Free The Last Days of Louisiana Red by Ishmael Reed Page B

spontaneity, of uninhibited existential action. Bam! Street. Bam! Bam!”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œLet me put it this way, Street. When you used to come into those parties in those high heels, those floppy three-musketeers’ hats, those earrings, Street. Those huge glowing earrings you wore and that headrag, Street! That headrag all greasy and nasty (said nastily). People would say, Now there goes someone who is just like a natural man. Then, that night, you came into that party with nothing but those gold chains on you, symbolizing … symbolizing the dreaded past, and that Isaac Hayes haircut. You remember what happened, Street?”
    â€œThe people bought it.”
    â€œThat’s right, Street, the people bought it.”
    Street walked to his window on Africa. Victoria Falls was streaming down its wonders. Elephants roamed. In the distance he could see a gazelle leaping. Good old Africa. Good. Old. Africa. Who was this man tempting him so? Telling him the glory that awaited him back home. He could see it now. Five thousand in Golden Gate Park. Eight thousand in Sheeps’ Meadow. Clapping. Just a-clapping. Clapping real loud while he strolled about the stage in his great maxi coat made of condor feathers and his hat. Why, maybe he could save his peoples. That’s it. He would be the Moses of his peoples.
    â€œWhy, Street, I could see the headlines in the Chronicle right now. ‘On holy Mission—Street says.’ Well, what do you say, Bigger… I mean Street!”
    â€œWhat about that incident in the club in Oakland? That man they said I killed when they tried to frame me.”
    â€œThirty-two witnesses said they saw you do it, Street.”
    â€œI don’t care. They was probably informers working for the fascist Amerika. They framed me, that’s what happened.”
    â€œDon’t worry about it, Street. We got some of our money to get you off. That murder doesn’t count anyway. Negroes kill each other every day, and after a few hours the murderer is back out on the street. In New York they are killing each other at a rate of eight negroes to one white.”
    â€œHey, ain’t my sister leading this Moocher thing anyway?”
    â€œShe talks over the people’s heads, Street,” Max said, now cooler, lighting a pipe. “She runs around Berkeley with these bodyguards she has for herself called the Dahomeyan Softball Team, a bunch of butches who split a man’s head open with a baseball bat. They go about ejecting men from the Moocher rallies mostly, losing recruits for us, diverting attention from our real foe: LaBas, industry, Business.”
    â€œLaBas—who is that?”
    â€œHe’s the man your brother Wolf brought in after your father was killed, I’m sorry, I …”
    â€œSkip it. He wan’t nothin anyway. Bourgeois sell-out and a punk, that’s what he was. A punk. A torn.”
    â€œI didn’t know you were political, Street.”
    â€œI wan’t then but I am now. When I was framed and sent to the slams, mysterious visitors brought me this book. And it was this book that turned me on. I brought the book over here and read it from page to page. The first book I ever finished.”
    Maxwell Kasavubu examined Street: This lousy son of a bitch! Why do I admire him so? Why did I permit them to put this man in? I couldn’t tell them about my dreams, my dreams about him. Jungle drums. There I am tied up and wriggling on a post while these yelping nigger savages are jumping up and down. Mary Dalton, virginal and nude, is about to be… about to face a crime worse than death. And I am saying or trying to say, “Mary, I’ll save you,” but the words won’t come out. I am forced to watch them violate this beautiful young thing, sticking Burgers into her cavities while she almost faints from … she feels faint. And then this huge black gorilla they are calling Old Sam whips out his