Feeling the tension-interface before him bulging inward against the clot of black men guarding the door, eyes straight ahead never looking to the side to acknowledge the sullen-stare question the back of his neck knew was there—Hey what you doin’ here, you shade mother you?
Barron threaded through them, neither intruding on turf nor giving ground. And like a bubble bursting through layers of oily tropical waters, was through, and inside.
A big barn of a room (scars patterning the flakey-paint ceiling where the barroom, amoeba-like, had absorbed shops or apartments by knocking down walls) sunk down a half-flight from the entrance, down three stairs into the cellar, huge slash-pop green poster-fronds painted halfway up the dim grimy-white walls like chartreuse flame in the junkie-funky fluorescent light that turned the sea of black faces to ashy washed-out blue-gray.
The far side of the room was a long bar with a black plastic bartop over some phony ersatz wood; no bar stools, only beertaps visible, and behind the bar no bottles, no mirror, just a crude phallic mural of warriors black and pagan around a tribal fire. Not a mirror in the entire room.
Barron stood above the tangle trying to spot Franklin before stepping down into The Clearing, the turf, choked with invisibly-bruised black bodies, gut-knowing he had better show a non-Man reason for being there real quick. Sullen eyes began to turn upward, measuring him as he stood there like so much meat—one spade? Hard-up junkie? Flush dumb John out for a piece of black tail? The Man? Is this shade mother The Man? Down here in black man’s country, where The Man’s a nigger? Federal heat? Barron felt the paranoia rising, a thousand eyes sharpening their knives… gotta make a move quick!
“Hey, ol’ Jack Barron—” a hoarse barroom shout from a two-man table at the far corner where the bar met the wall. Barron saw Henry George Franklin, alone with a bottle and two glasses, blearing at him through the thick blue smoke, waving a vague hand from a fawn-colored sportjac sleeve. “Hey, ol’ Jack, over here!”
Barron felt an electric thrill as he sensed his name flashing like a running mouse through the crowd. No shouts, no mumbling, just a sudden series of dampening drops in the general noise level jumping around the room like a silence-ghost, leaving knots of black men, dark-skinned women, staring up at him in its wake; then a general turning toward him, a couple of shouts, a quick tension-moment when nobody moved that came as fast as it went. And then a tall, willowy, New-York-street-face Negro standing just below him flashed him an ironic, brother-hippy smile, pulled a pair of black shades out of a jacket pocket and put them on.
And the man next to him did likewise. And the man next to him. In waves. In spreading circles. Then a rustle of glass and clothing and plastic and three-quarters of the people in the room were wearing black shades, staring up at him with obsidian plastic-framed sightless eyes as if waiting for some countersign while the moment continued to hang.
More of Luke’s mindfuck games? Barron wondered. Guy that started it a plant? Luke’s having me followed? Or… or could it be real?
He fished into his jacket pocket (did I put them here on purpose?), pulled out the pair of black sunglasses Greene had given him, put them on, stepped down to the floor of the bar room.
And abruptly the wheeling and dealing resumed, and it was like Jack Barron wasn’t there, like he was invisible, like he was black as the best of them—the ultimate compliment, but cool and distant as the top of Mount Everest. Like he was… a black shade. And he knew dead-certain Luke hadn’t engineered this one; it was too cool, too choreographed, too underplayed, too yeah, to be anything but a gut-reaction. The Black Shade…
Barron made his way across the crowded barroom—with no more than a nod or two in his direction, a smile here and there (cool, real cool, from the womb of cool)—to the table where Henry George Franklin nodded to him, poured him a shot of Jack Daniels even as he sat down.
Barron fingered the drink, then sipped it as he studied Franklin’s seamy, puffed face, stubble on the verge of becoming a beard, liver-brown bloodshot eyes, yellowed teeth in a slack wet mouth, and stinking like a brewery: face of Brackett Count estimated hundred million losers behind the glass interface of the black shades.
“Y’came, ol’ shade Jack Barron,” Franklin said half-affrontedly, “now ain’t that a bitch! Big important shade TV star in a place like this.”
“I’ve been thrown out of crummier holes flat on my ass,” Barron said, one-of-the-boys-wise, tossing down the drink half for the flash half for the gesture.
Franklin studied him thoughtfully, his eyes no less opaque than the shades Barron still was wearing, finally said: “Maybe jus’ have,” and poured each of them another drink.
“Yessir,” he said, “good ol’ Jack Daniels. No more corn out of Mason jars for ol’ Henry George… nossir, nothin’ but bottled-in-bond for me and my fancy shade guest. Yeah, ol’ Jack, fifty thousand dollars, that buys a lot of good whiskey and bad women…” And he bolted down another drink.
“Let’s talk about that money, Henry,” Barron said, noticing strange hostile looks flickering across the faces of men who happened to glance sideways at the table, dirty looks seemed directed at Franklin the Negro, instead of Barron the shade. “The man who gave it to you must’ve given you some name.”
“Suppose he did,” Franklin muttered, pouring yet another drink. “Don’t rightly remember, and besides, ol’ Jack, who cares? Like I say, he was just some crazy rich man’s fancy shade messenger-boy, wouldn’t be using his real name, now would he? Not for goin’ around buying people’s kids. That’s gotta be some kinda crime, don’t it?”
“Did it ever occur to you that it might be a crime to sell your daughter?” Barron asked.
“Look, ol’ Jack, let’s talk man to man, okay?” Franklin said, waving a maudlin thumb in Barron’s face, “Y’got jus’ two kinds of people, lotsa different names, maybe, but only two kinds of people—them as got somethin’ to lose, and them as got nothin’ to lose. Shade what can go around handing out satchelfuls of money, that’s gotta be someone’s got somethin’ to lose, got reason to worry ’bout legal or not legal, ’cause he plays it cool and The Man’s on his side, unless he does something real stupid. But a dirt-poor nigger with nothin’ but a crumbly ol’ shack, few acres of no-good land he don’t even own and a seven-year-old daughter t’feed, he got nothin’ but nothin’ to lose, why should he care ’bout legal? Law’s against him day he’s born till the day he dies, ’cause he’s black, ’cause he’s poor, ’cause he’s been in and out of jail a few times for having too much to drink, gettin’ in a couple fights, stealin’ a little here and there to keep his belly from growling… When you broke, you take chances.”
“So you sold your own flesh and blood just like that,” Barron said. “Like you were a fucking slave trader, is all! I don’t understand you, Franklin, and I don’t know if I want to.”
Franklin bolted down his drink, poured another, stared into the brown liquid, said: “Black shade they call you, tha’s a good one…’cause there jus’ ain’t no such thing. Jus’ like that, the man says. Ain’t no jus’ like that, either. Try bein’ black, try havin’ nothin’ at all for forty-three years, try livin’ on Food Stamps and tinned peanut butter, savin’ up enough money in a month to get drunk one night to forget you is nothin’ got nothin’ never’ll habe nothin’, and knowin’ that little girl eats up half what money you got never gonna be nothin’ better than you, dirt-poor nigger and off your back, you lucky, and then some crazy shade drives up to your place when you had a little corn to begin with, feeds you a whole bottle of whiskey, then throws a satchelful of hundred-dollar bills at you and all he wants is…” Franklin began to shake, sobbed once, downed the drink, poured another, and drank that too.