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BLACK
HELICOPTERS EPISODE 28 FRIDAY the SEVENTH - 8:41 PM The temperature had dropped twenty
degrees since dusk; in the Jefferson Street Sanctuary where nearly a score of
chilled Coalition for a New Consensus skeptics huddled on dumpster chairs and
milk crates round a rickety, cash-strewn card table... Andy, Tom Jenks, Demian, Fredrika, Marty Lesh, Rael, Fil, Richard Reid… a few others and
out-of-towners. Arguing and posturing with intensity that imbued even the
most bedraggled, peripheral ephemera with apocalyptic urgency. Words crashed
mightily over the equally vibrant despair of homeless people slinking in
through the shelter doors, alone or in packs of three, or four, or six,
taking furtive sips from bottles and cans, gazing questioningly at the influx
of demo-dazzled interlopers or enviously at the paper bag of lucre abruptly
bestowed upon the Sanctuary by Mayor Pinhead Potter. |
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All the scavenged mattresses had been
doled out; still more strangers from Chicago, Pittsburgh, even Occupied
Memphis, manifested and Andy had had to get up several times to marshal
expeditionary forces out to the dumpsters for cardboard, rags and newspapers
for blankets and use a large, borrowed Sharpie to make a sign:”No guns allowed
on premises!” The saved rolled over,
tuned out the increasingly harsh voices emanating from the group around the
card table like acrid auditory steam rising from a pie, and curled into fetal
question marks, trying to sleep. Others nodded their heads and swayed to the
rhythm of the sitcom one-liners and canned laughter bleeding out of the
ancient, pictureless television mounted above Eddie's desk... returned to its
place by shadowy hands which had groped into equally shadowy places.
When Andy and two assistants came in
from the alley with armfuls of thick, top-of-the-line refrigerator cardboard
from the appliance store, a gum-chewing, middle-aged black woman from back
East, Florence Croup, was appealing for her slice of the money on the table.
"I didn't say the
man himself was sending a letter, I said the Reverend James Shutts from
Providence would come to personally
convey a blessing, sort of a good-luck welcome to get things off right with God
on Sunday morning... what do they call them prayers in Congress...”
"The benedictions," answered
David Soames, still in black, still jauntily positive even after two days'
worth of meetings with frazzled, chemically-poisoned and one-legged veterans
waiting on the lazy clinicians in Cap City to renew their Medicaid prescription
vouchers authorized by the once-again-leaderless V.A.
"That's it!" Florence
agreed, popping a pink bubble to emphasize her point.
"If we provide his transportation, a room at the Ivona and a... what would it be,
the benediction fee?" Fil asked.
"The Reverend's a man of God, a
man of all the people. He ain’t no
Larry Ellison… don't have much money..."
"We have even less," replied Marty Lesh,
which answer outraged one of the socialists down from the U., the very pale,
very thin Herb Clark... incongruous in his security guard's uniform, passing
time before he had to be downtown for his midnight shift at the bank.
"He has all that money from the City!" Clark pointed an accusing
finger from the table to Andy, as he dumped the cardboard into a corner where a
line had already begun forming.
"Which is just about kaput,"
Marty added, looking nervously at the line of newcomers. "Uh, Andy, if
you'd... again…"
"OK," he said, making his
way through the bodies on the cold, stained concrete, "OK... this is what
it's about. Out of the original three thousand, three hundred went to our legal
defense."
A glassy eyed man slumped on a milk
carton in the second row slavered: "Kill all the lawyers!"
"Yeah, and you'd all have rotted
in jail until the world turned round a couple dozen times and the Conks
finished with their dirty business," Andy lost his temper, mentally
kicking himself as he did for responding to a nut. "OK, little more than
seven hundred went back to the people who put up bail for certain persons, some
of whom are in this den of conspiracy tonight.
Now this is not exactly lost... means we can tap them again. It's even
possible we'll have to go to them
again before this is over," Andy grimaced, "they're our reserve. Our
human resources..."
"Reverend Shutts is more human
resource than any rich white liberals," Florence Croup interrupted.
"He is a black man, a black man!...
and he fights for the people!"
