Ishmael Reed - Flight to Canada

“So you’ve just about ended this heathenism, eh, Cato? Their ethnicity.”

“That I’ve done, suh. It was mighty helpful of you and Barracuda to end all them cults and superstitions and require that all the people follow only the Jesus cult. That make them work harder for you, Boss. The women especially be thrilled with the Jesus cult. They don’t ask no questions any more. They’s accepted their lot. Them other cults, Massa … there was too many of them. Horn cults, animal cults, ghost cults, tree cults, staff cults, serpent cults — everything they see they make a spurious cult out of it. Some of them kinks is worshipping the train, boss. They know the time when each train pass by on the railroad tracks. Leechfield even had a cassarette, Massa Swille.”

“A what?”

“One of them things you talk into, and your voice come back. Boss, even with my liberal education, it looked like magic. I was skeered. But I didn’t show it.”

“Oh, you mean a cassette.”

“That’s the one; it sure is the one, Massa Swille. The nigger was having runners going from village to village carrying messages refutin me and my Biblical arguments. I found them cassarettes and throwed them into the river, Massa. He was just confusin everybody. I’m glad that old Leechfield is gone.”

“Good, son. I mean—”

They freeze and stare at each other.

“Oh, figuratively, Cato. Only figuratively. I call all my sbleezers son. Now, Cato, I’m giving you new responsibilities. First, I want you to send in the Nebraska Tracers. Try to reason with them. Honey them with saccharin and seduce them through flowery, intelligent proposals.”

“Yessir, Massa Swille. Yessir. It sound like an exciting prospect.”

“And if they don’t go for that, I want you to permit the bloodhounds to sniff Xerox copies of that poem. The way you find a fugitive, remember, is to go all the way back and work your way up to him. That poem has trapped him once and it’ll trap him again. Now you go to it, Cato.”

“Yessir.”

“Hustle, Cato, hustle.”

“Yessir.” His arms thrown out in front, his heels kicking his behind, Cato rushes out of the door and knocks over Uncle Robin, who’s been listening through the keyhole; the glasses of Scotch he has placed on the tray tumble to the floor, spilling on Cato’s white shoes. Cato’s monocle drops to his chest. “Now look what you did, old splay-nosed rascal,” he says angrily.

“I’m sorry, Mister Cato, but I thought maybe you and Massa Swille would like some ’freshments.”

“ ’Freshments, ’freshments. When are you going to learn? Refreshments. How are we goin to gain acceptance if we don’t show that we know Dr. Johnson and them.”

“There’s some spot remover in the kitchen, Mr. Cato.”

“Oh, all right. And don’t get smart, either, just because Harriet Beecher Stowe came down and taped you. Ha! Ha! She didn’t even use your interview. Used Tom over at the Legree plantation. What did she give you?”

“She just gave me a flat-out fee. I bought a pig, a dog and a goose with it.”

“Ha! Ha! Eeeee. Ha! Ha!” Cato stands in the hall and slaps his head. “One of the best sellers of all time and you only received pig money. You are stupid, just like they say, you black infidel.”

“Yessir, Mr. Cato.”

Cato, whistling, skips down the hall toward the kitchen. Uncle Robin stares after him. A stare that could draw out the dust in a brick.

ABOUT A MILE FROM the Great Castle are the Frederick Douglass Houses. This is where all the Uncles and Aunties who work in the Great Castle live. Inside a penthouse, in one of the bedrooms, Uncle Robin and Aunt Judy lie under the covers of a giant waterbed, watching TV. It is twelve o’clock midnight. Their children, whose freedom they’ve bought with their toil, are “Free Negroes” who live in New York. They send their parents money and write them letters about the good life up North. Robin and Judy know about the North from the conversations they’ve heard at the Swille table from visitors. They know that the arriving immigrants are molesting the Free Negroes in the Northern cities. They know that Harriet Beecher Stowe characterized the worst slave traders as being Vermonters. They know a thing or two and are proud of their children. Even though their children chastise them about their “old ways” and call them Uncles and Aunts and refer to themselves as 1900’s people. There is a bottle of champagne on the dresser. Robin and Judy are sipping from glasses. A panel of newsmen is discussing the Emancipation of the slaves.

Uncle Robin sighs. “Well, I guess Lincoln went on and crossed Swille. Swille was downstairs calling Texas when I got off duty a half-hour ago. I knew that Lincoln was a player. Man, he was outmaneuvering Swille like a snake. Me and him winked at each other from time to time. Ugliest man you want to see. Look like Alley Oop. When Swille brought out the Old Crow, Lincoln’s eyes lit up. You suppose it’s true what that Southern lady said about Lincoln being in the White House drunk for six hours at a time? I understand that Grant is a lush, too; what’s wrong with these white people?”

Aunt Judy’s thigh rubbed against his. Their shoulders touched. She took a sip of champagne. “You should see Ms. Swille. She drinks like a fish. Won’t eat. Look like a broomstick. I went into the room the other day and look like Mammy Barracuda had a half nelson on the woman. They stopped doing whatever they were doing, and I played like nothing was unusual. Then, later on in the day, Barracuda came into the kitchen, and we turned off the radio because we were listening to Mr. Lincoln’s address, but she caught us. She asked us did we know what Emancipation meant, and we sort of giggled and she did too. Then Barracuda showed us the Bible where it say ‘He that knoweth his master’s will and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.’ ”

“I never read it, but I figured something like that was in it.”

“She said that we were property and that we should give no thoughts to running away. She say she’d heard that 40s, Quickskill and Leechfield were having a hard time of it and that Quickskill had gone crazy and was imagining that he was in Canada. She said that she always knew Quickskill was crazy. As for Canada, she said they skin niggers up there and makes lampshades and soap dishes out of them, and it’s more barbarous in Toronto than darkest Africa, a place where we come from and for that reason should pray hard every night for the Godliness of a man like Swille to deliver us from such a place.”

“What’s wrong with that woman? Seem like the older she get, the sillier she get. In the old times people used to get wiser the older they get. Now it’s all backwards. Everything is backwards.”

“She treats that Bangalang like a dog. Whips her. Today for dropping a cake. Sure is a lot of whipping going on up there. They whips people when they ain’t even done nothing. They had a party the other night — the gentlemen from the Magnolia Baths, and they was whipping on each other too.”

“It’s the war, Judy. Making everybody nervous. As soon as old man Swille heard about the Emancipation you should’ve seen him. That cigar bout jumped out his face. He started cussing and stamping his foot. He called Washington, but they gave him the runaround. The boys in the telegraph office called him Arthur and made indignant proposals to him, so he say. Them Yankees are a mess. Well, the Planters have been driving up to the Castle all day now. Those Planters are up to no good.”

The bottom of her foot moved across the top of one of his. The top of his right thigh was resting on her hip. He was talking low, in her ear.

“Rub my neck a little, hon.”