Black2Reality

Run, Boy! The Last Black Man In America--Conclusion

2005-12-23T17:43:00.000-08:00

F I V E

Cheryl entered the central living quarters of the safe house waving a piece of paper in her hand. She found Jennifer staring blankly at a 70’s sitcom she had long ago lost interest in. She felt sorry for her, having watched her mood swing from upbeat to depression and strike every emotion in between. Jennifer looked up at Cheryl and managed a slight smile.

“What’s got you feeling so giddy this morning?”
“I received a fax from the mobile unit,” Cheryl said. “They have Al Baker with them and better still, there was a kid with him.”
“Mr. Baker didn’t have any children—at least, none that I knew of.”
“He’s a twelve year old named Noah Watson. He’s from Buckeye, Arizona.”
“Wonder why Mr. Baker was headed that way?” Jennifer said absently.
“I don’t know,” Cheryl replied. “Maybe he was making a run toward Mexico.”
“So where are they now?”
“Howard said that they were getting ready to set up camp in the desert—about one hundred forty miles Northeast of here.”
“What if they get stopped?”
“They are traveling by night, to minimize the chances of that happening.” Cheryl paused before adding, “I assumed you’d be happy that Mr. Baker is okay.”
“Mr. Baker and I were always at odds,” Jennifer said wistfully.
“I gathered as much.”
“But when he arrives, I’ll be genuinely glad to see him.”
Cheryl smiled and said, “I have a variety of perfumes and scented soaps.”
“I want to congratulate him for managing to stay alive,” Jennifer said. “Not seduce him.”

Noah was in one corner of the tent wearing a flack jacket and lay quiet, as ordered. Meanwhile Louis and Mark watched on a 6-inch video monitor the advancing forces. The ragtag bunch of vigilantes numbered fifteen and that didn’t seem to worry either man as they checked their automatic weaponry and adjusted their BPVs.

Al and Howard had crept to one side of the butte, so that the four adults formed an “L” shape. Al was armed with his pistol and packed three grenades that had been given to him by the HOPE members. Howard was toting a grenade launcher and was adept at preparing it to fire.

Louis and Mark had lay trip wires immediately after arriving. The wires were attached to mines buried beneath the sand. They lie quietly on their stomachs and through night vision binoculars watched as the mob crept forward. Seconds later Louis tossed a flash grenade behind them and he and Mark engaged them in a firefight.

This initial part of the battle lasted less than five minutes. One-third of the attackers were knocked out of commission by a rocket propelled grenade fired by Howard. As a couple of men ran to aid them, they triggered one of the land mines. Howard and Al sprayed automatic gunfire eliminating any avenue for retreat. And as the remaining men scampered for cover, Mark took out a couple with deadly accuracy.
One of the men called out that they were willing to throw down their arms. When they did, Al lobbed a couple of grenades in the vicinity and felled two more foes. Mark and Louis had no qualms about cutting loose on unarmed men and within fifteen minutes the attack force was vanquished.

Al immediately checked on Noah, assured him everything was fine, then he and Howard ditched the three abandoned vehicles. Meanwhile Louis and Mark disposed of the bodies by dragging them behind the butte and covering them with large camouflaged tarps. When they returned to the tent, they relaxed as if it were just another day on the job.

Al swigged a bottle of water and asked, “What is operation HOPE?”
“It is an organization formed to create an antidote for that shit CHEMICO put in the water,” Mark replied. “Scientists, students and militia men taking on the U.S. government.”

“So the government is in on this?”
“From the President, to the Secretary of the Interior. Several Congressmen have also come on board as have the leaders of the European Union.”
“What made you guys join up?”
“I despise anyone who inflicts injustice,” Howard replied. “I guess in a nutshell, I believe Rodney King was right: We all really should try to get along.”
“May such idealism live forever,” Mark said, twirling his finger above his head. “Now let’s assign the day watch.”

A generator in the back of the van allowed cool air into the tent. Noah, Howard and Al slept until noon while. Mark and Louis stood guard. Then they reversed roles until seven that evening, when they loaded the gear in the van. There was another two hours before nightfall, so they scarfed through another batch of MREs then played a trivia-oriented card game that Louis had brought along.

When they finally hit the road no one was very talkative, in particular Noah, who sat in the front seat next to Louis. The child spent his time staring out at the redundant landscape: Large, faceless buttes looming on the horizon beneath starlit sky. He thought about his family and felt ashamed that he didn’t miss them more. Although he wished for HOPE being able to reverse the whitening serum, he expected and was thus, prepared for their failure.

To break the monotony, Louis turned on the radio. He found the program of popular, conservative radio show host, Rich Limburger. The man was the most loved and hated of any radio personality in the country. His divisive views on race, economics and politics appealed to those of the far right. His ego was as large as his size fifty-six pants and his mantra was, “Be like me, or be gone!” Which was the phrase he closed every show with.

His followers were derisively known as “Rich’s bitches,” but they wore the label proudly. On this night, Rich was in rare form, taking calls from all over the country concerning “the New and Improved America.”

He began by saying, “Oh my, the niggers are all turning white. I can say ‘nigger’ now, can’t? I mean, who’s around to stop me? They used to use the word like they er…owned it. Anyway, we in this country have been blessed. The curse of Ham has ended at long last they are truly free! Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty…well, you know the rest.”

The first caller was an insurance salesman from Denver who admitted, “I’m no longer afraid to do business in the ‘hood. I mean, I actually sold a policy to two gangbangers.”

“Why were you afraid in the first place?”
“Niggers, man! I mean, those people didn’t want to work. They only wanted to prey on hard-working Joe’s like me.”
“But look at them since they’ve been whitenized.”
“No kidding. And the best thing is, you don’t know which white people were former Negroes. I mean, just because they have a prison record…well, that kinda junk doesn’t matter anymore. Their credit’s good with me!”
The next caller was a woman from Bellingham, Washington.
“Now that they’re gone, I can truly say…” The woman became choked up. “…That God really has blessed America. Big time.”
A real estate agent from Tupelo, Mississippi was the third caller.
“No more red-lining and gerrymandering for me. That kinda stuff was costing me a bundle.”

A man from Detroit, whom Al was sure was a former brother, called in and said, “I never knew I could borrow money even with bad credit! And on my job last week, my boss told me he would start paying me what he had been paying everyone else.’ I’m so grateful for being an American!”

Then Limburger went on to praise the newly named Supreme Court Justice Phineas Washington Jones, an alleged African-American. His skin was black, but his mind was as white as Kansas in winter.

“Now this is a colored boy who has his heart in the right place,” Limburger said.
The next caller agreed.
“I was impressed by the Justice’s patriotism. Especially after I saw him on TV tap-dancing on the steps of the Courthouse singing ‘Camptown Races.’ Strangely his skin was still black and no one seemed to notice.
“Turn that shit off,” Al said. “I’ve heard enough.”
“Sad to say, but this country has a new mindset,” Louis said.
“It’s the same mindset that’s always been,” Al said. “It’s just that now there’s no one to contradict it.”
“I guess you’ve got a point,” Louis replied as he turned off the radio.
Noah then slept through the HOPE members’ off-key renditions of Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer, This Land Is Your Land and Cumbaya. Al wished he had been so lucky.
“So what’s the deal with this Negron-5 shit?”
It was Howard who answered Al’s question.
“It destroys all Negroid features.”
Al shook his head.
“So all the women left have flat asses?”
“Pretty much. By the way, we found another black man—well, he was still partially black, but now he’s changed over. We’re going to test the antidote on him.”
“What’s he like?”
“That poor bastard. I played a record by Snoop Dogg and the man began shaking uncontrollably.”
“Shaking or dancing?”
“Shaking, as if he was having a nervous breakdown. I was finally able to calm him down, but only after I played some Johnny Cash records.”
Al’s eyes were wide with disbelilef.
“His mind is THAT fucked up?”
“Hey man, the guy claims that both Ali-Quarry fights were fixed, that Kenny Rogers is a better singer than Brian McKnight, referred to the Ku Klux Klan as ‘freedom fighters’ and said Janet Reno was more beautiful than Vivica Fox.”
Mark added, “He even argued that Michael Jordan’s achievements were overrated and that the real key to the Bulls’ success was due to Luc Longley’s ‘presence in the middle’.”
The four men laughed long and loud. When it died down Al was wearing a sad expression.
“Good luck trying to get his mind right,” Al answered, dismayed.

After three hours, they were between Battle Mountain and Tonopah, Nevada, in the Big Smoke Valley. Noah had wakened from his sleep screaming, but then gained his bearings and realized that the white faces surrounding him were those of friends. He informed the men that he was hungry.

“You’ll be eating in a few minutes,” Howard said reassuringly.

Finally they turned off the main road and onto a gravel road with numerous potholes and sharp turns. After an initial rise, the road dipped deep into the woods and followed a quiet stream. Twenty minutes later they were at the safe house, which was located deep in the forest behind a clump of rocks and trees. The van pulled through an entrance carved in the side of a hill. The entrance was shielded by a barrier of tall grass. Noah looked around, awed.

“Where are we?” He asked.
“Home,” Howard answered, grinning at him.
Two Mexican men dressed in fatigues approached the van, looked inside and signaled for the men inside to exit. The five were sprayed with a high pressure air hose and then led inside the house—which was comprised of nearly 10,000 square feet.
Once inside all five persons inside the van breathed a sigh of relief. Cheryl came into the livingroom to greet them with hugs and a disarming smile. Then Al and Noah were shown to their quarters. During that time Cheryl explained the situation to Al, who was awed.

“That shit happened right under my nose and I didn’t see it.”
“You couldn’t have,” Cheryl answered.

Noah’s room had been filled with age appropriate books and a computer. It was furnished with a twin bed, dresser, a roll-top desk and a color TV with a Playstation attached. Across the hall was Al’s room, which was filled with sports magazine, a king-size bed, dresser, a computer module and a treadmill.

The two were given time to freshen up before being fed dinner (pork steaks, mashed potatoes, tossed salad and garlic bread) and then debriefed. At that time, Cheryl returned to the room carrying a manila envelope. Two other men entered, dragging along a resistant man wearing a straitjacket and whose mouth was duct taped. The man had a curly Harpo Marx like hairstyle, a pointed nose, gray eyes and razor thin lips. Cheryl did the introductions.

“This is Pookie J. Hawkins, an approximately thirty-eight year old male. To make a long story short, he used to be black. We found him staggering around in an alley in Reno. He had taken a few swigs of water, so at the time he had yet to succumb to the full effects of Negron-5.”

“So why is he here? If he ever escapes, he’s going to blab about this place,” Noah said.
“He’s our Guinea pig,” Cheryl said. “Tomorrow we are going to test our antidote on this gentlemen.”
The man’s eyes widened with fear.
“I heard about him,” Al said, disgusted.
“Yeah, he’s wild about Britney Spears, plans to vote Republican in the next election and he thinks ‘The Brady Bunch’ is the best show in the history of television.”
“What a scrub,” Noah said shaking his head.
“How can a brotha that mentally messed up be saved?” Al asked. “I mean in less than a week every speck of his black self is gone.”
“The antidote should bring it all back. And there’s a second phase of the reversal process that we haven’t yet discussed: Blackology.”

The news of O’Shea’s death reached the desk of Conrad Cain within fifteen minutes of it happening. CHEMICO had paid to have the professor shadowed, in case he too, made a run for it. The agents report was brief, including only the fact that the victim died by a single gunshot wound to the throat that severed his brain stem. The only other piece of information was the approximate time of death.

Cain drank several whisky sours and when he looked up at the clock on the wall it was a shade past ten p.m. He summoned Dr. Wood back to the CHEMICO building, even going so far as to send a limousine for him. When Wood arrived, he was dressed in an overcoat, khaki shorts and an undershirt that revealed his flabby breasts.

“You remind me of my ex wife,” Cain quipped. “Now I know what to get you for Christmas, a bra.”
“Is that why you poisoned her?” Wood made no effort to keep the anger out of his voice.
“That was one of the many reasons I poisoned her,” Cain said coolly. “Anyway, I requested your presence to give you some good news and some bad news. I will deliver the good news first.”
“You could have played this childish game over the phone!”
“You would have hung up in my face,” Cain said sarcastically. “Now, assuming that was the last interruption, here is the good news. At approximately nine-forty this evening, Professor Edward O’Shea shot and killed himself. One of our agents was able to grab his CPU before emergency personnel arrived. It shows that his wife knew a great deal about our operation.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”
“Temporary condition. Would you like a drink?”
“I’d like to get back in my own bed,” Wood groused.
“Oh, you will lie in your own bed all right.”
Cain opened his top drawer and drew a pistol. Wood’s breath caught in his throat and he reflexively threw both hands in the air.
“Wh-what the hell’s the matter with you?”
“It wasn’t good enough to deprive O’Shea of his self-respect, was it?”
“What do you mean?”
“That thing about screwing his wife was really fucked up.”
“He had it coming….no pun intended,” Wood added quickly.
“So do you, Woodsy.” He cleared his throat. “Earlier you asked me why I poisoned my wife. Yes, her tits were sagging and she was planning to divorce me and take me for everything. But she did something that was unforgivable. Do you know what that was?”
“Why would I?”
“Because you were a party to it.”
Wood began to tremble. Cain picked up a picture off his desk. It was of his wife, a brunette with freckles and a cheerleader’s body. He glanced at it, then tossed the photo into a nearby wastebasket.
“You knew?” Wood asked.
“Yes. In an intoxicated rage my charming wife Sylvia told me of your sordid trysts. Of how you showered her with flowers and expensive gifts. I kept it under my hat and waited until the appropriate time for my revenge.” He leveled the gun at Wood. “That time has come.”
“Wait, Conrad…I can explain!”
“Your actions need no explaining. You stripped an old man of his dignity and his life. On top of that, you also stripped my wife.”

Wood turned to run, but he didn’t make two steps before three bullets to the back brought him down. After Wood fell to the floor, Cain stood over him and drilled him with three more rounds. He went back to his desk, reloaded his gun and drilled him with six more slugs. He then kicked the corpse, not once—but twice and afterward, contemplated setting it on fire, but changed his mind. The room was already filled with the acrid smell of blood and gun smoke. Cain stood over his victim and sneered.
“Now you’re good and dead.”

Cain went back to his desk and poured a fourth whisky sour. He hummed softly to himself as he sipped. When he was finished he summoned a crew to dispose of the body and install new carpeting. Then he went home and slept as if he had just spent a typical day at the office.

The Channel Two morning news featured a report of a “massacre” in the Mt. Irish section of Southeastern Nevada. The report mentioned the death toll—fifteen, and the fact that the case was being investigated by the Nevada State Police and the FBI.
Next came the story of the suicide of Edward O’Shea, during which several neighbors were interviewed. All said that he “seemed a little down since his wife walked out on him.”

Throughout the report Cheryl remained expressionless.

After breakfast, one of the researchers armed with a camera and an Uzi, took Noah for a nature walk. This was done so that he would not be frightened by the screams of Pookie Dawkins. The scientists were preparing for testing their serum on him and Pookie was being combative—verbally and physically. During this time Al sat in his room drowning out the noise by thumbing through a dog-eared copy of The Red Badge of Courage.

Minutes later a beaming Cheryl entered, with Jennifer in tow. Al rose and his former neighbor gave him a brief, but exuberant embrace. He admitted being surprised that she too, had survived the Negron-5 experiment. Then she took a seat on t he bed next to him.
“I’m glad to see you, Mr. Baker.”
“Al.”
“Okay, Al.”
“So how’d you avoid this madness?”
“Cheryl told me about a year ago to leave the water alone.”
“You could have warned me.”
“You were too busy watering my car.”
Cheryl cleared her throat and broached the issue at hand.
“Mr. Baker, if for some reason our formula fails to work as we expect, or if NEGRON develops a counter antigen, the re-population of the black race will weigh heavily on you and Miss Singleton.”

Al stroked his chin and grimaced. It was not like he found Jennifer unattractive. Only that he was flooded with feelings of guilt for the insults he use to hurl at her. It such circumstances, it would be difficult for either of them to be intimate.

“I suppose test tubes are optional?” Al asked.
“Not yet, so the old-fashioned way would have to do for now.” Cheryl then added, “We would need to add a lot of new equipment to use the test tube method. Equipment that might draw suspicion if we tried to purchase it.”
“How do you feel about that, Jennifer?” Al asked.
“I’d rather have a root canal.”
“You seem like the type to have a pain-based orgasm.”
“You two are going to have to try and get along,” Cheryl said, sensing that their tete-a-tete might escalate into something counterproductive.
Jennifer shrugged. “A girl’s gotta do who a girl’s gotta do.”
“And you did take your blood test already, right?” Jennifer asked.
Al nodded.
“You both are free of communicable disease,” Cheryl announced.
“Well, I suppose I could go through with this,” Al said cautiously.
“Don’t act like this is a mercy screwing,” Jennifer said. “I’m the one making the major sacrifice.”
“Oh? And just what are you sacrificing?” Al asked belligerently.
“My dignity,” Jennifer said.
There was a dense cloud of silence before the three laughed.
“Okay, we know what we have to do,” Jennifer said. “So I guess I’ll be seeing you tonight.”
She stood up to leave. Cheryl rose also, still enjoying the humor of the moment.
“This has to be the most lackluster act of seduction in the history of mankind,” Cheryl muttered as she followed Jennifer out of the room.

Serena Parker served Pookie J. Hawkins his dinner: Meat loaf, broccoli, mashed potatoes and gravy and bottled water. Unbeknownst to Pookie, during his exercise period, a camera had been installed in his room, which enabled the doctors to monitor his reaction to the antidote. The water line to his room had been altered to pump in the antidote, which they named ‘Bactublac.’

