THE
BOY WHO TAMED FEAR AT LAST
by Ron Metzger
Once upon a time there lived a woman who had one son whom she didn’t
know what to do with. Their little cottage was on the outskirts of a
jungle, and as they had no neighbors who spoke any language they could
understand, they were very lonely, and the boy was kept at home by his
mother for company.
One day they were sitting together discussing just who the boy’s father
might be when a storm suddenly sprang up and the wind blew the door
open. The woman quaked and shivered and glanced over her shoulder as if
she half expected to see some horrible creature behind her. “Go and
shut the door,” she said to her son. “I’m concerned that it might be a
black man whom I once knew.”
“Concerned?” said the boy. “Why should you be concerned about a
black man?”
“Well, that’s just the way it is,” answered the mother. “We all
have
concerns and fears about certain types of people, either from personal
experience or from tales told to us by our elders.”
“Hmmm . . . It must be very uncomfortable to feel like that,” replied
the boy, knowing that his father had been a black man, although his
mother wasn’t entirely sure which one. “I will go forth in the
world
and seek out why people have these unreasonable feelings until I find
the reason.” And the next morning, before his mother was out of bed, he
had left the jungle behind him. She’d always looked at him as
somewhat
of a pest and was glad to be rid of him.
After wandering for some years through strange and smoky lands, he
reached a tall building which he felt compelled to climb, in a city by
a lake. Near the very top, in a lush yet forbidding chamber, he came
upon a band of cutthroats and scoundrels sitting round a huge pile of
money. The boy, whose feet were hot and tired from his climb, was
delighted to see the bright and shiny coins, so he went up to the
scalawags and said, “As-salaam Alaikum to you, sirs,” and wriggled
himself in between the men, his feet buried in the pile of money.
The crooks stopped counting and eyed him curiously, and at last the
organizer spoke. “No one dares to come here unbidden. Even
the
po-lice leave us alone. Who are you to venture in so boldly?”
“Oh, I have left my mother's house in search of the source of suspicion
and fear. Perhaps you can show it to me?”
“Fear and suspicion are wherever we are,” the head agitator told him.
“But where exactly?” asked the boy, looking round. “I see nothing
fearsome, nothing suspicious.”
“Is this bumpkin for real?” suggested the Capo di Tutti Capi di
Chi-town, sotto voce.
“Here, kid. Take this little book, go down to the projects, and
rustle
us up some voters,” grunted the socialist-in-chief. And the boy, who
was by this time enthralled by the wealth and power of the group,
jumped up cheerfully, and tucking the little book Rules for Radicals
under his arm, hurried down to the Land of the Ignoranti.
When he got to Cabrini-Green he collected some acorns and started a
fire so that all could assist in creating the choom cloud. It was
not
long before everything, even the air, grew aromatic and brown, and the
boy shared the contents of the pot and chanted from the book as the
eyes glazed and the crowd began to grumble about bushes and
reparations.
At that moment a hand touched the boy’s shoulder, and a voice
said:
“How audacious. How colorful. How erudite. Come with
me.”
And the boy, now much inflated with airs, followed the hand as an idea
struck him: “I need to start writing some of this down,” he said
to
the voice. “Perhaps you can help me.”
So together they spun a pair of dreamy tales and talked of
fundamentally transforming the land. Then, carrying his little
book
along with the new ones the voice had made for him, the boy went back
to the money pile, whistling a catchy tune which greatly captivated
most who heard it.
“Well, have you found fear?” asked the Capo when he held out the new
book to the captain.
“No,” answered the boy. “But I did encounter a beguiling vision,
a
vision of hope and change, and I created these two imaginary revisions
of reality to substitute for my complete lack of experience and
credibility.”
“You are just what we need,” said the Capo in a voice much like the
earlier ghost-like voice which had helped him with his books .
“Yes, there is a great future for you,” said another of the assembled
agitprops. “A seat in the state legislature is open.
We’ll get you
in, and perhaps there you can learn all about controlling fear and
suspicion.”
“I hope so, indeed,” answered the boy. And he set out at once.
Soon he
watched with great interest as the old men of the Illini Senate devised
and crafted their means for controlling and exploiting the citizens.
He beheld the wheeling and dealing in the dim corridors and noisy
lunchrooms of the halls of government, and as he gained understanding
he realized what the organizers with their pile of money had in mind
for him, and it was good.
Fear’s power, he realized, was in his hand, his to control, for at last
he knew what his mother had expressed: ordinary citizens are
suspicious of black men and afraid of being called
racist. All he
had to do was focus their fear while reciting words that the men who
sat at the foot of the mountain of money prepared for him.
In a moment of profound understanding he knew that he could say what
the people wanted to hear, whether true or not, and then if he failed
to produce what he promised, all he had to do was blame it on his
predecessors. Fear of his blackness would forestall any
criticism of
his abilities or his style or his motives.
It was like a sacrament, a ritual, a miraculous potion. And the
first
corollary of fear was political correctness. He could do no
wrong, for
even if he did, the blackness thwarted and deflected all repercussions.
Dingle Barry’s quest was at last over. An unending flow of riches
now
followed him wherever he went. He, his even blacker crony Mooch,
and
their offspring Malaria and Sharia moved into the white palace near the
swamp where Dirty Harry and Daffy Nan held regular ceremonies for the
interment of the archaic ideals of honor, ethics, common sense, and
patriotism.
Fear was no problem for him personally. It could exist in him
only if
white people conquered their fear of being politically incorrect
concerning race. And by the time that happened, they would be in
the
minority anyway, unable to turn the tide of tribal loyalty and
Spanish-speaking dependents.