"Right on, sister!"
exclaimed Richard Reid, giving the old power salute with a clenched right fist.
His feet twitched and something on the floor fell over with a glassy clink and
began to roll backwards, away from the card table, down the slightly tilted
tiles of the Sanctuary, spewing liquid as it did. Several of the disheveled men
already sleeping on mattresses or cardboard sat up as it passed; meerkats
sniffing instinctively in the close, musty air, one even straining to read the
label...
"Restinza? Whas 'dat?"
"We'll deal with arrests when and
if they happen," Andy hastened along. "Two hundred more went back to
some others who've put money up for us..."
"What people?" Reid
demanded.
"Thurman.
The Korean ministry. Some of the nuclear weapons
people..."
"Fuck 'em! Sneaky slant eyes peekin' over money box store-eya...
pop a piece in yer mouth, blow you soul back to ol’
See-yole!" Richard Reid began to rap, standing
up, swaying, smirking at Florence Croup as if expecting her to join in,
"...fuck all the
virus gooks! An’ fuckin' liberals... they don't
deserve a dime!"
"They're getting back one for
three," Andy pointed out. "That is, they provided us with over five
hundred in stamps, phones and stuff, gas... even lent us personal cars... all
the shit we had to do when Disson turned our permits
down."
Herb Clark stood up. "Which turned out to be all a hoax, except for you and the other
cowards who panicked and spent all that money telling people not to come!"
"You wrecked the demo, not Permits," Reid chimed in.
"Let me sit in jail while you cut your own private deal with Disson's nigger... oughta take
you outside now, beat your ass! Nobody ever put you in charge of the rest of us..."
He spat a great, green gob of goo that
brushed Andy's chin and dripped down to the table, soiling a few of the bills
resting there like proceeds of a long, mean poker game. Before Andy could reach
him, Demian thrust herself between them, knocking a
couple of foreign-looking bystanders out of the way.
"We're supposed to be fighting
the system, not each other," she complained. "I think we should all
stop, hold hands and take a few deep breaths..."
One of those kicked aside, a crosseyed, middle-aged woman who... for some obscure,
European reason... had arrived with a nametag sticker "Ketti
Graul" over her left breast… quickly agreed.
"Intercommunal violence serves the purpose of our enemies," she said
in mostly correct, though heavily-accented English. "It is the province of
Americans with or without assistance from the Russian backsliders. But I still
condemn the process by which these decisions make. I am not American, I cannot
regard for you processes. But this denial of consensus is violence against the
process..."
"Hey, lady," Marty sneered
back, "you don't like us here, why don't you slither back home to Berlin,
hunker in the bunker with the rest of your gay Nazi skinhead symps..."
"Not German!" Ketti objected, "Austrian! Anti-the-Haider..." she added, nose
uplifted, proudly, in the reeking Sanctuary air. "Death
to the arrlutt-right! Long live Commandante
Cuatro!"
"Well now you're in America! We
don't have time for consensus... we have this convention beginning and our
permits that take effect, like... tomorrow!"
Andy emphasized, picking up a stack of papers from the card table, waving them
for emphasis. "Some of these people still want space and mike time... they
don't even say who they are, some, just these initials like MPRL, UBA, INTMI,
nobody knows who they are or what they'll be saying and we gotta
decide who gets stage time and how much of it..."
"Well, I'm decided," rallied
Florence Croup, "...when do I get my money? For the Reverend..."
"I'm going to finish with the
money," Andy cut her off, "I don't want any more of this shit coming
up again until each one of you's been told exactly
where we stand, whether you listen and remember or not," Andy warned.
"You're right, it's shit, you're
all shit..." Reid raved, beginning to stagger side to side as drool
spattered those to either side of him, Fil and another distressed-looking
European, “and shit... shit gets shot.”
"Chill, Mistah David Duke,"
Florence rebuked him, to his evident surprise and displeasure; Reid having
already forgotten his estimation of Sylvester. "You are getting on my nerves!" she added, and
popped the gum in her mouth again.
Reid opened his mouth to object but
vomited thinly, instead, then sank back down into his folding chair wiping his
chin. "OK," Andy continued, "we're down to eighteen hundred.
