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One fine morning soon after he announced his approaching retirement from public service, Jesse Alexander Helms set out on a drive through the verdant Carolina countryside he had loved all his life. He was wistfully reflecting, as you might expect, on the part he had played in American history since 1972, when he was elected to the U.S. Congress — and how in the intervening years he had transformed his reputation as an insignificant, far-right demagogue into that of the savvy, mean-spirited conscience of America’s conservative backlash.
Just before lunchtime, as he slowly rolled past the neatly-kept front lawn of some respectable white folks’ modest mobile home, Jesse looked down to see a tiny black ceramic doorman, done up in a cap and red coat, holding out a lantern to greet anyone who might turn in at the driveway. Jesse stopped there awhile, looking out his side window and studying on that diminutive statue, and mused about his place in the history of social progress. Truth to tell, this put him in a somber mood — he couldn’t have told you why exactly — and so he decided to drive right on to Lake Gaston, a spot he’d favored all his life. Easing his old, aching body out of the car and sitting himself down against a tree, Jesse gazed out over the water, now feeling as happy as a fisherman with a long string of striped bass. The sun played on him in spots through the shade and soon, in utter contentment, Jesse fell asleep. And Jesse dreamed.
He dreamed that he stood up by the tree, stretched lazily, and walked down to the water’s edge. But he didn’t stop there — no, he walked right into Lake Gaston without bothering to take off his shoes, mushing into the mud nearly up to his knees. Then, he calmly swam out to deep water, slipped under the surface, and lazily drifted to the bottom of the lake. It was easy, and he wasn’t scared for a moment.
Strangely, on the lake floor Jesse found himself in front of an old wooden door, standing upright and almost completely covered in long fronds of snakegrass. No sooner did he reach out and touch the slimy doorknob than there was a blinding flash of white light. Lo and behold, next thing he knew Jesse was walking barefoot down a dirt path toward a big white plantation, feeling as light and easy as when he was a little piker without a care in the world.
It was twilight in the Old South, and Jesse thought he smelled some fresh blackberry cobbler wafting from the big house. He broke into an effortless run, whizzing by a cotton field populated with happy darkies working to the rhythm of an old gospel hymn sung in passionate harmony. To his left Jesse suddenly noticed a one-room shanty, and he was about to run on by when he heard an ancient, familiar voice call from the open door.
“Whoooa-dere, Jesse! Whar you runnin’ now? I ain’t seed sich a’runnin’ since Brer Fox was nigh on t’Rabbit’s hiny! Now whatchew gots to do so all-far impo’tant dat you cain’t set wid yer Uncle fer a spell?”
Jesse halted, coming to such an abrupt stop that his trademark eyeglasses pitched right off his head and into the dirt. He picked them up, brushed them off and got them fixed back on his skull as he approached the doorway of the cabin and peered inside. There he saw an old, black gentleman sitting in a rocking chair, whittling away at a stick with a humble pocket-knife.
“Uncle?” Jesse whispered in amazed recognition. “Uncle Remus?!”
The old Negro laughed, deep and hearty. “Shore’s hell ain’t yo Uncle Sam!” He grinned mischievously. “C’mon hyar en sit, boy. I bin wantin’ t’yammer wid you.”
Without questioning, Jesse hurried over to Uncle Remus and sat down cross-legged by the old man’s knee. From this perspective Uncle Remus looked huge. His hands were enormous, and his head, shiny bald on top but fringed with a bushy, salt-and-pepper nap, loomed over Jesse like the head of a giant. Or perhaps it was that Jesse was now as small as a boy — he couldn’t tell. But something didn’t seem right.
Putting aside his disquiet, Jesse smiled up at the grandfatherly figure and asked the first thing that came to mind. “Uncle, will you tell me The Wonderful Tar-Ba
by Story?”
Uncle Remus chuckled, a guttural rattle that never left his throat. “Now, less jus’ hol’on a minnit b’fo yo Uncle tells enny tales. We got sum real hist’ry to discuss.” The old man put his knife on the rickety table beside him, then reached underneath and produced a big, matte-black boom box. From a grimy shirt pocket he withdrew a cassette, slipped it gingerly into the machine, shut the small door and pressed the PLAY button, smiling tightly all the while at Jesse. “Less go way back, boy.”
Jesse’s confusion turned to wonder as the quiet hiss of the rolling tape turned into his very own voice, though much younger. He was so surprised that he couldn’t even understand the words until he heard himself say distinctly, “...Negroes and whites participating in the march to Montgomery engaged in sex orgies of the rawest sort...”
“Uncle!!” exclaimed Jesse. “Where did you get that? That sounds like one of my radio shows from nineteen — uh, nineteen...”
“Sixty-five,” filled in Uncle Remus, bending over to hit the PAUSE button. “Dat’s only da b’ginnin’ uv what I got on you, boy. Lissen up.”
The tape resumed and Jesse was treated to a tightly-edited playback of his most famous harangues from twelve years as a radio and TV commentator in eastern North Carolina — the position of public notoriety that launched his legislative career. Jesse listened with mixed emotions as he heard himself attacking everything from the United Nations and the Peace Corps to the League of Women Voters. He was proud, but nervous because Uncle Remus regarded him with an increasingly hostile frown as the tape played on. As Jesse heard his younger self criticizing President Richard Nixon for “appeasing Red China,” Uncle Remus suddenly ejected the tape and replaced the blaster on the floor behind him.
“Dat’s enuff now,” growled Uncle Remus. “I sorely wants t’hear whatchew got t’say f’yo’self, Jesse.”
Jesse grinned uncertainly, a wormy apprehension crawling up his back. “Well, I, gee, Uncle Remus ... guess I had some pretty good lines back then, didn’t I?”
