Reckless Eyeballing

by Ishmael Reed

  “This is a fifteen-round cat-and-dog fight—and O with what zip, verve and wounding laughter the fur doth fly.”

  —Tom Robbins

  “In Reckless Eyeballing Reed creates a literary tornado, a book so irreverent and sweeping in its condemnations that it’s certain to offend just about everyone.”

  —Larry McCaffery, Los Angeles Times

  “Literature is lucky to have Ishmael Reed around. If only for the fun of it.”

  —David Remnick, Washington Post

  “Reed is a master of the satirical novel, who takes no single group’s side: as usual, he gets everybody. Engaging, disturbing, and really funny.”

  —Choice

  “Mr. Reed’s fiction bristles with parables, asides, voodoo rituals, razor blades and spikes enough to vex even the most competent plot summarizer.”

  —Brent Staples, New York Times Book Review

  “There’s something to offend and amuse everyone.”

  —Library Journal

  BY ISHMAEL REED

  ESSAYS

  Writin’ Is Fightin’

  God Made Alaska for the Indians

  Shrovetide in Old New Orleans

  Airing Dirty Laundry

  NOVELS

  Japanese by Spring

  The Terrible Threes

  Reckless Eyeballing

  The Terrible Twos

  Flight to Canada

  The Last Days of Louisiana Red

  Mumbo Jumbo

  Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

  The Free-Lance Pallbearers

  POETRY

  New and Collected Poems

  A Secretary to the Spirits

  Chattanooga

  Conjure

  Catechism of D Neoamerican Hoodoo Church

  PLAYS

  Mother Hubbard, formerly Hell Hath No Fury

  The Ace Boons

  Savage Wilds

  Hubba City

  ANTHOLOGIES

  The Reed Reader

  The Before Columbus Foundation Fiction Anthology

  The Before Columbus Foundation Poetry Anthology

  Calafia

  19 Necromancers from Now

  Multi-America: Essays on Cultural War and Cultural Peace

  RECKLESS EYEBALLING

  by Ishmael Reed

  Copyright © 1986 by Ishmael Reed

  First Dalkey Archive edition, 2000

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Reed, Ishmael, 1938-

  Reckless eyeballing / by Ishmael Reed. — 1st Dalkey Archive ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-56478-237-3

  1. Theater—Production and direction—Fiction. 2. Afro-American dramatists—Fiction. 3. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3568.E365 R4 2000

  813’.54—dc21

  00-058956

  Partially funded by grants from the Lannan Foundation and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

  Dalkey Archive Press

  www.dalkeyarchive.com

  This novel is dedicated to Taj Mahal,

  David Murray, Allen Toussaint, Steve

  Swallow, Carla Bley, Carman Moore,

  Lester Bowie, Kip Hanrahan, Scott

  Marcus, and all of the others who made

  the album Conjure such a striking

  success.

  What’s the American dream?

  A million blacks swimming back to Africa

  with a Jew under each arm.

  —Blanche Knott, Truly Tasteless Jokes

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  LANNAN SELECTIONS

  1

  At first the faces were a blur, but then he was able to identify the people who owned them. It was a painting he’d seen in a book about Salem, of the Puritan fathers solemnly condemning the witches, but in place of these patriarchs’ faces were those of Tremonisha Smarts and Becky French. He couldn’t hear what they were saying. They were moving their lips. They were mad. He was sitting in the dock where they kept the witches. Becky said something to a guard and the guard started toward him. The guard was about to take him away to the gallows, he’d gathered from the logic you get in dreams, but when the guard looked up from underneath the black Puritan’s hat she wore, she wasn’t a guard at all but his mother.

