The Last Days of Louisiana Red (6 page)

Chorus:
Now, about this Antigone. According to writing found written on Egyptian papyri, there's a later episode of the myth. In this version, Creon, due to the counsel of Teiresias, was able to save Antigone. (pause; lights a cigar, inhales and resumes) As a result he lost favor with the right wing of his government. Reprieve was interpreted as a justification for her action; the girl became emboldened. Creon was close to her secret ambition when he said, “I am no man, she is the man, if this victory shall rest with her and bring no penalty.” Creon, a member of the old school, was indulging in some petty dyke-baiting when he said that. To be a man was easy; chump change. Antigone was after bigger game. She wanted to be a sphinx: head and breasts of a woman; bird's wings; lion's feet and a snake's ass. A hissing, barking, distorted eye-balling bitch is what she was out for. This version goes on to say that contrary to the strong-willed law-and-order man we read about in the other story, Creon was swayed by popular opinion and occasionally went about anonymously collecting information from the people—a practice future tyrants would imitate. When Creon saw how incensed the population was towards him, he relented and freed Antigone. Antigone was exonerated for ritualistically burying Polynices, that is, sprinkling “a handful of dust” over the corpse, as was the old religion's practice. Creon gave the corpse a state funeral, but so disfigured was the body from the mawling, clawing animals, the corpse wasn't shown.

This fragment is later confirmed by a picture on a vase. Here we see Antigone, standing with a child. Haemon stands next to them, but he looks blurred. Some say that this is because some wild female member of the cult which sprang up after Antigone's example had come along and rubbed him out of the picture.

After his father died, heartbroken, Haemon discovered that the old geezer was right all the time. Antigone was a being of perfidy, spite and deviousness, given to lying even when it wasn't absolutely necessary. She used her good looks to get ahead. Ismene, always half-heartedly giving in to Antigone's every request, was getting wiser too. When she finally caught Antigone in the secret act, she quietly retired to her bedroom, drinking whiskey all day, sequestered from her countrymen.

When the Athenians conquered the Thebans, double agent Antigone made a deal with them. You see, the Athenians were so rational, so civilized they had to have a reason for everything, including barbarity. They sent Antigone on tour. She teamed up with her nanny, a confidante and rough-looking woman from the old days; formerly Antigone's nurse, but now making a reputation from her “readings.” In these “readings” Nanny depicted the Theban males as weak and simpering while Antigone would play the guitar. Or sometimes they would exchange roles. Nanny would jug it out while Antigone told a plaintive tale of the “lost woman” abandoned by her man. Whenever a man was seen as a hero in their work, Nanny adorned him with the woman's garb.

In exile Haemon kept returning to Creon's argument. “I am no man if she is the man.” His father had accused him of being “the woman's champion.”

He had believed her. Now he knew he had been her trick, and she had turned him out. She told him that she no longer craved the woods of Thebes, mysterious, and the scene of diabolical rites like the Santa Cruz woods; of mutilated victims. She promised him she no longer desired to meet Hades, her lover, who wore a rank-smelling coat made of goatskins. Haemon had loved her so he couldn't see straight, and so he paid; he paid hard.

“I like not an evil wife for you, son,” his father had said.

Antigone's faith was sweeping the countryside. Winning converts. She faced many encores. Their son was handed over to allies of hers.

Meanwhile, Haemon sharpened his axe in Bohemia. He was beginning to like what he was and what he was doing; enjoying it for the first time in his life. Although it was quiet, although only a handful turned out to hear him, even though his checks were questioned and the restaurants handed his kind the bill immediately after putting down the dinner, it was quiet; you could see the ocean if you looked hard enough. Occasionally he missed the hubbub of Thebes. He traveled among statesmen, scribes, merchants, as well as supped in mansions referred to by the hostesses as “our little cottage.”

One day the word came from Thebes that Antigone had gotten what she was after. She was high priestess, which was as good as Sphinx. The Theban males were rounded up and marched naked through the streets as, in the background, homes could be seen burning. Others kept themselves warm around a primitive fire. In the amphitheatre, the woman who had been bucking for Sphinx had her name spelled out with flares by her shrieking followers. Her running buddy, Nanny, read a poem or two to warm them up, but when Antigone came on there was no controlling them as this professional shrew screamed, cursed and, in rage, shook her fists.

One night, Haemon sneaked into the surrounding suburbs of Thebes. He sat on a horse overlooking the city. Much had changed. First, Haemon thought, he would see his son; then he would bring Antigone down.

