The Last Days of Louisiana Red (13 page)

Chorus received the good news that morning. Yes, he had been ejected from a recital hall but he was still in demand. Another had called the day after his dismissal. His agent wanted him to fly to New York to check out its dimensions, its acoustics. His voice had been stifled so much over the years through bad distribution, poor and often hostile salesmen, indifference from those at the top that he insisted a clause be added to his contract giving him the right to satisfactory acoustics.

Chorus fed the cats, cleaned his apartment and was soon packing his white tuxedos. He drove to the San Francisco Airport and before long was airborne.

About ten minutes out, the stewardess asked him if he wanted to have a cocktail. He sipped his Bloody Mary and gazed out over some dry-looking mountains. He read a magazine. He napped for about a half-hour. He got up and walked down the aisle towards the bilingual toilet. He noticed a woman and two companions. He recognized her from her picture that had appeared in the
Berkeley Barb
and the
San Francisco Chronicle
. He recalled she made Herb Caen's column regarding some Moochers' benefit in which she shared the platform with Rev. Rookie.

He returned to his seat and read some more.

One of the woman's companions rose and went towards the cockpit. Sky-jack! The man addressed the passengers telling them that no one would be hurt.

The two men, now wearing terrorist masks which looked like big woolen socks with two slits for eyes, walked down the aisle, putting the passengers' valuables into some sacks while the skinny woman with them, quite fashionably dressed, began making some kind of speech to the passengers. She went on and on, and the more she talked, the more Chorus became enraged.

Chorus went along with it, though. He didn't want any hassle. When they came to him, he would gladly give them whatever cash he had.

Fish came to Chorus and spoke sarcastically through his mouth opening.

“Well, what do we have here? Mr. Superstar. Big Nigger. I seen your picture in
Jet
. Some kind of actor you is.”

Chorus fumed.

“Sell-out, oreo niggers like you—I can't stand. Fork over some of that money, you minstrel.” He laughed. “Hey, Andy, look what we have here. A minstrel all decked out in a white tuxedo.”

After taking Chorus' money, they moved on, robbing some of the other passengers.

Minnie moved down the aisle as the men kept an eye on the passengers. She caught Chorus' eye. She paused in front of him. She said she had seen his last performance. She said that she didn't think it was “relevant.” She started calling him obscene names, standing in the aisle with her hands on her hips. She went on and on, and every time he tried to get a word in edgewise, she would scream, “YOU LISTEN TO ME, NIGGER. YOU LISTEN TO ME. LET ME FINISH. LET ME FINISH!”

Chorus knew what he had to do because he'd be damned if he was going through this scene again.

They are dining at Spenger's Seafood Restaurant. Ernest Hemingway dined here and after talking to Frank Spenger went on to write
The Old Man and the Sea
. Frank Spenger remembered a time when there were so many crabs in the Bay they made a nuisance of themselves.

LaBas is glum; he is eating a prawn. Ms. Better Weather is sobbing; she hasn't touched her food.

“That poor child.”

“Will you control yourself, Better Weather, and continue with the report.”

“After she busted Kingfish and Andy out of jail, they commandeered a car and somehow evaded the security at the San Francisco Airport.”

“Amazing!”

“Anyway, they sky-jacked the plane, but then something happened. She was talking to one of the passengers; he jumped her and holding her with a gun to her back he was able to disarm Andy and Kingfish. He screamed, ‘I'm sick of you cutting into my lines, bitch.' The captain rushed in upon the situation and mistaking the stranger for one of the sky-jackers killed him, but he got … he got—”

“O Better Weather, brace yourself. Tell me the rest.”

“They took her to the hospital, and that was the last I heard from New York. As soon as I heard, I came right down. They told me you were eating here. What are you going to do?”

“What can I do? There's nothing they would do to reverse what has happened. The Board of Directors has made the decision. I have no vote.”

“But you just told me she couldn't help herself. Isn't that what you said?”

“Better Weather, you know how the Corporation works. It is an individual with its own laws, an uncharacterized character like the Greek Chorus, a fictitious person. Once it moves, it moves by its own by-laws. Did you tell Sister?”

“I called her, but she had been told already. I think we ought to go up and see how she's doing.”

“That's a good idea.” LaBas paid the check, and he and Ms. Better Weather left.

The Solid Gumbo Works' car pulls up in front of the Yellings' house. Sister opens the door and tearfully rushes into Ms. Better Weather's arms. Ms. Better Weather comforts her.

Sister's Nigerian friend approaches the door.

“She's really upset, LaBas. She was packing her clothes to go to New York to be with Minnie when she heard about Lisa.”

“Lisa, what happened to Lisa?”

“Come in, I'll tell.”

Ms. Better Weather walks to a sofa and sits down with Sister, who is still shaken.

