Ishmael Reed - The Free-Lance Pallbearers

“I’ll do? I’ll do for what?” I asked, sitting up.

“You’ll do for my great BECOMING ‘Git It On.’”

“But I don’t understand,” I pleaded. “The man over at the Seventeen Nation Disarmament Bar didn’t say anything about a theatrical production.”

“Theater? Acting?” He frowned. “Those old men over there are just a bunch of losers talking nothing but a lot of dumb cannon fire and the way things used to be. Their notion of the world went out with the proscenium arch.

“All things are theater,” he said, vaulting to his feet and wildly gesticulating. “A child playing with a beach ball, a bus driver taking a token instead of twenty cents. Why when I attend a concert, I’m more interested in the spit that leaks from the horn valves than the music. O, I can go on and on. Why every time I hear a newborn baby cry or touch a leaf or—”

“But how do you know I’ll do well in this BECOMING?” I said, cutting him off.

“You,” he said, holding my chin, “are a natural. That face, the face of a sphinx, your ample neck, those lean, hard wrists. Tomorrow night’s BECOMING should be a stirring one.”

“Tomorrow night? But aren’t we supposed to have an audition or a rehearsal?”

“Idiot!” he sneered. “Auditions? Rehearsals? There you go again talking like the Seventeen Nation Disarmament Conference Bar. Why don’t you do as you’re told. Just show tomorrow night at eight thirty and we’ll just allow things to drift. Now no more of these questions,” he said, putting twenty ten-dollar bills into my hand.

“Why, I can’t take this. I haven’t done an honest day’s work. Right here in the Nazarene manual,” I continued, removing my trusty little booklet from a pocket. “Allow me to quote from our beloved Bishop Nancy Spellman: ‘One must sweat one’s balls off to be a head in SAM’s.’”

But Cipher X had crossed to the other side of the room and was now kneeling before the big black hoopla hoop which hung from the wall by a nail. Not wishing to interrupt the man’s meditations, I went out of the building and walked toward Connecticut Avenue.

I came upon a room-for-rent sign displayed in the window of a tenement building. I rang the super’s bell. A nattily dressed bearded man wearing a fez opened the door. It was my friend Elijah Raven, the heretic Nazarene apprentice.

“Bukka Doopeyduk, you ol son of a gun. What are you doing here?”

“Elijah, my good man,” I answered his greeting as we warmly embraced. “You were saying ‘Flim Flam Alakazam’ last time we saw each other. Aren’t you still with the Jackal-headed Front?”

“No good, baby. It all turned out to be a plot. What a hummer that was, man. Made me real disillusioned and cynical about organizations. You see, the CIA controlled the organization through an ol geezer who was given to such eccentricities as wearing cobwebbed antlers all the time. In fact, the kat was eating pork on the side and had a Betty Grable pinup on his wall; and to make things worse, his mother, I mean the man’s own mother, put the hoodoo not only on the people in the ghetto but one-third of the planet. They made themselves rich by getting the patent on a solution that would de-hoodoo people they’d put the hoodoo on. Well, just as we uncovered that the mystery man behind the organization was this joker, SAM made him ambassador to Luxembourg. Man, we got our nickel plates and were heading for the pier to ice the kat. But just as we drove up to the dock the Queen Mary was pulling away and the cocksucker was sticking his tongue out and laughing at us. And you should have seen the party they had. Governesses, maids, companions, manicurists, domestics and a beautiful fly black chick. Man, all kinds of o-fay kats were on their knees in their tuxedos and tall hats serenading her like in those 1930 musicals. She was decked out from head to foot in some of those chic saber-toothed fashions for aggressive living.”

“I wonder, did they take the antler polish?” I pondered out loud.

“What was that, Bukka?”

“Never mind, Elijah, you’d never believe it.”

“As I was saying, Bukka, the Queen Mary pulled off with this really Hanging-Gardens-of-Babylon scene taking place on the deck and this traitor that the CIA had picked was surrounded by all of these old blue gums holding ear trumpets and shaking hands with some hooting crackers in creme-colored ten-gallon hats. Man, I was really down in the dumps after that but now I’ve recovered. I moved down here to write plays about ‘Git It On.’”

“‘Git It On’?” I cried. “Why that’s the same thing I’m preparing for. Cipher X, the white BECOMINGS king, and I are doing a thing called ‘Git It On.’”

“Cipher X,” Elijah scowled. “Man, watch that kat. Whitey is a born devil. Snakes hide in his tongue muscles.”

“O, I don’t know, Elijah. Cipher seems to be pretty serious. He’s in his loft all day fashioning those hoopla hoops. Why, some of them hang in the American collection at the Metropolitan. He even gave me a two-hundred-dollar advance and I haven’t performed yet. Now if you’ll excuse me, Elijah, I’d like to find the super so that I can inquire about the room for rent.”

“The super,” he said, breathing on his knuckles and rubbing them up and down his chest. “You’re looking at the super, my man. I’m the agent in this house. You see, I collect rent for a kat named Irving Gooseman and the dwarf assistant Slickhead Fopnick he got from the Urban League. Two characters the likes of which you’ll never see. Once a month they come pouring in here, all out of breath and waving a rod. A real heat. Man, those kats are always in a hurry. Then they put the money in a sack and they’re gone, quick as a flash. You should see them speeding around the corner at one hundred miles an hour in that T-Model looking as if they’d seen a ghost. And the kids and dogs and people on the street are like climbing trees and leaping into the air trying to get out of their way.

“Anyway, I’m just the agent, kinda like a catalyst. Little does the Joo know that I’m secretly collecting milk bottles and rags as I prepare for ‘Git It On’ right under my man’s nose. See, I’m a poet down here in this artistic community, going around saying mothafuka in public by night, but by day I’m stacking milk bottles in the closet instead of taking them back to the store for the two cents deposit. That’s what you might call out-maneuvering whitey.”

“There’s no two-cent deposit on milk bottles these days, and they’re disposable,” I said.

“There isn’t? Well, that’s even better because Borden’s and Sealtest won’t even miss them. Hey, Bukka, you’re smart. Why don’t you help me and the brothers work on a manual for urban guerrilla warfare?”

“I’m too busy looking for loopholes in the Nazarene manual.”

“Bukka, don’t you know that HARRY SAM has body odor?”

Another one, I thought, but too weary to take up the challenge, I said, “If you don’t mind, Elijah, I’m kinda tired. Would you mind showing me the room?” I followed him up the stairs.

“By the way,” he said, looking over his shoulder, “is Fannie Mae moving down here?”

“No,” I answered. “You see about the time Art Linkletter awarded a life supply of pigeons to these … I mean … you see, I became hoodooed and the Chinamen slashed Dr. Christian … just let’s say we broke up, Elijah.”

“Sorry to hear that, Bukka,” he said, turning the key in the lock.

A large sink, a chest of drawers and a closet. Atop the chest was a basin of water and a towel. There were also some Hershey-bar wrappers.

“O, Bukka,” he said, picking up the wrappers, “the last tenant here was a transient who rented for two days. She was a former movie star and the chick was so tired that she slept the entire time. That’ll be ten bucks a week, Bukka. Pay promptly on Friday.”