Ishmael Reed - The Last Days of Louisiana Red

“She seemed to be in a better mood when you told her the whole story. She will be in an even better disposition when she reaches New York and rushes to Minnie’s side.”

“Yes, that’s very good.”

There is a pause.

“Papa, what about interceding for Minnie?”

“How can I do that? You know how ill-tempered and cold-blooded the old Co. is. They wouldn’t listen to me.”

“But it seems to be the only route. I mean, after all, even you admitted that it isn’t the girl’s fault. You said others made her that way.”

“I’m not a sociologist, not a classicist. I’m just a trouble-shooter for a Board of Directors.”

“O Pop, you’re not all that cold as you make out to be. You have a soft spot in you. Go and get that girl away from Death. You can do it.”

Another pause.

“O, all right. I’ll give it a try.”

LaBas speeds away in a huff; Ms. Better Weather smiles, a triumphant, wetly luscious smile.

Blue Coal had very large and sensual red lips which had the appearance of having been waxed. He was wearing hardly anything, and his penis could be seen, big, its tip almost touching the floor. He wore eagle feathers and was covered with white clay. He liked to beat on hollow things and boasted of saving the Sun from darkness. He had a hideous lecherous grin which disgusted Papa LaBas, but LaBas was civil. It takes all kinds to make this Co., LaBas thought, and when you’re in this Business you need all the support you can obtain, since enemies are constantly testing you.

Every time LaBas would try to broach the subject of Minnie’s release, Blue Coal would talk about something else, or shove a huge basket of fruit LaBas’ way or some 1973 California wine. The other guests seemed so weary, so bored, but kept their peace as Blue Coal rattled on about pussy.… Pussy seemed the only thing to be on his mind.

One guest, a young gentleman though mature-looking, impeccably dressed in a white tuxedo, hair shampooed, parted down the middle and giving off a lustre, was smoking a small cigar. He seemed a little bloodied but appeared relaxed, serene even, as if he had gotten something off his chest that had been bugging him for many years.

There was a burgundy-colored sky in this place. The winds sounded like the risqué clarinet trills of the old Cab Calloway band. The pervasive mist changed colors as if directed by a wizard lighter.… Maybe someone who had been in charge of lighting in a golden age of theatre.

LaBas sat through the ceremony in which a woman was seduced by some hooded figures, male and female; she had a delicate body and LaBas could see certain sections of this wonderful torso twitching with delight as if the body were inhabited by thousands of erotic creatures with a life of their own. He saw the clowns. He ate some more food. He drank some more wine. Some of the guests went to sleep, but Blue Coal was enjoying his own show, clapping the loudest of them all, yelling $$$$

Then they got down to serious business. In contrast to his former mood of merriment, Blue Coal began to snort and grimace as he heard one of his assistants, a short droll figure, read Minnie’s crimes.

How everything had to be her way. How she burned down the factory’s wings. How she promoted a shoot-out between two brothers — her own brothers.

LaBas tried to defend her, but the Blue Coal merely shook his head, his teeth full of pieces of meat from a hambone, wine flowing down his chin, while a woman on her knees was giving him pleasure, skillfully placing his peter in and out of her mouth, massaging it. LaBas turned away.

It wasn’t long before LaBas had requested his top hat from a short-skirted devilish woman with purple eyelids.

He walked out of this place he had come to petition. The Co. was effective, but Blue Coal wasn’t really his type. Blue Coal was intransigent; Minnie couldn’t be released. He would return to Berkeley and ease out Solid Gumbo Works. There were a few remaining details to attend to.

“Poor Minnie,” LaBas said as he was about to enter the crossroads dividing two worlds. She was certainly in the hands of a primitive crew. They would eat her heart out.

Suddenly LaBas heard someone call behind him. It was Minnie.

He turned around just as Blue Coal threw her out. He kicked her hard in the backside, and she landed on earth; he certainly was no gentleman. He wiped his hands and then walked back inside, but not before addressing LaBas:

“Take her. I don’t want her here. This ain’t her type of scene. I mean, she don’t seem like she like it here. She don’t seem like she think we good enough for her,” Blue Coal said in his graveled cracked 7,000,000-year-old Be-bop voice. “She wants to devote all the time. This ain’t no devoting society — this is a partying Board of Directors.”

She got up and started towards him. She was beautiful in the bright red light. The star music played in the background. You won’t believe this but it was harp music, too. She moved as if on air, in slow motion. She headed straight towards LaBas and cuddled up to his chest. There was nothing underneath her nightgown and the warm youthful flesh stirred the old man. “It was like a world of endless blackness.”

“I know,” LaBas said, putting his coat about her. She began to sob. LaBas had won her an out.

At the same time two doctors were somberly talking outside Minnie’s room at a New York City hospital. They were shaking their heads.

1st. Dr.: I don’t know what happened. She was in that coma until a minute ago after every treatment failed, and then suddenly she came to, her vital signs strong and healthy.

2nd. Dr.: A miracle. That’s what it was, a miracle.

Sister had just turned the corner of the hospital corridor where she had come to visit her dying sister. She ran into Minnie’s room to find Minnie up and about. The sisters embraced.

A wanga bag confiscated by marines in 1921 near Gonaives was supposedly a murder wanga , and its contents were rather peculiar. It was a hide bag, and in it were luck stones, snake bones, lizard jaws, squirrel teeth, bat bones, frog bones, black hen feathers and bones, black lamb’s wool, dove hearts, mole skins, images of wax and clay, candy made of brown sugar mixed with liver, mud, sulphur, salt, alum, and vegetable poisons.

Voodoo by Jacques d’Argent

It was the placid ending of a long case. No graves opening, releasing the dead to quake before damnation; no eleventh-hour shoot-out between the militants and the cops; no burning cars at the bottom of the cliff or chasing each other at high speeds pursuing good guys closing the gap; no trumpets in the heavens and groans in the deep.

Just the calm ending of a story with violent twists and turns, banging garden doors and knobs on the bedroom door turning mysteriously after midnight. They used to call LaBas and his Workers ghost chasers, but now they had become so respectable that the government was awarding contracts to investigate E.S.P.

LaBas sat in the empty office on a plain box. The physical properties of Solid Gumbo Works had been shipped east for recycling. He thought of the eaters and the eaten of this parable on Gumbo: poor Nanny Lisa murdered because she wouldn’t buck a nefarious Corporation; Maxwell Kasavubu driven mad by his own cover; Big Sally put in the police wagon for making sorry deals with the small business administration (piker to her soul she took cheap); T Feeler killed by the phantom of his own conscience he rejected in the name of “consciousness.” And Rev. Rookie. Well, Rev. Rookie was replaced by a moog synthesizer. The Kasavubus, Sallys, Feelers and Rookies are among all “oppressed people” who often, like Tod Browning “Freaks,” have their own boot on their own neck. They exist to give the La-Bases, Wolfs and Sisters of these groups the business, so as to prevent them from taking care of Business, Occupation, Work. They are the moochers who cooperate with their “oppression,” for they have the mentality of the prey who thinks his destruction at the fangs of the killer is the natural order of things and colludes with his own death. The Workers exist to tell the “prey” that they were meant to bring down killers three times their size, using the old morality as their guide: Voodoo, Confucianism, the ancient Egyptian inner duties, using the technique of camouflage, independent camouflages like the leopard shark, ruler of the seas for five million years. Doc John, “the black Cagliostro,” rises again over the American scene. The Workers conjure and command the spirit of Doc John to walk the land.