Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 4
Dear Mr. Coleman,
I’m sorry I missed seeing you yesterday, but with Thanksgiving going on and all, I figured the reason you weren’t answering my calls to the hospital was that you were resting quietly. Well, you were. I just found out from Mrs. Coleman that you slipped away in your sleep in the early morning, just when the sun was rising. I’m glad for you, my friend. I was afraid that Mr. Death was going to maul you for a while before he took you away, but it ended pretty fast. It doesn’t seem like a month ago that I popped up again, after three months away from the neighborhood, to find you sitting in your chair by the woods. You were still fine then, though complaining that you needed to drink some milk of magnesia.
Yessir, you and I sat out by the woods together gabbing until it was a starless, dark night, and Dexter had gone to sleep in the pickup truck. Brother Beauxhand came sneaking across the street in back of me to see how close he could get to us before I ranged him with my staff. He didn’t get close, but he didn’t get hit either, because your eyes told me that the someone was a friend, and that was assurance enough for me.
We all commenced jawing about things in general, since I’d been out of circulation so long. Y’all started picking at me, with Beauxhand joking about how it was so dark that the only thing y’all could see was Captain May. I laughed right along with y’all until I had a comeback line, which was that white folks like me were in the world to light the way, and y’all were lucky I was around, so just keep looking at me. Naturally Beauxhand couldn’t let it sit at that, so we all wrassled the topic this way and that before amicably deciding that blacks, whites, browns, yellows and reds were generally all about as bad as each other. We left it at that, and I was glad to get my race that good a conclusion, ‘cause like I’ve told you a hundred times, it’s hard to defend white folks when you know ‘em as well as I do.
Well, we were having a pretty good time of things generally, but then the local poe-lice came driving by and flashed lights on us to shuffle us along, and Beauxhand quoted Malcolm X about the blue man being the worst of all. You joked that things had finally come full circle when y’all looked suspicious for being seen with a white man in our neighborhood, and we laughed as we parted.
My God, Mr. Coleman, how many times have we laughed at all of it? A thousand times, I’ll bet, and probably more, ‘til we both split a gut, tears in our eyes. We’ve laughed ever since March 31, when I told you I was writing up my April Fools essay for the Houston Chronicle to say how we were all going to hell in a hand basket with no brakes on it by starting a war in Iraq. Yep, we’ve laughed at CNN, the Cowardly Chronicle and especially Thomas Freedman. (You said that if I changed the spelling to that he might stop acting like a slave, but so far it hasn’t worked.) We laughed every time Austin Bay-ed at the moon. We laughed when you taught me that, according to your way of talking, my slingshot was a nigger shooter, my staff was a nigger knocker, and only a black man like you could master the art of nigger rigging any piece of junk to make it functional. Sometimes I would come home from talking with you using the N-word myself, but Mrs. May would give me that disapproving look that Creole women get, and I’d cut back until the next time you and me let-off some steam. Sometimes I wouldn’t come home at all from the pleasure of our talks, and she’d come in a car to fetch me. You taught me that black folks called white folks peckerwoods when they wanted to dis ‘em the most, so I started calling the prez a peckerwood for you. You laughed when you heard it coming from me, and approved, saying it helped get you in a frame of mind to talk about his poor strategy.
We weren’t always
laughing, though. When I came to visit
you on the morning of July 17, 2003, there wasn’t a chuckle in you. You were afraid. You told me I’d finally stirred up the
hornets’ nest with my publications, letters and radio talk-show raids, and you
had a look in your eyes, a tremble in your voice and a shaking in your hands
that told me even more. At first I told
you that they could all go to hell because I wouldn’t go into hiding – and you
told me I was going from being Captain Braveheart to
being Captain Bonehead. [Editor’s
emphasis, in all cases] You twitched
every time a car drove within a hundred yards of us. Finally, your jitters gave me the jitters, because I figured that a
man who had lasted four years as a soldier in a world war and four score years
as a black man in a white world knew more than I did about danger. I got up and told you I’d tuck away for a
while, and you said good deal, and then went inside for a while yourself. Dr. Kelly died in
Like I said, I didn’t see you
over the next three months, but we stayed in touch every day on the phone,
comparing notes on the T.V. and the papers, trying to figure out what bad moves
the peckerwood would make next. I told
you that our conversations weren’t secure, and that
Thom Shanker of the Times had been too afraid to talk
with me (except in Russian) after Dr.
I’ve taken to telling
folks that you’re my grandpa, and I think I’ll keep on doing it. It feels natural, because I haven’t had one
in thirty years, and since my mom is adopted, we don’t really know who her
kinfolks are. I’m very glad I stole a Confederate
flag from that state-trooper flagpole in
You were one of four brothers who fought
for
Back last winter on your birthday (January 10), I remember asking to buy those wooden porch stairs you had for sale out in your yard. You said I could have it for free because it was your 80th birthday. You looked fit as a fiddle then, and even helped me load the stairs into the bed of the pickup. But I believe those months of the infowar with me knocked you down from being eighty-years-young to being eighty-years-old.
It was only this last week when you stopped asking for war updates and the nurses started giving you the pain killers you were asking for. They’re angels of mercy, and I’m glad they made the pain go away from you until you were ready to go away from the pain. The last time I saw you, I was sitting on my knees, there by your hospital bed, close enough that we could talk. The comfort was spreading over your face, and you were smiling at me. You spoke softly:
“Captain May, Captain May, you got to stay safe, you hear?”
You were silent for a while, then spoke again:
“Captain May, Captain May, you got stop the war, you hear?”
You urged both things again and again until the reason had left them, and I had had time to ponder that there was no reason in the two things together anyway. It was just your way of benediction, because we both knew that everyone has to choose whether to stay safe or stop war, and you knew which choice I had made on April Fools day. You were drifting, so I took your hand and squeezed it and told you that I’d keep trying to stop the war, and that I’d try to stay safe if I could, and that I would see you again. I kept telling you that as I held your hand, until you went to sleep, smiling.
Sleep well, Mars Joseph. I’ll be seeing you again.
Captain Eric Holmes May,
MI,
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