Ishmael Reed: The Free-Lance Pallbearers

UH O, I thought. You’ve made a blimp of a blooper this time, Bukka Doopeyduk.

The M/Neighbor explained. “We had a child dat disappeared around three years ago.”

“Didn’t you have the Screws look into the matter?”

“Yes, dey searched. But dey couldn’t find hide nor hair of him.”

The women returned. F/Neighbor, red-eyed and stunned. Fannie Mae assisted her into the chair.

“I’m sorry, F/Neighbor. I wasn’t aware of your loss,” I said.

“Dat’s all right, Mr. Doopeyduk. I should have gotten over it by now. By the way, Mr. Doopeyduk,” F/Neighbor asked, “does that name come out da Bible?”

“No, my mother won it in a lottery.”

They all laughed and I was pleased that my quip had helped to glide over an unpleasant and embarrassing incident. Afterward we played whist. I couldn’t get the missing child out of my mind. I looked out over the M/Neighbor’s shoulder toward the island across the bay. The helicopters dipped and rose above the roof. Again the snow. The stillness. The four letters, EATS.

I came home one day, walking dejectedly, grumbling. I had been demoted from the shock room. I had placed a tongue blade into a banker’s mouth carelessly and he had nearly strangled to death. He was a powerful and influential man in HARRY SAM who had been picked up by the Screws for enticing sailors and was placed on the psychiatric floor to avoid publicity. His psychiatrist had witnessed the mishap and had reprimanded me before the nurses. They cut my salary and placed me in a ward with the violent patients. My job was to clean the wastes which hung from the walls in gobs and change the catatonic patients. I was in a miserable mood when I arrived at the apartment.

Fannie Mae was entertaining Georgia who sat in a chair smoking a cigarette butt and swinging her legs. When she saw me, she nodded disinterestedly and continued smacking her gum.

“Georgia and her husband are goin’ to move into da projects building next to ours,” Fannie Mae announced.

I nodded at the girl, who smiled mischievously, then picked up a comic book lying on the coffee table. I stepped over the comic books which were strewn about the house and walked into the bathroom. The house was filthy. The dishes filled the sink, clogging it so that I expected some pulsating thing to reach out and assimilate me into the decayed eggs, meat and vegetables. The place stank of food. The refrigerator contained provisions crawling with bacteria.

“Dear,” I said, “why don’t you at least try to keep the house in a sanitary condition?” I pleaded. “It looks like a pigsty.”

“Don’t start no mess,” she replied, looking at Georgia for support.

Blood rushed to my head. I gritted my teeth and threw a glass against the wall. The women ignored this, continuing to read the books and chatting with each other.

“Why don’t you get up off your big funkey sometime and pick up a mop? I break my ass emptying shit at the hospital and you lay around here all day, half-dressed, watching ‘The Edge of Night,’ ‘Search for Tomorrow’ and ‘The Guiding Light.’”

“Look, my man. Nobody told you to get that job. At the Harry Sam Ear Muffle Factory they makes good money.”

“Why don’t you get a job and help me, tramp? Plenty of women work nowadays. What’s so special about you? ’Round here lying on the floor reading comic books like some empty half-wit.”

The picture of Nancy Spellman dressed like a little red Kewpie doll swung around on the wall and crashed to the floor below. Nancy was the Chief Nazarene Bishop. Poor Nancy, I thought.

“See what you made me do, bitch! Nancy Spellman fell off the wall.”

“I’m sick of dem sweetback-looking white mens on my wall anyway.”

Georgia Nosetrouble snickered behind the comic book.

Fannie Mae got up from the sofa, and hands on hips, feet spread apart, spoke hot fire.

“DERE’S PLENTY OF KONKALINED PORKPIE BEANIES ’ROUND HERE WHO THINK I LOOK VEWY VEWY GREAT. YOU START SOME MESS AND I’LL SLASH YOUR CLOTHES AND THROW THE FURNITURE OUT OF THE WINDOW. What’s wrong wit dese mens today, Georgia?”

“Don’t ask me, Fannie Mae. Must be some bug going around.”

“What you got to do with it, Georgia? What are you doing moving in here anyway? You jamming this ho.”

Rising to get her wrap, Georgia pouted, squinted her eyes and threatened me.

“Looka heah, Doopeyduk, whatever yo name is. I am not yo wife. Fuk with me and I’ll really give you something to complain about.”

Nancy’s portrait was damaged beyond recognition. All that remained were the puckered lips, the twinkly eyes.

Fannie Mae lurched for the door.

“Don’t go, Georgia. He jess showin’ out fo company.” She followed the girl into the hall. When she came back into the apartment, she laced into me.

“Now I guess you satisfied. She wasn’t botherin’ you, but you had to show yo ass. Dippyduk goofy mother-grabber!” And then grumbling, she went hissing into the bedroom, slamming drawers and after an hour in the bathroom profuse with whucking faucets and the opening and shutting of cabinets, she came out heavily made up. She whisked past me and stalked into the hall tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for the elevator to come up.

“What time do you intend to come back?” I asked submissively.

“Nighttime! And if you try to follow me, I’ll get a jeep full of dem Screws with turkey muskets after you.”

I went all out. Through my whole crying-the-blues repertory, even pulling a few new tricks out of the hat. Like—

“Fannie Mae, Fannie Mae, please don’t go, sugar, ’cause iffin you leave me, I’ll have bread done on one side, ’cause the toaster broke down, I’ll cry a fistful of clock hands over you, and walk the third rail, boo hoo boo hoo. What I gonna do? Consult the hoodoo man. Woe is me.”

But my words slap-dashed against the elevator door and slid down to the floor. My baby had done gone. The little children who had given the Nazarene apprentice the hassle were standing next to the elevator door. I stood there in my orderly uniform with the black stripe down the side of the pants. The kids broke up, rolling about the floor and laughing.

I went back inside and saw that my fly had been open during the entire episode. Embarrassed, I walked to the window just as the moon peeped over the summit of Sam’s Island. Fannie Mae and Georgia were hightailing it toward the lights from the jooks which surrounded the projects. I drunk some likker and got my head bad. At three o’clock in the morning there came a tap-dap-rapping at my door. A tit-tat-klooking at my hollow door.

“Who is dat rap-a-dap-tapping at my do’ this time of night? What-cha wont?”

“Have you seen some children playing in this vicinity?” asked the lean woman dressed in black. She shivered, clutching the top of her housecoat.

“No, I haven’t,” I lied, hoping that they’d been swallowed by the incinerator or some equally grisly fate had befallen them.

Mr. and Mrs. Nosetrouble moved into the projects shortly after that night. At last the Harry Sam Projects were integrated. Mr. Nosetrouble was white and the statue of HARRY SAM winked slyly from one stony eye. The moving van pulled up and dumped the basket chairs, bound and musty pamphlets, fish tanks, flags, short-wave radios, plants, chickadees, espresso machines, Band-Aids. Tumbling out behind these were stacks upon stacks of foreign language newspapers, and a fine little case. When the men started to throw this black leather case upon the rest of the items, Georgia’s husband had a fit.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Where you goin’ wit that case? Have a little respect, fellas. The nose inside that case belong to none other than L. Trotsky who in a speech before the cemetery at Prague said ‘Blimp Blank Palooka Dookey,’ and standing in a threadbare coat, shaking his fist in the rain for hours, said ‘Blank Palooka Dookey Blimp’ and who on more than one occasion warned the ruling circles ‘Dookey Palooka Blank Blimp.’”