Read Online Tales of the Out & the Gone by Imamu Amiri Baraka - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Imamu Amiri Baraka
Ads: Link
sharp conflict developed inside the temple. One afternoon, somebody’d blown the Imam of the Noah temple to kingdom come. He was shot up close, as he’d come out of his house on the way to the temple.
Of course, the whole Muslim community was in an uproar and there were Muslim brothers supposedly searching Noah furiously for the assassins. Apparently they found them too, or at least some dudes who’d fit the description. Early one morning, the two guys’ heads were found by the lake, just off the running path. Yeh, the heads of the twin brothers were left there, blood still drying at the severed necks, right down by the lake. I think that’s what killed it for me. I never went jogging there again.
August 15–September 5, 1982
Correction Facility, New York City
MONDONGO
Y ou never go anywhere, Ray. Believe me, I know where you go. And you don’t go anywhere. Not around here, I mean, where everybody can see.” Irv Laffawiss pushed his “cunt cap” back on his head so he looked like the posters of the sloppy airmen in the slides shown at Character Guidance lessons on Saturdays. He should have had a red X painted across him to resemble the classic well-advertised “Sad Sack” of U.S. military tradition. And it was the U.S. military, the Air Force, in which he and his good friend, Ray Johns, were now entrapped. Johns was reading, it looked like. But he had on dark glasses and the lights in the room were low, so how he was accomplishing this reading was vague. But Laffy knew from repeated encounters not to get involved in any conversation with Ray about how it was he could read in the near-dark with dark sunglasses.
To the inquiry about “not going anywhere,” Ray Johns merely peeped up over the book and stared at Laffy, “Hey, man. Why I got to go off the base? I ain’t lost nothin’ out there.”
“You’re too weird, Johns.” Laffawiss sounded mildly annoyed. “Don’t you believe in R&R?”
Ray Johns turned over on the bed where he was half-sprawled. He knew Laffy was going on with the conversation, so he wanted to see how he looked when he said this shit. “R&R? Shit, man. I wanna go home. Naw, I wanna go to fuckin Greenwich Village. R&R?”
“Don’t you believe in girls, then?” Laffy was pressing it. He was leaning now against one of the walls, smoking a bent cigarette and flicking the ashes like Groucho Marx. Groucho was Laffy’s alter ego. He enraged the non-coms and officers by coming into their office or his own room when there might be an inspection or something, bent at the waist, holding his cigarette like Groucho’s cigar and striding in crazy-looking, rolling his eyes like a roulette wheel.
“Yeh, Laffawiss, I believe in girls. Why, you got any?”
Laffy pointed over his shoulder and imitated Groucho: “They went that-a-way!” Pointing in the general direction of the town—in this case, Aguadilla, a nasty little dot at the tip of Puerto Rico’s shore. Laffawiss and Johns, together with 5,000 other airmen, were stationed just outside Aguadilla at the SAC base, Ramey. They, along with the others, commanded by a thirty-eight-year-old nutty general who wanted to clean up venereal disease, were busy with the task of keeping the free world free and intimidating any sons-of-bitches who wanted to maybe make wise remarks, or rape frecklefaced girls, or live too close, or talk in funny languages, or smell or look funny, or communize the country—any of that stuff. They were doing this by means of the B-36 bomber. Laffawiss was a radio operator without a crew, and Johns a weather- gunner in the worst crew on the base.
Every weekend and maybe more, Laffawiss would “roar into town,” as the airmen described, get drunk, pay for some pussy, then stagger back to the base with a head as big as a propeller. Johns and Laffawiss were pretty good friends, Johns from a large town in Jersey close to Manhattan and Laffawiss from the Lower East Side. Not the Lower East Side of boutiques and
Of course, the whole Muslim community was in an uproar and there were Muslim brothers supposedly searching Noah furiously for the assassins. Apparently they found them too, or at least some dudes who’d fit the description. Early one morning, the two guys’ heads were found by the lake, just off the running path. Yeh, the heads of the twin brothers were left there, blood still drying at the severed necks, right down by the lake. I think that’s what killed it for me. I never went jogging there again.
August 15–September 5, 1982
Correction Facility, New York City
MONDONGO
Y ou never go anywhere, Ray. Believe me, I know where you go. And you don’t go anywhere. Not around here, I mean, where everybody can see.” Irv Laffawiss pushed his “cunt cap” back on his head so he looked like the posters of the sloppy airmen in the slides shown at Character Guidance lessons on Saturdays. He should have had a red X painted across him to resemble the classic well-advertised “Sad Sack” of U.S. military tradition. And it was the U.S. military, the Air Force, in which he and his good friend, Ray Johns, were now entrapped. Johns was reading, it looked like. But he had on dark glasses and the lights in the room were low, so how he was accomplishing this reading was vague. But Laffy knew from repeated encounters not to get involved in any conversation with Ray about how it was he could read in the near-dark with dark sunglasses.
To the inquiry about “not going anywhere,” Ray Johns merely peeped up over the book and stared at Laffy, “Hey, man. Why I got to go off the base? I ain’t lost nothin’ out there.”
“You’re too weird, Johns.” Laffawiss sounded mildly annoyed. “Don’t you believe in R&R?”
Ray Johns turned over on the bed where he was half-sprawled. He knew Laffy was going on with the conversation, so he wanted to see how he looked when he said this shit. “R&R? Shit, man. I wanna go home. Naw, I wanna go to fuckin Greenwich Village. R&R?”
“Don’t you believe in girls, then?” Laffy was pressing it. He was leaning now against one of the walls, smoking a bent cigarette and flicking the ashes like Groucho Marx. Groucho was Laffy’s alter ego. He enraged the non-coms and officers by coming into their office or his own room when there might be an inspection or something, bent at the waist, holding his cigarette like Groucho’s cigar and striding in crazy-looking, rolling his eyes like a roulette wheel.
“Yeh, Laffawiss, I believe in girls. Why, you got any?”
Laffy pointed over his shoulder and imitated Groucho: “They went that-a-way!” Pointing in the general direction of the town—in this case, Aguadilla, a nasty little dot at the tip of Puerto Rico’s shore. Laffawiss and Johns, together with 5,000 other airmen, were stationed just outside Aguadilla at the SAC base, Ramey. They, along with the others, commanded by a thirty-eight-year-old nutty general who wanted to clean up venereal disease, were busy with the task of keeping the free world free and intimidating any sons-of-bitches who wanted to maybe make wise remarks, or rape frecklefaced girls, or live too close, or talk in funny languages, or smell or look funny, or communize the country—any of that stuff. They were doing this by means of the B-36 bomber. Laffawiss was a radio operator without a crew, and Johns a weather- gunner in the worst crew on the base.
Every weekend and maybe more, Laffawiss would “roar into town,” as the airmen described, get drunk, pay for some pussy, then stagger back to the base with a head as big as a propeller. Johns and Laffawiss were pretty good friends, Johns from a large town in Jersey close to Manhattan and Laffawiss from the Lower East Side. Not the Lower East Side of boutiques and
Similar Books
