause da pencil broke for those fuked-up souls—rest in peace for 1931-1939.]

  I saw an object atop the fragments of dead clippings. I waded up to my knees through the grassy film and the phlegm-covered flags and picked up an ivory music box. On the cover done in mother-of-pearl was a picture of Lenore in her Bickford’s uniform. I opened the music box and heard the tape of the familiar voice:

  ROGER YOUNG IN THE FIRST AT SARATOGA

  ROGER YOUNG IN THE NINTH AT CHURCHILL DOWNS

  ROGER YOUNG IN THE FOURTH AT BATAVIA

  ROGER YOUNG IN THE FIFTH AT AQUEDUCT

  ANNOUNCED BY RAPUNZEL

  Why those sneaky old bastards in the Seventeen Nation Disarmament gin mill, I chuckled, putting us on for all these years—pretending to be Nazarene patriots, but actually bettin’ on the nags!

  My shirt was wringing wet and barracudas wiggled from under my pants cuffs. I looked at my pocket watch. It had stopped at 3:00 A.M., August 6, 1945—when the skulls pressing against my thighs had crushed its glass plate.

  THROUGH THE PARK TOWARD SOULSVILLE I RAN, MY FEET SLAPPING (PING-PING) THE PAVEMENT AS I RAN TOWARD THE “FOUR CORNERS” INTERSECTION IN THE MIDDLE OF SAM WHERE VIOLENT WHIRLPOOLS OF PEOPLE SEEMED TO BE HEADING PELL-MELL INTO THE CROSSROADS. I RAN ACROSS THE STREET JUST AS A T-MODEL FORD COMING FROM AN OPPOSITE DIRECTION SWERVED TO AVOID HITTING ME.

  I HAD NOT CHANCED TO LOOK BACK UPON THE RESULTING EXPLOSION WHICH SENT SCREWS AND A PRIZE DOG, AN OL WOMAN, A FORMER MOVIE STAR, A SLUM LORD AND ASSISTANT, HANDICAPPED VETERANS, AKESTRA OF MEN IN WHITE FORMALS AND A TOP GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL AND WIFE FLOATING UP FROM THE STREET HALOED AND WHITE-ROBED AND STRUMMING HARPS.

  When I reached the projects the lights of the auditorium located in the community center was ablaze. Outside the center a sign announced the reason: