SUPERWORM
.191
you who've got us into this mess. You think you can buy anything,
and what you can't buy you take by force, and what you can't take
by force you get by cheating. Because you think it's yours already,. I
suppose. Arrogant boors is what you are. Self-assured provincials of
race and nation. So you just leave that boy alone.
If
circumstances of
racial and economic inequality require him to take a job in a place
like this and associate with people like you, that is, far from being
a license to exploit him, an absolute barrier to any plan you have to
take advantage of him. Frankly, if I had my way, Mercer, I'd have
you painted blue. Just to see how it feels. All of you, right down to
the President."
There is a long moment of silence as they all turn and stare at
him. The first to speak is the barber-general, the man on the first
chair with the soldierly wen; he asks, "You got something against
barbers, son? What do you mean,
'a place like this'?
I'll have you
know I worked twenty years to buy this location. I got some of the
most iIIuminous clientele inna whole city. And furthermore...."
"Look at Barry Goldwater and Booker T. Washington," the lean
man reminds them, "or Abe Lincoln or Tony Curtis or even Marilyn
Monroe and our own L.B.]. My God, any of hundreds of great men
who had to work up from humble beginnings. Let us not put down
opportunity to work your way up from the bottom."
"Why I'm just giving this here lad a chance to earn a quick
five," the salesman says with another wink. "A little work never
hurt nobody, isn't that right, Sambo?"
"I won't have you insulting my customers, sir," says the wen.
"Besides, that's violent, subversive talk. It's not nice, and I run a
nice shop."
They look at him with immense hostility. The salesman sneers.
So Claude he tum to his
frere
and he sez, sezee, "Brother, don't
lower yourself."
And the black boy he say with such great and withering disdain
that the professor cannot even hear him it hurt so bad, "Kiss my ass
with your brother-shit. Somethin' like
you."
Then to the salesman,
"C'mon, Mercer, make it a deck like last week and you're on."
"Ten it is, Sambo," Mercer says and pops a pork-pie hat on
his hot head.
So because he cannot hear him through the pain of having heard,
