Ishmael Reed: The Terrible Threes

“But, Bro Lobster, how can Nick and Peter, who are opposites, be the same?” the turtle asked. But the lobster wasn’t saying.

The sun was the color of the lobster’s coat. The palm trees began to sway. A dog barked in the distance. Soon it was dark, and the lobster, mosquito, and turtle relaxed, staring up at a ship, in the distance, moving across the ocean of sky. They wondered what its destination was. And then the sky was filled with shattered lights as the fireworks began, and the cannons began to be fired as Shango’s music, the 1812 Overture, was coming to an end.

As Clift’s caravan of black cars headed through the gates of the sanatorium toward the highway that would take them into the nation’s capital, the well-wishers cheered; Clift waved to them as they lined the road leading to the highway. There was only one dissenter, and he was from the D’Roaches, those who believed that cockroaches would make an appropriate food supply after a nuclear war, and he held aloft the symbol of the D’Roaches, the computer-generated image of the androgynous Leonardo Da Vinci. John was in the second car, seated next to Jack Marshall, the car’s driver; the press and Secret Service agents were driving behind. Clift had gained about fifteen pounds and his hair was greyer. He had lost the face that had graced the cover of thousands of fashion magazines. He had spent the three years reading, something he hadn’t had time for since he began his career in modeling. He was also able to invite some of the nation’s writers, scholars, intellectuals, workers, and students to visit him during his “rest,” as the Hatch administration called his virtual imprisonment. He had read avidly of the world’s literature: from Africa, Asia, India, Afro-America, and he had also talked to many of the contemporary authors and intellectuals from around the world. His speech would quote from the world’s literature as well as from the Bible, which, in his view, had been exploited by televangelists and fundamentalists over the years. He could imagine Christ, armed as he was when he chased the moneylenders from the temple, flogging the TV evangelists until they fled their pulpits. Jones invoked the sinister side of the scriptures, while in his speech Clift had decided that he would quote the sections about the poor and about peace.

He didn’t know whether he’d want to live in the White House. Maybe it was time to build something that didn’t look like a set from Gone with the Wind . He’d worked on his speech all night. A speech setting the tone for the Clift administration — the unfinished administration that had been aborted when he’d gone on television and announced that St. Nick had revealed to him the off-the-shelf operation: the Terrible Twos, but now everybody in Washington believed him. Thanks to the Admiral’s letter, and Nola Payne, James Way, and a score of Congressmen.

The passengers in the black limousine rode in silence, as the procession rolled through the Maryland winter toward Washington.

Suddenly, the motorcycle escort which preceded Clift’s car stopped. There was a black Winnebago up ahead. It was blocking the road. One of the policemen waved his hand at the driver, a signal for the van to move. Shots were fired from the Winnebago.

Weary of waiting in the cold, the marching bands had left hours before. The huge disappointed crowds that had been gathered in a cold and rainy downtown Washington to greet Dean Clift and his party had also dispersed. They had spent hours rubbing and blowing into their hands for warmth. The workmen were dismantling the platforms upon which Dean Clift, flanked by those Congressmen who were not members of the New Christian majority, was to make his first speech since the Supreme Court declared his ouster from office under the disability amendment unconstitutional. The bulletin had been carried by the networks that evening, announcing that Clift’s motorcade had vanished on its way to Washington. John was sitting in his chair. He was so depressed that he couldn’t finish his Xmas meal. The TV news crew that came to record his eyewitness to the disappearance of Dean Clift and his party had packed up and left. His nephew was sitting across from him. His nephew was in fifth grade, and earning all A’s. He had grown accustomed to his artificial limb, and was a merry young lad with bushy hair and long, strong arms. He had baby eyes like Jesse Jackson.

“Can I get you something?” Esther asked. Jane was in the kitchen, preparing the Xmas meal. Esther shook her head slowly. Both of them wore black glossy wigs over their grey hair, and between the pensions their husbands left and their White House salaries, they eked by.

“John, it wasn’t your fault that the President disappeared,” Esther said.

“But only if I had sat in the front car with him, it never would have happened.”

“Uncle John, this fight is bigger than you. President Clift has some powerful people mad at him. We studied it in current affairs at school. People didn’t want him to return to Washington,” his grandson said. He reminded him of his mother, John’s daughter, who had been killed in a car crash. Had her nose, and his son-in-law’s mouth. John hoped that he could stay alive until he was eighteen. He hoped he could live with his irregular heartbeat.

“I’ll bet that Reverend Jones had something to do with it,” John said.

Jane came into the kitchen and joined the conversation. “He ordered everybody to get his things packed, and I understand that they had a ticket for him on Piedmont Airlines, then after he spent some time with that crazy woman, what’s her name?”

“Lucy Artemis. She’s that woman that all of those Congressmen go to. Some kind of fortune-teller. She’s the one who said that America was going to be taken over by some kind of snake religion,” Esther said.

John usually looked forward to these Xmas dinners with Esther and Jane. They’d usually have a fine time discussing their days in the White House where Esther and Jane still worked. He had only picked at his food. That morning was supposed to have been the end of the Terribles. Dean Clift would arrive into the Capitol and pick up where he’d left off. That speech he had made during the Xmas of the Terrible Twos. The one that had raised the hopes of so many millions of people.

“I hear they were all in there laughing. That German soldier, Lucy Artemis, and others,” Jane said. “What do you mean, others?” John said. “And I thought that this German soldier, Heinrich, the one they were supposed to have brought back from Bitburg — I thought that he was a figment of Jones’s imagination.”

“We heard him. Jane saw him.” John turned to Jane.

“You’re making that up,” he said. Jane crossed herself.

“I swear fo’ God. It was late one night at the White House. I had to stay late because Ms. Hatch was hosting a dinner. Well, she was so full of Valium that she got the shakes. Started giggling and acting inappropriate and talking a lot. It took me a while to get her to bed, and I was about to leave when I saw this soldier, standing in the hall. I thought it was one of the guards, but then I saw the helmet and the man look like he didn’t have no black in his eyes, you know, look like his eyes were white, and he smelled real bad. He smell the way dead people smell. One of the drivers said that he had seen him too. Said it was that old Nazi, Heinrich, whose spirit Ronald Reagan, the man who used to be in the White House, brought back from some Nazi cemetery. Well, he didn’t actually bring him back, the man stowed away, or his spirit stowed away.” The wood was sending up sparks in the fireplace. Esther came in and poured glasses of whiskey all around. The grandchild was under the Xmas tree, playing with his toys.