“This man with the African name,” he smirks, “this critic—Maxwell Kasavubu; he went berserk and was found running through the Berkeley Hills. People became suspicious when they saw him running around the same block over and over again. Of course, he could have been lost in the maze of cattle trails, but they phoned the police anyway because he had a negro accent characterized by a high falsetto laugh. There have been instances of robberies up there and so anything resembling black is suspect. Well, they found that he wasn't black at all. They arrested him in front of a linguist's house, and the linguist traced his dialect to Mississippi/Chicago, 1940s. The linguist had just finished a study on Black English. Maxwell Kasavubu was dressed in a chauffeur's outfit.”

“How curious.”

“When they broke into his house, they found T Feeler and Nanny Lisa dead. She didn't even look like the Nanny. She looked more like a glamorous streetwalker, and they saw her mammy's costume in the bedroom. She had dropped her mammy guise.”

“So they were the three. It's all so clear now.”

“What do you mean, LaBas?”

“The three industrial spies the messenger was talking about.”

“The messenger? Spies?”

“Skip it.”

“You're a curious man, LaBas. America is curious. I'm taking Sister away from this city. As soon as we fly to New York and see about Minnie, we're going to Lagos.”

“How's Minnie?”

“They just called; they don't think she's going to pull through.”

LaBas has a clammy feeling. The Yellings' house seems to have had its walls washed in blood.

Sister revives; Ms. Better Weather escorts her into the room.

“I feel better, Pop. It's… it's been like a bad dream. Those Moochers. They just about moved in after Wolf was killed. Turned the house into a commune, as they called it. Eating our food. Playing the music real loud. And then, when Kingfish and Andy were arrested, Minnie just about ordered me and Lisa to wait on them hand and feet; lazy rascals. The phone bill was eating up Dad's estate. They had friends all over the world, it seemed. Nanny Lisa even offered to remain on free, they were eating up our funds so. But now she's gone too.” She sobs.

“She was in the conspiracy that killed your father.”

“What?” Sister asks.

“What are you saying, LaBas?” the Nigerian asks.

“She had orders from a criminal mail-order house to spy on your father. This was after he had consulted with the remaining followers of Doc John who dwelled in an area near New Orleans called Algiers. When he returned to Berkeley, he went into the Gumbo business, calling it Gumbo so as not to arouse suspicion. Leading people to believe it was just another soul-food joint. What he had really done was to carry on Doc John's work.”

“I don't understand,” Sister says.

“Doc John took the show biz out of the Business, the long technical rites and often hideous gris gris and mojo. He took it off the streets and didn't have to use sensational come-ons. The secret customers flocked to him. Well, Ed being a botanist, and knowing something of pharmacology, synthesized the formulas left by Doc into a pill—an aspirin-like white pill which he gave to his clients for what ailed them. He noticed that Doc John referred to certain human maladies in terms of astrology. One had a snake or a crab inside of one. It occurred to him one day that a crab meant cancer. Even the astrological sign for Cancer is a crab. Doc John cured cancer by using stale bread, ginger root soaked in sweet oil, blackberry tea and powdered cat's eyes and making a pill of these elements. You see, Gumbo was the process of getting to the pill—using many elements, plant, animal and otherwise.

“Louisiana Red Corporation learned through a spy who had access to Ed's papers, Nanny Lisa, that he was on the brink of a cure for heroin addiction—a cure that would keep the victim off heroin forever. That's when they ordered their three spies to kill Ed. Nanny and Max did it. They killed him with butcher knives and blamed it on two black intruders.”

“It's all very confusing,” Sister says.

“What he's saying,” Ms. Better Weather says, “is that your family was destroyed not by a fate but by a conspiracy. Not
Que será, será
, whatever will be will be, but plain old niggers and white front men up to ugly.”

“Very well said, Ms. Better Weather,” LaBas said.

“You see, Sister, his hard-drug panaceas and his presence would have sent organized crime's millionaires packing from their estates on Long Island, in Brooklyn and New Jersey and from their reconverted plantation nightclubs outside of New Orleans back to lower Manhattan to sell apples from pushcarts. If he had found a cure for heroin addiction, if gambling and prostitution had been legalized; if distribution had been taken out of the hands of criminals, then other negroes would have followed Ed's example.”

“My dad did all that?” Sister said. “Why didn't he ever tell us what he was up to? Why didn't Wolf?”

“Because they wanted to Work in secret to bring about the results they desired. They worked with disciplined Workers; they weren't interested in glory, only results.”

LaBas and Ms. Better Weather were climbing into the Solid Gumbo Works' BMW. Sister and her Nigerian friend had called a cab for the trip to SFO Heliport. From there they would travel to San Francisco and then to New York.

“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.