Before dinner had been served he’d already drank sixteen ounces of water. Both Parker and Carver recorded various bits of data during the first few hours. Occasionally one of the other three scientists—Cynthia Pratt, Earl Quentin or Arnold Dillon—came over to observe.

Within five hours Hawkins hair had regained a noticeable amount of its natural color and texture. Around the edges of his ears and cuticles he had grown darker. Since there were no mirrors in his room, he could not readily detect the changes. By nine p.m. and ten hours into the test, his nostrils had widened and when he showered, a computer measured more than two inches of penile growth. (He now had 3-¼ inches.)
Miss Parker called it a night, patting Al on the shoulder and wishing him luck on his rendezvous with Jennifer. Al nodded and returned to his own observation: Miss Jennifer Singleton. He had always found her attractive, but assumed she was the prudish type. Knowing he was going to sleep with her made him see her in a “hole” different light. He wondered if she would be passive or passionate, then recalled the words of his grandfather:

“Getting some kootchie is like having a bank account: The more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it.”

Less than an hour later Al and Jennifer would retire for the evening.

At two a.m. Dr. Carver had his colleague Serena Parker roused from her sleep. A groggy Serena entered and took a seat next to him. Being in a daze, she was unaware that she entered the livingroom without her robe. Her short, sheer gown revealed assets that would have made a monk drool and rethink at least one of his vows.
Carver was awe-struck and completely forgot what he had called her for. When she realized the reason for his stupor, she pulled the one of the pillows from the sofa, put it over her and sat in the now vacant space. The second doctor looking on was Cynthia Pratt, who found the whole thing humorous.

“Sorry about that,” Carver said, embarrassed.
“Not as sorry as I am,” Serena Parker replied coldly. “What’s so important that you have to rouse me from my sleep?”
“Observe.”

Serena looked at the monitor and her mouth flew open. Pookie Hawkins was now an olive color, his hair had morphed into an afro—black in some places, brown in others. His nose had widened, there was now evidence of acne scarring and his eye color had changed from gray to brown. Also, there was a notable increase in the thickness of his lips.

“He’s in the ‘blonky’ stage—the point where he’s about fifty percent black, fifty percent honky.”
“In just under eighteen hours.”
“Looks like the antidote is functioning as anticipated,” Carver beamed.
“Let’s not shoot off in our pants just yet,” Serena said, intentionally making a sexual remark, to see how Mark might react.

He took a deep breath, fumbled for the right words, then decided to keep his mouth shut. She was pleased with the result.
“I’m going back to bed. I’ll return at six a.m.”
As she turned to leave, Malcolm called to her.
“Yes?”
“Perhaps this is none of my business, Serena, but why haven’t you volunteered for re-population duties?”
She smiled. “I have.”
She left the room and Cynthia Pratt looked at the obviously flustered Malcolm.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Dr. Pratt said casually.
“Indeed. I think my sperm count just doubled.”

When Jennifer entered Al’s room she found him shirtless and donning a pair of gym shorts. She had on an extra-long T-shirt, intentionally attempting to throw Al’s imagination into overdrive. The front of his pants revealed that her stratagem had worked. She came over and sat next to him on the bed.

“Mr. Baker, at risk of killing the mood, I think we should talk.”
“Okay, but let’s cut through the formal jargon. Call me ‘Al,’ and if you don’t mind, I’d like to call you ‘Janet’.”
“I’m sure you would, but my name is ‘Jennifer’.”
They laughed and Al felt comfortable reducing the distance between them.
“I never knew you had a sense of humor.”
“That’s why I want to talk. I find it strange that I could be sharing the most intimate secret with someone who will know nothing else about me.”
“I see your point.”
“I see yours, too,” she quipped, again making him laugh. “But tell Tiger he’s going to have to wait before he goes prowling.”
“What would you like to know about me, Jennifer?”
“For starters, why you were such a knucklehead. Especially about the sprinklers?”
“Gee, this relationship’s off to a great start.”
“Answer the question.”
“I guess I didn’t see the harm in a little overwatering. Spotting up your car seemed like such a little thing.”
“It means I had to wash it more than once a week.”
“Well, I still don’t see why that’s such a big thing. But you had your own hang-ups.”
“Such as?”
“Every time I had company of the opposite sex, you felt free to make derisive comments. You made it sound like I was nothing but a cockhound.”
“You mean you’re not?”
“Come on, why did I get the cold shoulder, Jennifer?”
“Did it ever occur to you that I might have been a little jealous?”

Al paused before answering. He wondered if she was playing a game, or if she were serious. He didn’t believe it was the latter. Then again he recalled the many times he’d heard females declare their disdain for someone, only to be sleeping with the guy within the week. Jennifer saw the confusion I his eyes and elaborated.

“You’re a nice looking man and I think I’m an attractive woman. Maybe not the Halle Berry fantasy you and so many other brothers harbor, but at least fine enough to merit a smile, or at least a playful comment.”
“Maybe I knew a pass would have fallen incomplete.”
“So you just drop back and try again.”
“Is that what you wanted?”
“What woman doesn’t want the attention of a handsome man? Look, you ever been to a club and seen a fine woman sitting by herself and just shooting down men?”
“Sure.”
“It’s not like she’s some cold bitch, or anything like that. She enjoys the flirting. It’s just that most men take flirting as a woman saying, ‘I want to be fucked’. The truth is, sometimes women just like flirting. It’s like foreplay without the touching.”
“And THAT’S like writing a love letter to an inflatable doll,” Al answered. “But I suppose being enigmatic is part of what makes women so alluring. Nowadays it’s okay for the woman to be the aggressor.”
“Do you like aggressive women?”
“Woman are aggressive for different reasons.”
“Give me a few.”
“Some women are gold diggers. They think that sex with them is such a privilege that the man should be willing to bankrupt himself—morally and financiallly—for a roll in the hay.”

Jennifer laughed and Al continued.
“On the other hand, some ladies are aggressive because they’re horny and like most men, just got to have it. I know several women like that. They make Ray Lewis look like Dakota Fanning.”
“I assure you, I’m not that type.”
“Not always,” Al countered. “There comes a time when everyone feels that way.”
“Okay, continue.”
“Then there are the ladies who exude confidence and like being in charge. Sadlyu, most of their boyfriends wind up in therapy, opr in battered men’s shelters.”
“Will you be serious?”
“Okay, next there are the type who are convinced they’re nothing without a man, and feel pressured to have someone—anyone. They literally have top puill a Sadie Hawkins and grab hold of the first thing they see. These are the types found in prison visitation rooms. And finally there are those who are merely inexperienced, inebriated or both.”

Jennifer kept a straight face as she answered.
“My brotha, you are righteously full of shit.”
“It’s all theoretical. I gleaned it from a little-known book written by Albert Einstein.”
“Ha-ha. But tell me, mister theorist, for each action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. A man responds differently to each one of those women, so what category do you fall under?”
“That’s where you’re wrong, sista. Men just want three thinigs.”
“Sex is one of them.”
“Yes—and food, and then some peace and quiet.”
“You’re a Neanderthal,” Jennifer said, disgusted. “If you’re going to be partly responsible for re-establishing our race, black women of the future are in big trouble.”
“I was just joking,” Al said. “You’re taking this way too serious.”
“Okay, let’s get back to the subject of us.” Jennifer frowned, as if the thought of their being a couple were toxic. “When I first saw you, I wanted you to pursue me. Then when I discovered that you were an asshole, well, things kind of changed.”
“I might have had many of the characteristics of an asshole, but trust me, I’m not an asshole.”
“So what are you?”
“Like most men, I’m confused. I had no idea what women want, and I’m not sure about how to find out.”
“But you attempt to find out about strange women in clubs. Some who—if you don’t mind my saying it—couldn’t have held a candle to me.”
“Just because I had a female visitor stay at my house overnight doesn’t mean we were intimate. And I don’t know anyone who’s ever found true love in a night club.”
“So they were all one night stands?”
“At risk of sounding flippant, they were just there. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but I knew it wasn’t that—at least, not long-term.” He took her hand in his. “Now for the first time in my life I see not only what I want, but what I need. Besides the obvious—seeing the return of the black race—I need to touch, kiss and hold someone.”

“Oh-oh, this is getting deep.” She gave him a smile and added, “You’re going to get a chance to have your wishes fulfilled. I think before the night is through that you will realize that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.”
“I hope that’s not a reference to cunnilingus.”
Jennifer ignored his last remark, and as if there was symbiosis between them, they stood in unison, kissed and quietly undressed. They eventually made love several times.

At six a.m. Serena Parker was roused from her sleep by someone shouting. She ran into the livingroom where a stupefied Malcolm Carver was pointing at the monitor. But no one was more surprised than Pookie Hawkins, who learned that he now sported an afro, goatee, and now had a nose like Michael Jackson’s first one. However, when told that his skin was black, he became angry and called out, “Okay, enough of this! What are you fuckers up to?”

Howard and Dr. Earl Quentin entered his room and sat him down. They told him the story of NEGRON and how and when he had been captured. They followed up by showing Pookie a photo montage of himself—after he was first brought into custody, along with subsequent shots of him as a full-fledged white male When they finished their spiel, he thought they were insane.

“This must be some psychological test to see how much I can take, right? Like Michael Douglas in that movie, ‘The Game’.”
“We know this is hard to believe.”
“Damn right! I want outta here!”
“Trust me, Mr. Hawkins,” Howard said quietly. “Right now you are one of only three known black males left in the United States. If we let you out of here, you would be killed within hours.”
“I’m not crazy! The last time I looked into a mirror, I was a white man!” He said defiantly. “I like Kenny Rogers, The Monkees, Britney Spears and I hate rap music!”
Howard handed him a mirror and Pookie stared into it, stunned.
“This is some kinda fun house mirror, right?”

He ran his hand over his face.
“You are what you were born as—a black man.”
“I thought…” Pookie shook his head and unzipped his pants. He took a peek inside his shorts. Then his upper lip trembled and slowly worked itself into a wide grin. The glee at seeing his blackness nearly triggered a coronary episode.
“Awright! I’m black, I’m black, I’m black!” He fell to his knees and thrust both fists into the air. “Thank you, Lord!”

He let out a joyous whoop (which was what wakened Serena Parker) and moonwalked across the room, spun on his toes and did the splits.
“I knew there was something going on inside me, but I didn’t know what!”
Then after he climbed into the shower, he was pleased to find himself endowed with eight-plus inches. When he came out for breakfast he was informed that the straitjacket and duct tape would no longer necessary. Soon there were tears streaming down his face. But there was yet one more step to undergo in order to prevent a relapse.

That afternoon Howard drove up in the van, followed by three camouflaged military vehicles. Noah immediately went into panic mode, ran to his room and hid. Cheryl went after him and when they returned minutes later, both were smiling. Three Latino and nine white men toting duffel bags stepped from the trucks. All had athletic builds and wore army fatigues.

Cheryl introduced them to the scientists as former Green Berets-turned soldiers of fortune. She explained that the men voluntarily joined HOPE. Then the adults gathered ini the conference room and the leader of the men—a man named Suarez—explained the reason for their presence.

Their mission was simple: To get the antidote into the various water systems. They would split into four teams, three of which would infiltrate the water systems of Phoenix, Las Vegas and the California Delta. Another three-man squadron would commandeer a cable news satellite feed and announce the implementation of ‘Operation Bactublac’.

Once the waterways contained Bactublac, they would wait twenty-four hours before going on the air. They would show the world the results of their counter-attack and appeal to average Americans to urge the Government to get out of the genocide business. They would also reveal the steps entailed in ‘Blackology.’

Blackology defined in basic terms, is the inundation of black images into the black psyche. This was necessary because during the early tests of Bactublac, the test subjects regained Negroid physical features, but still had elements of whiteness: Such as walking as if they were constipated and using words and phrases like “malarkey” and “gosh darn.” When shown photos of Lil’ Kim, Beyoncé Knowles, Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox and Tyra Banks the subjects said “they don’t look all that good” and scored their beauty lower than that of their white counterparts—Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears and Jennife Love Hewitt.

Carver had administered a second test of the serum, only this time he had each subject read articles from The Final Call and listen to Celebratrion: The Best of Kool and the Gang, 1979-1987. Though the serum again had less-than-perfect results, Malcolm Carver noticed that the effects lasted four times longer than during the first test.

Before the final test on Pookie Hawkins, he worked up a computer model. His deduction was that the dosage needed to be doubled and the subject needed 72 hours of image bombardment. This would allow the images to take root in the subject’s mind, enabling him to accept and embrace the reality of his blackness.

He then tested Pookie and the original two subjects to see which images elicited the most intense responses. He showed them photos, read news accounts and played an assortment of recordings for them. He monitored the three, recording increases in their blood pressure, respiration, brain activity and the amount of toe-tapping or head nodding. In less than three days he was able to disseminate the data and put together the first Blackology lessons.

Now it was time to see if it would be enough to save his race.

S I X

The soldiers decided they would commence their mission at midnight, Sunday. Team A would be responsible for getting the Bactublac into the Las Vegas water system. Team B would do the same in Phoenix and Team C, in the California delta. Team D would wait twenty-four hours, then using the services of plants who had infiltrated NCNUSA (National Cable News, USA), they would commandeer the satellite feed.

Meanwhile, it had been nearly thirty-six hours since anyone, including Noah, had heard from Al or Jennifer. When the two finally emerged from the room, goofy grins were plastered on their faces. They were then filled in on the events of the past day and a half.

Al saw through the silver lining and examined the reality of the cloud.
“I believe in this plan, but the fact is, Dr. Ibsen and the crew at CHEMICO are probably going to flee to a country that has no extradition treaty with the United States. They will probably collaborate with some rogue nation and who knows what will happen.”

The group leader for the soldiers spoke up.

“We know of the whereabouts of Ibsen and his co-conspirators. We also know where they will go in the event of an emergency. And trust me, we have forces in place that are prepared to ruin their plans.”

At 12:01 a.m. Sunday morning teams A, B and C rolled out of the forest toward their destinations. Unfortunately, prior to their departure one of the men had drank tap water from Pookie Dawkins’ room and the following day awakened and found himself black. His name was Charles D. Miller and he would be the first man to die in what historians would later call, “The Battle of Bactublac.”

Meanwhile, Serena taught Pookie the simple techniques of Blackology. He spent the next three days poring over the speeches of Malcolm X, watching Spike Lee films and listening to James Brown recordings.

On Monday afternoon—in the words of one CBS anchor Dan Rather, “The rooster has shit right into the fan blades.” Black people were appearing on the streets en masse in major cities all across the West and according to that news anchor, there were more to come. Whites were in an all-out panic. Many were traumatized and admitted to hospitals and asylums. As blacks reverted to their old selves, Limburger was already on the air creating an offensive name for them—“retrospooks.”

The Federal government quickly went into denial mode. The President, Rory Hawke, delivered a primetime address in which he stammered and yammered and vowed to, “bring the perpetrators of this ‘atrostity’ [sic] to swift and ‘harshful’ [sic] justice.”

Supreme Court Justice Phineas Washington Jones called it, “A sad day in America, that we should have done all we could, to prevent.”

Sadly, he was referring to Operation Bactublac.
Young white Americans took to the streets rioting and looting—stealing and hoarding perms, skin lighteners and colored contact lenses “just in case.” They did not want to lose all their privileges—which was what would happen if they were once black and reverted.

On the other hand, the whites who had always wanted to be black, were sending sales of suntan lotions, Classy Curl™ perm kits and collagen through the roof. The National Association for the Advancement of Gray Girls (NAAGG) was encouraging its entire white female membership to drink up, in the hope that they themselves could actually become black. But lacking melanin and the appropriate mentality, their efforts were fruitless.(Though some did experience an increase in lip size).

For various reasons, people were drinking tap water by the gallons. Around the country, water rates tripled. Some areas were worried about shortages. In some states martial law was declared, as people were raiding water treatment facilities.
Churches were filled with white people praying they weren’t really black. Most of these people were frightened by their sudden skill on the dance floor, or the increase in their leaping ability. Some whites who experienced unexplained penile growth, or noticed an increase in expenditures at KFC, simply killed themselves.

Others who had Negroid features—i.e., thick lips, frizzy hair or “unusually dark skin”—were being discriminated against by the so-called “pure whites.” All Affirmative Action programs were suspended indefinitely “pending further review.” And even the Ku Klux Klan had problems, requiring all members nationwide to prove their white ancestry.

Not everyone knew they were undergoing racial conversion. Ned Andrews was on the ski slopes of Vail, Colorado, in the midst of a downhill run when his conversion occurred. Not knowing how to land, or properly navigate the slope, he was killed instantly when he smashed into and spotwelded himself to a tree.

Jeffrey James Rodgers of Miami, Florida was charged with three counts of manslaughter when he converted during a game of bridge. The other three players, all white and in their seventies, keeled over dead.

Oliver Craig started the one hundred-meter dash at the World games as a white man. He finished the race as a black man and was stripped of his gold medal for “winning under false circumstances.”

Charlene McElroy was working at the nation’s number one brokerage firm. One morning she was spinning around in her desk chair and enjoying a view of the New York City skyline, then morphed back to black. Board members admitted they had no intentions of putting a black in such a position of responsibility. They cited a quote from her company biography: “I always wanted to break through the glass ceiling,” and immediately demoted her to head window washer.

In a true rarity, Jake Jackson went camping in Eastern Oregon as a white outdoorsman. He awakened as a black man and became a happy meal for a grizzly bear, making him the first black man in more than 200 years to be eaten by a wild animal.
Worse was the case of Eugene Posey, of Ethel, Arkansas. He was of white skin the night he began his address as Grand Dragon of the local chapter of the Klan. But before his speech ended, his hair reverted to a medium-sized afro and his skin darkened, like that of a fig. Torches were lit and the pitchforks began flying in his direction. His last words were, “Can’t we all just get along?”

