Ishmael Reed: The Free-Lance Pallbearers

“She not home.”

“What time will she be in?”

“No tellin’ what time she be in. Is dis you, Bukka Doopeyduk, the boy what’s gone marry my granchile?”

“That’s me.”

“Well, I don’t have to tell you how fast dese youngins is today. She probably out whipping dope needles into her mouf or somethin’ lak dat.”

“When she returns, would you tell her that the wedding ceremony will take place tomorrow afternoon and shortly before I must present my application to the Harry Sam Housing Projects and—”

“Hold on, Dippydick. Dis ain’t no IBM factory. I’m scribbling with a chewed-up pencil and considering the fact dat I’m a spindly ol woman with two bricks for breasts, it’s awful admirable dat I’m even able to take my conjur lessons through the mail under the Mojo Retraining Act. So take it from the top and go real slow.”

I repeated the instructions.

“Okay. I’ll tell her Daffydink Dankeydim Doopeydank …”

“Doopeyduk.”

“Whatever your name is, listen here. If you don’t take good care of my granchile, I’m gonna put da hoodoo on you, and another thing …”

“What’s that, ma’m?”

“Don’t choo evah be callin’ here at twelve o’clock when I’m puttin’ da wolfbane on da do.”

(CLICKI) She shut the phone down so hard my ears were seared. Well, that’s show biz, Bukka Doopeyduk, I sighed, cakewalking my way back to the limbo of a furnished room.

We Would Need a Bigger Place

I picked up the booklet from the table in the housing project office. Above the table hung an oil portrait of SAM in a characteristic pose: zipping up the fly of butterfly-embroidered B.V.D.’s and wiping chili pepper sauce from his lips.

Next to the painting hung some employment ads:

“Passive sleep-in maid wanted.”

“Apple-pickers 50 ¢ an hour. Must like discipline.”

The cover of the booklet showed the housing manager holding the keys to an apartment. Color them gold. He smiles as he points to the Harry Sam Projects with the pose of an angel showing some looneybeard the paradise. On the next page, the typical family scene. Dad reading the papers, pipe in mouth. The little child seated on the floor busily derailing choo-choo trains, while with goo-goo eyes and smiles shaped like half-moons, the appliances operate these five rooms of enveloping bliss. And after a long list of regulations a picture of the park area. All the little children having a ball. Fountains, baby carriages and waxen men tipping their hats to waxen women.

I sat in the section where the applicants were biding their time until a woman with a sweater draped over her shoulders called their names. They were interviewed by a roly-poly man in 90 per cent rayon Sears and Roebuck pants, mod tie and nineteen-cent ball-point pen sticking from the pocket of his short-sleeve shirt, and hush puppy shoes. (No shit. Da kat must have been pushing forty and he wore hush puppy shoes and a polka-dot mod tie. Why da man looked ridiculous!)

Some of the women had electronic devices plugged into their ears. They listened to the hunchbacked housewives phone in their hernias to the bugged benzedrined eyes who negotiated toy talk for a living.

Typical: “Hello Frank? Dis Frank? Been trying to get ya ever since you come on da air. Geez kids, it’s Frank. Come and say hello to ya Uncle Frank. Hiya Frank. We sure like to hear toy talk out here in Queens and Brooklyn, which brings me to the point about what I wrung ya up. You see we tink dey got too much already, running around in da streets like monkies. Why can’t dey behave demselves like da res of us ’mericans. And as far as bussing wit um goes — we don’t tink it’ul ’mount to much for da very simple reason dat we don’t tink it’s too good. Dey should help demselves like we did when we come over on da manure dumps. Take my ol man for an instant. Worked hisself up and now he is a Screw. Killed fourteen hoods last week what was comin’ at um wit a knife. And my son jess shipped overseas to put down dem Yam riots what’s gettin’ ready to break loose. As you can see we are all doin’ our part. Why can’t dey? ”

But occasionally this informative chitchat would be interrupted by a bulletin from radio UH-O:

UH-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

DEM CHINAMENS DONE GALLOPED INTO THE SUBURBS ON WEREWOLF SANDALS/KIDNAPING HEEL-KICKING HOUSEWIVES HANGING OUT DA WASH/BREAKING TV ANTENNAS OVER DERE KNEES DEY WAYLAID COMMUTER TRAINS AND SMASHED INK INTO THE FACES OF THE RIDERS WHO DOVE INTO THE HUDSON TRYING TO ESCAPE/

TONS OF CREDIT CARDS SALVACED/BULLETPROOF RICKSHAWS SPOTTED IN NEW ROCHELLE/(AND SOME SINISTER-LOOKING JUNKS DONE SNEAKED INTO DA EAST RIVER TOO!) MAJOR CRISIS SHAPING UP/SAM TO DRESS HIMSELF AS SOON AS MAKEUP MAN ARRIVES AND THE URINALS ARE SCRUBBED.

Conorad: YAWL BETTER RUN!

“Bukka Doopeyduk,” the social worker announced through his Rudy Vallee megaphone. Sitting down he officiously pinched his hooked nose.

On the desk were two round faces. One larger than the other. Smiling. Wife and girl child. In a box a row of half-chewed maraschino cherries resting in their wrappers. Gold trimmings on a get-well card which read: “We all miss you in unit X”—followed by a list of stingy signatures. The Nazarene priest lifted his chubby face from the sheaf of papers he held in his hands. Rubbing his palms together he talked.

“Sorry I kept you waitin’ so long, chum, but me and da missus were up late last night. Caught dat Sammy out at Forest Hills. Boy dat Sammy sure can blow the licoric stick and tickle da ivory. He was better ’n da time we caught him at da Eleanor Roosevelt birthday celebration. He was twirling his cane and kicking up wit da spats when suddenly a miracle happened. A helicopter landed right on da stage and out came da savior and hope of da world. He put his arm around Sammy and said, ‘Sammy is my ace boon koon so you guys treatum real good. Unnerstand?’ Well, after dat somethin’ happened dat’ll just get you in da girth, I mean gird you in da pith, I mean dere was a dearth of boos and nothin’ but stormy applause after an especially pithy ditty SAM done about how hard it was when he was back in rat pack p.s. Why pennies run outta da sky. You shoulda seenum. And den da dook come on. Dat dook. His band raised da roof beams off da joint.”

“If you don’t mind, your honor,” I said, “I’m getting married this afternoon so if it’s all right with you, I’d like to get on with the interview.”

“Gettin’ married! How wondaful. Here, have a piece of candy,” he said, pressing the chocolate into my hand.

“I don’t know what to say, sir. Gee, not only are you Nazarene priests in the Civil Service kind, but the candy melts in your mouth and not on your hands.”

“Tink nothin’ of it dere, Doopeyduk. Your name is Doopeyduk, ain’t it? Where dat name come from, kiddo, da Bible or somethin’?”

“No, sir. It came from a second cousin of my mother who did time for strangling a social worker with custom-made voodoo gloves.”

“I see. What do you do for a living, Mr. Doopeyduk?”

“I am a psychiatric technician.”

“What precisely does that involve?”

“I empty utensils and move some of our senior citizens into a room where prongs are attached to their heads and they bounce up and down on a cart and giggle.”

“That must be engaging work.”

“Yes, it is. I’m learning about the relationship between the texture and color of feces and certain organic and/or psychological disturbances.”

“Excellent! What do you intend to do in the future?”

“Well, my work has come along so well that I have been assigned to the preparatory surgery division of the hospital.”

“What does that involve?”