Читать онлайн «Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down»

Ishmael Reed

Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

To Carla, Pope Joan and Dancer

my 3 Wangols

I. The Loop Garoo Kid Goes Away Mad

I was content. I was surrounded by no greedy grafters, no slimy creatures. Just dogs, horses, sheep, goats, bulls, burros and Men.

William S. Hart

America…is just like a turkey. It’s got white meat and it’s got dark meat. They is different, but they is both important to the turkey. I figure the turkey has more white meat than dark meat, but that don’t make any difference. Both have nerves running through ’em. I guess Hoo-Doo is a sort of nerve that runs mostly in the dark meat, but sometimes gets into the white meat, too.

Anywhere they go my people know the signs.

Henry Allen

Oh, the hoodoos have chased me and still I am not broke,

I’m going to the mountains and think I am doing well;

I am going to the mountains some cattle for to sell,

And I hope to see the hoodoos dead and damn them all in hell.

from “The Rustler,” an American cowboy song

Folks. This here is the story of the Loop Garoo Kid. A cowboy so bad he made a working posse of spells phone in sick. A bullwhacker so unfeeling he left the print of winged mice on hides of crawling women.

A desperado so onery he made the Pope cry and the most powerful of cattlemen shed his head to the Executioner’s swine.

A terrible cuss of a thousand shivs he was who wasted whole herds, made the fruit black and wormy, dried up the water holes and caused people’s eyes to grow from tiny black dots into slapjacks wherever his feet fell.

Now, he wasn’t always bad, trump over hearts diamonds and clubs. Once a wild joker he cut the fool before bemused Egyptians, dressed like Mortimer Snerd and spilled french fries on his lap at Las Vegas’ top of the strip.

Booted out of his father’s house after a quarrel, whores snapped at his heels and trick dogs did the fandango on his belly. Men called him brother only to cop his coin and tell malicious stories about his cleft foot.

Born with a caul over his face and ghost lobes on his ears, he was a mean night tripper who moved from town to town quoting Thomas Jefferson and allowing bandits to build a flophouse around his genius.

A funny blue hippo who painted himself with water flowers only to be drummed out of each tribe dressed down publicly, his medals ripped off.

Finally he joined a small circus and happily performed with his fellow 86-D — a Juggler a dancing Bear a fast talking Barker and Zozo Labrique, charter member of the American Hoo-Doo Church.

Their fame spread throughout the frontier and bouquets of flowers greeted them in every town until they moved into that city which seemed a section of Hell chipped off and shipped upstairs, Yellow Back Radio, where even the sun was afraid to show its bottom.

Some of the wheels of the caravan were stuck in thick red mud formed by a heavy afternoon downpour. The oxen had to be repeatedly whipped. They had become irritable from the rain which splashed against their faces. In the valley below black dust rose in foreboding clouds from herds of wild horses that roamed there. Loop Garoo was driving the horse hitched to Zozo Labrique’s covered wagon.