For some there was immediate benefit: Claire McCloskey of Appleton, Wisconsin discovered this while having sex with her boyfriend, Harold James. As he grunted, sweat and made the most hideous “fuck faces,” she lie on her back, bored. She had picked up the TV remote and was flipping through the channels when the change hit her husband “down south.”

She described it as “the best sex I’ve ever had,” and was so overjoyed from the scores of orgasms, she called her father and told him about it. Her father, Mike, was an avid hunter with a short-temper and a long-range rifle.

The “wedding” was held several hours later.

At NCNUSA, Pookie went on air. With photos and in his own words he gave a ten-minute retrospective of the past three weeks. He was thus, living proof that the black race could and would return. Pictures of Cain, Peabody, Ibsen, Wood and McConkey were flashed on screen.

By the time Federal agents raided CHEMICO, the building was bare.

During an emergency session of the UN Security Council, the U.S. was denounced as “agents of genocide.” The creators of Negron-5, the Secretary of the Interior and the President were branded, “war criminals.”

Several African nations immediately shut down all U.S. and European Embassies and expelled their diplomats. China denounced U.S. leaders as, “the biggest hypocrites in the history of the world.”

Congress convened in a hastily called emergency session. The House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to add Bactublac to all U.S. water systems. President Hawke again went on television in primetime. He denied any knowledge of the NEGRON organization. But a memo unearthed by NBC News proved otherwise. Due to public and international outcry the President was forced to resign.

The Vice-President, Sally DeGeorgis, claimed that the agents of NEGRON had been captured and would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of U.S. and International law. But in reality, NEGRON and its operatives were whisked away by Air Force C-130 cargo planes to another lab; this one in the nether regions of Eastern Africa.

Former South African leaders were arrested when they tried to purchase Negron-5 from a sham Internet site set up by Interpol. Riots broke out in the Caribbean and most whites on the islands were either imprisoned, or drowned as they were chased into the sea.

Many whites did what they could to keep Bactublac from being added to the water. Legal briefs were filed claiming that since the FDA hadn’t approved the drug, adding it to water unfairly put innocent Americans at risk. In an attempt to be p.c. more than anything else, the Supreme Court ruled against them and the more than 15,000 friends of the court briefs.

Protests were launched across the country, including one called “Hands around the water tanks’, where protestors linked arms in an attempt to keep Federal agents from adding Bactublac to the drinking water.

Many whites who suspected they were once black, joined such efforts. These were individuals who did not want to give up the supposed gains—in particular living in the suburbs and their improved credit ratings. These folks relied on bottled water, bleaching creams and heavy metal to maintain their whiteness. Both “pure” whites and the "re-blackened" turned on these folks, who were dubbed “cooncasians,” “hip-hop house niggas” and “double stuffed Oreos.” Many were savagely beaten and/or jailed. Some of the severely afflicted ones leapt from skyscrapers.

Some blacks were relapsing, until Blackology kicked in. The lessons were beamed into every school and shown ‘round the clock on BET (which was back on the air) and C-Span. The favorite method of Blackology was listening to James Brown, Kool Moe Dee, Last Poets, Chuck D or old Paliament-Funkadelic recordings. Another process was reading black literature—from newspapers to the following books: Anything by Maya Angelou or Gwendolyn Brooks; The Autobiography of Malcolm X; Claude Brown’s, Man-Child In the Promised Land; George Jackson’s, Soledad Brother; Richard Wright’s, Native Son, or Eldridge Cleaver’s, Soul On Ice.
Another tactic was watching old fight films. Recommended viewing included Ali-versus anybody white (Ivan Dunn, Chuck Wepner, Oscar Bonavena or Jerry Quarry); Ken Norton Vs. Duane Bobick; and Larry Holmes’, or Michael Spinks’ dismantling of Jerry Cooney.
Spike Lee films along with CDs from Paul Mooney, Dave Chappelle or Richard Pryor, and singing James Brown’s, Say It Loud )I’m Black and I’m Proud) also did the trick. Within the week, the black population had risen back to 93% of its previous level.

The Congressional Black caucus called for reparations in the form of (1) Blacks being exempt from income taxes for fifty years; (2) Guaranteed funding for any black person who qualified for and desired a college education. In particular, those pertaining to biological sciences; and (3) Congressionally funded Water Inspection teams made up primarily of black hydrologists, geneticists, biologists and laymen.
Black Democratic Presidential candidate Reverend Jonah Samson declared, “It is nothing less than tragic that the greatest threat to democracy came not from a mad man’s dirty bomb, or from a foreign missile, but inside the very borders of our country. The men responsible for this heinous and twisted act must be brought to justice, no matter how high up the political ladder the trail takes us.”

The following day he was on the steps of the U.S. capitol, strangling an elderly white Senator and was shot and killed.

The African National Congress’s Mwalimu Aali led a guerilla contingent that destroyed the new laboratories of NEGRON. Files, computers, research materials and all supplies of Negron-5 were destroyed. Cain, Peabody, Professors Ibsen and McConkey were hanged on-site and all their henchmen, hangers-on and helpers were shot and buried in a mass grave. The world body had further proof that American Government condoned the actions of NEGRON when they labeled the attack “an act of terrorism against the U.S.”

Alphonse and Noah became national heroes, as did Malcolm Carver and Serena Parker. Noah was reunited with his family, who left the Buckeye area to reside at the safe house. Jennifer Singleton kept secret the fact that she had never been exposed to Negron-5. What’s more, early tests run by Serena showed that she was pregnant. Only she, Cheryl, Serena and Al were privy to that information.

On his radio show, Rich Limburger denounced Cheryl as “The bitch who ruined the one chance we had at a real color blind society.”
She was ostracized by other whites for “Not knowing when to leave a good thing alone.”

Tragically, just three days later, members of a radical wing of the Republican Party killed Cheryl O’Shea. This splinter group called itself White Heroes Inspired To Eliminate Moolies and Especially Nigger-lovers (WHITEMEN). Even some so-called liberals spit on her memory, claiming that she “eliminated the best chance for blacks to make progress.”

After the funeral of Cheryl O’Shea, Al and Jennifer were married. Al’s best man was the new and improved Jimmy—that is, the old one. The wedding made news all over the world and the happy couple received congratulatory telegrams from various heads of state and notables including Nelson Mandela.

During their honeymoon the government of Nairobi feted the newly weds. Two weeks later they returned to the U.S. and for the next seven and a half months lived quietly in Los Angeles where Jennifer gave birth to eight-pound eleven-ounce Adam Alphonse Singleton-Baker.

And though it was a happy occasion, both Jennifer and Al cried. For neither knew what the long-term effects—if any—Negron-5 might have on future generations of blacks. Jennifer slipped her arms around her husband’s neck and summed up their feelings.

She whispered, “We’re part of something very special.”
“I feel special just having you in my life.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She smiled through her tears and said, “After we’re dead and gone, our son may very well be the last REAL black man on earth.”

T H E E N D

Today's Whack Ass White Kids (With The Emphasisi on "Whack")

2005-12-23T17:31:00.000-08:00

Being in high school today must be a frightening experience, for blacks and whites alike. School age children are just as likely to be carrying guns and pipe bombs in their backpacks as pens and binders. Kids are popping caps at school as if gang banging is part of the curriculum. Why? Is it because of an imminent Soviet invasion? Threats from foreign terrorists? Is it because they enrolled in ROTC?

Nope. All of this shit happens because someone is getting teased. Ain’t that a bitch?

An uncoordinated wood shop student makes a tea pot that looks like a maple leaf, is ridiculed by his classmates, then decides to bring his dads .410 to school and gun down a few classmates. Isn’t that sad?

Campuses across the nation are seeing a new sort of American Revolution: “The Nerd Rebellion.” Sensitive Sam, because of his frail appearance, thick glasses and good study habits, is constantly being teased by the campus jocks. Sam is cut from the badminton squad, and is encouraged by his PE instructor to “try out for ballet, or join the knitting club” instead. Sam’s feelings are hurt; he’s fed up and he’s not going to take it anymore. He has no friends to talk his woes over with and his parents are busy working, and when they come home they’re too tired to spend any part of their evening with him. So he goes upstairs to his room and surfs the net and downloads the instructions for building a pipe bomb.

After several weeks of isolation and due to his parents inattentiveness, Sam produces several bombs. He even tests a few of them by blowing up the family dog and videotaping it. He steals his father’s .38 revolver from his underwear drawer and puts it in his backpack. He straps a knife to his ankle, puts on his all black attire—including eye black for that “soldier look” and finally he is ready for the big day. Since everyone is being tested that day he gives new meaning to the phrase “Final exam.”

He begins the day by killing his parents, Herb and Marjorie, while they’re sleeping. He then has a bowl of Count Chocula cereal and heads out the door with the gun in his backpack and full of pipe bombs. He plants the pipe bombs in the lockers of his PE class, hoping to get even with his tormentors. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about killing those who did nothing to him because in his twisted state, there are no “innocent bystanders.” The world’s against him and he literally wants to leave it with a bang…

Fortunately, a custodian who just happened to be in the gym lavatory jerking off while reading a girlie magazine, seen Sam hiding the bombs. He alerts the Principal, who alerts the police. Sam’s plan is foiled, but not before he kills a cheerleader for smiling (“mockingly”) at him and then himself.

Whatever happened to fist fights and playing the dozens?

Libby Borta, a psychiatric social worker says, “There is something very specific about a school environment that results in expressing that rage there. Why don’t they do this in a movie theater? There is something more personal at school.”

You betcha. That’s where most name-calling and dissing by the beautiful ones occurs. Do you think these violent nerds go to the movies and suddenly Halle Berry and Drew Barrymore ridicule them from the screen? (By the way, I’m sure there’s some young kook who will read Ms. Borta’s statement and go, “Yesiree, Bob. That movie theatre thang shore sounds lahk a good ah-dear.”)

Today’s geeks and disgruntled bookworms are bent on whole scale destruction. Parents in the 60’s only worried about their kids becoming hippies and “fairies”. Maybe smoking a little too much “Mary Jane.” Parents of the 70’s and 80’s worried about “lewd” lyrics in music. Now parents and educators are fearful that some other kid will come to school with a cannon and wreak havoc.

Experts are decrying TV and movie sex and violence as if that’s to blame. They argue that today’s kids have become “desensitized” to violence. Well I say, keep your child’s TV and movie viewing to a minimum and teach the little bastard how to read and write. Keep your child away from video games, otherwise, his mind will flit about like a moth on crank. Allow principals to discipline children paddles; Allow parents to righteously whip asses again. You will see a kinder and gentler American youth and a drop in school violence.

Why should we blame a child’s extremism on Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, when it’s really due to a parent’s lack of interpersonal skills? When mulling over this issue, use your head, white folks. Your kids don’t listen to you, so why would they listen to black people? This is white people’s desperate attempt to blame niggas for everything instead of facing the fact that as parents, they suck.

Ask yourself who’s is doing all of this shooting? Gang bangers in the barrio? Frustrated black kids? Survivalists? Nope—middle class WHITE kids. And isn’t it strange the media isn’t playing up that aspect? Why isn’t the media raising the question, “What’s Wrong with America’s Little Ofays?” If black kids were doing this, the media, sociologists and educators would be engaged in a political menage a trois, addressing the black males “propensity for violent behavior.” TV documentaries would air shows with titles like, “Our Violent Black Youth.”

I’m stunned by the fact the media (especially Fox) hasn’t exploited this issue. I’m shocked we haven’t seen shows like “Guess Which Little Honky’s Packing,” or a teen-oriented, primetime special, “Who Wants To Go To the Prom With A Mad Man?” Where’s 60 Minutes’ Ed Bradley and his expose on, “Whack Ass, Gun-Toting, Teenage White Boys”? (Which would also be a good name for a Saturday morning cartoon show. In fact, I might approach the WB with that one.)

Look, I attended a high school run by Klansmen, where race riots were eagerly anticipated. But no one thought of bringing a gun to school. Why? We had good sense. We believed in keeping fights “fair.” Or should I say, without guns and knives; for being outnumbered 850 to 100 was their idea of fighting fair. Back in the day we had to deal with parents, neighbors, educators and judges, who didn’t care about anything except keeping their boot heels on the necks of black people. But no brotha ever “snapped” and brought a gat to school.

Prosecutors are trying some of these young knuckleheads as adults, and rightfully so. If a bad hair day is too much for you to bear, and you just have to gun down someone, you ought to be put away forever. You are a twisted individual who threw away the right to live amongst us decent and sensible folk. And during sentencing don’t stand before the judge crying like a teenage girl who’s severely afflicted with PMS. Don’t plead for mercy. You didn’t have any on your victim.

Like the ten kids in Milwaukee who beat a man to death with a rake. Tried as adults and rightfully so. It began when they hit the man with an egg, he went upside the head of one of the kids (the wrong one) and subsequently was murdered inside his home. Then those kids and their parents expected the courts to show mercy.

I say pack some corks, cigarettes and your collection of girlie magazines. You’re gonna need ‘em, ‘cause we’re shipping your goofy asses to the pen. There you'll get a dose of reality and discover what it’s really like to be abused and in the end you'll be someone's cute little prison bitch. The same goes for these kids who come to school and want to kill everybody for no other reason than the fact they are having a bad day, or were being teased.

We're kicing you to the curb, like Burger King did "Herb." Don’t come back now, y’heah?

Be Real About Racism

2005-12-23T17:26:00.000-08:00

Be Real About Racism

A white guy once asked me, “Why is it okay for black people to call each other the ‘n’ word, but they get mad when whites do it?”

I avoided the obvious answer and lecture, that not all black people find it okay and that it oftentimes depends on the user’s intent. Instead I asked him, “Why does it matter to you? You ain’t black.”

I Added that I don’t sit up nights wondering why white people call each other “peckerwood.” It isn’t my business and I don’t give a rat’s ass.

Today, the trip behind the word NIGGER is that it upsets white people more than black people (unless it’s a white dude using the word). Our “redefinition” of the word as something other than negative somehow makes it seem less offensive. Our claiming squatter’s rights to the word have changed the racial landscape. It’s now “nigga”, or “niggaz,” as opposed to the old English pronunciation.

When white people “slip” and use the word (in other words when they didn’t know there was a black person within earshot) they get red faced and stammer, “I uh…holy crap, dude. I meant nothing by it. ‘Niggers’ come in all colors. There are white niggers, too.”

That’s mighty white of you to notice. In reality, that’s another white-created bullshit story. It’s merely a way to say, “You people are the original niggers and set the standard for ‘niggerness’. There are several lowlifes in our race who have yet to reach that stage—but don’t think they aren’t trying!”

Second, the perpetrator is a coward, to boot. Name one instance when you heard a white guy refer to another white guy as a “nigger.” When was the last time Ted Kennedy made a speech in congress, and afterward, Trent Lott stood and said, “Nigger, please”? Did Bill and Hillary refer to Al and Tipper as “My nigz?”

This is why I begrudgingly respect the KKK. (The Kook/Klucks Klan.) They don’t resort to verbal trickery and euphemisms. When they say, “We hate niggers!” we know they mean people darker than blue. They don’t include lazy white folks and trailer trash. (That would be self-condemnation.) They’re not like these neo-racists--cowardly, euphemism-spouting crackas like David Duke, who cloak their bigotry in the business suit of “white people’s rights.”

These “exploited Europeans” have no balls and it shows when they substitute phrases like “non-European” for the other, more popular “’n’ word.” Everyone knows the word they really want to use. What ever happened to that George Wallace/Nathan Bedford Forrest racism of the South? Evil rednecks like Bull Connor, and “Jane” Edgar Hoover and his posse of FBI agents? Their racism was the kind that made it easy for both sides to know where they stood.

The white race has gone from those old, hardcore rednecks, to this new breed of pussyfied racists, like Alan Bakke and David Duke. That’s like going from Rocky Marciano and Babe Ruth to Jerry Cooney, Duane Bobick and Will Clark; Lenny Bruce and Don Knotts to Carrot Top and Pauly Shore; from John Wayne and John Holmes to Keanu Reaves and John Wayne Bobbitt.

White dudes today can’t be serious about “making things better” for their European descendants, because things can’t get any better for them. What more could you money mongering muthafuckas want? You want to have your cake and eat it, while standing on the neck of a black man. You are a race that does not need to love yourselves because you have such intense hatred of everyone else.

By the same token, you’re not the most hated people in the history of the world for nothing. The rest of the world also sees past the whipped cream and nuts that you’ve placed atop the steaming pile of dog turds you call Americanism. So you can relax. You have nothing to hide. We’ve seen it before. It’s time for you to be real about your racism.

Now Bill Cosby is denouncing use of the word by young black people, especially entertainers. I see his point—to a degree—for Mr. C also goes on to say that we should stop saying that the reason we are held down is because of racism.

Personally, I think Cos has had his day in the sun and like most people in the sun, sometimes they tend to stay out a little too long. That often effects one’s thinking and I think Cos lacks credibility in the eyes of young blacks because he comes off as a critic rather than a mentor. Two—he’s a hypocrite in the sense that his own lack of morals resulted in his “daughter” doing prison time and three, he sounds like an apologist for white people.

White people should constantly be reminded of their racist history and hypocrisy. They are now and always will be racist—only on a more subtle level, or what I call “sneaky Pete racism.” Black people are not the ones redlining, gerrymandering, manipulating FICO scores, polluting water systems in minority communities and whatnot. Black people do not run the courts that apply the death penalty and three strikes laws in disproportionate numbers.

White people are trying black youth as adults in record numbers—including one incompetent California District Attorney who wanted to try a six-year old black boy for murder! Whites further show their hypocrisy when they condemn the ghettoes of Americas as havens for drive-bys, yet glorify the creators of the drive-by (Capone, et al.) in movies and literature.

America was taken from the Indian at gun point, then this “land jacking” was glorified in countless movies and television shows. Now white folks have the guts, gall and the gumption to say it’s blacks who are trigger happy? Who’s designing all these violent video games they keep bitching about?

