Flight to Canada (20 page)

“Would you get your man Master Arthur Swille; we’ll wait here in the lobby,” the short one said, removing his hat, walking a grumbling Stray Leechfield into the hall. The medium one was handcuffed to Leechfield.

“I’m afraid my man is dead,” Robin said, bowing his head. “I’m the man here now.”

“He died? What does that mean?” the medium one said, staring at his companion.

“It means that I’m free. Now will you take these handcuffs off?” Leechfield said, stretching out his hands. “I have to get to New York for the opening of the Leechfield
&
Leer Minstrel Organization at the Ethiopian Opera House on Broadway,” Leechfield said, his nose to the ceiling.

“What’s so funny?” Leechfield said, glaring at Uncle Robin. Leechfield was dressed in a white Russian drill coat, ruby-red plush breeches, a beautiful cloth waistcoat of the color of ideal sky-blue, a splendid silk shirt and a rakish French hat from New Orleans. He had rings on all of his fingers, a diamond stickpin on a cravat and Wellington boots.

“Man, is that the way you dress up around the Great Lakes?” Robin asked.

“It’s my bi’ness how I dress, old man,” Leechfield said. “You ain’t bound to me. You don’t have to identify with me. Why don’t you get free, old man? Then maybe you’ll let me be free. You ought to get out of the South once in a while. Then you’d know that these are theatrical clothes. Dummy. This what theatrical people wear out there in the smart world.”

“Let him go,” Robin said. “It’s all right.”

“Yeah, but with Swille gone, who’s going to pay the bill?”

“Yeah, who’s going to pay the bill?” the medium one said.

“I’ll pay. I’ve taken over the books. I’ll give you a check,” Robin said. “But first, I know you’ve traveled far for this. Why don’t you go into the kitchen and have Bangalang fix you some sandwiches and give you a bottle of beer.”

The three start for the kitchen, led by Leechfield. Being a former Greaser, he knows where the kitchen is.

“Hold on, Leechfield,” Robin says.

“Yeah, what is it?” Leechfield says with a sneer.

“Did you really think that it was just a matter of economics? Did you think you could just hand history a simple check, that you could short-change history, and history would let you off as simple as that? You’ve insulted history, Leechfield. The highest insult! You thought he’d let you off with a simple check. It was more complicated than that. You thought you were dealing with straw when you’re dealing with iron. He was going to return you the check. He had money. He didn’t want money. He wanted the slave in you. When you defied him, took off, the money was no longer the issue. He couldn’t conceive of a world without slaves. That was his grand scheme. A world of lords, ladies and slaves. You were showing the other slaves that it didn’t have to be that way. That the promised land was in their heads. The old way. The old way taught that man could be the host for God. Not one man. All men. That was the conflict between you and Swille. You, 40s and Quickskill threatened to give the god in the slave breath.”

“I don’t know what you and Quickskill are talking about. House talk. Talk from the living room of ideas. He didn’t take the check. It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead. I wasn’t doing all that when I ran away. Not what you said. I not only ran away from the Master, but from the slaves too. Sometimes it was hard for me to tell the difference. I got whips from both of them. I decided to do it for a living. As you can see from my clothes and from my newly acquired wealth, it’s a thriving industry. Anyway, you keep doing it, Uncle Robin.” Leechfield left for the kitchen.

Robin smiled. That Leechfield is a flambeau carrier in a Mardi Gras parade.

The violet sun was setting behind the Virginia hills. Soon it would be night. A night so black the stars looked like scattered sugar crystals.

That was a strange letter from Raven this morning. I’m glad he’s doing my book. I’ll be glad to see him again. I wonder did he find what he was looking for in Canada? Probably all that freedom gets to you. Too much freedom makes you lazy. Nothing to fight. Well, I guess Canada, like freedom, is a state of mind. Them counts and earls look like they’re free, but they’re not free. Always in the newspapers caught with their baby dolls. Old Abe showed them, though. What a player. Abe showed those dukes and earls. Old Jeff Davis in jail, doomed to be the name on a dirt road in crawfish country, Louisiana.

