“And then when one of the brothers is up talking, another brother comes up and whispers something in his ear, like this,” and Chaser cups his hand around his mouth like he’s whispering something. “And the brother stops talking, like he’s listening, and the man thinks, ‘What’s he saying? What kind of unbelievable shit are they planning now?’ The brother, he’s not saying anything. He’s just moving his lips. It’s a tactic . . . you know . . . And at the end I’ll slap my hand down on the desk—whop—and everybody gets up, like one man, and walks out of there. And that really shakes ’em up. They see that the people are unified, and disciplined, and mad, and tired of talking and ready for walking, and that shakes ’em up.”
Chaser had his two main men, James Jones and Louis Downs. Downs was Chaser’s showpiece. He was sharp. He was young and had a very athletic build. He had a haircut of the intellectual-natural variety and a pair of José Feliciano sunglasses and a black leather dashiki, and he’d have on a pair of A-1 racer pants. The A-l racers are not just narrow, they’re like a stovepipe, with the 16½-inch cuffs. And he’d have on either a pair of Vietnam combat boots with the green webbing or a pair of tennis shoes, but a really expensive kind of tennis shoe. You look at them and you know he really had to look especially hard to find that pair. He’d always be bracing his hands in front of him, pressing the heels of his hands together, which made the muscles pop up around his neck and his shoulders. James Jones was Chaser’s philosopher. He was a talker, too. He’d come on like a Southern Christian Leadership preacher, giving all the reasons why, and then Downs would come on hard and really sharp. Between the three of them, Chaser and Downs and James Jones, they were like the Three Musketeers. They were beautiful to behold.
Chaser was funny. Just like he had everything planned out on his side, right down to the last detail, he thought the Man must have it planned out that far, too. Chaser had a kind of security paranoia. At a demonstration or something you’d see Chaser giving instructions to his boys with his hand over his mouth. He’d always be talking with his hand over his mouth, mumbling into his fingers, and he’d tell his boys to talk that way, too. Chaser was convinced that the Man had electronic eavesdropping devices trained on them. He’d tell you about the “parabolic earphones” and the deaf-mutes. He believed that the Man had trained a corps of deaf-mutes to read lips for crowd control. He’d have you believing it, too. It was like, What would you do if you were a deaf-mute and shuffling and shitkicking through life and the government comes along and offers to pay you money for reading lips and playing C.I.A. . . . Chaser didn’t blame them any more than he’d blame a dog . . . They were being exploited like all the other Toms that didn’t know any better . . .
BROTHERS LIKE CHASER WERE THE ONES WHO PERFECTED mau-mauing, but before long everybody in the so-called Third World was into it. Everybody was out mau-mauing up a storm, to see if they could win the victories the blacks had won. San Francisco, being the main port of entry for immigrants from all over the Pacific, had as many colored minorities as New York City. Maybe more. Blacks, Chicanos, Latinos, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, American Indians, Samoans—everybody was circling around the poverty program. By the end of 1968 there were eighty-seven different groups getting into the militant thing, getting into maumauing.
Nobody kept records on the confrontations, which is too bad. There must have been hundreds of them in San Francisco alone. Across the country there must have been thousands. When the confrontations touched the white middle class in a big way, like when black students started strikes and disruptions at San Francisco State, Columbia, Cornell, or Yale, or when somebody like James Forman came walking up to the pulpit of the Riverside Church carrying a four-pound cane the size of the shillelagh the Fool Killer used to lug around to the State Fair to kill fools with—when Forman got up there with that hickory stick like he was going to swat all undeserving affluent white Christians over the bean unless they paid five hundred million dollars in reparations—then the media described it blow by blow. But what went on in the colleges and churches was just a part of it. Bad dudes were out maumauing at all the poverty agencies, at boards of education, at city halls, hospitals, conventions, foundations, schools, charities, civic organizations, all sorts of places. It got to be an American custom, like talk shows, Face the Nation, marriage counseling, marathon encounters, or zoning hearings.