Whites label rap music misogynistic, but what about the video game violence and anti-female violence in movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th? Rapper Ice-T was condemned for making “Cop Killer” a record that spoke of how blacks see white cops as an invading force and worthy of having war declared on them. James Cameron makes a movie (“The Terminator”) showing a white person (albeit, a cyborg) going into a police station and killing every cop in the place.

Which is worse?

And going further off topic, what’s with this white woman and monsters thing that we see so often in movies? We’re now seeing the third remake of King Kong, where this ape becomes infatuated with a white woman. Just like Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, Dracula, Swamp Thing, etc. Is the white woman’s ego so fragile that she accepts this as normal? Hell, that’s bestiality! It’s as if she’s saying, “White men don’t find us desirable anymore, but giant monkeys, werewolves and Dracula do!” Yet, this country’s racial trips are so deep that you still won’t see a black man and a white woman being intimate on screen. (In the book “The Pelican Brief” the two central characters had sex; in the movie the central characters, played by Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, didn’t. Hmmm…)

These little white kids don’t have it as bad as they think. The problem is, their [parents neglect them, won’t whip their asses when they need it (a la The Brady Bunch) and they let their brains rot with excessive playing of violent video games.
Rap Brown was right, when he wrote in 1969, “Violence in America is accepted as long as it’s white folks doing it.”

Run Boy! The Last Black Man In America--Ch. III & IV

2005-12-15T11:58:00.000-08:00

T H R E E

Al reported off from work the rest of the week and remained indoors through the weekend. He kept his arms ready and screened all of his calls, most of which were from telemarketer’s. And whether from prejudice or ingrained intuition, none of the callers “sounded black.” He spent most of Saturday on the internet doing research on genetics. Most of the information was redundant or written in a scientific vernacular that he didn’t completely understand. However, none of it could be related to how a gene could be manipulated and a person of color turned white. After several hours he felt foolish. Perhaps he was losing his mind and he was adrift in some hallucinogenic-induced universe. Then for no reason at all he cried, for he knew he was an astute and reasonable man. What was happening to him was very real and his fear was rooted in not knowing the what’s and the how’s.

Later he went to the CHEMICO website. He perused the photos and biographies of the members of the Board of Directors. There wee announcements of job openings, then more biographies of the Department heads. There was news of his promotion and then something most shocking. While the photos of others in Supervisory positions was shown, above his biography was a blank space. Inside the space were the words PHOTO NOT AVAILABLE.

Al then looked up the page of Gerald Matthews. To the best of Al’s knowledge, the biography underneath the photo was accurate. The photo was shocking. There was a grinning white face with rosy cheeks, curly brown locks and an elfin nose. Underneath the photo was the name of Gerald Matthews.

He flicked off the computer and fixed himself a tumbler of bourbon. Before sitting he took a peek at Miss Singleton’s house. There was no activity. Her car was parked in the driveway as it had been since Friday evening. Al wondered if she were dead, or if she too, had been “whitened.”

He kept his guns handy at all times—the pistol strapped to his hip and the rifle always within reach. He kept the knives hidden underneath the pillows on his sofa and never napped for more than three hours at a time. He wanted to get an Uzi and wished there were at least one other black person with whom he could collaborate. Each time he wakened he took a glance toward Miss Singleton’s house and was dismayed when he saw no signs of life.

Al wasn’t sure what had taken place. Never having been a deeply religious man, he was surprised when he heard an inner voice telling him to pray. And pray he did, for nearly an hour, weeping and asking for understanding of what was happening. Was it was possible that the pressure of being the first black to reach such a level in the company hierarchy overwhelmed him? And if that were true, was there a psychological malady that would cause him to see everyone as a white person?

He laughed at the possible names for such an illness: Honkyphobia, Angloxiety, Crackerrhea, Caucasia Terraria.

There was but one way to find out what was happening to him. And he believed there were three possibilities: He was either the victim of an elaborate prank, or perhaps he no longer “had enough sauce for his chicken nuggets.” The third possibility was that somehow nature had run amok and if that were the case, he knew there was nothing he could do about it.

On Monday he put the handgun in his briefcase and the rifle in the back seat of his Volvo. He packed up the food and water just in case, then drove to work. His entry into the CHEMICO building went largely unnoticed and he went straight to his office. He sat his desk and perused his desktop and desk drawers. Nothing appeared to be out of place and he breathed a sigh of relief. No sooner had he sat down before his secretary called and said that Conrad Cain wanted to see him.
Al grabbed his briefcase and walked to Cain’s office with a sense of trepidation. He considered the worst case scenario: He would be handcuffed immediately upon entry and told he was under arrest on some trumped-up charge. Under the best conditions he would quietly be relieved of his duties, or be given the chance to tender his resignation.

Cain’s secretary forced a smile Al’s way.

“Mr. Cain is expecting you.”
Al entered and was about to take a seat when Cain told him, “Don’t.” Then he cut to the heart of the matter.
“Al, we gave you a promotion that quite frankly, you didn’t deserve. After less than two weeks on the job, you have proven beyond a doubt that you are overmatched, unreliable and incompetent.”
“Sir, if I may—”
“No, you may not!” Cain bellowed, slamming his fist on to the desk. “I’ll determine when you talk, or even if you have the right to!”
Al frowned and for a moment thought about pulling the gun and slaying the red-faced man.
“My point is, you are not right for the District Three Supervisor’s job. In fact, you’re not right for any job at CHEMICO!” He smiled. “Look around, Mr. Baker. Notice anything different?”
He paused for dramatic effort then added, “As you can see, you no longer fit in.”
“I guess I’ll clean out my desk and pick up my termination check.”
“The contents of your desk have been burned. And as for any final paycheck, you won’t be needing it.” Cain stood and his eyes held the look of unbridled hate. “Get out now, while you still can.”

Al turned and speedwalked toward the elevators at the end of the hall. Someone in Jimmy’s office called to him.

“Hey!” The white man ran behind him. “I oughta sue your black ass for harassment!”
Al pushed “Jimmy” away and continued toward the elevators.
“Did you see that? That’s assault!” cried the man formerly known as Jimmy. “Notify security!”
Al sprinted toward the elevators at the end of the hall. He could hear the white man behind him yelling, “Run, boy!”
Al boarded the elevator and bolted from it when he reached the second floor. He ran through a rear exit, which triggered an alarm.
“Shit!”

Al ran to the lower level of the parking garage and was about to get into his Volvo when a hand grabbed him by the wrist. It was a security guard, who was wearing a sadistic sneer and swirling his handcuffs.
“Going somewhere, spook?”

Al shook loose, took two steps back and fumbled with the snaps of his briefcase. He worked it open, took out the gun and barely beat the guard to the draw. The first shot Al fired was because he wanted to. The next three were involuntary. All four bullets hit the guard in the chest and he fell, seemingly in slow motion, as if they were performing a scene in a movie.

Al jumped into his car and sped away, knowing that if he went home the police would be waiting for him. Instead he went to several banks and using their ATMs made four withdrawals of four hundred dollars. He drove to a used car lot and purchased a nondescript Chevy Cavalier for eight hundred dollars. He drove the car to the city limits, near a dump site—which he found ironic, since his life was now a mess.

His first thoughts were to avoid the major highways, so he spent the better part of thirty minutes studying the map he’d packed. He wrote out a five hundred-mile back road itinerary that would take him back and forth across the Utah-Arizona border. However, that also decreased his odds of seeing other black faces. But gnawing at him was the possibility that would be the least of his problems.
Al climbed back in the car and drove sixty miles east to the small border town of Mesquite and pulled into the parking lot of a sporting goods store. He entered with his head down and walked briskly through the store. His purchases had been thought out in advance and included sunglasses, two sleeping bags, a back pack, tent, longjohns, instant coffee, a penlight, a transistor radio, batteries, fishing line and ten small bells.

After paying for the items there was five hundred eighty dollars left. Al then traveled east and he didn’t quit driving until darkness had swept down and enveloped the mountains looming in the distance. He had no trouble finding his way to one of the campgrounds in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. With it being early spring, there figured to be few campers.

Al signed the park entry form using the whitest name he could think of: Gil Watkins. Then he slipped three days worth of fees into an envelope and pushed it through a slot in the door of the Ranger’s Station. Tall grass and several trees shrouded the campground he chose. The tent was set up quickly and so that it faced away from the road. Then Al strung the fishing line around his tent, making sure he wrapped it around the tent stakes and nearby brush. He then attached the bells to the fishing line. The line was set three inches above the ground.

When he finished setting his trip wire, he had dinner, which consisted of a can of Vienna sausages and two packets of saltine crackers. He forced the food down, knowing he could ill-afford to grow weak and inattentive. Stress and the fear that his days might be numbered gnawed at him. He stretched out on one of the sleeping bags and eventually sleep crept upon him. He bolted upright when he thought his mind was playing tricks on him, for he could have sworn he heard the bells jingle…

Wait! They did jingle!

He grabbed the pistol and peeped out of the opening in the front of the tent. He thought the noise that startled him was likely caused by a stray animal passing through. He certainly did not want to encounter any wild animals, or members of the Ranger’s staff. But what he saw shocked him.

Before him stood a human wielding a gun. The strangest part was the human couldn’t have been no more than twelve years old. After several seconds a smile creased Al’s face, for it was a black child and the look in the kid’s eyes revealed that he was as frightened as Al.

Cheryl drove the minivan while Jennifer looked out at the endless sand that made up the countryside. Jennifer was already homesick and figured that if her days were numbered, she would rather die in the familiar surroundings of the home she was buying. She didn’t like the idea of her fate being determined by people who didn’t look like her.

“I’m scared, Cheryl.”
“So am I, Jennifer.”
“What do you have to fear?” Jennifer realized the foolishness of her question almost as soon as she asked it.
“When my husband realizes I’m gone, he’ll put two and two together and he’ll want me just as dead as he wants you.”
“So why do you want to help me?”
“I’m not helping you per se. I want to help save mankind.”
“How novel,” Jennifer said with an acerbic tone.
“That’s why me and three friends built an underground shelter and lab; a safe house. We enlisted the services of five scientists who rebutted the theories and motives of NEGRON.”
“And just what can they do?”
“They’re working on an antidote and they’re making progress.”
“How would they know?”
“The first tests of NEGRON-5 were done on outlying tribes in southern Africa. We were able to get hold of two of them. Thus far—and remember, this is with but ten months of research under their belts—they have been able to reduce most of the effects. They believe it will be but a few weeks before they have an antidote perfected.”

“In a few weeks, it could be all over.”
“Never say die. We plan to recruit the aid of the United Nations if necessary.”
“How? Every representative of that body will be white.”
“But many are fair-minded thinkers like us.”
“Who devised that strategy, The Brothers Grimm?”
“We’re doing all we can,” Cheryl said, unable to keep the irritation out of her voice.
“Any of these scientists black?”
“Two of the five.”
“So where are you taking me?”
“To the safe house. It’s about two hundred eighty miles from here, hidden in a heavily wooded area.”
“I hope that was a reference to trees,” Jennifer said warily.
“Huh? Oh—‘heavily wooded’—I get it.” Cheryl chuckled. “Yes, what I meant was that it’s in the midst of a forest.”

Jennifer managed to laugh with her, but hers was borne of necessity, for she had to have something to believe in. For the moment laughter and the slim hope that the five scientists could reverse the effects of NEGRON-5 were all that she had.

“Drop that gat little brotha, or I’ma have to put a few hot ones in your ass.” Al’s voice contained a fervor that he never knew existed.
“Don’t trip old dude. This is some plastic shit I swiped from the store,” the boy said, dropping the gun to the ground with a Clack!

“Sheesh,” Al said, shaking his head. “Who are you and what are you doing out here?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you ‘don’t know’?”
“’Not aware; resulting from a lack in knowledge’.”
“Ha-ha, smart ass.”
“Look mister, I’m hungry and I ran away.”
“From what?”
“If I told you, you’d think I was crazy.”
Al’s gaze softened.
“Come in little brother. I have a little bit of grub I can spare.”
“How do I know you ain’t a booty bandit?” The boy said warily.
“If I am, I promise not to sodomize you until after you’ve eaten,” Al replied sarcastically.

The boy entered and feasted on two cans of sardines, crackers, beef jerky and an entire bottle of water.
“You can’t eat all my grub,” Al said. “Now tell me who you are and what you’re doing out here.”

The boy informed Al that his name was Noah Watson and that he was twelve years old. He was from the suburb of Buckeye, just outside of Phoenix, where there was a sizable black population, “until a few days ago.”
“What do you mean?”
“On Friday I started feeling bad and my mother said I had the flu, or some twenty-four hour virus. Like most black mothers she believed in the curative powers of 7Up and chicken soup. For three days that’s all I had, oh, and bottled water.”
“Wait, you said bottled water?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm.” The wheels in Al’s head were turning. “Please continue.”
“I woke up the third day, which was Monday. I was feeling okay until I saw these white people staring at me like I had two heads or something.”
“Where’d they come from?”
“I dunno. They claimed they were my parents—at least, they had the same names as my parents—Eddie and Shamara. They were just white. I rose up and rubbed my eyes, then I noticed that there were two police officers present.”
“The cops were white, too, right?”
“Everyone I saw that day was white. But let me finish.” The boy took a deep breath and resumed his story. “This white woman was pointing at me and telling the cops, ‘we woke up and found this nigger lying in our son’s bed. We don’t know what he did with our Noah’.”

“Where were you?”
“In MY bed,” Noah said adamantly. “Those white folks were saying I broke in their house, did something to their son, then took a nap. Ain’t that a bitch?”
“Watch your language,” Al said. “Now, why didn’t you tell them who you were?”
“I did. I even showed them my school ID. The white dude said it was coincidental that I was the same age and had the same name as his son. He told the cops I must have been trying to steal their son’s identity and family.”
“So what happened?”
“I knew I wasn’t dreaming, because one of the cops farted—you can’t smell anything in a dream. So I shot past the people, hit the back door, ran past my dog and flew over the back fence. I ran as far as I could, then I started hitchhiking.”
“That was dangerous.”

“I didn’t know what else to do.”
“So how’d you wind up way out here?”
“I caught a ride with this old white dude who was just passing through. He said he was originally from Montana and asked me if I wanted to go there with him. I told him ‘no.’ I didn’t want to tell him I was already escaping a land with no black people in it.”

“So he dropped you off here?”
“About two miles from here. And he gave me forty bucks.”
“So what are you going to do?”
The boy’s face fell. His voice was heavy with sorrow, as if he was going to start crying.
“I thought I could travel with you.”
“Listen to me, son, because I want you to know what you’re getting into.”
“I think I already know. All the black people are gone.”
“Not all of them—and that’s what makes being with me dangerous.”
“Do you know what caused this?”
“I have a theory as to what happened. The thing is, the people who I believe are responsible, know that I know. They think I’m the last black man.”
“So they’re looking for you?”
“Exactly.”
,br>

“That means they’re looking for me, too, because the cops saw me. They must know that I’m the last black person in Buckeye.”
“Listen, kid—you and I have one thing in common beside our black skin. Neither of us drank tap water. We drank bottled water, which is why I think we’re still black.”
“I ain’t feeling you, bro.”
“I believe the company I once worked for added something to the water supply. Thing is, if it’s affecting people in the Phoenix area, that means the Colorado River has been tainted, too. That means Los Angeles will also be affected.”
“Why are they doing this?”
“Don’t worry about it kid. All I know is, we better try and get some rest and lay low. We have enough food to last us three days if we skimp. Then we gotta try and get outta here.”
“How?”

“That car that’s parked near the tree? It’s mine.” Al paused. “Do you know anything about guns?”
“Think I don’t? My daddy’s a dope dealer.”
“I’m not going to give you a gun, but in the event I can’t protect you, you’ll need to know how to fend for yourself.”
Al gave the boy one of the sleeping bags. Noah lie down with a glum look on his face.
“Where will we run to?”
“I don’t know. We’ll just run until we can’t anymore.”
‘What are we going to do tomorrow?”
“Let tomorrow come before you start worrying about it, okay?”
Five minutes later when Al looked over at him, the kid was asleep and drooling.

Operation NEGRON never sought anyone else’s approval for administering their serum into various water systems. The next two days they sent out teams that moved with military precision. The teams tainted the reservoirs of the California delta, the Central Valley’s Hetch Hetchy reservoir, Puget Sound and municipal water systems in Los Angeles and San Diego; Portland, Oregon; Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada; Salt Lake City, Utah; Albuquerque, New Mexico and Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Latinos were vanishing as well, meaning that illegal immigration slowed to a crawl. The need for bi-lingual signs in business establishments ceased. There was no longer the threat of prison riots erupting and Jerry Cooney had dreams of coming out of retirement to win the heavyweight crown.

Sales of Lakers’ and Lebron James basketball jerseys slumped. Sales of Celtics’ and Wally Szerbiak gear increased more than 3000%. Congress pushed through an act repealing the Martin Luther King holiday and replaced it with James Earl Ray Day. And as with most European holidays, there was a mythical creature chosen to represent the occasion—Elmer, the European Rights Eel. The caricature was that of a grinning white eel wearing a straw boater and smoking a stogie.
There were concerns that certain areas of the economy would be affected by Negron-5, in particular agriculture. This would in turn, impact negatively on the stock market.

As the attacks on the water systems moved East, the pop culture scene was also affected. BET went off the air as did Telemundo. KFC was forced to add turkey to its menus. The Church’s and Popeye’s franchises soon followed suit. Taco bell went out of business. Sales of tortillas, Mexican beers, malt liquor, Afro Sheen, hair weaves, zoot suits, menthol cigarettes, pork products, Tabasco sauce, R and B music and silk “pimp” socks fell way off.

