Ishmael Reed: The Free-Lance Pallbearers

I live in HARRY SAM. HARRY SAM is something else. A big not-to-be-believed out-of-sight, sometimes referred to as O-BOP-SHE-BANG or KLANG-A-LANG-A-DING-DONG. SAM has not been seen since the day thirty years ago when he disappeared into the John with a weird ravaging illness.

The John is located within an immense motel which stands on Sam’s Island just off HARRY SAM.

A self-made Pole and former used-car salesman, SAM’s father was busted for injecting hypos into the underbellies of bantam roosters. The ol man rigged many an underground cockfight.

SAM’s mother was a low-down, filthy hobo infected with hoof-and-mouth disease. A five-o’clock-shadowed junkie who died of diphtheria and an overdose of pheno-barb. Laid out dead in an abandoned alley in thirty-degree-below snow. An evil lean snake with blue, blue lips and white tonsils. Dead as a doornail she died, mean and hard; cussing out her connection until the last yellow flame wisped from her wretched mouth.

But SAM’s mother taught him everything he knows.

“Looka heah, SAM,” his mother said before they lifted her into the basket and pulled the sheet over her empty pupils. “It’s a cruel, cruel world and you gots to be swift. Your father is a big fat stupid kabalsa who is doin’ one to five in Sing Sing for foolin’ around with them blasted chickens. That is definitely not what’s happening. If it hadn’t been for those little pills, I would have gone out of my rat mind a long time ago. I have paid a lot of dues, son, and now I’m gonna pop off. But before I croak, I want to give you a little advice.

“Always be at the top of the heap. If you can’t whup um with your fists, keek um. If you can’t keek um, butt um. If you can’t butt um, bite um and if you can’t bite um, then gum the mothafukas to death. And one more thing, son,” this purple-tongued gypsy said, taking a last swig of sterno and wiping her lips with a ragged sleeve. “Think twice before you speak ’cause the graveyard is full of peoples what talks too much.”

SAM never forgot the advice of this woman whose face looked like five miles of unpaved road. He became top dog in the Harry Sam Motel and master of HIMSELF which he sees through binoculars each day across the bay. Visitors to his sprawling motel whisper of long twisting corridors and passageways descending to the very bowels of the earth.

High-pitched screams and cries going up-tempo are heard in the night. Going on until the wee wee hours of the morning when everything is OUT-OF-SIGHT. Going on until dirty-oranged dawn when the bootlegged roosters crow. Helicopters spin above the motel like clattering bugs as they inspect the constant stream of limousines moving to and fro, moving on up to the top of the mountain and discharging judges, generals, the Chiefs of Screws, and Nazarene Bishops. (The Nazarene Bishops are a bunch of drop-dead egalitarians crying into their billfolds, “We must love one another or die.”)

These luminaries are followed by muscle-bound and swaggering attendants carrying hand-shaped bottles of colognes, mouthwash and enema solutions — hooded men with slits for eyes moving their shoulders in a seesaw fashion as they carry trays and towels and boxes of pink tissues — evil-smelling bodyguards who stagger and sway behind the celebrated waddle of penguins in their evening clothes.

At the foot of this anfractuous path which leads to the summit of Sam’s Island lies the incredible Black Bay. Couched in the embankment are four statues of RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD HAYES. White papers, busted microphones and other wastes leak from the lips of this bearded bedrock and end up in the bay fouling it so that no swimmer has ever emerged from its waters alive. Beneath the surface of this dreadful pool is a subterranean side show replete with freakish fish, clutchy and extrasensory plants. (And believe you me, dem plants is hongry. Eat anything dey kin wrap dey stems around!!)

On the banks of HARRY SAM is a park. There the old men ball their fists and say paradoxes. They blow their noses with flags and kiss dead newsreels. Legend has it that when the fateful swimmer makes it from Sam’s Island to HARRY SAM, these same old men will sneeze, swoop up their skiffles and rickety sticks, then lickety-split to rooms of widow executioners in black sneakers. It is at this time that the Free-Lance Pallbearers will take SAM.

I stood outside my dean’s office at the Harry Sam College. I had flunked just about everything and had decided to call it quits and marry a chick I’d been shackin’ up with for a few years. I would provide for her from earnings received from working at a hospital as an orderly and where I had been promoted frequently. (“Make-um-shit Doopeyduk,” the admiring orderlies had nicknamed me.) U 2Polyglot, the dean, had been very nice to me so that I couldn’t conceive of leaving the hallowed halls of Harry Sam without saying good-bye to him. Just as I opened the door to his office, a sharp object struck me in dead center of the forehead. It was a paper airplane which received its doom at the tip of my toes.

“O, forgive me,” U 2said. “Are you hurt? Have a Bromo Seltzer,” the dumpy redheaded man in clumsy tweeds and thick glasses fizzed.

“It’s all right, U 2Polyglot. I just stopped by to tell you that I was leaving school.”

“Leaving school? Why how can that be, Bukka?” (My name is Bukka Doopeyduk.) “You’re one of the best Nazarene apprentices here. Why, you’re on your way to becoming the first bacteriological warfare expert of the colored race.”

“I know that and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me but I am flunking just about everything and plus I’m kinda restless. I want to get married and see what’s out in the world. Got to go, Polyglot.”

“Well, on the other hand, maybe dropping out and tuning in will turn you on, Bukka. Who knows? But whatever you decide, I wish you a lot of luck and I’m sure that we’ll be running into each other from time to time.”

U 2and I shook hands and I left him to a paper he was preparing for an English literary quarterly, entitled: “The Egyptian Dung Beetle in Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis.’” He had dropped to his knees and begun to push a light ball of excrement about the room by the tip of his nose. He wanted to add an element of experience to his paper. You know, give it a little zip.

That night I called Fannie Mae’s home to find out if she had made the final preparations for the wedding which would take place in the parish office of Rev. Eclair Porkchop, head of the Church of the Holy Mouth. A shrill tales-of-the-crypt voice answered the phone.

“May I speak to Fannie Mae?”