Flight to Canada by Ishmael Reed Page B

understand you guys. You, Leechfield, irrational, bitter. You still see me as a Castle black, some kind of abstraction. If we don’t pull together, we are lost.”
    “I’m not going to put in with no chumps. What do you know? I was with Grant and Lee in Mexico. Bof of em. Mr. Polk’s war. They was friends then. We chase Santa Yana’s butt all over the mountains. I was there when they captured—”
    “In what capacity, a body servant? Fetching eggs for the captain, Arthur Swille the Second, shining his boots and making his coffee? Oh, look, 40s, I’m … I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Look …” He puts his arm around him.
    “Get on way from me.”
    “But …”
    “I got all these guns. Look at them. Guns everywhere. Enough to blow away any of them Swille men who come look for me. I don’t need no organization. If I was you, Quickskill, I’d forget about this organization.”
    “Why?”
    “Cause them niggers don’t wont no organization. You have a organization, they be fighting over which one gone head it; they be fightin about who gone have the money; then they be complainin about things, but when it come down to work, they nowhere to be found. Look, Quickskill, they bring in some women, then it’s all over. Then every one of them want to impress the women. They be picking fights with each other and talking louder than each other, then look over at the women, see if they lookin.”
    “There really doesn’t seem to be too much interest in it. Maybe you’re right.”
    40s closed his eyes and rocked in satisfaction. “Now you’re talkin, Quickskill. You worry about Quickskill. Leechfield will look after himself, you can be sure of that. Come on, have a drink.”
    He went to the shelf and pulled a bottle down. It had a mushroom cloud painted on the label. He poured Quickskill a shot glass. He poured himself one. Then he hobbled around the table on his stump. “Here’s to the emancipation of our brothers still in bondage, in Virginia, Massachusetts and New York.”
    They drank. Quickskill’s liquor went down. He felt like someone had just shot a hot poker through his navel. Battleships started to move about inside. Gettysburg was inside. His face turned red. He began to choke and his eyes became teary. 40s slapped him on the back.
    “How can you drink this stuff?”
    “Jersey Lightning. Stuff is good for you. Make your hair grow. Where you think Lincoln got that beard?”
    “Yeah, sure,” Quickskill said, wheezing and coughing.
    “What’s going on with Leechfield?”
    “He’s doing okay. I just left him.”
    “He’s comin up in the world. I saw him in the paper. He had an ad in there. Man, what a con he is.”
    “Let me see it.”
    40s rose and got a newspaper from a pile over near the houseboat’s one door. He brought it to Quickskill, pointing to Leechfield’s ad: “I’ll Be Your Slave for One Day.” Leechfield was standing erect. In small type underneath the picture it said: “Humiliate Me. Scorn Me.”
    “This is disgusting.”
    “Leechfield gets more pussy than a cat, Quickskill. Always driving a long boat. Money.”
    “What does that Leer have to do with Leechfield?”
    “Oh, man, that’s his runner.”
    “I don’t get it.”
    “They pardners. You see, Leer takes photos, and they sell them around the country. It’s a mail-order business they got. You’d be surprised how many people enjoy having a slave for a day even when they can’t touch them. They say that one of them Radical Republican congressmen even sent for one. Leechfield has come a long way. Use to be nothin but a chicken plucker. That Leer brought him into the big time. First they started out in Tennessee. Leer would pretend to be Leechfield’s owner, and he’d have Leechfield dressed up in black cloth pantaloons, black cloth cap, plaided sack coat, cotton check shirt and brogans. And he’d sell Leechfield during the morning and then he’d kidnap Leechfield at night, and then would repeat the same