The Last Days of Louisiana Red (9 page)

A landmark tells you a lot about the town. Berkeley's is still Sather Tower, which holds a clock with four faces. It was designed by John Galen Howard, who also did the campus' log cabin in which a secret society known as the Order of the Golden Bear met and in collusion with the Chancellor ran the school for many years. For his tower, Howard had in mind “the tall stalk of a lily with a single tightly closed bud as a crown.”

Berkeley is so rational that even its trashings have structure; the rocks know right where to go: Bank of America.

Oakland is wild, churlish, grinding its pelvis to tough shipyard music. The last thing its negro weekend casualties say to their wives before they go out of the house with their shotguns is “I'll be right back.” Even a rough-and-tumble painter like Joe Overstreet refuses to go into Oakland. He'll drive to the border of the town and drop off passengers as if they were passengers at the edge of the world. Oakland's caretaker was Bill Knowland, publisher of the
Oakland Tribune
. If you will recall, he was the Senator Knowland of the fifties who wanted to blockade Asian ports and lob a few at communism. Shooting from the hip, you know. “Let him hang there and twist slowly in the wind.” He wasn't interested in merely containing the thing but wanted to wipe out “the whole enchilada,” as high-class lawyers from Orange County say. If the early skyline of Oakland was dominated by gothic gables, now Doggie Dog Diner's totemic head revolves everywhere—the animal god. Oakland's focal point is Lake Merritt. This early description:

Now you only see a dozen or so polluted specimens from the bird infirmary, down on their luck and stranded because their oil-laden wings won't lift them off.

Old Doc Durant, a classics professor, intended Berkeley to be the Athens of the West; that would make Oakland the Thebes.

This scene takes place in Oakland. Chorus was waiting his turn to speak. He wanted to tell the good news to the audience of how he had made his comeback. How he had regained his dignity. It was a forum, and he was appearing with a sculptor and a musician. People wandered in and out dressed in their fantasies; they strode across the podium giving their unsolicited views concerning the dimensions of Hades, the correct way of grooming a unicorn and other verbal play. These Thebans consider the arts for the sissies; for Athenians. And so these public forums provide an opportunity for the profoundest idiots to castigate the artists because they cannot see, hear or taste—they have no sense and are one big ignorant tongue, constantly rolling off opinions like breakfast cereal boxes in a factory assembly line. Chorus merely attended to see if the dialogue was as bad as he had heard; it was worse. It stunk.

The moderator wandered in and out, occasionally peeking through an open door like a moron. Children bawled. People in the hallways were noisy. You could hear the clunk of cigarettes dropping in machines—the rattle of coffee dispensers.

People greet the moderator with shouts; giggle and sneer at the panelists. Chorus notices Antigone in the audience. She is always in the audience. She is raising her voice and folding her arms. Her hatred has screwed up her face so that, though she can't be more than twenty-five years old, she looks like a rotten hag with crowsfeet and craggy wrinkles. She heaps viperous words, she sneers, she twists her mouth.

In a former time when the Theban elders had manhood, a man would have leaped across that stage and whipped the shit out of this bitch, but this is considered bad form these days. People are allowed to say anything to you in any words.

In Brazil they would have left Antigone in a temple until all of her psychic poisons were flushed out, but there is no such system of mental sanitation created for the Thebans. Their gods have been destroyed, their art plundered, their goals in life: eat, sleep, shelter, pussy; they steal from and assault each other. What did Creon say? “O Zeus, what a tribe you have given us in woman.” When she finishes excoriating the other forum members, she turns to the Chorus and talks in the manner of a 19th-century Barbary Coast sailor.

She respects no man and the only one she can deal with is Polynices, whose Greek name means “much strife.” The painter, the sculptor, the writer and the Chorus glare at her, inwardly raging as Athenian guards walk up and down the aisles, grinning over their discomfort. They are Theban men who are sitting on a stage discussing their art; they have walked into a trap because the conqueror wishes to demean the Thebans by having them ridicule their best. The conqueror always sends Antigone. She gets the biggest honorariums. She is on her way to becoming: “The Sphinx who ate men raw.”

Chorus:
Just answer me this one: Did Oedipus think that when he banished the Sphinx—in Africa a half-man, half-animal which became a grotesque female in Greece—did he think that when he banished this monster from Thebes, in thousands of years the Sphinx would not have learned a trick or two? That the Sphinx would reappear as his brother's niece, Antigone, woo Teiresias to wear down Oedipus about his origin (Creon was close when he suggested Teiresias was out for personal gain) and finally wipe out his brother's family?

