The Busting Out of an Ordinary Man (19 page)

Somebody typing on the tier below, … must be Kwendi. Yeahhh, that would be him, young stud never sleeps it seems, but who am I to talk?

The clouds passed, leaving him temporarily blinded by the re-emergence of the moonlight.

“Leaving Mississippi three steps ahead of the lynch mob and working, bumming, conning, doing whatever else necessary to make life happen was a great book. I wish I had the nerve to try and remember all of it. Starving almost to death in a hermit's shack down in Cairo, Illinois. Why Cairo, Illinois? my imagination said to me. Why not Cairo, Egypt? And I was off the one room shack became a fifty room hash den owned by a funky-butt Ptolemaic aristocrat.

“It's a very strange thing to admit to yourself, after so long, that you are a liar. But I wonder about me, specifically me, on this score. Have I been a liar all these years, or a geography teacher?”

He frowned at the sound of the toilet being flushed in the cell next to him.

“What does it really matter? After all is said and done about what you are, someone once said, it's what you have done with what you are. And what was I before I was tamed? Before I had the iron doors slammed behind me and the key thrown away?”

The moon glared at the fierce smile he turned up to it.

“What was I? A question that not many men less wise than myself would even attempt to deal with.”

He paused, on the verge of writing a lie, before going on with the truth.

“I was a conning, cunning, scheming, dreaming, shrewd, slick, conniving beast, a miniature dinosaur with a brain a lecher, a consummate player. I was, at one time, the Great Lawd Buddha.”

He had to stop writing for a moment, to cool out the gush of egotism he felt rising within himself.

“Yes, at one time, I was the Great Lawd Buddha, a supersonic, geopolitical mac man. There've been times, many times, when I've found myself flashing across the face of the planet, taking those who could come with me, on the strength of a name Yemen, Jakarta, Hunza, Moeshoeshoe, Lhasa, Huatabampo, Mundina God! Whatever happened to Mundina? Yes, if not the name of a place, the name of a woman, or her perfume, or the shape of her earlobe.

“I was that, a lover of the lives of the women who thought that the greatest gift they had to offer was their bodies and all I really wanted, in most cases, was their stories.”

The sour-sweet memory of Heatwave set off a dull, achy feeling around the region of his heart.

“The ladies of my summer in life, the Circassians, the Navajos, the hundreds of hours of glamorous sorrow I suffered, taking my grizzled lovebone into and out of their holy slits, putting my mind into the position of being given something more precious than all the cunt they could possibly lay on me. Back and forth I've gone, across these United States, this cold-blooded America, from the east to the west, from north to south, tripping into Mexican villages, near Detroit, or raiding the striped tents of rival Bedouins because that's what one did, just this side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

“The moments I've had. The exquisite flavors of ten-thousand make-do stews in a thousand hobo jungles, the glistening stories recited by shattered men with hearts of tempered steel, the little fires, the rivers of wine.”

He let the pencil slip out of his fingers and leaned back against the wall, wishing he had a cigarette.

Maybe Rank has one.

He peered across at Ranklin C. Jones, at the smile slicing his brown face in sleep, dreaming of Pam Grier's titties, checked out the area surrounding him and spotted a half-smoked cigar in a jar lid under the edge of his bunk.

Oh well what the hell

He skirted the edge of his table, stooped for the half-done stogie, found a match and lit up frowning from the first puff guess beggars can't be choosy.

He remounted his seat behind the table, the smoke from the cheap cigar, held down too long, giving him a cheap high. He looked closely at the last words he had written, “rivers of wine, rivers of wine, days and nights of frustration, illness, suffering, a lifetime of dismal failure.

“How hard it is to tell the truth. A lifetime of failure. To be able, after all these years, to say that. To say that I've never been to Europe, Africa, Asia, or any other fucking place outside my country 'tis of thee.”

He dropped the smouldering cigar butt on the floor, feeling angry. “Making it up as I went along, that's what I did. I made it all up, the windblown feasts on the Mongolian steppes with Kurdish tribesmen, here's yogurt in your eye!

“The Japanese penis worshipping society, the Great Lawd Buddha, President down, girls! down!