That was certainly the way the message came down to the youth of the Third World in areas like the Mission, Chinatown, and Japan Town. Mau-mauing was the ticket. The confrontation route was the only road. So the Chinese, the Japanese, the Chicanos, the Indians picked up on mau-mauing from the bloods. Not only that, they would try to do it exactly like the bloods. They’d talk like the bloods, dress like the bloods, try to wear naturals like the bloods, even if their hair was too straight to do it. There were Spanish and Oriental dudes who washed their hair every day with Borax to make it fluff up and sit out.
When anybody other than black people went in for maumauing, however, they ran into problems, because the white man had a different set of fear reflexes for each race he was dealing with.
Whites didn’t have too much fear of the Mexican-American, the Chicano. The notion was that he was small, placid, slow, no particular physical threat—until he grew his hair Afro-style, talked like a blood or otherwise managed to seem “black” enough to raise hell. Then it was a different story.
The whites’ physical fear of the Chinese was nearly zero. The white man pictured the Chinese as small, quiet, restrained little fellows. He had a certain deep-down voodoo fear of their powers of Evil in the Dark . . . the Hatchet Men . . . the Fangs of the Tong . . . but it wasn’t a live fear. For that matter, the young Chinese themselves weren’t ready for the age of mau-mauing. It wasn’t that they feared the white man, the way black people had. It was more that they didn’t fear or resent white people enough. They looked down on whites as childish and uncultivated. They also found it somewhat shameful to present themselves as poor and oppressed, on the same level with Negroes and Mexican-Americans. It wasn’t until 1969 that militants really got into confrontations in Chinatown.
Every now and then, after the poverty scene got going, and the confrontations became a regular thing, whites would run into an ethnic group they drew a total blank on, like the Indians or the Samoans. Well, with the Samoans they didn’t draw a blank for long, not once they actually came up against them. The Samoans on the poverty scene favored the direct approach. They did not fool around. They were like the original unknown terrors. In fact, they were unknown terrors and a half.
Why so few people in San Francisco know about the Samoans is a mystery. All you have to do is see a couple of those Polynesian studs walking through the Mission, minding their own business, and you won’t forget it soon. Have you ever by any chance seen professional football players in person, like on the street? The thing you notice is not just that they’re big but that they are so big, it’s weird. Everything about them is gigantic, even their heads. They’ll have a skull the size of a watermelon, with a couple of little squinty eyes and a little mouth and a couple of nose holes stuck in, and no neck at all. From the ears down, the big yoyos are just one solid welded hulk, the size of an oil burner. You get the feeling that football players come from a whole other species of human, they’re so big. Well, that will give you some idea of the Samoans, because they’re bigger. The average Samoan makes Bubba Smith of the Colts look like a shrimp. They start out at about 300 pounds and from there they just get wider. They are big huge giants. Everything about them is wide and smooth. They have big wide faces and smooth features. They’re a dark brown, with a smooth cast.
Anyway, the word got around among the groups in the Mission that the poverty program was going to cut down on summer jobs, and the Mission was going to be on the short end. So a bunch of the groups in the Mission got together and decided to go downtown to the poverty office and do some mau-mauing in behalf of the Mission before the bureaucrats made up their minds. There were b
lacks, Chicanos, Filipinos, and about ten Samoans.
The poverty office was on the first floor and had a big anteroom; only it’s almost bare, nothing in it but a lot of wooden chairs. It looks like a union hall minus the spittoons, or one of those lobbies where they swear in new citizens. It’s like they want to impress the poor that they don’t have leather-top desks . . . All our money goes to you . . .
So the young aces from the Mission come trooping in, and they want to see the head man. The word comes out that the No. 1 man is out of town, but the No. 2 man is coming out to talk to the people.
This man comes out, and he has that sloppy Irish look like Ed McMahon on TV, only with a longer nose. In case you’d like the local viewpoint, whites really have the noses . . . enormous, you might say . . . a whole bag full . . . long and pointed like carrots, goobered up like green peppers, hooked like a squash, hanging off the face like cucumbers . . . This man has a nose that is just on the verge of hooking over, but it doesn’t quite make it.
“Have a seat, gentlemen,” he says, and he motions toward the wooden chairs.
But he doesn’t have to open his mouth. All you have to do is look at him and you get the picture. The man’s a lifer. He’s stone civil service. He has it all down from the wheatcolor Hush Puppies to the wash’n’dry semi-tab-collar shortsleeved white shirt. Those wheatcolor Hush Puppies must be like some kind of fraternal garb among the civil-service employees, because they all wear them. They cost about $4.99, and the second time you move your toes, the seams split and the tops come away from the soles. But they all wear them. The man’s shirt looks like he bought it at the August end-of-summer sale at the White Front. It is one of those shirts with pockets on both sides. Sticking out of the pockets and running across his chest he has a lineup of ball-point pens, felt nibs, lead pencils, wax markers, such as you wouldn’t believe, Paper Mates, Pentels, Scriptos, Eberhard Faber Mongol 482’s, Dri-Marks, Bic PM-29’s, everything. They are lined up across his chest like campaign ribbons.
He pulls up one of the wooden chairs and sits down on it. Only he sits down on it backwards, straddling the seat and hooking his arms and his chin over the back of the chair, like the head foreman in the bunkhouse. It’s like saying, “We don’t stand on ceremony around here. This is a shirtsleeve operation.”
“I’m sorry that Mr. Johnson isn’t here today,” he says, “but he’s not in the city. He’s back in Washington meeting some important project deadlines. He’s very concerned, and he would want to meet with you people if he were here, but right now I know you’ll understand that the most important thing he can do for you is to push these projects through in Washington.”
The man keeps his arms and his head hung over the back of his chair, but he swings his hands up in the air from time to time to emphasize a point, first one hand and then the other. It looks like he’s giving wig-wag signals to the typing pool. The way he hangs himself over the back of the chair—that keeps up the funky shirtsleeve-operation number. And throwing his hands around—that’s dynamic . . . It says, “We’re hacking our way through the red tape just as fast as we can.”
“Now I’m here to try to answer any questions I can,” he says, “but you have to understand that I’m only speaking as an individual, and so naturally none of my comments are binding, but I’ll answer any questions I can, and if I can’t answer them, I’ll do what I can to get the answers for you.”
And then it dawns on you, and you wonder why it took so long for you to realize it. This man is the flak catcher. His job is to catch the flak for the No. 1 man. He’s like the professional mourners you can hire in Chinatown. They have certified wailers, professional mourners, in Chinatown, and when your loved one dies, you can hire the professional mourners to wail at the funeral and show what a great loss to the community the departed is. In the same way this lifer is ready to catch whatever flak you’re sending up. It doesn’t matter what bureau they put him in. It’s all the same. Poverty, Japanese imports, valley fever, tomato-crop parity, partial disability, home loans, second-probate accounting, the Interstate 90 detour change order, lockouts, secondary boycotts, G.I. alimony, the Pakistani quota, cinch mites, Tularemic Loa loa, veterans’ dental benefits, workmen’s compensation, suspended excise rebates—whatever you’re angry about, it doesn’t matter, he’s there to catch the flak. He’s a lifer.
Everybody knows the scene is a shuck, but you can’t just walk out and leave. You can’t get it on and bring thirty-five people walking all the way from the Mission to 100 McAllister and then just turn around and go back. So . . . might as well get into the number . . .
One of the Chicanos starts it off by asking the straight question, which is about how many summer jobs the Mission groups are going to get. This is the opening phase, the straight-face phase, in the art of mau-mauing.
“Well,” says the Flak Catcher—and he gives it a twist of the head and a fling of the hand and the ingratiating smile—“It’s hard for me to answer that the way I’d like to answer it, and the way I know you’d like for me to answer it, because that’s precisely what we’re working on back in Washington. But I can tell you this. At this point I see no reason why our project allocation should be any less, if all we’re looking at is the urban-factor numbers for this area, because that should remain the same. Of course, if there’s been any substantial prefunding, in Washington, for the fixed-asset part of our program, like Head Start or the community health centers, that could alter the picture. But we’re very hopeful, and as soon as we have the figures, I can tell you that you people will be the first to know.”
It goes on like this for a while. He keeps saying things like, “I don’t know the answer to that right now, but I’ll do everything I can to find out.” The way he says it, you can tell he thinks you’re going to be impressed with how honest he is about what he doesn’t know. Or he says, “I wish we could give everybody jobs. Believe me, I would like nothing better, both personally and as a representative of this Office.”
So one of the bloods says, “Man, why do you sit there shining us with this bureaucratic rhetoric, when you said yourself that ain’t nothing you say that means a goddamn thing?”
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram—a bunch of the aces start banging on the floor in unison. It sounds like they have sledge hammers.
“Ha-unnnnh,” says the Flak Catcher. It is one of those laughs that starts out as a laugh but ends up like he got hit in the stomach halfway through. It’s the first assault on his dignity. So he breaks into his shit-eating grin, which is always phase two. Why do so many bureaucrats, deans, preachers, college presidents, try to smile when the mau-mauing starts? It’s fatal, this smiling. When some bad dude is challenging your manhood, your smile just proves that he is right and you are chickenshit—unless you are a bad man yourself with so much heart that you can make that smile say, “Just keep on talking, sucker, because I’m gonna count to ten and then squash you.”
“Well,” says the Flak Catcher, “I can’t promise you jobs if the jobs aren’t available yet”—and then he looks up as if for the first time he is really focusing on the thirty-five ghetto hot dogs he is now facing, by way of sizing up the threat, now that the shit has started. The blacks and the Chicanos he has no doubt seen before, or people just like them, but then he takes in the Filipinos. There are about eight of them, and they are all wearing the Day-Glo yellow and hot-green sweaters and lemon-colored pants and Italian-style socks. But it’s the head-gear that does the trick. They’ve all got on Rap Brown shades and Russian Cossack hats made of frosted-gray Dynel. They look bad. Then the man takes in the Samoans, and they look worse. There’s about ten of them, but they fill up half the room. They’ve got on Island shirts with designs in streaks and blooms of red, only it’s a really raw shade of red, like that red they paint the floor with in the tool and dye works. They’re glaring at him out of those big dark wide brown faces. The monsters have tight curly hair, but it grows in long strands, and they comb it back flat, in long curly strands, with a Du
ke pomade job. They’ve got huge feet, and they’re wearing sandals. The straps on the sandals look like they were made from the reins on the Budweiser draft horses. But what really gets the Flak Catcher, besides the sheer size of the brutes, is their Tiki canes. These are like Polynesian scepters. They’re the size of sawed-off pool cues, only they’re carved all over in Polynesian Tiki Village designs. When they wrap their fists around these sticks, every knuckle on their hands pops out the size of a walnut. Anything they hear that they like, like the part about the “bureaucratic rhetoric,” they bang on the floor in unison with the ends of the Tiki sticks—ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram—although some of them press one end of the stick onto the sole of their sandal between their first two toes and raise their foot up and down with the stick to cushion the blow on the floor. They don’t want to scuff up the Tiki cane.
The Flak Catcher is still staring at them, and his shit-eating grin is getting worse. It’s like he knows the worst is yet to come . . . Goddamn . . . that one in front there . . . that Pineapple Brute . . .
“Hey, Brudda,” the main man says. He has a really heavy accent. “Hey, Brudda, how much you make?”
“Me?” says the Flak Catcher. “How much do I make?”
“Yeah, Brudda, you. How much money you make?”
Now the man is trying to think in eight directions at once. He tries out a new smile. He tries it out on the bloods, the Chicanos, and the Filipinos, as if to say, “As one intelligent creature to another, what do you do with dumb people like this?” But all he gets is the glares, and his mouth shimmies back into the terrible sickening grin, and then you can see that there are a whole lot of little muscles all around the human mouth, and his are beginning to squirm and tremble . . . He’s fighting for control of himself . . . It’s a lost cause . . .
“How much, Brudda?”
Ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram-ba-ram—they keep beating on the floor.