THE MOOCHERS HAVE A CRISIS

The committee meeting was to be held at the Gross Christian Church, San Francisco's truly avant-garde center of worship. The first thing you came upon was the entrance, over which could be seen a sign spelling out “P
EACE
” in the manner of the garish neon signs one saw at the bottomless topless clubs on Broadway. Rev. Rookie's church was a reconverted niteclub. Inside he stands behind one of the long elegant bars which has been restored to its original furnishings. On the walls are black light psychedelic posters of Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis, Jr. (the name of Jefferson Davis' body servant, incidentally), and Quincy Jones. Whenever “Q” came to the Circle Star Theatre, Rev. Rookie would be right there, in the front row, whooping it up, yelling such colorful expletives as “right on,” and “get down,” which he would say twice, “get down, get down.” Another one of his expressions was “can you dig it?” Quite effective when used sparingly, which Rev. Rookie didn't. Cats were circling the room. Moochers love cats, perhaps because you have to be crafty and dexterous and phony-finicky to be a Moocher, winning your territory inch by inch. Rev. Rookie had a motley congregation and really didn't care about their life styles. He had twisted old John Wesley's philosophy so that he had forgotten the theology he started out with. Rev. Rookie was real ecumenical. Gushing with it. I mean, he ecumenicaled all over himself, but he wasn't one of these obvious old-fashioned preachers. No, when he spoke of God, he didn't come right out and mention his Hebrew name. God, for him, was always a “force,” or a “principle.”

The Christians looked the other way from their maverick minister in San Francisco; after all, he was packing them in, wasn't he? Why, Rev. Rookie would get up in his mojo jumpsuit and just carry on so. He employed $100,000 worth of audio-visual equipment with which to “project” himself, plus a rhumba band (he couldn't preach); it was the tackiest Jesus you'd ever want to see. Rev. Rookie wasn't no fool, though. He had won a place for himself in the Moocher high command along with Maxwell Kasavubu, the Lit. teacher from New York; Cinnamon Easterhood, hi-yellow editor of the
Moocher Monthly
, their official magazine; and Big Sally, the poverty worker. The crisis meeting was being held to see what was to be done with Papa LaBas, the interloper from the east.

Big Sally arrived first. Big old thing. Though her 300 ESL Mercedes was parked outside, Big Sally insisted upon her “oppression” to all that would listen. She had a top job in the 1960s version of the Freedmen's Bureau, which was somewhat surprising since the poor had never seen Big Sally. Never heard of her either. Although she was always “addressing myself to the community,” she spent an awful lot of time in Sausalito, a millionaires' resort. A Ph.D. in Black English, her image of herself was as “just one of the people”; “just me” or “plain prole.” Big Sally took off her maxi coat which made her look like a Russian general and then slid onto one of the barstools and continued her knitting; she was always knitting.

“WELL, HOW YOU, SALLY? WHAT'S THE NEW THANG? WHAT'S WITH THE HAPPENINGS?” Big Sally looked at Rev. Rookie as if to say “poot.”

“I guess I'll get by.”

Rev. Rookie knew better than to scream on Big Sally. She had a habit of screaming on you back. She'd rank you no matter where you were; in the middle of the street, usually, telling all the traffic your business.

The next Moocher to show up was curly-haired grey Maxwell Kasavubu. Trench coat, brown cordovans, icy look of New York angst. He slowly removed his trench coat and put it on the rack; he smiled at Big Sally.

“Hi, Rev., Sally.” Rev. Rookie lit all up; Sally blushed and fluttered her eyebrows.

Rev. Rookie rushed over to one of his church's biggest contributors, slobbering all over the man.

“HEY, BABY, WHAT'S GOING ON?” he said, placing a hand on Max's shoulder. Max stared coldly at his hand, and, meekly, Rev. Rookie removed it.

Sally continued knitting. Rev. Rookie paced up and down behind the bar. Max sat for a moment, contemplatively inhaling from his pipe, occasionally winking at Big Sally. Soon Max rose and went over to read some of Rev. Rookie's literature which was lying on the bar top:
Ramparts
and
The Rolling Stone
. Max stared at them contemptuously for a moment, then slammed them down.

“WOULD YOU BROTHERS AND SISTERS LIKE TO HEAR SOME LEON BIBBS?” Rev. Rookie asked.

