The Free-Lance Pallbearers (4 page)

“Yes, that's what they always told me and you, Mr. Doopeyduk. But dese smart-aleck kids tink dey can figure da MAN out.”

“This I have to see. Will you call them in here?”

“Sho, Doopeyduk. M/NEIGHBOR'S TEEN-AGER!”

“Whatchawont, Pop?” came the reply from the room.

“Me and Joel O. are studying for the lecture tonight down at the B.B.B. Club.”

“Boy, when I tell you to do something, you do it, boy. Understand, boy? Now git yo tail in here and talk to us grown peoples. Pay attention to what grown peoples be saying.”

“But grown people don't say anything of significance any more, Pop. They're just a bunch of middle-aged rukus-juice drinkers who drop bombs on people and listen to that smelly man who's been holed up in the John for thirty years.”

I was appalled. “What! WHAT THE CHILD SAY?”

But before I could register my shock, the neighbor had slapped his son's face.

“What did you have to go and do that for, Pop?” he asked, as the little white boy comforted him.

“Listen heah,” M/Neighbor continued, rukus juice hanging from his lips in spidery strings. “Repeat after me.

In my father's house …”

“In my father's house …”

“What grown peoples be saying …”

“But Pop. That's not even correct grammar.”

“Damn the grammar, you black-assed bastard. Now repeat after me before I smacks you again. What grown peoples be saying …”

“What grown peoples be saying …”

“Is not never supposed to be joked around about.”

“Is not never supposed to be joked around about,” the M/Neighbor's son replied. “Now, can me and Joel O. go down to the B.B.B. meeting?” he asked. Joel stood next to him wearing a parka. His hair was draped about his shoulders and on his chest he wore a “Flower-Power” button.

“Where you mannish kids going tonight? Don't be comin' in heah all time of da night again no mo. Dat boy Joel O. has got his own apartment and he can do what he wants to do but yo tail has to answer to me ‘cause I'm footin' the bills … And before you go, 'pologize to Mr. Doopeyduk for getting him all upset.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Doopeyduk.”

“That's all right, my boy. But you must always be careful about what you say about our great leader. You only give aid and comfort to our enemies when you speak ill of him. Of course you kids were only speaking in jest.”

“Jest, hell,” the little white boy said for the first time. “When we come to power, it's going to be curtains for the generation that gave us Richard Nixon and his scroungy mutt, Checkers.”

“See you later, Pop, and it was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. and Mrs. Doopeyduk.”

“Clao,” said the little white boy as the pair walked out of the door.

“Why, I must lodge a protest tomorrow morning about this man who's subverting the young youth. Report this subversive to the authorities. How long has this been going on, M/Neighbor?”

“Dey always be readin' some kinda books. Got da author's picture on da wall. He's a colored man but he look lak one of dem Anglishmens. Wears a goatee. Sometime dey wear dem tablecloths what African peoples wear and dat little white boy be talkin' funny. Two, three words at a time. Somethin' 'bout ‘psychedelic guerrilla/Mao Mao/folkrock fuckrock Ra cock/freak stomp group grope/sunra's marimbas/yin yang.' It's way over my poor brains. And da B.B.B. thing supposed to stand for SAM has got body odor.”

“That does it,” I said, rushing to the telephone to dial the Screws.

“Aw fool, set yo butt down. Dem boys jess tryin' to have some fun,” Fannie Mae said, after remaining silent throughout the entire episode.

F/Neighbor walked into the room with the platter of steaming hot chittlins and a side dish of potato salad.

“A man what's been in the baffroom fo thirty years—no tellin' what he smell like,” Fannie Mae continued.

“I gots to go along wif you, child,” the F/Neighbor interjected. “Unless he got a powerful deodorant, he smellin' like dese chittlins when dey's cookin'. But less stop talkin' 'bout polotics and eats some food. Dere's plenty.”

Although shocked at these pronouncements, the neighbor and I were so taken by the meal that we decided not to pursue the matter.

After the dinner, I asked, “Do you have any more children?”

F/Neighbor rose from the table and ran sobbing into the living room. Fannie Mae went after to comfort her.

UH O, I thought. You've made a blimp of a blooper this time, Bukka Doopeyduk.

The M/Neighbor explained. “We had a child dat disappeared around three years ago.”

