Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone

he thought of them invading the south in their buses, stirring things up with their speeches, polluting the places he ate, and he knew that somebody had to be the avenging angel to strike them down

Chicken fat. Black chicken fat, that's all he smell like. Three four mile away he come stepping off the bus, no matter what kinda grease he got up under his arms, no matter what kinda 'pomade, you smell him, whiff.

True enough I don't get that close 'cept the one time I give him the business. But down the Preparation and Readiness Club there's a couple that got it good. They're waiting at Trailways when he come off, Harlem New York suit, little secret lapel pin, shined shoes, press reporters paying out attention like he was up for space in the legislature. The TV taking down words what he speak. Nicreamus his name, something like that, stole out of the Bible, Nicreamus Loam. Agent for the conspiracy.

The two boys from the club hang back, let pictures get took, count the crowd standing around, see who there and who ain't, take names, listen to the speech he make.

Sedition. Full of black sedition and propaganda. Anyone can tell. "Hundred years," come Murtagh Feud, mocking, pinkies in his nostrils. Murtagh looks the part when he minds, head like a bull's only bigger, baby fat. He's local deputy, full time, acting chancellor of the Preparation and Readiness Club. He roll back his lips, bug his eyes, keeps going. "Hundred years the spade say. E-mancipation, civil rights, using words like he ain't no nigga atall, regular Yankee voice like some announcer in the newsreel."

"He's passin'," come Billy-Dick Mangle, other boy who scouted the bus stop. "Pretty (continued on page 174)Long Time(continued from page 123) soon he look just like Feud here." Murtagh scratching his head like a monkey, jump around and everybody laugh a little, ready for fun. But he stop when he getting our attention, and go so fast-serious you have to listen. "This Loam," he say, "is one nigga ain't passin' nohow let me tell you. He got certificates all right, even books his name's in. But that don't change that skin none, that hair." Everybody murmur, nod their heads. "I tell you how he's passin'. He go by you buck naked some December night with no moon, you won't see him 'less he smiles. That's how he's passin'."

"You smell him too," come Mangle, and the members chuckle, everybody sitting around the war table the time I'm telling about, making plans for the crisis. "You smell that chicken-fat smell."

"Couldn't be much else," say Feud, pinkies up there again. "All the grease they sopping in with hardtack. Bound to emit some noxious fumes." Then we mix it up again, laughing, talking about his bodily parts.

Now this thing happening round the basement where the field marshal got his home. Everyone have some kinda name in west Tennessee, that's how they get to join, me the youngest, 32 next birthday, been a member one, maybe one and a half years. The club come to emergency session three four times since I join: first right after that initial sit-in Birmingham tactic, then immediate after each major crisis, whenever there's threats to what the field marshal calls sovereign personal properties. (The field marshal have a gift of speech. But he don't keep it reserved for the club alone. He got responsibilities above and beyond the brotherhood which is why I don't record his name. You gotta be careful what gets put down and what don't. Everybody being watched all the time, microphones, miniature cameras manufactured in Africa. Wherever you go they got agents listening, keeping tabs.)

"Grease," again out of Murtagh Feud.

"Flame thrower," is exactly what I say.

Everybody at the war table looking me over then and there, quiet, not fooling around, hearing just how I put it, what I'm thinking. "Cook up that chicken fat."

All the club ain't present that time. 'Bout two-thirds majority, them that's steady, dependable. Commander Fear counting heads. The rest standing, sitting, not too formal, still early, the secretary yet to arrive with the decoded minutes. Commander Fear wait for quiet, then announce the count. He discharged from the Navy after the Second World War but the uniform fit anyway and he wear it proudly every week, that gold thread sewn into the cap, thick stripes on the epaulets, he look like a prime minister. Everybody out to get his attention, he don't smile much, listens hard, stays clean, gets manicured in Chattanooga where he keeps an office. Fear say to me then, "Repeat yourself, son."

"Combat flame thrower," I just say it again, holding my hands like I got the nozzle pointed, ready to go. "Cook him up."

They glance around at each other, the brothers do, nobody saying nothing much, then over in the alcove at the head of the table where the field marshal got his throne. He sit there with that hood on his features, cowl he calls it, inscribed with crosses and portents. Under the hood, the field marshal nod. There's something weird, the way he did it, give you a feeling like if a shaft of golden sunlight picked you out in the Baptist church, shined on your face to let you know you had this one special mission to fulfill.

• • •

There's times I wash my arms 50 60 times a day. Got some kinda rash, dermatitis on my fingers, don't want it spreading. Keep it on the fingers then it don't go nowhere. Sometimes I get whatever you call them, daydreams, see it all over my body, fungus, different kinds of itch. Got to wash my arms when I see that, use special salve I get from Billy-Dick Mangle. There's gases in the air. Bacteria. Whatever Feud calls them. Noxious fumes.

• • •

Fear's the man what first told me about the world plot. It's a little bit like I knew it the whole time. Inside I got that feeling something going on all over, subversive. Niggas got their noses in it. But I don't have nothing figured till Fear come by and tell me.

