Ishmael Reed - The Free-Lance Pallbearers

He whispered into my ear and gave me a small bottle, just as two Screws grabbed him by the arms, then aimed two lugers at me. Pouring the bottle’s contents into the water before me, I dove into the Black Bay, which now showed crystal-clear, with brilliant-colored vegetation and fancy fish swimming at the bottom. Some distance out I turned over and began a backstroke. I could see the motel at the top of the mountain, its “EATS” sign blinking rapidly.

On the oak tree which stood on the last bend of the pathway near the wall, a flaming figure swung back and forth. A mob had gathered below. They were playing dogbones and kazoos and blowing into jugs the popular American song “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” I wept; tears pouring down my cheeks and into the water, but having business to take care of I could not pause — I turned around and kept on swimming.

I clutched the branch of a tree which drooped into the Black Bay. The ol men in the Emperor Franz Joseph Park scooped up arms full of film and slammed shut the bound copies of Harper’s Brothers Weekly . They sent clouds of dust and the musty smell of pulp up from the park.

They said, “Whoopie, yeserie,” and jogging erlong, swapped “do-si-dos” and “I told you so’s” and they zigzagged, reeled and rocked in file all around the park until meeting two-by-two and side-by-side they marched into the tree-lined street of ol brownstones where an ol man was dropped at every stoop until there was only the bony-kneed soul with the bass drum — he boomed with a ragged soupbone — and then soon he too was gone as wheelbarrows of dentures, toupees, elevator shoes and sloppily laid corpses stood before each ol man’s home. [Da efficient widow executioners had raised dem black-checkered flags right on time, baby. And dat was all she wrote cause da pencil broke for those fuked-up souls — rest in peace for 1931–1939.]

I saw an object atop the fragments of dead clippings. I waded up to my knees through the grassy film and the phlegm-covered flags and picked up an ivory music box. On the cover done in mother-of-pearl was a picture of Lenore in her Bickford’s uniform. I opened the music box and heard the tape of the familiar voice:

ROGER YOUNG IN THE FIRST AT SARATOGA

ROGER YOUNG IN THE NINTH AT CHURCHILL DOWNS

ROGER YOUNG IN THE FOURTH AT BATAVIA

ROGER YOUNG IN THE FIFTH AT AQUEDUCT

ANNOUNCED BY RAPUNZEL

Why those sneaky old bastards in the Seventeen Nation Disarmament gin mill, I chuckled, putting us on for all these years — pretending to be Nazarene patriots, but actually bettin’ on the nags!

My shirt was wringing wet and barracudas wiggled from under my pants cuffs. I looked at my pocket watch. It had stopped at 3:00 A.M., August 6, 1945—when the skulls pressing against my thighs had crushed its glass plate.

THROUGH THE PARK TOWARD SOULSVILLE I RAN, MY FEET SLAPPING (PING-PING) THE PAVEMENT AS I RAN TOWARD THE “FOUR CORNERS” INTERSECTION IN THE MIDDLE OF SAM WHERE VIOLENT WHIRLPOOLS OF PEOPLE SEEMED TO BE HEADING PELL-MELL INTO THE CROSSROADS. I RAN ACROSS THE STREET JUST AS A T-MODEL FORD COMING FROM AN OPPOSITE DIRECTION SWERVED TO AVOID HITTING ME.

I HAD NOT CHANCED TO LOOK BACK UPON THE RESULTING EXPLOSION WHICH SENT SCREWS AND A PRIZE DOG, AN OL WOMAN, A FORMER MOVIE STAR, A SLUM LORD AND ASSISTANT, HANDICAPPED VETERANS, AKESTRA OF MEN IN WHITE FORMALS AND A TOP GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL AND WIFE FLOATING UP FROM THE STREET HALOED AND WHITE-ROBED AND STRUMMING HARPS.

When I reached the projects the lights of the auditorium located in the community center was ablaze. Outside the center a sign announced the reason:

COMMUNITY MEETING WHERE ARE OUR CHILDREN?

speakers discussions committees

symposiums Kool-Aid & lemonade

I stood in the back of the auditorium. M/Neighbor was speaking to the audience from a lectern which stood on the stage.