“The voodoo thang in Papa Doc's Haiti, Erzulie's ride on my back, my career as a nudist photographer on the French Riviera, the kisses I exchanged with the princesses of twelve nations, including that cold-blooded young English bitch who loved horses more than she liked men.

“The rackets, the games, the schemes, the hustles all lies! Yes, all lies!”

He looked up, surprised to see the sky streaked by the first signs of another day, in this instance, Thursday, but no matter, and hurried on, writing as though the full day would destroy everything he had written.

“My life has been one glorious lie from beginning to end. A lie that deviated from time to time but still remained a lie, or perhaps I should put it another way, where other men have habitually told the truth and lied sometimes, I have always lied and told the truth as seldom as possible For me a lie.…”

“What is it, Buddhaman?” Ranklin yawwwned across at him, ending his story for the moment.

Buddha nodded his head neutrally, plastering his opaque look on.

“You been writin' all night, Buddhaman?”

“That's right, brother, all night long.”

Ranklin stepped onto the floor gingerly, popped over to the unenclosed stool for his morning piss. “Mannnnn, I don't see how you do it. I have a helluva time tryin' to scribble my woman a few lines every now 'n then.”

Buddha smiled and, along with the rest of the inmates, prepaied to deal with another jailhouse day.

“Buddha?” the guard spoke through the bars.

“Yeah, what can I do for you, Smitty?” Buddha turned to him casually, folding his blankets on his bunk, looking forward already to the nap he was preparing to steal later in the day.

“Warden wants to see you.”

Buddha straightened up, a shrewd gleam spooling the possible reasons around in his mind. “What's he want, Smitty?”

“Ooohhh, I don't rightly know.”

Ranklin winked at Buddha, turned to the guard, working sour against Buddha's sweet. “What the fuck you mean, you don't know! You the motherfuckin' polease here, ain't you?!”

“Mind your own business, Rank. When I got something to say to you, I'll call your name and number, o.k.?”

Ranklin C. Jones, having spent a night dreaming of freedom and ladies, started to bristle up at the guard. Buddha, cool, cooled him out. “It's cool, Rank, it's cool, probably needs my help to figure somethin' out. I'll be ready in a minute, Smitty.”

Buddha changed into his prison denims, brushed his teeth and shot a natural comb through his receding hairline a few times. “O.k., let's be gettin' on.”

Smitty signaled to the gateman to release the current on Buddha's cell, manually unlocked it and glared at Ranklin C. Jones. “Better watch your step, Rank,” he warned as he fumbled with his keys.

“Shhhiii-it! if you know what's good for you, you better watch your own fuckin' step This is our prison, not yours.”

Buddha and the guard fell into step on the way to the warden's office, Buddha reviewing his sins of the past week. Wonder what the fuck he wants to see me about? That cocaine deal? Nawww, he wouldn't have any way of knowing about that. The prostitution ring? Nawww, it wouldn't be about that, what the hell do they care about punks setting up a union? The moonshine still in the kitchen? Nawww, not that either, that's been there for years. What?

He maintained a poker face through all the checkpoints, began to feel slightly nervous as they stood in front of the huge paneled door of the warden's office.

Smitty knocked politely, twice.

“Come in!” a big bass voice boomed out.

“The Great uhhh, Chester Simmons, sir,” Smitty announced, ushering him in.

“Come in! Come in! Come in Buddha! Thank you, Smitty That'll be all.”

The guard reluctantly departed, certain that this man he guarded every day, this passive storyteller, was going to harm his warden in some way.

Buddha stood in the center of the floor, holding his cap behind his back, taking the warden's measure. Big, bluff, bleary-eyed beer drinker, three months in the Chair, tough.

“Sit down, Buddha! Sit down!… I know you're wonderin' why I wanted to see you. Coffee?”

“Yes, thank you, sir.”

The warden bounced over to his intercom. “Pasquale, two espressos, please.”

The Great Lawd Buddha relaxed, placed his cap on his knee espresso, shit! Things couldn't be too bad, not if he was going to be treated to Italian coffee beforehand.

The telephone buzzed twice before the warden snatched it up. Trouble with a couple members of the population.

