The Last Days of Louisiana Red (10 page)

(Before Sather Gate, University of California at Berkeley, Fish and Andy stand. They are wearing pink robes, sandals and have shaved their heads. Andy Brown keeps his derby. They are shaking tambourines and soliciting.)

 

Kingfish:
Karmels! Karmels!

(A crowd has gathered and is laughing at them)

 

Andy:
(whispers) Fish, what is these peoples laughing at us for? Don't they know that this is them Indian fellers' religion? Ain't they got no respect?

 

Kingfish:
They's got respect, Bro. Andy, but they shows it through beatitides.

 

Andy:
What?

 

Kingfish:
Look, they ain't laughing at you, dummy, they's blissful; they's delighted. There are many cases of people that gets moved away by saying Karmels; they starts to laugh and can't stop. They's happy.

 

Kingfish/Andy:
OMMMMMMMMMMMM. OMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

(The people continue to laugh)

 

Andy:
We been out here a long time, Fish, saying Karmels and Ommmmmmmmm. Our humming ain't gettin us nowhere. We ain't collected but thirty-five cents since we been out here this morning, while them other fellows down the way is cashing in.

 

Kingfish:
I believes you do have a point there. I believes you do. Maybe we ought to go down the street and get a little respiration. I'm tired.

 

Andy:
Yeah, maybe we should. Man, pickings is lean this year.

 

Kingfish:
You can say that again. Remember the time we took over the Black Studies programs up here, Andy?

 

Andy:
Yeah, I remembers. We bopped the bushwa nigger who was running it, and he had a big hickey on his head. Then we took over.

 

Kingfish:
Those was the days, Andy, the sixties. They took us off television and the radio and gave us freedom to roam the world, unchecked, hustling like we never hustled before.

 

Andy:
Yeah, we sure did get in a lot of fights.

 

Kingfish:
Remember the time this bushwa hi-yellow got up to speak in that meetin we had? I turned off his microphone. Ha! (A pause)

 

Andy:
I think maybe we ought to go.

 

Kingfish:
Have a little patience. That's how them Asians win. They have so much patience they can go till they wear you out.

 

Kingfish/Andy:
Karmels! Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! Karmels! Ommmmmmm.

(The spectators once again laugh)

 

Andy:
We sure is making these people happy.

 

Kingfish:
That was some rally Minnie just had there at Sproul Hall, huh? Inspiring. Inspiring.

 

Andy:
I don't like the way she run down Papa LaBas. He's a turkey and all, but she don't have to talk about him that bad. I mean, she didn't have to call him all kinds of MF's like she did.

 

Kingfish:
It's a new age, Andy. She's one of them emaciated women.

 

Andy:
What kind of woman is that, Fish?

 

Kingfish:
She believes that the womens have received a raw deal, a bum rap, and a bogus turkey.

 

Andy:
O, Iz sees.

 

Kingfish:
You know, we are very fortunate to have someone like Minnie leading us Moochers. She's quite a gal.

 

Andy/Kingfish:
Karmels! Karmels! Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

(Crowd laughs again, sounds like canned laughter. A white hippie walks by.)

 

Hippie:
(shakes his head)

 

Kingfish:
(belligerently) What's the matter with you, fella?

 

Hippie:
Man, are you guys square.

 

Kingfish:
What do you mean? Can't you see we is beatidizing these folks? Look at 'em, they can't control their happiness.

 

Hippie:
Look, they're laughing at you. Your friend smoking that cigar and wearing the derby and you… They know you're faking …

 

Kingfish:
Why, you—

(They hit and smack the Hippie, and then when he is down they begin to stomp him. Fish removes his razor and is about to cut the boy when the crowd begins to throw things at them. They are chased by the crowd and take off down Telegraph. They run down an alley and over a roof and go to the back yard of Rezor's Restaurant. Brother Amos calls to them.)

 

Amos:
Fish, Andy, how are you?

(They turn around and see Bro. Amos. He is seated, eating a roast beef sandwich and drinking a glass of beer. They approach the table whispering.)

