Ishmael Reed - The Last Days of Louisiana Red

The Christians looked the other way from their maverick minister in San Francisco; after all, he was packing them in, wasn’t he? Why, Rev. Rookie would get up in his mojo jumpsuit and just carry on so. He employed $100,000 worth of audio-visual equipment with which to “project” himself, plus a rhumba band (he couldn’t preach); it was the tackiest Jesus you’d ever want to see. Rev. Rookie wasn’t no fool, though. He had won a place for himself in the Moocher high command along with Maxwell Kasavubu, the Lit. teacher from New York; Cinnamon Easterhood, hi-yellow editor of the Moocher Monthly , their official magazine; and Big Sally, the poverty worker. The crisis meeting was being held to see what was to be done with Papa LaBas, the interloper from the east.

Big Sally arrived first. Big old thing. Though her 300 ESL Mercedes was parked outside, Big Sally insisted upon her “oppression” to all that would listen. She had a top job in the 1960s version of the Freedmen’s Bureau, which was somewhat surprising since the poor had never seen Big Sally. Never heard of her either. Although she was always “addressing myself to the community,” she spent an awful lot of time in Sausalito, a millionaires’ resort. A Ph.D. in Black English, her image of herself was as “just one of the people”; “just me” or “plain prole.” Big Sally took off her maxi coat which made her look like a Russian general and then slid onto one of the barstools and continued her knitting; she was always knitting.

“WELL, HOW YOU, SALLY? WHAT’S THE NEW THANG? WHAT’S WITH THE HAPPENINGS?” Big Sally looked at Rev. Rookie as if to say “poot.”

“I guess I’ll get by.”

Rev. Rookie knew better than to scream on Big Sally. She had a habit of screaming on you back. She’d rank you no matter where you were; in the middle of the street, usually, telling all the traffic your business.

The next Moocher to show up was curly-haired grey Maxwell Kasavubu. Trench coat, brown cordovans, icy look of New York angst. He slowly removed his trench coat and put it on the rack; he smiled at Big Sally.

“Hi, Rev., Sally.” Rev. Rookie lit all up; Sally blushed and fluttered her eyebrows.

Rev. Rookie rushed over to one of his church’s biggest contributors, slobbering all over the man.

“HEY, BABY, WHAT’S GOING ON?” he said, placing a hand on Max’s shoulder. Max stared coldly at his hand, and, meekly, Rev. Rookie removed it.

Sally continued knitting. Rev. Rookie paced up and down behind the bar. Max sat for a moment, contemplatively inhaling from his pipe, occasionally winking at Big Sally. Soon Max rose and went over to read some of Rev. Rookie’s literature which was lying on the bar top: Ramparts and The Rolling Stone . Max stared at them contemptuously for a moment, then slammed them down.

“WOULD YOU BROTHERS AND SISTERS LIKE TO HEAR SOME LEON BIBBS?” Rev. Rookie asked.

Big Sally made a sound like spitsch , lifted her head and stared evilly, stopping her knitting, staring disgustedly at Rev. Rookie for a long time.

“I don’t feel like hearing no music now,” she said.

The door opened and in walked Cinnamon Easterhood, hi-yellow editor of the Moocher Monthly . He walked in all tense and hi-strung in a nehru suit, clutching a wooden handbag which the men were wearing or carrying these days. He looked so nervous and slight that if you said boo, he’d blow away. Accompanying him was Rusty, his dust-bowl woman of euro descent, wearing old raggedy dirty blue jeans, no bra and no shoes. She immediately got all up in Sally’s face.

Big Sally showed the whites of her eyes for a real long time. “Uhmp,” she said. “Uhmp. Uhmp.”

“Sally, lord, you sure is a mess,” Cinnamon Easterhood’s wife said, looking like the history of stale apple pie diners, confidante to every Big-Rig on the New York State freeway.

“HEY, PEOPLE. I FEEL GREAT NOW. ALL MY PEOPLE ARE HERE. WHY DON’T WE LIGHT THE FIREPLACE AND ROAST SOME MARSHMALLOWS? MY UKULELE AND PETE SEEGER RECORDS ARE OUT IN THE VW.” Ignored. And here he was the chairman of the Moochers, second only to Minnie herself.

Cinnamon was over in the corner, congratulating Maxwell Kasavubu on his startling thesis, now being circulated in literary and political circles, that Richard Wright’s Bigger Thomas wasn’t executed at all but had been smuggled out of prison at the 11th hour and would soon return. Cinnamon was doing most of the talking, saying that he thought the idea was “absolutely brilliant,” or “incredibly fantastic.”

Max examined his watch.

“Well, I guess it’s about time we began the meeting,” he said in his obnoxious know-it-all New York accent. As usual Max talked first.

“I’ve been thinking about our problem and think I can put some input into the discussion. After Ed was murdered, we thought it would take people’s minds off gumbo and renew the interest in Moochism, but this hasn’t been the case. The community’s infatuation with cults and superstition should have run its course by now. But now we have this LaBas. A name that isn’t even French and so you can see how pretentious he is.”

“It’s patois.” Big Sally, expert on Black English, put in her input.

“What say, Sally?” Max said, smiling indulgently.

“I said it’s patois.”

“Well, whatever, the man has presented us with some problems.”

“ Spitsch! ”

“Did you want to say something, Big Sally?” Max said, mistaking this sound for comment.

“Nothin, Max. ’Cept to say that I concur with your conclusions. Things was moving nicely till this LaBas man come in here, but it seems to me that we ought not be sitting here talking bout our problems but bout our conclusions, I mean about our solutions.”

“TELL IT, SISTER. TELL IT,” Rev. Rookie hollered all loud.

“Our solutions is an inescapable part of our problems, and they are one in the part the woof and warf of what we’re going to be about. Now, are we going to be about our problems or are we going to be about solutions?”

Hi-yellow, pimply-faced and epicene, rose to speak.

“But—”

“I ain’t through. Now, I ain’t through. Let me finish what I’m saying and then you can have your turn to talk, cause ain’t no use of all us talking at one time, and so you just sit there and let me finish.”

Maxwell signaled him to sit down.

“When it comes your time, then you can have the floor, but long as I’m having the floor I think everybody ought to treat me with the courtesy to hear out my views, cause if you going to dispute my views you have to hear me out first—”

“But I was only being practical,” Easterhood protested.

“Practical? You was only being practical? If you was only being practical, then look like the first practical thing you would want to do would be to hush your practical mouth so I can talk.”

Easterhood’s wife was just beaming at all that good old downhome rusticness coming her way. She just leaned back and said, “Sally, lawd. Sister, you sho can come on.”

“Takes Sally to just cut through all the bullshit and get right down to the nitty gritty,” Maxwell said.

“TELL IT LIKE IT T/I/S/MAMA,” Rev. Rookie said.

“That’s mo like it. Now, as I was saying, we don’t have to worry about this LaBas man, and was going on to say that what we need is somebody to replace that hi-yellow heffer,” Big Sally said, her eyes rolling about her head.

Easterhood smiled a good-natured Moocher smile but secretly wanted to crawl on his belly out of the room. He didn’t mind all this downhomeness, but, shit, he had an M.A.

“Hi-Yellow Heffer?” Max asked. “What’s with this hi-yellow?”

“THE SISTER IS CALLING SOMEBODY A COW,” Rev. Rookie explained to Maxwell Kasavubu.