Ishmael Reed: Flight to Canada

“Sure, sure, Lincoln, I know. You’ll decide what’s best. I know that the war is even-steven right now, and this gold will help out. I’ll take a chance on your little Union. The nerve of that guy Lee. I’m going to take back that necklace I gave Mrs. Jefferson Davis. Why, they can’t do that to me. Just for that …” Swille goes to his safe, removes some bags of gold and places them on his desk. “That ought to do it, Mr. President, and if you’re in need of some more, I’ll open up Fort Knox and all that you guys wheelbarrow out in an hour you can have.”

“Why, thank you, Mr. Swille. You’re a patriotic man. But all of this gold, really, I …”

“Take it. Take it. A long-term loan, Lincoln. I’ll fix these Confederates. That Lee. Sits on his horse as if he was Caesar or somebody.”

“The Confederates are innocent, Mr. Swille. The other day one of them was tipping his hat and curtsying, and one of my snipers plugged him. And in the Chattanooga campaign, Grant tells me that once he was ascending Lookout Mountain and the Confederate soldiers saluted him. ‘Salute to the Commanding General,’ they were saying.”

The men share a chuckle on this one.

“My generals may look like bums, with their blouses unbuttoned and their excessive drinking and their general ragged appearances, but they know how to fight. Why, that Grant gets sick at the sight of the blood and gets mad when you bring up even the subject of war, and he’s never read a military treatise — but he can fight. His only notion of warfare is, ‘Go where the enemy is and beat hell out of him.’ Crude though it may sound, it seems to work.”

“You know, Mr. President, I’m beginning to like you. Here, have a Havana. I have three homes there. Ought to come down some time, Mr. President, play some golf, do some sailing on my yacht. Get away from the Capitol.”

“Well, I don’t know, Mr. Swille. I’d better not leave town with a war going on and all.”

“Where did they get the idea that you were some kind of brooding mystic, tragic and gaunt, a Midwest Messiah with hollow cheeks? I was saying to myself, ‘How can a smart corporation lawyer like this Lincoln be so way-out.’ ”

“I keep my mouth shut, Mr. Swille. And when I can’t think quick enough I walk over to the window, put my fingers into my lapels, throw my head back and gaze toward the Washington Monument, assuming a somber, grave and sulfurous countenance. It impresses them, and the myths fly.”

“You know, Mr. Lincoln, I wish you’d do something about that fugitive-slave law you promised to enforce during the campaign. There are three of my cocoas at large. I’d like to bring them back here. Teach them a lesson for running away. They’re giving the rest of the cocoas around here ideas. They’re always caucusing, not admitting any of my white slaves or the white staff — they pass codes to one another, and some of them have taken to writing.

“They’re in contact, so it seems, with slaves in the rest of the country, through some kind of intricate grapevine, so Cato my graffado tells me. Sometimes he gets blackened-up with them so’s they won’t know who he’s working for. He’s slow but faithful. So faithful that he volunteered for slavery, and so dedicated he is to slavery, the slaves voted him all-Slavery. Sent him to General Howard’s Civilizing School. You should have heard my son, who was an authority on sables. He said they’re so trusting and kindhearted. I sent him to the Congo to check for some possible energy resources, though he told them he was looking for the source of the Nile. They’re so trusting.

“He was majoring in some kind of thing called anthropology in one of those experimental colleges. You know the young. First I wanted him to go to Yale, like me. Then I saw that the little stinker had an angle. What a cover. Anthropologists. We used to send priests, but they were too obvious.”

“You must be very proud of him, Mr. Swille.”

“He was doing well until … until these Congo savages captured him and … and … well.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, was he …?”

“You might say that he was killed. But, Mr. President, we all have our trials. An unpleasant subject. A smart one he was, like your Todd. Very inquisitive. It’s upon my son’s advice that I don’t permit any of the employees to use the telephone. I permit Uncle Robin to use it because he’s such a simple creature he wouldn’t have the thought powers for using it deviously. He’s been in the house for so long that he’s lost his thirst for pagan ways and is as good a gentleman as you or me.”

Lincoln nods, approvingly.

“Why, thank you, Cap’n Swille.”

“Don’t mention it, Robin. I don’t know what I’d do without you. He brings me two gallons of slave women’s milk each morning. It keeps me going. He travels all over the South in an airplane, buying supplies for the estate. He’s become quite a bargainer and knows about all of the sales …

“Of course, I still buy the … well, the help. Just got back from Ryan’s Mart in Charleston with a boy named Pompey. Does the work of ten niggers. I got him working in the house here. He doesn’t say much but is really fast. The boy can serve dinner before it’s cooked, beats himself getting up in the morning so that when he goes to the bathroom to shave he has to push his shadow out of the way, and zips about the house like a toy train. I’m really proud of this bargain. Why, on his days off he stands outside of the door, protecting me, like a piece of wood. He can stand there for hours without even blinking an eye. Says he would die if something happens to me. Isn’t that right, Uncle Robin? Though he’s asp-tongued and speaks in this nasal tone, Pompey is a saint. He doesn’t come down to the races, nor does he Camptown; doesn’t smoke, drink, cuss or wench, stays up in his room when he’s not working, probably contemplating the Scriptures. They don’t make them like that any more, Mr. Lincoln. I have a shrewd eye for good property, don’t you think, Abe?”

“Well, Mr. Swille, if you’ve read my campaign literature, you’d know that my position is very clear. What a man does with his property is his business. Of course, I can’t help but agree with one of my distinguished predecessors, George Washington, who said, ‘There are numbers who would rather facilitate the escape of slaves than apprehend them as runaways.’ That law is hard to enforce, Mr. Swille.”

Swille rises. “Look, Lincoln, one of them kinks, 40s, wiped me out when he left here. That venerable mahogany took all my guns, slaughtered my livestock and shot the overseer right between the eyes. And the worst betrayal of all was Raven Quickskill, my trusted bookkeeper. Fooled around with my books, so that every time I’d buy a new slave he’d destroy the invoices and I’d have no record of purchase; he was also writing passes and forging freedom papers. We gave him Literacy, the most powerful thing in the pre-technological pre-post-rational age — and what does he do with it? Uses it like that old Voodoo — that old stuff the slaves mumble about. Fetishism and grisly rites, only he doesn’t need anything but a pen he had shaped out of cock feathers and chicken claws. Oh, they are bad sables, Mr. Lincoln. They are bad, bad sables. Not one of them with the charm and good breeding of Ms. Phyllis Wheatly, who wrote a poem for the beloved founder of this country, George Washington.” He begins to recite with feeling:

“Thy ev’ry action let the Goddess guide.

A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,

With gold unfading, Washington! We thine.

“And then that glistening rust-black Stray Leechfield. We saw him as nothing but a low-down molasses-slurper and a mutton thief, but do you know what he did? He was stealing chickens — methodically, not like the old days when they’d steal one or two and try to duck the BBs. He had taken so many over a period of time that he was over in the other county, big as you please, dressed up like a gentleman, smoking a seegar and driving a carriage which featured factory climate-control air conditioning, vinyl top, AM/FM stereo radio, full leather interior, power-lock doors, six-way power seat, power windows, white-wall wheels, door-edge guards, bumper impact strips, rear defroster and soft-ray glass.