Mumbo Jumbo (20 page)

It don’t look too bad; a little more and I’ll be a light brown and then…

LAWD! LAWD! LAWD! WE COMES UP HERE TO FETCH THE PRODIGAL SON AND HERE WE IS GOT D WHORE OF BABYLON! LAWD IT’S WORSE THAN I THOUGHT!

The 3, Hubert, Hinckle and W.W., turn to see a huge man dressed in a black Stetson, Wild Bill Hickok flowing tie and black clergyman outfit and cowboy boots.

PA!!!

The 3 deacons accompanying Rev. Jefferson kneel as Rev. Jefferson stretches his hands toward the heavens.

Lawd we axes you to pray over this boy …mmmmmmmmmmm An’ deliver this child away from these naked womens…mmmm And sweet back mens. And save his soul from torment…mm

What is the meaning of this? Busting into my estate unannounced like this? Who are these men, W.W.? Hinckle asks, turning to his columnist.

W.W. is sobbing softly. It’s my paw and his deacons, Publisher Hinckle Von Vampton.

Well it’s a pleasure to meet you, Hinckle says, slithering over to where the quartet stand, menacing and strong in the doorway.

O no you don’t. You wants to make 1 of them things out of me as well; I’m not going to stand for it.

Rev. Jefferson slugs Hinckle Von Vampton with a fist that has toted many a grain sack and tamed many a horse. Hinckle kind of floats to the rug, out cold. Hubert “Safecracker” Gould tries to flee through the door but is grabbed quickly by the 3 other deacons who’ve accompanied their pastor from Rē’-mōte Mississippi.

That’s right men. Bust him up. It ain’t no use to planting potatoes when it’s hog-killing time.

In the other room, sure enough, Hubert “Safecracker” Gould can be heard squealing and knocking over furniture trying to escape their grip.

Pa…I was just trying to get out there.

Don’t be using none of the city talk at me. We’ve been driving for 1 week. I couldn’t believe it. You told me you were working for a magazine and I was proud and went around telling everybody about it then 1 of the sisters brought me a copy and I knew, son, that you had left the teachings of d church and well son, I’m here going to take you back to Rē’-mōte and try to heal yo’ soul, you up here posing with all types of trash. Come here.

No, pa! Don’t do that!

I said come here boy! Raising your voice at me! Rev. Jefferson walks toward his son with an open 12-foot cotton sack and doesn’t stop until he gets him all the way. One squirming shoe shows and he pushes that in too.

Rev. Jefferson brushes his hands. Puts the wiggling, protesting sack over his shoulder steps over Hinckle Von Vampton and starts out to join his men to begin the journey back to Mississippi. The Rev. Jefferson, his deacons go outside and climb into their T Model Fords which at that time had such a reliable engine you could plow with it.

Once inside their cars, Rev. Jefferson and one of the deacons ride in the front of their car; the sack is on the backseat.

Rev.?

Yes, Deacon Jones.

Rev., what are you going to tell the folks back at the church when they find out that you resorted to beating on these men?

I got it all worked out, deacon.

How’s that?

John 2:14.

I don’t understand, Rev.

Christ and the money lenders. New Yorkers ain’t the only 1s possess a science.

The deacon scratches his head as the 3 T Model Fords rumble on out of Spiraling Agony’s path toward the highway.

Hinckle Von Vampton comes to. He looks about W.W. Jefferson’s suite. That preacher had a pretty solid punch to be a man of the cloth. Hinckle climbs to his feet and staggers out to the front of the mansion. The place is a mess. Chicken feathers are all over the floor. Brogan prints. Half-chewed chunks of tobacco. How had 1 man put it? “Quintessential Americans.”

Well that’s what these Southern preachers are; man, could they bop you one! What was that? The sound of moaning coming from the front yard. Hinckle walks out to see Hubert “Safecracker” Gould lying face down in the mud, groaning. He goes into the kitchen and returns with a pitcher of water. He walks over to where Gould lies and turns him over. His face is covered with the black mud.
Why of course,
Hinckle thinks,
why not?
Hinckle is desperate and would resort to any means in order to come through with the flying colors. He pours cold water on Hubert’s face, and Hubert wakens from his unconsciousness. Hinckle helps Hubert to his feet and then goes into the house to make a phone call to a woman he knows.

A
N ANDROID IN MINT-GREEN
long johns which cover everything but his face rolls into the room and salutes the Hierophant 1.

Yes?

Trouble, sir. Everything has been confirmed. He just entered the Lincoln bedroom, locked the door and removed a clandestine Victrola from under the bed…he then…he then…the thing muttered in its vocal monotone, flashing its eyes.

Well, go on.

He put on a record entitled “The Whole World Is Jazz Crazy” and began to tap his “pedal extremities” as Fats Waller would say.

Fats Waller? Who is this Fats Waller?

He’s a piano player, sir. He wrote “Soothin’ Syrup Stomp,” “Stompin’ the Bug,” “Hog Maw Stomp,” “The Rusty Pail” and one the boys down in central control enjoy called “Abercrombie had a zombie.”

How did you become so familiar with this Jazz? The Hierophant gives the assemblage of wires and aluminum metal a steely questioning look.

You told us to keep an eye on Jes Grew, sir.

O, yes…true.

The Android turns about and leaves the room.

He thought it was antiseptic up here. He’d have to watch that Android in case the Germ was about. Warren Harding. Him too? Of course there had been rumors during the campaign, the book brought to Washington by guarded express car, written by 1 William Eastbrook and based upon interviews with Harding’s neighbors of Marion Ohio who said that they had never treated his father as a White man. The books had been secretly destroyed in a bonfire.