Big Sally made a sound like
spitsch
, lifted her head and stared evilly, stopping her knitting, staring disgustedly at Rev. Rookie for a long time.

“I don't feel like hearing no music now,” she said.

The door opened and in walked Cinnamon Easterhood, hi-yellow editor of the
Moocher Monthly
. He walked in all tense and hi-strung in a nehru suit, clutching a wooden handbag which the men were wearing or carrying these days. He looked so nervous and slight that if you said boo, he'd blow away. Accompanying him was Rusty, his dust-bowl woman of euro descent, wearing old raggedy dirty blue jeans, no bra and no shoes. She immediately got all up in Sally's face.

Big Sally showed the whites of her eyes for a real long time. “Uhmp,” she said. “Uhmp. Uhmp.”

“Sally, lord, you sure is a mess,” Cinnamon Easterhood's wife said, looking like the history of stale apple pie diners, confidante to every Big-Rig on the New York State freeway.

“HEY, PEOPLE. I FEEL GREAT NOW. ALL MY PEOPLE ARE HERE. WHY DON'T WE LIGHT THE FIREPLACE AND ROAST SOME MARSHMALLOWS? MY UKULELE AND PETE SEEGER RECORDS ARE OUT IN THE VW.” Ignored. And here he was the chairman of the Moochers, second only to Minnie herself.

Cinnamon was over in the corner, congratulating Maxwell Kasavubu on his startling thesis, now being circulated in literary and political circles, that Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas wasn't executed at all but had been smuggled out of prison at the 11th hour and would soon return. Cinnamon was doing most of the talking, saying that he thought the idea was “absolutely brilliant,” or “incredibly fantastic.”

Max examined his watch.

“Well, I guess it's about time we began the meeting,” he said in his obnoxious know-it-all New York accent. As usual Max talked first.

“I've been thinking about our problem and think I can put some input into the discussion. After Ed was murdered, we thought it would take people's minds off gumbo and renew the interest in Moochism, but this hasn't been the case. The community's infatuation with cults and superstition should have run its course by now. But now we have this LaBas. A name that isn't even French and so you can see how pretentious he is.”

“It's patois.” Big Sally, expert on Black English, put in her input.

“What say, Sally?” Max said, smiling indulgently.

“I said it's patois.”

“Well, whatever, the man has presented us with some problems.”

“
Spitsch!
”

“Did you want to say something, Big Sally?” Max said, mistaking this sound for comment.

“Nothin, Max. 'Cept to say that I concur with your conclusions. Things was moving nicely till this LaBas man come in here, but it seems to me that we ought not be sitting here talking bout our problems but bout our conclusions, I mean about our solutions.”

“TELL IT, SISTER. TELL IT,” Rev. Rookie hollered all loud.

“Our solutions is an inescapable part of our problems, and they are one in the part the woof and warf of what we're going to be about. Now, are we going to be about our problems or are we going to be about solutions?”

Hi-yellow, pimply-faced and epicene, rose to speak.

“But—”

“I ain't through. Now, I ain't through. Let me finish what I'm saying and then you can have your turn to talk, cause ain't no use of all us talking at one time, and so you just sit there and let me finish.”

Maxwell signaled him to sit down.

“When it comes your time, then you can have the floor, but long as I'm having the floor I think everybody ought to treat me with the courtesy to hear out my views, cause if you going to dispute my views you have to hear me out first—”

“But I was only being practical,” Easterhood protested.

“Practical? You was only being practical? If you was only being practical, then look like the first practical thing you would want to do would be to hush your practical mouth so I can talk.”

Easterhood's wife was just beaming at all that good old downhome rusticness coming her way. She just leaned back and said, “Sally, lawd. Sister, you sho can come on.”

“Takes Sally to just cut through all the bullshit and get right down to the nitty gritty,” Maxwell said.

“TELL IT LIKE IT T/I/S/MAMA,” Rev. Rookie said.

“That's mo like it. Now, as I was saying, we don't have to worry about this LaBas man, and was going on to say that what we need is somebody to replace that hi-yellow heffer,” Big Sally said, her eyes rolling about her head.

Easterhood smiled a good-natured Moocher smile but secretly wanted to crawl on his belly out of the room. He didn't mind all this downhomeness, but, shit, he had an M.A.

“Hi-Yellow Heffer?” Max asked. “What's with this hi-yellow?”

“THE SISTER IS CALLING SOMEBODY A COW,” Rev. Rookie explained to Maxwell Kasavubu.

