Minister Faust

by From the Notebooks of Dr Brain (v4. 0) (html)

  “The shaman told the young brave, ‘Inside everyone there are these same two wolves. One is white, and one is black. The white one is Joy, Hope, Courage, Loyalty, Justice, Honor, and Love. The black one is Rage, Despair, Fear, Selfishness, Revenge, Cowardice, and Hate.’ The brave asked him, ‘Really? That’s what these wolves are inside me? Then which one will win?’ You know what the medicine man answered, Kareem?”

  He shook his head.

  “ ‘Whichever one you feed.’ ”

  Kareem argued with me at length over the colors for the wolves, but I refused to budge on the deeper truth of my story, and throughout his dinner break he ate his bean pies quietly, his every munch a munch of intense, self-actualizing introspection.

  Chaos X Machina

  After supper, a mellowed Kareem still refused to discuss Syndi, but neither did he launch himself out of the room when I asked him about that relationship. Instead, the ever highly strung Kareem suddenly uncoiled like a black mamba on muscle relaxants, waxing nostalgically on the first hero he’d ever wanted to emulate—not Hawk King, but the Langston-Douglas legend Maximus Security.

  Rising to prominence as a crusader against neighborhood drug dealers and the “corrupt police” supposedly in collusion with them, Maximus Security left America in 1975 to fight alongside the MPLA in Angola. The young Kareem, then known only as Philip Edgerton, had idolized the maverick crimefighter throughout those overseas adventures and even more after his return to the neighborhood in 1977, following his every move and filling scrapbooks with everything he could find on the man.

  “Old people used to look at Brother Max and shake their heads,” laughed Kareem, imitating their scowls. “They thought he was gay. See, he used to wear this shiny yellow disco shirt open down to his navel, these tight blue pants, and this huge, oversized chain around his hips—”

  “Would that bother you? If he were gay?”

  “What’re you talking about? I don’t give a frosty freak about any gay/straight yah-yah. Coulda been gayer than Oscar Wilde and Felix Unger for all I cared. He was my hero, understand? He had his own style. Man was always using weird expressions like ‘Holy ship!’ and ‘Jesse H. Chimpmas!’ and saying to the cops stuff like ‘You jive turn-key’—I mean, corny as all hell, but he’d wink and all us kids’d laugh, and he’d toss us some goat jerky. Man was so popular, they actually based the movie Shaft on him, and Schoolhouse Rock even did a cartoon that everybody in Stun-Glas just knew was really supposed to be him: ‘Verb! That’s what’s happening!’ I mean, you know you hit it big time when they start making cartoons of you!”

  “There was a cartoon of you, Kareem. Do you feel fulfilled to have ‘hit the big time’?”

  “Editorial cartoons depicting me as a Klan pimp and drawn by step-and-fetching, massa-sucking, porch-monkeying, professionally hamboned ultra-Toms don’t count, Doc. And you already knew that, so quit talking shit,” he sniffed bitterly. “Like I was saying, Brother Max, he was every ghetto kid’s hero. So when he up and joined the New Atlantis International Brigades against Reagan’s terrorists, we all wanted to go off with him, be his Stun-Glas junior troopers. He was so tough that if we could be like him we’d never die, cuz he could never die. And then it was 1984, and he did.”

  “Did what?”

  “Did die,” he said darkly. “So yeah, you’ve been blasting me, blasting me, blasting me about being angry, that I have to ‘take responsibility’ for what I wrote about Hawk King. Yeah, I was angry. And I had a right to be angry. I wrote it and I was right: from Guatemala to Congo to Iran, the F*O*O*J were, quote, agents of global honkification and leucogemony. And yeah, that included Hawk King, going along with all this shit about truth, justice, and the American way. I wrote that you could have truth and justice or you could have the American way, but you couldn’t have em all together. And you know what happened? After I wrote that?

  “Hawk King, who’d supposedly exiled himself inside the Blue Pyramid almost every day and night for the last nine years, he came to visit me.”

  “You? Personally?”

  He nodded slowly and heavily, as if the power of his claim were in the mass of his chin. My wristband buzzed three quick vibro bursts into my skin; I subtly tabbed the ACKNOWLEDGE key to let Ms. Olsen know I’d received her message.