“Sock both of the bastards in the Hole!” the warden growled, looking at Buddha as though he were a fellow warden, someone who understood the problems of managing the Big House.

Pasquale, the warden's personal servant, knocked lightly and popped in balancing a tray of coffee cups and a pot of coffee like the good Italian-European waiter he had been, once upon a time.

“Pasquale, I don't wanna be disturbed for the next half hour,” the warden warned him as he pulled his swiveling armchair around to the front of his desk to sip with Buddha. He handed him a demitasse, poured one for himself and settled his beefy frame into his seat opposite Buddha.

“Now then,” he growled jovially, “lemme hear this story about you ruling the city of Tel Aviv for a week without anybody knowing about it. Anybody who can put anything over on them goddamn Jew bastards has got to have a helluva lot on the ball! Hahhhhahhahhahhh!”

The Great Lawd Buddha settled back in his seat, balancing his coffee cup on his thigh, an enigmatic smile on his face. Uhh huhh, so this is what this motherfucker wants, a Scheherazade session, huh? Oh well, espresso is a helluva lot tastier than that chicory dishwater in the mess hall. Guess I better tear that shit up I wrote last night, no one would believe it anyway.

He suavely held his cup out for a refill. “Well, Warden, you see, it was like this. I had copped a ride on this ol' freighter, deliverin' coffee from Brazil to Haifa and.…”

Chapter 8

The Proposal

“Awright, there it is, The Proposal,” Chili announced after reading the last page of the twenty-five pages Cynthia had devoted all of her liberal energies to, day and night, for a solid month.

Jake the Fake let out a long, low whistle … “Woww! Bruh Chili, that's a helluva piece o' work you got there, I didn't know you had it in you.”

“Uhh, well, I had a lil' help,” he replied slyly.

The members of the group looked cautiously at each other, reluctant to give any wholesale endorsement to anything.

“Heyyy mannnn, that's a motherfucker of a proposal, and I ain't just bullshittin' neither,” Leo Terry opened up the group.

“Yeah, Chili it's clean outta sight!”

“Right on!”

Chili flashed the group an arrogant smile and toked up on the joint going around.

“Awright everybody, pull in close and listen up,” Jake folded his hands pontifically on Taco and Rina's kitchen table and waited for absolute quiet. “Awright now, we got the proposal. Chili, you got copies for everybody?”

Chili, on his job, reached down into his attache case and pulled out xeroxed copies, passed them around.

“O.k.,” Jake continued, “I don't have to tell anybody here that we operatin' in Tricky Dick's land, so beware, be cool, be together.”

“Awww com' on, man,” Harry growled at him. “We don't need no fuckin' pep talks, git down!”

Jake rolled his eyes malevolently at Harry, cancelled out the urge to say something nasty.

“Uhh huh, o.k. then, here we go. I want it to be understood from the git-go that this is
my
plan but … but, if anyone has anything they feel they can add to the basic plan as we go 'long, feel free. What we want is as perfect a thing as we can git together.”

He looked deeply into each pair of eyes around the table. “Now then, here is the thang, in steps. Step number one, everybody study that proposal like you've never studied anything in your whole life.”

Taco interrupted, staring at her copy of the proposal. “Why you have to have so goddamned many bigass words in this motherfucker?”

“'Cause that's what the white boy digs,” Chili answered smoothly, remembering Cynthia's advice. “Bureaucrats just love to read stuff they find impossible to make any sense of.”

“Chili's right,” Harry seconded the notion.

“Study the proposal,” Jake moved on as though the interruption had never occurred, “know and understand each paragraph of it, especially those money sections. Make damn certain you know and understand all of the reasons why this Mental Energy Encounter Therapy Group, M.E.E.T.G., is necessary. We gon' have classes on it as we go along. The important thing is preparation.”

Chili clicked his eyes around at the group, snapping up their rapt expressions. Yeahhh, this shit just might work … first time I've ever seen these niggers really into something this deep.

“As well we all know, the proposal was the big, big thang Chili got that for us, the second thing was a location to run the game from. I got that.” Jake the Fake held up a real estate lease.

“I got a piece of legal paper that says we've been holdin' Mental Energy Encounter Therapy sessions in this here storefront for the last two years.”