Factories, he say. Engines and machines of every description. He picture it like a place where there ain't nothing but lathes and drill presses, smokestacks, no streets, no grass, no sidewalks even. Just factories and dirt roads for trucks to pick up and deliver. So much soot you don't know what the sky's doing. Men working the machines, sleep right in the factory, mattresses full of axle grease, steel shavings, work day and night, eat swill.

"Where's that?" I ask Fear. "What kinda place people gonna do all that?"

"They're doing it," he say. "They're doing it on the other side of the very ocean that washes up on the sands of Virginia."

"Well nobody ever gonna do it in Tennessee," and I show him a fist to make it stand. All the same something drop in my stomach, some kinda heat. I see me working those hydraulic machines, chained up.

"They could assign you to their mines," Fear continue. "Digging coal, hauling salt, just a shovel, no clothes."

"Not me they don't," shaking my head.

"A cup of oily water for the entire day; some black unleavened bread."

"Mines," I say, and my eyes close tight a minute. "I don't feature nothing about mines. Down in some hole cover you up in the dark."

Rash spread to all parts of the body. Infection.

Then he smile. Commander Fear give that look of benevolence and understanding. He take out the pamphlet and put it in my hands. Looks nearly the same like what the Government give out for crop rotation, conservation. Same size, same kinda printing, drawings like them political cartoons in the papers. It get me confused because on the one side it don't look interesting nohow and on the other Fear acting like he got the word to set me straight. So I look and he's pointing out this picture. It take him some patience, some easy going to make it all clear, but by the time I stop looking I seen it all.

New Jerusalem, it's right there, come straight out of Saint John, big walls running around the outside buildings for security. Buttresses, thick. Lines coming off the way they do to show like its shining. White and gold. You want to be inside. Two flags blowing in the wind over the gates, one have a cross, the others stars and stripes. It all look tough.

Only one thing's wrong. Men coming to knock everything down. Two of them running a log, big battering-ram, charging hard, meaning to bust through. The log dripping a whole lot of swamp moss, slime. Printed right on it, it say World Communism, just like that.

• • •

I got the room up over Billy-Dick Mangle's pharmaceutical supply. Fear come by there when he come. Late June it seems to me now, place used to be a loft, got a single fan blade on the ceiling, grease fur, don't cool nohow. Sometimes lend it to Billy-Dick when he beats up on his wife, buys some poon. No stomach for women myself, they got that trouble, that indecent business. Single room's all I need, cot in the corner, hot plate, can of Sterno, weights and exercises, some back issues of Male Body, not much more. Spartan. Old flag over the cot used to belong to the field marshal, got the 13 original colonies all in a circle. Makes me think about the Swamp Fox, Patrick Henry, people like that, takes my mind off work. I do automatic transmissions. Pays good enough, but the job's dirty, takes half the evening washing off. Fear hinting he got something better to offer someday. He come by that evening, citronella smell on him, keeps back the mosquitoes, me sitting blindfolded on the floor taking apart my Springfield what I got from the club after that flame-thrower talk. Trying to put the weapon back together, stay sharp, you never know when you got to do it in the dark. He show me that picture in the pamphlet then leave a moment so I look it over; give me a cigar, special kind comes in a metal tube. He don't wear the uniform then, only at meetings, but he's clean all the same, military pleats, spit shine, manicured nails. He wear dark glasses all the time, even at night, I forget to mention that, blue tint, wire rims, I don't miss too much.

"They trying to bust down the gates," I say, picking up the bolt for the Springfield. Fear puff on his own cigar a minute or two, look out the window, speak gentle.

"We are conversing in this room," he say. "And even as we speak the conspiracy gains ground."

All the time this heat feeling coiling up my stomach. Fear point to the men running with the log. First is some buck nigga strip to the waist, all stud, mean, kind you dream about, forget what kinda dream. Second's a Jew. He got that Jew star on his shirt, black beanie, beatnik beard, you know him right away. They moving together, they gonna bust down them white gates, knock over the flags. It's like we're all inside, me and Commander Fear in his uniform like a prime minister, and Mangle, and Feud, all kinds of children crowding behind us like something terrible about to take place. The field marshal, though, he's already been transported somewhere safe, you can't take a chance on his sovereign person. I look at the picture. I study up the detail on the nigga face, the Jew face, I know somewheres I seen them faces before.

Fear telling me, "They left out the Catholics, son, but they're the ones built the ram."

"Keep talking, Fear." I say it 'cause I got to know.

"Hand in hand they connive. Hand in evil hand. Godless, without quarter they mean to pillage, annihilate, enslave whoever survives their initial onslaught."

"Niggas?" I put it to him. "Jews?"

"Whoever works to secure a victory for international communism." He turn and look at me through them glasses. "There is a world plot, son. A scheme in every nation made to fit the pattern of their master plan."

I put away the Springfield and sit on the window ledge. Down in the street ain't much going on. Garage where I work's just closed, some boys drinking beer, few old niggas asleep by the curb, bugs in the lamps, people rocking on porches.

"The field marshal put out that memorandum on the master plan," I say, remembering. "It comes from Moscow."

