Ol’ Clementine

Ol' Clementine Explains How he and a Team of Navy SEALs Killed Osama bin Laden

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NOTE: This is the third and final post in the series, THE MERKING OF OBL (though it may be back as an occasional feature). Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Ol' Clementine

Eds. note: At 236-years-old, Ol’ Clementine is the oldest man in the world. He worked as a slave in most of the Confederate states and has continued the profession long after Emancipation. Occasionally, he shares his unique perspective on the pressing issues of the day and we present it for you, dear reader.

One thing most folks don’t know ‘bout me is that I been in the Navy since there was a Navy and I been a Navy SEAL since the SEALs been pups.  Yep, SEAL Team 6, as a matter of fact. Been proud to serve, for no pay of course. It remind me of back in them days when I used to fight against them Northern folk who kept meddlin’ with Southern affairs back during the War of Yankee Aggression.

I could tell you a rack of stories from my Navy SEAL days, but I figure you only interested in the time we went and got that Osama boy, so that’s the story I’m gon’ tell. Lots of ‘spiracy theories and misinformation and tales told by confused folks, but this is how it went down.

Well, we in that helicopter and we getting closer and closer to that bin Laden boy’s house and maybe I’m nervous or maybe it’s all that damn curry I be eating, but my stomach’s gone with the wind. I mean it’s real foul in that helicopter. First, when I pass gas, I keep pointing at them damn SEAL dogs with the titanium teeths, but it gets so loud I can’t even pretend it’s the dogs no more. I call out: “Hey, how long till we get to that boy’s house and do he have a bathroom?”

See, I’m not trying to shit in no hole in the ground or out in the sand like a cat. I figure that boy is rich, he probably got gold plated toilets and sinks better than my ol’ massa from back in 1845. I was with that man a year and he was rich and famous. This was down in Georgia before them Yankee boys burned it. We was supposed to shit out in a little outhouse down on the edge of the plantation, but ol’ massa’s facilities was special. The boy was so rich he had indoor plumbing. Now everybody got indoor plumbing, but back then only the richest of the rich white folks had it. I used to sneak up there and do my business. Leave a little unflushed negro poo in that bowl when I was in a hurry. I ain’t want to get caught. Them folks musta been ignorant cause they couldn’t tell the negro poo from the white poo. You shoulda seen the lady of the house yelling at poor lil’ James, that was her son, about leaving his mess all swirling and around and bobbing up and down without flushing.

It all went to shit, so to speak, when lil’ James got tired of being yelled at and did some ‘vestigating. This was on a day when I fried me some pigs feets that felt like they was kicking my stomach in. I was halfway through a nice little movement when they kicked down the door and dragged me from the bowl. That little fiasco got me sold down South. Lost the best job I ever had on account of my runny behind. And I deserved it. Who want to do their business after a negro? I get it.

But things done changed these days and of course white folks shit after negroes all the time now. I don’t ‘gree with it, but that’s how it is. So, anyway, we keep flying and it seem like a long ride. So I asks, “Where we going? Where this boy live, Detroit?”

I guess they ain’t want to give me answer ’cause one of them dudes said: “About as bad.”

“Ol’ Clementine ain’t no fool,” I say. “I know my gas smell ‘about as bad’ as it ever smell before. You ain’t gotta insult me. I want to know when and where we touching down. I got to go.”

Them SEAL boys get to ignoring me and I keep yelling until the some of them tell me to sit my stankin’ ass down and I think they rude. I ain’t nobody, but an ol’ Alabama slave, but I’m old enough to serve some of their daddies and daddies’ daddies. But I sit my ass down, still farting up a dust storm and them SEALs start trying to move away from me. It get so hectic inside that funky ol’ helicopter that one of them SEALs open the door, talking ‘bout he can’t breathe. It warn’t that bad, but all them folks is moving all around and the door is open, sand just a-flying all through the copter. You gotta forgive the pilot for being distracted. Just as we come to bin Laden’s house, he crashes the thing and we rolling all around the ground and some of them SEALs is yelling, “Fresh air! Fresh air!” It offend me a little bit. My wind ain’t that bad. I mean for a negro, of course.