“Folks, Nosetrouble be back directly from his gotiating with SAM — but in the meantime how about a few frank pranks?” He began to slap his thighs and fuss with his trousers as he performed a mean hambone.

“Aw man, quit shuking,” said one man, raising himself from a cot in the middle of the auditorium. “We’ve been waiting here for two weeks now and the kat hasn’t come back and all you do is throw a whole lot of empty lemonade at people. Now if he doesn’t come back soon we’re going to take things into our own hands.”

“Have patience, my friends,” M/Neighbor said. “I tell you what I’m going to do. How would you like to meet a real live ghost? A man who spooked Rutherford Birchard Hayes’s biography and is gung ho about the lawd.”

“Awwwwwwww ain’t that commendable,” said some of the ol sisters. The water pitcher rattled as the first poltergeist to integrate Cornpone University walked toward the lectern. But having no time for a matinee I ran down the aisle and jumped to the platform, wresting the microphone from his hand.

Never one good at diplomacy, I blurted, “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, SAM’S EATING YOUR CHILDREN.” The audience gasped. “I mean, I mean …” (thinking of how brutal the language was), “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, SAM HAS A RARE DELICACY YOU OUGHT TO KNOW ABOUT.”

“Man, what are you talking about? Babbling like that,” M/Neighbor said. “You’re supposed to be dead. Look at what this says,” he said, removing a ny tooth from his pocket.

ACTOR MEETS QUEER DEATH IN BLACK BAY

NOSETROUBLE STILL NEGOTIATIN’ MISSING CHILDREN

WORLD-WIDE YAM RIOTS BREAK LOOSE

MARINES SENT TO LATIN AMERICA, ASIA AND MOST OF AFRICA POPE ABDICATES

“Lies,” I said. “Nosetrouble is not negotiating anything! And I’m alive and kicking,” I said as a fish jumped from my pocket and flipped about the stage until it died.

“Now I suppose you’re going to tell us you swam the Black Bay?” M/Neighbor taunted.

“Not only that,” I said, “NOSETROUBLE IS UP IN THE JOHN DOING THIS.” I screamed, raising my fist to my lips and making squishing sounds.

“Aw man, you’re just trying to get publicity for your show,” M/Neighbor said. “Prove it.”

“I’LL PROVE IT!” I said, yanking the sheet from the ghost who blushed and put his hands over his privates. His pubic hairs were shaped into a Smith Brothers’ beard giving him away to the audience who began chasing him and M/Neighbor off the stage.

“COME OUTSIDE,” I shouted to the audience.

We reached the outside of the auditorium just as the merry-go-round was kinda slipping and easing away from the curb.

“STOP THE MERRY-GO-ROUND! STOP IT!” I shouted.

The women ran and plopped themselves into its path. I leaped to the platform and unscrewed the head of an evil smirking steel droll and placed the infant on the sheet. In another compartment, I found a tape recorder.

ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE!!!

The man helped me as I tried to open the door of the truck’s cab. The door was locked. Someone came from the rear of the crowd with a blowtorch. We melted the door open and climbed inside to find an abandoned steering wheel.

Surely the thing didn’t drive itself, I thought. I sat on the leather seats as the statue of HARRY SAM in the project park fell with a thunderous THWACK.

Above my head I heard a light scratching sound. I turned around. Behind me were two doors belonging to a cabinet used to store tools and other gear for the merry-go-round. On the front of the door was a pinup picture of Betty Grable. I opened the door while two men stood on each side of the truck. Inside the cabinet, crouching, looking like the cat who had swallowed the canary — grinning and waving at us — was none other than Elijah Raven.

“What are you doing up there, Elijah?” I asked.

“‘Trickin’, Charlie,” was the terse reply. “You see, I drive this truck for SAM. Doing a little moonlightin’. Little does he know that I’m collecting box tops from his cereal right under his nose so that when the revolution comes we can pull a Quaker Oats gambit on the kats. Popping from guns, so to speak. Get it, hee, hee, popping from guns.”