Ishmael Reed: The Free-Lance Pallbearers

“Dey gone, dey gone,” she was saying. “Dey jess vanished in thin air.”

I scowled at the gathering and rushed past the amusement truck toward the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Nose-trouble. Nosetrouble answered the door.

“Have you seen Fannie Mae?”

“They went outta here ’bout three hours ago. Said they were going to a movie. Why don’t you come on in and wait, Mr. Doopeyduk? You can be one of the first to be in on my grand strategy for gettin’ the goods on SAM.”

He was having trouble with his wife Georgia who would lie about the house all day in a hefty mess when she wasn’t with Fannie Mae. She would tell him to kiss her behind whenever he’d want dinner or his clothes laundered. Sometimes she would return home after a three-day spree and Nosetrouble would get ill and threaten to hang himself. I dozed off while he recited his grand strategy, and when I awoke he too had fallen asleep, curled up in one of the basket chairs and coddling a Leadbelly album. Our slumber was disturbed by quick giggling coming from behind the door. I opened it and was greeted by Mrs. Nosetrouble and my wife. Their dresses were rumpled. Their breaths stank of strong drink.

“Where’s the fuken grocery money, bitch?” I asked Fannie Mae. “You were supposed to buy: two pounds of neck bones, marked-down day-old bread, a can of beans, four cartons of beer, a bottle of milk, a bunch of greens, a can of Spam, a pound of rice, coffee, a pound of hog maws — with what I gave you.”

Georgia walked past me and into the living room where her husband sat fuming.

“Where did you get the money to go drinking with Fannie Mae?” he asked her.

“I pawned that tiny black case you’re always playin’ wif.”

He caught her with an uppercut which sent her flying against the bookcase, spilling pamphlets and documents to the floor. She bellowed like an animal whose paw has just been crushed by a fire truck. Nosetrouble stood triumphantly over his wife.

“If you have spent that grocery money, I will kick the livin’ shit out of you!” I continued to Fannie Mae.

Fannie Mae stepped back from me a few paces. “You lay a hand on me, I’ll see to it that your behind is shoved under the mothafukin’ jail.”

Nosetrouble dropped to his knees and embraced Georgia. He told her how much he loved her and said that he had lost his temper and that I had prompted him to take drastic action which was totally out of keeping with his character.

I started to maul the kat but my hands were full. Fannie Mae bolted for the elevator door, slamming the door of the Nosetroubles’ apartment in my face.

In the hall I waited for the elevator to rise again. From the apartment I could hear effusive squeaks and groans. Finally I reached the bottom floor and ran across the projects grounds, my arms swinging from side to side in front of me.

I emerged from the building just as Fannie Mae shut the door to our apartment. With strength that surprised me, I tore the door from its hinges and slammed it to the floor of the hall.

“What’s come over you, man! You lost yo mind or something?”

I walked toward Fannie Mae, forcing her against the wall, and tried to sink my claws into her throat.

“This will be the last time you spend my hard-earned money on Screen Gems magazines and liquor,” I growled.

She pried herself loose from my grasp and ran into the hall.

“HELP/LAWDY/JESUS/MOSES/ELIJAH/DANIEL/MERCY/MAMMA/DADDY/HELP ME! DA MAN DONE GONE APESHIT!”

M/and F/Neighbor’s eyes appeared through the peephole of their apartment. Once outside, she yelled up to me at the window.

“I’m goin’ over to my father’s house. You as looney as dey come. Don’t try to follow me neither.”

“Here’s a gift for your grandmother,” I snarled, throwing a broom out of the window which landed at her feet.

That night a phone call from the Grand Exalted Ruler of the Elks Ret. Himself.

“Uh, O. You done gone and did it now, Doopeyduk. You ’sturbed my daughter so with yo conniptions dat she got upset and nearly slipped into the oven. She is suffering from burns and shock and had to be took to the Harry Sam Hospital. If you ever upset my daughter again, I’m gone send my clean-jawed and bald assassins after you. Dey don’t eat pork as you know and dey make their wives wear dresses whose hems reach their ankles. So dey is in good condition.” (Click!)

I walked to the window of my apartment. The full moon. I marveled.

I wore my cap over my eyes and gloves to conceal my claws. I reached the hospital where my mother and father were sitting in the lobby. My mother had enough chinchillas on her to weigh down a whole garment pusher’s detail. My father wore a Petrocelli suit and toyed with his hat.

“We tried to raise you right, Bukka. But you never know how dey’s going to turn out, as Mrs. Nosetrouble just said up in Fannie Mae’s room.”

I was reticent “Could you tell me where the room is?”

“It’s over there, but Bukka, we just gone have to pray for you. By the way,” she continued, “Fannie Mae told me a while back you got a raise of five dollars at the hospital. Least you could do is turn me and your daddy on to a few dollars a week to help us add that garage to the new house we just bought to rent out.”

“I was demoted, so I can’t help you out.”

“I knew he’d never amount to anything,” she said to my father as I walked toward the entrance of the ward where the indigent patients were placed. Nurses’ aides were putting bundles of soiled sheets into dumbwaiters. Some women in flimsy robes held together by safety pins were walking slowly down the aisle holding their groins. Nurses were carrying cups with pills to beds which were emitting rough guttural sounds.

Fannie Mae lay in the middle of the room with dark circles under her eyes. Tubes protruded from her body as if she had taken root. A bottle hung next to her bed where she fed intravenously. Her face was sallow and cheeks sunken.

The nurse said, “Don’t stay too long. She has been delirious and is under heavy sedation but I think she will recognize you.”

Fannie Mae batted her eyes then looked up at me. “HELP! HELP! HE GONE VISCERATE ME. HE-”

“Calm down,” I said. “I just wanted to apologize for disturbing you so.”

“Well, Grandmama said dat da hoodoo had been put on you ’cause you were a loser and a creep and nothing would ever come of you. She told me I should leave you.”

My mouth quivered as I started to speak. The orderlies and nurses’ aides stopped and moved in closer to the bed. Their arms folded, their ears cupped. The lab people dumped ol people off carts and left women’s breasts hanging before the X-ray machines. Patients were left with scissors in their wounds as surgeons moved into the room and closed in about the bed. One man who was about to be declared dead got up and came into the room arm in arm with his priest. Crowds of people were perched atop carts, sitting in window sills, jostling and maneuvering for a better view. There was silence when I spoke.

“I apologize for frightening you. I lost my head. I have not been keeping abreast of my Nazarene studies.” I stopped and put a paw in my mouth. My voice was sounding like the growling of an animal.

She lifted her head and said, “Did you bring cigarettes, chump? After all, we lay in dese beds in our own mess, rats leap into da nightstands, and down below some of da po’ patients are moved into some room and come back wif dey legs all cut off, even though they was only in here for da whoopin’ cough. You have to ring da bell for hours jess to get a drink of water. We need a smoke or we will go crazy.”

“Filter tip or plain?” I asked in a deep croaking voice.

The crowds of people fell from their positions in laughter. Men doubled up on the floor and howled. I charged through the crowd and my cap fell off. Women in the halls screamed, as I swung over the staircase and into the street. There were air-drill alerts, people running.