by Ed Bullins
“Wrong!”
“SING RIGH
“WRONG!!!”
“YAWHL RIGHT, BROTHERS … ha ha ha … for I don’t really knows that dere are only nine card-carryin’ members in the L.A. cell … do I’s … or are dere ten … or two hundred and fifty-eight.” A haze surrounds the speaker as his voice whines, and the frightened man sees the form on stage wax and flow behind the voice.
“YAWL HEAR DAT … HE’S ONE OF DEM REDS,” the youth shouts, pointing his finger to the dark mass.
“WOULDN’T YAWHL RATHER BE A FIRST-CLASS COMMUNIST THAN A SECOND-CLASS CITIZEN?” the speaker shouts.
“Nawh.”
“Yeah, man.”
“He said first-class,” a flurry of voices.
“I don’t want to be no mahthafukkin’ Communist … I’s a good American,” the dark boy in front says.
“Shut up, Tom,” someone shouts.
“Don’t intimidate the young man … and get ahold of yourselves, folks … ’cause I got news for you,” the speaker grins. “Now what’s our password?”
“ILLOGIC!” rings out in the hall.
“YAASSS … CHILDREN … and for dat I’ll confess dat I’m really an imposter … I’s really Malcolm X … BLOODS … ha ha ha … yawhl.” The speaker removes his hornrimmed glasses and wipes his shaven head with the handkerchief.
“THAT’S AN OUTRIGHT SLANDEROUS LIE PUT IN YOUR MOUTH BY WHITE DEVILS,” a tall brown man in black suit and red tie shouts; he is the exact copy of the tall brown man in glasses standing upon the platform. “I’M MALCOLM X!” the strange man screams and starts toward the platform.
“Shut him up,” the brown youth hollers. “I should know Malcolm when I’s see him and dat don’t look no nothin’ like him.”
There is a scuffle with ten men milling around the tall man taking their karate stances. The loud youth balls up his fist and rushes up to the man and shakes it in his face just out of reach.
“I’s a killer, a mangler, a mad dog when I’s gets started. I’s so bad I’s have to hold myself back; you better be careful, boy!” the youth repeats thirty times.
The fight begins when the boy pushes one of his gang within the reach of the waiting man who breaks the tough’s neck, collarbone and hipbone with a nifty judo chop, and the mob break out of their defensive poises to save their fallen brother.
“Liar.”
“Peace, brother.”
“Fraud.”
“Take dat, brother.”
“Mahthafukker.”
“Teach da truth, man.”
The tall man is finally wrestled out of the hall by twenty-five men, as the brown youth shakes his fist at their exit and informs the crowd: “He better not come back or I’ll whup him so bad his mama won’t take him in.”
“I’m glad that cowardly dog is gone,” the speaker says, his beribboned uniform sparkling in the quieting hall. “To attempt to smear my good name … the idea.”
Hushes are called for among the crowd.
“See,” the speaker says, “now that order has been gotten at the expense of a few, I can say positively that I am Lenin, right, for he came before Stalin, so I am my own Second Coming.”
“Wowee … listen to him … he knows everybody,” the youth cries.
“Then he must be everybody,” someone answers.
The visitor moans and many heads turn.
“Hush yo mouf,” a black young lady stands and orders the speaker.
“But, sister,” the speaker says, “ain’t you never seen me befo … ?” He explodes before the visitor in a nova.
“Nawh … I ain’t never seen no nothin’ like you before,” the lady challenges.
The visitor sees the flashing particles draw together and fuse into a single entity.
“Well, I’ve been away for quite some time, honey,” the voice on stage says, “I’s really the Wandering Jew.”
“The wandering who?” it is asked.
The beam drifts and glides about the stage, skirting the edges of the stage apron and then whirling backwards to slide through the cracks in the stage floor like smoke. “Don’t yawhl knows I’s Martin Luther, Butterbeans without Susie,” the voice resounds. “That I’s Uncle Tom, Fred Schwarz, Emperor Goldwater, Lumumba, Castro, all the L.B.J.’s, Lincoln Rockwell, the Birds’ Turds resurrected … chickenshit, ya hip?”
“Teach, brother.”
“That’s right!”
“Sho nuf … dat’s where it’s at.”
