A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing Read online

  Technically, this collection is composed of works of fiction. For the most part, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations—unless, of course, they are based on real characters, places, and incidents, in which case it’s anybody’s call. Because what is fiction, really? And reality? Forget about it. If you see any resemblance to real events or persons, living, dead—or anywhere in between—then it was most likely intended, and that’s your problem and not ours. So get over it.

  Published by Akashic Books

  ©2006 T Cooper & Adam Mansbach

  Cover design by Pirate Signal International

  Cover and chapter illustrations by Vinay Ganapathy

  ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-02-6

  e-ISBN: 9781617752179

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2005934829

  All rights reserved

  Printed in Canada

  First printing

  Akashic Books

  PO Box 1456

  New York, NY 10009

  [email protected]

  www.akashicbooks.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  INTRODUCTION by T Cooper & Adam Mansbach

  PAUL LA FARGE

  The Discovery of America

  ca. 2000 B.C.E.—present

  ALEXANDER CHEE

  Wampeshau

  1426–1524

  BENJAMIN WEISSMAN

  West

  1846

  KATE BORNSTEIN

  Dixie Belle: The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

  1865

  DAVID REES

  The Waterbury

  1884

  ADAM MANSBACH

  A True and Faithful Account of Mr. Ota Benga the Pygmy,

  Written by M. Berman, Zookeeper

  1905

  AMY BLOOM

  April 9, 1924

  1924

  T COOPER

  The Story That Refuses to Die

  1932

  FELICIA LUNA LEMUS

  Five and Dime Valentine

  1937

  DARIN STRAUSS

  One More Old Hat

  1946

  SARAH SCHULMAN

  The Courage to Love

  1955

  RON KOVIC

  The Recruiters

  1968

  KEITH KNIGHT

  The Harlem Globetrotters

  1971

  THOMAS O’MALLEY

  The Resurrection Men

  1989

  NEAL POLLACK

  The New Century

  1998

  VALERIE MINER

  Apprehensions

  2001

  DANIEL ALARCÓN

  The Anodyne Dreams of Various Imbeciles

  2011

  CONTRIBUTORS

  INTRODUCTION

  BY T COOPER & ADAM MANSBACH

  Introduction

  Dear Reader, Browser, or Shoplifter:

  Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. We can’t remember who said that, so here we are repeating it.

  We’re Americans, and as such, we can’t remember shit. Perhaps that’s why, as we write this, the massive, orchestrated effort by the current administration to revise history even as it occurs is experiencing almost total success. Events are being reduced to sound bites; sound bites are becoming mantras. The truth—if you edit carefully enough, omit artfully enough, distort brazenly enough—becomes lies. And lies, if repeated relentlessly, become truth. Especially if they are wedged immovably between the covers of the kind of history text that bored you to tears in high school.

  You ever wonder how it’s possible that history—the story of everything that’s ever happened—got so damn sterile and uninteresting that you and your friends spent most of tenth-grade American History ditching to smoke cigarettes in the parking lot?

  Well, to haul out another old saw, it’s because history is written by the winners. Those stale-ass textbooks, just like our received cultural memories, are packed with names, dates, places, and single-sentence summaries of events that, in reality, resonated differently for hundreds of millions of people.

  The goal of this collection is to move beyond the obvious and the canonical: to challenge, tease, and expand upon the hegemonic single-narrative of mainstream American history. Here are some of the moments and people left out of the textbooks. Here is what else happened on some of the dates and during many of the eras we were forced to memorize in school, or incorporate into the stride of our daily lives.

  So why use fiction as the way to get at the truth? Two reasons. The first is that’s what the best fiction is: a lie that reveals the truth. (That’s somebody else’s line too, by the way. We’re most likely totally mangling it, but since we can’t remember who said that one either, let’s just apologize to his estate and move on.)

  The second reason is that history is fiction. How can it not be? History becomes fiction the minute someone attempts to write it down, to retell it in any way, shape, or form. So many factors intervene between the moment history unfolds and any attempt to relay it: power, pain, bias, sadness, tragedy, elation, time, fear, desire—to name just a few. Plus, there’s the problem of who gets to tell the story. Howard Zinn addresses this issue beautifully in his important, comprehensive book, A People’s History of the United States. In fact, that was a title we considered borrowing for this book—you know, doing the cutesy thing where you insert an extra word with a little arrow:

  FICTIONAL

  A PEOPLE’s / HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

  Because in some ways, this collection is meant to capture the spirit of Zinn’s book. These are stories that take up the same challenge of speaking for the voiceless—who all too often are voiceless because somebody who will later be made into a statue is standing on their necks.

  As you can see, the name of the book ended up being A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing. This is simply an accurate description, not an attempt to preempt readers who might ask questions like, “What about the Watts Riots?” or “What about Eleanor Roosevelt’s purported lesbian relationships?”