  “I was sitting up on the roof of my apartment building drinking coffee,” said Kareem, unaware of what I had waiting in store for him, “pounding out my column on my manual typewriter like I did every Sunday night. Every once in a while I’d look around…maybe at all the network transmission towers, at the lights of the Hermes Theater, or over at the Tachyon Tower, wondering what kind of astonishing discoveries they were finding in their dimensional research labs, scanning out past the edge of the galaxy, spelunking black holes, gazing at quasars…

  “And while my head was all whirling inside those mysteries, suddenly the moonlight went out.

  “I looked up, and I was staring into the moon-frosted silhouette of a man-hawk.

  “He swooped down, landed in front of me—six-four, golden beak and gold-rimmed eyes glittering, flapping his huge black-and-gold wings with enough strength in em to crush me like a ripe tomato.

  “I thought…I thought he was there to kill me, Doc.”

  He shook his head again, got out of his chair to gaze through the window across the Bird Island skyline.

  “But he’d come to tell me he’d read what I’d written,” said Kareem, “…and that he thought I was right.

  “I couldn’t believe it. I was completely in awe, humbled that he’d even read something I’d written, that he’d been moved by something I said. And somehow I managed to cough up the guts to ask him why he’d come to me.

  “And then he invoked a spell…and transformed himself. Into a man, an old man, maybe five-seven, in a crummy, crumpled suit looking like something my grampa would’ve worn in maybe 1945. He was sitting there in front of me, a black man. In a wheelchair. Told me his name was Dr. Jacob George James ‘Jackson’ Rogers. That he wasn’t a god, but a man from the dawn of civilization who’d gained his celestial powers by leading a war to avenge his slain father, the ancient Sudanese mystic named Lord Usir.

  “I mean, it’s a Sunday midnight and I’m sitting at the feet of the man Hawk King’s turned into, who’s revealing to me his life story underneath the city lights and the moon and the stars. He told me that after ruling over the lands of the Nile for a century as its Hawk King, he felt empty…Except for great-grandchildren, he’d outlived everyone he’d cared about: wives, mother, friends, cousins…and in all that time he’d never gotten over the loss of his father, which happened even before he’d been born. So he left. Went up into the stars to try to find his father’s souls. Found himself still in battle against his evil uncle, Warmaster Set, and holding back the chaos of the cosmic serpent Ããpep.

  “Sometimes he’d come back for a while, rescue Egypt when she was in trouble…and after Egypt fell, he helped out in other places where people still knew his secret names, in Meroë, in Namoratunga, in Timbuktu…but he’d always go back out into the rolling deeps of space, searching for his father.

  “And then, one time, after searching for he didn’t even know how long and still not finding him, he came back. But everything’d changed. He realized it’d been seven thousand years since he’d been born, and he hardly even recognized the world anymore. But he saw a war going on—World War Two—took a side, raised his own army. The F*O*O*J.

  “But when the war was over he wanted a life, not as a hawk man but as a man. So he transmuted himself back into his human body. It’d aged—not seven thousand years, of course, but still. And when he went looking for a place to live, he made a discovery: most places in the city wouldn’t rent to a black man.

  “He knew what it was like to be a persecuted refugee—that’s how he’d started his life, since his uncle’d murdered his father and he was raised by his single mother, a warrior-woman on the run. So he decided to blend in. Got an apartment in Elli
son Heights in Stun-Glas. Practiced medicine for people who couldn’t afford it. Got his doctorates in archeology and cosmology and taught at the university and tried just to live as a man by day while guiding the F*O*O*J as a mystic-philosopher-king by night.

  “But Dr. Rogers…he was devastated by what he saw in the world. And he just…he couldn’t figure out what to do with his powers that wouldn’t involve conquering the planet, killing and destroying to impose his will, and he didn’t wanna solve things like that. Said it wasn’t right and that it wouldn’t work in the long run anyway. So he’d decided to bide his time, do his research, figure everything out.

  “He told me, when he came to see me that night, that he’d finally figured it all out. Partly because of the death of Brother Maximus Security. And partly because of what I wrote.