Them SEALs start to running and scattering around the compound just a-shooting away. Not me, I holds my gun at my side. I only shitted a little bit when that copter went down. Figure I got enough in me to make these droppy draws drag all along the desert sand so I starts looking for a bathroom.

The first bathroom I find is on the ground floor. I step in that place and it’s like Shaytan himself had just sit on the bowl. There’s mudbutt all up in that bowl like they ain’t believe in flushing and all along the ground. Disgusting. I figure bin Laden got his own bathroom and if it ain’t ‘macculate it’s at least tolerable.

I run upstairs and around the corner and wouldn’t you know it, there go Osama bin Laden himself ‘bout to go to the bathroom. I says: “Hey man, could you wait a few minutes? I got to drop some logs.”

“Just like Americans,” he reply. “always so impatient. You will wait. I must go drop some bombs in the toilet bowl. Get it? Drop bombs? Bombs, because I’m bin Laden! Ha Ha! Death to America.”

The boy start to say more, waving his finger all around. I’m thinking, “He sure is long winded.” But I’m standing there passing some long winds myself. so I’m not trying to listen to nothing he saying. He take one of them blinks for emphasis then he stop in mid-sentence, opens his eyes and gets to sniffing. “Allah, what is that smell?” he say. That’s when I try to get around him. I dips and ducks like them runaway slaves I used to tell on. Bin Laden sticks out his foot and I go all a-tumblin’ toward the bathroom. He try to step over me to get to that toilet, but I grabs his legs and yanks at ‘em. We’s down on the ground wrestling and I’m pulling his beard and he’s punching me and I’m clenching my butt cheeks so don’t nothing leak out when I hear a pop. Loud as all get out. At first I think, that was a damn sizeable fart. But then I realize he ain’t wrestling so much no more.

I guess that boy had reached in the wrong place and touched up that gun I takes with me into battle. He about as limp as a ragdoll.  As I’m getting up, some Navy SEALs come into the room. They got they mouths all open. One lie down next to bin Laden to figure if it’s him and he rise and say: “Yep, we got Geronimo.”

I get a little proud ‘cause I ain’t realize they was using the code name I made up. I was on the team that catch the injun Geronimo back in the day. His code name back then was “Mary, Mother of Jesus.” The damn Catholics made us apologize.  This time when they was asking for names, I says, “Who can we insult and get away with it? I know, the negroes!” My first suggestion for a codename for Osama was “The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” But they rejected that one for some reason. Same with “Rosa Parks,” “Sojourner Truth,” “Frederick Douglass,” “Harriet Tubman,” “El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz,” “Medgar Evers” and “J.J. Evans.”  Somewhere along the lines I threw out “Geronimo.” And I guess they took a liking to that one, figuring an injun is as good as a negro is as good as an a-rab and I’m OK with that.

But yeah, after they determine it was that bin Laden boy everybody get all silent looking at him lying there like a newborn baby. “Is he-is he-is he dead?” I ask. Then one of the SEALs start ranting. He say that Kenyan boy in Washington gon’ be mad. We was supposed to capture bin Laden to put him on trial, not shoot him down. Say this look like a ‘ssassination. I start to feel bad. I was there when that Lincoln boy was ‘ssassinated. I ain’t agree with his politics and that freeing the negroes policy, but they ain’t have to do him like that. Then they ‘ssassinate Kennedy and LBJ come talking all that civil rights mess. Ol’ ‘ssassination some bad stuff.

Meanwhile I’m thinking all this, my stomach ain’t keeping silent; it’s bubbling and aching and shooting out silent ones. Them SEALs ask me what we gon’ tell the Kenyan. Man, I was at a loss.

“That’s a good question,” I say. “I got to think about that one. You got a newspaper?”

“A newspaper?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I got to go drop something—I do my best thinking on the bowl anyway—but I notice that that bin Laden boy ain’t got no toilet paper.”

Rion Amilcar Scott writes fiction all over the damn place, tweets @reeamilcarscott and blogs at datsun flambe.

