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

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.

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.