(Sister and Minnie are seated in an apartment in the Yellings' house. Minnie is reading a grey-covered magazine with no cover picture. Sister is sewing and listening to Radio KDIA “Lucky Thirteen.”)

Radio:
Still unconfirmed reports are trickling in from a shoot-out at the Berkeley Marina. As reported earlier this morning, two men apparently in a case of mistaken identity mortally wounded each other in gun battle. KDIA will keep you posted on further developments
.

“What do you suppose it means, Minnie? Do you think that LaBas and Wolf have been injured?”

“No. Most likely an internal feud among the Workers. We'll never know. You know how secretive they are.”

(Sister rises to go to the telephone.) “I'd better call and find out.”

“I'm amazed it's even made the radio. They usually keep their little squabbles among themselves, never issuing information to anyone. Elitists,” Minnie says sourly.

Radio:
More details are coming in on the shoot-out which took place at the Berkeley Marina early today. In what was apparently a case of mistaken identity in which each man got the wrong one, two brothers, the popular Street
(the sisters gasp)
Yellings, leader of the Moochers, and Wolf, his brother, Vice President of Solid Gumbo Works, shot it out, leaving each other dead
. (Sister screams, throwing a hand over her mouth)
The scene of the double murder is shrouded in heavy fog. Eyewitnesses claim that when the blaze of gunfire ceased, the two men could be seen in the death embrace
.

(Minnie and Sister go to the closet, put on their coats and exit.)

LaBas sat inside his apartment on Grant Street, reading a copy of
Fate
magazine by candlelight.
Fate
magazine was pretty good at predicting the future. They had predicted in an interview carried in October 1963 that J.F.K. would be assassinated in November of 1963.

“I'm finished, Pop. Is there anything else you want? Something to drink?” (She advertised herself as “Madame. On San Pablo Avenue—Hablo Español. Readings $5.00. With this ad $2.00.”) She was a good old-fashioned woman who didn't believe that housekeeping was beneath her. Housekeeping was important to LaBas; he thought that it was the only way one could be sure of security.

He had abandoned his woolens, sturdy boots and eastern attire for jerseys, corduroys and light footwear when he came to the west coast. He relaxed in the Worker's garment worn only in privacy so as not to draw attention; a black blouse, black cotton pants. He was wearing the jet equilateral cross on a chain around his neck. The Watson cross.

“No, I don't think so, though I know you make good drinks.” He gave her a check for her services.

“I did the floors with Van Van floor wash, and in front of each room I sprinkled some Silver Magnetic Sand. I scrubbed your room with Oil of Verbena and Oil of Rosemary.”

“Good.”

“Your bath water is drawn, and I put some Special Oil No. 22 in it.”

“That's fine. You really do the job. Please lock the door when you go out.”

She stood there for a moment. She was wearing a kerchief over her beautifully wrinkled crone face. She wore a blouse and a colorful Haitian skirt.

“Pop, is there anything wrong?”

“Well, I don't understand why Street would want to muscle in on the Solid Gumbo Works. His brother, Wolf, said he was never really concerned about it. I have a hunch somebody put him up to it, but I can't prove it.”

“You want a reading?”

“No, not at this point. I'd like to solve this riddle myself.”

“If you want a reading, you know where to reach me.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“The people tell me that the boys were really put away nicely. I was talking to one of the sisters at the Pick 'n Pack supermarket. She said the Argivians looked so nice in their uniforms. Wolf and Street were real handsome in their caskets. That was good of you to put them away so nice, LaBas.”

“I did what I had to do. I told Wolf to get rid of that pistol. He wouldn't listen. When he drew the pistol, that made the Argivians nervous. They ran, leaving Street behind. He was forced by his stupid machismo to stay there and pull his. A real old west scenario. I once saw a photo of Shattuck Avenue made in the 1850s. It looked like a set in
Shane
.”

“Yes, Pop. It was a bad fog that day. A friend of mine drove into a Berkeley entrance from route 101 and almost went over the divider on University Avenue, the fog was so thick.”

“I just can't understand who would be behind Street. I know they brought him to spy on us, but it couldn't be Minnie because they were representing rival factions of the Moochers. That doesn't make sense unless she is more cunning than her words speak.”

(Telephone rings)

“I'll get it, Pop.”

The domestic, Sister Jackson, went and picked up the phone. She returned to the room, running.

