Disaster Among the Heavens, Don E Peavy Sr [reading rainbow books txt] 📗

winds do on rooster vanes perch!
. . .
Doctor Diggs continued to sit on the side of the bed where Fredda lay sleeping. He was about to crawl in beside her when the radio blasted forth the words of Hammer Head, the late Assistant’s second in command.
“Hey, dog breath, answer the goddamn radio!” his voice boomed.
The Doctor rushed across the room as the foul language continued to bombard his ears. He grabbed the radio and shouted into it, “What the hell’s your problem, man, people are sleeping here!”
“Hey, dog breath, answer the goddamn radio or I’m comin' down dar and dip off into your ass!”
Diggs realized he had failed to depress the transmission switch. He did so and said, “Yea, man, what’s up?”
This time Diggs reduced the volume of his voice in deference to Fredda who groaned and turned on her side.
“I need some freaking answers. Shit, I didn’t come here to babysit. Put my man on!”
The Doctor looked at the Assistant’s corpse in the corner as his mind searched its memory banks for a response to Hammer Head. “Look man, the Assistant’s asleep. He’s in deep pain. I gave him a strong sedative. He’s out cold!”
“Look Doc, I’m freaking tired of your bullshit games. I’m gonna let ya slide this time. But hear me and hear me damn good. In the morning I want to speak to my main man and I don’t want no freaking ifs, ands or buts. Can ya dig it?”
“Ah, well, uhhhhhhh, what’s happening? What is it? What’s wrong?” It was Fredda who had been awakened by the thunderous voice of Hammer Head. She sat up on the side of the bed with the covers wrapped tightly around her.
“It’s Hammer Head again,” answered Diggs. His voice trembled.
“Hey, dog breath, did you copy me?” boomed Hammer Head.
The Doctor pressed the switch and fumbled, “Yea, ah, sure, ease up man.”
“Ease up my ass! Don’t freak with me Doc. You’d rather walk through hell in gasoline draws than freak with me! Dig?”
“Sure, ah, yea, I mean I’ll have your man ready to talk to you in the morning.” Diggs looked at Fredda who gave him a puzzled look in return.
“You’d freaking better. Cause Doc, if my man don’t get on the radio when I call in the morning ya know what I’m gonna do?”
“No man, I don’t.”
“I’m gonna come down there and put my foot so deep in your ass it’ll take Red Adair and a platoon of marines to get it out! Dig?”
“Yea man, just don’t call too early. It’ll be closer to mid morning before he comes out of it,” counselled The Doctor. He struggled to be patient with Hammer Head and not enrage him any more than he already was.
A stressed Doctor Diggs placed the radio down gingerly as if doing so would dissipate the sting of Hammer Head’s words. This was a complication he did not anticipate. He had no idea how to resolve it; realizing he could not bluff Hammer Head or delay him for long. There was no reasoning with this six foot four, two-hundred and fifty pounds ex-convict.
“Hammer represents the epitome of black rage,” the assistant had argued when Diggs questioned him about having such a person as his second in command.
“What we have to do is to control that rage and direct it towards the white man,” the assistant reasoned in one of his moments when death loosened its hold on him.
The Doctor disagreed, though only in his mind for he feared causing the assistant to relapse into a choking fit. He noticed that Hammer Head was just as violent towards Blacks as he was towards whites. Hammer Head, for Diggs, represented the absurdity of the Assistant’s so-called revolution. It was Blacks who were most hurt by the widespread violence and killings. Death and incarceration rates were much higher for Blacks than whites.
He wished he could have discussed this with the assistant whom he considered quite intelligent and insightful. What was he going to do about Hammer Head?
“Perhaps there won’t be a tomorrow,” he said to the radio. He turned and faced Fredda who was now completely awake.
“What do you mean no tomorrow? she asked. “There’s got to be a tomorrow.”
Diggs did not respond. He walked over and sat next to Fredda.
“What do we do now?” she asked. She propped herself up using the pillows.
“Those presidential pillows suit you nicely,” said Diggs, referring to the presidential seal on the pillows. Fredda smiled.
Diggs sat down beside her. “As for that monster, I don’t know. I haven’t a clue. I’m sick of this whole mess. Maybe we ought to find a way out of here before morning. Maybe we should fire the damn missiles and be done with it!”
“You mean give up when we are so close to victory?” asked Fredda. She let go of the covers and exposed her voluptuous breasts.
Fredda adjusted her position so that she was closer to Diggs. He had buried his face in his hands. She reached out to him with her right hand while holding the covers with her left. All other movement in the room came to a stop.