“And in all my glory I’s de greatest,” the speaker shouts.
“THAT’S RIGHT!” the brown youth in front screams and staggers.
“Teach, brother … speak the word, the word, the word,” the crowd repeats.
The visitor bites his lip and chokes.
“Very well,” the speaker answers, “I’ll give you more, everything and whatever you wish to hear.”
“Give it to us, brother.”
“Teach … teach … teach, brother!”
“The word, the word, the word!”
With great eyes formed, the cloud takes shape as a black presence. The voice beats out as though it comes from everywhere in the room; the stranger can almost see the lips of the serene picture move: “I’S DE GREATEST … I’S DE ONE AND ONLY WHO WILL TELL YAWHL DAT WHOEVER SELLS HIS SOUL FOR POWER MUST COME TO ME, THE POWER-GIVER … THE SINGLE VOICE WHO WILL HIP YOU TO THIS, BROTHERS: THERE’S A MESSIAH ON EVERY CORNER! AND WE’RE ALL OUT HERE TO FUCK YOU … BROTHERS … !”
“THE TRUTH! THE FINAL TRUTH!” the youth throws back his head and wails.
“Aaaa wooo ouwwalll weeesss wa booogie blues in de alley soul so much soul so soulful, lawdy, yes indeedy, yawhl,” a fat girl goes into a trance.
“Now, yawhl knows dat I’s goin’ ta take ov’va, so let me tell ya how’s I’s goin’ ta do it so you can help me out,” the speaker says and his fat shape waddles to the blackboard. The slit of his suit coat is pushed out by his high pockets, and his pants fall below his sloping stomach, a wrinkled bunching in the crotch.
Reaching for the chalk, the speaker writes DIALECT DETERMINISM … YAWHL!
There are rustles in the audience and grunts of cleared throats mixed with the squawks of parrots and farts of zebras. The speaker turns and smiles.
“Dialect … what’s dat?” voices whisper.
“Ummuummm … ?”
“REMEMBER THOSE WORDS, BROTHERS,” the speaker shouts.
“We’ll remember!” most voices answer.
“Now, to bind us closer together,” the speaker continues, “we needs a martyr.”
“YEAH, DAT’S WHAT WE NEEDS IS A MARTYR,” the brown youth hollers.
“Say, what’s dat?” someone asks.
Eyes search throughout the room, under seats, in pockets and purses, to the visitor drying his eyes; he shakes his head and stares toward the front of the hall. The speaker sees all eyes upon himself.
“RIGHT!” the speaker says.
“Right!” the audience repeats, rising as one except for the stranger.
“SING RIGHT!!!” the speaker screams with the laying on of all hands.
“RIGHT!!!” The mob surge up on stage, their fingers tearing away his clothes. He smiles at the visitor as he is trampled among his brothers.
“I’ll get the rope,” the brown youth says and bounds from the stage, running up the aisle past the visitor who is nearing the door.
A rope is dragged from a broom closet in the hallway and the brown youth almost knocks the strange man over as he returns to the auditorium.
At the door, the guard hands the visitor his personal items. They shake hands. The portrait of the serene man glistens in the soft light; its eyes cast upon the entire scene.
“Come again, brother,” the guard says.
“I’ll try.”
He is helped into his coat; a rallying cheer arises from the auditorium.
“Never seen my people in such high spirits,” the guard says. “Well, goodnight, brother, Peace be with you.”
“And Peace remain with you, brother,” the visitor says, pulling away from the warm eyes, and stepping through the doorway.
The Messenger
“Ah mumble mumble mumble … Ah mumble mumble mumble …”
Early, with the first light, came Rick’s morning prayer from his room. Rick gave vows to his black god. He had no time to present the other four chants his faith demanded during the day and evening, for his one dawn devotional cost him precious time spent upon his knees, time necessary to his cause. Being unorthodox, as he called himself, he said he was free to interpret his new faith in an individual way.
That’s all it is, brothers, that’s all it is … a shuck, just a shuck to stay on your knees prayin’ all the time for things to change and not gettin’ out there and doin’ somethin’ ’bout ’em. The devil’s not on his knees! … No, the devil’s not jivin’ … not one hundreth of the time that brother is … the devil gave brother religion for one purpose … to take the chains from his wrists and put them around his mind!