  Becky and Tremonisha said cut it, cut it, and then the dream cut to a scene in the desert. He was cowering behind a huge cactus plant as a snakeskinned hand was about to cut off a rattler’s head with a large, gleaming blade. He shot up in his bed. He was sweating. He looked next to him. The cover had been pulled aside and the woman he’d brought home from the evening of nonreferential poetry had left. Her subtle perfume still hung in the air. While he’d been making love to her he kept thinking of that ad for Jamaica that contained the line: “Come daydream in a private cove.” At one point, they were fucking so heavy that they began to warble involuntarily like birds. He’d had about three gin and tonics. This drink always brought out his romance. He got up and put on a robe.

  He occupied a large studio in a run-down hotel in the west twenties of Manhattan. A huge poster of Bugs Bunny, carrot in hand, hung over the white fireplace. On a table near the stove and refrigerator lay a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken with only a half-eaten breast and a couple of French fries remaining. The packet of ketchup hadn’t been opened. There was a quart bottle of Bombay Gin next to the box. He removed the sheets and blanket from the bed, converted it into a sofa, and added a couple of pillows. On the floor lay a copy of Life’s World War II special issue, and a book about negritude poets. On another wall was a Hagler vs. Hearns fight poster. An IBM typewriter, a gift from his mother, lay on a table with more books and magazines. Two magazines with mammoth circulation carried cover photos of Ronald Reagan laying a wreath at Bitburg, a cemetery in Germany where a number of Nazis were buried. A record cover lay on the floor. The Kronos Quartet playing Thelonius Monk’s “Crepuscule for Nellie” had played all night. They’d gone to sleep without removing it from the turntable. Underneath that record was one that featured Archie Shepp playing piano, Tadd Dameron’s “If You Could See Me Now”; his version was rich and sweet. Most of the records in his collection were from the Caribbean, but he loved jazz, be-bop, and blues as well. They’d gone to a Clifford Jordan performance after the reading; he invited her up to his hotel room for “conversation.” He told her that she didn’t talk like an American. He remembered that he had told her she looked like an Arawak Indian. That’s why the opened map lay on the floor next to the subway tokens. He had brought out this map of the Caribbean to show her were the Arawaks were located. Sometimes when you’re inspired you’ll say anything, Ian thought. The dishes in the sink were giving off a sour odor. He fixed himself a cup of coffee and sat on the sofa after turning on the Sony 25-inch, also a gift from his mother.

  His mother had second sight. Once when they were having an argument she had blurted out, Maybe I don’t have such a grand education as you but there are some things that I know that your professors and all your high-class
education don’t know. She could know your business before you knew it. One of the reasons he came to New York from the South was to become a playwright. The other was to get away from his mother. Being the son of a mother who had what the people in Arkansas called “the Indian gift” was not easy. When he was a kid he couldn’t get away with a thing. He had the vague feeling that even here she was noticing him, and knew what he was up to. The phone rang. Speaking of the devil.

  “Are you all right, Ian? I had a bad dream about you. You aren’t getting those women mad at you again, are you?” How did she know that? Ian wondered. “I’m one step ahead of you, Ma,” he said. “I’ve written a play that’s guaranteed to please them. The women get all of the good parts and the best speeches. I’ve taken all the criticism they made of Suzanna to heart. You’d be proud of me. I’m—I’m going for it.”

  “You what?”

  “I’m trying to reform, Ma.”

  “Don’t be using that low-class vulgar Yankee talk on me, you hear? When you coming home? End this artistic foolishness. It’s been six years since you left the South. I worry about you up there in New York.”

  “I’m here for the limit, Ma. I’m going to make it as a playwright. I can’t quit now. They’re doing my play at the Lord Mountbatten. Anyway, I have to go to a meeting with my director. I’ll call you later.”

  “Did you get the check?”

  “Yeah, thanks, Ma. And, look, this time I think I’ve got a hit. You won’t have to send me any more cash.”

  “That’s what you said the last time. Before Suzanna. Don’t get me started on that.”

  “Goodbye, Ma.” He put the receiver down. He put on some jeans and a sweater.