Ol’ Clementine Explains How he and a Team of Navy SEALs Killed Osama bin Laden

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NOTE: This is the third and final post in the series, THE MERKING OF OBL (though it may be back as an occasional feature). Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Ol' Clementine

Eds. note: At 236-years-old, Ol’ Clementine is the oldest man in the world. He worked as a slave in most of the Confederate states and has continued the profession long after Emancipation. Occasionally, he shares his unique perspective on the pressing issues of the day and we present it for you, dear reader.

One thing most folks don’t know ‘bout me is that I been in the Navy since there was a Navy and I been a Navy SEAL since the SEALs been pups.  Yep, SEAL Team 6, as a matter of fact. Been proud to serve, for no pay of course. It remind me of back in them days when I used to fight against them Northern folk who kept meddlin’ with Southern affairs back during the War of Yankee Aggression.

I could tell you a rack of stories from my Navy SEAL days, but I figure you only interested in the time we went and got that Osama boy, so that’s the story I’m gon’ tell. Lots of ‘spiracy theories and misinformation and tales told by confused folks, but this is how it went down.

Well, we in that helicopter and we getting closer and closer to that bin Laden boy’s house and maybe I’m nervous or maybe it’s all that damn curry I be eating, but my stomach’s gone with the wind. I mean it’s real foul in that helicopter. First, when I pass gas, I keep pointing at them damn SEAL dogs with the titanium teeths, but it gets so loud I can’t even pretend it’s the dogs no more. I call out: “Hey, how long till we get to that boy’s house and do he have a bathroom?”

See, I’m not trying to shit in no hole in the ground or out in the sand like a cat. I figure that boy is rich, he probably got gold plated toilets and sinks better than my ol’ massa from back in 1845. I was with that man a year and he was rich and famous. This was down in Georgia before them Yankee boys burned it. We was supposed to shit out in a little outhouse down on the edge of the plantation, but ol’ massa’s facilities was special. The boy was so rich he had indoor plumbing. Now everybody got indoor plumbing, but back then only the richest of the rich white folks had it. I used to sneak up there and do my business. Leave a little unflushed negro poo in that bowl when I was in a hurry. I ain’t want to get caught. Them folks musta been ignorant cause they couldn’t tell the negro poo from the white poo. You shoulda seen the lady of the house yelling at poor lil’ James, that was her son, about leaving his mess all swirling and around and bobbing up and down without flushing.

It all went to shit, so to speak, when lil’ James got tired of being yelled at and did some ‘vestigating. This was on a day when I fried me some pigs feets that felt like they was kicking my stomach in. I was halfway through a nice little movement when they kicked down the door and dragged me from the bowl. That little fiasco got me sold down South. Lost the best job I ever had on account of my runny behind. And I deserved it. Who want to do their business after a negro? I get it.

But things done changed these days and of course white folks shit after negroes all the time now. I don’t ‘gree with it, but that’s how it is. So, anyway, we keep flying and it seem like a long ride. So I asks, “Where we going? Where this boy live, Detroit?”

I guess they ain’t want to give me answer ’cause one of them dudes said: “About as bad.”

“Ol’ Clementine ain’t no fool,” I say. “I know my gas smell ‘about as bad’ as it ever smell before. You ain’t gotta insult me. I want to know when and where we touching down. I got to go.”

Them SEAL boys get to ignoring me and I keep yelling until the some of them tell me to sit my stankin’ ass down and I think they rude. I ain’t nobody, but an ol’ Alabama slave, but I’m old enough to serve some of their daddies and daddies’ daddies. But I sit my ass down, still farting up a dust storm and them SEALs start trying to move away from me. It get so hectic inside that funky ol’ helicopter that one of them SEALs open the door, talking ‘bout he can’t breathe. It warn’t that bad, but all them folks is moving all around and the door is open, sand just a-flying all through the copter. You gotta forgive the pilot for being distracted. Just as we come to bin Laden’s house, he crashes the thing and we rolling all around the ground and some of them SEALs is yelling, “Fresh air! Fresh air!” It offend me a little bit. My wind ain’t that bad. I mean for a negro, of course.