 

Kingfish:
Hey, there's Amos, maybe we can get the chump to sponsor us on some beer.

 

Kingfish:
Well, what do you say there, Bro. Amos?

(They give him a ritual handshake)

 

Andy:
Yeah, how you doing there, Amos?

 

Amos:
Well, it's been a long time. Last I heard, you boys had gone into radical politics—what's the name of it?—Waitress! bring my friends a pitcher of beer.

 

Kingfish:
We is in the Moochers. Minnie's Moochers.

 

Amos:
That's wonderful. What are some of your programs?

 

Kingfish:
Well, last week we …

Andy:
We are planning …

 

Kingfish:
Well, next Thursday, there's suppose to be a …

 

Andy:
If it don't happen Saturday night …

 

Kingfish:
Well, Amos, to tell you the truth we just go to rallies and hear Minnie talk about the Big Minnie.

 

Amos:
What on earth is that?

 

Kingfish:
That's when we gone string 'em up!

 

Andy:
Kill 'em all!

 

Kingfish:
Take a stand!

(Waitress brings the beer; Fish & Andy eye her lecherously)

 

Andy:
(frowning) Well, you look kind of prosperous there, Amos.

 

Amos:
Well, as you know, I gave up working for the taxi company. I now manage a fleet of limousines that's sent to bring Papa LaBas' customers to the Gumbo Works.

 

Kingfish:
You mean this man LaBas has such a business that the customers are brought to the Gumbo Works in limousines?

 

Amos:
Yes.

 

Andy:
Aw, we don't wants to hear about that man. He is a sell-out.

 

Kingfish:
Yeah, a Gisling.

 

Andy:
He is unmoochable.

 

Amos:
He's done mighty well for me … I have to go now. You boys enjoy your beer, stop by and see me sometimes.

Here's my card. (He gives Fish the card, exits)

 

Kingfish:
Yeah, that nigger is living in the Oakland Hills. Away from the Moochers.

 

Andy:
Yeah, let's have some more beer.

(Kingfish looks around and then pockets the tip Amos had left behind)

(Enter Rufus Whitfield, struggling with a fighting Minnie, into LaBas' office. She's dressed real mannish.)

“Here she is, Pop. Fought like a tiger; bit my hand; tried some of that Kung Fu mess on me, so I whopped her one real good.” (Minnie spits in his face. Rufus draws back his hand, ready to strike) “Why, you—”

“Don't hit her, Rufus. You can go.” Rufus glares at Minnie, who glares fiercely back.

“O.K., Pop, but if this girl gives you any trouble, let me know. I'll bop her so she'll think I'm Gravedigger and Coffin Ed, Captain Blackman and Solomon Gillis—all one big chopping nigger.” (Rufus exits.)

Minnie stands before LaBas' desk, fuming, arms folded, tapping her feet.

“Cigarette?”

“I don't smoke.”

“What do you do, Minnie? You seem to be a very serious girl. That article of yours I read. People need to play, party sometimes, you know. Why be so stiff? Why, in my day, we'd pile into our zoot suits, jalopies, and jitterbug to the big bands at Roseland, then we'd—”

“Look, I know you brought me here to talk about that fire. If that's what you want to talk about, you're wasting your breath. I'm the first one to admit it was a mistake. Shortly before your men illegally entered my home and brought me here, I heard from my lawyer. Whatever you're running here is going to be mine anyway. I'm the next in line after Wolf for the inheritance—”

“There won't be anything here.”

“What do you mean?”

