Ishmael Reed - The Free-Lance Pallbearers

But the nose, resting on the bench like a stout lizard, interrupted the spectators. “Now look here, do you think I’m some kinda dunce? I mean, if SAM has taken Checkers, then who is in the John?”

Another man hopped to his feet and said, “Hey, yo honnah, that’s catchy.” He then went into the aisle and started a chant. “If SAM has kidnaped Checkers, then who is in the John?” He snapped his fingers and began the old a-one, a-two, a-three, kick. The courtroom audience joined, clapping on the beat. Another woman stood behind him and put her hands on his waist. Together they began a conga line. Soon the whole courtroom was in a conga line singing the ditty, “If SAM has kidnapped Checkers, then who is in the John? A-one, a-two, a-three, kick.” Suddenly the doors of the courtroom flew open and an orchestra of men in damp white dinner jackets rushed in. Their hair was dripping wet and fish flew from their pockets. The musicians accompanied the spectators, putting their soggy violin bows to strings and playing marimbas and steel drums.

I went apeshit. “WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS, SOME KINDA JOKE OR SUMTHIN? STOP THIS MONKEY BUSINESS RIGHT NOW! YOU KNOW THIS PLACE IS NOWHERE. NOTHIN’ BUT A BIG KLANG-A-LANG-A-DING-DONG-A-RAZZ-A-MA-TAZ.”

The judge jumped up and waving his arms cried, “STOP IT! STOP IT!” He took out a whistle, puffed his jaws and blew. “DO YOU THINK AMERICAN JUSTICE IS SOME KINDA WEIRD CIRCUS? SOME FREAKISH SIDE SHOW? A CARNIVAL ROUTINE?” Everybody hurried back to their seats and the orchestra rushed from the courtroom.

“Now that’s more like it,” the nose said. “We will continue with the case.” The nose turned to me and with its beady eyes piercing through the wig said, “I’m not going to have my circus … turned into a courtroom … dog bite it.” He combed his bangs again. “I mean I’m not going to have my courtroom turned into a circus, unnerstand? It’s clear to me, Mr. Doopeyduk, that you are a disagreeable person whose head is always in the clouds. Imagine such ravings. If I didn’t know that you were a Nazarene apprentice, I’d think you were off your rocker.”

“He talks like dat all the time, yo honnah,” Fannie Mae added, putting her two cents in, tapping her foot and looking at me evilly. “Always talkin’ all out his head.”

I looked up to the nose and said, “I’m sorry for turning your courtroom into a circus, your honor. I’ll take whatever’s coming to me.”

“Very well, then,” the nose said. “I award your wife a separation and fifty per cent of your salary will go to her for support” With this he banged his gavel and called for the next case. I turned around to leave, almost bumping into the next case which was the bearded lady and the fat woman who had brought the juggler into court for hitting them over the head with the lion tamer’s stool. I walked down the steps of the courtroom just as the limousine with antlers sticking from the roof pulled away from the curb.

The next morning I was fired from my job. When I opened the door of the floor the orderlies were waiting for me. “Mrs. Nurse Rosemary D Camp wants to see you, Doopeyduk.”

I went into Mrs. Nurse Rosemary D Camp’s office. Standing next to her in a gray double-breasted business suit with a stethoscope hanging around his neck was Dr. Christian. “Mr. Doopeyduk,” Mrs. D Camp began, “I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am about the action the hospital is going to take against you so I brought down Dr. Christian to explain to you why we deem it necessary to let you go at this time.”

“Let me go,” I said. “I don’t understand.”

“You tell him, please, Dr. Christian, please,” Rosemary D Camp said.

He walked over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Yes, my boy,” he said, shaking his head, “we were all prepared to give you a job in the surgical department where you would be in charge of the other nurses’ aides and orderlies who clean up leftovers from the operations. But you see, Bukka, it’s hard for us to keep on people who have outside financial trouble.”

“Outside financial trouble?”

“Yes. Show him the order,” he said, turning to the nurse. It was the greenish-brown seal from the court ordering the hospital to deduct 50 per cent of my salary each week.

“Yes, you see, Mr. Doopeyduk,” the doctor said, his back turned to me as he looked out of the window, “we can’t afford the clerical help necessary to take care of garnisheed wages. We are a nonprofit institution here to service mankind, the Hippocratic oath and all that,” he said, removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to take back your golden bedpan.”

I dropped to my knees and threw the kat all kinds of Al Jolson mammies one after the other, but he wasn’t impressed. “O, don’t,” I cried, tugging at his pants. “Don’t take the golden bedpan, don’t take it, do anything but don’t take the golden bedpan.”

A sparkling tear of rainbow colors appeared in Nurse Rosemary D Camp’s eye and rolled down her plump pink cheek. “Don’t worry, my boy,” Dr. Christian said. “I’m sure we will hear great things from you. You shouldn’t have any trouble at all, you look just like Sidney Poitier, Jackie Robinson, Nat King Cole, Joe Louis, Harry Belafonte, and Ralph Bunche, so, no sweat. Good-bye, Bukka, here is three weeks’ salary,” he said, giving me a small envelope.

I walked down the steps of the hospital. It had begun to rain. Here I was, I thought, twenty-three years old. Lost a job and lost a wife. The future looked quite dim. I drew up my collar and walked through the streets to the sound of the foghorn coming from the pier. I reached into my pocket for a smoke. I felt a card. It was a pink card given to me by the ol man in the Seventeen Nation Disarmament Conference Bar. It was wrinkled and moist. It said, “Go to Entropy Productions. Collect 200 dollars.” Things were looking up. A cloud moved above sagging with rain. It seemed as if it had eyes, nose, lips. It did, my eyes, nose, and lips. Get it. Clouds. Head in the clouds.

Entropy Productions was located in the Lower East Side of this WAY OUT BRING DOWN, this sifting area of BAD NEWS, this ugly TRIPS FESTIVAL. Its manager was Cipher X who graduated from M.I.T. in mechanical drawing — but having abandoned this career, he lived in a loft where he made big black gorgeous hoopla hoops with his own wittle hands.

Well, not exactly. Cipher, which means zero, would make a sketch including his specifications and send it off to GENERAL DYNAMICS CORPORATION which in turn would send him a brand new hoopla hoop every two weeks. Cipher was the darling of the fire insurance underwriters, airline ticket reservation clerks, female book editors from Skidmore and the wives of these groups who would flock to the loft to witness his BECOMINGS , as they were called. The loft was situated in a run-down factory on Oriental Avenue.

I had moved from the projects that morning because of that rule which forbade single people to live in them. I was broke, having spent three weeks’ salary on some rare Nazarene books so as to better prepare myself for a deep thoroughgoing scrutiny of the faith. I must have seemed a little bedraggled as I walked along the street with the bag containing my belongings. The bag was tied to a stick and I carried it over my shoulder.

The door said: ENTROPY PRODUCTIONS: FLOAT IN. I opened the door and was tackled by a slim, agile man who wore tight-fitting black pants and a black T-shirt. His feet were bare. Sitting on my chest he began to measure my neck and wrists with a tape.

“You’ll do,” said the angular nose, the thin lips, the sterling high cheekbones.