Landfills were filled with scrapbooks, photo albums and pictures of black people. Thrown away by “neo-whites” who wondered, “What the hell am I doing with all these picture books full of niggers?”

Near the end of the week Cain called CHEMICO’s Board of Directors into emergency session. He revealed that the Suntanning solution was a ruse and elaborated on the grandiose plans of he and his cronies. He showed them preliminary data and theories regarding the positive effects of “race cleansing.”
Eight of the board members were overjoyed. But five—including the lone people of color, a black man and a Latina—objected. They were killed on the spot by security personnel, as were the three white dissenters who were branded “nigger lovers.”

After that a vote was taken and the board agreed to quadruple funding for NEGRON-5. Meanwhile Drs. Ibsen and Wood were speaking with the Secretary of the Interior who told them that the President himself greenlighted Phase III of the operation. By Wednesday evening, every major water distribution system west of the Mississippi had been tainted. Furthermore, there were plans to launch Phases IV and V—attacking the south and the Eastern seaboard by that Friday.
Al was able to keep track of the news via his transistor radio. He also learned an APB was issued for his arrest, that he was being sought for murder and was considered to be “armed and extremely dangerous.”

Sightings of “stray negroes” had been reported. Many of whom were killed by mobs. Unaffected Latinos raced toward Mexico and Central American countries. The Island of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands were affected by a Naval blockade. Hours later, the water systems of those regions were contaminated with Negron-5.

When Edward O’Shea arrived at home he found the house eerily quiet. Upon further investigation, he found his wife’s closet bare and her jewelry strewn about the floor of their bedroom. He discovered that several of his files had been tampered with and many more were missing.

So the bitch found out about us and left, fucking liberal cunt.

Initially he was dismayed by the fact his wife was one of “them” and that CHEMICO spies had somehow lost track of both she and Al Baker. But his woe was short-lived, for he knew Al Baker would eventually be exposed to Negron-5 and that his wife, when found, would be strangled before his eyes.

On Thursday Al and Noah left Glen Canyon and headed West. They retraced his route until they hit Cedar Falls, where they managed to go into a sporting goods store and purchase another sleeping bag, a CB radio, appropriate clothing for Noah—camouflage gear and longjohns—and two cans of fix-a-flat, “just in case.”
Under cover of darkness they ventured North on State Highway 89. They stopped at an out of the way, 24-hour gas station/convenience store near Centerfield where they gassed up and purchased enough food to last another two weeks, including several dehydrated goods. On the way to the counter Al walked past a magazine rack where several porno magazines, wrapped in plastic, were set up. One title caught his eye:

Black Tails—with an ‘s’ on the end.

He picked up the magazine and thumbed through several pages before throwing the book onto the floor. Turns out it wasn’t the afrocentric nudie magazine, but rather, a pornographic magazine for necrophiliacs and the “models” inside were actually corpses.

After making their purchases, Albert had less than four hundred and fifty dollars. He and Noah returned to their car and drove away slowly. Once on the freeway they headed west at eighty-five miles per hour until he reached their destination, the Fishlake National Forest. There they found a camping space and pitched their tent under a starlit sky. Next they arranged their bells and trip wire then feasted on beef jerky, flaming hot Cheetos and grapefruit juice.

They discussed the idea of trying to purchase a third gun and trying to recruit a white person they could trust; someone to purchase items for them during daylight hours. But then reality set in: It would be impossible to purchase a gun, especially having to wait seven days; and trusting any white person could be hazardous to their health.

That night they tuned the radio to an oldies’ station and fell asleep listening to songs by the Beach boys, Jerry Lee Lewis and the hit, I’m Telling You Now, by Freddie and the Dreamers.

Meanwhile just thirty miles West, parked in a densely wooded orchard were three college age white men in a plain-looking, brown Econoline van. The men were able to trace Al to the used car dealership and find out what sort of car he was now driving. The salesman was a fast-talking white man in his early thirties. He gave them as much information as he could, then was shot and killed execution style. Afterward the three men set fire to the office building.

They assumed that Al would stay off the main roads, but figuring out which direction he was headed wasn’t an easy task. They caught a break when a news report mentioned that “two negroes” had been spotted in Southern Utah in a car that fit the description of the one Al had purchased. With dogged perseverance they tracked Al to the convenience mart and again killed the person who provided them information.

“He’s probably camped out somewhere near here,” One of the men surmised. “It will be daylight in less than two hours and he wouldn’t want to chance being seen.”

The man’s named was Howard Brillstein and he was a twenty-six year old graduate student at Harvard University. He had black curls shaped into a circular hairdo and wore wire-rimmed glasses. His nose was beak shaped and his frame long and lean.

Two brown-haired men, Louis Jamison and Mark Graham accompanied him. Both had done volunteer work with the “We The People” political campaign and left feeling disillusioned. They trio had met three years ago and were inseparable ever since.

Mark was a burly man from Montana with thick shoulders and a matching midriff. He maintained an unshaven look and was partial to plaid shirts and sleeveless vests. He was also a crack shot with both handguns and rifles.
Louis was a clean-shaven young man with friendly brown eyes. He was an analytical sort and known as a computer geek. He was quiet and despite his tendency to binge on junk food, had a wiry build.

“What I want to know is, who is this second parson accompanying him?” Louis asked.
“More than likely another black person,” Howard said. “I’ve heard reports where some of the persons who have gone unaffected by NEGRON-5 are members of the Nation of Islam.”
“Nor did it work on James Brown,” Louis said. “Right now he’s being held for study at an undisclosed area in Atlanta.”
“Obviously several blacks did survive the attack,” Mark opined. “Vigilante groups are hunting them like elk.”
“Well, we better get back on the road and try and catch Baker,” Howard said. “He’s the key to this mess.”

F O U R

Jennifer was becoming depressed and for the first time, found herself craving the company of Alphonse Baker. For three days she moped around the lab, feeling useless, ignored and having no idea what questions to ask the scientists. Even Cheryl’s presence and eternal optimism couldn’t put a smile on her face.

She was given a battery of tests, fed nutritious meals and encouraged to exercise regularly. She knew the reason why: She could very well be the last black female, meaning she might be the only hope for the regeneration of the black race. She didn’t mind, for she figured to have plenty of idle time and healthy eggs.

On the fourth day, the two black scientists took a break from their work and attempted to explain to Jennifer what their research encompassed. One of the scientists was Malcolm Carver, a great, great, great, great descendant of George Washington Carver. He was a heavyset man with sleepy eyes and a pug nose attached to a narrow face. A genial demeanor offset what he lacked in looks. Jennifer held out no hope for producing good-looking offspring—not if he was going to be the sperm donor.

Though Carver was but twenty-one, he had already earned a Ph. D from MIT in the fields of molecular and cellular research, with his specialty focusing on cellular mutations. He had been able to unravel how the gene mutated and how to correct the flaw.

The second scientist was Serena Parker, a microbiologist from Stanford University, via the University of Nairobi. She spoke with just a hint of her native accent and had flawless, olive-colored skin. Miss Parker was the first scientist recruited by HOPE.

For the better part of three hours they gave Jennifer a crash course in microbiology and cellular research. Jennifer asked numerous questions and they answered them in great detail, using drawings, computer models and analogies when necessary.

They explained the theory behind Yakub’s alleged research, then broke down how Ibsen was able to refine and apply them. They demonstrated how they had to unravel the mess, putting it all in layman’s terms. In conclusion, the solution to the problem was two-fold and simplistic. It not only involved getting the antidote into the water, but treating all the victims with what they termed, “Blackology.”
Serena said, “The hard part is going to be getting our serum into the country’s water systems.”

“The best part is, our serum is so concentrated we only need to apply one deciliter per one hundred thousand cubic feet of water. That will work to our advantage when we send in guerillas to do our work,” Carter said.

“But keeping things real, there’s always the chance that NEGRON has developed something that can counteract our formula.”
“That’s where you come in,” Serena said. “We already have people on the trail of Mr. Baker. He is one person who we know for a fact hasn’t been exposed to tap water. He may have to be our Adam.”
“A-T-O-M, or ‘Adam’ as in the first man?”
“The latter.”
“So who is…” Jennifer caught herself, then frowned. “You’re kidding, right?”
Both scientists shook their heads.
“If he’s Adam, we might—and I can’t emphasize that word enough—need you to be his Eve.”
“Why not use test tubes?” Jennifer asked.
“We don’t have the proper equipment for that,” Carver said. “But like Serena said, this is a maybe.”
“Why don’t you be the new Adam?” Jennifer asked Carter.
“Low sperm count.”
“Among other things,” Serena noted wryly.
Carter frowned at her.
“Miss Singleton, our theories are sound. We just have to hope that Negron has nothing that counters our serum.”
“What are the odds of that?”
“Fifty-fifty. Either they do, or they don’t,” Carver answered morosely.
Jennifer stood and brushed her hair out of her face.

“Well, I thank you for the biology class and more importantly, for the reality check. But I do have one other question.”
“Fire away,” Serena said.
“How sure are you that Negron doesn’t know about this place? And how capable are we at defending it?”
“They had no idea that Cheryl was on to them and we organized this by courier. Second, we have security forces gleaned from the Mexican militia. We have installed motion detectors and several land mines we purchased on the so-called ‘black market’.”
“How long before you get your antidote into the first water system?”
“We hope within seventy-two hours,” Carter said. “The second part, the application of Blackology is predicated upon the success of the first.”

Alphonse was able to charge his cellphone in the car and that afternoon he decided to take a chance and call his mother. He hoped that she were alive and for that matter, still black. Both he and Noah kept their fingers crossed as he dialed. On the fourth ring someone on the other end picked up. He immediately recognized the voice as his mother’s.

“Hello?”
“Hi, ma.”
“Alphonse?” She sounded elated to hear his voice.
“Yes mom.”
There was a long pause and Al started to hang up the phone. He wasn’t sure if the pause was from shock or if someone else was listening in on their conversation. Finally his mother spoke.

“Al, some men have come by here looking for you.”
“Did they say what they wanted?”
“They say they’re with a chemical company or something.”
“Did they say what they wanted?”
“Only that they needed you at work.”
“Ma, they don’t mean a brotha any good. They—”
“’A brother’? Son, why are you using hoppy-hip talk? You weren’t hanging out with Negroes listening to that god awful rap music were you?”
“Mom what are you talking about?”
“The new niggerless world, baby. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“What’s so great about it?” Al snapped, forgetting that he was raising his voice at the woman who had given birth to him.

“Al, it’s like a world without tooth decay and you can eat all the sweets you want.” She was genuinely elated. “It-It’s like eliminating VD and you can just lay up with anyone you like; like it was in the 60’s!”

Al couldn’t believe that such vitriol was coming from the mouth of his mother: A woman who’d taught him to always treat others fairly and to show compassion toward the disadvantaged, regardless of what color they were.

“Am I speaking with Sally Johnson-Baker?”
“Why yes. Who else would you be calling ‘ma’?” She laughed then he could hear a knock on her door. “Hold on son. I just saw a car pull up and it looks like one of your friends from the chemical company.”
“Ma, wait!”
He could hear her opening the door and her familiar, high-pitched, “Why hel -lo-o-o…”

Then he heard the sound of automatic gunfire, followed by silence. He screamed into the phone.
“Ma!”
Someone came back to the phone, but it wasn’t his mother.
“We got your mama, boy—that is, the white version! And it won’t be long before we get you!”
The phone was left to dangle. Seconds later he heard the sound of screeching tires, then nothing. By instinct he terminated the call and stared blankly, until Noah snapped him from his daze.
“Hey, old dude—you okay? You look like you just seen a ghost.”
“I just spoke with one,” Al mumbled.
“Huh?”
“They killed my mom.”
“You for real?”
“Yeah, and stop calling me ‘old dude.’ My name’s ‘Al’.”
“Sorry to hear about your mother, Al.”

Al set the phone on the floor of the tent and closed his eyes.
“You know, one part of me is happy that my mom doesn’t have to live through this nightmare. As far as I’m concerned, she was always the epitome of black womanhood—strong, proud and beautiful.” Al sighed and continued. “On the other hand, I would love to have held her one last time.”

Noah came over and sat at Al’s side.
“At least you got to hear your mother’s voice,” Noah said. “I was getting yelled at by a crazy white woman who disowned me—yet, she was my mother.”
Al slipped his arm around the shoulders of the boy.
“Noah, we have no one to turn to. It really is you and me against the world.”

Noah looked at him then began to cry. Al also felt like crying, but realized he would have to stay strong. He couldn’t afford to fall the pieces and Noah follow suit. Al patted the kid on the shoulder then duck-walked outside the tent and contemplated their next move. Inside the tent, Noah buried his face in his sleeping bag. By the time Al reentered he found the boy adrift in a fitful slumber.

Out of curiosity he made several more phone calls to establishments in his old neighborhood: Al found that the Afro-american bookstore was now a white-owned establishment dealing in sports memorabilia. Josephus’s pool hall was now a polish dance hall; and B.L.A.M. headquarters—the home of the Black Liberation Action Movement—was still B.L.A.M.—but that was now an acronym for the Brotherhood of Local Amish Men.

That evening Al and Noah noshed on potatoes roasted over an open fire, dehydrated chicken strips and water. They ended the evening listening to the oldies’ station as Al provided amusement by making up inane lyrics to many of the songs. Around ten o’clock Noah again drifted off.

For a reason he could not explain, Al’s mind drifted to Jennifer Singleton. He imagined her in all her feminine glory and that she was his for the taking. He awakened unable to recall when he had fallen asleep and gasping for breath. He rolled over and immediately rationalized his fantasy by reminding himself that it occurred during the pre-REM sleep stage.

He rolled onto his side and lowered the volume on the radio. When he heard a stick crack beneath someone’s foot, he slid the pistol from underneath his sleeping bag. Al eased out of the tent in a crouch and hid in the shadows cast by the trees.

He saw a skinny man creep to the door of the tent and peer inside. Al drew one of his knives from a cardboard scabbard he’d constructed and sneaked up behind the intruder. As he raised his knife he heard someone shout.

“Drop it, or I’ll shoot!”

Al froze and ironically the first words that popped into his head were, The jig is up.

Now that Operation Negron-5 had been implemented, Alexander Wood decided it was time for his ego trip. He hated the thought of being odd man out, but that was his reality. Ibsen had been the controversial one, the “lightning rod” who drew all the media attention; O’Shea had been the taskmaster, implementing a flawless game plan and was now being praised for his organizational expertise. McConkey was the quiet intellectual. Or as Newsweek dubbed him, “the George Harrison of the group.”

But how would history portray Alexander Wood? Probably as a hanger-on and as a so-so scholar and technician riding the coattails of his colleagues. He would be the Gerald Ford of evil technology—a forgotten man, viewed by the few who did remember him as an oaf. There would be no encyclopedia articles under WOOD, ALEXANDER. No science groupies (“test tube babes” as they were called) to hang on his every word and toss in a complimentary roll in the hay. Nothing, zilch, zero, nada.

Wood had served as overseer of the project and was the one who hired the research assistants and laid the groundwork for the African testing. But all that meant was that he was a solid administrator, but not a scientist that commanded respect. It was that fact which fueled his anger, so Professor Wood sought his due by the only means he could: He summoned the CHEMICO Board of Directors to an emergency session. His sole intention was to discredit one of the others and he knew just how to do it.

All four scientists, the eight old-line board members, the five new ones, plus Cain, Peabody and the Secretary of the Interior, Colin Jefferies, were present. When the meeting commenced, Alexander came right to the point.

“Ladies and gentlemen, our method of racial cleansing is the greatest thing to take place in the history of mankind. It is the only sure way to, A: Create world peace and B: Maintain the purity of the white race. However, we have enemies on many fronts; enemies who had access to our information before we had a chance to present and disseminate it properly.” Wood paced the floor with his hands behind his back. “How did this happen, you ask? Well, first ask yourselves how did we manage to lose track of Mr. Baker?”

“Get to the point,” Peabody groused.
“How did the various worldwide organizations—including the U.N., The Red Cross and Amnesty International—get the information that now has the world community questioning our motives and accusing us of genocide?”
“So tell us already,” Peabody interjected.

“All of this happened because of the slip- ups of one man, who couldn’t keep our secret from his wife!” Alexander pointed at Edward O’Shea. “You! Edward Thaddeus O’Shea—jeopardized this entire operation and I don’t think it was an accident! I demand you answer to the satisfaction of this body!”

O’Shea stood and with quivering voice said, “I have dedicated my life to the elimination of Negroids. I was hating people of color before you were born!”
“Talk is cheap, old man! To say you despise those of color is not enough; what have you done about it?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” O’Shea demanded.
“Tell us, professor: Where is your wife?”
“I have no idea.”
“She left you?”
“It’s a woman’s prerogative to be moody.”

“This goes beyond moodiness, bitchiness, vindictiveness. This woman knew what we were up to. She has singlehandedly made it difficult for us to sell our ideals to the world.”
“How the hell could Cheryl do all that?”
“Because you gave her the information,” Wood said coolly. “Let’s put two and two together: The world knows the most finite details of our plan and your wife is missing. Worse, you’re to blame for us losing track of Baker. I wonder if he’s with your wife?”
“Watch your mouth sonny boy!”
The others looked on with wicked delight. Wood stepped toward O’Shea, who remained seated and was obviously ill at ease.

“Do you know what we do to sell-outs, Eddie?”

O’Shea remembered the vow each man had taken: All traitors must be tortured brutally, then killed in the most excruciating way imaginable: Placed on the rack and broken in half, or slow roasted in a large oven—and marinated in the blood of his loved ones for laughs. Or, being dragged by wild horses over a gravel road, or rubbed down with ground meat and fed to a pack of ravenous, angel dusted wolves.

