Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

“When you is black only one thing bugging you, and it bugs you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, time you’re born time you die. Or anyway, once was a time when being black was over when you died. Not no more. Now we got that medical science. We got that Foundation for Human Immortality. Freezes them dead bodies like instant pizza till them medical scientists get enough smarts to defrost ’em, fix ’em up and make ’em live till Judgment Day. What they say, that Howards cat and his flunkies, ‘Someday all men will live forever through the Foundations for Human Immortality!’

“Yeah, we the leading country in the world, we got ourselves a Foundation for Human Immortality. Make that the Foundation for Shade Immortality. “Course we got plenty cats around like old George and Bennie Howards think it all amounts to the same thing. Solve the Negro problem the easy way—get rid of the Negroes. Too messy—why, then, just fix it so the shades live forever. Let them black men have their three score and ten, who cares, when a shade can live forever, long as he can pony up that $50,000.”

Tiny cold tension lines appear at the corners of Jack Barren’s eyes as the screen splits even down the middle, faded black and white image of Rufus W. Johnson facing living-color reality of Jack Barron, as Barron says hard but quiet: “You’re talking around something that’s bugging you, Mr Johnson. How about letting us in on it? Riff it out. So long as you don’t talk about any intimate parts of the human anatomy don’t use four-letter words, we’re still on the air and plugged in, no matter what you say. That’s what Bug Jack Barron ’s all about. It’s hit-back time, worm-turning time, and if you got a real bind on any powers that be, this is the time they gotta sit there and take it while the you-know-what hits the fan.”

“Yeah, man,” says Rufus W. Johnson. “I’m talking about that there Foundation for Human Immortality. Hey, man, Rufus W. Johnson is like human. Bleach me white, do a plastic job on my nose, and why, every shade looks at me and says, ‘There goes that Rufus W. Johnson, regular pillar of the community. Got himself a successful trucking business, new car, own house, sent three kids right through college. Regular model citizen.’ Was Rufus W. Johnson white instead of black, why, that there Benedict Howards’d be more than pleased to give him a contract for a freeze when he flakes out and have a chance to collect the interest on every dime Rufe’s got till that Big Defrost Day comes—was Rufus W. Johnson a shade, that is. Know what they say down here in Mississippi, Harlem, out there in Watts? They say, ‘You a shade, you got forever made, but, baby, if you’re black, when you go, you don’t come back.’ ”

Back in the upper righthand corner catbird-seat goes living-color Jack Barron. “Are you charging the Foundation for Human Immortality with racial discrimination?” he asks, dancing black semivisible moire pattern flashes from backdrop off white deskchair in his slightly downturned eye-hollows turning his face to a mask of smoldering danger, suddenly solemn and sinister.

“I ain’t charging them with going through a red light,” drawls Rufus W. Johnson. “Look at my hair—that’s the only white part of me you’ll see. I’m sixty-seven years old and I about used up this one life I got. Even if I gotta live it all as a black man in a white man’s country, I want to live forever. Bad as it may be to be alive and black, when you dead, man, you are like dead!

“So I go to them Foundation shades, and I say, ‘Hand me one of them Freezer Contracts. Rufus W. Johnson is ready to sign up for Forever.’ Two weeks go by, and they sniff around my house, my business, my bank account. Then I get a real fancy letter on real fancy paper about three yards long, and what it says is, ‘Man, you do not make it.’

“Well, you figure it out, Mr Jack Barron. My house—it costs me $15,000, 1 got $5,000 in the bank. And, man, my trucks alone cost nearly fifty big ones. And Bennie Howards can have it all long as I’m on ice. But the Foundation for Human Immortality says I got ‘insufficient liquid assets for us to offer a Freeze Contract at this time’. My money’s the same color as anyone else’s, Mr Barron. Think it’s the color of my money they don’t like or could it just possibly be the color of my something else?”

The screen snaps to a full close-up of the concerned flashing face of hard-jawed, kick-’em-in-the-ass Jack Barron. “Well, you certainly got something to be bugged at—if you’ve got your facts straight, Mr Johnson. And you’ve sure bugged Jack Barron.”

Baron rivets the camera with his eyes promising bottomless pools of earnest bad-boy, brick-throwing, thun-der-and-lightning. “And how does it grab you out there, plugged into the two of us? How’s it grab you out there, Benedict Howards? What’s the scam from the powers that be? And speaking of the powers that be (abrupt facial shift to sardonic-shrug-inside-joke smile)—it’s about time to see what’s bugging our sponsor. You hang right on, Mr Johnson, and you too out there, and we’ll be right back where it’s all happening—right here right now no-time-delay live, after this straight poop from whoever’s currently making the mistake of being our sponsor.”

Pretty good curve you got there, Vince, you smart-ass wop, Jack Barron thought, watching his image on the outside studio monitor become image of new model Chevy.

The moment he was off the air Barron was up on the edge of his chair, thumbing the intercom button on the number one vidphone, “Fun and games tonight, eh, paisan?”

Behind the thick glass of the control-booth window, he saw Vince Gelardi smile, smugly cynical, then Vince’s voice filled the small spare studio: “Want Bennie Howards in the hotseat slot?”

“Who else?” Jack Barron answered, repositioning himself in the chair. “With Teddy Hennering number two, and Luke Greene in the safety slot.” Barron thumbed off the intercom, read “60 seconds” flashing across the bulb grid of the promptboard, and poured his attention into the brief pause.

Smart-ass Vince putting through a six-week dud like that Johnson (but every so often a dud becomes a potato even live one like tonight). Professional spade calls in every damn week new ethnic sob story and probably never got past the first monkey-block screen before. But add the latest dumb beef, against Foundation this time, to Freezer debate on the Hill, and you got a real hot potato (… you shade, you got Forever made… Wonder if Malcolm Shabazz & Co are spreading that one?) Too hot to handle with Howards’ two tame schmucks sitting on the good old FCC. Can’t afford to make waves in that league for one lousy show, and Vince should’ve known that, it’s his job, that’s what I’ve got him running the monkey block for.

But shit, Barron thought, as the promptboard flashed “30 seconds,” Vince did know it but got to give him credit, he saw beyond it, saw that Howards wouldn’t be pissed because the Foundation’ll freeze any Negro got $50,000 in liquid assets (liquid’s the kicker; liquid, not rotting old house not decaying trucks—liquid cash bonds negotiable securities negotiable power). Foundation’s got enough trouble with Republicans, SJC, Shabazz & Co, without buying race trouble. Foundation cares about only one color—green money color, crazy bastard Howards’ not that far ’round the bend. Yeah, Vince saw it all, saw Rufus W. Johnson full of it, saw whole country’s tongues hanging out, slavering over the Freezer Debate, saw good hot show but safe from tigers, with Howards, happy to get free publicity with his big chestnuts in the Congressional fire, saw formula for next forty minutes: Howards squirming a bit in the hotseat, enough to make sparks without making waves because on the race thing (about the only thing) Foundation’s in the clear. Everyone makes points—Howards pushes his Freezer Bill, the Great Unwashed gets Jack Barron in top fun-and-games form, I look like champ and just flesh wounds, no one gets hurt enough to try to hurt back. Good old Vince knows how to walk that line!