He lean forward, touch me on the shoulder. "They are putting chemicals in our reservoirs, trying to drug us into apathy. They are legislating against our Constitution. They are coming by the busload to make us share our very drinking glasses with the mouths of an inferior race."

It all come out then. It's like I known it the whole while but the knowledge sealed off in a plastic sack, tied up waiting for Fear to let it out.

• • •

There's times I can't stop eating. I think how I got to stop but all the time I'm thinking, I keep it up, different kinds of whipped-cream pies and cakes, mashed potatoes with gravy, chili, red beans, Almond Joys, Sugar Daddys I buy pretending they're for some nephew, Tootsie Rolls to suck.

Doctor told me I'm too fat, gonna choke my heart.

• • •

Next meeting at the club they discuss the new buses coming in. The crisis right there in front of us. The field marshal speak out from under that cowl, show how everything relate to income tax, Supreme Courts, infiltration in Government ranks, things like that. I ask about the FBI and Feud step in to say they got their hands tied. He knows. Then Mangle explain how the Army made to work against us. Everybody got some kinda report. Only the talk getting too specific. I mean I can't follow it past a point, it get all bogged down in names, numbers, facts of every description. Details ain't nobody can do nothing about all at once. Too much confusion.

Alls I saw was chicken fat. Black chicken fat got to be cleaned out. Got to be. Somebody have to be the avenging angel, swoop in from the clouds with a white-fire sword, lay the conspiracy low. One by one I talk to the other brothers, hint how I got this feeling like I been selected, picked out. They listen, they say all right, but all the while something missing, left out. They ain't committed. The field marshal working on his facts is how I figure it. Some kinda organization, everybody planning together against this subversion, nobody see how it got to be personal. Sacrifice. A hero is positively required. Too much numbers the other way, too much figures.

I watch the ceiling up over the cot at nights, fan blade making shadows, Jews and niggas driving people into mines, practicing perverse and disgusting activities. Fungus on their fingers.

Come home from the station at night, wash my arms good, use abrasive soap and disinfectant in the water. Use my weights and springs, exercise, take apart the Springfield, put it together behind my back, look for guidance. The time coming and I feel it. Makes me excited and I eat a two-pound box of pecan praline just thinking.

• • •

One day I meet Fear right after work. He's returning from some kinda meeting in Chattanooga, been there with the field marshal. He got a book which describe in detail certain sexual and social facts about the white vs. nigga race. It cover everything. It go right into size and smell, brain structure, glands, disease, spoilage in the blood. I read it over and over, I think of how they coming in buses trying to mess the places I eat, chewing off the same utensils, the whole while this Nicreamus Loam giving speeches agitating the whole business, speaking propaganda, no one moving to strike him down.

That's when I carry on an investigation. I find out all about this particular Nicreamus Loam. The field marshal and Feud got files, they keep records on who moves in and out. They got what they call dossiers. Photographs, fingerprints, personal information of every description, I tell you there ain't nothing left out.

• • •

The day come and I know it by the way I feel in the morning. Saturday, kinda quiet, certain excitement in the air. I get some Nehi and rye whiskey, oil the weapon, he around the cot, break down the stock from the barrel, put the parts in my suitcase. I stroll over the nigga section.

Just stroll. Free and easy, me walking, nobody knowing the angel inside. Everything easy.

I wait in the goldenrod across from where he occupying some rented house. Two hours, maybe three, it don't sound like I can do it but I'm trained, me not moving, lying still, some kids stare but they see the avenging look and run, don't say nothing. When Loam walk up the path from his New York car, I just lay open the back of his head with half the clip, chew up his spine with the other half.

He go over, no fooling, like he hit with baseball bats. Twitch a little, bleed like a stuck pig, black-red blowing right out his ears.

College boy too, that Loam. Come from near Birmingham the dossier say, seven in the family, work North, win some scholarship in Philadelphia, place like that. All the information right there: Air Force man, first lieutenant, become a lawyer in Chicago later on, work for UNESCO, other front outfits, start out conspiracy work with CORE. Three children, would you believe it, two girls, one stud, the stud an intern, his woman got some name in books, artist, poet, like that--and me with the sword of white-fire step in and stop it all dead.

You gotta think about that. Man does all those things, them hours studying up, them days advancing position, going off to meetings, getting known. Then me, I cut him down.

Didn't see Fear no more after that. Only his picture once in the paper wearing that commander uniform, gold on the cap, receiving some breed of citation.

About legal expense, the Preparation and Readiness Club got special funds for all that. Billy-Dick Mangle get some medical reports written up on account of his pharmaceutical supply store, one I live over. The field marshal work behind the scenes, can't afford to get too involved, but fix it so nothing happen for seven eight months, the courts tied up with what he call litigation. Murtagh Feud the man got to make the arrest in the first place, collect evidence, him being the local deputy, and he slow to act. So ain't nothing happen. Everything circumstantial, nobody seen me. Them that did, now what they gonna say? They gonna say they seen me?

Them that say they seen the avenging angel got to hide their eyes. The light too radiant, too strong, too pure. It come from God.