The Cool School (45 page)

“Inch’ Allah!
if God wills,” Hamid corrected me automatically and then, as if he were indeed the Consul of Keef, who was sending me out on this mission, he went on: “I’ll get them to cut you a green passport of keef to see you through everything. I’ll see that you get the best of the crop from Ketama and I’ll bring it down from the mountain
myself with the blessings of Hassan-i-Sabbah, the Father of Grass. On your way, you’re bound to run into some other Assassins.”

“But, Hamid,” I laughed: “I am not an Assassin at all!”

“We are Assassins, all of us,” he gravely replied.

The Process
, 1969

A poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist, Ishmael Reed has been an indelible presence in African American literature since the 1960s. He has written ten novels, including the 1972 hoodoo novel
Mumbo Jumbo
excerpted here, which I consider one of the most important American novels. Reed has also published six volumes of poetry and eight collections of essays. He taught at U.C. Berkeley for thirty-five years, and has edited thirteen literary anthologies. A delightful late bloomer, after collaborating as lyricist and vocalist on three albums with producer Kip Hanrahan and a host of legendary musicians, including Allen Toussaint, David Murray, Taj Mahal, Eddie Harris, and Bobby Womack, he recently debuted as a jazz pianist heading up the Ishmael Reed Quintet.

A
T
RUE
S
PORT
,
the Mayor of New Orleans, spiffy in his patent-leather brown and white shoes, his plaid suit, the Rudolph Valentino parted-down-the-middle hair style, sits in his office. Sprawled upon his knees is Zuzu, local doo-wack-a-doo and voo-do-dee-odo fizgig. A slatternly floozy, her green, sequined dress quivers.

Work has kept Your Honor late.

The Mayor passes the flask of bootlegged gin to Zuzu. She takes a sip and continues to spread sprawl and behave skittishly. Loose. She is inhaling from a Chesterfield cigarette in a shameless brazen fashion.

The telephone rings.

The Mayor removes his hand and picks up the receiver; he recognizes at once the voice of his poker pardner on the phone.

Harry, you’d better get down here quick. What was once dormant is now a Creeping Thing.

The Mayor stands up and Zuzu lands on the floor. Her posture reveals a small flask stuck in her garter as well as some healthily endowed gams.

What’s wrong, Harry?

I gots to git down to the infirmary, Zuzu, something awful is happening, the Thing has stirred in its moorings. The Thing that my Grandfather Harry and his generation of Harrys had thought was nothing but a false alarm.

The Mayor, dragging the woman by the fox skins hanging from her neck, leaves city hall and jumps into his Stutz Bearcat parked at the curb. They drive until they reach St. Louis Cathedral where 19th-Century HooDoo Queen Marie Laveau was a frequent worshiper; its location was about 10 blocks from Place Congo. They walk up the steps and the door’s Judas Eye swings open.

Joe Sent Me.

What’s going on, hon? Is this a speakeasy? Zuzu inquires in her cutesy-poo drawl.

The door opens to a main room of the church which has been converted into an infirmary. About 22 people lie on carts. Doctors are rushing back and forth; they wear surgeon’s masks and white coats. Doors open and shut.

1 man approaches the Mayor who is walking from bed to bed examining the sleeping occupants, including the priest of the parish.

What’s the situation report, doc? the Mayor asks.

We have 22 of them. The only thing that seems to anesthetize them is sleep.

When did it start?

This morning. We got reports from down here that people were doing “stupid sensual things,” were in a state of “uncontrollable frenzy,” were wriggling like fish, doing something called the “Eagle Rock” and the “Sassy Bump”; were cutting a mean “Mooche,” and “lusting after relevance.” We decoded this coon mumbo jumbo. We knew that something was Jes Grewing just like the 1890s flair-up. We thought that the local infestation area was Place Congo so we put our antipathetic substances to work on it, to try to drive it out; but it started to play hide and seek with us, a case occurring in 1 neighborhood and picking up in another. It began to leapfrog all about us.

But can’t you put it under 1 of them microscopes? Lock it in? Can’t you protective-reaction the dad-blamed thing? Look I got an election coming up—

To blazes with your election, man! Don’t you understand, if this Jes Grew becomes pandemic it will mean the end of Civilization As We Know It?

That serious?