Them SEALs start to running and scattering around the compound just a-shooting away. Not me, I holds my gun at my side. I only shitted a little bit when that copter went down. Figure I got enough in me to make these droppy draws drag all along the desert sand so I starts looking for a bathroom.

The first bathroom I find is on the ground floor. I step in that place and it’s like Shaytan himself had just sit on the bowl. There’s mudbutt all up in that bowl like they ain’t believe in flushing and all along the ground. Disgusting. I figure bin Laden got his own bathroom and if it ain’t ‘macculate it’s at least tolerable.

I run upstairs and around the corner and wouldn’t you know it, there go Osama bin Laden himself ‘bout to go to the bathroom. I says: “Hey man, could you wait a few minutes? I got to drop some logs.”

“Just like Americans,” he reply. “always so impatient. You will wait. I must go drop some bombs in the toilet bowl. Get it? Drop bombs? Bombs, because I’m bin Laden! Ha Ha! Death to America.”

The boy start to say more, waving his finger all around. I’m thinking, “He sure is long winded.” But I’m standing there passing some long winds myself. so I’m not trying to listen to nothing he saying. He take one of them blinks for emphasis then he stop in mid-sentence, opens his eyes and gets to sniffing. “Allah, what is that smell?” he say. That’s when I try to get around him. I dips and ducks like them runaway slaves I used to tell on. Bin Laden sticks out his foot and I go all a-tumblin’ toward the bathroom. He try to step over me to get to that toilet, but I grabs his legs and yanks at ‘em. We’s down on the ground wrestling and I’m pulling his beard and he’s punching me and I’m clenching my butt cheeks so don’t nothing leak out when I hear a pop. Loud as all get out. At first I think, that was a damn sizeable fart. But then I realize he ain’t wrestling so much no more.

I guess that boy had reached in the wrong place and touched up that gun I takes with me into battle. He about as limp as a ragdoll.  As I’m getting up, some Navy SEALs come into the room. They got they mouths all open. One lie down next to bin Laden to figure if it’s him and he rise and say: “Yep, we got Geronimo.”

I get a little proud ‘cause I ain’t realize they was using the code name I made up. I was on the team that catch the injun Geronimo back in the day. His code name back then was “Mary, Mother of Jesus.” The damn Catholics made us apologize.  This time when they was asking for names, I says, “Who can we insult and get away with it? I know, the negroes!” My first suggestion for a codename for Osama was “The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” But they rejected that one for some reason. Same with “Rosa Parks,” “Sojourner Truth,” “Frederick Douglass,” “Harriet Tubman,” “El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz,” “Medgar Evers” and “J.J. Evans.”  Somewhere along the lines I threw out “Geronimo.” And I guess they took a liking to that one, figuring an injun is as good as a negro is as good as an a-rab and I’m OK with that.

But yeah, after they determine it was that bin Laden boy everybody get all silent looking at him lying there like a newborn baby. “Is he-is he-is he dead?” I ask. Then one of the SEALs start ranting. He say that Kenyan boy in Washington gon’ be mad. We was supposed to capture bin Laden to put him on trial, not shoot him down. Say this look like a ‘ssassination. I start to feel bad. I was there when that Lincoln boy was ‘ssassinated. I ain’t agree with his politics and that freeing the negroes policy, but they ain’t have to do him like that. Then they ‘ssassinate Kennedy and LBJ come talking all that civil rights mess. Ol’ ‘ssassination some bad stuff.

Meanwhile I’m thinking all this, my stomach ain’t keeping silent; it’s bubbling and aching and shooting out silent ones. Them SEALs ask me what we gon’ tell the Kenyan. Man, I was at a loss.

“That’s a good question,” I say. “I got to think about that one. You got a newspaper?”

“A newspaper?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I got to go drop something—I do my best thinking on the bowl anyway—but I notice that that bin Laden boy ain’t got no toilet paper.”

Rion Amilcar Scott writes fiction all over the damn place, tweets @reeamilcarscott and blogs at datsun flambe.

Birther Control or Ol' Clementine Got Some Questions About The President's Birth Certificate

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Ol' Clementine

Eds. note: At 236-years-old, Ol’ Clementine is the oldest man in the world. He worked as a slave in most of the Confederate states and has continued the profession long after Emancipation. Occasionally, he shares his unique perspective on the pressing issues of the day and we present it for you, dear reader.