“Didn't you have the Screws look into the matter?”

“Yes, dey searched. But dey couldn't find hide nor hair of him.”

The women returned. F/Neighbor, red-eyed and stunned. Fannie Mae assisted her into the chair.

“I'm sorry, F/Neighbor. I wasn't aware of your loss,” I said.

“Dat's all right, Mr. Doopeyduk. I should have gotten over it by now. By the way, Mr. Doopeyduk,” F/Neighbor asked, “does that name come out da Bible?”

“No, my mother won it in a lottery.”

They all laughed and I was pleased that my quip had helped to glide over an unpleasant and embarrassing incident. Afterward we played whist. I couldn't get the missing child out of my mind. I looked out over the M/Neighbor's shoulder toward the island across the bay. The helicopters dipped and rose above the roof. Again the snow. The stillness. The four letters, EATS.

 

I came home one day, walking dejectedly, grumbling. I had been demoted from the shock room. I had placed a tongue blade into a banker's mouth carelessly and he had nearly strangled to death. He was a powerful and influential man in HARRY SAM who had been picked up by the Screws for enticing sailors and was placed on the psychiatric floor to avoid publicity. His psychiatrist had witnessed the mishap and had reprimanded me before the nurses. They cut my salary and placed me in a ward with the violent patients. My job was to clean the wastes which hung from the walls in gobs and change the catatonic patients. I was in a miserable mood when I arrived at the apartment.

Fannie Mae was entertaining Georgia who sat in a chair smoking a cigarette butt and swinging her legs. When she saw me, she nodded disinterestedly and continued smacking her gum.

“Georgia and her husband are goin' to move into da projects building next to ours,” Fannie Mae announced.

I nodded at the girl, who smiled mischievously, then picked up a comic book lying on the coffee table. I stepped over the comic books which were strewn about the house and walked into the bathroom. The house was filthy. The dishes filled the sink, clogging it so that I expected some pulsating thing to reach out and assimilate me into the decayed eggs, meat and vegetables. The place stank of food. The refrigerator contained provisions crawling with bacteria.

“Dear,” I said, “why don't you at least try to keep the house in a sanitary condition?” I pleaded. “It looks like a pigsty.”

“Don't start no mess,” she replied, looking at Georgia for support.

Blood rushed to my head. I gritted my teeth and threw a glass against the wall. The women ignored this, continuing to read the books and chatting with each other.

“Why don't you get up off your big funkey sometime and pick up a mop? I break my ass emptying shit at the hospital and you lay around here all day, half-dressed, watching ‘The Edge of Night,' ‘Search for Tomorrow' and ‘The Guiding Light.'”

“Look, my man. Nobody told you to get that job. At the Harry Sam Ear Muffle Factory they makes good money.”

“Why don't you get a job and help me, tramp? Plenty of women work nowadays. What's so special about you? 'Round here lying on the floor reading comic books like some empty half-wit.”

The picture of Nancy Spellman dressed like a little red Kewpie doll swung around on the wall and crashed to the floor below. Nancy was the Chief Nazarene Bishop. Poor Nancy, I thought.

“See what you made me do, bitch! Nancy Spellman fell off the wall.”

“I'm sick of dem sweetback-looking white mens on my wall anyway.”

Georgia Nosetrouble snickered behind the comic book.

Fannie Mae got up from the sofa, and hands on hips, feet spread apart, spoke hot fire.

“DERE'S PLENTY OF KONKALINED PORKPIE BEANIES 'ROUND HERE WHO THINK I LOOK VEWY VEWY GREAT. YOU START SOME MESS AND I'LL SLASH YOUR CLOTHES AND THROW THE FURNITURE OUT OF THE WINDOW. What's wrong wit dese mens today, Georgia?”

“Don't ask me, Fannie Mae. Must be some bug going around.”

“What you got to do with it, Georgia? What are you doing moving in here anyway? You jamming this ho.”

Rising to get her wrap, Georgia pouted, squinted her eyes and threatened me.

“Looka heah, Doopeyduk, whatever yo name is. I am not yo wife. Fuk with me and I'll really give you something to complain about.”

Nancy's portrait was damaged beyond recognition. All that remained were the puckered lips, the twinkly eyes.

Fannie Mae lurched for the door.