Yes. You see, it’s not 1 of those germs that break bleed suck gnaw or devour. It’s nothing we can bring into focus or categorize; once we call it 1 thing it forms into something else.

No man. This is a
psychic epidemic,
not a lesser germ like typhoid yellow fever or syphilis. We can handle those. This belongs under some ancient Demonic Theory of Disease.

Well, what about the priest?

We tried him but it seized him too. He was shouting and carrying on like any old coon wench with a bass drum.

What about the patients, did you ask any of them about how they knew it?

Yes, 1, Harry. When we thought it was physical we examined his output and drinking water to determine if we could find some normal germ. We asked him questions, like what he had seen.

What
did
he see?

He said he saw Nkulu Kulu of the Zulu, a locomotive with a red green and black python entwined in its face, Johnny Canoeing up the tracks.

Well Clem, how about his feelings? How did he feel?

He said he felt like the gut heart and lungs of Africa’s interior. He said he felt like the Kongo: “Land of the Panther.” He said he felt like “deserting his master,” as the Kongo is “prone to do.” He said he felt he could dance on a dime.

Well, his hearing, Clem. His hearing.

He said he was hearing shank bones, jew’s harps, bagpipes, flutes, conch horns, drums, banjos, kazoos.

Go on go on and then what did he say?

He started to speak in tongues. There are no isolated cases in this thing. It knows no class no race no consciousness. It is self-propagating and you can never tell when it will hit.

Well doc, did you get other opinions?

Who do you think some of those other cases are? 6 of them are some of the most distinguished bacteriologists epidemologists and chemists from the University.

There is a commotion outside. The Mayor rushes out to see Zuzu rejoicing. Slapping the attendants who are attempting to placate her. The people on carts suddenly leap up and do their individual numbers. The Mayor feels that uncomfortable sensation at the nape and soon he is doing something resembling the symptoms of Jes
Grew, and the Doctor who rushes to his aid starts slipping dipping gliding on out of doors and into the streets. Shades of windows fly up. Lights flick on in buildings. And before you know it the whole quarter is in convulsions from Jes Grew’s entrance into the Govi of New Orleans; the charming city, the amalgam of Spanish French and African culture, is out-of-its-head. By morning there are 10,000 cases of Jes Grew.

The foolish Wallflower Order hadn’t learned a damned thing. They thought that by fumigating the Place Congo in the 1890s when people were doing the Bamboula the Chacta the Babouille the Counjaille the Juba the Congo and the VooDoo that this would put an end to it. That was merely a fad. But they did not understand that the Jes Grew epidemic was unlike physical plagues. Actually Jes Grew was an anti-plague. Some plagues caused the body to waste away; Jes Grew enlivened the host. Other plagues were accompanied by bad air (malaria). Jes Grew victims said that the air was as clear as they had ever seen it and that there was the aroma of roses and perfumes which had never before enticed their nostrils. Some plagues arise from decomposing animals, but Jes Grew is electric as life and is characterized by ebullience and ecstasy. Terrible plagues were due to the wrath of God; but Jes Grew is the delight of the gods
.

So Jes Grew is seeking its words. Its text. For what good is a liturgy without a text? In the 1890s the text was not available and Jes Grew was out there all alone. Perhaps the 1920s will also be a false alarm and Jes Grew will evaporate as quickly as it appeared again broken-hearted and double-crossed
(++)

Mumbo Jumbo
, 1972

A prolific poet, prose writer, and monologist, Bobbie Louise Hawkins has produced many stories, essays, and memoirs that have been collected in
Own Your Body
(1973),
My Own Alphabet
(1989),
Bijou
(2005),
Selected Prose
(2012), and other books. She has released two performance CDs,
Live at the Great American Music Hall
and
Jaded Love.
Hawkins was the wife of poet Robert Creeley from 1957 to 1975 and his book
For Love
is dedicated to her.

I
N
1947 Albuquerque got its first stripper club. That was a good year for Albuquerque. The first Jewish Delicatessen opened on Central Avenue right downtown. And a lot of a very different kind of person started going to the University of New Mexico on the G.I. Bill.

