Midnight (6 page)

A cop—what do they call them here?—a bobby was smiling at him. He threw a tentative smile back. The bobby strolled over to him without hesitation.

“Can I help you, sah? You seem to be in a bit of a snit.”

A smiling English cop was trying to help him out. Wowww.… “a bit of a snit.”

It took all of five minutes for the cop to unravel the mysteries, which bus to get on to get to the hotel, what time to get up to catch the morning bus to Gatwick airport, the whole nine yards.

“Thanks, uhhh officer. Appreciate it.”

“Glad to be of service, sah.”

The bobby flicked a polite salute off and stepped away to deal with the next wayward traveler.

“Everything is in proper order, sah. Bellman!”

England
. He was beginning to like the way they said, “sah.”

“Yes, sah.”

“No, sah.”

“Not quite, sah.”

“Sahh.”

“Here we are, sah, room 315. Hope you have a comfortable stay hare, sah.”

“Look, I'm hungry and I'd like to have a little taste. You think that could be arranged?”

“Certainly, sah, simply put in a call to room service.”

“Oh, yeah, cool. Here ya go.”

He gave the man a dollar bill, not knowing whether it was a big tip or not.
Fuck it, it's a dollar
.

An hour later he sprawled out on his bed, belly plumped out on a medium-sized pizza and two Guinness stouts.

England
. He gazed out of the window, a gray light glowing dully through the Irish lace curtains.
England. What the hell am I doing in England? Why do I have to go to England to get to Ghana?

“What you have to keep in mind, Bop, is that a lot of colonial residue is still floating around out there; be prepared to deal with it.”

“But, Chester, look, man, I thought you said the colonial powers had been kicked out?”

“Physically they've been kicked out but mentally they're still there.”

The afternoon was becoming grayer.
Damn.… Here it is May 5th and it looks like it's about to snow
. He reached for the phone.

“Room service? This is room 315; send me two more stouts up here.”

“Right away, sah.”

Nothing to do, a whole night to trip on, in London, England. Well, just on the outskirts of London anyway. Bop furtively pulled his suitcase out of the closet, placed it flat on the bed, and lifted the false bottom under his shirts. Eight thousand in one hundred and five hundred dollar bills, and so far no one had said a mumbling word about the possibility of him hiding money. No one had told him that it was illegal to be in possession of eight thousand drug-earned dollars, he just simply felt it was the right thing to do, conceal. Knock-knock-discreet-knock.

“You ordered two Guinness stouts, sah?”

“Yeah, put 'em on the dresser. Here you go.”

“Thank you, sah.”

Another dollar, that same neutral expression.

“Will that be all, sah?”

“Yeah, that's all.”

The man left with a slight smirk on his face, or so Bop imagined.
What the hell, who cares what he thinks?
He strolled around the room, sipping his Guinness, decided to take a shower.

Sprawled out on the bed after a hot shower, a towel saronged around his waist, the last Guinness in hand, Bop stared at the deep blue lights of a cool English May evening.

That was really dumb of me not to let Justine come on over and give me a little good-bye sugar
. Justine, Frances, Annette, Margaret, Justine, Justine.… He kept coming back to Justine.

Why would she have to suck on the pipe? A little nagging voice screamed at him:
You gave her the pipe! You gave her the pipe! You! You! You …!

He gulped a swallow of Guinness and washed it around in his mouth, trying to defend himself. Got crack everywhere; she didn't have to do it.

Frances, too fuckin' educated. All she wanted to do was talk about books. And fuck. She was a book-fuckin' freak.

Annette wanted to get married. Well, why not? After three babies.…

Margaret Kuykendall, black, beautiful, ambitious. “Bop, you know what I want? I want a helicopter so I won't have to deal with this damned traffic everyday; it gets on my nerves.”

Sex. He had gotten bored with it at twenty and scared. Sex.…

I've watched bitches fuck pit bulls for the pipe, seen niggers suck clappy dicks for the pipe. Had the claps four times in one year
. The last venereal episode had shaken him up somewhat because the lab report said herpes.

“Herpes? That's warts 'n shit, ain't it?

