SIDETRIPS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three spies a'spyin

We have to get our shit together, said the three secret agents, so it all hits the fan at the same time.

– What is the date?

– Too late, said Asset Smeg of SOG, which was secretive and gloomy.

– The morning after the first day of the rest of our lives without Martin Luther Coon, noted Special Agent Willis, FBI.

– April 5, 1968, said Officer Fergus (The Tool) O’Phul, undercover agent for the Boston PD, who for his birthday had seized from a midlevel drug dealer a Rolex that showed the day of the month in a window where the 6 should be.

– Where are we?

– In serious trouble, said SOG.

– At the Federal Building in Boston, said the Federal Bureau man.

– On this I ponder, where’er I wander, and thus grow fonder, sweet Southie, of thee, said The Tool, a long way from his native land, the South Side.

– Who stands atop yonder hastily rented van, microphone in hand?

– The death of me, said Asset Smeg.

– A black nationalist with a white man’s name; that’s how they deceive today’s youth, SAC Willis read from The Director’s crib sheet.

– Some furriner from San Francisco, said O’Phul, named James Fintan O’Shea.

Three moans: fear, loathing, contempt, respectively.

Jimmy said:

“Brothers and sisters,

“It is over. It is all over. We are at the end of our illusions. The murder of Martin Luther King is the murder of our futile expectation that American racism can be brought down politely, that we have but to ask loudly and politely and respectfully enough and the system that blights and destroys our blood brothers and sisters will wither and fall. No more. No more.

“We have made it worse by evasion and plaintive hope. We have deceived ourselves that racists could be constrained by love. No more. The responsibility is ours. Whites created racism. Whites must destroy it.”

Typical jungle bunny philosophy, thought Willis. It’s always: you whites do this, you whites do that.

“If we do not take responsibility, a civil war will engulf us, not of black against white, but brother against brother, American against American. Finally, finally, we are learning what Black Americans have known for 400 years — American law is murder and American order is death.

“One hundred cities are burning. One hundred American cities did not burn in World War II. Look at them and see rage and anguish, yes, looting and burning, yes, but see most of all a political rebellion by people denied all other means of ending their oppression and their pain.”

Mother of God am I glad to be here and not in Roxbury, thought The Tool, being as it’s smoke and flames and garbage cans off the roofs. Is it not a grand thing that a white man cannot be sent undercover to the ghetto.

“We can no longer, must no longer, feel safe within our skins. Anyone who thinks genocide in our country is impossible is deceived. The violence against Black America is violence against us. No one is safe. No one.”

This is confusing, thought Special Agent Willis. Is he white or not? He consulted the FBI’s Agitator Index, which replaced the Rabble Rouser Index, which supplemented the Security Index, which indicated Jimmy was Priority I ( 200 most dangerous radicals in the U.S. to be rounded up in event of national emergency). The box marked SNCC was checked on the first sheet (that meant he was black), COMMUNIST on the second (white), BLACK POWER on the third (black). White was written in the RACE box and Male in the SEX box. Agent Willis was seized with overwhelming panic that if he checked the wrong box in his report he would be personally bumfucked by the Director.

Jimmy said:

“What are whites to do? What would we do if all our appeals were ignored and explained away? If one by one our leaders were assassinated and jailed? If our humanity, talent, culture, and labor were wasted and denied? In 1776 we answered these questions with a revolution.”

Asset Smeg’s mind took a saltatory leap, which can only be compared to the creation of a new species in nature. He had waited for Jimmy to mention Vietnam. Jimmy had not, and, Smeg now realized, would not. Because the Vietnam War is over; we lost it. His mind leaped fantastically ahead to the year 1975. Saigon had fallen to the communists, a vision of hell. The crowd at the Boston Federal Building vanished in a revelatory clap of light. What would Smeg do? Immediately, today, request a transfer, to, to, to, the Castle Bank & Trust in the Bahamas where they dole out money to Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro. He, Asset Smeg, had a noggin for numbers. The light, the sulfur, the flames subsided; the crowd returned. But he had seen his future. It lay due east of Key Biscayne.

“Who among us will fight to keep the police and military out of the black community, even if it means sitting-in at armories and police stations? Who will go to city officials and demand that repression cease? Who among our doctors will give medical aid to rebels, even if it means risking their licenses and their lives?”

O’Phul, in a reflexive gesture, kissed the crystal lips of his Rolex, exposing to the Boston University student next to him that he was no demonstrator a'tall a'tall. His photo, discreetly snapped, appeared in the next issue of the Old Mole; he was busted to undercover duty in Roxbury where he was shot in a drug bust gone bad and buried with the Rolex.

Jimmy said:

“Blacks and whites together are in a trap. But whites built, own, and operate that trap. Only we can destroy it.

“No one can help us if we do not.”