Ishmael Reed - Flight to Canada

The play’s audience was giving President Lincoln a standing ovation; his white wife, Mary Todd, stood next to him. They were beaming. He could see her eyes glistening. People in Emancipation liked her. A most unusual First Lady. She said what was on her mind, sometimes embarrassing her husband.

The audience was applauding wildly. Lincoln, a twinkle in his eyes, was waving back.

“It’s the President,” Quaw Quaw said. “That hick. I didn’t know he went in for culture. I read in The Realist that back in Illinois he operated a still. You should have heard the way my professors at Columbia talked about him. They made fun of his Corn Belt accent and that stupid stovepipe. They are so urbane. Many of them have published poems in The New Yorker.

“Yeah, they all read as if they were written in a summer home on Long Island, about three o’clock in the morning, with many things yet unpacked.”

She stood up, balling her fist. “Now, they’re wonderful writers. How dare you attack my sensibilities? This race talk all the time …”

“You’ll never change. Daughter of the West. Pocahontas rushing to place her body between the white man and the arrow intended for him. You and your Anglican Injuns.”

“I knew it would be savage out here. My teachers at Columbia said so. I plan to go back there. I miss the teas and hanging out in the bookstalls.”

“Camelot. Camelot West, Camelot East, Camelot South. One big fucking Camelot. With darkies and Injuns to set places, pour and serve at the Round Table. Playing on the lute and reciting verse, doing court dances. Do you know how your husband treats that swami he’s bought? He’s nothing but a houseboy. ‘Vill Mr. Jack need somring?’ ‘Is Mr. Jack’s footrest not high?’ He locks him in a closet, and told the dog trainer to sniff the swami’s clothes in case the swami got ideas. When the swami did manage to free himself and found a phone, he tried to get some poets to organize a benefit for him, only to discover that your husband, Yankee Jack, had warned them if they tried to help him, he’d cut off their grant money. He can’t even raise carfare to return to India, the poor chap. And that’s not all, there’s rumors going around what he’s done to you, I … I …”

“What rumors, Quickskill?”

“Oh, I … don’t want to say.”

“Quickskill, you generalize so.”

“Come on, Quaw Quaw, let’s stop arguing.” He grabbed her hand. He was pulling her toward the sofa. She was between him and the television set. He could hear from the stillness of the audience that Tom Tyler’s new play was about to begin.

She was resisting. “It’s been a long time, Raven. I have to get used to you again.”

Before he knew it he had a tiny nipple in his mouth. Her sweater was pulled up about her neck. It was a soft purring sweater made of lamb’s wool, a rose-colored sweater. She was wearing some kind of hip Bohemian college-women’s scent, Bonnard ’60. The kind of women who studied under teachers who scolded them for not being able to identify more than twenty-five spices, or not being able to walk right. They never walked splayfooted and bowlegged, with their necks lowered. It had a French name — posture.

DUN: Miss Florence, will you be kind enough to tell Miss Georgina all about that American relative of yours.

FLO: Oh, about my American cousin; certainly. (Aside to Harry) Let’s have some fun. Well, he’s about seventeen feet high.

DUN: Good gracious! Seventeen feet high!

FLO: They are all seventeen feet high in America, ain’t they, Mr. Vernon?

VER: Yes, that’s about the average height.

FLO: And they have long black hair that reaches down to their heels; they have dark copper-colored skin, and they fight with — What do they fight with, Mr. Vernon?

VER: Tomahawks and scalping knives.

FLO: Yes; and you’d better take care, Miss Georgina, or he’ll take his tomahawk and scalping knife and scalp you immediately.

He let his tongue linger there for a while, darting, taking long agonizing strokes, moving like a feather.

ASA: There was no soft soap.

DEB: Soft soap!

AUG: Soft soap!

VER: Soft soap!

MRS. M: Soft soap!

FLO: Soft soap!

GEO (on sofa): Soft soap!

DUN: Thoft Thoap?

ASA: Yes, soft soap. I reckon you know what that is. However, I struck a pump in the kitchen, slicked my hair down a little, gave my boots a lick of grease, and now I feel quite handsome; but I’m everlastingly dry.

FLO: You’ll find ale, wine and luncheon on the side table.

ASA: Wal, I don’t know as I’ve got any appetite. You see, comin along on the cars I worried down half a dozen ham sandwiches, eight or ten boiled eggs, two or three pumpkin pies and a strong of cold sausages — and — Wal, I guess I can hold on till dinnertime.

DUN: Did that illustrious exile eat all that? I wonder where he put it.

ASA: I’m as dry as a sap-tree in August.

Her head was lying back. Her black hair was hanging over the couch. His dick was hard and was trying to break out of his pants. He had removed that left white cup from over her breast mound, and now his fingers moved the other white cup up. And he slithered across her chest till he reached that one. Then he went to town, his free finger bringing down that zipper. “Oh, Quickskill,” she was saying. “Oh, Quickskiiiillll.” She’d draw it out. His finger moved underneath her short white panties, which were embroidered around the edges with lily designs. He dug that, the contrast. Those denims and those panties. The denims now down over her ankles.

She started breathing real hard; he was, too, and she helped relieve him by zipping down his pants and taking out his dick. She was moving the brown skin up and down with her hand. He was moving his finger into the vagina crescent. They started to move in a seesaw fashion. Then there was some hip-swiveling and bending backwards.

AUG: Oh, Mr. Trenchard, why did you not bring me one of those lovely Indian’s dresses of your boundless prairie?

MRS. M.: Yes, one of those dresses in which you hunt the buffalo.

AUG (extravagantly): Yes, in which you hunt the buffalo.

ASA (imitating): In which I hunt the buffalo. (Aside) Buffaloes down in Vermont. (Aloud) Wal, you see, them dresses are principally the nateral skin, tipped off with paint, and the Indians object to parting with them.

She got up and took her clothes off, threw them on a chair, removed the pins from her hair and let it down. He was trembling, removing his shoes. He was always trembling at this point. He would tie his shoelaces in knots, or he’d spend time trying to put his clothes in one place so that he wouldn’t be missing a sock or having his host find the wrong thing underneath his couch or caught under the seat of a chair.

FLO: What’s that, sir? Do you want to make me jealous?

ASA: Oh, no, you needn’t get your back up, you are the right sort too, but you must own you’re small potatoes, and few in a hill compared to a gal like that.

FLO: I’m what?

ASA: Small potatoes.

FLO: Will you be kind enough to translate that for me, for I don’t understand American yet.

ASA: Yes, I’ll put it in French for you, “ petites pommes de terre. ”

The lights went out. The television light was the only one in the room. It gave out a bluish haze.

ASA: Yes, about the ends they’re as black as a nigger’s in billing time, and near the roots they’re all speckled and streaked.

DUN (horror-struck): My whiskers speckled and streaked?

ASA (showing bottle): Now, this is a wonderful invention.

DUN: My hair dye. My dear sir.

ASA (squeezing his hand): How are you?