The lab report was in error. He didn't have herpes, only a relatively simple case of gonorrhoea.

“Thank you, Jesus, hallelujah!”

Sex. It had gotten to the point where he did it whenever he had to and didn't feel compelled to do it then; it was purely a matter of hormones kicking up that he couldn't control.

Morning came and looked like the English evening.
Damn, I wouldn't want to live in this motherfucker a day longer than I had to, no matter how many times they said “sah.”

On the plane again, to Kano, Nigeria (for a half-hour stopover). The faces were ninety percent black, no German women with children, some swarthy types, Lebanese and Syrian or something. Bop stared at the propaganda movie for Ghana, a village scene with a man whirling around on stilts, a quartet of bra-less women doing a hip-swiveling dance. He perked up.

Kano, Nigeria. He stood in the doorway of the plane, watching the darkest men he had ever seen do ground duty chores.

The heat that blasted through the open door seemed alive, leaden with moisture. Africa.

He felt the urge to race down the steep steps, to put both feet on African soil for the first time, but couldn't bring himself to do something so square.
Nawww, I'll wait till we get to Ghana
.

“Now look, Bop, what you got to understand about gettin' off into Africa is this: this is where a whole bunch of shit first happened.”

“Awww c'mon, Chester, don't be so ‘generic,' as you like to call it.”

“That's a good point, youngblood; do let me be more specific. Let's start with the aroma of Africa; Africa is where funk came from and if you don't believe it, listen to some of the ol' Horace Silver albums, or some of that Cannonball-Yusef Lateef shit.”

Horace Silver? Cannonball? Yusef Lateef?
Chester was always dropping names. Who in the fuck was Horace Silver? Who was Cannonball? Yusef who?

“There's this smell you get when you get out of the airport. Nawww, it's not a smell, man, it's funk. It's a primitive odor, something that's been buildin' up for centuries and is finally let loose. It almost knocked the shit outta me when I first smelled it. Ain't no tellin' what it's gon' do to you.”

“We shall be landing at Kotoka airport in approximately fifteen minutes; it will be approximately twelve
P.M.
local time when we land, if you care to adjust your timepieces.”

The English were so fuckin' cool. “Adjust your timepieces.”
Wowww.…

The dark, dark man across the aisle, who hadn't spoken to him before, leaned over and pointed out of the window.

“Down there is Accra.”

Bop stared down on what seemed to be a random collection of lights.

It sho' in the fuck ain't EL-A, I can see that from here
.

He pulled the last two bottles of cognac out of his jack et and gulped them as the plane descended, trying to remember every word Chester Simmons had said.…

“They wash their right hands and eat only with the right hand. If you're left-handed, you got a bunch of shit to explain.”

“Don't fuck without using a rubber.”

“You gon' get sick every once 'n a while, but don't panic.”

“Don't stare at shit you don't understand.”

“Be cool. Bop; Africans is cool, that's where we got it from.”

“You will not be seein' white folks from the usual perspective. Over there, they are definitely the minority, but you're going to see some shit that will turn your stomach.”

“Like what?”

“Like watchin' black people in their own independent country kiss European asses like they were candy canes. Remember what I told you; there's a heap of colonial residue out there. Some of them funky chumps really loved the European beast so much that they became imitations. You'll see it, believe me.”

The plane taxied in; it was time to experience Ghana, West Africa, to check out what Chester Simmons had been rapping about.

A dozen adjectives flashed through Bop's olfactory senses as he struggled through the humidity into the airport terminal; toe jam, ten yards to git back, unwashed pussy, shit, an alley on the near westside before Maxwell and Halsted street was re-urbanized, BoBo Colic's breath, funky.

“We never really smell ourselves the way them African cats do, Bop. Some of 'em ain't never deodorized themselves. You know how we are when we get the least bit funky; we race for the deodorant stick. A lot of them dudes over there don't even think like that.”

Yeahhh, I hear you, Chester, funky
. After the first few minutes in the bus-sized terminal, the stench modified into a more exotic funk.

The chaos seemed unnecessary, people calling out to each other in languages he couldn't understand. That took him out for a minute, to realize that he was looking and listening to black people and that he couldn't understand a word they were saying.