  There were real problems growing up with a clairvoyant mother. A woman who could look around comers and underneath the ground. He used to have nightmares of eyes with wings swooping down on him. Then the room would be full of women wearing white dresses and white head coverings. And then he would be at peace again as they knelt, rocked, and keened about his bed in a circle. He cleaned up the place, leaving the chore of putting away the gin until last. He took a swig of the gin, twisted the cap on, and put it on a shelf above the sink. Actually he preferred rum. He walked out to get the newspaper. What it carried on the front page woke him: TREMONISHA SMARTS, WELL-KNOWN BLACK PLAYWRIGHT, ACCOSTED BY PSYCHO. He read the story. It said that a man dressed in a gray leather coat, matching beret, and dark glasses had entered Tremonisha Smarts’ apartment two nights before, tied her up, and shaved all of her hair off. His twisted explanation: this is what the French Resistance did to those women who collaborated with the Nazis. The man had said that because of her “blood libel” of black men, she was doing the same thing. Collaborating with the enemies of black men. Ian blinked and read the story again.

  2

  It was a blue and windy New York day. Jim’s scarf almost reached his hips. He had his hands in his pockets as he walked and half ran toward the theater. His black curls seemed to bounce on his head. As he bounded up the stairs, he didn’t acknowledge the greeting of two actors who were descending. Mr. Ickey, Becky’s assistant, tried to block his way but was unsuccessful. When Jim burst into Becky’s office, she became as angry as he was, but managed to put on a professional smile. The German shepherd she kept tied to the leg of her desk stood up and began some ugly barking. She commanded him to sit down. Becky had two guests, an elderly woman with gray-silver hair tied up into a bun and wearing a black velvet dress and black shoes, and the woman’s chauffeur, a huge, oafish-looking man with gray hair. He looked as though he weighed about 250 pounds.

  “Oh, Jim, I’d like you to meet—”

  “I didn’t come here to meet anybody. I came to talk to you.”

  “What about?” The smile vanished. She was wearing a black dress with a long, white, pointed collar.

  “Ickey called me this morning and said that you were going to consider moving Ball’s play to the Queen Mother,” Jim said.

  “I have a new play. A play that I’m very excited about,” Becky said. The old lady smiled.

  “Yes. I read the newspaper. Eva Braun. What are you celebrating that Nazi whore for?” The old woman’s cane fell, making a klooking sound on the hardwood floor. She was shaking. The chauffeur scrambled toward the cane and picked it up. The corners of Becky’s mouth were twitching. Her skin became red.

  “She may be a Nazi whore to sexists like you, but to many of us, she epitomizes women’s universal suffering.” She was trembling.

  “What? You must be out of your mind. She was married to Adolf Hitler?”

  “She was coerced. Just as all women are coerced by men into doing things against their will.”

  “Must be written by one of your neurotic feminist friends. You let them use the Mountbatten as some kind of playpen where they can mudsling their invective at men, but you would deny the Mountbatten to Ian Ball.” Jim and Becky were now leaning on the desk and shouting at each other.

  “We disagree about that. His play is…well, it reads like a first draft.”

  “Who are you to decide the merits of his play? You’re just a glorified reader around here. You stupid shiksa. It’s my directing that draws the numbers, and the numbers get the grants.” The dog was on its feet again. Jim and Ian had laughed as they fantasized about the relationship between Becky and her German shepherd. They had said foul, unprintable things.

  The old lady whispered something to her chauffeur. He got up and left the room, giving Jim a nasty stare as he exited. Becky began to sob. Jim shifted his eyes in annoyance, first to the portrait of William Shakespeare on the wall, then to the slim vase holding the tulips on Becky’s desk.

  “I expect to do Reckless Eyeballing in the Mountbatten, and if you stand in my way I’ll break your neck.” Jim stormed from the room.

  He almost collided with the chauffeur, who was returning with two Diet Coke cans. He gave one to the old woman. Becky recovered her composure as she spoke to her guests.

