Ishmael Reed: The Last Days of Louisiana Red

Brown: Which nigger, Fish?

Kingfish: That last nigger he kill that got him into San Quentin.

Brown: O yeah, that time. Yeah, that nigger said something about “Excuse me, isn’t that my seat?” all bushwa. Kekup .

Kingfish: (mimicking, gesturing) No, the nigger say, “Excuse me, that seat is reserved for me.” Next thing they know that nigger was on the ground holding his brains in. Kekup!

Brown: Kekup! Yeah, that was something. Look like chittlins comin out. Kekup!

Kingfish: (tears of laughter) Street told the nigger that we don’t believe in no reserved. We Moochers believe that niggers — all of them — is in the same boat.

Brown: They the same thing. There’s no such thing as privacy as you own thoughts, we is linked to each other and can’t break that linkage.

Brown: That Street was the real Royalty of the avenues of despair, as that newspaper man said. Sho wish we had him as the leader of the Moochers.

Kingfish: What’s wrong with Minnie?

Brown: Well, me and some of the boys been thinkin, Kingfish. Since Minnie is heading it up, them gals be around her has become bodacious. Them girls talk to a man any way they want to talk to him. Them Dahomeyan Softball Team that be riding around on them meter-maid scooters. Look like they go out of the way to ticket us poor colored men, and Kingfish, the fellas afraid to go to meeting any more. That big ol one?

Kingfish: The one they call Eunice, the Reichsführer?

Brown: Yeah, that’s the one. Well, she put some kind of Dragon Foo See on one of the boys.

Kingfish: Dragon Foo See?

Brown: Some kind of new thing them chinamen invented where the woman go all the way up in the air and come down choppin away and what’s worse of all …

Kingfish: What’s the worse, Brown?

Brown: Well, why is a grown woman like that needs to have a Nanny always chaperoning her. Some of the fellows are saying that that woman Nanny is dealing Minnie more than pancakes.

Kingfish: Why… you…

(Kingfish and Brown stand up and begin to wrestle. On their feet, Brown’s derby comes off while Kingfish has him by the neck. They fall against the bar, causing the pitchers to fall and break.)

Elder: Hey! What’s going on here?

(The bartender comes from behind the bar and grabs both of them, rushing them to the outside of the bar.)

LaBas was sitting in his office reading the Berkeley Gazette , a newspaper that carried Max Lerner’s column. A different kind of politician, indeed a “radical” politician of the “new politics,” Berkeley Congressman Ron Dellums was buying a $150,000 home in Washington, D.C. So read a report with the dateline Washington.

Outside LaBas’ window could be seen the motorboats of fishermen, some small yachts, sailboats, and people fishing on each side of the Berkeley pier. Outside his office-door window he could see the Workers going about their Work. The incense was floating in from beneath the door. LaBas continued reading. He always read the Berkeley Gazette . Its feature, “About People,” with its announcements of The Business and Professional Women’s Groups’ meetings: “Mrs. Mabel Speers will read an old-fashioned Christmas Story”; its recipes for “Kung Fu Clusters,” told you more about Berkeley than the Telegraph-Calcutta Street (only three blocks) of runaways or Mario Savio.

LaBas’ thoughts were interrupted by Wolf, who entered the room wearing a white double-breasted suit. LaBas looked up.

“Yes, Wolf.”

“Pop, I just wanted to say that you’ve done a good job here. Why, after Dad died we didn’t have anyone to turn to. Street and Minnie — they’re so ragged in their ways. They would never have been able to manage the household and this place too. Now that we’ve built ourselves back to the top, it’s time to liquidate our physical assets as my father Ed wished.”

“The Board of Directors told me that there would be a phasing out, but I didn’t know when you were going to decide to begin it.”

“The Workers are taking an inventory of our goods and will be having meetings over the coming weeks on how to inconspicuously place them where they won’t be noticed.”

“We’ll take care of that back east, Wolf. We will have them go to up-and-coming Businesses. These Businesses will have to go through the same phases as your factory, Solid Gumbo Works. They will need time to gain enough knowledge to do with only token physical assets. We have to be fast. Physical assets weigh us down.”

“Good, then it’s decided. We will begin to dissolve the Solid Gumbo Works the world has come to know and disperse, communicating only through the post office box.”

“I’m glad you made the decision, Wolf. I admire the way it was handled. If you had liquidated after your father was killed that would have been interpreted as a sign of failure, and it would have made all of us look weak in the eyes of the competition, for what is the situation in their other Businesses if this particular west coast franchise buckled under, they would ask. They would have put pressure on us at the T.C. Institute and branches throughout the world. This way, since they know we’re ahead, our disappearance from the public scene will be interpreted as meaning that you’ve found a lucrative market elsewhere. So-called legitimate businesses make these kinds of decisions all the time.”

“Thank you for seeing it my way, LaBas. No word of this is to be said to anyone. I’ve only told the Workers. We’ll just continue to operate as we always have, then one day, our mission accomplished, we will have up and gone. I have to go now, Pop. Must send our Going Out of Business cards to our customers. Don’t have to worry about them. They’re discreet and won’t talk.” Wolf went out. LaBas returned to reading the Berkeley Gazette . His eyes scanned the television listings. Inaccurate as usual.

Chorus is seated in an outdoor café.

“‘The Chorus has gone too far,’ they said. ‘He has upstaged our pretty actors.’

“Cheap makeup peels off their faces. They stumble and forget their lines; ‘Please cue me,’ some of they say. To put it in the language of old American slavery days, the Chorus, me, was a fugitive slave who wanted his aesthetic Canada, but the Claimant and Sambo wanted to bring me back to the Master.”

Imagine that. “The people downstairs” wanted to can his strophes, his delightful twists and turns. “The people downstairs.”

“One woman led the pack. She had an ’tigone on her. ’Tigone, the beginning of my difficulties, hogging all my good lines. Couldn’t be cool, that wench.

“Like, the elders of Thebes and Creon didn’t give a damn if she went out into the woods to fuck, drink and prance about a huge goat. Creon and the elders were interested in the spirit of the law and not its letter. They weren’t finicky. Each to his own God, as they use to say in the Congo.

“No, she had to brag about her malady and boost it.

“‘Go marry Hades,’ Creon had said. ‘You are his bride.’

“He could see Hades grinning behind her like she was ghost-photographed because she, like Core, had tasted of Hades’ fruit and had been touched by this loa. The burial of her brother was just a cover-up. All those speeches, ‘the wisdom of man vs. the wisdom of God.’

“Do you suppose that Zeus really gave a hang whether Polynices was buried? Zeus was too busy chasing tail to be bothered with such trifles. No, this woman wanted to die and she was going about it in a roundabout way — all that blather. This woman was demanding. Sophocles edited out many of my good lines because of this woman and her big mouth.”