“Pop, you'd better come here quick, Solid Gumbo Works is afire.”

(Brother Brown and Fish walk toward each other on Telegraph Avenue. It has been two weeks since their falling-out. When they see each other, they both cross to the other side of the street. Noticing this, they start to return to their original side; when halfway across, they see that the other has done the same thing. They return to the side of the street opposite the one they started on. Then they try to walk past each other. They remain stationary, look at the sidewalk and then stare into the store windows, all the while looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes. Fish has a bandage still from where Andy cut him. Then, shyly, they walk towards each other with their heads down. They look up, and each simultaneously extends his hand to the other.)

 

Kingfish:
Put er there … I mean—

 

Andy:
Look, I—

 

Kingfish:
Well, you started it by—

 

Andy:
If you hadn't—

 

Kingfish:
Aw, Brother Brown, let's be friends, fellow Moochers.

 

Andy:
Yeah, that's my philosophy too, Fish. Forgive and forget.

 

Kingfish:
That's right, Brown, I'll forgive and I'll forget. (Andy scratches his head) You know, I been thinking, Brown, the future is ours and all, but I'm still broke. The landlady put me out today. Aw, what I gonna do? Holy Mackerel there.

 

Andy:
Yeah, Fish, I'm in the same boat that you am. Pretty soon it'll be winter and I'm really uptight for money.

(A youth in saffron-colored robes and a shaved head walks by. Fish studies the man as he solicits them. They refuse. He smiles and walks on.)

 

Kingfish:
Hey, that gimme an idea. You know, I see them boys up there at Sather Gate, saying Karmels over and over again, and people be putting coin into their hats. (Strokes chin) You know, Andy, I think it's about time we went into the Karmel bizness.

Ms. Better Weather's voice is heard on the intercom. “Rufus Whitfield of Gumbo Security is here to see you, sir.”

“Send him in.” Rufus enters. He is a large negro man with sharkskin suit, alligator shoes, skinny brim hat, pencil-thin mustache, Johnny Walker eyes.

“Rufus. It's a good thing we saved most of the building. Terrible fire. Wonder who could have done it. Argivians?”

“That's why I came up here. It wasn't the Argivians.”

“What's that?”

“Weren't no Argivians who set that fire.”

“You know who it is? Why didn't you use your techniques to repel them? Why didn't you arrest them?”

“We were being true to our reputations. We had gone through the entire routine which would have been enough to repel them. My men were checking out some of the hostile waves being sent out. We thought they were from some of those hippie organizations.”

“Will you please get to the point, Rufus? I have to take a light plane to Sacramento.”

“We were checking out the wrong signals because she got through. She bent our security backwards and ignited the place. We spotted her getting into a red sports car; we gave chase but lost her.”

“But you made no effort to fire upon this woman.”

“We weren't going to tell you about it at all. I was headed for Bos'n's Locker for a drink, forget about my troubles, when I decided to tell you because I thought that if you were going to be mad, you're just going to have to be mad.”

“You could have shot her. Why didn't you?”

“My men said she was too fine to shoot.”

“What?”

“Too fine to shoot. They said she was too fine to shoot.”

LaBas, enraged: “In other words, they went soft.”

“Have a heart, LaBas. Ain't no politics, religion or anything in the world worth shooting a fine bitch over. Why, that girl was so fine some of the men's faces were blushing cherry-red. I mean, Pop, we don't mind bloodying a few noses or busting some behinds, causing a few welts on the leg or leaving a small permanent scar, but, LaBas, there ain't no reason in the world to shoot a woman like that no matter how much building she burns up. Damn, LaBas, you have insurance, so the building can be replaced, but a woman like that—”

“Stop it! We work and build until our plant is in good operation, and you ruin it all. Because you went, soft when you saw a beautiful frame. You're fired. But before you go—do you have her identity?”

Rufus removes a toothpick from his mouth. “Yeah, we know who she is. She's Ed's daughter, Minnie.”

“Minnie?”

“Yes, Minnie,”

“Minnie the Moocher?”

“The same.”

LaBas takes his seat slowly. “Well, of course, that sheds a different light on the matter.”

“That's right. We didn't think you'd want the
Gazette
to get a hold of a scandal involving Ed's daughter. You know how they play up black scandal so heavy.”

“Yes. Forget what I said about it. Go bring her to me.”

“But you said I was fired.”

“Go get the girl, Rufus.”

Rufus, smiling, exits.