Ishmael Reed - The Free-Lance Pallbearers

The ol men clinked their glasses, took some robust swigs and then sang a rousing chorus of “I’m a Yankee-Doodle Dandy.” Suddenly the half-nude man rose from his chair and genitals swinging moved toward us.

“Gentlemen,” he said in the Boris Karloff voice. “A toast to Lenore!”

There was sheer silence until Aboreal Hairyman spoke up. “Alfred,” Aboreal consoled, putting a sympathetic hand on the man’s shoulder, “please don’t start that again.”

“A toast to Lenore, dammit,” the man insisted, rudely pushing Aboreal’s hand aside. “How can we forget Newport? The milling young women just home from Radcliffe shading themselves near the picnic baskets? The sumptuous melons on the tables and the brilliant conversation?”

One ol man waving his hands wept uncontrollably, pleading with the speaker, “Don’t talk about it, Alfred. Please don’t talk about it, boo, hoo, boo, hoo.”

“O the boat races,” he said, ignoring some of the weaker of the ol men who had dropped their heads to their tables. Their violently trembling fingers clutched the handles of their steins as the man went on. “I would walk about in my duck pants and blazer and sometimes we’d go clam-digging. O, if only I could have continued paying for her harpsichord lessons, things would have turned out different”

“It wasn’t your fault, Alfred,” Aboreal Hairyman whispered.

“My boy,” the grief-stricken gentleman said, turning to me, “it would have never happened if Matthew and Waldo had remained to guard the gate. The villagers wouldn’t have been able to …” But he trailed off and broke down. After a pause he looked up, and reaching inside the top of his hat, brought out a gold watch. He put the gold watch in my hands. “My boy, I want to give you this as a token from Lenore and the army of unalterable bores.”

“O, no I can’t, sir,” I protested.

“No, take it,” he insisted, then wheeled about and slowly returned to his deer tongue, cucumber soup, his Berchtesgaden. Another man came, hesitated, gave me a carton of Picayune cigarettes. Still another, a shiny spittoon. I was babbling with joy.

“O, gentlemen. This is much more than I deserve. I can’t take your pension checks, your boxes of gold dust twins and the elbow baking soda.”

Aboreal Hairyman reassured me. “Now my boy, we fossils will be very much rebuffed if you won’t take our gifts. You deserve each and every one of them,” Aboreal said in State Department redundance.

“I must go home now and study my Nazarene manual but I’ll never forget this night.”

“Three cheers for Bukka Doopeyduk. Hip, hip. … Hip, hip. … Hip, hip. …” The ol men waved as I left the quaint Seventeen Nation Disarmament Conference Bar of flickering gas lamps and beaded curtains. Mist rose from the cobblestone streets. Horse-drawn carriages moved in and out of the shadows. From the 1870 dining palace the ol men could be heard singing the haunting strains of a World War I favorite:

Roger Young Roger Young was the glory and the story of the everlasting tires of the infantry who died for you and me young Roger of the story and the everlasting wires of the infant free lies the story and the glory of you and me Roger Young who died in his veins and the …

I was as happy as a lark when I arrived home. I put down the gifts and turned on radio station UH-O.

TRAPPED IN HOWARD JOHNSON’S FOB THE THIRTY-FIFTH DAY BY ANGRY HOUSEWIVES IN MOTORIZED GOLF CARTS: CHINAMENS REFUSE TO YIELD. VATICAN SEALED OFF AS BINGO CRISIS ENTERS FIFTH WEEK. POPE ASKS COMPROMISE. CHINESE CHECKERS ANYONE?

On each side of the steps leading into the courtroom was a statue of a white seal balancing a bright ball by the tip of its nose. Inside in the ceiling of the main hall was a dome of murals depicting episodes from the life of Rutherford Birchard Hayes. RBH pulling the pigtails of the first Chinese officials to be received in the White House; RBH commenting on the size of their buck teeth to two of his cronies who hold the little diplomat’s jaws apart for a better look; Rutherford Birchard Hayes making a mad dash to get rid of the poker cards and the bottle of Old Hickory as the First Lady, affectionately known as “Lemonade Lucy,” pokes her coalscuttle hat of green silk into the Cabinet room to announce that lemonade and Kool-Aid are being served; Rutherford Birchard Hayes kicked in the head by a horse on October 21, 1864, but intrepidly opening the Wichita pickle fair the next day; Rutherford Birchard Hayes giving colorful and quaint measles blankets to some Indians who proudly pose with their headdresses thrown back and their noses in the air like snooty camels while the President winks at his poker partners who — in on the prank — stand off to the side of the reception slapping their thighs and covering their grinning mouths. In the center of the dome was a giant mural of Rutherford Birchard Hayes surrounded by his eight children: Birchard Austin Hayes, James Webb Cook Hayes, Rutherford Platt Hayes, Joseph Thompson Hayes, George Crook Hayes, Fanny Hayes, Scott Russell Hayes and Manning Force Hayes. They stand with their mouths open as Daddy holds a big round and firm cucumber between his raunchy lips at the Wichita pickle fair, October 22, 1864.

Inside the court, the clerk called for the case which was to precede mine. The participants were roughly shoved through the door. They were surrounded by an unusually heavy detachment of Screws. Masks had been drawn over their heads and their wrists were bound with rope. The Screws positioned the pair before Judge Whimplewopper. Whimplewopper stood on three telephone books behind the bench. He was a natural-born midget afflicted with an unusually long nose. In fact the nose was so long that it became the subject of a series of features in the National Inquirer .

It was very difficult for Whimplewopper to conduct a normal courtroom because many of the nose’s fans would line up in the corridors of the courtroom to take pictures and ask its opinion on the length of Jackie Kennedy’s riding boots. Sight-seeing buses would follow his limousine to his home in East Hampton where he entertained Mile. Matzabald’s associates and bargain-basement hippies. While he conducted the business of the courtroom, his nose rested upon a purple satin pillow Matzabald had made for him. This only added to his difficulties. Ruthless art executives would try to swipe the pillow so that they could exhibit it in their galleries. Judge Whimplewopper asked the Screws to remove the defendants’ masks. They turned out to be M/Neighbor’s son and his little anarchist friend Joel O. I knew it. I knew it. Their criticism of the state would get them into trouble. I hoped the judge would be stern with them and stern he was.

“You pair have been accused of trying to make it across the Black Bay in a rowboat full of boxes of mouthwash. Whaddaya have to say for yourselves?”

“Well, your honor, all that I can say is that your mama must have humped a whole bunch of anteaters for you to have a snout like that. Which is to say more for her than SAM’s mother who gave a dying bull elephant the clap,” M/Neighbor’s son replied.

Everybody in the courtroom got shook including me. I only wished that the punishment issued would be severe.

“Now see here, you young punk, you can’t talk about me and SAM’s mothers like that They’ve been dead for years, God rest their souls.”

“Yes and they’ve probably given all the worms in the cemetery lockjaw by now,” added Joel O.

“Thirty days for contempt of court!” the judge screamed, weeping profusely.

Suddenly a man ran down the aisle of the courtroom, swiped the pillow and dashed toward the side exit. “Come back here with that pillow! One of you Screws stop that man!” It was the president of the Yellow Cab Company. The man was captured and whisked off to a room near the courtroom. The Screws returned the pillow to the bench, lifting the judge’s nose and gently placing the pillow underneath.