by Rod Davis
At 6:50, Jean-Pierre led the Voices of Angelique from the dressing tent into the backstage waiting area. Bringing up the rear, Gus could sense the girls tensing up. The sides were rolled and tucked most of the way around to let the evening breeze filter in, but even in its relative openness the Gospel Tent was a like a fortress walled off from the encroachments of the outside world. Gus understood why Jean-Pierre had wanted to wait until the last possible moment. The girls had sung in public before, but nothing could have prepared them for this. Gus himself was intimidated.
The acoustics were much more impressive than he had expected, and much more resonant. The Arkadelphia Angels were finishing a contralto harmony that made Gus’s spine tingle. And his stomach sink. The Arkadelphia Angels were mere rookies compared to the other acts, like the Angels of Desire, and they were at least twice as good as The Voices of Angelique.
Gus tried to see if Jean-Pierre might be thinking the same thing, but couldn’t be sure. The girls wore the long-distance stares of the dazed. That was good, thought Gus. They are so thoroughly out-of-place and humbled they will lose all fear. And then he smiled. Maybe they would surprise him. For some reason Jean-Pierre looked back at him, glowering, as if he had read his thoughts. Gus flushed with embarrassment. No time for clutch-thinking.
Jean-Pierre guided the girls into a place just outside the crisscross of bodies and stage hands and spoke to them quietly. In his heavy choir master’s gown of deep indigo lined with black and scarlet piping, he seemed to them as a great protector from Above. Jean-Pierre put his two hands into the midst of the pale blue half-circle and they all placed theirs on top. They bowed their heads. Jean-Pierre prayed.
Gus couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the din from the big amplifier next to him. Nor did he drop his head with them. He probably should have, as the chaplain, but he could not stop marveling at the sight of them. He felt sappy and mushy at their simple beauty, and he felt crass and unforgiven at what the Shadow Gus held in the pit of his stomach, which was the deliberate and calculating use of their efforts pretty much for his own behalf. But he snapped out of it. Recrimination was but a shadow, itself, of clutch-thinking.
Also, from the corner of his vision, he noticed Agon and Elizabeth along the right side behind the stage and out of the way of the crush. Thank God. Gus had been watching for him the last fifteen minutes without success. And then Gus saw the man standing next to Agon.
A thin black woman in green taffeta rushed past, grazing Gus’s shoulder with an old flattop guitar. She apologized quickly, and when Gus was able to look again Agon and the man standing next to him were circling along the rear edge, as if to reach the opposite side of the stage. Elizabeth lingered behind, almost squishing herself into the canvas, which in the backstage area had been pegged down to limit crowd access. Gus moved toward her. He was glad she had dressed appropriately—a loose fitting white smock, straw hat. Almost churchish. But the expression on her face was, at the least, secular.
“Was that Joe Dell Prince?” Gus called out as he got closer.
“Hello to you, too.”
“Was it?”
She nodded, then shook her head. “Hard to believe, ain’t it?”
Gus edged in next to her. Through the bodies, he could see the girls clustered near the portable steps at the far side of the stage—where Agon and the senator had seemed headed. Jean-Pierre was talking, or perhaps yelling, at Art.
“What’s going on?” Gus asked, turning back to Elizabeth.
She laughed. Her mouth crinkled the way it had after they had made love that time. “I think my husband has finally gone completely insane—”
The tent broke into applause, which was even louder than the singing. It became impossible for Gus to hear Elizabeth, but she wasn’t talking anyway. She was standing next to him but she didn’t seem to be there anymore. Her mouth was crinkly, but her eyes were glazed.
The Arkadelphia Angels bowed and turned stage right, leaving single file, followed by their pianist. Gus thought about trying to get to Jean-Pierre to tell him but it seemed a bad time to pass on bad news. Not that it was even possible to get around there in all the confusion. So he remained at Elizabeth’s side. Despite having snapped at Bonita that morning for “skipping Jazzfest just because of a bad experience two years ago,” he was glad now that she had chosen to go to work. He was very glad.
Stage hands jumped atop the platform to adjust equipment. Audience members busied themselves with readjusting their seats, fanning their perspiring faces, and deciding whether to go to the refreshment tents for Cokes or wait for the fifteen-minute intermission at 7:45.
Gus picked out Corina again amid her flock. She looked immensely happy. Gospel was her music of choice and now her eldest was going to be the center of attention. She twisted this way and that in her seat, talking to everyone around her. Then Paulus, at her side, turned around at some kind of activity coming from the far end of the tent and so did many others in the crowd.
Gus followed their line of vision and saw a black man and white woman come inside. The man was holding a big video camera with a “Channel 12” decal. The woman was someone whose face Gus had seen. That made him feel better. The Academy would be on the ten o’clock news.
“After the girls sing, let’s go find that reporter. Maybe they could interview you.”
Elizabeth gave him another look.
But the attention of the crowd rapidly returned to the show. Gus looked up to see the Reverend Albert Lincoln, the master of ceremonies, proceeding up the stage right staircase, past his friend Jean-Pierre and a gathering of light blue robes. He was followed by Agon Hapsenfield and Senator Joe Dell Prince.
The three men paused at the top of the steps to huddle and to make way for stage hands moving equipment back and forth. The Reverend Lincoln seemed confused and disconcerted. Agon was smiling and almost beatific. Then Agon followed the reverend to the microphone at the center of the stage. Joe Dell waited at the edge, hands folded in front like a schoolboy.
The reverend put his hand over the top of the mike. He seemed even more confused. He said something in a low voice to Agon, and Agon said something back. The reverend pursed his lips, wiped the top of his shiny pate, and flicked the mike with his finger. The sound popped through the tent, hushing what had become a flurry of whispering from the audience. The reverend broke into a stage smile.
“You hearing the Lord’s words sung to you today?”
“Yes, brother . . . Amen . . . Yes, Jesus . . .”
“And you with the Lord today?”
“We with him, Reverend.”
“Well, that’s as it should be. We got some glorious voices for Jesus today right here in the city of New Orleans and we callin’ to the Lord to be with us today, brothers and sisters.”
“Amen.” This time more voices, stronger. Amid them, the sound of paper being shuffled as people skimmed their programs to make sure they were correct, to figure out who that tall white man was. The whispering increased.
“Well then, are you ready for some more good Gospel?”
Applause.
“All right, children. Well, now is the time we see the Gospel goes to all peoples and all colors. It ain’t no one color for the Lord. All colors. All peoples.”
“Say it, Brother Lincoln.”
“And that’s why I’m proud to bring on right now something we don’t see too much in our city and something we ought to see more often.”
“You got that right.”
“I’m proud—proud—to introduce a fine group of our white sisters who have been practicing and studying the Gospel of Jesus and now want to show you their stuff!”
More applause.
The reverend put his hand to his jaw, rubbed it, as if still working something out. He could hear the whispers, the shuffling. He smiled again.
“And because this is such an important
occasion for us, I want to let the man who made all this possible come up and say just a few words to us all. And make that just a ‘few’ words, Brother Hapsenfield, because what these folks come here for ain’t to hear us talk but to hear our brothers and sisters sing.”
Agon moved forward. The Reverend Lincoln raised his arms.
“My brothers and sisters, let us welcome the headmaster and proprietor of Miss Angelique’s Academy for Young Ladies, Mr. Agon Hapsenfield.”
Agon bowed slightly, shook the reverend’s hand and positioned himself in front of the microphone. The applause died fast. It could have been described as “polite.”
“Thank you all so much. Now I don’t have much to say about my girls because you’ll hear what they have to say for themselves soon enough, although I would like to give special thanks to Mr. Gus Houston, our chaplain, and Mr. Jean-Pierre Youngblood, our choir director, for their bold initiative in bringing our beloved Academy to this revered place at this special time.”
Gus watched. It had gone very quiet. Corina, bursting with a smile at the mention of Jean-Pierre’s name, nonetheless let the smile drop as Agon continued. Gus felt a rush of blood in the back of his neck at that instant. Agon should have been done, but it was clear he was going to say something more. A sidelong glance at Elizabeth told him the flash of dread was not without justification.
“But the reason I am really here, I think, is not the reason I thought.” Agon smiled, and leaned over the microphone stand. He did look like Ichabod Crane. He cleared his throat and continued. “But that is what happens in life sometimes. What you think is not what you get. What I thought was that I was going to introduce the Voices of Angelique and sit down.” He paused and looked out. He seemed out of his comma-shaped body.
“But life has offered me a greater role. A greater challenge—and, I must say, a greater privilege. For on this day it has come upon me the opportunity to see a man grow before my very eyes. On this day I can share that vision with you. On this day—” he straightened to his full six-feet-six. His hands raised into fists in front of him. His head bowed slightly.
“I can barely relate my joy. On this day I am pleased to yield my brief time on the stage to a man who, on entering this tent, was one thing, but, I suspect, on exiting, will be quite another thing. And it will be a Becoming, a transformation, all of us can take into our consciousness and grow from. A remarkable moment, I feel.”
Throughout the rows of the long tent, people were shifting uncomfortably. So was the man, who, as Agon’s long right arm swept toward his side of the stage, could feel the entire weight of the audience’s collective gaze. “I would like to offer a very special moment to State Senator Joe Dell Prince of Metairie, who came to me from compassion and evolution of his spirit and asked to allow us to share something from him that I feel will change all of us together.”
Joe Dell knew he had to move quickly. He was halfway to the microphone before Agon’s last words had left his mouth.
It may have been too late. In the audience, the tension and confusion seemed to alter by the microsecond. Whatever that skinny white man had been blabbering on about was now all about the Klan senator walking out on the stage of the Gospel Tent. Still, for a few moments, the reality seemed too unlikely to be possible. And yet there it was. Same face that had plastered the political posters of election campaigns and TV news. Same face that went with the motto, “It’s All Right to Stay White.” It was him. It was not possible but it was him. But it was not possible.
“What’s this?” came the first cry.
“Reverend Lincoln, what going on?” An older, bearded man in a gray suit near the front row stood and faced out into the audience. He called out even louder. “I said, Reverend Lincoln, what is going on here?”
But the reverend had left the stage, glowering, slapping his hands to his sides with great force, calling out for Art.
Joe Dell clutched the mike stand. “I know what you may be thinking,” he began. The amplifiers screeched. He let go the stand and tried again. “I know what you may be thinking. And I know you have your reasons. But what I’m doing here now is to ask you to just hear me out. See if you won’t know that things have changed for me as they once did for Matthew and Paul. That as I once was, I am no longer—”
“Hear the man out,” came a female voice.
The senator tried to seek her out and ride with the sentiment. “I have come here to tell you of a great change in my heart—”
“Get off the stage,” came another woman’s voice. “How dare you come to this place!”
Joe Dell couldn’t see where that one came from. Nor the sustained booing that rose up like a drill hole ready to blow. For an unhinged moment, Joe Dell wanted to think the booing might be directed against the woman trying to silence him.
“I am here to tell you that although my past was one way, my future lies in another—”
The booing continued. It grew. It became a wall of sound.
“We don’t need no Klan in here—”
“As I said, my past was one thing. I could explain that, but I am here to tell you I have surely changed—”
A red, round seat cushion sailed out of the audience and whipped past Joe Dell’s head.
“Now there’s no call for this,” he said, dodging. “I came here to say I’m your brother—”
Three more cushions were launched. The first hit the mike cord and took the stand down with it. Feedback scratched through the air again. Joe Dell’s face squinched up in pain. The second cushion hit an amp, and the hell-noise went off and on, like madness. The third round caught him in the stomach.