“O, you mean heifer,” Maxwell Kasavubu said.

“Whatever you call that old ugly thang. Think she cute. Drive up here in that sport car and when she come start talking that old simpleass mutherfuking bullshit make me sick in my asshole.”

“RUN IT DOWN, SISTER, RUN IT DOWN TO THE GROUND,” Rev. Rookie said, jumping up and down.

“But which sister are you referring to, Big Sally?” Max asked for clarification. He always asked for clarification, not one to be swept away by emotions as the “minorities” were. They got “enthused” real quick, but when you needed someone to pass out leaflets or man a booth, they were busy or tired or it was so and so's turn to do that.

“Minnie,” Big Sally blurted out.

“Minnie?” Cinnamon said, jumping from the couch where his wife Rusty sat guzzling beer, eating Ritz crackers as if they were the whole meal and grinning squint-eyed over what Sally was saying.

“Minnie? Did I hear you right?” Cinnamon Easterhood said, grinning.

“You hearrrrrrrrd, me!” she said, cutting a rough glance his way.

“Well, you have to admit Minnie is a bore. Only a handful turned out for the last rally,” said Maxwell.

“That's crazy, we need her. The sister has a fine mind,” Cinnamon protested. “She's writing an article in the
Moocher Monthly
magazine on the morphological, ontological and phenomenological ramifications in which she will refute certain long-held contradictory conclusions commonly held by peripatetics entering menopause. Why the dialectics of the—”

“Big Sally, did you want to say something?” Max said, noticing Sally's impatience—impatience being a mild word. Frowns were proliferating her forehead.

“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, we don't need no ontology, we needs some grits, and Minnie ain't bringing no grits. Ain't no ontology gone pay our light bill. P.G. and E. fixin to cut off our Oakland office. Disconnect. We need somebody who knows how to get down.”

“Who would you suggest, Big Sally?”

“Street Yellings is the only one the people in the street wont. He the only man that can put this Moocher business back in business.”

“Street!” Rusty said. “Street Yellings! Why, if you brought him back, everything would be so outtasite.” She remembered his Wanted poster in the post office. The girls would go down there and get all excited. Somebody had painted horns on his head. Street made them want to say fuck. Say words like fuck. Made you feel obscene. Even the men. There was a way he looked at you. And when he made love she had heard from one of the women who had named a rape clinic after him—after he had your clothes off he would say, “Now Give Me Some That Booty, Bitch!!”

“I don't think he can articulate the Moocher point of view,” Easterhood said.

“We don't need no articulate,” Big Sally said. “Articulate we got too much of. We need someone to oppose that LaBas and them niggers over there in that Gumbo business.”

“I wish I had your gift, Big Sally—right down to brass tacks.”

“Why, thank you, Max,” Big Sally said, smiling.

“And as for you, Cinnamon, don't ever call Street inarticulate. Why, if it wasn't for me convincing the Moocher Board of Directors to back that rag of yours, your verbosely footnoted monstrosity would have folded long ago. Street knows the poolrooms, the crap games, the alleys and the bars. He knows the redemptive suffering and oppression. We will offer Street Yellings the position. Is there any dissent?”

“You, Rev. Rookie?”

“WHATEVER YOU SAY IS FINE FOR ME, MAX,” Rev. Rookie said.

“Mrs. Easterhood?”

“Do I look like a broomhandle to you, you four-eyed goofy motherfuka,” Rusty says nasty as Max turns red as a beet. Big Sally starts to cackle.

“Please, dear, you'll upset Mr. Kasavubu,” Easterhood said.

“I don't care, I'll spit on that fat worm.”

“Let's not get carried away, Rusty. We'll remove the licorice sticks you enjoy so much,” Max said.

“What did you mean by that, you poot butt?” Rusty said, leaping from the sofa.

Easterhood looked real simple, like a Bunny Berrigan adaptation of a Jelly Roll Morton hit.

“I get sick of your pompous insane cock-sucking remarks,” Rusty bellowed.

“BROTHERS AND SISTERS. WE MOOCHERS DON'T GET INVOLVED IN PETTY INDIVIDUALISTIC CLASHES. WE ARE TOGETHER FOR ONE CAUSE. WE MUST LEARN TO SUBMERGE OUR DIFFERENCES.” (Guess who.)

Rusty was sobbing, curled up in Big Sally's lap. Big Sally was comforting her.