Ishmael Reed: Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

Look out now Loop don’t get quippy with me, I’ll have one of my men take you off. We can’t afford the luxury of individualism gumming up our rustling. We blast those who don’t agree with us.

Aw leave me alone Bo Shmo to doing my thing which for now is dying. You presume to be able to give other people decrees — living in your expensive neo-social realist retreat while common folk who follow your rants try to match their nickel plates with aeroplanes and tanks. One of these days those people are going to rise up from the pavement where they died clutching coupons and unredeemable refuse from shop windows and take it out on your hide.

O.K. fat mouth, you asked for it. Discipline him fellows. The horsemen dismounted and began to put Loop through changes. Being neo-social realist and not very original they gave him a version of Arab Death. They smeared jelly on his face and buried him up to the neck in desert. Soon his face would be crawling with vermin which was certainly no picnic of a way to go.

Suddenly above them a whirring noise.

Gads! Bo said, the arch-nemesis of villains like me. The Flying Brush Beeve Monster. Let’s get out of here.

The horsemen mounted their nags and with Bo Shmo out front headed back to their institution in the mountains.

Not only would he be a desert carrion, but now something right out of Science Fiction was descending upon him from the heavens, Loop thought. It resembled a monster insect whatever it was and when it landed it stirred up the sand so that Loop couldn’t make out its dimensions. Much to his surprise a plainclothes Indian casually stepped out of the monster’s belly. He held a cigarette holder in his hand. He strode to the position where Loop’d been tied down in the sand and lifted a canteen to the outlaw’s lips.

Champagne! Who are you?

Never mind my man, I was on the way to Europe for an appointment with my tailor when I happened upon you surrounded by those mediocre bandits. The desert was fine until they moved into those hills coming out of their fancy hideout only to make raids on sniveling and s/m liberals that take that sick tour.

What tour?

O there’s this Royal Flush Gooseman, a rattlesnake heart if there ever was, he hires wagon trains which bring liberals out here for the purpose of having the trains surrounded by Bo Shmo and his henchmen. The whole thing is staged if you ask me. Since my people are no longer around to raise war parties Bo Shmo and his men are taking all the loot. Deserts are for visions not for materialists. Read any American narrative about crossing — apparitions, ravens walking about as tall as men, the whole goldern phantasmagoria. Maybe I can give you a lift to Video Junction, the town lying about 50 miles from here?

Loop regarded the Monster with apprehension.

O don’t worry about that. I created it to get around in, made it from spare parts I found in deserted ghost towns. I also used a new kind of plant called plastic I discovered growing in the hills like wildfire.

I’m a kind of patarealist Indian going about inventing do dads. This machine comes in better than nags and creaky stagecoaches. Stupid shmucks and boobs around here think it’s some kind of flying ghost cow. Legends, whispering among the peasants, protective charms on the door of each house. The whole bit. Bo Shmo and the cattlemen are in the same routine. Afraid of anything that can get off the ground, materialists that they are — anything capable of groovy up up and aways strikes terror in their hearts.

The Indian freed Loop and escorted him to his hobby lying in the sand.

I call it a helicopter, lots of mileage on very little fuel, but I wouldn’t be surprised if bad medicine steals the patents and calls them his own. Honkie. Devil.

Loop smiled.

John D. Rockefeller didn’t have an original idea in his life and George Gershwin stole pillows from sleeping Negroes plush vampire that he was and where did you think Mae West got her manic depressive female swishing? In New York City as you read me now some woman done took Martha and the Vandellas “Dancing In The Streets” and calls it her very own.

You listen to Soul Music, Chief?

Sure man; all the time, the Indian replied releasing the wheel of the helicopter and breaking into a strong boogaloo from the waist up. The craft rocked.

I don’t even want to go into how Moses sneaked around the Pharaoh’s court abusing this hospitality by swiping all the magic he could get his clutches around. If I run down that shit, Loop, the book won’t be reviewed in Manhattan…and look what the Fiend did to us. We showed the cat how to ride, what to wear, how to plant, woodcraft, how to tan, tried to teach them riding bareback but they were so repressed they had to use a saddle, and on Friday nights we introduced a new recreation for these dull creatures.

What was that?

Taught them to pop corn and when you got that popcorn covered with maple syrup you got crackerjacks. Man they didn’t know from dick. We gave them all those things and you know what we got in return?

What?

Liquor smallpox and guns. Well, Royal Flush Gooseman came through and sold our tribe some defective rifles and that was the end.

How did you escape?

I was away spearing salmon. You see the tribe was so busy trying to organize they forgot that they were clandestine by nature, camouflage, now you see now you don’t, what some blockheads call esoteric bullshit. But now I’m trying the same thing on him he put us through.

What was that?

Foment mischief among his tribes and they will destroy each other. Not only that. I have my secret weapon.

O, said Loop yawning.

The Chief Showcase revealed a pipe. He put some tobacco in its bowl.

If I can’t get their scalps I’ll get their lungs. My fellow tribesmen, I told them we were outnumbered, but they were in a meat thing, rushing like the buffalo over cliffs to certain disaster. You think I wanted to end up in front of a barber shop with a tomahawk in one hand and box of cigars in the other or have my face printed on a nickel? No, this time it’ll be done by an idea, not toying around with gumshoes.

What handle do you go by Chief?

Chief Showcase.

Chief Showcase, Loop thought, remembering the Indian names he’d heard like Toohoolhoolzote, Looking Glass, and Man-Afraid-Of-His-Horse which opened up new possibilities of being named after phobias, objects or even words that didn’t mean anything but sounded like music.

I know what you’re thinking Loop. You’re thinking that from all of the beautiful Indian names, Chief Showcase is kind of a letdown. I assure you it works though. You see, I’m Chief Cochise’s cousin so that makes me Chief Showcase. Yuk yuk yuk.

The helicopter sped on its journey.

I don’t want to take you out of your way Indian.

No sweat, the Chief replied, I’m sure my accountant can come up with something like “entertaining the Great Meshuga,” Chief Showcase winked at Loop.

You have heap bit gnosis to be such a young man and only to have lived one life. The Loop smiled sadly.

I recognized you right away, O Morning Star. Besides, Indians and black people have been roaming the plains of America together for hundreds of years. Why one of the chiefs of my tribe, the Crow, was James P. Beckwith, and Dick Gregory represented our Washington tribes in their treaty fights. Knappy hair rises like grass from the tracks through the Mandans and the Arikaras made by Sgt. York. And the Seminole fought invasion after invasion against the Fiend to protect black fugitive slaves. Take a look inside that compartment, the Chief said, pointing to one of the panels with one hand and steering the copter with the other.

Loop opened the door to see a plate of steaming chitterlings with potato salad on the side, collard greens, and a champagne bottle wrapped in a towel immersed in a bucket of ice.