“Don't go, Georgia. He jess showin' out fo company.” She followed the girl into the hall. When she came back into the apartment, she laced into me.

“Now I guess you satisfied. She wasn't botherin' you, but you had to show yo ass. Dippyduk goofy mother-grabber!” And then grumbling, she went hissing into the bedroom, slamming drawers and after an hour in the bathroom profuse with whucking faucets and the opening and shutting of cabinets, she came out heavily made up. She whisked past me and stalked into the hall tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for the elevator to come up.

“What time do you intend to come back?” I asked submissively.

“Nighttime! And if you try to follow me, I'll get a jeep full of dem Screws with turkey muskets after you.”

I went all out. Through my whole crying-the-blues repertory, even pulling a few new tricks out of the hat. Like—

“Fannie Mae, Fannie Mae, please don't go, sugar, 'cause iffin you leave me, I'll have bread done on one side, 'cause the toaster broke down, I'll cry a fistful of clock hands over you, and walk the third rail, boo hoo boo hoo. What I gonna do? Consult the hoodoo man. Woe is me.”

But my words slap-dashed against the elevator door and slid down to the floor. My baby had done gone. The little children who had given the Nazarene apprentice the hassle were standing next to the elevator door. I stood there in my orderly uniform with the black stripe down the side of the pants. The kids broke up, rolling about the floor and laughing.

I went back inside and saw that my fly had been open during the entire episode. Embarrassed, I walked to the window just as the moon peeped over the summit of Sam's Island. Fannie Mae and Georgia were hightailing it toward the lights from the jooks which surrounded the projects. I drunk some likker and got my head bad. At three o'clock in the morning there came a tap-dap-rapping at my door. A tit-tat-klooking at my hollow door.

“Who is dat rap-a-dap-tapping at my do' this time of night? What-cha wont?”

“Have you seen some children playing in this vicinity?” asked the lean woman dressed in black. She shivered, clutching the top of her housecoat.

“No, I haven't,” I lied, hoping that they'd been swallowed by the incinerator or some equally grisly fate had befallen them.

 

Mr. and Mrs. Nosetrouble moved into the projects shortly after that night. At last the Harry Sam Projects were integrated. Mr. Nosetrouble was white and the statue of HARRY SAM winked slyly from one stony eye. The moving van pulled up and dumped the basket chairs, bound and musty pamphlets, fish tanks, flags, short-wave radios, plants, chickadees, espresso machines, Band-Aids. Tumbling out behind these were stacks upon stacks of foreign language newspapers, and a fine little case. When the men started to throw this black leather case upon the rest of the items, Georgia's husband had a fit.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Where you goin' wit that case? Have a little respect, fellas. The nose inside that case belong to none other than L. Trotsky who in a speech before the cemetery at Prague said ‘Blimp Blank Palooka Dookey,' and standing in a threadbare coat, shaking his fist in the rain for hours, said ‘Blank Palooka Dookey Blimp' and who on more than one occasion warned the ruling circles ‘Dookey Palooka Blank Blimp.'”

The two husky movers scratched their heads and grinned at little Nosetrouble as he scampered into the building, precious black case in hand. Nosetrouble was Crazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzy about the workers. Wanted to be around them all the time and wear the workers' clothes and eat the workers' food and drink the workers' drink and look at um all a time. Once Nosetrouble raised such a stink in HARRY SAM that SAM had to go into a huddle with his washroom attendants. But being the sellout hippies that they were, they came up with a slick ploy.

SAM went on television. Sitting at a workman's bench he patted a little cocker spaniel on the head. They had applied synthetic soot to his face. He took a swig of beer from a can and addressed the nation.

“Hi folks. The MAN here again. Got a few minutes before the whistle is blown on us down in the John, a signal for me to go back to work. Didn't know I worked, did you dumplings? Pardon me. …” (He took a sandwich from a brown bag and filled his mouth to the brink of his lips with liverwurst.)

“At least all those who know me and love me 'preciates the fact that I work, which makes it come as a surprise when these people go around here bitchin' about the way I handle the workers.

“Geeze, folks, solidarity forever and o yeah while I'm at it, we shall overcome. Hell, I got injured in an industrial accident once, see?” The dictator raised his nightshirt and pointed to a scar which traveled north from the spine to his left breast.

The
New York Times
called the speech an eloquent and poignant plea for industrial peace.