The G.I. Bill changed the look of Joe College U.N.M. drastically. A large part of the influx, particularly in the painting department, were Jews from New York. That look blew me over. Everytime I saw somebody looking great it turned out later that he or she was a Jew. For awhile I got worried about it. Or rather I got worried about whether I should be worried about it. That all my friends were Jews. Then I thought what the hell go along with it.

I sat through evening after evening of conversations so abstract that the only thing clear was that they all knew what they were talking about. And it was fascinating. You have to realize that the talk I had been understanding wasn’t worth the effort. A presumptuous snob at seventeen is what I was, out of desperation. What these people were talking about involved rampant energy, arms waving, real anger for intellectual reasons and a dynamic. They were so knowledgeable.
One of them who wanted to make love to me but never did gave me a Modern Library copy of
Sons and Lovers
for my birthday. I mean I was getting so much sustenance off of them that not being able to follow the mesh of their reasoning and not recognizing the names of their heroes was trivial; hardly to be thought of. And there were consistent small bonuses like eating my first hot pastrami on rye.

Anyway to return to the history of the city, that was growing a town, that’s supposed to have been the first year the Mafia made their move in on the overall action. It was a stripper club west of town, out Central heading for the desert.

The building was a junker; cement block with patterns. Inside, the room was a huge barnlike square, with a dance floor orchestra section intruding off one wall so the tables were jammed into the remaining three sides.

Every couple of hours there would be a floor show. The exotic dancer was naked on her left side with a little pasty on her nipple and a g-string. Her right side was dressed up like a red and black devil. She was split right down the center and the act was watching the right side get it on with the left side. A lot of the time it really looked like two people, the right side being aggressive, the left side fighting it off, but being progressively overcome, even attracted. Hitting the floor at the same time and working up to a grand climax with all the lights going black to give her/it a chance to get up and walk away. Saving the image from a tawdry exit.

And then Cuban Pete and Frenchy would come on for a comic turn. Cuban Pete was a short fat Greek with a mass of black curls and an accent. He wore a straw hat and a blouse with huge ruffled sleeves. The straw hat worked as a hand prop. He’d take it off with a flourish, give it a shimmy-shake at the end of his arm to make a point, and to enter, and to exit. Frenchy was six feet tall with a high bleached pompadour and spike heels, and almost nothing else. She was a walking example of what was legally allowed. She would station herself like so many pounds on the hoof in front of the band microphone as if she
meant to sing. Thank God she never did. Cuban Pete would have a hand mike with yards of cable to let him meander among the tables while they went through their act.

They were rotten. The jokes were so bad that the only way you knew when one was over was the band would go
“Ta-Taaaa!”
Then we’d all break up.
“Ta-Taaaa
!” was the real punch line. It let you see where you would have laughed if it had been funny.

One of their routines was Cuban Pete would be out among the clientele yelling back, “Hey Frenchy! How you like that movie I take you to last night?” “Oh!” she’d say, her nose like a trumpet, “Clark Gable was wonderful!”

“How you like that?” Cuban Pete would ask us. “I say how you like that movie I take you to last night and she says Clark Gable was wonderful!” He would try again. “Hey Frenchy, how you like that movie I take you to last night?”

“Oh!”, she’d answer, “Clark Gable was wonderful!”

“How you like that?” throwing his arms wide in mock despair so the ruffles would ripple.

“I want to ask you just one thing.”

“What you say?”

“I want to ask you just one thing.”

“She wants to ask me something. O.K. Frenchy. What you want to know?”

“I want to know if you’re jealous of Clark Gable?”

“How you like that! I ask her how she like the movie and she wants to know am I jealous of Clark Gable!”

A long pause to build suspense, then—

“You gah-dam right I am!”

Ta-Taaaa

T
HERE
WAS
another routine that Frenchy walked or rather marched through with two other women. The orchestra played a rousing medley of
Over There
and
I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy
and such like songs,
and Frenchy would come marching onto center dance floor with a Marine’s hat on. The other women represented the Army and the Navy. All three of them wore red satin brassieres and very short blue and white striped skirts. They marched into a triangle with Frenchy out front, all of them keeping a time-step, marching in place. Then the two girls in back marched toward each other and wheeled in unison toward the bandstand where they came by an enormous American flag which they opened out to make a backdrop for Frenchy. They marched around her wrapping her in the flag. The highlight was when all the lights went out and the flag and costumes glowed in the dark.