  To such questions, we say: Right! Good point, boss. What about those things, and so much more? How about the entire eighteenth century, for instance? We totally left that out. By all means, send a letter to your favorite author, asking exactly why he or she did not take up a particular historical event and write a story about it for this anthology.

  But even if every author in America had returned our emails and letters (and in one case, text messages), this would still be a patchwork history, an anecdotal history, one with huge chunks missing. The stories in this book reflect the moments that moved this particular, eclectic batch of gifted and courageous writers and cartoonists. Of course, there are millions more stories, and we hope this collection provides some impetus for them to be told. We think the seventeen pieces that did make it between these covers are riveting, inventive, timely, funny, and—most pressingly for us—politically vital.

  A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing picks up—and yanks on—the thread of America’s supposed commitment to seeking the truth … even if that truth happens to be revealed in fiction.

  T Cooper & Adam Mansbach

  New York City

  May 2006

  ca. 2000 B.C.E.—present

  THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

  BY PAUL LA FARGE

  THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

  1

  There is a story that America was discovered by t
he Icelanders, who came across the North Atlantic in boats centuries ago, when the ocean was warmer and perhaps not quite as wide. They got to Greenland, and by some accounts went south as far as Virginia, where they left Icelandic artifacts: spearheads and mead jugs and the skulls of their enemies, the Danes. It is a certain fact that the skulls of Danes have been discovered in Virginia, although the purpose for which the Icelanders carried the skulls across the ocean and buried them there can only be guessed at.

  2

  According to another story, America was discovered by the Basques, who sailed the Atlantic in fishing boats, in search of cod. The Basques may have been blown across the ocean by a storm, because in those days storms were more frequent than they are now. Indeed, in the earliest times, when Europe and America were so close that you could practically jump from one to the other, the air between them was a perpetual storm, vast and greenish-black, which shot lightning into the narrow body of water that would one day become the Atlantic. Imagine how each continent must have looked to someone standing on the other shore in those days: a black land, lit only in flashes, where it seemed always to be raining. Nonetheless, the Basques took to their boats and crossed the ocean to America, where they left artifacts: wool caps, leather wineskins, and sturdy Basque shoes. None of these artifacts have survived, but when the French arrived in Louisiana, hundreds of years later, they found a tribe of Indians there whose language was unlike any they had ever heard, with the possible exception of Basque.

  3

  An old story has it that America was discovered by the Phoenicians. They discovered it on a clay tablet, where a scribe unfamiliar with the Phoenician alphabet had written west for east. They rowed across the ocean and there it was, America, big and green and full of animals! They landed in what is now New Hampshire, sacrificed some children, and rowed home. The holds of their galleys groaned with fur and copper. Their discovery would be widely known, but the Phoenicians, jealous as always of their trade secrets, erased America from their tablets, and claimed to have discovered England instead.

  4

  Long before anyone reached the eastern shores of America, this story goes, the continent was visited from the other side, by Japanese fishermen who were blown across the Pacific by a storm. They reached the Aleutian Islands, which were just like the country they had left, but rockier and more desolate, and infested with a small black biting fly unknown in Japan. Driven almost mad by these insects, the Japanese fishermen sailed down the coast as far as California, which looked just like China, only it was more arid and there were no temples. For reasons that this story does not supply, the fishermen wandered inland as far as New Mexico, where they lived for many years. They taught the natives to make pots, and to paint them with decorative patterns; they taught them the Japanese words for blue and yellow, and showed them how to burn their dead. There was so much they wanted to teach the natives! But most of their knowledge was useless in this desert country: no point in showing the natives how to fish, or how to build boats. As for the rest—the construction of huts, or the weaving of tatami mats—the natives already had their own way of doing things. Discouraged, the Japanese fishermen traveled overland back to California, where they found their boats half buried in sea grass. They cut themselves free and set out to sea; almost at once they were carried back to Japan by a storm blowing in the opposite direction. To this day, in parts of New Mexico, you can find fragments of pottery with designs on them that could be Japanese; also, Japanese and Zuni share the words ha and mo, which mean leaf and spherical object, respectively.

  5

  And this is not to mention the Hindus, who visited America some 3,000 years ago. We don’t know how or why they came, but we know they were here. The absence of Hindu monuments in the New World proves it: The Hindus were a Turanian people, and the Turanians did not construct monuments, not back then.