Back when that Kenyan boy was running for president I was living in New York and working for Mister Trump, for no pay of course. Ain’t have no time to be thinking ‘bout no politics.

I was a judge on his show The Apprentice, ‘cept he ain’t want me on camera. So I stay behind the scenes advising Boss Trump each week on which contestant to sell down South.

People keep telling me this man Brock O’Bama is running for president and talking all this Yes We Can stuff. And white folks is smiling up in my face saying I should be proud and look how far my people have come. Proud? I’m furrowing my brow and looking at them funny. I ain’t no Irishman. What I gotta be proud of this O’Bama boy for? Then I figure we ain’t have an Irishman in the White House in a long time. Should be nice. I never seen the boy; how was I supposed to know he was a negro?

One thing about me is I don’t vote. Uh uh. Never have. Won’t do it. It’s just not right.

I’m what they call a strict constructionist. That’s when you follow the Constitution and don’t worry about no ‘mendments. Some of them ‘mendments are good. Like the 2nd ‘mendment. Shot me a grizzly the other day and got them bear arms over my fireplace.

But it say there in the Constitution that I’m 3/5th of a man. So I don’t see where I gets off casting a ballot. I don’t care if some activist judge say I got the right. I ain’t ‘bout to disrespect the founding fathers’ vision. And part of they vision is you got to be born here to be president. Once I figure things out, I gets powerful angry. It’s obvious he ain’t from either the Union or the Confederate States. After all, his name Barack Hussein Obama (not Brock O’Bama like I thought). If that don’t sound like the name of some negro Kenyan Asalamalakum negro then I don’t know what do.

I’m looking at the TV and there he is just a-making laws and talking to white folks anyway he want. I’m so shocked watching this boy’s antics that I slap myself in the mouth so hard I tip over in my chair. Back hit the floor and legs just shooting up in the air.

I’m the first one that begin all that question-asking and ‘vestigating. Then people start getting ‘spicious about that boy. On Nov. 5, 2008 you should have seen all the white people who voted for him like, “What have I done?” Guess they like me and misheard the man’s name.

I tell Mister Trump he need to do something, but he don’t want to listen. That short birth certificate look fake, I say. Why he don’t release the long one? It’s not even from no real place. Ain’t nobody ever heard of no Hawaii. Honolulu? That just sound fake.

We go back and forth about it for a few months. Mr. Trump try and say Obama had one of them birth notices in the Hawaii newspaper. I look at this fool like he done slam lost his mind. I say, “Don’t you know them Kenyan negroes got them magical bush doctor powers? Make it appear like there were a birth notice in the paper back then on that day they say he was born on when, in truth, there wasn’t no such birth notice anywhere near that damn newspaper.”

After the president get to giving health care to little black negro children, Mr. Trump start getting concerned. He say, “Clementine, you may have a point.  This could be big, tremendous, the most amazing thing that ever happened in the history of the world. Bigger even than this season of my hit, number 1 NBC reality show, The Apprentice. Sunday at 10/ 9 central. This is going to be uuuuge!”

Mister Trump don’t say ‘huge’ like normal people. He say it like rich folks. Rich folks leave out the ‘h.’ And he was right, this thing was uuuuge, because the next day he say he gon’ send me to Hawaii to ‘vestigate.

When he tell me that, I’m all excited ’cause I never left the United States before. Ain’t want to get all ‘mancipated by accident. Man next to me say when the plane touch down you get laid by some Hawaiian woman so I get even more excited. That didn’t happen. Some woman put flowers round my neck and then I look at her all amorous-like and I’m thinking, this is where I get laid, but she move on and I ain’t press the issue none.

Then I thought about it; maybe he ain’t mean as soon as you touch down you get laid. Maybe it happens after you get out onto the town. So I went to the beach. Went out to the club and started dancing with fine Hawaiian women. Got slam dunk off mai tais at the bar. Figure I keep partying and eventually I’ll get laid.