“I remember my commitment to this project and I am guilty of nothing!”
“Your wife is guilty—and she’s guilty because you were careless. Either that or you offered her the information of your own free will.”
“My wife is a nigger loving bitch,” O’Shea said. “She broke into my files, stole some information and left. But you’re quite quick to place blame. Maybe YOU filled in the details for her.”

“The only thing I filled her in with was semen while you worked late,” Wood said, grinning.
“Let’s get back to the subject,” O’Shea fired back. “The facts are, this plan—a plan YOU, Mr. Wood had final say over—was supposedly too well thought out to be derailed by the likes of a mere school teacher. At least that’s what YOU told us.”
“Not if one of the key men in that plan is a doddering, pussy-whipped old man married to that school teacher!”
“Quiet!” Cain shouted; and when Conrad Cain spoke, all within earshot were wise to heed his words. He glared at O’Shea.

“You have forty-eight hours to find your bitch, or we’ll have to assume the worst about you. I’m sure you know what that means.”
O’Shea began to tremble and hyperventilate. He pulled a vial of nitroglycerin pills from his inside jacket pocket and took one, washing it down with bottled water. Cain then stared down Professor Wood.

“Alex, you are a blowhard and a frightened little man who can’t handle the fact you will be left out of future history books. If only your penis was as large as your ego—you would put Harry Rheems out of work.”
Alex swallowed audibly and countered weakly, “This man’s wife has vanished and so has the last black man. That’s not a coincidence.”

“Perhaps O’Shea was telling the truth. It isn’t easy for a man to announce that his wife no longer wants him. His colleagues will assume its because he has become impotent, or always was. In the latter case, it means that he has probably gone broke, too.” Cain stepped to the front of the room. “I took the liberty of checking your finances, Edward. You are broke.”
O’Shea’s eyes widened with shock.

“Don’t feign ignorance, old boy—it’s so unbecoming.” Cain stroked his chin and seemed almost embarrassed to speak. “I also checked with your doctor. You picked up a prescription for Viagra two weeks ago.”
“I have a woman on the side,” O’Shea said defiantly.

Everyone in the room burst into laughter. When the mirth subsided, Cain resumed speaking.
“Surely you are a descendant of Hans Christian Anderson.” Again there was uproarious gaiety. “If you are telling the truth, Edward, find your wife and kill her.”
“Or better yet, bring her before the board and let us kill her,” Wood said, wiping saliva from his lips with his coat sleeve.
“I’ll find her,” O’Shea said. “And I will kill her, then bring her skull before the board.”

One of the new board members, a man of about twenty-five yelled out, “I’m all for getting some head before coming to work, but this is ridiculous!”

Again the room was filled with hearty laughter. Professor O’Shea shrank in his seat.

That evening Edward O’Shea went home and analyzed his computer files. He then found out how extensive his wife’s snooping was. First, she had raided all of his files, copied them and forwarded them to a dummy e-mail site in France. Then she had made contact with the enemies of Operation Negron-5 and created an organization of talented scientists hell-bent and capable of thwarting their plans.
Out of desperation he reached her cellphone and received the following message:

“This is Cheryl. I am no longer willing to come to the phone. And if this is my shitbag husband, I hope you and your twisted cohorts rot in hell. Good riddance sonofabitch.”

He walked to his livingroom, his expression quite placid and fixed himself a martini. He dialed up Wood, who was not in, so he left a message:

“I found my wife. She is on a higher plain than either of us—morally and intellectually. So long, asshole.”

O’Shea killed off his martini and then went into his bedroom. He undressed, showered and then slipped into his favorite suit—a navy blue number with a light blue shirt and two-toned blue, speckled tie. Next, the elderly man drew a .38 caliber pistol from his dresser drawer, lie on his bed and silently asked God to have mercy on his soul and forgive him for his sins, including the one he was about to commit.

Edward O’Shea took a deep breath, shoved the pistol as deep into his throat as possible and pulled the trigger. He had simply done what his cohorts wanted to do to him, only with much less pain and fanfare.

Al Baker stood frozen with his hand above his head. For a split second he thought about trying to run the nine-inch blade through the intruder’s back, but unlike Superman, he was not faster than a speeding bullet. And by some chance if he succeeded, the second man would have no doubt killed both he and Noah.
Al dropped the knife and asked, “Who are you?”

“We’re your only hope—literally,” Howard Brillstein said, stepping into the light. “Damn, you’re a hard man to find.”
“Guess I kinda wanted it that way,” Al said. His hands were still in the air.
Noah called to him: “Al, you out there?”
“Yeah. Kid.”
The man kneeling in front of the tent was Mark and he spoke.

“Lower your hands, Mr. Baker, we’re friends, not foes.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“My name is Mark Graham and I’m with my friends Howard Brillstein and Louis Jamison.”
Louis stepped out of the shadows as Mark continued.
“We are representatives from a group called HOPE—Honkies Out to Preserve Equality.”
“What do you want with me?”
“This is a long story,” Mark said. “You’re just going to have to trust us and come along. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Bullshit. I’m not going any—” He heard Brillstein gun click.
“Sorry, Mr. Baker,” Brillstein began. “But use your head. If we were out to do you harm, we could have killed you and walked out of here whistling. We’re white, remember?”

Al called Noah and instructed him to come out of the tent. The three white men were surprised to see a black child with Al.
“Where did you find this child?” Brillstein asked.
“In Arizona.” Al then addressed the child. “Noah, we’re going with these men. They say they’re here to help us.”
“Do you trust them?” Noah asked. “Because if you don’t, I’m cool with dying right here.”

His courageous statement touched the heart of every man present.
“I trust them,” Al said quietly.
“And I trust you,” Noah replied.
“Hate to break up this Kodak moment, but we need to get on the road,” Louis said.

Noah walked over to Al, who put his arm around the boy. Then the five of them marched over and climbed into the brown vain waiting on the side of the road. Three and half-hours later they crossed the state line and entered Nevada. By that time, Howard had filled Al in on what NEGRON had done, then he responded to each of Al and Noah’s queries.

“It’s four-seventeen a.m.,” Louis said. “We’re going to pull over and set up camp.”
“There’s four adults here—why not drive through?”
“Because the state troopers and police cars are on the look out for suspicious vehicles. If we travel at night we minimize our chances of being stopped.”
“And if we are?”
“We have automatic weaponry and other advanced military devices.”

They turned off the highway onto a gravel road that led to a small butte. Unbeknownst to them, a Nevada State Police car had been following them for more than thirty miles. When they turned off, the car slowed and dimmed its lights and pulled to the side of the entry road. The man driving the car was not a Nevada Trooper, but a mercenary hired by NEGRON and who had slain the car’s original driver some one hundred miles back.

The man radioed for backup and Fifteen minutes later two pickup trucks pulled up. Armed men in black body suits scampered from the cargo areas and marched on foot across the sand in the direction of the buttes.

COMING NEXT: THE CONCLUSION, Jan. 3, 2006

Run Boy! The Last Black Man In America--Ch. I & II

2005-12-03T20:49:00.000-08:00

O N E

Alphonse "Al" Baker was in the twenty-eighth and best year of his life. He was a black man who had achieved the American Dream: Home ownership, a quiet life and a job where he was loved and respected. He lived in a three-bedroom Tudor style dwelling in the suburb of Sweetburg. Alphonse had recently won a promotion that would not only enhance his lifestyle, but would give him a $30,000 a year boost in salary. This would push his income into the mid-hundreds, which would make it so he could pay off his home before the end of his projected ten-year plan. All of this after just eight years of employment at CHEMICO Pharmaceuticals, where earlier in the day he had been named the new Third District Supervisor.

His co-workers, black and white, were happy for him and elated to work for such a fair-minded man as he. Female employees adored him and flirted shamelessly; men envied his being single and uncommitted. He wasn’t ready to settle down, wanting to first see the world. With the bonus that came with the promotion, he’d be able to spend his vacation touring Europe.

Alphonse drove toward home with a sunny disposition and with a bottle of champagne as his co-pilot. He wheeled his Volvo into Golden Heights as the CD player kicked out the strains of Steely Dan’s Hey Nineteen. The neighborhood had a 1950’s atmosphere. Most of the homes were on tree-lined streets and had white picket fences out front and neatly manicured lawns. Shutters graced the windows, but other than that, no two houses looked the same. The Beaver and Wally could just as well have been his neighbors. He made a right on the main thoroughfare—Birch Street—blew his horn and waved to several neighborhood kids engaged in a game of touch football. They returned his wave as he drove past, careful to obey the posted speed limit of 15 miles per hour.

Mr. Baker lived a life free of drama. He didn’t smoke, exercised regularly and on most weeknights was in bed by ten. He drank, but did not abuse alcohol. And Alphonse was a ladies’ man—with natural wavy hair, a Gablesque moustache, chestnut eyes and a strong jawline. His idea of a good time was going to a club, coming home with a new friend and entertaining her. But as for having a steady, he nixed the idea. He was a firm believer in maintaining his singularity, calling relationships "troublesome and restrictive." A wife or even a live-in girlfriend would only complicate his serene little world.

He rolled into his driveway, which led to a white house trimmed in cherry red, with matching shutters. He stepped from his car, grabbed his champagne and strolled up the flower-lined walk. As was his custom, he took a peek at the lavender trimmed house next door. There he caught a glimpse of Miss Singleton, peering at him from her kitchen window. She was scowling.

He felt a sense of pity for the young woman, whom as far as he knew never dated and seemed to have an eternally downbeat disposition. Before opening his door he stood on his porch and waited for her to step onto hers. When she stepped from her door, their eyes met and Al called out, "And what complaint doth thou greet me with today?"

"You know, if there’s one thing I can’t stand is a wise-ass," she shot back.
Jennifer Singleton was around Albert’s age and had a coke bottle figure. Despite her cover girl looks, she too, was unattached. She had black, doe-like eyes, ever-puckered lips, skin the color of brown sugar and her hair was expensively coifed. But she had an icy demeanor that was male repellant and Al believed if the encyclopedic definition of the word "bitch" ever needed a picture to accompany it, hers would be appropriate.

"What’s on your mind Miss lady?"
"Your sprinklers."
"What about them?"
"They keep wetting my car and it leaves ugly spots."
Alphonse shrugged and replied, "Well, now your car matches your hands."
"Ha-ha wise guy. I’m serious. I’ve been thinking of calling my brother Tank and having him get you right."
"Ah, yes—Tank Singleton, the starting middle linebacker for the New York Giants." Al chuckled. "It’s October, Miss Singleton. His season won’t be over until the end of December. By that time, I’ll have saved enough for a pistol."

Miss Singleton put her hand on her hip.

"You’re just full of clever retorts today, aren’t you?"
"Madam, why don’t you do what everyone else on the block does, and park your car in the garage?"
"Because you could turn down your sprinklers."
"Then my junipers would die. We don’t want that, do we? They sit on the property line, meaning both of our yards would look like they’re suffering from neglect." Al unlocked his door. "Good day, neighbor."
"Good evening, asshole."

She went inside and slammed her door. Meanwhile Al entered his house, hung his keys on a hook in the foyer and quickly dumped the champagne into an ice bucket. Then he stepped to the livingroom. The room was narrow and painted an eggshell white. A fireplace graced the room with gray and black paneling blending with the gray stone façade of the hearth. Two highback leather chairs flanked a coffee table. The other three walls were lined with books—the classics, several law books and tomes on chemicals and related subjects—like statistics and methodology.

A hand-carved grandfather clock stood in one corner of the room and gracing the walls were several paintings Al had done himself. Noticeably missing was a television. Al plopped into one of the chairs and dialed the phone number of co-worker, Jimmy Usher, who picked up on the third ring.

"Hello, Al. I take it you want to celebrate your good fortune?"
"Of course, and who better to celebrate with than my best friend?"
"I’ll supply the drink."
"One step ahead of ya. I already have the champagne."
"Then all we have to do is hit Jefferson Street Bar and Grill. It’s usually packed with scantily clad college age girls."
"You’ve read my mind," Al answered.
"We’ll dance…"
"And with girls this time."
Jimmy laughed and said, "And at night’s end we’ll bring them back to your spot."
"Right on."
"I’ll be ready eight."
"Cool. I’ll be there at eight-oh-five."

Al hung up, went to his bedroom and stripped down to nothing. His bedroom was a reflection of him—old fashioned and elegant. There was a king-size, four poster bed with oaken head and footboards. The armoire and nightstands complimented the cherry dressers. Atop the nightstands were small crystal lamps. This room was also without a television, but an old fashioned, conical radio was perched atop a shelf in one corner of the room.

Al stepped into a roomy, glass shower. He loved the caress of the steam so much that he usually showered for no less than half an hour. When he finished, he slipped into a silk robe and went into the kitchen. The quickie meal he fixed consisted of an avocado, tomato and Swiss sandwich with grapefruit juice. Afterward he dressed for his night out on the town, opting for a beige, tweed suit, brown tie and brown shoes.

For the next hour he sat in his den, the only room in the house with a television—an old Curtis-Mathes floor model. A program about robotics on the Discovery Channel enraptured him, before he called his mother and told her the good news.

"So with your promotion you’ll get more time off?"
"I doubt it, Ma. But I promise you, I will come and see you soon."
"I hope so."
"I’ll talk to you soon, mama."

He cut their conversation short because as always, the expectancy in her voice changed his mood from joyful to melancholy. He was saddened by the fact that he could only get back to Ohio once a year. His mother didn’t want him to move back home, for she knew he was happy. She only wished to be able to hold him and smother his face in kisses more than once a year. By the same token she had grown accustomed to the slower pace of the Mid-east, and try as he might, he could never persuade her to come to Nevada.

Thirty minutes and two horn toots later, Al and Jimmy were rolling toward the Civic Center, where the Jefferson Street Bar and Grill was located. The bar was what drew the customers, as Chinese people, who had put their own twist on Cajun cuisine, manned the grill. (This was not a match made in Heaven).During the drive they listened to Fourplay and El DeBarge’s collaborative effort on After the Dance. Al bobbed his head to Bob James’ piano solo and was slightly perturbed when Jimmy chose that time to interrupt his thoughts.

Jimmy was a round-faced, clean-shaven man with shortly cropped hair and an infectious smile. He was of stocky build and looked like he was fresh out of high school, but was in fact twenty-nine.

‘Your new job’s gonna require a lot of travel."
"Yeah."
"And you don’t mind?"
"I’ll be out of the plant for weeks at a time."
"So who are you going to recommend to fill your old position?"
"Come on, Jimmy, you’re the most intelligent person in that department and you have the most seniority."
Jimmy grinned. "Just confirming my suspicions."

They rode along and several minutes later were pulling into the Jefferson Street parking lot. When they got out of the car, they were greeted with shout outs from many of the bystanders, some of who felt self-conscious by the duos immaculate appearance. The others had to wait in line to enter, but Al and Jimmy were waved to the front of the line and ushered inside.

The club was lit by a bank of multi-colored light reflecting off a series of mirrored balls. The crowd was an eclectic mix, but most were of college age. The professional crowd was also well represented, including dentists, doctors, firefighters and off-duty police officers. As with any club, there was a small contingent of middle-aged men with thinning hair pulled back in ponytails. This group made it apparent they were willing to spend big money on drinks and whatnot for a little late night companionship.

Jimmy grabbed two seats at the bar and immediately ordered two double scotches on the rocks. He and Jimmy then scanned the crowd for any ladies they hadn’t become more than familiar with. Two hours and several dances later, they were leaving the club with two of the better-looking patrons. One of the ladies was Ebony, a short, light-skinned sister with an afro almost as tall as she was. Her friend was Brenda, a curvaceous, red haired sister with freckles. When the women went to the bathroom, Jimmy got Alphonse to laugh when he referred to her as, "a fugitive from one of my wet dreams."

On the way to Al’s, they engaged in some lighthearted banter while listening to his favorite radio station, WSOUL FM, "The Funkin’ 107." The station’s late night deejay was "Mixin’ Earl Dixon, who described himself as, "World famous, locally." Earl was partial to 70’s soul music and was spinning "Summer" by the group War. By the time they arrived at Al’s it was just after midnight. Immediately Miss Singleton’s motion detector switched on. For some reason, that always irked Al. He even said so, for what Jimmy claimed was "ten thousandth time."

Miss Singleton cracked her door and gave Alphonse a look of disgust, as the female accompaniment snickered.

"Coming in so late with all that racket," Jennifer Singleton groused.

Al adopted a faux British accent and announced, "To our right is the rare and obnoxious suburban hoot owl, with emphasis placed on the word ‘hoot’."
Al and Jimmy were the only ones who laughed. As the foursome went indoors they heard Miss Singleton’s door slam shut.

"Who put Tabasco in her tampon?" Brenda asked.
"Let’s not worry about her," Al suggested.

He took them into his sunken den, a mahogany-paneled room with an aquarium built into the wall. He flicked on a light and the room took on a soft, yellow hue. The ladies looked around and were impressed by the simple, yet expensive furnishings of the room. There was a leather sofa / loveseat combo, a wide, solid oak coffee table, a glass and brass liqueur trolley, wet bar and a mahogany shelf which contained photographs of his parents and siblings.

Al immediately retrieved the ice bucket from the wet bar, then he placed the bottle of champagne onto the coffee table. He plopped down next to Ebony, who was on the loveseat. Jimmy and Brenda sat side-by-side on the sofa, where she had removed her heels. After engaging in some small talk, Al served the champagne with fresh shrimp that he had kept on hand. Then he flicked on the stereo, which was also built into the wall. Soon the room was filled with the mellifluous sounds of Smokey Robinson’s Warm Thoughts album. With the mood set, both men reduced the space between their respective paramours.