The paint on my window frame and baseboard and upon the walls in all the rooms of the house was a combination battleship grey and flesh pink. When we moved in, the landlady, Mrs. Goodstein, offered it to hide the blotched walls; it had been bought at a war surplus store.
After Mrs. Goodstein had left, Rick, with paint cans obstructing his path, had paced the length of the long living room, tirading against all “Anns” (as he called white women). And he denounced every woman—black and white—engaging in commerce and business—not solely in domestic duties.
“Ah mumble mumble mumble … Ah mumble mumble mumble …”
It had been a bad day for Len and me.
I sat in a corner reading book reviews, passing the pages to Len as I became offended by the critics. Len and I whispered little and strained to hear the FM above Rick’s teachings, hoping that he would not accidentally tilt a can upon the nearly large enough, patched and sewn, once maroon rug.
Rick’s narrow, highly polished black shoes scampered like ebony shrews among the gallons of grey and flesh, always just skimming past the containers, over the half-dozen glass quarts of turpentine, above the faded, no longer imperial, floor covering. Even when the toes, from the outset of a reckless swoop, were sweeping to a collision to smashing vivid spangles upon the carpeting, they somehow slid past, carrying their messenger upon his path of righteousness.
“Ah mumble mumble mumble … ah mum mum mum …”
Rick finished praying; the floor’s creak disclosed him getting from his knees in the center of the room. With routine rigid as his backbone, he stretched first, then puffed out his chest, for he had done his duty. Next he strode to the FM and CLICK; it was on … so morning had fully come.
“JIVIN’ JONES! JIVIN’ JONES … THE HIP ONE!” Rick screamed.
Each weekday morning was like the last; Rick up first and the Jiving Joe Jones Rhythm ’N Blues Program turned on. But Rick hated blues.
“Get up, brother Steve,” he spoke to me. “Get brother Len up too so he can listen to Jivin’ Jones’s message.”
I saw his gossamer form through my web of curtain, spinning away from my doorway, his shaven gleaming skull seeming like a haloed globe through the curtain, approaching Len’s shut door on the far end of the couch; each morning Rick awoke the world to his screams.
“Yes, brothers … get up, get up for dancing and singing … ha ha ha … get up for playin’, brothers; we all know what great players black men are … yawhl. Listen to Jivin’ Jones, brothers, ain’t he hip? AIN’T HE HIP? Wants you to dance your life away. JIVIN’ JONES! Black people have got more records than books … YEAH! … Dance your lives away!”
Then Rick was at the hi-fiturning the volume higher; he raised his chant above the blast, and the shuffle of his slim shoes gave me the image of him gyrating across the floor, burlesquing the latest dance steps, eyes shut tight against light in imitation bliss, body whirling, buttocks protruding, absurdly jutting beneath the flaps of his slit suit coat.
“JIVIN’ JONES WILL TELL YOU ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW; LISTEN TO HIS MESSAGE, BROTHERS!”
“As-salaam alaikum, brother Steve,” Rick said as I stepped into the living room, barechested, hands filled with shirt, shoes and towel.
He sat at one of the two tables in the room, writing in an old looseleaf tablet.
“Morning, Rick.”
Beyond the living room was Len’s bedroom. To enter the bathroom off the tiny chamber, I shoved the door against his yielding mattress, and slid my body through the opening. As I jerked through, my twisted head looked down upon Len’s bearded, slumbering face.
In the bathroom my face cloth still hung in its place. Some mornings it was gone or pushed and fallen into the tub it hung above.
I reentered the living room; Rick gathered up his books and materials.
“There’re some English muffins in the oven, brother. I hope you don’t mind an Anglicized breakfast, but English muffins don’t have filthy pork grease in them. Yes, the Englishman is a heavy man. Did you know that, brother Steve?”
“I had guessed as much,” I said and turned the fire up under the frying pan before spreading the few slices across the oily steel.
“You’re still eating pork, I see.”
Rick stood in the kitchen doorway, hands upon sides, distaste showing upon his light tan face.
“There’s nothing I can say to break you of this filthy habit?” he asked.
“No.”