Then something harder bounced off his right elbow, and then, in a matter of seconds, the place where the Angels of Angelique should have been standing and interfacing as promised became ground zero for seat cushions, flying ears of corn-on-the-cob, chicken wings, wadded-up paper cups, an occasional rock.
Transfixed, as if it could not be comprehended therefore it must go away—a nightmare, only, nothing real—Joe Dell held stock still. Neither did Agon Hapsenfield move. Pocked with food bits and ice balls, assailed by cushions, he scarcely even ducked, never lost the blank, peaceful expression which gave no indication of his circumstances.
Joe Dell was the first to tune back in. At the next salvo, a deep crimson flush raged across his face and neck. Mouth, eyebrows and even his nose contorted and he did not look like Kevin Costner. Staring at Agon, he said something no one could hear in the din, and hurried off stage, pelted all the way.
Finnester, trying desperately to shuck the Times-Picayune reporter he’d escorted in for the “exclusive,” took his boss by the elbow as he came down the stage stairs. Joe Dell pushed him away, nearly toppling the reporter, and made directly for an opening at the rear of the tent. Finnester ran after, and they disappeared into the evening. The reporter followed a few paces, paused, looked back inside the tent, and returned to the real action.
Agon was still on stage. Alone. But the barrage had not lessened and he was covered in muck and his face and arms were already welting. It all seemed in slow motion, and he could not believe what had come of the most recent three and one-half minutes in his life. He looked out at the audience. A spare rib caught him on the jaw. He winced, touched his cheek, felt blood. People were beginning to mount the stage. It had cut him.
His cheek throbbed. He suddenly knew why. Covering his head with his arms, he scurried off to the stairs so recently also used by the man whose political penance and rebirth Agon had fervently believed would have triggered the rebirth of the future of the state.
Elizabeth was laughing. Gus moved in front of her, protectively. Among the scrambled and overturned chairs, people of every color, age, and gender had begun to brawl. Even the performers were crowding and shoving each other to try to get out of the tent. Jean-Pierre was among them, trying to lead the girls through the maelstrom.
Gus put his face next to Elizabeth’s ear. “Go. Get out. Now. I’m going to help Jean-Pierre.” She stepped back and stared at him. Whatever she was going to say, Gus didn’t hear. From out of the pit that had been an audience of Christians a whirling folding chair struck him in the lower back. Sagging, unable to catch his breath, he dropped to his knees. Elizabeth backed out under the tent flap.
Gus tried to get up, but was knocked down again by several men in deacon-like black suits yelling, “Get him, get him.” Gus thought at first they meant him and covered his head to ward off the blows but the men were heading for someone else. He lowered his arms just in time for a shoe to catch him full on the left ear. He saw a flash of light amid a pitch-black universe deep inside his brain and before he lost consciousness he felt a coolness on his cheek. The compressed ball of grape Snoball slush that had arced in from an unknown hurler left only a small abrasion and fell onto the ground inches from Gus’s forehead to melt without a trace of culpability.
Jean-Pierre knew how bad it was going to get before the first cushion was thrown, which, he reminded himself, could not have come from his mother because her bad back wouldn’t give her that kind of range. When it started, the girls were in single file behind him at the base of the stairs, waiting for their cue.
That was when he had first seen Joe Dell Prince. Jean-Pierre had stopped cold, and held his arm back to halt the girls, too. He knew right away. He should have reacted without hesitating. He should have turned back and found Art and found out what the hell was going down. Whatever that man was doing up there on stage, it couldn’t have been good.
He should have paying closer attention. But everything was bedlam and Betsy and Tina had gone pale even by white standards with stage fright. So he’d been calming them and only half-listening to the introductions, mentally readying himself to lead the girls up to the stage and make his way to the piano, and hoping Art had it set up in the right place.