  “He told me he was reaching out to what he called ‘the virtuous young’ to become his Shemsu-Heru. That he would entrust us with certain powers, his to enhance and his to take away depending on what we did with them. And then he gave me a papyrus roll, what he called The Book of Doing Knowledge. Told me to search out the canopic jars he’d left around the city, across the Americas, across Africa…and write down whatever words I found in them.

  “Within a few months I’d found a dozen jars, mostly in Stun-Glas libraries and in the Schombro Center. They were like glowing turquoise, and after you opened ’em, they spoke their words to you and then—whoof!—they just disappeared. And because I was searching for them, I met a bunch of other young brothers and sisters looking for them, too. That’s how I met the people who’d end up forming the L*A*B and the Supa Soul Sistas. It was like a, a, a Hawk King affirmative action program.

  “At last, deserving people weren’t gonna be held back by where they were born, or what they sounded like on the phone, or looked like when they showed up for the interview. Brother Grimhotep, he found so many jars and gained so much wisdom, he was the one who created the Brotherhood of the Forty-Two Chambers and initiated the rest of us. We connected, selected, directed, and defended Stun-Glas. And waited for the day Hawk King promised when we’d be trained enough and ready for him to reveal to us all his celestial, revolutionary vision.”

  “So,” I asked, “with all that success and what you saw as an inspiring vision, Kareem, what happened? Why did the L*A*B to which you were so devoted decide to excommunicate you?”

  He looked back toward me, his lips parted, not even trying to hide his shock.

  “I am a psychiatrist, Kareem. We don’t get our degrees for being completely dim, you know.”

  I got up, joined him at the window, noticing how the street-lights turned into stars in the blackness of his eyes. “Did the L*A*B kick you out…because they found out?”

  He looked down. His jaw muscles bulged visibly around the base of his scalp as he ground his teeth against one another.

  “So this is it, huh?” He chuckled grimly to himself. “This is how my career ends. Not because some dickwad’s laser beam cuts me in half, not because the Ammit Monster chews me to bits, not because the Turner Diarists blow me up in the Los Ditkos Federal Building…but because of the kot-tam lie that I hated Hawk King…and the truth that I…that I—”

  “—that you did have an affair with Power Grrrl.”

  He stood, still as a statue.

  “Yeah,” he said finally.

  I touched my wrist. “Ms. Olsen, would you please show in Ms. Tycho now?”

  Kareem looked up at me, eyes bulging as if he were choking.

  Syndi walked in. Gone was all her glamorous glitteralia, the look-at-me paraphernalia and the outrageous temporary tattoos, all replaced by a simple black PG!-logo T-shirt and jeans. Even her trademarked blond mane had changed—faded to black.

  “Hello, Eva,” said Syndi, her mascara drenched into raccoon smears. “Hello, Kareem.”

  The Long Kiss Good Morning

  The two black-garmented heroes sat as far as possible from each other on opposite corners of my wide white leather chaise loungue.

  “This is bullshit!” rumbled Kareem. “I should be investigating a murder case! Hawk King’s dead, Jack Zenith’s dead, Asteroid Zed’s destroyed, Iron Lass is dying, Menton and Sarah Bellum are missing—”

  I cut him off. “Syndi, how do you feel about what Kareem’s just said?”

  She shook her head. “It’s just, like, sad, Eva? Because Kareem was always, like, afraid to look inside himself. Which is why he was always looking ‘out there.’ But snap, like, let the world save itself? You’ve gotta save yourself, you know?”

  “So you don’t believe Kareem’s claims about the Destroyer being responsible for this current crisis?”

  “Gawd, no. Even when we were together, Kareem spent half the time talking about these, like, elaborate conspiracies. This Menton-thingy’s just the latest one.”

  “So, Syndi,” I asked, “why did you lie about being a lesbian?”

  She twirled her hair, rolled her eyes at the ceiling and then back toward me, indignant at being questioned. “I didn’t, like, lie, Eva.”

  I produced the advance copy of Butch Like Me that Festus had acquired for me, flipping through the ghost-written Billi Biceps autoherography until finding the first of many passages I’d marked. “ ‘In eight months together, Syndi never even let me get past first base. Or maybe second—I never really got that whole baseball thing. That’s a man’s game, anyway, what with all the phallic crap. So let’s just say volleyball. Well, I never spiked her or anything like that. Just overhand serves. But regardless, the point is, she’s no dyke, you understand? I don’t think she’s even bi. She’s just the world’s biggest poser. Everything is all about appearances with her, and it’s always all about her.’ ”

  I closed the book and kept my hand on the cover image of Billi as a steroidal Rosie the Riveter. “Well, Syndi? Is Billi lying? Or are you?”