"This is a very nice home," ebony said. "But it does seem a bit cold and impersonal. I think it could use a woman’s touch."
"That’s assuming that I have women visiting on a regular basis," Al remarked nonchalantly.
"C’mon, a good looking man like you, living in this big house all by your lonesome?"
"It’s worked for eight years."
"Relationship-phobic," Brenda chimed in.
"No, I just know what I want."
"Which is?"
"Peace of mind."
"So women interrupt your piece of mind?" Ebony asked.
"Having a live-in companion means having to make adjustments. I don’t like change."
"Is that why you’ve never married?"
"Pretty much. They don’t call it going to the ‘alter’ for nothing," Al wisecracked.

Once the champagne and shrimp were gone, Al broke out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red. By this time Jimmy was making serious progress with Brenda, and the two were nestled together and whispering back and forth. Al and Ebony kept their conversation platonic, but lighthearted. Later that morning, the two couples retired to separate quarters and by the time the sun wakened the city, Al and Ebony had slept together but only in the literal sense.

The offices at CHEMICO were abuzz with the news of Al’s promotion. Everyone on the fourth and fifth floors, where the majority of the executives worked, came by his new office to offer congratulatory backslaps and handshakes. His new secretary, a garrulous blonde named Heidi Middletown entered that afternoon with congratulatory e-mails and telegrams from others in the pharmaceutical industry.

Later that afternoon, Al was invited to address and dine with the entire thirteen-member board of directors, which included some of the country’s most astute businesspersons and academicians. All were impressed by his articulate vision for streamlining the facility’s shipping and receiving department. The plan included a way to save the company money by increasing production and efficiency without the loss of a single job. In the end, it was the first time at a CHEMICO board meeting where anyone had received a standing ovation.

Back at his office on the fifth floor, Al met with the fourteen black middle managers. He listened to their suggestions for fair employee performance reviews and opportunities for advancement. At meetings end the consensus among those individuals was that they had the ear of someone who was trustworthy and would try and carry out his promises.

His day ended with the plant’s CEO, Conrad Cain, paying him a visit. Cain was a white male in his mid-fifties who wore a forced smile and whose glare and handshake were cold. His age-spo0tted hands had earned him the derisive moniker, "The Warthog." Al shivered when Cain’s hand grasped his.

"Congratulations, Mr. Baker. I knew when you first hired in that you were a young man destined to go places."
"Thank you, sir."

There was something about the man’s uneasy smile that made Al nervous.

"You r presentation before the board was impressive."
"I feel grateful that they were so receptive."
"I look forward to hearing more of your ideas." Cain leaned forward. "In fact, over the next several weeks I look forward to us working one-on-one."
Cain turned and left, leaving Al relieved and wondering why he the man’s presence chilled him so.

When Al arrived at home that evening he found Jennifer Singleton staring at him from the foot of her driveway. She was sipping from a small bottle of water and wearing a smirk a Leprechaun would be envious of. She was looking rather enticing in a lavender sundress and her hair swirling around her face. He let the feelings pass as one look in her eyes told him there was something she was itching to get off her chest. So he didn’t bother going inside; instead he joined her in the driveway.

"What’d you do, Jennifer, complain to the police about my sprinklers?"
"Better still, the Water Company. They turned your water off and it will stay off until you go to a hearing."
"What are you talking about? I paid my bill."
"I videotaped you watering your lawn, the sidewalk and my car. It seems that there’s a city ordinance against wasting water. In short, I supplied them with evidence that you violated that ordinance."
"Of all the chickenshit—"
"Ah, ah, ah," Jennifer admonished. "I tried to settle this through some constructive dialogue with you, but all you had to offer were insults and off-color remarks."
Al took a deep breath.
"I’ll just go downtown tomorrow and—"
Jennifer was shaking her head.
"No, you’ll have no service until that hearing—three days from today. And I’m sure the water commissioner will impose a fine, being that she’s a personal friend of mine."

Al said nothing, afraid he might blow up and cause a scene. He turned and went into his house.

Jennifer waved to him and called out, "Have a good evening Mr. Baker. I know I will."

Al emerged minutes later and jumped into his car. Within fifteen minutes he returned home with two cases of bottled water.

Inside Jennifer’s modest home was a livingroom filled with everything wicker—from the sofa and loveseat, to her favorite chair, coffee and end tables and two bookcases in opposite corners of the room. Above her fireplace was a picture of she and her parents, Gerald and Kathleen, now deceased. It was obvious that Jennifer had gleaned her good looks from her mother.

Her co-workers at City Hall often wondered why such a beautiful woman had never married. She simply said she hadn’t met "the right man" yet. In reality, Jennifer was unsure as to what marriage was comprised of. Yes, she could love, honor and screw a man’s brains out—even give him the number of children he wanted, but then what?

In the city’s accounting department, she dealt with numbers all day. But the ones that danced in the back of her mind were unrelated to city business. For when the subject of marriage came up, the numbers read: 52% of marriages end in divorce within seven years…within seven years…seven years…

She didn’t believe she needed a man. The only sure thing about them was that they could tune out a conversation and were obsessed with sports, power tools and T and A. So on this evening, it was no surprise when Jennifer found herself alone on the sofa sipping a pińa colada and watching an adult film called, Phat and Phrantic III. Afterward she relied on BOB—the Battery-Operated Boner™ that ran not on emotion, but three size "D" batteries. Later she was awash in guilt, having imagined that Alphonse Baker was on her porch listening to the whining of the sexual device, well-aware of her secret.

The board of CHEMICO met again on Tuesday, this time to debate the merits of a closely guarded project which they had provided with funding. At the insistence of Conrad Cain, the board had over the previous forty-eight months voted to invest nearly thirty million dollars into a subsidiary run by four CHEMICO "consultants."

These consultants had their own work area in an isolated region of Southwest Utah, in the Wah Wah Mountains. The only person they had to report to on a weekly basis was Cain, or his right-hand man, Joseph Pilate. The consultants were scientists Robert Ibsen, Edward O’Shea, Thomas McConkey and Alexander Wood, who were allegedly working on a new suntanning formula called Negron 5™. This formula would "revolutionize" tanning and had been sold by Cain as a product "Guaranteed to reap CHEMICO tens of billions of dollars."

As a prototype, the substance would be manufactured into pill form. Taking two pills once a day for sixty days would eliminate the need for sunbathing and being exposed to harmful U-V rays. It would do away with tanning lotions and salon visits. The pills provided a boost in melanin production, creating a tan that would last for more than a year. CHEMICO stood to turn the industry on its ear if the product attained FDA approval.

The four scientists gave their bi-monthly progress report to the board and informed the committee that Negron-5 had received approval from the FDA to begin human trials. The thirteen board members were elated, especially Cain and Pilate, who secretly, and foolishly, hoped to garner a Nobel Prize.

There was kudos for the four scientists and promises of bonuses "in six figures" if and when the product was allowed on the market. But none of that mattered to the scientists, for what they presented to the board was a series of complex lies and faked data that resulted in the consummate bullshit story. The real issue was discussed in secret later that evening between the four scientists, Cain and Pilate.
The truth was, the four had spent four years creating a serum that when mixed with water, would destroy the melanin in people of color. Their research showed that such a reduction (or "anti-colorization" as they termed it) not only lightened the skin of its subjects, but it made them subjects more palatable to white culture. It also caused the subject to take on the mannerisms, speech and physical attributes of Caucasians.

When the product had been surreptitiously and illegally tested on two tribes in a remote region of southwest Africa, their Negroid features vanished completely. Their wide noses thinned, their eye color changed, their lips shrank—as did their penises. The kinkiness of the tribesmen’s hair was changed to a "stringy" texture. Moreover it changed to various shades of blond. The native’s dialects were erased, replaced by English accents and worse, they’d lost all manner of rhythm. Drumbeats were replaced by the sound of banjos and flutes.

These changes took place over a period of seventy-two hours and the scenario was set in motion by infiltrating the tribes’ water systems. The saddest fact of all was that none of the tribesmen realized they had ever been black. They were convinced they had always been white. As a joke, the scientists had dubbed their group NEGRON—New Effort to Get Rid Of Niggers.

Robert Ibsen was a shriveled man with very thick glasses, a pointed nose, blond hair and intense blue eyes both named and headed the program. He was a graduate of the most prestigious Scientific University in France. Besides Robert Gallo and Peter Duesberg, he was considered the world’s foremost microbiologist. He had written his Master’s dissertation on methods of mutating the so-called "black gene." Many of his cohorts considered him, "brilliant, but also as a sure candidate to be fitted for a strait jacket."

While in college, he had taken a class titled, History of Religions. Each student had to make a written and oral report on a particular religion. Ibsen had been assigned to do a paper on the Nation of Islam. Ibsen read about the theories of Yakub, a Muslim antagonist and scientist who had created the white race from a weakened black gene. Ibsen became intrigued by the idea and wondered if the idea had any validity. If so, he hoped to discover the method and eradicate the black race en toto. He dedicated his life studies to genetic research for just that reason.

His papers at International conferences were controversial to say the least. Many were laden with scientific jargon in order to give his work a scholarly tenor. In reality, he had an acute hatred of colored people. This hatred could be traced back to his fifteenth year, when his father, a South African police officer, was slain by that country’s black rebels.

He developed the methodology for designing and producing the drug. Now that he’d discovered his "magic bullet", he became spellbound by the idea that he would change the world, whether the world wanted to be changed or not. He believed in his heart that life for all the earth’s inhabitants would be better if all its inhabitants were of one race—the greatest race of them all: The white race.

"I know what we are doing may in some circles be considered morally reprehensible," Ibsen said. "They may even question our sanity, but remember the words of Jonathan Swift: ‘When a true genius appears in the world, you will know him by this sign: The dunces are in confederacy against him’."
He paused for effect, then added, "Once the world sees how well American society functions without colored people, or their culture, European countries will flock to buy the serum. We’ll make trillions."
"However," Dr. Wood added. "It isn’t all about money."
"That is right," Ibsen replied. "It’s about the preservation of white culture and values. Imagine a world without rap, FUBU, Spike Lee films, complicated dance steps or reruns of ‘Sanford and Son’."
"But if what we are doing, for whatever reason fails, we will spend our remaining years behind bars. We will be forever ostracized as madmen and megalomaniacs," O’Shea warned.

He was a brown-haired man with a bulbous nose and a face scarred heavily by acne. He too, was a microbiologist and had a deep-seated hatred of blacks. His anti-black antipathies were based on the misguided notion that blacks and Latinos were hijacking and wasting a disproportionate amount of the world’s resources. In particular, gold and food stamps.

"I think we should take our chances and go ahead and test it at the company party on Friday," a grumpy, scowling McConkey suggested.

McConkey was a red haired man with piercing green eyes, mutton chops and teeth so discolored when he opened his mouth it looked as if he were chewing a mouthful of candy corn. He was the former head of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. After just three months on the job he was dismissed from his post when he referred to a black, female Senator as a "picaninny."

He not only admitted that he said it; he refused to apologize and dared "That nigger-loving President of ours to do something about it." When told he must resign or be fired, he offered his resignation—on C-Span, no less. Subsequently he became an icon in the burgeoning White Power movement.

Both Cain and Pilate were anxious to implement the next phase of Operation NEGRON, but as usual their support came with a disclaimer: "If you are caught, we will disavow any knowledge of your work."

They scientists raised the question of what would happen when the board demanded an accounting of the thirty million dollars spent. Ibsen replied, "When they see the altered and improved state of our nation, that money will be the furthest thing from their minds."

Then there was the question of what the world response would be. More than likely, the United Nations would charge them with genocide.

"That technically isn’t genocide, since the subjects would still be living. They would only become part of a more human-friendly culture," Cain said smiling.

On Friday Al called off from work so that he could attend his meeting with the Water Commissioner. The city’s Water and Sewage Department was downtown and Al did not want to have to navigate through the early morning bumper-to-bumper traffic. For the first time in three years, Al patronized the public transit system and rode the train to the Civic Center.

During his twenty-three minute ride, he perused a free copy of the Black Muslim newspaper, Final Call. He found most of the articles interesting, even though he did not embrace the Nation of Islam’s general philosophy of the white man being the devil.

Once downtown, Al met with the water commissioner. She was a hard looking woman of about forty who refused to let him get a word in edgewise. In the end, Al was ordered to "modify" his sprinkler system and fined $250. Moreover, his water would not be turned on until later in the day, "Some time between noon and five p.m."

By the time he made it back home, the water was still inoperative. He called Jimmy and expressed dismay at missing the department’s party, then closed their chat with, "I have to drop my car at the shop tomorrow and it won’t be ready until Tuesday. Please don’t forget to pick me up for work Monday."

"I assure you I’ll remember," an already inebriated Jimmy replied. "I remember what happened the last time I forgot to pick you up: That’s all you talked about for two weeks."

Al laughed and hung up, then spent the evening dining on Chinese take out and catching up on his reading. After perusing the local paper, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal he was bored. At five minutes before five o’clock, he checked to see if water service had been restored and found it hadn’t. While waiting for his service to be restored, he drank two glasses of cranberry juice.

At nine-fifteen p.m. the water service was back in order. The workman acted as if being "only four hours late" was doing Al a favor. However, Al passed on drinking anything out of the tap since there were still nine bottles of water left in the refrigerator.

He drank them over the weekend.

T W O

On Monday morning Jimmy never showed up and Al figured to be more than an hour late for work. Exacerbating things was the fact that Jimmy never called and offered a reason why. So before calling a cab, Al phoned his secretary telling her to cover for him and that he would get to the office as soon as possible. She sounded disinterested in his plight but said she would do what she could. Al chalked her brusque demeanor up to it being a Monday morning.

Next on his agenda he called the cab company, then Jimmy, whose line rang five times before the voice mail feature was activated. Al wasn’t the least bit amused when he heard the message, with Jimmy doing his "white voice."

"This is Jimmy Usher at CHEMICO Pharmaceuticals. I’m currently away from my desk, but if you would be kind enough to leave a message, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible."

Al hung up, hoping to be able to ream Jimmy a new ass on a more personal level. He would however, do so behind closed doors. To get his mind off his impending blow-up, and knowing the cab would be at least forty-five minutes, Al watched one of the early morning talk shows. The news stories were boring and repetitive and the guests weren’t much better.

There was the hard luck interview with a black entrepreneur who started a magazine for and about black farmers. He called his magazine "Black Hoe". However, his intentions were misinterpreted and most people thought it was a pornographic venture. In no time he went bust and black activists burned down the home office of the publication.

Another segment featured a deaf (he made sure to emphasize not "def") rapper who only performed live and signed gangsta rap lyrics. After twenty minutes of such nonsensical fare, he dialed Jimmy’s office a second time. This time, Jimmy picked up.

"Jimmy, this is Al. Did you forget something this morning?"
"This is who?"
"Your best friend. The guy you were supposed to pick up for work this morning."
"Al who?"
"Come on, Jimmy, stop fooling around. And why are you doing your ‘white voice’? This is no time for your comedy schtick."
"Fuckin’ ay, dude—I don’t know who you are. Must have a wrong number."

Jimmy hung up the phone and an agitated Al hit redial. Not only had his friend made him late for work, but he was also making light of it. Al thought that maybe Jimmy was jealous of his promotion and was trying to make him look bad. Then again, maybe things had soured between him and Brenda. Either way, Al wanted to find out why his friend was tripping.

Jimmy picked up the phone on the first ring.

"Yeeeeel-lo?"
"What’s the deal, Jimmy?"
"Hey man, what do you want?"
"Don’t play dumb, Jimmy. This is Al Baker, newly named District Three Supervisor. Remember him—the man who could put your balls in the wringer?"
"Yeah, now I know who you are. I guess you gotta be black to get a promotion around here, huh?"

Al couldn’t believe his ears. If he didn’t know better, he would swear he was speaking with a very irritated white man.

"Are you high on something?" Al asked, finding it difficult to mask his anger. "I mean, all I wanted to know is why you didn’t pick a brother up this morning."
"Say, bro," Jimmy said, stressing the latter word sarcastically. "Like a New York cabbie, I never pick a brotha up."
"Hey man, I don’t have time for this shit."
"Up yours," Jimmy said hanging up the phone.
"Brenda must have shit on him," Al mumbled. "Every time that cat gets dumped he acts a damn fool."

Al put his cellphone back in his jacket pocket. His thoughts were interrupted by the impatient horn of the cab driver. Albert grabbed his briefcase and ran out to the car. He climbed in the back seat and once he was settled in, he saw the driver giving him a peculiar look.

"I’m going to one five five five Broadway."
"You won’t be going anywhere unless I get twenty dollars up front," the cabbie said.
"What?"
"Twenty up front, or no dice."

Al sighed, reached into his back pocket, retracted his wallet and handed the man a twenty-dollar bill. The ride downtown was a slow, boring one with Al’s thoughts fragmented by the heavy metal music blaring from the cabby’s boombox. Forty minutes later the car swung to a jarring stop in front of the CHEMICO building. As Al paid the man the balance (sans tip), he caught the tail end of the radio disc jockey’s spiel:

"This is Mixin’ Earl Dixon, at the W-S-O-U-L, the rockin’ out one-oh-seven…"

"What the—?"
"Get the hell outta my cab," the white man growled.

Al was barely out of the cab when the man raced away. After gagging on the acrid smell of burning tire tread, he walked through the glass double doors and into the lobby. Immediately all eyes were set upon him. None of the looks were of the casual variety one might give a passerby. They were lingering, baleful stares, as if he were at a state funeral and had just finished taking a shit in the casket of the deceased.

He stepped through the stainless steel door s of the elevator, and the two white women already aboard huddled together and clutched their purses. Al ignored them and when the elevator reached the fifth floor he exit without looking back. He continued to receive strange looks from his co-workers, as if he were some stranger who had come in via a hostile takeover.

He speedwalked past his own office and went straight to Jimmy’s. He entered without knocking.

"Hey!"