Three is going for this and that... printing, postage, signs.
Bradley Printing... union, minority owned, said they'll be open tomorrow until
noon but, on the other hand, we can save thirty, maybe forty bucks by going to CopyQuik, fifty with the Krishna chain. Anybody want to take the cheap road or do we support community, labor-friendly
businesses? Going once, going twice..."
Fil shook his head, using the
opportunity to push his milk crate as far away as possible from the puddle of
puke while Reid, slumped in the chair in his incongruous Hawaiian shirt, hummed
an old Three Dog Night tune. "We shouldn't have to pay for supplies. They
ought to be liberated."
"If you or anybody else wants to
do so, that's fine. But... we can't afford the time or bail if you're busted.
Fred and Lee will make their van and truck available all day tomorrow, Sunday
and Monday... since we'll have to clean up... fifty bucks gas money each. Fair?
OK... this is the big one, five hundred to Youthquake for security; that runs
to something like twenty-five, thirty dollars each kid for two ten-hour
days."
"Oughta
be more," said Florence, but softly.
"I think so, too. The office, by
the way, is taking nothing off the top. Which knocks us down
to nine hundred. Music... we've contacted three bands. Kitschfire,
Girlie Boys and Kajunga. Hundred each for their time
and they provide equipment. Two solos. Mark Kavanowski
and Leota Brand, they get fifty."
"Why?" objected Ketti Graul.
"Why?" Andy scratched his
neck. Something was beginning to rise up angry there, the beginnings of a
jail-induced chancre. "For performing?"
Ketti waved
a beringed hand disdainfully. "In Salzburg, artists... they are grateful
to play for the people. They perform for nozzing!"
"In Salzburg," Marty sniped
back, "they don't have to get paid because they're already leeching off
the state, like Mozart did. Or a King,
if that’s what you still have. We here rip off artists and musicians enough, as
it is."
Florence had been reduced to simmering
during the Youthquake decision, but now she boiled over again. "Who's all these people. What they do to get all of this money? What about colored folk?"
"Maybe you don't know, back in Providence,"
Demian tossed her head, "but Leota
has done more for the communities of color in this city than everyone in this
room combined. And Kajunga... they're bloods too,
Brazilians, Cubans..."
"Gusanos!"
sneered Herb Clark...
"...I mean we are talking nine
people, all their equipment..." Demian
continued, ignoring him. "The talent money is more of a courtesy than a
payment..."
"Girlie's a gay group," Rael
added, "...at least three quarters gay... I think..."
"So who the fuck cares about
that?" slurred Richard Reid, returning, for a moment, from the twilight
zone. He stood up, looked around, blinked, and sat down again, smearing more
puke over the heel of his Nike.
"That is the fuck, you homophobe!" Frederika retorted.
"OK, I happen to believe that
everyone's underpaid. Well, so are we!" Andy explained. "Ours is
never a perfect world. At least we're doing something, plenty of other people
are volunteering. So we're down to five hundred now..."
"Six!" Herb Clark corrected.
"Six?" Andy started down at
the money on the table, reviewing his calculations. "Oh,
yeah! Right on! We need more mattresses for the shelter.
Lee's going to make a dumpster run tomorrow, but we'll
probably need at least twenty for the people coming here with nothing... no
pack, no bedroll. They'll do it!" he commented sardonically. "He'll
get a hundred dollar budget... hit the Salvation Army and Goodwills,
then there's that veterans' place David heard about in Weslington
that hauls them off from the motels and charges twenty, they might go down to
fifteen or, even, ten in bulk. Blankets, too..."
"I would block this
corruption," Ketti declared. "One, maybe
two nights people coming to protest fascism use these second-hand infested and
infected mattresses and blankets the way your colonialists killed off Native
Americans and those immigrant children in cages, and then you keep them for
yourself? Such arrangement would not be
tolerated where I come from."
"Some of these people are coming from Germany,"
pointed out Tom Jenks. “These are
fuckin’ motel mattresses, lady, probably not diseased, but with motel stains
all over that you don’t want to know about… it’s not like we’re shopping for Beautyrests…”
"I would not
know, I am Austrian. Germans can sleep on this floor. They are strong...
it will not kill their backs. I call it to question."
