Some of the local Native American poets were there too, standing in a huddle, drinking Coke. In the dining room men were standing around a table, smoking cigars and discussing the Emancipation.
They began to smile when they spotted Quickskill laying down his contribution to the slave food that was on the table. Dunbar food: wheat bread, egg pone, hog jaws, roasted shoat, ham sliced cold. He had brought some Beaujolais, which he placed down next to the dishes of meat, fish and the variety of salad with Plantation dressing. Somebody else had brought John Brown à la carte—boiled beef, cabbage, pork and beans. The bottles of champagne looked chilled and ready to pop their tops.
He returned to the main room, where the guests were dancing. Leechfield was in the middle of the room doing a mean Walk-Around with this long-legged stack of giggles, who was dancing around like a tranquilized ostrich. Quickskill recognized her as the Abolitionist principal of the Free High School. Due to her New England Abolitionist ideas about education, some of the slave children had become, under her influence, surly and unmanageable, wouldn’t mind their parents and referred to themselves as the future; 1900s people, they were calling themselves. Leechfield, a little grey in his beard and with those squint devilish eyes, was enjoying himself. He hopped into Chicken Wings and ended it up with some dance they were doing called the Copperhead. His partner was trying to keep up, bouncing about and moving her bony elbows like a mutant ape.
The front door opened, admitting a new guest: Princess Quaw Quaw Tralaralara. She was the frontier dancer, an accurate-shooting, limb-wriggling desperado; tear a man’s nose off. She could put the palms of her feet on the top of your bush, so limber was she. She was extremely good doing limber things. She wore Western boots, denims. She recognized Quickskill and began that smile that made you feel that the top of your brain pan was coming off. You could put the tip of your tongue along the roof of her mouth and feel like Pinocchio inside some soft whale, spouting and leaping in the Atlantic. She could stand ten feet away from you and make you feel that she was all over you. She was a real mountain climber. She was popular on the college circuit, performing Indian dances.
She approached him, hips moving like those of a woman who swims fifty laps a day and subsists on bananas and yogurt. “Quickskill,” she said, in one of her Anglicized sentences, “it’s so nice to see you. It’s been such a long time. Fort Thunderbird?”
Fort Thunderbird was where the fugitive slaves obtained their Emancipation papers as soon as they arrived in Emancipation City. It was a complex of buildings called “Jack’s Plaza,” built by her husband, Yankee Jack the pirate, or rather consultant on trade routes and compiler of shipping logs, as his business card read. He was somewhat of a hero in these parts because of his condemnation of those pirates who pirated human cargo. He was even more indignant over the fact that they kept bogus logs so as to deceive the British Navy. He considered them to be untidy. He was a respectable pirate, and so he only dealt in things like distribution, abandoning taking over trade routes and shanghaiing ships as crude. He also dabbled in jewels, gold and real estate.
He was dedicating his life to building Emancipation City, a refuge for slaves, Indians and those who committed heinous acts because society made them do it. This Wordsworth reader, connoisseur of good wines, good theatre, good art and other finer things of life was known around these parts as the Good Pirate. And when he took as his bride Quaw Quaw, cultured performer of Ethnic Dance, finer than Pocahontas, sturdy as the Maid of the Mist—actually married this Third World belle, since heathen women were available to pirates under any condition the pirate wanted—when he actually put a ring on her finger, there was a celebration
They began to smile when they spotted Quickskill laying down his contribution to the slave food that was on the table. Dunbar food: wheat bread, egg pone, hog jaws, roasted shoat, ham sliced cold. He had brought some Beaujolais, which he placed down next to the dishes of meat, fish and the variety of salad with Plantation dressing. Somebody else had brought John Brown à la carte—boiled beef, cabbage, pork and beans. The bottles of champagne looked chilled and ready to pop their tops.
He returned to the main room, where the guests were dancing. Leechfield was in the middle of the room doing a mean Walk-Around with this long-legged stack of giggles, who was dancing around like a tranquilized ostrich. Quickskill recognized her as the Abolitionist principal of the Free High School. Due to her New England Abolitionist ideas about education, some of the slave children had become, under her influence, surly and unmanageable, wouldn’t mind their parents and referred to themselves as the future; 1900s people, they were calling themselves. Leechfield, a little grey in his beard and with those squint devilish eyes, was enjoying himself. He hopped into Chicken Wings and ended it up with some dance they were doing called the Copperhead. His partner was trying to keep up, bouncing about and moving her bony elbows like a mutant ape.
The front door opened, admitting a new guest: Princess Quaw Quaw Tralaralara. She was the frontier dancer, an accurate-shooting, limb-wriggling desperado; tear a man’s nose off. She could put the palms of her feet on the top of your bush, so limber was she. She was extremely good doing limber things. She wore Western boots, denims. She recognized Quickskill and began that smile that made you feel that the top of your brain pan was coming off. You could put the tip of your tongue along the roof of her mouth and feel like Pinocchio inside some soft whale, spouting and leaping in the Atlantic. She could stand ten feet away from you and make you feel that she was all over you. She was a real mountain climber. She was popular on the college circuit, performing Indian dances.
She approached him, hips moving like those of a woman who swims fifty laps a day and subsists on bananas and yogurt. “Quickskill,” she said, in one of her Anglicized sentences, “it’s so nice to see you. It’s been such a long time. Fort Thunderbird?”
Fort Thunderbird was where the fugitive slaves obtained their Emancipation papers as soon as they arrived in Emancipation City. It was a complex of buildings called “Jack’s Plaza,” built by her husband, Yankee Jack the pirate, or rather consultant on trade routes and compiler of shipping logs, as his business card read. He was somewhat of a hero in these parts because of his condemnation of those pirates who pirated human cargo. He was even more indignant over the fact that they kept bogus logs so as to deceive the British Navy. He considered them to be untidy. He was a respectable pirate, and so he only dealt in things like distribution, abandoning taking over trade routes and shanghaiing ships as crude. He also dabbled in jewels, gold and real estate.
He was dedicating his life to building Emancipation City, a refuge for slaves, Indians and those who committed heinous acts because society made them do it. This Wordsworth reader, connoisseur of good wines, good theatre, good art and other finer things of life was known around these parts as the Good Pirate. And when he took as his bride Quaw Quaw, cultured performer of Ethnic Dance, finer than Pocahontas, sturdy as the Maid of the Mist—actually married this Third World belle, since heathen women were available to pirates under any condition the pirate wanted—when he actually put a ring on her finger, there was a celebration
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