What happened to all they Canadas? Quickskill, 40s, Leechfield, Davis, Swille, old Abe. Old Abe gunned down while watching a comedy. Gunned down by one of those true savages, dressed in zealot’s popinjay clothes. Maybe Raven can talk about all of that. Glad my letter reached him up at the Eagle Hotel. Old. Pompey knew. How did Pompey know? What a strange one. Knew where Raven was. Like he flew my letter to Raven at the Eagle Hotel. What did Raven mean when he said, “Writing always catches up with me”? Quickskill
—
that boy has tried to be so clear. He’ll always be a poet, that Raven.

I couldn’t do for no Canada. Not me. I’m too old. I done had my Canadas. I’m like the fellow who, when they asked why he sent for a helicopter to get him out of prison, answered, “I was too old to go over the wall.” That’s the way I feel. Too old to go over the wall. Somebody had to stay. Might as well have been me and Judy. Yeah, they get down on me an Tom. But who’s the fool? Nat Turner or us? Nat said he was going to do this. Was going to do that. Said he had a mission. Said his destiny was a divine one. Said that fate had chosen him. That the gods were handling him and speaking through him. Now Nat’s dead and gone for these many years, and here I am master of a dead man’s house. Which one is the fool? One who has been dead for these many years or a master in a dead man’s house. I’ll bet they’ll be trying to figure that one out for a long time. A long, long time.

Well, you had to hand it to Swille. He was a feisty old crust. Lots of energy. What energy? Rocket fuel. And Ms. Swille. She had a lawyer who could have sprung John Wilkes Booth. Lawyers for those who dwell in castles. The rich get off with anything, it’s us serfs who have to pay. I don’t want to be rich. Aunt Judy is right I’m going to take this fifty rooms of junk and make something useful out of it.

Who pushed Swille into the fire? Some Etheric Double? The inexorable forces of history? A ghost? Thought? Or all of these? Who could have pushed him? Who?

“Uncle Robin?”

Robin turns to his secretary, Pompey, who as usual has appeared from out of nowhere.

“Yes, Pompey?”

“Raven is back!”

12:01 A.M.

Tamanaca Hotel, Room 127

Fat Tuesday March 2, 1976

New Orleans

*
Corn-syrup solids, vegetable fat, sodium caseinate, mono and diglycerides, dipotassium phosphate, sodium silicoaluminate, artificial flavor, tricalcium phosphate, and artificial colors.

Ishmael Reed (b. 1938) is an acclaimed American novelist, essayist, and poet, whose work often challenges mainstream culture and conveys the perspectives of minorities—especially African Americans—whose voices are underrepresented. He has been called “great” by novelist James Baldwin; Sam Tanenhaus of the
New York Times
; Ta-Nehisi Coates of the
Atlantic
; and Harvard University Press Over the past forty years, Reed has published more white authors than white literary magazines have published black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian American authors.

Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Reed grew up in Buffalo, New York. He studied at the University at Buffalo, which later became the State University of New York (SUNY), before moving to New York City, and later, California. For thirty-five years Reed taught at the University of California, Berkeley, while maintaining visiting appointments with several other institutions, including Harvard University, Yale University, Dartmouth College, and the University at Buffalo, SUNY.

Reed’s activities in 2012 alone exemplify his position among the most well-known international writers and performers. Conjure, a band that has performed his poetry and songs since 1983, with various personnel including Bobby Womack, Taj Mahal, Jack Bruce, and Allen Toussaint, presented a concert at the Sardinia Jazz Festival. At the request of the US State Department, Reed visited middle schools and universities in East Jerusalem. He attended the launch of his new book,
Going Too Far
, in Montreal, joining the city’s mayor and a member of Quebec’s National Assembly. And he delivered the keynote address at a literary conference in Beijing.