  “I don’t have to tell you how sorry I am about this intrusion, but these New York Jews are just…just brazen. They have the manners of the lowly peddlers they are. I don’t know what we’re going to do with them. But don’t worry, Ms. Smith, with your contribution we won’t have to worry about donations from those people anymore. You can count on the Mountbatten. He doesn’t know it, but I’ve already begun casting.” The old woman’s stiff hands removed the checkbook from her purse; she began to write her signature. Becky smiled and studied the piece of paper that would pay the Mountbatten’s expenses for two years. The woman ripped the check from the checkbook and handed it to Becky.

  “I still think that you should acknowledge the authorship of the play. The press has been calling. A few interviews might boost ticket sales.” The old woman shook her head.

  “As you wish,” Becky said. The dog and the chauffeur were staring at each other. Finally the dog looked askance and began to whine and wag its tail. The chauffeur laughed and continued to drink from the can.

  3

  Detective Lawrence O’Reedy, “Loathesome Larry,” as he had been nicknamed by generations of admiring rookies (he’d always confront a criminal with his personal snub-nosed .38, Nancy, with the threat, “Give me something to write home to Mother about”), lumbered into the lobby of a fashionable East Side condominium (both down payment and maintenance costs pretty steep) located near the United Nations Plaza, around the comer from Danny Johnson’s obelisk for Ralph Bunche. The black doorman gave him some lip, but O’Reedy knocked him to the floor with one punch to the stomach. The doorman, Randy Shank, fell to his knees and held his stomach in agony. O’Reedy was all out of breath when he reached the elevator, and so leaned against the wall, waiting for the elevator to reach the first floor. He was thinking about Florida. In six months he’d retire to Vero Beach and be seated in a deck chair, dressed in golf shorts and Hawaiian shirt, staring out over the reef. Just a few more cases and he’d be out of New York, which had become a toilet for all the huma
n offal of the world. Wasn’t like the old days when men were men and you could separate the men from the boys. Nowadays, you just about had to read a criminal a bedtime story before you arrested him. He thought of all the P.R.s and nig—or blacks, as they were calling them these days—he’d arrested. He’d spread-eagled and frisked. The brains blown out. The days when men were men. Been a long time since he’d been one himself. He was even thinking about consulting a Chinese herbalist. Nothing had solved the problem. His wife, Betsy, the Lord bless her. She was patient. She had her women’s club and charities.

  His esophagus was always burning, and he ate a lot of hard candy because someone had told him that hard candy was effective in treating flatulence. Recently he was having bad dreams in which he’d seen the faces of the dead he’d dispatched to the land of ghosts, blown-up before him. And then, this morning, was it a man, with a part of his skull missing and blood on his shirt, in his house, sitting in his chair, reading his newspaper? It looked up from the newspaper and grinned at O’Reedy, a mass of putrefying flesh hanging from its skull. He screamed and ran back into the bedroom to grab Nancy. Betsy said that she was sure that he was just having a nightmare, but when he went back to get the newspaper, the man had gone, yet the newspaper was scattered about the floor and not outside, on the doormat, folded neatly. Must have been the spaghetti and meatballs he ate the night before. The way he looked at it, those men deserved to die. I mean, they were running away, weren’t they, so they must have been guilty. Well, maybe that black jogger was innocent, but it was dark the morning he shot him. He couldn’t see so well, and besides there had been a number of rapes in that park. Everybody knew that all black men did was rape white women, so too bad for the jogger, but, well, the way O’Reedy looked at it, this was war, and in war a lot of innocent people get killed. But then, the other day he had opened the shower curtain and those three P.R.s he’d shot one night after a rooftop chase were standing there in the shower, nude, and singing some song in Spanish, and the bullet holes were still visible on their chests, and he didn’t understand the Spanish. What really haunted him was the jogger’s name: O’Reedy, same as his.