‘Mister Dockawee, might I have a beah pwease?’
‘Everyone watch this!’ Schmidt ordered as soon as the beer was put down.
Charlie would grip the glass with his teeth and tilt it till the beer ran over his face – he gulped frantically, catching every drop he could. Drenched and choking, yet he never unloosed the glass till it was empty. Then would set it down as carefully as he had picked it up, bow slightly and say,
‘Thank you, Mister Dockawee.’
‘My God, what a pig!’ – Schmidt would race back and forth on his platform, slapping his stumps. ‘Aint he the worst?’
A different brand of innocent was one who didn’t come into Dockery’s at all, but always chose Mama’s instead. This was an ancient Negro carrying a curtained cage more ancient than himself. He would set it down on its wrought-iron base, doff his little red monkey-cap to each woman individually and at last would pull a little string that caused the cage’s shade to rise.
Revealing a parrot that took one glassy glance around and screeched, ‘Let me out! I’m a married man! Let me out!’ Then hung upside down in a clench-beak rage while biting the bitten wood.
The old man stood a bit to one side, implying the bird was now on its own. But kept his cap extended should anyone care to drop a penny. If someone did, he would pull out a drawer at the cage’s base, where small pieces of colored paper lay folded promisingly. The parrot would snatch one and permit the purchaser to take it out of its beak. The message on each was the same:
Dummy! Don’t try to come back the way you came. Don’t you know a tiger is trailing you? Stay off footpaths – they have been mined just for you. Don’t peek under that stone, fool, a pit viper is planted there especially for you.
If you have any sense left at all you’ll stay downwind, six blunt-nose hyenas have a good whiff of you. Avoid open plains – buzzards have spotted you. Pay no heed to anyone in the trees, it is only the apes laughing their heads off at you. Natives are beating the brush for you. And you still call it ‘Civilization’?
Call it what you want. I call it a jungle.
Now you owe me 15¢ for a bowl of gumbo for being the only one not pursuing you.
‘I don’t believe that old man wrote all that, he aint got the sense for it,’ Finnerty decided.
‘Who did then?’ Hallie wondered.
‘The damned parrot, of course,’ Finnerty assured her.
And went off to see Kitty Twist. The new child who still had a thing or two to learn from his mouse.
Yet another wonder, neither snatch-mad nor prophesying, taxied in one narrowing twilight, made one brief scene; and no twilight brought him back again.
‘In person!’ this one announced himself – ‘Adler! King of the acrobats! Good as ever!’ Paunched and pallid, bald and tattooed: a man at least as good as ever. He came to the center of the parlor wearing seersucker so soiled and stained one wondered how many places he’d been thrown out of since the last time he’d changed.
‘Once an acrobat always an acrobat!’ he announced – ‘I invented the double high-wire back somersault.’
‘You invented it but who did it?’ Kitty Twist asked, but the king ignored all questions like that. Just stood back beaming until everyone had had a good look then asked so benignly: ‘How does it feel, now that you’ve met the king?’
‘It feels like hell,’ Kitty told him.
‘These young ladies are waiting for you to say hello, Mr King,’ Mama let him know no one cared a doodle in a wood how great he was. If he wanted to stay he’d have to let loose of some loot.
That didn’t disturb Adler. He knew how people loved to tease, pretending they hadn’t heard of Adler.
‘Are you with a circus or something, mister?’ Floralee inquired hopefully, and somehow that set him off.
‘Clear a space!’ He met the challenge as a motion picture director might, or at any rate so we’re told – ‘Women off the set! No crowding! Put out that cigarette!’ Then pointing right at Dove, who wasn’t even wearing cowboy boots – ‘You there! Tables end to end!’
Dove leaped to action, tumbling girls upon one another until Mama gathered them up and put them safely behind her. In rushed Finnerty to discover Dove placing two tables end to end and the king in command.
‘A little lower,’ the king instructed Dove. ‘No, a little higher. There, that’s just right.’
‘What the hell is this? a whorehouse or a circus?’ Finnerty demanded.
‘The man has signified, let him qualify, Oliver,’ Dove urged him to indulge Adler.
‘It better be good, all I got to say,’ Finnerty compromised.
The king had stripped to the waist and the hair of his chest gleamed white where it wasn’t grizzled; a chest as good as ever. Yet he dallied – ‘The king always says a few words first.’
‘Then say a few, king,’ Floralee pleaded.
‘Very few,’ Kitty suggested.
‘By God, this better be good,’ Finnerty resolved.
‘Ladies ’n gentlemen,’ Adler nodded toward Hallie, ‘I dedicate this amazing demonstration of human agility to the lady in the brown dress with the green earrings.’
‘Bust your damned neck instead and dedicate it to me,’ Kitty invited him.
Hallie didn’t acknowledge his gift lest he take it to mean her price tag was off. Ex-clown, ex-cop, ex-acrobat – ex-anything, all sought to please this indifferent dark woman in every way but by overpaying her. Money, they seemed to think, could never please her.
‘Do what you’re gonna do,’ Finnerty said.
The king turned his back to the tables, did a knee-bend and arched his back with surprising suppleness, bounded one short confident step forward, pitched himself ass over appetite, beaned himself beautifully on the table’s edge and crushed flat, shoulders shaking in noiseless laughter.
‘Why, he didn’t qualify after all!’ Dove was just simply incredulous.
‘Why don’t we sell the juke and buy beds for the money?’ Kitty asked, ‘every time I look around someone else is stretched out.’
Finnerty kicked the fellow to his feet, booted him through the door, made a bundle of his cap, coat and shirt and pitched it through the door after. Then threw a spittoon just for good measure. It clanged loud as it struck the stone, rang less loud as it bounced, then splashed faintly into the gutter. For a moment after, all was still. Then Adler’s foolish phizz popped right back in – ‘Good as ever!’ he defied everyone, and cap in hand and draggle-shirted, scurried off to seek some door where everyone would cry out on sight – ‘Champagne all around! The king is back!’
Some place where he could back-somersault all night to applause that would never cease.
‘Now don’t you go faultin’ me, Oliver,’ Mama told Finnerty. ‘I didn’t invite the man. And why every fool who hits New Orleans has to head right for my door is more than I can understand.’
The tables were back in place when the legless man rolled in. Immediately everyone but Floralee began trying to tell him at once what a show he’d just missed. For Floralee felt so elated by the whole thing all she wanted to do was sing—
‘Honey dear, run upstairs like a good girl,’ Mama asked her, for she knew how the girl loved to run any errand involving Hallie. ‘Tell Hallie her husband’s come.’
Floralee was so very long in coming down that at last Mama waddled up the steps herself. She found Floralee standing in the middle of Hallie’s room looking vaguely around as if Hallie were hiding from her.