“But to consume swine … to eat the nastiest scumsucking, filth-swilling vermin in creation is nauseous, brother. A hog, a sow, a pig is dirty, brother Steve. It’s devil food!”
Too much flame shriveled the strips, scorching their edges brownly in curls, raising glistening puffs of fat in the centers of the curls. Looking me over as I fished out the bitter scraps, Rick shrugged, then turned away.
“Oh well,” he said. “Some of my brothers just aren’t ready yet.” He returned to the kitchen doorway. “But we need you, brother. We need poets as well as builders.” He turned once more, final and done.
He gathered up his books and adjusted his glasses; I wondered how he’d see once the downpour swept against the lenses. A clear plastic raincoat with ends spreading out like a kite was to keep him dry, and transparency revealed his black suit and stiffly starched white shirt. His books and pamphlets were wrapped in a plastic bag. A great black umbrella hung from his arm by its curved neck, and new, glossy black rubbers covered his wicked-looking sharp-toed shoes.
“Just think of the songs you could sing of your people in your poetry, Steve. The black man lives in song and poetry.”
“If I could only sing truth, Rick, buddy, I’d be glad,” I said.
“Isn’t the black man truth, brother Steve?” he replied. “Isn’t he fact; are you your own dark lie, or does the lie belong to the devil?”
I turned and stared at him; then I reached down into my saucer and picked up a charred strip of pork, biting through its tough fat, licking the grease from my smacking lips with relished swipes of tongue.
Rick lowered his head; the overhead light lit his stripped, skin-drawn skull; I saw the surface plainly, naked and tan.
“I have a meeting to attend all day, so I won’t be back until this evening,” he said.
I nodded, my mouth stuffed by breakfast.
“As-salaam alaikum, brother,” he said, using the Arabic address, backing out the front door. Some storm spray plucked off his uncovered scalp and skewed down his brown brow in zagging streaks. He shook out his umbrella and closed the door.
See you later, prophet, I thought as the door shut, and reached over and snapped the blues nob to “off.” Finally, I plunged into the kitchen and puked the pork into the sink.
PART TWO
THE
HUNGERED
ONE
The Hungered One
He suspected no unnaturalness in the flock. The pigeons were feeding upon salted nuts that some other passer-through had
scattered down. He walked among the birds, tolerating the nearly tamed ones who grudgingly strutted from his path, hindering him on his tour.
His shoes crushed nuts, making his soles slip; he scraped them as he walked, startling the flock to leap briefly from the ground. It was during their resettling that he saw the strange one; it had remained aground, determined, pecking with its vicious beak, about its companions’ flitting feet.
It was larger than the other birds, weighing as much as a kept duck, and was a pale blue shade. No feathers clothed it; its tinted skin looked scaly, thirsty, and hot. More important to the young man were the bird’s four legs which sprouted from its muscular, squat body, grey and coarse. Black talons shielded its toes, and splintered dewclaws dangled from the backs of each leg.
The man gaped at the blue creature. The flock remained aloof, leaving it isolated, spinning counterclockwise like a dog, in an island of goobers, awkward, unable to lower its short neck completely to the ground. Its hooked beak came within a hair of the nuts, causing its labors to be of little profit, but fortunately, the bird discovered occasional kernels lying upon small protuberances that jutted from the pocked, uneven ground. Then it would snap them up with clicking sounds.
Most of the flock kept clear of this vortex of frenzy; for the unfeathered one tore after its meal, a hundred pecks to their one, although receiving only a hundredth of their portion, and so furious were its random actions, that at times, in the fury of filling its craw, it snapped up careless birds which had gotten too near to it, and it devoured them wholly.
The young man stood until twilight, observing the movements of the creature. No other human passed that way; night was an awaited arrival. Many of the feeders took to wing, to soar in coveys, coated by the crimson rays of sun. One by one, the birds rose to race in scores about the treetops, until singly landing exhausted in their nests, to chirp, fretful into sleep.
As night sulked down the green paths, there was still enough light for the young man to fully distinguish the bird, which seemed to feed more rapinely upon its feast. The creature appeared to seize even fewer tidbits, almost none now, for its clicking beak erred when a morsel came within reach, and it would bite into the crumb instead of gobbling, resulting in the pieces falling from the bird’s beak as it adjusted its hold.