The man shouting at Al was of medium build and had blond hair and freckles. His hair was slicked back into a ponytail and his green eyes were cold as snow. Al stepped back and looked at the name on the door then looked at the nameplate on the desk. They were one and the same: JIMMY C. USHER, ASSISTANT SUPERVISOR.

"Where’s Jimmy?" Al asked.
"Jimmy who?"
"Jimmy Usher."
"You’re speaking with him."
"Jimmy Usher’s black."
"Like hell he is. There are no colored people in his family tree."
Al shook his head.
"Look, I have no time for bullshit this morning. Now did Mr. Usher relocate, was he fired, or what?"
"Listen, I don’t know who you are or what you want, but I have work to do. Good day."
"I don’t know what kinda sick joke this is, but I’ll be back," Al said angrily.
"You have sixty seconds to get the hell outta here, asshole, or I’m calling security."

Al spun on his heels and headed to the copy department, where he knew two black women—Helen Lucas and Marilyn Paige. He figured they might be able to provide information on what happened to Jimmy. When he arrived at the copy center, Al asked the receptionist to summon the ladies, which she did via intercom. A couple of minutes later two stern-faced white women approached.
One was a redhead wearing a gray business suit. She had an owlish face and a tight-lipped expression. The woman with her had a chubby face and a steely, gray-eyed glare. Her hair was chestnut, streaked with gray; and she wore a garish color of red-orange lipstick.

"You just called us out of a meeting, Mr.—?"
"Wait a minute, who are you ladies?"
The red head looked at the receptionist.
"Is this the man who summoned us?"
The receptionist nodded hurriedly.
"Yes, Miss Lucas."
Miss Lucas turned to Al.
"May I ask what’s the nature of the business you have to discuss with Mrs. Paige and myself?"
"I’m looking for Helen Lucas and Marilyn Paige," Al said exasperated.
The red head replied, "For your information, I am Helen Lucas."
"And I’m Marilyn Paige," the chubby faced woman said.
"This is bullshit. Some sort of elaborate hoax or something."
"Are you the copier salesman?" Mrs. Paige asked. "If so, you’re more than three hours early for our meeting."
"I’m not the damn copier salesman!" Al snapped. "I’m Alphonse Baker."
"Ohhh, the black fellow who was recently promoted," Miss Lucas’s features softened as she extended her hand. "I think it’s wonderful when your people get the opportunity to expand their horizons."

Al looked at her hand as if it were a cobra ready to strike.

"Bitch, are you insane?"

The words had slipped past Al’s lips before he knew it. Helen put her hands on her hips and the stone-faced expression she wore earlier returned.

"I beg your pardon! That sort of language isn’t very professional!"
Al left and Helen immediately turned to the secretary.
"Get security up here, pronto."

Al strode back down the hallway toward his office. On the way he saw that the office door of Gerald Matthews was ajar. Matthews was a slightly older black man whom he often played basketball with. When he entered he was surprised to see a gray-haired, but youthful looking white man seated at Matthews’s desk.

"Gerald?"
The man turned and looked up at Al.
"Yes, what is it Al?"
"I’m looking for Gerald Matthews."
"You’re speaking with him." The look on Al’s face was one of pure puzzlement. "What can I do for you, Mr. Baker?"
Al backed up and waved the man off.
"Never mind."

He was now sweating and feeling lightheaded as he strolled to his supervisor’s office. He hadn’t bothered to knock and inadvertently interrupted a private meeting.

"What’s the meaning of this Baker?" Asked one of the men, a craggy faced white man who was nearing seventy and who wore very thick glasses. Both men gave him stern looks.

"I need the day off," Al mumbled.
"You took Friday off," the man said. "You just got a promotion and already you’re taking time off. Do you need a vacation? Is the job too much for you?"
"No, sir. This has been a very unusual and stressful day."
"Get used to it. You’re an executive now. If you can’t handle the stress of the first day, I’d hate to see you six months from now."

The two men laughed. They cut their mirth short when they saw Al’s hound dog expression.

"Take the day off, dammit," the man said. "But by tomorrow you better get it together, boy."
"Y-yes sir."

Al left the office confused, shame-faced and praying that the events of the morning were nothing more than a bad dream. But when he left the CHEMICO building and the cold wind stung his face, Al knew everything he experienced was all too real. Now for the first time in many years he was genuinely frightened.

On the way home Al decided to stop by one of his favorite eateries, a barbecue joint called Kelvin’s. Though the owner wouldn’t have fired up the ovens yet, the establishment did serve alcoholic beverages and light fare breakfasts. He figured he could at least settle his stomach if not his nerves.

When he entered there were six other patrons, but most unusual, none were black. Even the chef—usually Kelvin, or his twin brother Melvin—was white. The cooks stationed over the hot stove on this morning were identical twins, but they had long brown hair, cleft chins, thin noses and they served up the most hateful looks he’d seen since—well, since twenty minutes earlier.

"What do you want?"
"Uh…I’m looking for one of the Jackson twins."
"There are no frickin’ Jackson twins here. We’re the Petrocelli brothers—we own this joint."
"Since when?"
"Read the sign on the window and what the hell do you want with us?"

Their thick Brooklynese accents threw Al off, especially since New York City was three thousand miles away.

"Yeah," the other one said. "You the frickin’ health inspector or somebody?"
"I-I was just gonna come in for a drink."
"Not here you ain’t. They got a bar down the street that’ll sell you a drink. This place don’t cater to no moolies."

Al walked out as the other patrons grinned at him. He looked at the sign on the window a second time:

KELVIN’S BARBECUE
Drinks Breakfast Lunch
Since 1985
Kelvin and Melvin Petrocelli, Owners

"Something isn’t right," Al mumbled as he made his way to the subway, dazed and on the brink of debating his own sanity.

As he took the stairs into the underground facility he looked around. There was nary a black face. Everyone—from the token seller, security guard, train operator, newspaper kiosk owner, shoeshine boy and passengers—were white. He stood on the platform and looked at his Rolex (the only "dark face" he’d seen all morning), and saw that he would have but a three-minute wait for the next train.

When the silver rail car arrived Al was the last to board. He slid into a seat near the door. The car was filled with a myriad of faces; some offered a friendly smile, others stared at him hatefully and still others gazed past him, indifferent to his presence.

He gazed out the window for a few minutes then scoured neighboring seats for a stray newspaper or magazine. On the floor of the car he found a crumpled section of The Final Call. One of the passengers, a husky white man in a plaid shirt and jeans, looked at him disdainfully.

"You read that crap?" The man asked.
"What’s it to you?"
The white man sneered and muttered, "You people are something else."

Cheryl O’Shea was what her friends called "a bleeding heart liberal." She believed in the innate goodness of all men and saw America as "a quilt, made up of different nationalities, customs and cultures."

She and her husband Edward—who was twelve years her senior—had been married fifteen years. They exchanged vows just one month after she graduated from tiny Oberlin College with a Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education.
Though he was older, that had never been a problem in any aspect of their relationship. Even their political bearings differed as she was a "Kennedy Democrat" and he a "Reagan Republican." Somehow they made it work and in the eyes of their friends and colleagues their union was the epitome of opposites attracting.

One rainy night Cheryl would discover just how much their viewpoints differed. It wasn’t anything like the lighthearted Dems V. GOP debates they discussed over dinner. She found that her husband’s grasp reached beyond Washington and was designed to impact upon every human on the planet. It was then that Cheryl realized she had wed a monster.

Now she was racing down the interstate and a confused Jennifer Singleton was along for the ride. Jennifer’s morning began with Cheryl disrupting her sleep, pounding on her door just before six a.m. Cheryl told her there was something urgent she needed help with; so urgent she insisted that Jennifer get dressed within five minutes.

Once outside of town, Cheryl drove to a wrecking yard, parking just outside the gate. She still hadn’t explained her actions and Jennifer was beginning to panic.
"I’m sorry," Cheryl said. "But I’m scared, because I stumbled across a secret that threatens mankind."

The look on Jennifer’s face was one of controlled fear.

"You’re not a person who’s big on hyperbole," Jennifer said, biting her lower lip.
"I’ll cut to the chase," Cheryl said. "The life of both you and your neighbor are in grave danger. The key word in that sentence was ‘grave’."
"Cheryl, you sound like the cheese has slid off your big Mac."

Cheryl took a deep breath.

"Remember almost a year ago I told you to stop drinking the city water?"
"You told me to drink nothing but bottled water. You said there was something wrong with the city’s water treatment system."
"I lied. But not about avoiding the city’s water. Just about the extent and nature of the problem."
"I’m confused," Jennifer admitted.
"Just over a year ago CHEMICO had won the right to try an experimental fluoridation process on the city’s water supply."
"Yes and it’s strange that my friend Shirley Davis, head of the Water Department knew nothing of it."
"There never was a plan for such a program. It was a ruse. If I came right out and told you what was up, you’d think I was insane."
"So why the early morning run?"
"I want to tell you the truth, but I have to do this my way."
"I’ll be honest," Jennifer began. "You’re starting to frighten me."
"Jennifer, you may be the only person alive that truly knows me. You know I wouldn’t lie about something like this."
"Like what?"
"The city’s water was poisoned yesterday."
"By who?"
"My husband and three of his cohorts at CHEMICO."
"Poisoned? Why?"
"Because this poison is only harmful to certain members of our society." Cheryl O’Shea took a deep breath. "Remember the day we went to the office of the Association of African-American Artists?"
"Yes, but what’s that got to do with this?"
"There were thirty or so people working in that building. You knew three of them."
"Donna Franklin, Noreen Mays and Sylvia Okafur."
"I want you to drop in on them this morning and see if you notice anything different about them. While inside the building, tell me if you see anything unusual."
"Okay—and if I do?"
"Then I will tell you the second half of the story."
"I hope this is worth me missing a day’s pay."
"Once you know what I know, your paycheck will be the furthest thing from your mind."

Al made it home just before eleven and the first thing he did was fix a double bourbon, straight. He guzzled it, fixed another, then sat on the loveseat in the den and reflected on the events of that morning. By the time he began swigging his third tumbler of bourbon, the conclusion he reached was that several blacks had been fired and his white co-workers were now pulling some sort of practical joke on him.

Though his theory made little sense, the other one he came up with was outright ridiculous: That the entire lot of black employees had been given some sort of chemical that turned them white.

He burst into laughter and swigged half of his drink, then he thought about Jimmy. Something happened at CHEMICO since the company party on Friday, but what? He was still peeved about Jimmy leaving him hanging, but then a smile creased his face. He remembered that Jimmy purchased two tickets to the Phoenix Suns game that coming Wednesday. The game was against the Lakers—meaning a chance to boo Kobe Bryant.

Al made up his mind that he would keep the tickets and ask Ebony if she was interested in going. Turnabout’s fair play, he thought. Would serve him right, for faking on me.

He used his cellphone to call Ebony at work. By the time their conversation ended, he was even more confused. Not only was he cussed out—and the voice hurling the expletives was Ebony’s—but the woman stunned him by declaring Ebony was her "former" name. She now preferred being referred to as "Pinky."
Furthermore, she was "No longer interested in dating black men."

It was then that Al walked to his bedroom, took out his pistol, rifle and more than 500 shells for both and brought them into the den. He grabbed a cardboard box from his garage, loaded it with enough snack foods for three to four days. He also packed four sweatsuits, a pair of comfortable hiking boots and the last five bottles of water he had.

He grabbed two of his longest, sharpest knives and decided he would hit the road. But he couldn’t drive in the state he was in, so he brought his alarm clock from his bedroom into the den, set it for five p.m. and soon drifted off into a deep and much needed sleep.

The previous Saturday Jimmy Usher wakened feeling hung over. He had drank way too much at the company party and couldn’t remember when or how he made it home. Though he backed each drink with a glass of water, he still felt sluggish. He forced himself from under the blankets and staggered into the kitchen for a bottle of Gatorade and two Ibuprofen tablets. He hoped that combination would bring a swift end to the pounding in his skull and aid in recharging his batteries.

Jimmy popped the pills then checked his phone messages. The fourth and final message was the one he found most interesting:

"Jimmy, this is Al. Don’t forget to pick me up on Monday, and we got the Lakers coming in on Wednesday. Hey, give me a buzz later on; maybe you and I can hook up with Ebony and Brenda, take in a movie. That new Wayans Brothers film is playing at the Roxie. Later,"

How’d that coon get my number? And what’s this about the Suns-Lakers game on Wednesday? I’m a Celtics’ fan…and he wants me to call him? Boy, some of those people will do anything to fit in.

He replayed the message. After listening to it the second time, he had even more questions.

Who is ‘Ebony’ and ‘Brenda’? I know Ebony is a black name—what white parent would give their daughter such a moniker? That would be like a colored girl named ‘Pinky’…and the fucking Wayans’ Brothers? The Marx Brothers they ain’t…And he invites me to the Roxie—yeah, right. I wouldn’t set foot in that part of town to save my life…hell., if I did, someone probably WOULD have to save it…

He erased the message then hung up his phone.

I don’t know want that jig calling here. Next thing you know, he’ll think we’re buddies—and so will everyone else. I’ll change my number first thing Monday morning.

Jimmy’s growling stomach was telling him that it was time for some breakfast. He went to the bathroom and washed his face and removed the green crusts from his eyes of the same color. He used his hands to brush back his blond locks, then he brushed his teeth. Afterward he looked in the mirror and thought, Jimmy Usher, you’re no Brad Pitt, but you’re still one handsome devil.

He went back to the kitchen with a taste for a breakfast of sliced kumquats, cottage cheese, toast and a bowl of Special K. But when he perused his cabinets the only cereals he found were Coco Puffs and two of the hot variety: One with a picture of an elderly black man on the front of the box. When he looked in the refrigerator he was aghast to find a pan of hogshead cheese, a pot of greens, a loaf of bread, a package of dry salami, a quart of chocolate milk, some leftover pieces of barbecue, three eggs and a pitcher of red Kool-Aid.

Jimmy dumped it all out—along with a poster of Bob Marley that he was shocked to find hanging on his livingroom wall. He couldn’t remember how the picture got there, but he assumed he must have hang it while inebriated. Upon further examination of his livingroom, he found a dog eared copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and an issue of Black Tail. He ripped both along the spine then threw them in the fireplace.

After that he went grocery shopping, making sure to purchase a package of ostrich meat, a loaf of pumpernickel, some bok choy and a gallon of white milk.

A tearful Jennifer sat on the bench in the park in stunned silence. She had been crying for nearly half an hour. When she managed to stifle her tears, she looked at Cheryl and shook her head, puzzled as to what had taken place and how.

"Not a single black face."
"I didn’t know how else to tell you, Jennifer."
"The people…I mean, it’s as if they were turned white…or was I dreaming?"
Cheryl took her hand and spoke in a soothing tone.
"This is no dream, Jennifer. This is a nightmare, a really twisted nightmare designed by my husband and three of his evil cohorts."
"What do they plan to do?"
"They want to unleash this formula on the world and turn everyone on earth white."
"But that’s crazy!"
"Not to them. Their theory is that then there will be a true sense of universal love, a greater chance for world peace and great achievements for all of mankind."
"So how did you find out about this?"
"It was luck—and it happened nearly a year ago."
"So why didn’t you go to the feds?"
"I couldn’t be sure who was in on it. You can’t pull of something like this without government officials knowing something."
"I guess you’re right."
"And even if I went to someone who wasn’t involved, how long do you think it would have been before they held me under psychiatric observation? Then how long before my husband had me killed?"
"Okay, so back to the original subject: How’d you find out about this?"
Cheryl sighed wearily.
"One night Edward came home drunk. I knew he was either drunk or had gone insane, because he came in humming, ‘Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.’ He showered then got on the phone with a colleague named Robert Ibsen. I accidentally picked up the extension and unbeknownst to them, caught the crux of their conversation."
"Were you shocked?"
"Shocked isn’t the word. But a few days later, Edward left town to attend a conference in New Mexico. I began sifting through his notes. Most of it was written in a scientific vernacular, but I understood enough of it."
"You should have told someone."
"Who?"

Jennifer closed her eyes and lay her head back.

"I guess you did the best you could, under the circumstances."
"Jennifer, when I found out what he was up to I wasn’t sure what to do. So over the next few weeks I continued gathering information. I even bought one of those four dollar telephone pick-ups and recorded several of his conversations."
"What’d you find out?"
"The names of scientists who opposed their rhetoric and research. Those men and women, five in number, were targeted for assassination. Then it dawned on me to contact them and tell them what I knew."
"What did they say?"
"They decided it was best for us to work together. However, we underestimated my husband’s ambition. While we believed he and his cronies were about five years away from human trials, they greased a few palms at the FDA. Within six weeks they had approval to test what they said was a new suntanning formula."
"For the record, Cheryl, who is ‘they’?"
"A group called NEGRON. It’s an acronym for New Effort to Get Rid Of…"

She looked at her friend uneasily. Jennifer finished the sentence for her.

"Niggers."
"Yeah."
"So how far along are they?"
"The first U.S. test was administered Friday at the CHEMICO staff party."
"My neighbor works there!"
"We know. Alphonse Baker, twenty-nine, single. Recently named Division Three Supervisor."
"Is he in on it?"
"No."
"But how could he work there and not have undergone the transformation, unless he was a sell-out?"
"He had a meeting at the water company that morning."
"Oh." Jennifer grinned nervously.
"Mr. Baker’s completely unaware as to what has taken place. Sadly, workers at CHEMICO know that he escaped the test. They also know his water was turned off and that he hasn’t been affected."
"And they’re going to come after him?"
"Exactly. But my group, HOPE—Honkies Open to Preserving Equality—has his house and car monitored. We’ve kept track of his comings and goings, in case we could get him in a position to thwart their activities."
"So what’s their next move?"
"If all went according to plan, you and Mr. Baler are the last black people within a one thousand mile radius. And by next week you’ll be the only existing blacks in America."

COMING Jan. 3, Chapters 3 & 4