Minister Faust by From (html) (best ereader for pdf txt) 📗

“Kareem, I’m worried about you, how you’re handling the passing of Hawk King. First your claims that someone conspired to do away with him, then your claims that he was an Afro-American, and then getting into a brawl at the funeral—”

“Number one, I haven’t ‘claimed’ any conspiracy—I’m investigating the likelihood. Two, I didn’t ‘claim’ Hawk King was a brother—I asserted what I knew from direct experience. Third, I didn’t ‘get into’ a brawl. I was attacked! What, you think I should’ve just stood there and let him beat me like I was Rodney King?”

“Well, as I recall, Rodney King did fight back—”

“What? How can you—”

“—but that’s not the point, Kareem. Surely you have to know how all these things will affect your electoral ambitions with the public, not to mention your membership status, which the F*L*A*C could—”

“The public wants to know, Doc. They’re sick and tired of being lied to, and sick and tired of being sick and tired. People want somebody who isn’t afraid to speak the truth. And as far as the F*L*A*C, well, just let ’em try to throw me out now, after I revealed the truth about Hawk King. People’ll be in the kot-tam streets they try that foolishness now!”

Rather than engage Kareem’s delusions of popular support, I gestured to the decor: wicker chairs, a zebra-skin rug, what looked like a Masai shield, and finally a wall of framed pictures. The only face I recognized was that of dietitian Dick Gregory.

“That’s Marcus Garvey,” said Kareem, picking up on my curiosity. “That’s the Mighty Sparrow, Bob Marley, Son of Nat Turner, Paul Robeson, Rakim, Steve Biko, Redd Foxx, Fela, Sun Wosret, Richard Pryor, the Brother from the HOOD, Maximus Security, James Brown…and that’s Dr. Jackson Rogers—”

“The man you claim was Hawk King.”

“I don’t claim anything. I assert the truth.”

“Interesting that there’s not a single picture of a woman on the walls. And other than me, no women in here at all.”

Kareem appeared startled, as if he’d never thought of that before, and then startled further that he’d let slip his startlement. Finally he shrugged. “There should be pictures of strong sisters on the wall. I’ll mention that to Brother Larry.”

“These other men—they’re your old comrades from the League of Angry Blackmen, correct?”

He nodded, pointing them out where they stood or sat in front of murals of pyramids, primitive art, and African idols. “In the long black coat, almost see-through in the shadow, that’s the Grand High Exalted, Never Faulted, Rock of Gibralted, Atomic Sucker-Breaker, the Dark Fantastic.”

“That’s his name? All of that?”

“Yeah. We all had long titles in the L*A*B. Part of our mystique.”

“So what was yours?”

“The Kinetic Kemetic Magnetic Mystic Majestic.”

“Very colorful! And the rest of these gentlemen?”

He scowled, as if he mistook my delight in the L*A*B’s poetical (if juvenile) fixation for condescension. But he continued anyway. “In the pyramid hat over there, that’s the Pyramidic Gikuyu Mau-Mau Hip-Hop Master Blaster, Ahmed Q. Wearing the suit with the badge over his breast pocket, that’s the Universal Stimulator and General Overseer, the Black Lieutenant. Loves to yell—he was always saying how we’d ‘gone too far this time’—kind of our coordinator.

“In the cape, carrying the double-headed axe? That’s the Cosmic Soul Controller and Planetary Roller, Shango. Guy with the glowing knife is the Hyper-Gravitic Invincible Convincer, Eldritch Cleaver. Obviously the brother in the locks is the Political, Poetical, Polemical Dreadnaught, the Dreadlocker.”

“His hairdo is alive? Like Medusa’s snakes?”

“Yeah, but they don’t turn you into stone. They’re like tentacles. Over there with the ankh-staff, ankh-fez, and the black ankh turtleneck is the Star-Breathing, Hyksos-Crushing, Sucker-MC-Smiting Mystical Militant, Professor Grim, HKA Grimhotep, the Living Ka. In the bowler hat and the Edwardian coat, that’s the Righteous, Tonighteous, Fool-Smackin, Punk-Attackin, Preachifyin and Testifyin Upbraider, the Player Hater. And finally, the tiny dude next to him in the suit is the Litigious, Pernicious, Troublemaking, Shit-Shaking Arnold Drummond, HKA Mofo Jones. Brother clerked with Johnnie Cochran. He was the one who got us our HUD contract to protect Stun-Glas—”

“—before you lost it.”

“Before somebody ‘lost’ it for us.”

“And who ‘lost’ it for you?”

“It’s a Black Thing”: RNPN (Racialized Narcissistic Projection Neurosis)

The X-Man snorted. “That is the question, isn’t it?”

“So you don’t think it had anything to do with the L*A*B’s antiwhite rhetoric?”

“Being accused,” he sneered, “is not the same thing as being guilty. But in your line of work, I suppose that’s difficult to understand—what with Freud blaming mothers, sexual perversion, and everything else for causing the planet’s problems except for the white power system and the people who own it—”

“And you don’t regard that as antiwhite rhetoric?”

“Hey, if the hood fits…”

“It’s exactly that kind of language, Kareem—”

He held up an index finger, yelled toward the counterman. “Brother Larry, can you turn that up?”

I looked behind me at the television that had caught Kareem’s eye. According to the news report, now that word of Omnipotent Man’s resignation had become widespread, tributes were piling up for him outside the fence of the F*O*O*J’s Fortress of Freedom—thousands of bouquets, drawings, cards, and action figures, and tied to the fence, red-white-and-blue ribbons and capelike flags with the letters OM on them.

The images were followed by a shot of dozens of tiny Egyptian statuettes in tiny cardboard boats set adrift by citizens across Eaton’s Bay toward Sunhawk Island.

“Disgusting,” growled Kareem. “Hawk King’s death is world news, right? So why is it when that steroid-popping bozo up and quits for reasons I wouldn’t buy on an expense account, suddenly everybody forgets the King and starts celebrating the kot-tam jester?”

“How does that make you feel, Kareem?”

“That the best you can do, Doc? ‘How does that make you feel?’ Maybe it’s time to buy a new CD, y’know?”

“Why are you afraid to discuss your feelings?”

“Afraid’s got nothing to do with it. But didja ever consider that maybe what people think is more important than what they feel?”

“Don’t overthink, Kareem—that’s where you’ll get blocked—”

“What I think is that the day I announce that