It was Fredda who spoke next. She lifted Diggs’ head out of his hands and turned his face towards hers. “Look sweetheart, I have lost the only two men I have ever loved.
“Both of them betrayed by a woman they cared a lot about. If you give up now, it would all have been in vain. Think how many Black people are depending upon you?” Fredda let go of the Doctor.
Diggs came to life. “Black people?” He jumped up from the bed. “I’m sick of this black shit!”
“C’mon, let’s get some sleep,” pleaded Fredda. “We’ll figure it out in the morning.”
The Doctor ignored the plea and continued on his journey for an answer. “What is black? What does it mean to be “Black”?”
Realizing the futility of her efforts, Fredda responded, “Well, whatever it is, one thing it is not and that’s eating soul food! Nor does it mean wearing an Afro and listening to jazz or the blues.”
She continued as The Doctor stared at her in admiration, “Black doesn’t mean working up a sweat at church or doing the split like James Brown on the dance floor. What being “Black” really means is best expressed by a Black intellectual who wrote that no matter what your station in life; no matter the content of your character; regardless of the intelligence of your mind; you are subject to being judged the world over merely by the color of your skin.
“Black means that even if you graduate from the best school, have the best job, live in the best suburb, wear the best clothes and drive the best car – all of those things are invisible to the vast majority of eyes in the world and if you are seen at all – you are seen as a dark-skinned creature who is somehow less than fully human.”
Fredda let go of Diggs’ hand. He smiled then frowned. Fredda’s speech reminded him of his wife.
Fredda ignored the change in demeanour and continued. “Sadly, love, even light-skinned Blacks like yourself can’t escape this reality. Oh sure, some of you are able to pass by abandoning all claims to Blackness and selling your souls to the devil of illusions. I have seen your kind day after day walk the downtown streets of Chicago with your noses up in the air like you’re better than the rest of us. I see you walking with your white friends and then the moment the sun goes down you run across the track to try to get in touch with your black soul.
“Yes, love, you and all of your middle class buddies think you have it made. But you’re nothing more than tokens which the white man uses to convince himself that he’s not racist and that his system is fair. He holds you up and says to the rest of us, ‘See what you can become if you play by the rules?’”
Fredda no longer sounded like Diggs’ wife. His wife was enamoured with the Black middle class and saw it as the salvation for Blacks. Like Diggs, she deplored what the assistant was doing.
He began to miss his wife as Fredda moved closer to the edge of the bed and slightly farther away from him.
She continued, “But it’s all a big lie. A grand illusion! As you have discovered, only so many of us are allowed to make it at any given time. When the chips are down, the white man sees you the same way he sees the rest of us and you’re out on your ass with us.
“Look at yourself, Doctor, you thought you had it made. But as soon as the assistant starts some shit, the white man doesn’t see a doctor or someone who has played by the rules and who has bowed down to his illusion. All he sees is another angry Negro!”
Diggs stared at Fredda. Her words hit him like so many knives piercing his soul. He clenched his fists. For once in his life he had a burning need to strike a woman – to beat the words back into this woman who spoke so eloquently those things that now tore at his soul.
He wanted to attack the truth that sat before him and to beat it into oblivion. As he glanced at Fredda, her eyes looking into his soul, he saw his own helplessness reflected in her eyes and he wanted to tear them out. Fredda had named the emptiness within him and revealed his darkest inner self. As he suffered through her words, he began to understand why he went to the Assistant’s aid. The Assistant, without words, had also named Diggs’ emptiness.
“Are you okay?” Fredda asked as she noticed the color go out of Diggs’ face. She put her arms around him and let the covers fall away from her body as if she hoped her nakedness would melt the ice from around his heart.
Diggs turned away from Fredda and stared straight ahead. His eyes focused on a painting on the wall which depicted Napoleon standing majestically at Waterloo giving his Old Guard a final charge, oblivious to the advancing hordes being led towards his position by Lord Wellington.
The Doctor tried to lose himself in the picture. He noticed there were no black faces in the painting. His momentary sanctuary turned to a reflective hell constructed by the words of Fredda and this increased his discomfort.
Sweat gushed from his forehead. His breathing turned heavy, staccato and then it slowed and got slower still until he felt himself gasping for breath.
He broke free of Fredda and ran over to a nearby garbage can from which he extracted the White Castle sack that he had on yesterday crumbled up and thrown there with the accuracy of Wilt Chamberlain. He unravelled it, clasped it