To tell you the truth, I forgot about ‘vestigating this birth certificate thing.

About a week after I got to Hawaii, Boss Trump call me. He ask: “Have you seen the birth certificate?”

“No, suh,” I say.

“Incredible. Outrageous. Out of this world. More out of this world than one of my buildings or my television show, which by the way, is the biggest, most exciting show on NBC and all of television,” he reply. “What about people who knew him growing up?”

“No, suh,” I says. “I ain’t met a one.”

“Unbelievable. No one knows this guy until later in life. Keep digging, Clementine, this is good stuff. This is uuuuuge!”

So Mister Trump hangs up and I don’t feel bad about leading him astray. After all, I ain’t lie. Plus I figure I bought myself some time. So I go back to the club, back to the beach, back on the hunt ‘cause I ain’t get laid yet.

But then about two weeks later, I’m watching TV and that Kenyan negro is on the screen looking serious and he say, “Asalamalakum my fellow Kenyans, er, I mean, Hello, my fellow Americans. Here go my birth certificate. I ain’t got time for this shit no more. Later for you suckers. PEACE.”

Immediately my phone gets to ringing and I know its Mister Trump. When I answer, he’s yelling and screaming.  Say I have him out there looking like an “absolute fool.” I’m thinking, that rat fur you got on top of your head got you looking like a fool, but I don’t say that. What I do say is, “You should be prouda yaself, boss. You helped put an end to this issue.”

“Clementine, you’re absolutely right,” he say. Then he gets quiet like he thinking. “Well, he’s an American alright,” Mister Trump say, “but he’s still black.”

“Yes, suh,” I say. “Besides, we got much more to ‘vestigate.”

“We do?”

“Yes, suh. He claim he a Christian, right? Anyone seen his baptismal records?”

Rion Amilcar Scott writes fiction all over the damn place, tweets @reeamilcarscott and blogs at datsun flambe.

Birther Control or Ol’ Clementine Got Some Questions About The President’s Birth Certificate

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Ol' Clementine

Eds. note: At 236-years-old, Ol’ Clementine is the oldest man in the world. He worked as a slave in most of the Confederate states and has continued the profession long after Emancipation. Occasionally, he shares his unique perspective on the pressing issues of the day and we present it for you, dear reader.

Back when that Kenyan boy was running for president I was living in New York and working for Mister Trump, for no pay of course. Ain’t have no time to be thinking ‘bout no politics.

I was a judge on his show The Apprentice, ‘cept he ain’t want me on camera. So I stay behind the scenes advising Boss Trump each week on which contestant to sell down South.

People keep telling me this man Brock O’Bama is running for president and talking all this Yes We Can stuff. And white folks is smiling up in my face saying I should be proud and look how far my people have come. Proud? I’m furrowing my brow and looking at them funny. I ain’t no Irishman. What I gotta be proud of this O’Bama boy for? Then I figure we ain’t have an Irishman in the White House in a long time. Should be nice. I never seen the boy; how was I supposed to know he was a negro?

One thing about me is I don’t vote. Uh uh. Never have. Won’t do it. It’s just not right.

I’m what they call a strict constructionist. That’s when you follow the Constitution and don’t worry about no ‘mendments. Some of them ‘mendments are good. Like the 2nd ‘mendment. Shot me a grizzly the other day and got them bear arms over my fireplace.

But it say there in the Constitution that I’m 3/5th of a man. So I don’t see where I gets off casting a ballot. I don’t care if some activist judge say I got the right. I ain’t ‘bout to disrespect the founding fathers’ vision. And part of they vision is you got to be born here to be president. Once I figure things out, I gets powerful angry. It’s obvious he ain’t from either the Union or the Confederate States. After all, his name Barack Hussein Obama (not Brock O’Bama like I thought). If that don’t sound like the name of some negro Kenyan Asalamalakum negro then I don’t know what do.

I’m looking at the TV and there he is just a-making laws and talking to white folks anyway he want. I’m so shocked watching this boy’s antics that I slap myself in the mouth so hard I tip over in my chair. Back hit the floor and legs just shooting up in the air.

