She lifted her head and said, “Did you bring cigarettes, chump? After all, we lay in dese beds in our own mess, rats leap into da nightstands, and down below some of da po’ patients are moved into some room and come back wif dey legs all cut off, even though they was only in here for da whoopin’ cough. You have to ring da bell for hours jess to get a drink of water. We need a smoke or we will go crazy.”
“Filter tip or plain?” I asked in a deep croaking voice.
The crowds of people fell from their positions in laughter. Men doubled up on the floor and howled. I charged through the crowd and my cap fell off. Women in the halls screamed, as I swung over the staircase and into the street. There were air-drill alerts, people running.
A sound truck announced: A NATIONAL EMERGENCY OF HIGHEST IMPORTANCE/THE HARRY SAM JOHN IS STOPPED UP/EVERYONE GO INSIDE OFF THE STREETS/WE REPEAT …
I ran. Convoys of plumbers were moving across the bay in battleships with rags sticking from their back pockets. They were armed with monkey wrenches and pliers and hammers. I continued to run. A truck pulled up to the park and cans of dead newsreels were dumped. I ran. The old men dropped to their knees, crossed themselves and cheered for the holiday. They swung their pails and walked somberly from the park.
Through the field glasses one could see the judges, generals and His Excellency Nancy Spellman tumbling down the slopes of the island toward their limousines while clammy fingers were adjusting their gas masks. I kept on running — galloping on my hooves like the wind.
PART II. An Old Woman Kidnaps Checkers
And I ran until I stumbled over a man who was lying face down in the street. My heels spun as I flew into a row of garbage cans causing the lids to tumble clanging into the gutter. In front of the spent form rested a giant ball of light manure. Thinking that the man might be ill, I went over to him and tugged at his armpits. Lying next to his body was a piece of luggage upon which were pasted stickers with the names of several Western capitals. Aroused, he slowly turned over and rubbed his eyes. I recognized him at once! It was my old professor from the Harry Sam College, U2 Polyglot, working out some empirical problems of his paper, “The Egyptian Dung Beetle in Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis.’”
“Bukka, my boy,” he said as he sat upright in the street “What are you doing outdoors during this grave crisis? All citizens have been advised to remain inside with their shades drawn and their fingers crossed.”
“I was on my way home before I fell into you, professor,” I answered,
He lit a pipe which he removed from the luggage at his side and continued to examine me. “My boy,” he finally said, “you look a little weak. I mean, those pointed ears and hooves. What are you trying to do, get on a quiz show or something?”
I told him of the setbacks I had received since leaving the Harry Sam College: the fights with Fannie Mae; my physical and spiritual deterioration; my increasing doubts as to the validity of the Nazarene discipline.
When he heard the last of these downcomings, the pipe nearly fell from his lips. “You’ve not kept up with the faith! That indeed is serious. You must get right down on your knees and repeat after me.”
The thinned tweed of U2 Polyglot’s knees met the street and I knelt next to him as he chanted: “HARRY SAM does not love us. If he did, he would come out of the John and hold us in his lap. We must walk down the street with dem signs in our hands. We must throw back our heads and loosen our collars. We must bawl until he comes out of dere and holds us like it was before the boogeyman come on the scene and everybody went to church and we gave each other pickle jars each day and nobody had acne or bad breath and cancer was just the name of a sign.”
The professor — after the manner of the Nazarene Bishops — lifted his nose from the street with great dignity. He then looked both ways and whispered into my ear: “Look, Bukka. I know that you’ve been afflicted with the hoodoo. That’s no disgrace; why in the “bad ol days’ they took the hoodooed, bound their paws, gagged them and made them lie on straw mats. But in this enlightened period, we take a more scientific view of this disease and that my boy is precisely what it is — a disease and not a curse.”
He shook his head sadly, then said, “The life of a scholar has its ups and downs, Bukka. We try to lift the spiritual sights of mankind and what do we get? These piddling allowances from the state for projects in the humanities, such as the one in which I’m now engaged. The grant I received for pushing this goddamn ball all over Europe is not enough to keep me in good pipe tobacco — so I’ve taken to a little hustlin’* on the side. You see, there’s this ol woman with two bricks for breasts who was taking conjure lessons through the mail under the Mojo Power Retraining Act. The other day while experimenting she came upon a recipe for allaying the symptoms and even curing advanced stages of hoodoo fever. I’ve been selling the stuff like hotcakes in Europe, scene of mysterious hoodoo epidemics, and I get five per cent on each bottle sold.”
He removed a bottle from the luggage which I tried to wrest from his hand, so eager was I to return to my normal self.
“Not so fast,” he said, gripping the bottle. “That’ll be five mazumas.”
I shoved the bills into his hand which he totaled — licking his thumb after each count. I unscrewed the bottle’s cap and poured the solution down my throat. I became itchy and nauseous. Convulsing and retching, I held my hips with crossed arms. My nostrils bristled from the sharp odor of the fluid and hair began to fall away from my body. Fangs dropped from my mouth, and falling into the street, broke into fine crystals. My feet began to shake involuntarily as if stricken.
“Thank you, professor,” I said to U2 Polyglot, as I began to feel a new lease on life.
“That’s all right,” he said, lighting up his benevolent eyes, those soft eyes which looked like chick-peas. “I still have faith that you will become a fine Nazarene Bishop, one of these days; I only hope that I will be able to follow your career.”
I was about to bid him farewell when suddenly a jeep full of Screws pulled up next to the ball whose greenish-brown flakes shone in the moonlight. One Screw stood up in the vehicle as soon as it screeched to a halt and aimed a turkey musket at our heads.
“What is this crap?” he shouted. “Why aren’t you citizens indoors like everybody else? Haven’t you been informed of the curfew?”
I was scared to death, but the professor seemed unperturbed as the Screw’s fingers fidgeted with the trigger of the turkey musket. U2 Polyglot removed some officious-looking papers bearing the greenish-brown seal of HARRY SAM from his vest pocket. The Screw’s eyes popped after he inspected them. He grinned meekly, then snapped to a stiff salute and clicked his heels. “Forgive me, Your Excellency, for interfering with a top-secret project.”
“That’s all right,” U2 Polyglot replied. “We must all be on guard against enemies of HARRY SAM.”
The Screw saluted, then shouted something to the other four who were huddled together in the back seat of the jeep. The vehicle jerked forward then backward and skidded around the corner on two wheels.
“Well, Bukka,” the professor said. “I have to get back to work. Take it easy, kid.” With this said, he lodged his nose in the ball of manure and with aplomb and correctness began pushing it down the street. I waved, until U2 Polyglot became a dark speck on the horizon.
The projects were settled in heavy gloom. Hundreds of candles flickered behind the yellow curtains of the narrow cubicles. The sirens wailed throughout the area and men holding flashlights trotted through the streets. The Nazarene apprentices from the universities — looking like sick dust mops — were dispensing coffee and doughnuts to the volunteers. I went into my apartment and turned on radio station UH-O. Reports of the crisis in the Harry Sam John were coming in from all over the world: