The Lemons

7 sams Larry Marshall Sams The Lemons The topo of the great US of A hanging in the office is yellow— dig it— and the area we seized got to look like nothing so much as a big fat lemon. Wings me true to feature when the other people of the US glim a topo, going to be for them like eating on something sour .... We were ten-eleven percent, so we copped five of the fifty, plus several dabs here and there. Most of Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia; plus dabs of Louisiana, and North and South Carolina. New Africa we named it. Vesey said consider Locke and Marx; said we built this Southland and sent blood into this nation and spilled ours in her wars— and have nothing but pain to show for it; said a state of nature plus labor equals property, and blacks have always existed in a state of nature in this country and been exploited, and now in the names of our ancestors and ourselves, we will take the property that belongs to us. Didn't they think they would crush us like a sleeping lizard? When we armed ourselves with the weapons of death, the motherfuckers knew they weren't going to do business with children. Skirmishes ripped off the peace. We assassinated a couple of worthless racist bastards otherwise labled governors and senators, yes sir, and next stone kicker: the colored peoples of the world rolled their weight behind us. Then the US motherfuckers said, I guess you do deserve a part of this land, and I guess what you've taken is fair. That flag with the lizard, symbol of immortality, jumped up the pole over the capítol, and has fluttered there strong and true for seven years. Mostly been all downhill and smooth move, but we've got a problem, and although its color gleams out — oh, don't you know!— white, I said the color of the problem's white, it's yellow too. Two hundred thousand lemons, mean to be exact on its number. White people left behind after the revolt: the elderly and the rednecks; didn't want to breeze the place born and grew up in— or didn't have anybody else or any other locale drawing them. Can't or won't even mash a botton, much less wheel a tractor or spin a lathe. They're a drain on the economy. Good-fornothing do-nothings. Vesey and I have found no way to square on this problem of what to do with the lemons, and Evelyn complexes the problem because she supports Vesey. Our office in the capítol. I ease over to Evelyn, bow, plant my hand on the point of her shoulder, and she copies my movements with the 8 the minnesota review naturalness of sunlight trickling along the earth: our smiles. "This day for the people." A clench of her hand drives the sentence into me. "May the lizard fly above this land forever." "Are you well today, Xanthos, and ready for work?" "Solid z's last night means today laced tight. And you?" Repeat the feeling with Vesey, different words. Vesey Lumumba. Whereas I sport a puny little B.S. in poli sci from Valley State, before it shucked skin to become the University of New Africa, Vesey holds up a Ph.D. in philosophy from — check it—the Sorbonne. Didn't he say America and Africa would meet in the name he took when he dropped his nigger name? Didn't he chart our direction by saying if we could mesh the traditional African society with Marxism we would have the best society on earth? Think of Vesey, feature great clamps on each end of a narrow steel bar, hauling in great tension. Voice a steel butterfly: "Have I not asked, Xanthos, that you refrain from the nigger diction?" "Diction" whiz in and out of my mind without touching it if Vesey hadn't illuminated the point for me more than once. His words: "I must illuminate you, Xanthos, about why your diction is not in the state's best interests." In our state, no eyes for...