“Aw, we know all this bull!” exclaimed Rufus W. Johnson (still off-screen). “You freeze fat cats, shade fat cats, that is, and while they’re on ice you get all their money and stocks and whatever they have, and they don’t get it back till they’re alive again, if they ever are. That’s cool, I mean, you can’t take it with you, might as well gamble, got nothing to lose but a fancy funeral.” (Keeping his face somber and glowering, Barron let the unseen voice rave on and waited for the pounce-moment.) “Okay, that’s what you’re selling, that’s what Rufus W. Johnson is buying. Only you ain’t selling to no nig—”
“Watch it, Mr Johnson!” Barron cut in, and Vince, thinking along with him, cut Johnson’s audio as the promptboard flashed “2 Minutes.” “You see, Mr Yarborough, Mr Johnson is overwrought and with good reason. He’s got a house that cost him $15,000 and $5,000 in the bank, and over $50,000 in trucks, and I’m no Einstein, but by my reckoning, $50,000 plus $20,000 is more than $50,000. Is it not true that the minimum net worth that’s supposed to be assigned to the Foundation upon clinical death in order for the Foundation to issue a Freeze Contract is $50,000?”
“That’s right, Mr Barron. But, you see, the $50,000 must be in liquid—”
“Please, just answer the questions for a moment,” Barron cut in loudly. Don’t let him explain, keep him bogey-man, he thought, noting wryly that Vince had granted the gray-on-gray image of Yarborough three-quarters of the screen, pale, unreal Goliath versus full-color David effect. “It all seems simple to me. $50,000 is supposed to buy any American a Freeze. Mr Johnson offered you his total net worth, which exceeds $50,000. Mr Johnson is an American citizen. Mr Johnson was refused a Freeze Contract. Mr Johnson is a Negro. What conclusion can you expect the American people to draw? Facts are facts.”
“But race has nothing to do with it!” Yarborough answered shrilly, and Barron frowned publicly, and grinned inwardly as he saw Yarborough finally blow his cool. “The $50,000 must be in liquid assets—cash, stocks, negotiable property. Any man, regardless of race, who has $50,000 in liquid—”
Barron crossed his legs, signal to cut Yarborough off the air, as the promptboard flashed “60 seconds,” said, “And, of course, we all know it’s the Foundation that decides whether a man’s assets are… liquid enough. Makes it nice and cozy, eh, folks? The Foundation doesn’t want to freeze a man, just tells him his assets are ‘frozen’, no pun intended. Wonder how many Negroes have frozen assets, and how many have frozen bodies? Well, maybe we can find out from a man who’s got some strong opinions about the current proposal in Congress to grant this—shall we say whimsical!—outfit that calls itself the Foundation for Human Immortality a monopoly on all cryogenic freezing in the United States—the Social Justice Governor of Mississippi, Lukas Greene. So hang on, folks, and hang on, Mr Johnson. We’ll be talking to the Governor of your home state right after this attempt to—unfreeze your pocketbooks by our sponsor.”
Hope you’re watching this, Howards, you schmuck you, Barron thought as they rolled the commercial. See what happens when you mickey mouse Jack Barron! He thumbed the intercom button, said: “Let me have a couple private moments on the line with Luke.”
“Hey what you want from this po’ black boy, you big bad shade you?” Lukas Greene (one eye on the Acapulco Golds commercial, the other on the vidphone image of Jack Barron) said. “Isn’t shafting Bennie Howards enough for one night? Gotta pick on us Crusaders for Social Justice too?”
“Relax, Lothar,” Jack Barron said. “This is you-and-me-stomping-the-Foundation night. This time good old Jack Barron’s playing ball with you, dig?”
Well, that’s a relief, provided I can trust Jack, Greene thought. But what’s all this race-flak with the Foundation? “Dig,” said Greene. “But we both know Bennie’d freeze Chairman Wang himself, if the cat coughed up the bread, let alone some poor buck. Why the knife? You comin’ home to the SJC, Claude?”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Jack Barron told him. “I’m just showing Howards what happens to a vip thinks he can be out to Jack Barron. Observe and learn, Amos, case you ever decide to be away from your vidphone some Wednesday night. But, cool it; we’re about to go on the air again.”
Same goddamn Jack Barron, Greene thought as Barron made with the introduction. (’… Governor of Mississippi and leading national figure in the Social Justice Coalition…’) Sell his mother for three points in the ratings, Howards could be eating babies raw and it’d be no sweat, no heat, too much power for the ball-less wonder, but don’t answer that phone and you get the knife, Bennie boy. (’… your constituent has charged…’) Okay, we play Jack’s game tonight, both shaft Howards maybe help kill the Freezer Utility Bill, and so what if Jack has asshole reasons.
“… and it is well-known that the Foundation has been refused permission to build a freezer in Mississippi, Governor Greene,” Jack was saying. “Is this because the Mississippi Social Justice Coalition suspects, as Mr Johnson charges, that the Foundation discriminates against Negroes?”
Well, here goes nothing, thought Greene. Let’s see how much SJC flak he lets me get away with. “Leaving aside the racial question for a moment, Mr Barron,” Greene said into his vidphone, noting that Generous Jack was granting him half the TV screen at the moment, angular black face sharply handsome in black and white, “we would not permit the Foundation to build a Freezer in Mississippi if Mr Howards and every single one of his employees were as black as the proverbial ace of spades. The Social Justice Coalition stands firmly for a free Public Freezer Policy. We believe that no individual, corporation, or so-called nonprofit foundation should have the right to decide who will have a chance to live again and who will not. We believe that all freezers should be publicly owned and financed, and that the choice of who is to be Frozen and who is not should be determined by the drawing of lots. We believe—”
“Your position on the Freezer Utility Bill versus the Public Freezer proposal is all too well known,” Jack Barron interrupted dryly, and Greene’s TV screen now showed him scrunched down in the lower lefthand corner (gentle reminder as to who was running things from old Berkeley buddy Jack Barron).
“What’s bugging Mr Johnson, what’s bugging me, what’s bugging a hundred million viewers tonight is not the theoretical question of private versus public Freezing, but the practical question: does the Foundation discriminate against Negroes? Is Benedict Howards abusing his economic and social power?”
Old college try, thought Greene. “That’s what I was getting at, Mr Barron,” he said, deliberately great-man-testy. “When a private company or foundation acquires the enormous power that the Foundation for Human Immortality has, abuses of one kind or another become inevitable. Should the Foundation succeed in getting its Utility Bill through Congress, and should the President sign it, this life-and-death power will be written into law, backed by the Federal Government, and at that point the Foundation can discriminate against Negroes, Republicans, sha—er, Caucasians or anyone else who refuses to play Howards’ game with impunity. That’s why—”