  6

  Dywed y chwedl fod gan Owain, frenin Gwynedd, nifer o feibion, ac mai enw ohonynt oedd Madog … Don’t you speak American? This story, which is almost certainly true, maintains that Owain, king of Gwynedd, had a number of sons, one of whom was named Madoc. Owain was the last independent Lord of North Wales, and when he died in 1170, his sons fell out among themselves. One of them, Madoc, took his retinue and crossed the high and far seas to a land which seemed to resemble Wales in character and climate, although, as they soon discovered, its extent was much greater than anything Welshmen had previously known—it was so big, in fact, that they had to invent new units of measurement to talk about the distances they traveled. Enchanted by all this open space, Madoc and his men went westward, leaving behind a trail of Welsh bibles, blue-eyed children, and legends. For centuries, explorers looked for Madoc’s colony. It was thought to lie beyond the Tuscaroras, beyond the Paducahs, beyond the Mandans, but apart from a few blue-eyed, fair-haired Indians, the explorers found no trace of Owain’s son. He must have kept going. Imagine Madoc coming to the shore of the Pacific and crossing that ocean, too; imagine Madoc and his men in Hawaii, in Japan. Imagine Madoc in China. He is very old now, and his blue eyes are dim with cataracts. But his children will keep walking west across the steppe when he is dead, and his grandchildren, and his great-grandchildren. One day they will come back to Wales. Then, perhaps, they will discover America again.

  7

  There is also a story that America was discovered by the Danes, who crossed the North Atlantic in their sturdy Danish boats, vastly superior in craftsmanship and seaworthiness to the boats of the Icelanders, and trod in their sturdy Danish boots, which were lighter and warmer than the boots of the Icelanders, on the shores of Nova Scotia. They traveled south as far as Virginia, which they found to their liking, and settled there, and the Danes would be there still if the Icelandic latecomers hadn’t descended from the north in their leaky, cramped vessels and killed them all—out of disappointment, probably, that they hadn’t discovered Virginia first.

  8

  Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qaddafi, the Libyan head of state, tells the story of a certain Arabian Emir who, long before the Danes had lashed together their rough craft and crossed the inconsiderable gap between Iceland and Greenland, navigated the length of the Mediterranean, through the teeth of Gibraltar, and across the whole width of the Atlantic Ocean, before making landfall on the Florida coast. So damp! the Emir sighed, overseeing the swamps which could all have been his, if only he chose to disembark his fierce Arab warriors on the shore. So smelly! And so unclean! The Emir, a wise leader, prized the health and happiness of his men more than the dubious fruit of a greenish tangle more than half underwater. He turned his ships around and sailed due east; favorable winds conveyed him so quickly in this holy direction that he was back in Arabia before the sun had set three times. He made a map of his voyage, and named the land he had seen for himself—but then, in a fit of modesty, he ordered his name struck from the map and replaced by his initial, K. The barbarous Frenchmen who pillaged his culture some centuries later found the map, and wondered about the mysterious land named Emir K., which they, being French, pronounced kah.

  9

  As for the fact that the Chinese were the first to visit America, we can infer it from the fact that they did everything first.

  10

  Though another story has it that America was discovered by Americans, who had been living in Europe for many years and made up their minds at last to come home. The proof: In parts of Germany and what is now the Czech Republic, if you dig, you can find spear points and axes of a distinctly American design.

  11

  And there is even another story, which has it that America remains to be discovered. Who will discover it, by what means, and what artifacts they will leave behind to prove that they were here—all of these things are unknown. The only certain thing is that the discoverers, when they come, will ride on the wings of a storm.

  1426—1524

  WAMPESHAU

  BY ALEXANDER CHEE

  Wampeshau

  The most plausible expl
anation is that the [North Salem] rocks were erected by the Chinese and the women Verrazzano met were the descendants of Chinese concubines. I suggest that the first settlers of North America came not with Columbus nor any other European Fleet, but in the Junks of Admiral Zhen Wen’s fleet, landing around Christmas 1421. Perhaps New England should now be named New China.

  —From Gavin Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered America

  1426, NARRAGANSETT

  The boy stands on the prow of the ship in the early night, watching the forest’s edge along the coast. The red sails are tied to the masts. In the dark they look like trees again.

  The boy calls it his father’s ship and he thinks of it this way. He’s the son of a concubine and the fleet’s astronomer, the chief navigator, born after their long passage up the coast of this country and raised during the mapping of its inner reaches. He is five. A warrior braid stripes the wind behind him as he hops up and down in place.

  He wants to fly.

  The fleet is all boats of teak, dragon-shaped junks with red sails like wings raised for flight that never descend. Fifteen ships fill the harbor, and each of them is like a mother and a litter, with barges towed behind for the horses, the deer and cattle, and the concubines.

  The concubines are not allowed to sleep aboard the ships except during storms at sea, which has the sailors, on this journey, oddly anxious for bad weather.

  In the astronomer’s cabin, the concubine brushes her hair. She can hear the tap tap of her son’s feet landing on the deck.

  The captain of the fleet’s guard is the boy’s idol, and has filled his head with stories of China and its heroes and monsters.

  I want to be a dragon, he told her a few nights before, as she put him to bed.