Ishmael Reed - Flight to Canada

DUN: Dear Mr. Trenchard.

He could see her round red back reflected in the television screen. He was holding on to her. They were moving up and down. She was holding him around the neck. What they must mean when they say “cleaving.” He clove. She clove. She was in his mind; he in hers.

ASA: Wal, I guess shooting with bows and arrows is just about like most things in life, all you’ve got to do is to keep the sun out of your eyes, look straight — pull strong — calculate the distance, and you’re sure to hit the mark in most things …

They were as complex as the hedges trimmed by the Royal Gardener of London. They were underneath in a subaqueous city. If the Devil had reared this city, then the Devil was better than God. That’s why God always maintained a dour expression and the Devil was grinning all the time. This primitive act made them behave like children, and they began to giggle and tease and play hide and seek. There was a lot of hiding and seeking and seeking and hiding. They reached the hilt and then …

ASA: … You sockdologizing old mantrap!

Screams.

“What’s the matter, Quickskill?” she whispered.

The cameras were focused upon the President’s box. Lincoln lay slumped to his left side, his arm dangling. The assassin must have been a Southerner, because he was dressed to kill. And before he hobbled off the stage he struck one of those old theatrical poses; his slicked hair gleaming, his weak spine curved, a hand to his chest, he yelled, “Sic semper Tyrannis” and “Revenge for the South.” Quickskill sat staring into the set; Quaw Quaw, aghast, her hand shielding her mouth, sitting next to him. Somebody from the party played around with the doorknob to the den, but then, realizing that it was locked, joined the commotion coming from the other room of this “Good Friday” party.

Quickskill recognized the famous actor who just a few weeks before had played Antony to the Cassius of Junius Brutus Booth and the Brutus of Edwin Booth, to “lavish applause of the audience mingled with the waving of handkerchiefs, and every mark of enthusiasm.”

Booth, America’s first Romantic Assassin. They replay the actual act, the derringer pointing through the curtains, the President leaning to one side, the First Lady standing, shocked, the Assassin leaping from the balcony, gracefully, beautifully, in slow motion. They promise to play it again on the Late News. When the cameras swing back to the balcony, Miss Laura Keene of Our American Cousin is at Lincoln’s side “live.” Her gown is spattered with brain tissue. A reporter has a microphone in Mary Todd’s face.

“Tell us, Mrs. Lincoln, how do you feel having just watched your husband’s brains blown out before your eyes?”

“Oh, turn it off,” Quaw Quaw says, holding her hands over her ears. “How can you watch that thing?”

They went out of the den. Back to the party. Some of the people who had often called Lincoln a “gorilla” and a “baboon” were now weeping in the arms of others. Some of the women were screaming. Others were huddled about a television set, watching the latest developments. He walked out of the party with Quaw Quaw.

As they drove toward Yankee Jack’s castle, people could be seen in the streets, weeping. Some were listening to their transistors. Crowds of people were standing on the corner, waiting for the papers. They reached her husband’s grounds, a huge gate with secret symbols carved on it. There was the wall surrounding it. Behind the gates he could see some of the Orientals sitting under trees, arms outstretched, eyes closed. Others were walking back and forth in monk’s robes in “meditation.” She got out of the car. Her eyes were red.

Before entering the gate, she paused and turned to Quickskill, who was sitting in his sedan. “When are you leaving for Canada, Quickskill?”

“As soon as the check arrives from Beulahland Review. That’ll pay for transportation. They set up a reading for me, too. The Anti-Slavery Society of Western New York. They said they could get someone with a yacht to take me across the Niagara River into Canada.”

“Take me with you, Raven! Please take me with you!”

“But—”

“This country is violent, just like my Columbia professors said. They said it had no salvation. They said they didn’t expect most of us to live out our lives in this cacophonous rat trap. Ezra Pound was right. ‘A half-savage country.’ That’s what it is, a half-savage country. Every time someone in E.P.’s circle spoke American he was fined a dollar.”

“He hardly ever spent time in this ‘half-savage country,’ ” Quickskill observed. “His mind was always someplace else. That was his problem, his mind was away somewhere in a feudal tower. Eliot, too. The Fisher King. That’s Arthurian. How can anybody capture the spirit of this ‘half-savage country’ if they don’t stay here? Poetry is knowing. When I wrote ‘Flight to Canada’ it was poetry, but it was poetry based upon something I knew. I don’t even see how you can call them Union poets. They hated America. Eliot hated St. Louis. How can someone hate St. Louis? How the fuck can someone hate St. Louis? I mean, W. C. Handy; the Jefferson Arc. They were Royalists.”

“Quickskill, let’s stop arguing. Take me with you to Canada. I won’t do the evening of Oceanic poetry with Captain Kidd. I’ll never perform on the stage again. Not here. This … this unholy savage ground. Assassins and mobs. Gong-banging. It’s a rowdy roundhouse. I need to be somewhere refined. Why, they speak French in Quebec. I’ll be like Blondin.”

“Who is this Blondin? Another avant-garde racket? You and your friends have turned the avant-garde into a racket.”

“Oh, you never care about what I’m interested in. My world. You’re never interested in that. All you talk about is slavery. Kansas, Nebraska, Dred Scott, Manumit. Dumb words like that. Manumit. The chain around your ankle; the cowhide on your back; the bloodhound teethmarks on your ass. I’m sick of it. You and your stupid slavery. You and your stupid slavery can go hang. Go to Canada. See if I care. I hope it’s a real bad bummer.”

He’d often forget how young she was. “Quaw Quaw …”

She was heading up the path toward the pirate’s castle and would not heed his call.

“Quaw Quaw.”

She kept walking, her buttocks moving from left to right, her hair on the sides of her face like hairy blinders. Her arms were folded. She was looking down.

“Quaw Quaw Tralaralara.”

She turned. She had her hands on her hips.

“Meet me at the dock tomorrow. The steamer leaves at ten.”

She jumped up and down like a schoolgirl playing volley ball. She turned around and ran up the path, her arms flying in front of her. Quickskill started up the motor. The car moved back down the mountain toward Emancipation’s center.

He said that he wouldn’t give any more, but when she put it that way, when she started pouting … He once called her an emotional anarchist bomb. She was a love terrorist. You didn’t know when she was going off. Maybe that’s why she was a dancer. He said he’d never give into her again, but when she started pouting and when she rolled those beautiful dark eyes at him, he gave and he gave and he gave and gave. Charm, the physicists say, is real.

Man is in the last stage of his evolution. Women will be here.

“… AND ALSO, ROBIN, DON’T forget to order a few more cartons of Crisco. We seem to be always running out.”

Uncle Robin is mounted on Swille’s personal beautifully gold-harnessed horse, Beauvoir, rumored to have sired both Lee’s horse Traveller and Davis’ Tartar. It was doing a fancy Spanish trot in place. Uncle Robin wears a silk top hat, riding jacket, white silk ascot, long black boots, and holds a whip which thickens out into a point like the end of a blacksnake’s tail.