The Last Days of Louisiana Red by Ishmael Reed Read Free Book Online Page A

Ed wished.”
    â€œThe Board of Directors told me that there would be a phasing out, but I didn’t know when you were going to decide to begin it.”
    â€œThe Workers are taking an inventory of our goods and will be having meetings over the coming weeks on how to inconspicuously place them where they won’t be noticed.”
    â€œWe’ll take care of that back east, Wolf. We will have them go to up-and-coming Businesses. These Businesses will have to go through the same phases as your factory, Solid Gumbo Works. They will need time to gain enough knowledge to do with only token physical assets. We have to be fast. Physical assets weigh us down.”
    â€œGood, then it’s decided. We will begin to dissolve the Solid Gumbo Works the world has come to know and disperse, communicating only through the post office box.”
    â€œI’m glad you made the decision, Wolf. I admire the way it was handled. If you had liquidated after your father was killed that would have been interpreted as a sign of failure, and it would have made all of us look weak in the eyes of the competition, for what is the situation in their other Businesses if this particular west coast franchise buckled under, they would ask. They would have put pressure on us at the T.C. Institute and branches throughout the world. This way, since they know we’re ahead, our disappearance from the public scene will be interpreted as meaning that you’ve found a lucrative market elsewhere. So-called legitimate businesses make these kinds of decisions all the time.”
    â€œThank you for seeing it my way, LaBas. No word of this is to be said to anyone. I’ve only told the Workers. We’ll just continue to operate as we always have, then one day, our mission accomplished, we will have up and gone. I have to go now, Pop. Must send our Going Out of Business cards to our customers. Don’t have to worry about them. They’re discreet and won’t talk.” Wolf went out. LaBas returned to reading the Berkeley Gazette . His eyes scanned the television listings. Inaccurate as usual.

CHAPTER 13
    Chorus is seated in an outdoor café.
    â€œâ€˜The Chorus has gone too far,’ they said. ‘He has upstaged our pretty actors.’
    â€œCheap makeup peels off their faces. They stumble and forget their lines; ‘Please cue me,’ some of they say. To put it in the language of old American slavery days, the Chorus, me, was a fugitive slave who wanted his aesthetic Canada, but the Claimant and Sambo wanted to bring me back to the Master.”
    Imagine that. “The people downstairs” wanted to can his strophes, his delightful twists and turns. “The people downstairs.”
    â€œOne woman led the pack. She had an ’tigone on her. ’Tigone, the beginning of my difficulties, hogging all my good lines. Couldn’t be cool, that wench.
    â€œLike, the elders of Thebes and Creon didn’t give a damn if she went out into the woods to fuck, drink and prance about a huge goat. Creon and the elders were interested in the spirit of the law and not its letter. They weren’t finicky. Each to his own God, as they use to say in the Congo.
    â€œNo, she had to brag about her malady and boost it.
    â€œâ€˜Go marry Hades,’ Creon had said. ‘You are his bride.’
    â€œHe could see Hades grinning behind her like she was ghost-photographed because she, like Core, had tasted of Hades’ fruit and had been touched by this loa. The burial of her brother was just a cover-up. All those speeches, ‘the wisdom of man vs. the wisdom of God.’
    â€œDo you suppose that Zeus really gave a hang whether Polynices was buried? Zeus was too busy chasing tail to be bothered with such trifles. No, this woman wanted to die and she was going about it in a roundabout way—all that blather. This woman was demanding. Sophocles edited out many of my good lines because of this woman