“Please, Governor Greene,” Jack Barron said with a put-on jaded grimace. “We’re all on the side of the angels. But you know the equal-time laws as well as I do, and you can’t make political speeches on this show.” Jack paused and smiled a just-for-him for-chrissakes-Luke smile, Greene saw. “I’d ruin this groovy sportjac if I got canceled and had to go out and dig ditches. The question is, is the Foundation now discriminating against Negroes?”
Well, that’s where it’s at, Greene thought. I want to make points on Howards, all I can do is to help make it look like he’s playing the Wallacite game, Jack’s hobbyhorse for the night, and we both know he’s not that loopy. But those hundred million voters Jack mentions every other sentence maybe don’t, maybe can bug enough Congressmen to get them to vote the other way, kill Howards’ bill if we make the right waves. So, Bennie Howards, yo’ is a big, bad nigger-hating shade fo’ the duration, sorry about that, chief.
“Well,” Greene replied, “the record shows that although Negroes are roughly twenty per cent of the population, less than two per cent of the bodies in the Foundation’s Freezers are Negroes…”
“And the Foundation has never explained this discrepancy?” Jack asked, and gave Greene back full half-screen for playing ball.
You know the reason you sly shade mother, Greene thought. How many of us in the good old US of A buzz off worth fifty thou? Foundation don’t discriminate more than everyone else. Why should it be different when a black man dies than when he’s alive—“You a shade, you got forever made, but if you’re black, when you go you don’t come back.” Even though Malcolm planted that one don’t stop it from being gut-truth, shade-buddy Jack. Foundation’s cleaner than GM, unions, bossman vip bastards—only color Howards digs is green-money color—but gotta squash the mother like a bug any way you can…
“Never heard of one,” Greene said, “I mean, what can they say, those are the figures in black and white (he smiled wanly)—sorry about that. Even if there’s no conscious racial bias, the Foundation, set up as it is on the basis of who can pay, must in fact discriminate because everyone knows that the average income of a black man in this country is about half that of the average white. The Foundation, by its very existence, helps perpetuate the inferior position of the Negro—even beyond the grave. In fact it’s getting so’s a gravestone instead of a Freeze’s gonna become a black thing, like nappy hair, before too long.
“I’m not accusing any man of anything. But I do accuse the society—and the Foundation swings an awful lot of weight in the society. And if Howards isn’t exercising the social responsibility that should go with social power… well, then, he’s copping-out. And we both know, Mr Barron (sickly-sweet smile for cop-out Jack), that a cop-out’s just as guilty as the Wallacites and Withers’ that his irresponsible indifference allows to flourish.” Two points on Howards, Greene thought, and two points on you, Jack.
Jack Barron smiled what Greene recognized as his words-in-your-mouth smile. And sure enough, he saw that Jack had now given him three quarters of the screen. Prols see Luke Greene while hearing words of Jack Barron schtick and why don’t you use that sly shade brain of yours for something that counts, you cop-out you.
“Then what you’re saying in essence, Governor Greene,” Jack said, in what Greene recognized as the sum-up-kiss-good-bye-here-comes-the-commercial pounce, “is that the very character of the Foundation for Human Immortality itself creates a de facto policy of racial discrimination, whether this is official Foundation policy or not, right? That whether Mr Johnson was refused a Freeze Contract because he was a Negro, or whether his assets are actually insufficient by Foundation standards, those very financial standards arbitrarily set by Mr Benedict Howards himself are actually a form of built-in racial discrimination? That—”
“One hundred per cent right!” Lukas Greene said loudly. (You may get the last word, but you don’t put it in this black boy’s mouth, Jack!) “So far as you’ve gone (and fence-sitting Jack cuts me down to quarter screen but lets me babble got extra brains where his balls should be). But not only discrimination against Negroes. The existence of a private, high-priced Freezing Company discriminates against black men, white men, the poor, the indigent, six million unemployed and twenty million under-employed Americans. It places a dollar value on immortality, on human life, as if Saint Peter suddenly put up a toll booth in front of those Pearly Gates. What right does anyone have to look into a man’s finances and say, ‘You, sir, may have life eternal. But you, you pauper, when you die, you die forever’? Every American—”
Abruptly, Greene saw that his face and voice were no longer on the air. His TV screen was now filled with a close-up of earnest-lipped, sly-eyed Jack Barron. (Oh, well, thought Greene, at least we made some points.)
“Thank you, Governor Greene,” said Jack Barron. “We sure know what’s bugging you now. And you’ve given us all food for thought. And speaking of food, it’s that time again for a few words from them that pay for my groceries. But hang on, America, ’cause we’ll be right back with the other side in the hotseat—Senator Theodore Hennering, coauthor of the Hennering-Bernstein Freezer Utility Bill, who’s on record as thinking that the Foundation for Human Immortality’s just fine and dandy as it is, and would like to see the Foundation granted a legal monopoly. We’ll try to see where the good Senator’s head is at, after this word from our sponsor.”
Hey, Greene thought excitedly as a Chevy commercial came on, if he knifes Hennering on the bill that could be it! Jack could cut Hopeful Henny to dog meat he wanted to, shift ten votes in the Senate, or thirty in the House and the bill’s dead.
“What in hell you trying to do, Luke?” Jack Barron’s vidphone image said. “Screw me good with the FCC? Howards’s got two commissioners in his hip pocket; we both know that.”
“I’m trying to kill the Freezer Utility Bill, and we both know that too, Percy,” Greene told him. “You the cat decided to knife Bennie, remember? And you can do it, Jack. You can kill the bill right now by slaughtering Teddy Hennering. Nail him to the wall, man, and put in a few extra spikes for me.”
“Nail him to the wall?” Jack Barron shouted. “You’re out of your gourd, Rastus! I want Howards to bleed a little, teach him a lesson, but not in the gut, Kingfish, just a couple of flesh wounds. Howards can murder me if I hit him too hard where he lives. I gotta play pussycat with Hennering, let him make up some points the Foundation’s lost, or I’m in goddamned politics. Better I should get a dose of clap than a dose of that.”
“Don’t you ever remember what you were, Jack?” Greene sighed.
“Every time my gut rumbles, man.”
“Win one, lose one, eh, Jack? Back then you had balls but no power. Now you got power and no—”
“Screw you, Luke,” said Jack Barron. “You got your nice little bag down there in coon country, let me keep mine.”
“Fuck you too, Jack,” Greene said, breaking the vidphone connection. Fuck you, Jack Barron good old Jack Barron, what in hell happened to the good old Berkeley-Jack-and-Sara Montgomery Meridian sign-waving, caring, black shade committed Jack Barron?
Greene sighed, knowing what happened… what happened to all no-more-war nigger-loving peace-loving happy got nothing need nothing love-truth-and-beauty against the night Baby Bolshevik Galahads. Years happened, hunger happened, Lyndon happened, and one day, age-thirty happened, no more kids, time-to-get-ours happened and them that could, went and got.