Ishmael Reed: Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

The old Woman told us chances are 1-65,000 poker odds that a new crop of kids would come on the scene protesting, having love feasts and trying to turn the town into an open city. What I gotta do is start the flow towards docility a-gushing. Get rid of this broken seed stored in my loins. It aches. I will have some nice obedient progeny who will manage all the forms after I’m gone and nickelodeon for the worms .

What am I waitin for? I got to knock off that horrible hybrid in the kitchen and take a swell looking art nouveau broad . But before he could act he looked around. It was like a monster flickah drammer — the confrontation. Horrible hybrid meets Spooky Situation. Horrible hybrid was dripping wet. She walked across the room on her leafy feet webbed hands outstretched and the scales of horrible hybrid’s body shown green by the kerosene lamp.

In a quivering voice the Various Arrangement of Dead Parts said: What happened Drag dear husband you were supposed to bring me a towel?

Spooky Situation removed the six shooter from his holster and emptied it into Horrible Hybrid but the junk kept coming, sloshing across the floor to embrace Drag.

Drag managed to get over to the gun rack. There he picked out a Winchester and fired ball after ball into the creature’s chest until it made some unusual groan and dropped to the floor.

Chinaboy, Chinaboy. Come in here will you? The chinaboy ran into the room. His slanted eyes became orbs and he threw up his small yellow hands when he saw whatever it was lying on the floor.

Mop this up and bury it on the hillside. Crops looked a little weak up there this year, Drag said pointing to the bubbling mass on the rug and spitting tobacco on his wife’s remains. Drag hobbled over to the fireplace. He threw some pieces which lay on the floor into the fire, ran his hands across the sticky yellow patch of bull’s sperm on his head and put on a dressing gown. The Great House was empty except for Drag.

Guess I’ll go upstairs now and burn the marriage stiffycate, Drag thought, climbing into the portable elevator attached to the side of the winding staircase. He ascended to the second story of the building.

Once upstairs Drag removed the marriage certificate from the wall and put it into the fire. He then sat down and drank some whiskey.

Suddenly something black jumped out of the closet, leaped through the window into the yard. What the? Drag thought, a cigar falling from his lips and onto the floor.

At Big Lizzy’s Rabid Black Cougar, Drag was being discussed in earnest by the foreman and two cowhands from his ranch.

A daffy cat a really daffy cat, started saying spooky things about magic.

The foreman stared at the plump pink of nude dangling a flower between her teeth painted in an oil portrait above two moose horns hanging behind the bar.

Those kids said some nasty things about the six gun, the foreman addressed the bartender. Said we ought to unzip our pants and draw it from there. Them smart alecks good riddance.

Just then a tall mustached man walked into the bar. He wore a slouch hat single breasted black frock coat and flowing black tie. A star rested near his right breast.

Boys, the Marshal said, putting a hand on Skinny’s shoulders, thought you might want to know that the middle aged of Yellow Back Radio voted to commend you for saving the town from them kids who had it under siege. Didn’t even need the Preacher and his hazel wand this time. Just talked fast and said freedom every three words. They said they were grateful to you and the boys for freeing Yellow Back Radio from the kids. They’re glad you got rid of those brats who were being influenced with Spirit. Everybody take their hats off.

The bartender removed his Straw, the Marshal his Slouch and the foreman his Stetson and the cowpokes seated at the tables their battered and beat up Ten Gallons.

The Preacher Rev. Boyd, who was down at the other end of the bar, kept still. He was crying into his beer. Tears covered the froth of the stein.

I did everything, sponsored light shows, took them off the streets and nothing worked. O what am I going to do? What the Church lacked in aesthetic it couldn’t even make up in pyrotechnics.

The Marshal and foreman and the bartender winked all around as the Preacher turned a greedy trembling hand up to his lips and drank down the two bits a throw of Red-Eye whiskey.

What’s going on tonight boys?

There’s a lecture room over at the Hotel, Marshal, Skinny said. Got some bandits’ heads in jars preserved in alcohol — we saw it last night. It was good and nasty, not like a necktie party which at best gives only a few epiphanous and titillating moments but long, sustained. Eyes were bulging and we stood there with our glimmers hypnotized like the jars were a pair of rep-towls. The faces were wet and covered with a red silky substance. It was better than that dog fight where the one hound ate into the other pooch’s maw. But not as good as those scalps belonging to one hundred injun children and squaws that they exhibited last week.

Outside it began to rain on the rooftops of the Hat and Boot store, the Feed store. Their tops, reflecting the heaven’s disturbance, went on and off like blue tubes.

Marshal what are you going to do if the Loop Garoo Kid develops some kind of specialized mystique and comes hunting for us because we burned down the party? How are you going to get him shoved into the pokey? Into the hoosegow? Into the dim, dark sneezers?

No problem, the Marshal said putting a boot on the rail of the bar. Me and Kit Carson use to kill an injun every morning before hoecake and salty dog. He loved violence so we buried him with his shotgun, case he ran into some persnickety spooks beyond the Great Divide. I’m sure I can handle the Kid if he rises from some remote crypt and hangs out horrific super-hero shingles with a side dish of unusual origin process.

Haw haw, Skinny the foreman laughed. Marshal you ain’t nothin but an old hoss-eater. How’s about a taste of Red-Eye all around.

Where’s Big Lizzy, bartender? the Marshal asked.

She’s up in the hills hunting for meese.

You mean moose don’t you bartender? the Marshal asked.

No, Marshal, meese. Goose is to geese as moose is to meese. I know we’re out in the old frontier but everything can’t be in a state of anarchy, I mean how will we communicate?

You got a point there, Skinny added, but we cowpokes make up language as we go along. Compare our names for landscape, towns, industry, with those of tenderfoots back East — Syracuse, Troy, Ithaca, not to mention all those towns with names ending in yorks, burghs, villes — they got some inferiority thing back East. Seem to worship Europe. Why there’s a whole school in New York of poets writing like Frenchmen. But when you get out here, except for those names given by injuns and Spaniards, cowpoke genius takes over — Milk River, Hangtown, Poker Flats, Tombstone, Boot Hill. On and on. I heard that one of them dudes back there named Webster wants everybody to speak Hebrew.

Har har, the Marshal said, you can’t be for real.

No, Skinny said, I heard it over the radio.

I think maybe he’s right Marshal, the barkeep said. One of them historians remarked at a recent convention that we’re the only Americans or something like that. Said the real American personality begins with the frontier.

There was silence as the barkeep poured the boys some brandy on the house.

Big Lizzy said she found a necklace up there in the mountains — strung together with human teeth — and she found some odd arrowheads, and fish hooks.

Some kind of injuns we missed, barkeep? the foreman asked.

We got em all, Skinny. Left old Sitting Bull down at the Oklahoma Fair selling porny postcards. Must be some kind of mystery peculiar to Yellow Back Radio. These are certainly weird times. The old Woman on the talk show said we shouldn’t relax our vigilance one bit — she expects an invasion any day.