I’m the first one that begin all that question-asking and ‘vestigating. Then people start getting ‘spicious about that boy. On Nov. 5, 2008 you should have seen all the white people who voted for him like, “What have I done?” Guess they like me and misheard the man’s name.

I tell Mister Trump he need to do something, but he don’t want to listen. That short birth certificate look fake, I say. Why he don’t release the long one? It’s not even from no real place. Ain’t nobody ever heard of no Hawaii. Honolulu? That just sound fake.

We go back and forth about it for a few months. Mr. Trump try and say Obama had one of them birth notices in the Hawaii newspaper. I look at this fool like he done slam lost his mind. I say, “Don’t you know them Kenyan negroes got them magical bush doctor powers? Make it appear like there were a birth notice in the paper back then on that day they say he was born on when, in truth, there wasn’t no such birth notice anywhere near that damn newspaper.”

After the president get to giving health care to little black negro children, Mr. Trump start getting concerned. He say, “Clementine, you may have a point.  This could be big, tremendous, the most amazing thing that ever happened in the history of the world. Bigger even than this season of my hit, number 1 NBC reality show, The Apprentice. Sunday at 10/ 9 central. This is going to be uuuuge!”

Mister Trump don’t say ‘huge’ like normal people. He say it like rich folks. Rich folks leave out the ‘h.’ And he was right, this thing was uuuuge, because the next day he say he gon’ send me to Hawaii to ‘vestigate.

When he tell me that, I’m all excited ’cause I never left the United States before. Ain’t want to get all ‘mancipated by accident. Man next to me say when the plane touch down you get laid by some Hawaiian woman so I get even more excited. That didn’t happen. Some woman put flowers round my neck and then I look at her all amorous-like and I’m thinking, this is where I get laid, but she move on and I ain’t press the issue none.

Then I thought about it; maybe he ain’t mean as soon as you touch down you get laid. Maybe it happens after you get out onto the town. So I went to the beach. Went out to the club and started dancing with fine Hawaiian women. Got slam dunk off mai tais at the bar. Figure I keep partying and eventually I’ll get laid.

To tell you the truth, I forgot about ‘vestigating this birth certificate thing.

About a week after I got to Hawaii, Boss Trump call me. He ask: “Have you seen the birth certificate?”

“No, suh,” I say.

“Incredible. Outrageous. Out of this world. More out of this world than one of my buildings or my television show, which by the way, is the biggest, most exciting show on NBC and all of television,” he reply. “What about people who knew him growing up?”

“No, suh,” I says. “I ain’t met a one.”

“Unbelievable. No one knows this guy until later in life. Keep digging, Clementine, this is good stuff. This is uuuuuge!”

So Mister Trump hangs up and I don’t feel bad about leading him astray. After all, I ain’t lie. Plus I figure I bought myself some time. So I go back to the club, back to the beach, back on the hunt ‘cause I ain’t get laid yet.

But then about two weeks later, I’m watching TV and that Kenyan negro is on the screen looking serious and he say, “Asalamalakum my fellow Kenyans, er, I mean, Hello, my fellow Americans. Here go my birth certificate. I ain’t got time for this shit no more. Later for you suckers. PEACE.”

Immediately my phone gets to ringing and I know its Mister Trump. When I answer, he’s yelling and screaming.  Say I have him out there looking like an “absolute fool.” I’m thinking, that rat fur you got on top of your head got you looking like a fool, but I don’t say that. What I do say is, “You should be prouda yaself, boss. You helped put an end to this issue.”

“Clementine, you’re absolutely right,” he say. Then he gets quiet like he thinking. “Well, he’s an American alright,” Mister Trump say, “but he’s still black.”

“Yes, suh,” I say. “Besides, we got much more to ‘vestigate.”

“We do?”

“Yes, suh. He claim he a Christian, right? Anyone seen his baptismal records?”

Rion Amilcar Scott writes fiction all over the damn place, tweets @reeamilcarscott and blogs at datsun flambe.

Ol’ Clementine Remembers the War of Yankee Aggression

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Eds. note: On the 150th anniversary of The Civil War, that chapter in the country’s history remains a controversial one. To gain perspective, we turn to the world’s oldest man, former Alabama slave, Ol’ Clementine. At 236 years old, he participated in some of the key battles of the Civil War.