“We're phasing out. Ed and Wolf have trained the Workers to go out and set up their own individual offices. Wolf had completed the inventory before he was killed. I promised Wolf I'd preside over … not its liquidation but its metamorphosis. We've just about completed our inventory, and so there's no need to keep it a secret. You see, to our organization, industrial secrecy is sacred; any violation is what we call ‘sin.' Wolf could have told Street we were phasing out, but our plans would have been in jeopardy if that had gotten out prematurely. A true Worker, he went to his grave with his lips sealed. You see, as long as we're conspicuous, as long as we're in the public's eye with a definable point of operation, there will be scandals, murder. As long as we're trying to take care of Business, people like you will always seek us out and attempt to enervate us. Without a central location, if we're inaccessible, beyond reach, we'll even be more able to devote our full energy to the Work, communicating with each other only when the need arises. You see, they want us to fail. The competition would rather have us on the public dole than let us achieve anything, and they use people like you to keep it that way and to inhibit the development of our quality.”

“We will get whatever you leave. Why, we can use this place for a meeting hall where we can come and discuss abstract things. (LaBas smiles) What are you smiling at?”

“You. You, Minnie. You take yourself so seriously. You couldn't stand for your Dad and your brothers to run a Business as they sought. You and your roustabouts and vagrants just couldn't stand negro men attempting to build something; if we were on the corner sipping Ripple, then you would love us, would want to smother us with kindliness.”

“That's not the truth.”

“It's the truth. It's been the truth since we were enslaved into being the same—hammered into the same and kept there by white and negro forces. Every fool the same as a wise man, griot or warrior. The philosophy of slavery—the philosophy of inferiority in which the slave's plight was compared to that of fellow slaves: the ancient Hebrews. The philosophy of slavery has been handed down through the ages and has appeared under different names. Moochism, for example.

“But all of you are not the same really, are you? There are rivalries between you Moochers of different colors and from different classes. You even have a high command, don't you? Your high command, your ruling circle, gets all of the cigarettes, good whiskey and good cocaine while you talk about your brother and sister Moochers and what you're doing for them, like old Joe Stalin the ‘Communist' rewarding his personal chef with a general's medal because he cooked his favorite shashlik. Of course, being a woman, Minnie, being a hi-yellow woman or, as you say, being a ‘black' woman (chuckle), you even have further leverage.

“Have you ever heard the term ‘pussy-whipped,' or ‘pussy-chained'? These expressions may be crude, but they smack of the truth. A woman uses her cunt power to threaten and intimidate, even to blackmail—to cause brother to kill brother. We're still expected to pick up the bill and do the tipping, even though you say we're the same.

“Women use our children as hostages against us. We walk the streets in need of women and make fools of ourselves over women; fight each other, put Louisiana Red on each other, shoot and maim each other. The original blood-sucking vampire was a woman. You flirt with us, tease us, provoke us, showing your delicious limbs to our askance glances; then you furtively pretend you don't want it. Even some of you going around here reading ‘love' poetry on how good you are in the sack. Your cunt is the most powerful weapon of any creature on this earth, and you know it, and you know how to use it. I can't understand why you want to be liberated. Hell. You already free—you already liberated. Liberated and powerful. We're the ones who are slaves; two-thirds of the men on skid row were driven there by their mothers, wives, daughters, their mistresses and their sisters. I've never known a woman who needed it as much as a man. Women rarely cruise or rape.”

“Look, old man,” Minnie says, fidgeting, tapping her foot nervously, squirming in her chair. “I didn't come here to listen to a whole lot of antediluvian bullshit from you. If you aren't going to press charges against me, then I'll leave. I don't deal with your shit.”

“O yes, you call me old. The old morality is what you call mine. So liberated. So hip. Exposing your genitals at parties and swapping mates without getting jealous. You keep on letting it all hang out—you keep pulling it all out of yourself until you reach the dingy cave of yourselves and there you will find something cold and clammy that you won't want to know. Mystery is no plaything. Mystery was put here for a purpose. Some things are better left alone.

“Of course, you won't listen to me. I'm nothing but an aging nigger man in your eyes. Why don't you take these questions up with that white boy, Max? You respect him.”

“O, you want to make it racial, huh? Well, no man tells me what to say or think. Negro or white, you or Max.”

“O, you're denying the very lucrative benefits that go along with being a black woman in a white man's country? One of our Business people, Zora Neale Hurston, had an informant in Georgia say, ‘White men and black women are running this thing.'”