Even the plates were destroyed. Another book,
Warren Harding, President of the United States,
worth $200,000 per copy, is available only from the “Rare Book Room of the New York Public Library.”
*
250,000 copies of a book which asserted Harding’s Negro ancestry had previously been ordered destroyed by Woodrow Wilson. (It seems that the Haitian minister to Paris requested an audience with Woodrow Wilson to complain to this lying, hypocritical champion of “self-determination” the pain the American occupation was inflicting upon the Haitian people. The envoy was rudely dismissed by Wilson’s Secretary of State Robert Lansing. Wilson later lay ill, helpless, exhibiting the symptoms of VooDoo vengeance, for example, lassitude, the inability to concentrate more than 10 minutes at a time.)
*
When Republicans approached Harding with these rumors and asked him to deny them he said, “How should I know. One of my ancestors might have jumped the fence.”
*
What kind of answer was that? They had received reports from Hinckle Von Vampton that he had attended a Rent Party where he mingled with J.G.C.s and now this.

The author Mark Sullivan paints a picture I would imagine to be prolific with shadows, a waning witch-moon covered with shiny oil, 1 dark figure darting through a deserted street. The subject is the mysterious Harry Daugherty of whom the biographer wrote, “one of his eyes was imperfect, and the other, at the beginning of an acquaintance, seemed to circle round the man rather than focus on him, as if he was getting his impression, not from a physical man, but from some psychic aura about him, not visible to an ordinary eye.” Harry Daugherty is not only Harding’s poker partner, the man who was to put up with the Presidents’ swearing and drinking, but he is also the man “who pushed into the water” this reluctant candidate who would have preferred to remain in the Senate. You guessed it. Harry Daugherty is an agent of the Wallflower Order.

They thought that Harding would be perfect for the job of Jes Grew stopper. Hadn’t he earned his 1st dollar cutting corn? Didn’t he assist local farmers in painting their barns and thrashing? As a printer hadn’t he learned the art of “sticking type, feeding press, making forms, and washing rollers?” Hadn’t this man maintained William McKinley’s flagpole on his lawn as a good luck symbol? Didn’t he sprinkle his conversation with such wholesome expressions as “pleased as punch?” Wasn’t his favorite reading matter “the funnies?” And his contribution to building the Ohio railroad; what about that?

Wasn’t this a sedate businessman, newspaper editor and family man, a devoted husband of Florence, a dashing husband who campaigned often, dressed in white trousers, blue coat and saw-tooth hat? Here was a man whose opinions were those of Muncie, Indiana and now he had been exposed as Black.

They can’t use the lone psychopath emerging suddenly as the President’s party enters the train station. They used that with Garfield. No, they must use something different this time. Poison. It all adds up to guilty. He attended a Rent Party, exposed the Holy War in Haiti and now this. And when he was quoted as saying, “The Negro should be the Negro and not an imitation White man,” what did he mean by that? Was that some kind of code he was giving to Blacks? You know, how they talk sometime you don’t know what they’re saying and as soon as you find out they done gone on to something else.

The Hierophant phones Harry Daugherty to tell him of his decision.

*
The Five Negro Presidents US.A.
—J. A. Rogers.

*
The Harding
Era—Robert K. Murray.

*
The Five Negro Presidents US.A.—J.
A. Rogers.

…J
ES SMITH, A FRIEND
, attempts to warn Harding but “commits suicide”
*
in Harry Daugherty’s apartment. As soon as Warren Harding boards a train for what has become known to historians as “Harding’s mysterious journey West,” they begin injecting the poison. By the time he reaches San Francisco by way of Alaska on the morning of July 29 he is described by reporters as “gray and worn.”

They finish the job at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Harding had the last word though. It is contained in a message he was to deliver before the Hollywood Chapter of the Knights Templar, entitled “The Ideals of a Christian Fraternity.”
*
(In this way, he points his finger at his killers. Few historians have understood this clue.—I.R.)

*
Our Times,
vol. 6,
The Twenties—Mark
Sullivan.

*
Our Times
, vol. 6,
The Twenties
—Mark Sullivan.

T
HAT EVENING PAPA LABAS
sits in the office of Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral. He has closed the place until further notice. He is thinking of the deaths of his assistants Charlotte, Berbelang; and of Abdul Hamid. Was there a common thread which united them? If he could only find the Text. Abdul must have had it. He must have really been on to something. The Text must be somewhere in New York because wasn’t Jes Grew headed this way? Jes Grew would smell it out. He studies once again the epigram on cotton.

T Malice enters the room.

I went to see Earline over at Black Herman’s.

How is she?

She’s her old self. She took Berbelang’s death hard they say but got over it. The sisters will take care of her for a few weeks. Think I’ll go take in a show.

LaBas rolls a pencil in his fingers.

Where are you going? To a talkie?

No, thought I would go to the Cotton Club. There’s a terrific comedy team called the Warp and Woof formerly of the Diastole and Systole who imitate 3rd-rate literary critics with a passion. They are hilarious. Then there’s the Dancing Bales; that tap dance group taps so that the floorboards begin to creak.

Excited LaBas looks at T Malice. Say that again.

The Dancing Bales they dance so…

Come on let’s go.

But where?

No time to explain. LaBas flies down the stairs to the car, T Malice gasping for breath as he tries to keep up with the old man.

T
HOSE WHO HAVE BEEN
interviewed by Hinckle Von Vampton for Talking Android don’t have very much longer to wait. The 3 black Buicks bearing Haitian license plates pull up to the intersection of what is now 8th Ave. and 125th St. The men climb into the 3 cars and are driven to the pier near the blind pig where recently a series of amorous adventures culminated in a 1 night stand which nearly lost an innocent trolley car operator his happy home. They board
The Black Plume
and wait in the stateroom until Benoit Battraville (so bad that he isn’t mentioned in the index of one of the few books which cite him) enters the room.