"Fine.
Just fine," Andy said. "Comment noted. Let's finish, first. Tom here
has been working on the revenue end, contacting food booth vendors the way we
used to do back in the last Millennium. We're getting... we hope we're getting, fees from some
of the vendors or a part of their profits on food sales from the ones we can
trust, as well as smaller fees from the others... jewelry, leather goods, art
stuff. Tom thinks investing two hundred in a booth of our own can get us back,
what... five hundred? Tom, you said you could get three helpers from the
University, working for free?"
"Yeah, that's about it. This is,
like, revolutionary capitalism... big shit," he smirked, "we'll have
sodas, beer under the table depending on our police situation, salad, brown
rice, hot dogs..."
"No meat!" Rael was up and
shouting, face red as an organic tomato. "I thought I made that clear,
we're not financing this
demo on speciest violence." And she angrily
tossed her cigarette into a trashbox stuffed with
outdated propaganda.
"Rael," Jenks frowned,
"I don't think Fastway hotdogs even qualify as meat..."
"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" Her
screaming rose louder, louder and desperate enough that the weary homeless
looked up from their mattresses or cardboard, muttering. "Animal
rights are not a matter for jokes... I won't be part of any process that makes money off
of cruelty. Leather goods! Oppression!"
"There is no process here!" Ketti objected, also rising to face Rael across the table
of booth applications and snot-soiled cash. "Your leather goods are not
prohibited because of bourgeois animal sentimentality but because they are the
shady gray code... triggers for sadistic sexual violence, intolerance against
the woman. Justice Kavanaugh! O. J.!
Harvey Weinstein! Now... this has
become illegal discussion. You must declare this conference a void and
reconvene tomorrow under proper regulations..."
"I don't care about regulations,
or any more of your Nazi, speciest procedural power
plays," Rael blew up. "We are talking about saving the lives of
animals..." but an enormous pop from Florence's gum shocked her into
silence.
Sheetrock flakes, not to mention
asbestos, wafted downwards from the ceiling, more urban snow.
"Girl, you talking bull shit! If you was hungry, really hungry for one day in your sick, white
middle-class life, you'd eat a roach! Rats! You full of bull
shit... all of you. What
you need... save your soul... is some of the Reverend Shutts' fine Bar-B-Que.
No sick hot dogs, full of wood shavings and dead dog... which is true, by the
way, white folks taking dead dogs from the ASPCA and grind them into hotdogs
for lil' black children to grow up sick on with the 'nemia. Cats
too! Lil' black children eating cat and their grandmothers who bring them up eatin' cat food!
Look at your history, four hundred years!
Black revenge matters!"
Tom Jenks was first to recognize an
opening for accommodation. "Ma'am, if you or somebody wants to set up a
Bar-B-Que booth, I'm the man to talk to. We’d only want a little, hunnerd fifty bucks, maybe, even less if it's one of those
ventures for the people..."
"You want?" thundered Florence Croup. "You should pay people who be bringing healthy
food... fried chicken, bar-b-que, greens n'beans. Gots
to have plenty of beans!" she added, the phrase setting Andy to
thinking... as all the animal righters and their adversaries from the women's
regiment united in howls and whistles... where,
exactly, had he heard this before?
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RETURN to "BLACK HELICOPTERS" directory
VIEW CURRENT
COLUMN by JACK "CATFISH" PARNELL... "ENTROPY and RENAISSANCE"
HAVE A GLANCE... at the current episode of our occult serial,
wherein a young American encounters bizarre foreign artists and occultists –
from Aleister Crowley and William Yeats to Alfred Jarry and a young, feral Adolph Hitler…
THRILL!… to the adventures of outsourced and downsized middle-aged, formerly middle-class Americans reduced
to peddling hotdogs under the thumb of a psychotic Millenial
manager learn the dubious delights of low-rent sex, drugs and rock n’roll while plotting revenge, in…
And FOLLOW!... the mob of desperate football
fanatics who, after the FCC approves moving the Superbowl
to a premium channel accessible only by a scarce and expensive black box, storm
their local electronics outlets to fight for their right to spectate,
in…