Ishmael Reed - Flight to Canada

“So what you bothering me for?”

“Don’t you think we all ought to try to stop them?”

“Look, man”—he pulled out a wad of bills—“I sent the money to Swille. I bought myself with the money with which I sell myself. If anybody is going to buy and sell me, it’s going to be me.”

“That doesn’t make any difference to him. I don’t think he really wants us to pay for ourselves. I think he wants us. He thinks by sending the Tracers after us we’ll be dumb enough to return, voluntarily; he thinks that a couple of white faces with papers will scare us. Why should I have to tell you all of this? You of all people. You were their hero. They egged you on when you took your stolen hens, went into business. At that time they didn’t want us Mints anywhere near the business. You worked one right under their eyes. Man, Stray, you were our greased lightning, our telegraph wire, our wing-heeled Legba, warning the woodsmen and the rootmen about Barracuda and Cato’s plan to replace all of the cults with one. You were the last warrior against the Jesus cult. And when they caught up with you, how extravagant your departure was. How glorious. And now, here you are with this Leer; I don’t trust Russians. How can you—”

“Aw, man, Mel’s all right. Look, I just want to be left alone. I’m not no hero, I just have bravado.” That’s what Mel said: Bravado, striking a flamboyant pose. “See, Quickskill, the difference between you and me is that you sneak, while I don’t. You were the first one to hat, but you did it in a sneaky way. What kind of way was that, we thought. Just like a house slave. Tipping away. Following a white man and his wife onto the boat with a trunk on your shoulder, and when the guard ax you where you going, you say you with them. You house slaves were always tipping around, holding your shoes in your hands, trying not to disturb anybody. Well, Leer has done more for me than any of you niggers. Any of you. Always rooting for somebody, and when you do it, say we did it. I got tired of doing it. ‘We did it’ wasn’t paying my rent. ‘We did it’ wasn’t buying my corn, molasses and biscuits. Where was ‘we did it’ when I was doing without, huh? When I was broke and hungry. So I decided to do something that only I could do, so that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. What I’m doing is something ‘we did it’ can’t do, unless we did it one at a time. You follow? Besides, I sent Swille a check. Look, Quickskill, money is what makes them go. Economics. He’s got the money he paid for me, and so that satisfy him. Economics.”

“Hey, Leechfield, we have some more shooting to do,” Leer says, peeking through the door.

“Look, man, if you want to buy yourself, here’s the money. You can pay me back.”

“But it’s not that simple, Leechfield. We’re not property. Why should we pay for ourselves? We were kidnapped.”

“Yeah, you may think so. But this is a white man’s country. It never occurred to you because you thought that since you were working in the Castle …” He started to return to the room; he was combing his hair. “Hey, look, Quickskill, come by the pad sometime. Don’t stay away.” He closed the door on Quickskill.

QUICKSKILL WALKED THE STREETS. He kept seeing license plates with VIRGINIA on them; they seemed to be following him. He put his collar up around his neck. He put his hands in his pocket. He kept walking against the shop windows, sliding around the corners. He was a fugitive. He was what you’d call a spare fugitive instead of a busy fugitive: he didn’t have the hundreds of wigs, the make-up, the quick changes busy fugitives had to go through; he was a fugitive, but there was no way he could disguise himself.

That’s it, he thought, snapping his fingers—40s would know what to do. 40s lived in a houseboat down near the river.

When he climbed onto the old rusty houseboat, it was dark. He went to the door and knocked.

“Who’s there?”

40s opened the door on Quickskill. He had a shotgun aimed at him.

“Aw, 40s, put it away. We’re not in Virginia no more.”

40s spat. “That’s what you think. Shit. Virginia everywhere. Virginia outside. You might be Virginia.”

All the same he put the shotgun down and took Quickskill inside. “You ought to get your own home instead of watching them for peoples. I got my home. Nothing like having your own home. Don’t have to take care nobody’s plants and they cats or forward they mail.”

“How can a ‘fuge’ have his own home, 40s? Why, I’d be a sitting duck. Swille’s claimants and catchers could find me any time they wished.”

“I got something for them. This rifle. You and Leechfield have nothing but dreams. Your Canada. His ‘show business.’ You writing poems. Leechfield with that Jew …”

“Listen, I’ll have none of that.”

“He is, though. He is a Jew. He call me a Mint, why come I can’t call him a Jew? He call me a Mint, don’t he?”

“But—”

“Don’t he! He call me a Mint, and a black man suppose that’s what I don’t want to call myself. Huh! Suppose I don’t.”

“You sound like a Nativist.”

“The Nativists got good ideas. So do the Know-Nothings. I’d join them if they let me. Matter fact, let me show you.”

He pulled out a hand-spun crude-looking medallion. It was mixed up with symbols that couldn’t possibly go together. Strange letters. What ragged band of Bedlamites could this be? “The Order of the Star-Spangled Banner.” The “S” was backwards and the “Spangled” spelled with an extra “g.”

“They right. Immigrants comin over here. Raggedy Micks, Dagos and things. Jews. The Pope is behind it. The Pope finance Ellis Island. That’s why it’s an island. Have you ever noticed the Catholic thing about islands? The Pope and them be in them places plottin. They gettin ready to kill Lincoln so’s they can rule America.”

With this he pulled out some filthy saddle-stitched rag printed on paper, which looked like the kind of paper towels they have in the men’s room at the Greyhound Bus Station in Chicago. It had the same symbols he had on his old nasty medallion, which germ-infested thing he stuck back into his pocket. The Know-Nothing Intelligencer it was named.

“Why, that’s outrageous,” Quickskill said. “What fevered brain could have thought that up?”

“Okay, you watch it. Lincoln is courtin destiny. Look how he went into Richmond like that. Got to be a fool. Going to Richmond before Jeff Davis was fresh out of his chair. It say Lincoln sat in his chair … sat in Jefferson Davis’ chair, mind you, with a ‘serious dreamy look’ it say here. Now what kind a fool is that? He is tempting the reaper.”

“Listen, ah, 40s, I have to go. I just wanted you to know that Swille knows where we are.”

“You come all the way down here to tell me that? Come here.” He takes Quickskill to the window. “Look up there.” He points to the mountains above the river. “I can hide up there for twenty years and don’t have to worry. If you got caught, you wouldn’t know what to do. Spent too many years in the Castle. I seed you. Sittin at the piano, turning the pages for the white man, admiring his tune. His eyes highbrow. Yours highbrow. Look like twins. If you had to go to the woods, you wouldn’t know what to eat and how to find your way around. You’d eat some mushrooms and die or walk into a bear trap and crush your leg or the elements would get you. No, you let Swille send his dogs, both the four-legged and the two-legged ones. You the one’s going to have to hide. I’m already hidin. You don’t see me, you don’t know me. I’m hidin myself from you right now.”

“I … I can’t understand you guys. You, Leechfield, irrational, bitter. You still see me as a Castle black, some kind of abstraction. If we don’t pull together, we are lost.”