"Let me get a beer then."
"Puts pimples on your belly, man. Let me light up some good Tijuana brass and pass it over, old athlete like you shouldn't be getting a beer gut, right?"
Rabbit neither agrees nor moves. He glances at Nelson: the kid's eyes are sunk and shiny, frightened but not to the point of panic. He is learning; he trusts them. He frowns over to stop his father looking at him. Around them the furniture – the fireplace that never holds a fire, the driftwood base like a corpse lying Propped on one arm – listens. A quiet rain has begun at the windows, sealing them in. Skeeter holds his lips pinched to seal into himself the first volumes of sweet smoke, then exhales, sighing, and leans back into the chair, vanishing between the brown wings but for the glass-and-silver circles of his spectacles. He says, "He was property, right? From Virginia on, it was profit and capital absolutely. The King of England, all he cared about was tobacco cash, right? Black men just blots on the balance sheet to him. Now the King of Spain, he knew black men from way back; those Moors had run his country and some had been pretty smart. So south of the border a slave was property but he was also other things. King of Spain say, That's my subject, he has legal rights, right? Church say, That's an everlasting immortal soul there: baptize him. Teach him right from wrong. His marriage vows are sacred, right? If he rustles up the bread to buy himself free, you got to sell. This was all written in the law down there. Up here, the law said one thing: no rights. No rights. This is no man, this is one warm piece of animal meat, worth one thousand Yoo Hess Hay coldblooded clams. Can't let it marry, that might mess up selling it when the market is right. Can't let it go and testify in court, that might mess up Whitey's property rights. There was no such thing, no such, believe me, as the father of a slave child. That was a legal fact. Now how could the law get that way? Because they did believe a nigger was a piece of shit. And they was scared of their own shit. Man, those crackers were sick and they knew it absolutely. All those years talkin' about happy Rastus chompin' on watermelon they was scared shitless of uprisings, uprisings, Chuck, when there hadn't been more than two or three the whole hundred years and those not amounted to a bucket of piss. They was scared rigid, right? Scared of blacks learning to read, scared of blacks learning a trade, scared of blacks on the job market, there was no place for a freedman to go, once he was freed, all that talk about free soil, the first thing the free-soil convention in Kansas said was we don't want no black faces here, keep 'em away from our eyeballs. The thing about these Benighted States all around is that it was never no place like other places where this happens because that happens, and some men have more luck than others so let's push a little here and give a little here; no, sir, this place was never such a place it was a dream, it was a state of mind from those poor fool pilgrims on, right? Some white man see a black man he don't see a man he sees a symbol, right? All these people around here are walking around inside their own heads, they don't even know if you kick somebody else it hurts, Jesus won't even tell 'em because the Jesus they brought over on the boats was the meanest most de-balled Jesus the good Lord ever let run around scaring people. Scared, scared. I'm scared of you, you scared of me, Nelson scared of us both, and poor Jilly here so scared of everything she'll run and hide herself in dope again if we don't all act like big daddies to her." He offers the smoking wet-licked reefer around. Rabbit shakes his head no.
"Skeeter," Jill says, "the selections." A prim clubwoman calling the meeting to order. "Thirteen minutes to Laugh-In," Nelson -says. "I don't want to miss the beginning, it's neat when they introduce themselves."
"Ree-ight," Skeeter says, fumbling at his forehead, at that buzzing that seems sometimes there. "Out of this book here." The book is called Slavery; the letters are red, white, and blue. It seems a small carnival under Skeeter's slim hand. "Just for the fun of it, to give us something more solid than my ignorant badmouthing, right? You know, like a happening. Chuck, this gives you pretty much a pain in the ass, right?"
"No, I like it. I like learning stuff. I have an open mind."
"He turns me on, he's so true to life," Skeeter says, handing the book to Jill. "Baby, you begin. Where my finger is, just the part in little type." He announces, "These are old-time speeches, dig?"
Jill sits up straight on the sofa and reads in a voice higher than her natural voice, a nice-girl-school-schooled voice, with riding lessons in it, and airy big white-curtained rooms; territory even higher in the scale than Penn Park.
"Think," she reads, "of the nation's deed, done continually and afresh. God shall hear the voice of your brother's blood, long crying from the ground; His justice asks you even now, `America, where is thy brother?' This is the answer which America must give: `Lo, he is there in the rice-swamps of the South, in herfields teeming with cotton and the luxuriant cane. He was weak and I seized him; naked and I bound him; ignorant, poor and savage, and I over-mastered him. I laid on his feebler shoulders my grievous yoke. I have chained him with my fetters; beat him with my whip. Other tyrants had dominion over him, but my finger was on his human-flesh. I am fed with his toil; fat, voluptuous on his sweat, and tears, and blood. I stole the father, stole also the sons, and set them to toil; his wife and daughters area pleasant spoil to me. Behold the children also of thy servant and his handmaidens – sons swarthier than their sire. Askest thou for the African? I have made him a beast. Lo, there Thou hast what is thine.' " She hands the book back blushing. Her glance at Rabbit says, Bear with us. Haven't I loved you?
Skeeter is cackling. "Green pickles, that turns me on. A pleasant spoil to me, right? And did you dig that beautiful bit about the sons swarthier than their sire? Those old Yankee sticks were really bugged, one respectable fuck would have stopped the abolition movement cold. But they weren't getting it back home in the barn so they sure gave hell to those crackers getting it out in the slave shed. Dark meat is soul meat, right? That was Theodore Parker, here's another, the meanest mouth in the crowd, old William Lloyd. Nellie, you try this. Just where I've marked. Just read the words slow, don't try for any expression."
Gaudy book in hand, the boy looks toward his father for rescue. "I feel stupid."
Rabbit says, "Read, Nelson. I want to hear it."
He turns for help elsewhere. "Skeeter, you promised I wouldn't have to."
"I said we'd see how it went. Come on, your daddy likes it. He has an open mind."
"You're just poking fun of everybody."
"Let him off," Rabbit says. "I'm losing interest."
Jill intervenes. "Do it, Nelson, it'll be fun. We won't turn on Laugh-In until you do."
The boy plunges in, stumbling, frowning so hard his father wonders if he doesn't need glasses. "No matter," he reads, "though every party should be torn by dis-, dis -"
Jill looks over his shoulder. "Dissensions."
"– every sest - "
"Sect."
"– every sect dashed into fragments, the national compact dissolved - "
Jill says, "Good!"
"Let him ride," Skeeter says, his eyes shut, nodding.
Nelson's voice gains confidence. "– the land filled with the horrors of a civil and a servile war– still, slavery must be buried in the grave of infantry - "
"Infamy," Jill corrects.
"– infamy, beyond the possibility of a rez, a razor- "
"A resurrection."