One line led to another line, a man in a kiosk asking for papers, spending valuable time scribbling on each sheet of paper.
Why in the fuck don't they get a computer?
Everything seemed to be taking forever.

This sho' in the fuck ain't LAX.…

Bop began to look around for the easy way out.… Chester had given him a lowdown on the corruption quotient. “Everybody is bribable, but don't be too obvious, you dig?”

The big guy talking to three people at once seemed to be the likely choice; Bop wedged past people with his three heavy pieces of luggage, stood to the left of the man for a moment, measuring him.
Yeahhh, he's the one
.

He touched the uniformed sleeve with a twenty-dollar bill in his palm. “Uhh, 'scuse me, officer, I need some help.”

The officer made a quick, shrewd study of Bop and the concealed twenty-dollar bill. This was no English bobby performing a public service. “Ye-ase?”

Their eyes locked, meeting of the minds went up.

“My name is Clyde Johnson, I's a friend of Chester Simmons, and I want you to help me through all this bullshit.”

The man took the twenty like a pickpocket and beckoned for Bop to follow him. He followed him to a money exchange station.

Uhuuuuu huh.…

The man returned with six thousand cedis in hand. “This is today's exchange rate. I will have to take care of the customs inspector for you and pay the taxi driver.” Bop learned two days later that the officer had actually gotten ten thousand cedis, gave him four, the porter five hundred, the taxi driver one thousand, and kept the rest. It seemed only right.

“If you have to come back to the airport, ask for Oxform Amevovo, OK?”

Bop hopped into the taxi.
I like Ghana
.

The taxi driver made him smile, going around in a circle that he recognized after the second time around. The ol' taxi driver scam. “I cannot seem to find the place you are looking for.”

At least he didn't say “sah.”

“It's 308 Troas, man, in Osu. Are we in Osu?”

“Ahhh yes, my brudda, we are in Osu, but I cannot seem to locate this place.”

Bop enjoyed the taxi scam bullshit; it gave him the chance to familiarize himself with a neighborhood situation that he never had imagined. People sat around small oil lamps selling things.

“What're those people doin', man?”

“Oh, they are selling kenkey, cigarettes, different things.”

Ten minutes later, complete with a map to the Vernon place, they were still blazing around in the dark. A dozen people had been consulted, a number of “avenues” driven over. Bop compared the streets that they ricocheted off of to the very worst that Mayor Daley had ever left the west-side with, potholes plus.

“Uhhh, lookahere, my brotherrrr, you don't seem to be knowin' the fuck where you goin'. What's happenin'?”

“Ohhh, there is no problem; we are near, I feel that.”

Bop settled back, feeling cool. It was a good introduction to Accra. Everything had been set up. He was going to have the use of a two-bedroom house in an area called Osu, courtesy of an African-American couple named Vernon, Fred and Helene.

“The thing you have to remember, Bop, is this: the minute you become an international African you'll find shit opening up in front of you that you've never even thought about.”

“Like what, Chester?”

“Like people, youngblood, like people. When're you pullin' free?”

“I'm goin' next month.”

“When're you gonna go to Africa?”

“I'm goin' in May, yeahhh, I'm goin' in May.”

“OK, here is these two people I know. I'm gon' give you their address 'n shit. You can hook up. If they ain't in the groove, you can go hotel, no biggie, huh?”

“No, ain't no biggie.”

Fred and Helene Vernon, African Americans, international black folks.

“OK, lemme run it down to you: Helene, 'bout fifty-five, sixty, done wrote a book about menopause. Been everywhere, including what used to be Yugoslavia, and been married to Fred since Heck was a pup.”

“I probably would've tripped to Africa, sooner or later; Ghana was Fred's idea. In 1972 I was working for a huge corporation, I had corporation values, etc., but I wasn't blind. I could see what was happenin' way ahead of most folks. I had access to information that explained how the corporation I was working for, as well as all the rest of them, from all I know, had worked out their strategy and plans up to the next century.… and so far as I could tell, Helene Martin was not going to be a part of the setup.