  “I never, never said, Eva, that I was a lesbian. Never! I just created provocative imagery and let people think, like, whatever they wanted to!”

  “You joined GLAAD.”

  “You don’t have to be lesbian to join GLAAD. They got something they wanted out of it, and I got something I wanted out of it. Everyone profits. What’s your hyper-damage?”

  “So your profit was more albums sold, a possible film deal, more makeup endorsements, and more sales of your books, perfumes, breast enhancers, Power Grrrl Dental Dams™—”

  “And they got to use me for their own PR. Everyone wants to use me. Even these men who think I’m lesbian and buy my posters and videos and go to my movies…I mean, how insane is that? I’m more popular with men because they think they can’t attain me?”

  “You lied to Billi.”

  She looked back at me, her eyes blue radiant rage inside the black halos of smeared makeup.

  “According to this book,” I said, tapping the cover, “you broke Billi’s heart. Did she profit?”

  Deformed into its trademarked pout, Syndi’s mouth suggested indignation far more than photogenic lust.

  “How does it make you feel…to know what you did to her?”

  “I feel ashamed, okay? Are you happy? Is that what you want to hear?” she yelled. “I never meant to break her heart. No one was supposed to get hurt. It just…things got out of control. Like they are now. Kareem won’t even talk to me, for months he’s refused to even look at me, he won’t even say my fucking name, people are dying left and right around me and I’m gonna be left alone…”

  “Tell me,” I said, “about your relationship with Kareem.”

  At that, the two former lovers finally looked at each other, their faces crawling with the crabs of conflicting emotions.

  When neither broke from their eye war, I finally asked, “Which one of you initiated the relationship?”

  Kareem raised a black eyebrow with all the menace of a Jolly Roger, but Syndi didn’t flinch.

  “I did, Eva,” she whispered, her voice puckering with melancholy. “I first saw Kareem in the press, like, fiv
e years ago. I thought he was hot. And dangerous. And hearing him speak…it was like watching a panther run after a gazelle. I’d catch stories on PBS’s Langston-Douglas Black Journal about him and his L*A*B patrolling Stun-Glas—”

  “You watch PBS?” I asked. “You watch Langston-Douglas Black Journal?”

  “Yeah,” she said, flitting her head in an unspoken no duh. “So then they got their HUD contract, and Kareem was this up-and-comer, sexy, angry, successful, going places. So, like, this was four years ago and I was still an up-and-coming singer/ heroine myself, and I was the opening act for Salt-N-Pepa’s Let’s Talk About Sex tour at the Hermes Theater in Stun-Glas, and the L*A*B was doing security that night—”

  “Four years ago…so Kareem, you would’ve been thirty, and Syndi, you would’ve…been only fifteen?”

  Kareem’s and Syndi’s eyes faxed multipage documents to each other in text too small for me to read.

  “Uh…yeah,” she said. “Anyway, I arranged to meet him backstage after the concert. And I thought we, like, had this chemistry, but he was all, like, ‘Aren’t you a lesbian?’ and I was, like, ‘Don’t try to put me in your little box, baby. So are you down or what?’ and he was, like, ‘No, I’m a black nationalist, I’m chaste, and even if I weren’t I don’t do white girls, and plus you’re just a kid,’ and I was, like, ‘Whatever! You’re a man! You really think you can resist me?’ And so I started tracking him down, and he was, like, ‘Stop following me,’ and I was, like, ‘Nuh-uh, you stop following me—’ ”

  “Damn, Syndi,” groaned Kareem. “Would you please give it a rest with all this ‘like, like, like’ shit? We’re here, all right? Doctor-patient privilege? And after everything I’ve been through…”

  She looked at him, suddenly even softer.

  “I think that’s the first time you’ve called me by name since…” She sighed. “All right, Kareem.”

  I said, “You’re not nineteen, are you, Syndi? You’re older.”