Ishmael Reed: The Terrible Threes

“I’ve noticed that too. Nobody likes Krantz, anyway. He has almost as many enemies as you, I mean … I.”

“Don’t give it a second thought, Hatch. I know that I have enemies in the capital, but this town was worse than Sodom and Gomorrah before I came to town. Licentious parties attended by the press and politicians, womanizing and manizing, every possible sin that you can think of was being committed in broad daylight. Now the Marines are rounding up people and sending them to Sunday School. The Conversion Bill — when my court declares it constitutional — will drive the infidels out of the country. They will have to convert to Christianity or leave. I made the Congressmen give up their hideaways where they used to go and meet their dates, so they’re mad. The Washington hostesses are mad because neither I, nor my cabinet, attend their parties. The Redskins hate me because I forbid government employees from attending football, a sport which I’m convinced has pagan roots. Lucy Artemis is mad at me because I put all of the soothsayers out of town, cutting in on her multimillion-dollar business. The Shriners are mad because I caught them squirreling away funds from the crippled children’s fund; the Ms. America contest is mad because I insisted that the contestants abandon cosmetic surgery, and Coca Cola is mad because I revealed that Classic Coke wasn’t on the up and up. Goddamnit, if anybody bumped me off everybody in town would have a motive, but they can’t get me, as hard as they try, they can’t get me. I don’t smoke, don’t drink, and unlike the competition, I know how to keep my britches up. Do you think that I’m going to let them get me like they did Nixon and Reagan? He betrayed us worst of all. Cozying up to the Russians in 1987 and 1988 just because his wife wanted him to get the Nobel Peace Prize. You saw what happened to them after they left Washington, didn’t you? Snubbed by California country-club Republicans. Ridiculed by their former supporters: car dealers and owners of beer franchises. Why there were times when they couldn’t even go to their favorite Mexican restaurant without dining parties stalking out, refusing to even be seen in public with them. When one follows the ways of the Lord, Hatch, one becomes surrounded by agents of the Antichrist.” Hatch thought for a moment. He began letting it all sink in. Jones had a way of lubricating words so that they eased through your mind without the slightest snag. So that they were easy to take. Hatch fidgeted with the lapels of his pin-striped suit, as the preacher smiled at him. Both were wearing Barbie pinstripes. Some of the insiders were saying that the preacher was in a bad way, talking to people who weren’t in the room. An S.S. officer from whom he sought advice. Some were even saying that a mysterious Hollywood blowup was carrying out covert operations for him. But there was no sign of that this morning. The preacher had thought ahead.

“It’s a shame that such a blunder was made on the basis of faulty intelligence.”

“What do you mean, Reverend?”

“The Nigerians didn’t have the bomb. The men over at the C.I.A. thought that this Yoruban Operation they kept referring to in their overseas communications had something to do with a weapon. It didn’t. We’re still trying to figure out what it meant. The only problem is that when the surps find out that there was a plan to devastate Miami and New York, we’ll have a lot of explaining to do.” Jones leaned back in his chair. He looked at his watch and yawned. So the Admiral had the last laugh. His maid discovering the letter in a waste-basket. Good thing that Krantz destroyed the backup archives, he thought.

“I’d better get going, Reverend. I feel better now that I’ve talked to you.” Reverend Jones rose and shook the President’s hand. As Hatch left Reverend Jones, he turned and said, “I’m glad to be on your team, Reverend Jones.” Reverend Jones frowned. “The Lord’s team, Hatch. The Lord’s team.”

It was fifteen degrees below, and the windchill factor made it feel like thirty below (the American standard of living was a few points lower than that), and everywhere you looked in the nation’s cities, mobs were roaming, searching for food underneath garbage can lids and in charity soup lines, and in the homeless shelters, which had become an American way of life. In Washington, autos were stranded in shells of snow. Banks, airports, and schools were closed. So were the federal offices, but this didn’t deter the mourners, wrapped in overcoats, from attending the funeral of Rear Admiral Matthews, retired, a member of the four who ruled the Jesse Hatch White House. Their power had increased after former President Dean Clift, the ex-model, had been removed from office after the scandal known as the Terrible Twos.

Admiral Matthews was part of the invisible government that carried on the affairs of state after the Clift debacle, aided by Reverend Clement Jones, a faith healer and televangelist, Robert Krantz, the White House communications officer and ex-television producer, and a man known as the King of Beer, who during the Terrible Twos was involved in a dispute with Indians in Colorado over the rights to water, which the Indians claimed flowed from a sacred spring. The King of Beer had suddenly dropped out of sight, and the F.B.I. was still searching for him. Though Admiral Matthews provided the administration with a firm hand at the top, it was Krantz who carried out the orders. He was the one who spun and glided, stonewalled, and micromanaged. It was through his bland conniving that the Terrible Twos scandal had been, ultimately, shoved to the interior pages of the newspapers, and as the election approached pundits were saying that President Hatch would probably win by a landslide, his only possible rival being Dean Clift, who still commanded a small but dedicated following.

Reverend Jones, “spiritual leader” of the government, hated Admiral Matthews because the Admiral smoked cigarettes, didn’t go to church, and was married to a former chorus girl. Though he had brought Krantz into government, he envied the close relationship that Krantz had developed with Admiral Matthews. Admiral Matthews and Krantz had been like father and son, and to think it was he, Jones, who had rescued Krantz from certain death underneath the wheels of a fiery sports car, the incident that had brought millions more to Reverend Jones’s gospel hour. Reverend Jones could do what no other white preacher in America could do, and though his church had brought in millions, Jones shunned the lavish style of living embraced by his colleagues, and sometimes went about in the same polyester suit and drove a 1958 Studebaker through the streets of Washington. He seldom went home where his wife’s every need was being handled by a household staff and where she passed her days doing watercolors of the same landscape. The same tree. The same cloud. And the same flower garden. She had done hundreds of paintings of the same scene. The paintings filled the three bedrooms of the upstairs, the garages and the basements. Sometimes she would paint for three days, and go without food. It kept her busy, and the Reverend figured that it was good therapy.

At the Admiral’s funeral Jones sat next to the widow, but ignored her. His own wife sat on his other side, a shivering pile of fragile bones. Eagles and flags were omnipresent, including those belonging to the Marines. They began the services, slowly marching down the aisles, in front of the Admiral’s coffin. After the coffin was placed in front of the church, the pastor read the invocation. Because of the cold in the church, there was more than the usual amount of coughing. It sounded hollow in the huge church. Some hymns were sung. And then the pastor introduced Reverend Jones, who headed toward the lectern, as sturdy as a Volkswagen bug. The media personnel outnumbered the mourners, and Reverend Jones began to dab his face with a handkerchief, so hot were the lights, even in the cold church.