“Just lookit it!” Mike stands, his head canted sharply off to the left. “I can’t put it sthraight atall.”
WHOMP! Pat gives him a wallop with his fist that snaps Mike’s head all the way around to the right.
“Now it’s stuck on the ither side—”
WHOMP! The cymbalist joins the pit drummer as Pat throws another haymaker, this one knocking Mike’s head straight. He wiggles his jaw, checks his nose.
“Ye sh’d be a physician, Pat — ye’ve got a mother’s touch.”
“Did she bate ye, the auld woman?”
“Only when she could catch me, Pat. Ah, but she was a lovely woman — she passed into a better world just the other night.”
“Me condolences, Mike. Did she say anything before she died?”
“Say anything? She nivver shut her trap fer sixty years!”
The drummer cracks the rim of his snare.
“I hate to tap you again, old man,” says Niles without turning his head to Harry, “but I’m afraid that once more I’ve been caught short.”
Harry has managed to save most of his monthly stipend, left from their mother’s estate, while Niles was squandering his own “advance” in the Frozen North.
“You’re not gambling again?”
Niles flashes his dazzling smile, spreads his hands. “Life. Expenses. I am not the paragon of thrift that my dear brother is — what can I say?”
“I had to send me brother Frank a tellygram to give him the hard tidins. Did ye know they charge ye a nickel a word now? A long-winded feller could cost himself a great deal of the auld spondoolacs.”
“And what did ye say?”
“Ma’s dead.”
“That’s it? Yer only livin mother who worked her poor fingers to the nub to provide fer ye, gone to her reward, may the good Lord bless her soul, and all ye can say is ‘Ma’s dead’?”
“The very thing the tellygraph feller sez. ‘See here,’ he sez, ‘a mother’s got a right to a proper hewlogy. I’ll give ye three more words, gratis.’ ”
“Gratis, is it?”
“That’s Latin fer ye don’t have to pay.”
“I know what it manes, ye great flamin eejit. What did ye add to yer tellygram?”
“Ma’s dead. Bed fer sale.”
A big thunk on the bass drum as Pat gives Mike a roundhouse smack, Mike rolling backward and springing up on his feet to join Pat, singing and jigging as the orchestra backs them with the tune—
Mrs. Murphy had a party
Just about a week ago
Everything was plentiful
The Murphys they’re not slow
“What do you say, Brother?” Niles continues hopefully, turning to Harry and looking especially repentant. “You know what a hopeless case I am with finances.”
Harry decides to make him work for it a little. “How much?”
“Whatever you can spare.”
“Have you talked to the Judge?”
Niles shakes his head, grinning. “No blood coming out of that stone.”
The bicycle shop has been doing well for him the last few years, word that he’s a wizard with a wheel spreading beyond the city, and he’s put quite a pile aside. But Niles — he’s seen Niles throw away a twenty-dollar double eagle on a single roll of the dice, throw away more in one sitting than the wheel shop takes in for a month.
“I could part with ten,” says Harry.
Niles makes a pained face.
Harry knows that there is no way to gauge what his own expenses will be if he really makes the break and goes up north, how long it might take to get himself situated. He tries to hold firm.
“Ten dollars,” he says, “if you promise to pay me back on the first.”
Mc Ginty he got roaring drunk
His eyes were bulging out
He jumped on the pianer
And loudly he did shout—
Niles has never paid him back a dime, not on any of the loans over the years, so it is as good as gone. The sky, he knows, is not the limit for Niles. His brother crosses his arms and stares darkly at the stage, sulking.
“Who put the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder?”
Nobody answered, so he shouted all the louder
“It’s an Oirish trick it’s true
And I’ll lick the Mick that threw
The overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder!”
“Like our Board of Aldermen,” grumbles Niles, “but with more dignity.” Before he broke off with Mae, Niles had considered a career in politics.
“Most men step into public life from another profession,” the Judge observed when this design was revealed, “with allegiances and rivalries already forged in the world at large. Since you are as yet—innocent of employment,” and here he raised his eyebrows the way he does when lecturing a convicted man from the bench, “you will be free to defraud the citizenry without encumbrance.”
The lights rise again on the minstrels.
“Brother Tambo!” calls the Interlocutor. “Explain to me why you were tardy for tonight’s presentation.”
“Well, suh,” explains the tambourine man, “I’s on my way here when I’s accosted by a whole mess a young boys.”
“Ruffians.”
“Little bitty ones. They was wearin sho’t pants.”
“You mean knickers?”
“Nawsuh, they was white boys.”
This one earns the biggest laugh of the night. Harry looks back up to the left rear balcony and they are laughing too, mostly sports out on the town for the night, a few with their hats still on their heads. He has been to tent shows where the numbers have been reversed, five colored to every white man, but those were with real colored on the stage. It was Niles who dragged him to his first nigger show at the Thalian, sneaking in late and staying in the back in hopes they would not be spotted and reported to the Judge. In the afterpiece one of the actors descended from the ceiling wearing angel wings and Harry had been more fascinated with that, with the mechanics of how it was done, than with any of the jokes or songs or travesties played out on the boards.
“Brother Tambo, how would you like to earn a dollar?”
The end man’s eyes bug out even more. “Is it ’lection day awready?”
Righteous applause from the fair-skinned patrons. The sports in Nigger Heaven are not amused.
There is furniture in the room Royal doesn’t have a name for. He has never been in a white man’s house, rich or poor, but his mother is in them now and then to take the laundry and he has read books. Is that a divan or a credenza? Or maybe a credenza is a kind of piano, like the one Jessie is resting her hand upon, smiling slightly, standing in her white dress like somebody is painting her portrait.
“We’ve been the first called, I believe,” says Junior, “because they think we’re immune.”
“Immune to what?”
Dr. Lunceford is the most intimidating man Royal has ever met, black or white, despite his soft tone and his manners. Sergeant Jacks with his forehead resting on your own, screaming instruction and insult, breath hot on your face, has got nothing compared to this man’s gaze. Why, exactly, are you in my house? it asks when he smiles and grips your hand. You don’t really belong here, do you? it suggests as he inquires about your training and destination.
“To tropical diseases,” says Junior.
“That’s nonsense.”
“A prejudice perhaps, but one that works in our favor. This is a grand opportunity. Fighting for the flag, shoulder to shoulder with our white brothers in arms, freeing the oppressed Cuban from his bondage—”