Reed’s songs have been performed and recorded by Taj Mahal, Cassandra Wilson, the Roots, Mary Wilson of the Supremes, Little Jimmy Scott, Bobby Womack, and most recently, Macy Gray, among others. His writing has become a favorite of musicians. Funk star George Clinton, for instance, cites Reed’s novel Mumbo Jumbo as an inspiration, and the late rapper Tupac Shakur cites Reed in his song “And Still I Rise.” In 2012, Reed was named the first SFJAZZ Poet Laureate. Reed has performed with his band at Yoshi’s, the landmark San Francisco jazz club, and as a solo jazz pianist at Rome Neal’s Banana Puddin’ jazz series at the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City. Reed’s first album,
For All We Know
(2007), features Reed on piano, his partner Carla Blank on violin, and David Murray on saxophone.

In 1965, with counterculture activist Walter Bowart, Reed named and helped co-found the
East Village Other
, or
EVO
, a biweekly paper that was an early example of the alternative press. In addition to frontline journalism from the cultural underground,
EVO
featured collages and early comics by such notable artists as Spain Rodriguez, Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman. Reed was also a member of the Umbra Writers Workshop, a collective of young black writers living in New York, which included David Henderson, Calvin Hernton, Tom Dent, Askia Touré, Lorenzo Thomas, and Joe Johnson.

Beginning with
The Free-lance Pallbearers
in 1967, Reed has published ten novels, including
Mumbo Jumbo
(1972),
Flight to Canada
(1976), and most recently,
Juice!
(2011). His writing spans other genres as well, including plays, essays, and poetry. In 1972, Reed was nominated for a National Book Award for Mumbo Jumbo and for his book of poetry, Conjure (1972).
Conjure
was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, while
New and Collected Poems: 1964–2006
(2007) received a Gold Medal from the Commonwealth Club of California. Reed received the MacArthur Fellowship (otherwise known as the “genius grant”) in 1998.

Reed has attracted praise from such scholars and critics as Harold Bloom, for
Mumbo Jumbo
; Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, for his poetry; the
New York Times music
critic Jon Pareles, for his songs; and critic Clive Barnes, for his plays.
Backstage
, the New York theater trade magazine, compared him to Molière. In 1979, he won a Pushcart Prize for his essay “American Poetry: Is There a Center?” Reed’s cartoons have been published in the
San Francisco Chronicle
,
Black Renaissance Noire
, and the
New York Amsterdam News
.

Reed has also served as an editor for numerous anthologies, small presses, and publications. In 1976, he co-founded the Before Columbus Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes overlooked writers of diverse ethnicities and “a pan-cultural view of America.” The foundation has presented annual book awards for outstanding American literature since 1980, when Reed founded the American Book Awards, which the
Washington Post
describes as the American League to the National Book Awards’ National League.

In 1989, Reed founded PEN Oakland, a chapter of the PEN Center USA, with Floyd Salas and Claire Ortalda. The
New York Times
calls their group “the blue collar PEN.” The organization’s annual awards are named for the late University of California, Berkeley professor Josephine Miles.

Reed’s prolific output is unified by an interest in African American life and its wider relationships to American society. His work at times deploys parody and biting satire, using these to dissect repressively Eurocentric narratives of history and culture, and to critique dogma of all kinds. Advocating for a fully inclusive art, and marked by stylistic variety and playfulness, Reed’s work is sometimes described as postmodern. Its humor, however, is married to a passionate candor about history and social issues.

Reed’s wife is author and director Carla Blank. Blank’s recent work includes directing a play at the Kennedy Center, and collaborating with Robert Wilson on a work called “Kool: Dancing in My Mind,” which was performed at the Guggenheim Museum and made into a film called
The Space in Back of You
. Reed also has two daughters. Timothy, his daughter by a previous marriage, is the author of the novel
Showing Out
about the exploitation of strippers at a Times Square entertainment theater owned by a crime family. His youngest daughter, Tennessee, is a poet and author of
Spell Albuquerque
, her memoirs. They all live in Oakland, California.

Reed is pictured here as a young boy, between two and three years old.