Everybody keep talking about the ‘Civil War.’ ‘Civil War’ this.  ‘Civil War’ that. All I hear nowadays. Who want to keep talking about that? Sound like a bunch of damn fools. I guess it’s an anniversary so that make sense, but it’s bunch of nonsense mostly. I guess I gotta forgive folks; they wasn’t around when that war began. I was. Clementine gon’ tell you how it really got started.

It was back on April 12, 1861, a Tuesday if I remember correctly. I was 86 years old and mostly retired from my days on Master-what’s-his-name’s (forgive me, it’s been so long) farm. He dead now like everybody else. Though I was retired, I used to still wake up before 4-a.m.-o’clock-in-the-morning five days out the week just to work them fields and show those young boys how to do it. Would go late into the night. Died three times ‘neath the Alabama sun and each time, after some minutes, got right back to work. That’s how much I loved it out there.  And that’s what makes me special. I seen folks die out in them fields and I’m always like, why that fool don’t get back up? Die on your own time. I works down here in a factory in Alabama to this day, for no pay of course, and I die about four times a week. Don’t see me whining about it.

Anyway, I was talking about how that Yankee Aggressive War got start. It was one of them special days. We call ‘em cartoons cause they had cartoon birds and bees and butterflies just flying round our heads like in Song of the South, that old Disney movie they try to pretend don’t exist, but I seen it on the Youtubes. Yep, ol’ Clementine know how to work the internet. I’m the only former slave that got a Myspace page.

On that day, them cartoon bees was buzzing around my head and I didn’t near find them as amusing as Uncle Remus. Cartoon bees got them cartoon stingers. So I was swatting ‘em and shooing them little smiling blue birds because they kept shitting all over my head. They’d shit and then smile and circle my head and shit some more. I was usually a-zip-a-dee-doo-dahing it up like the rest of my folks in the fields, but them cartoon animals was annoying. We sure did love to be out there. While I was wiping some of that cartoon crap from my head, this one guy come running up. He say them Yankees starting to get ‘ggressive. I was like, “What’s ‘‘ggressive?’” He say, ‘You know when someone want to start fighting.’” I stood there scratching my head because Ol’ Clementine know a lot of words, but I ain’t know that one. We went inside and found a dictionary and you know what, turns out this fool meant ‘aggressive,’ with an ‘a.’

So theys all like, “What we gonna do?” One negro was like, “Let’s get some weapons and go fight for the Yankees and then we can be free.” I popped that boy in the mouth. We was treated so good. Only some fool tricked by them white abolitionists want to be ‘free.’ I said: “Fool, this ain’t about no slavery. This here aggression is about State’s Rights. We don’t win this war the Supreme Court say we gotta kill unborn babies and then one day maybe we have ourselves one of those negro Asalamalakum negroes from Kenya as president. You want that?”

Well, my folks get to gasping and grumbling and even the guy I popped come around.

First, we went to ol’ Master-what’s-his-name. He start equivocating and mumbling. Say he got to talk to some other white folks. We waiting around half a day and don’t hear nothing from him. I’m getting itchy to solve this situation and them folks is just talking and them Yankees are getting more and more aggressive. Only a matter of time before they get to this plantation and seize the place and tell us we’s free. Who want that? Eventually, I gathered up my folks and we got some weapons and we found them Yankees and got mighty aggressive with them.

After that battle, we started calling it “The War of Yankee Aggression.” The name caught on, but then ran outta steam after we lost the war and them Yanks came and told me I was out of a job. Saddest day of my life.

Always liked “The War of Yankee Aggression” better than any of the other names they gave it. “Civil War” don’t make no sense that I can figure. How a war gon’ be civil? A war start by someone being aggressive and another someone being aggressive right back. Like remember how on 9/11/01 Saddam Hussein got aggressive with us and we turned right round and got aggressive with him?

Yeah, me neither.

Rion Amilcar Scott writes fiction all over the damn place, tweets @reeamilcarscott and blogs at datsun flambe.