“What lucrative benefits are you talking about—rape?”

“You say it was all rape, huh?” LaBas turns from the window where he has been standing with his hands behind his back, gazing out over the bay towards Alcatraz. “A lot of you begged for him and fought over the trinkets he threw at you, nursed him and taught him how to fuck, loved the bastard children he gave you more than your own. You are defiling the truth of history when you deny this.”

LaBas walked over to his desk and picked up an old yellowing newspaper column. “Just before you came here, I was looking through an old copy of the
New Orleans Picayune
newspaper, which I collect for the purpose of discovering old Gumbo recipes, and I ran across a story about a police raid that happened in the 1890s. Seems that a white man named Don Pedro, a Businessman, held an orgy in which 26 white men and 25 black and mulatto females were having intercourse in what the newspaper describes as ‘ungodly' positions. There's no suggestion of anyone twisting anyone else's arm to participate in this affair. And if you don't think it's still going on, go to Broadway and Michigan Avenue in Buffalo, New York; Broadway and 52nd Street in New York City, and Broadway and Columbus Avenue in San Francisco. Every big city has some Broadway intersecting some other street where the ancient lovers meet, not to mention all the hidden places.”

“Those New Orleans sisters must have been drugged.”

“Could be. Could be. It could be that many were raped, but it also seems to suggest that some cooperated—you can find many examples of cooperation culled from slave narratives, old newspapers, family records and other documents found in North and South America.”

“I don't believe that. The sisters have been wronged, and it's time for us to take over; we've held the family together for all these years.”

“Every time I hear you say that I get sick. Inaccurate as usual. Your ideas seem to come from your spleen and not your head. For you to say that is an insult to the millions of negro men who've supported their families, freemen who bought their families freedom, negro men working as parking-lot attendants, busboys, slop emptiers, performing every despicable deed to make ends meet against tremendous odds. And as for those who ran away—if your corny little organization is interested in ‘dialogues,' then why don't you have a forum and invite some of them, that is, if you can get them coming out of the underground where they are ‘invisible legions,' harassed and pursued by court warrants—the so-called ‘Law,' that helps your vengeance. I'll bet half the men in Attica were there on domestic court violations.

“That's where I come in—the Spook Chaser. I've kept my private eye on you and the rest of the Minnies, Minnie. If you attempt, with the shrewd ally whose presence you deny—if you try what I think you ultimately want to achieve, then we will strike you. Strike you with the venom of the ancient royal cobra in our heads. Damn! At least the couples who frequented Don Pedro's operation, now called ‘sex therapy,' were enjoying each other and not injuring some innocent third party.

“What they were doing was not ‘ungodly' but normal practice under cover in the North and South when the sun goes down. It's almost like a secret society. When Governor Earl Long made a speech before the Louisiana Legislature about its existence, he was put into an asylum for giving away the Brotherhood. They've been enjoying each other, from the ninth-precinct cop whose car can be seen parked for two hours in front of the negro hooker's home to the President's cook who had more power than the First Lady. But now the old lovers have entered into a conspiracy to put the negro male into the kitchen and to death, and you can call me a male pig all you want, but I will do my utmost to stop you.”

“Aw, negro, you must be tripping. It's the negro man who is to blame. He's like an insect that fertilizes a woman and then deserts her. All he knows is basketball and pussy. But I didn't come here to argue with you. I don't have to stay here and listen to this. This counterrevolutionary, reactionary …”

“Those are just the slogans you use to mask your real ambition. You have something else in mind, don't you? We understand each other.”

“Look, why don't you do what you want to do? Call Rufus Whitfield in here to beat me up. That's all your kind know to do with a woman.”

“I'm not going to call anyone. You can go. You can talk to me any way you want. I'm still trying to be a gentleman, but one of these days, perhaps soon, you're going to meet your match.”

“Well, I hope he's not an old fool like you,” Minnie says, hurrying from LaBas' office.