"Make him love me."
"Who?"
"Remo."
"I cannot account for his ignorance."
Remo looked at Lithia Forrester and then realized the secret of group therapy. Those leading it had to keep a straight face. Then again, maybe it was good. Hadn't Chiun forced Remo in his training to examine his emotions, then use those that were beneficial?
Chiun returned in his little paddling walk to the open pillow near Remo. He sat down as he normally did, with a lightning fast soft motion that looked slow, almost as if a feather were drifting to rest upon the pillow. Only after years of training could Remo duplicate the motion. Remo checked the faces to see who would recognize such body control. Again, his eyes rested on the black man's face. He was watching Chiun intently. Lithia Forrester had noticed nothing.
The group was told to identify itself; to say how each one felt about the newcomers, to guess what they did for a living.
A man in his mid-forties, who said he was not permitted to identify exactly what he did, said he felt rejected by the world and his society. He said he assumed both Remo and Chiun had government jobs because only cleared people could attend Human Awareness Laboratories.
"Remo is a health instructor in some military kind of thing and Chiun must be a translator of some sort for the state department's Japan desk."
Chiun answered. "You think I am Japanese. Therefore you work for the CIA. Correct? And you speak like a white man who has attempted for many years to master Mandarin. Correct? Therefore you work in the Asia section. Correct?"
"Amazing," said the man.
"You have just proven Communism is a failure," Chiun said. "To not succeed against you shmucks is the proof of Communism's failure. I am not Japanese."
"Chinese?" asked the CIA man.
"Shmuck," said Chiun, again using the word he had picked up from a Jewish woman at a Puerto Rican hotel. Chiun loved the word.
The CIA man lowered his head and then told the story of his career, how he had been an expert in grain production, one of the best, really he was. He was really good. He was so good he was promoted to the hot Asia section and put as second in command of operations. He had done so poorly in that job, he was left there.
"Typical," said the black man. "Typical." He did not want to identify himself or tell what he thought or felt.
Dr. Forrester prodded. She prodded while looking at Remo. Finally the large black man told a story that left them all looking down at the carpet, not wanting to lift their heads.
Larry Garrand was born in Middle River, Conn. He wasn't fat then. Larry Garrand was a Boy Scout. Larry Garrand was president of his elementary school class. Larry Garrand was captain of the elementary school football team. Captain of the baseball team. Larry Garrand had the highest grades in his elementary school class. Yeah, some kids started skin popping. A couple of the girls got pregnant at eleven years old. But they were the niggers. Larry Garrand and his family were different. They were the class. Not class because they were light. He never went for that. His family was class because his father was a high school teacher in Booker T. Washington High School. And he was black.
Larry didn't go to Booker T. He went to the white high school, James Madison. Oh sure, he knew there were racists there but that was because they didn't know substantial Negroes. They hadn't met good Negroes. Larry was going to show them. This white high school, James Madison High, was something else. Sure everyone thought Larry would make a great halfback.
"Halfback?" interrupted Remo.
Halfback, continued Larry Garrand. He smiled.
He was thin then and fast. Real fast. But he didn't want to make it running. He wanted to make Iit another way. He wanted to show the white folks that Negroes could cut the mustard in every way. Decent Negroes.
It was a whole new scene at Madison. First of all, his freshman year saw him in the lower third of his class. He had been first in elementary school. He knew what the whites were thinking. His father saw the report card and didn't say a word. What his father was really saying was that they weren't as good as whites, so why try? Larry Garrand tried. He read his lessons twice. He pretended, in front of the whites, that he didn't work hard. But he studied ten hours a day. During mid-term recesses, he would begin reading for the next semester. Larry Garrand invented his own speed reading.
It was the time of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Larry Garrand thought they were both wrong. When the whites saw how really top notch Negroes could be, they would change their minds and not one second sooner. Larry Garrand won a scholarship to Harvard. He graduated magna cum laude despite severe headaches every two weeks. He went to many doctors, but none could cure him.
He had been approached by many white women but refused their offers. He wanted to show that black men—it had changed from Negro by then—weren't just interested in white pussy.
One night, the police made a dragnet pickup in Roxbury, the black section. They picked up Larry Garrand but when he showed who he was, they let him go. After all, he wasn't a nigger. Not all blacks were niggers and whites were beginning to realize that.
When Afros first came out, Larry Garrand secretly died inside. They looked so stupid. So niggerish, if you want to know the truth.
Larry Garrand got a master's and then a doctorate, not in sociology or the other plush easy courses that attracted most blacks. He got it in physics. The headaches got worse. But he had almost made it.
Dr. Lawrence Garrand went to work for the United States government's Atomic Energy Commission and he was Dr. Garrand and the secretaries called him sir, He attended a cocktail party at the White House. In one discovery he was noted in a national news magazine, his opinion sought by U.S. senators. Where he worked it was Dr. Garrand this and Dr. Garrand that and Dr. Garrand will not be able to meet with you this week, Congressman, perhaps next.
When Dr. Garrand knew that he had become the world's foremost authority on atomic waste disposal, then he felt he could allow himself to indulge a secret boyhood wish. He bought himself a gold coloured Cadillac convertible. After all, for the foremost authority on atomic waste disposal, this was an eccentricity. Do you know that the foremost authority on atomic waste disposal drives a gold Cadillac?
He even indulged in a modified Afro, cut neat every week of course. And well, since it was in, he bought a dashiki. The foremost authority on atomic waste disposal drives a gold Cadillac, wears an Afro and a dashiki. Dr. Garrand was the one really helping the Afro-American's cause, not the shouters.
One evening, while driving to New York City, not in Mobile or Biloxi or Little Rock, but in Jersey City, N.J., the world's foremost authority on atomic waste disposal was stopped by a motorcycle policeman. Not for speeding. Not for passing a red light or making an improper turn.
"Just for a check, buddy. Let me see your license and registration. Yeah, yeah, sure. You're the foremost authority on everything. You know it all."
"I was just trying to explain who I am."
"You're Mr. Wonderful. Keep your hands up on the wheel where I can see them."
"I'll have your badge, officer."
The motorcycle patrolman shined his flashlight directly into Dr. Garrand's eyes.
"I've had ail I'm going to take from you. You shut up. Now open your hood."
Dr. Garrand pressed the hidden hood release, taking joy in his own anger, anticipating the glorious revenge when the patrolman was dressed down by his superior, who was dressed down from Washington.
Dr. Garrand heard noises as the policeman's head disappeared under the hood.
"Okay, follow me," said the patrolman, handing back the registration and license.
"Is there anything wrong?" asked Dr.Garrand.
"Just follow me. There will be a patrol car right behind us."