“Naw, boy,” said Uncle Remus, suddenly grabbing Jesse by the collar and lifting him off the floor a couple inches. “All dat stuff jes’ plain scur’lus, Jesse! In’tolable! You really speck yo Uncle to grin ’n eat dat shit like it hominy?!”
Remus’ grip was tightening and Jesse found it a little hard to breathe. Everything seemed very strange, and he decided it best to try placating the old man.
“Well now, Uncle, all that was a very long time ago and . . .”
“Like HAIL!” thundered Remus, abruptly standing up while keeping his grip on the befuddled Senator, lifting him a full three feet off the ground. “Tweren’t so long ago you said my man Martin was a Comma’nist! Nother thing, Jesse,” breathed the black man, thrusting his angry face into nose-to-nose intimacy, “I got rr’libel sources tol’ me you useta call all de bruthas ‘Fred’ cuz you thought it wuz funny. Why dat funny, Jesse?”
Jesse, trembling, sensed that anything he said was going to get him in more trouble. “Well, Uncle, you see, all I meant was...”
“Shet yo mouf,” seethed Uncle Remus. He moved with sudden agility and slammed Jesse’s back against the wall, making the ramshackle cabin shake. “‘Nother question, boy,” he whispered, and Jesse squeezed his eyes shut in abject terror. Remus’ heavy breathing seemed to fill up the whole room until he spoke again, his voice hissing. “Now whut the hail wuz you thinkin’ when you tried to take all de money ‘way from dem po’ stahvin’ ah-tists, Jesse?”
Now the legislator felt ice in the marrow of his bones. “I-I don’t remember, Uncle Remus,” he mumbled weakly.
Suddenly Remus let go of the frightened Jesse and he slid to the floor, his knees crumpling. The old man glared down at the political figure and said slowly and distinctly, “Waal now, lessee if we kin find sumway ta shoppen yo’ memry, boy.” Looking up warily, Jesse froze as he saw Remus reach across the table for his pocketknife — which had somehow transformed into an enormous, fearsome open switchblade. That was enough for Jesse. He jumped up and shot out the door like a cannonball, as Uncle Remus commenced howling with laughter behind him.
Right outside the shanty Jesse ran by someone leaning against a fencepost, and stopped short to plead for help. “That old man in there,” gasped the terrified legislator, “he’s nuts! I thought he was Uncle Remus but he’s just some crazy nigger. We’ve got to call the police!”
Jesse glanced nervously back over his shoulder, and then at the person before him, who seemed neither to listen nor to care. Under a straw hat, this being looked distastefully androgynous and displayed an even, cream-in-coffee complexion with a very odd mix of features. Its hair was done in a modishly short Afro, but it had the jowly cheeks of a Massachusetts Democrat. Radiating from the hollow, sunken eyes of an AIDS sufferer were the wrinkles of an aged Vietnamese grandmother. Stuck in its mouth was a fine Cuban cigar. Jesse blinked, trying to get a bead on this weird creature, and then he frantically remembered the old man’s shiny blade. “Please,” begged Jesse, grasping both shoulders of the silent figure before him, “you’ve got to help me!”
With horror Jesse felt his clenched fingers sink into a gooey, resinous tar. He recoiled but his hands were stuck and couldn’t be retrieved. He rared back and brought one knee up into a forceful collision with the body, and then his knee was stuck too. Whining insensibly, Jesse butted his head into the cheek of the adhesive monster, and then realized, with deep nausea, that he was glued for good. He sagged, whimpering, toward the ground as his unwanted partner slowly began to pull away from the fence. Soon they fell down together, and rolled over once on the ground. Weeping and wailing, Jesse blinked through his tears to see the worn toes of old Uncle Remus’ shoes right before his eyes.
Jesse’s heart leaped with a frantic new hope. “Uncle!” he cried hoarsely, twisting his neck to get a look up at the old man’s face, “please don’t hurt me! Help me get loose from this thing and I’ll explain everything. Make it let go, Uncle Remus!”
Remus chuckled, his tone now casually factual. “Way hit looks to me, Jesse, you slugged dat tarbaby all yo life. Hit ain’t about ter let you go now.” The old man turned and began to saunter lazily toward the great plantation. “B’leeve I need me sum o’dat berry pie,” he murmured.
Jesse struggled to turn with the gooey mass on the ground and called out frantically once more. “Uncle!” he cried. “Dear God, Uncle Remus, please save me!!”
Suddenly the receding figure of the old man vanished — but his voice boomed overhead, filling the sky. “Now, now, Jesse,” he chided, “you know dey ain’t no real Uncle Remus. And dey nevah wuz.” The deep voice rumbled into the heavens, fading with finality. The eternal twilight of the Old South disappeared too, and a blazing hot sun bore down on the hapless Jesse, stuck in the middle of a dirt road with a disgusting mess that was oozing all over him. Jesse began to feel as if they were melting together in a pot. He watched helplessly as a huge wasp bore down from nowhere and headed straight for his cheek . . .
Senator Helms jerked awake abruptly, slapping away the mosquito that had nipped his face. He looked out over Lake Gaston with panic, and then realized that he wasn’t stuck to a tarbaby, and he hadn’t walked into the lake either — he’d only been dreaming. The sun had switched sides of the lake since he had dozed off many hours before; he had slept right through the night! He scratched his scalp and blinked hard several times, trying to shake off a lingering anxiety. For some reason, Jesse Helms suddenly felt a great urgency to get back home and mend some fences. As he stood up, his old bones creaking, he watched a dragonfly zoom in from the water and halt right in front of him, hovering gracefully in the reeds at the shoreline. It was a new morning in North Carolina.
Copyright 2001 by
D. Patrick Miller. All rights reserved. To be advised of every
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