Ishmael Reed - The Last Days of Louisiana Red

STREET: Don’t mind if I do. (Street takes a handful of colored pills and gulps them down. He gives the signal for the revelry to cease. A “rock” record is turned off.) You bitches over there, shut your asses. I just got some cans of films from the States from the Gimmie underground over there. Let’s all go into the projection room and see them. They’re about a Black superhero named “Dong.” He has it out with the mob and stays up all night playing cards. Plus, he is a real pool shark!

1ST. ARGIVIAN: Fantastic!

2ND. ARGIVIAN: What a groove. I mean zow, what a groove.

(They exit to the projection room. Street remains behind. He turns to see a man standing in the doorway. The man is wearing a pith helmet, safari outfit, elephant boots. He carries a lion tamer’s whip.)

“Who you?” Street said, eyeing Max Kasavubu suspiciously, stroking his chin and shutting one eye. “O yeah, I know. Yous the dude used to hang out with Minnie, my sister. You one of them Moochers, ain’t you?”

“I’m glad you recognize me, brother. It makes things easier.”

“Easier?” Street stepped down from the stairs leading to his throne, wrapping his superfly cape about his shoulders and making loud noises with his funkadelic boots.

“My task, Street. I have been authorized by the committee to offer you a proposal. In exchange you’ll be brought back to the States.”

“Well, you wastin your breath, buddy. I ain’t never going back there. Jiveass fascist Amerika. No good.”

“That’s why we need you, Street.”

“Need me for what?”

“Look, Street, don’t you understand that the place hasn’t been the same since you left? Folks really miss you. Remember how you used to come and beat up people at rallies? How you and your gang would come in and wipe us out? Obliterate our refreshments and run off with the liquor? People miss that. Now they say, where’s Street? There’s nobody to rip us off any more. Professors from Queens are writing papers on you. Missing you.”

“Writing papers on me? Why would they be writing papers on me? Why would they be spending their time writing papers on me and the boys?”

“Because, Street. In these times when things are so structured, so sterile, people need someone to remind them of the power of spontaneity, of uninhibited existential action. Bam! Street. Bam! Bam!”

“Huh?”

“Let me put it this way, Street. When you used to come into those parties in those high heels, those floppy three-musketeers’ hats, those earrings, Street. Those huge glowing earrings you wore and that headrag, Street! That headrag all greasy and nasty (said nastily). People would say, Now there goes someone who is just like a natural man. Then, that night, you came into that party with nothing but those gold chains on you, symbolizing … symbolizing the dreaded past, and that Isaac Hayes haircut. You remember what happened, Street?”

“The people bought it.”

“That’s right, Street, the people bought it.”

Street walked to his window on Africa. Victoria Falls was streaming down its wonders. Elephants roamed. In the distance he could see a gazelle leaping. Good old Africa. Good. Old. Africa. Who was this man tempting him so? Telling him the glory that awaited him back home. He could see it now. Five thousand in Golden Gate Park. Eight thousand in Sheeps’ Meadow. Clapping. Just a-clapping. Clapping real loud while he strolled about the stage in his great maxi coat made of condor feathers and his hat. Why, maybe he could save his peoples. That’s it. He would be the Moses of his peoples.

“Why, Street, I could see the headlines in the Chronicle right now. ‘On holy Mission — Street says.’ Well, what do you say, Bigger… I mean Street!”

“What about that incident in the club in Oakland? That man they said I killed when they tried to frame me.”

“Thirty-two witnesses said they saw you do it, Street.”

“I don’t care. They was probably informers working for the fascist Amerika. They framed me, that’s what happened.”

“Don’t worry about it, Street. We got some of our money to get you off. That murder doesn’t count anyway. Negroes kill each other every day, and after a few hours the murderer is back out on the street. In New York they are killing each other at a rate of eight negroes to one white.”

“Hey, ain’t my sister leading this Moocher thing anyway?”

“She talks over the people’s heads, Street,” Max said, now cooler, lighting a pipe. “She runs around Berkeley with these bodyguards she has for herself called the Dahomeyan Softball Team, a bunch of butches who split a man’s head open with a baseball bat. They go about ejecting men from the Moocher rallies mostly, losing recruits for us, diverting attention from our real foe: LaBas, industry, Business.”

“LaBas — who is that?”

“He’s the man your brother Wolf brought in after your father was killed, I’m sorry, I …”

“Skip it. He wan’t nothin anyway. Bourgeois sell-out and a punk, that’s what he was. A punk. A torn.”

“I didn’t know you were political, Street.”

“I wan’t then but I am now. When I was framed and sent to the slams, mysterious visitors brought me this book. And it was this book that turned me on. I brought the book over here and read it from page to page. The first book I ever finished.”

Maxwell Kasavubu examined Street: This lousy son of a bitch! Why do I admire him so? Why did I permit them to put this man in? I couldn’t tell them about my dreams, my dreams about him. Jungle drums. There I am tied up and wriggling on a post while these yelping nigger savages are jumping up and down. Mary Dalton, virginal and nude, is about to be… about to face a crime worse than death. And I am saying or trying to say, “Mary, I’ll save you,” but the words won’t come out. I am forced to watch them violate this beautiful young thing, sticking Burgers into her cavities while she almost faints from … she feels faint. And then this huge black gorilla they are calling Old Sam whips out his “Johnson,” as they say. And the drums, the drums pound across my sensibility, and I cry, “Mary, my Ivory Snow Mother, I’ll save you,” and they shout, “Old Sam,” the natives shout, “Old Sam” at this hideous grinning creature, the creature in a Bosch drawing, and then the slow rhythm builds into a rising crescendo as the head of his Johnson slides on into home … EEEEEEEEEEEE!

“What’s wrong, Max? I was going to tell you that I would take your proposal when you started staring off into space real weird.”

“An old war wound, Street. It comes and goes. I got it in the Pacific. World War II,” Max said, holding his helmet. “Just let me sit down, Street.”

“Sure, Max. Shall I get you a drink?”

“That’s fine, Street, sure.”

Street went to the liquor cabinet, walking through the muck track on the floor.

“Nice place you got here, Street. How long did the President give it to you for?”

Street was making a drink. White folks wonts to know all yo business. How much you pay for this, how much you paying for that, how are you getting by? Always checking niggers. Like slavery days. Nigger, let me see your pass. Where you going? Whose nigger is you? Well, if he wants to sponsor me and my boys back in the States, that’s fine with me. I don’t care if it is my own sister. Dumb ho. Dad gave her all the benefits he denied Wolf, Sister and me. Well, I’m a Moocher’s Moocher. We’ll see about this .

“O, he give it to me until I can get myself together, why?”

“Just asking, Street. We have a little ranch-styled number for you and your people we leased up on Grizzly Peak in Berkeley. I know you’ll like it. You can stay as long as you want.”