A Free State

by Tom Piazza

  I approached the crowd’s edge and stood on my toes to see. He leaned against the wall in the shade and wore an expression of grave and comic unconcern as he played and sang.

  Said the blackbird to the crane,

  When do you think we’ll have some rain?

  The pond’s so muddy and the creek’s so dry,

  Wasn’t for the tadpole, we’d all die . . .

  He ran through several songs—“Mary Blaine,” “Dan Tucker,” and one or two others from the familiar repertoire. His singing voice was better even than I remembered; it alighted on syllables and bent them downward as an ornament might bow a tree branch, and he endowed unexpected words with a sparkling glow. His banjo playing was full of trap doors and tunnels; it galloped, jumped and turned, stopped, and doubled back. He had a number of songs with lyrics I had never heard, which seemed to carry a veiled significance. One went:

  My old mistress had a dog

  Blind as he could be.

  Every night around suppertime

  That old dog could see.

  My old mistress had a cow,

  I know the day she was born.

  Took that old jaybird thirteen years

  To fly from horn to horn.

  In between songs, tuning his banjo, he seemed to register my presence—fleeting, but I thought I saw him mark me. Was it possible that he remembered my face from the previous occasion? All the while, he kept up a line of patter full of teasing and possibility, personalities assumed for thirty seconds and abandoned for others.

  “And now, a song from my native land—Spain.” General hilarity as he looked around in feigned affront. “Que paso?” he exclaimed. “Pues no encuentro la maquineta de todos los postales y cuatro ramitos enchiladas . . .” and so on, a fusillade of iridescent gibberish, pidgin Spanish that sent the crowd, myself included, into spasms of laughter. Plucking the strings in a deliberate habanera rhythm, he commenced singing,

  Soft o’er the fountain,

  Ling’ring falls the Southern moon.

  Far o’er the mountain

  Breaks the day, too soon . . .

  . . . and everyone quieted down, entered the dream of the far-off border town, the doomed romance.

  It was extraordinary. At one point I had to shake my head and look down at the cobblestones, with their mottled gray surface, the stains from the wine-seller’s, and scuff my shoe back and forth to remind myself that there was a physical world outside the imaginary one he was summoning.

  He finished and announced that he would take up collection. I kept my eyes on him as I made my way through the other listeners. When I was near enough to be certain I would not lose track of him, I hung back and waited for the last of his subscribers to make their donations, and then I approached.

  He was replacing his banjo in a canvas carrying sack as I drew near. I had the sense that he was aware of my hovering, although he gave no acknowledgment. Behind him, the outline of the bricks on the side of the Black Horse Tavern were visible through a freshly painted advertisement for Bigelow’s Bitters, with its smiling monkey; I was aware of a cart passing behind me, the mule’s hooves making a sound like Powell clopping his coconut shells. I waited for him to acknowledge me, but he didn’t. Finally he hefted his banjo in its sack and turned as if to leave, and I called out, “Hello!”

  At this, he stopped and turned to regard me. Although we were the same height and size, he gave the impression of looking at me from above. He said nothing.

  “May I speak with you a moment?” I said.

  “You are speaking,” he said.

  “Of course,” I said. “But . . . please. May I buy you a pint, inside?”

  “I’m comfortable here,” he said. “What do you want?”

  His face and the backs of his hands were the color of copper, and his eyes were green, with long lashes. With a little art, he might almost have been able to pass for a white man, a Spaniard, or certainly a Hindoo at the least. I introduced myself and rushed into a confused oration about my admiration for his skills. As I spoke he glanced past me, and around us, at the activity behind me on the street, then back at me. I watched him measure my mode and quality of dress, the degree of animation in my face, my way of placing myself, even, on the sidewalk, and I saw him come to the end of what he could discover, as I continued chattering about his banjo prowess and command as a performer. I had the distinct sense that I was quickly running through my allotment of his available attention.

  When, finally, I remembered to mention that I was a founder of, and performer with, the Virginia Harmonists, he stepped into the middle of my words and said, “Are you from Virginia?”

  “Well, no,” I said. “It is only the name we chose.” I noted some small but distinct retraction in him. “What, by the way, is your name?”

  “Ham Peggotty,” he said.

  I gave an involuntary laugh at the absurdity of this. This was nobody’s name. God only knew where he had picked that up. “That is not your name,” I said.

  “Is there anything else?” he said, as if to bring our interview to a conclusion.

  “Well, yes,” I said, feeling a bit impatient, now. I was, in fact, irritated. I had just strewn superlatives around him like rose petals, and he was being incourteous, to say the least. “I would like to talk to you about the possibility of incorporating you into our performance in some way.”

  Now it was his turn to register my absurdity. He smiled for the first time, but more in mockery than in mirth. Once again he glanced around the streets, quickly. “I am not disturbing the peace,” he said. “I am a free man, and I will defend myself.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  He began backing away, keeping me in view.

  “Wait!” I said. “What is wrong with you? I have a proposition for you.”

  He stopped ten yards away, by the entrance to the alley behind the Black Horse. I watched him look down the alley and make some signal with his hand, nod, and then turn back to me.

  “State it quickly,” he said.

  “I would like to find a way of using your talents in our show,” I repeated. “We perform every night but Sunday at Barton’s Minstrel Theater, on Arch Street. You can see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

  “I have seen the handbills.”

  “Well, then . . .”

  “How do you propose to present me on a stage in Philadelphia? You would be shut down.”

  “I do not know yet.”

  He regarded me for a long moment, looked up and down the street again.

  “What position do you play in the line?” he said.

  “I am on the end, with the bones. I can also play the banjo and the tambourine. You would not want to hear me play the fiddle, I’ll promise you that.”

  “Walk down there,” he said, indicating a dock area on the river, a block and a half away. “I will follow you, and we can talk there. Don’t turn around.”

  Half certain that he would take the opportunity to run away while my back was turned, but with little choice except to do as he directed, I began walking in the direction he indicated. He was as skittish as a bird on a low branch. I was of course aware that Negroes were often prey to unscrupulous schemes, and my proposition must have sounded unlikely to him, yet I would have thought my sincerity was evident.

  I arrived at more or less the intended place and stood for a few moments looking at the river. Half a block away some dock boys were hefting boxes onto a flatboat. I heard no footsteps, received no signal, and finally I turned around to look up the street. He was nowhere in sight. Once again, he seemed to have vanished into the ether. Well, I thought, I was right about that surmise, at least.

  I was about to leave when I saw a movement behind some crates half a block away, and he emerged, looking once more up toward the top of Chestnut Street.

  He pointed to a low platform nearby as he approached, and said, “We can sit there.”

  “Is all this necessary?” I said, half amused and half annoy
ed. “Do I seem so threatening?”

  He didn’t answer; I saw that he was holding something in his hand, which he now held out to me. It was a set of bones. I took them from him, as he pulled something out of a trouser pocket, with a rustling of paper.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I eat,” he said, unwrapping a bun. “Play something for me.”

  I remarked to myself that although I was the one with the famous troupe, the accolades, the theater, I had somehow found myself in the position of being auditioned by him.

  Anchoring the slightly bent lengths of white bone—about the size and shape of the doctors’ tongue depressor—in my right hand on either side of my middle finger, I began with the necessary abrupt twistings of my wrist to set up the rhythmic pattern of “De Boatman Dance.” The bones’ chattering mimicked the ornamentations and arabesques of a fiddle making its way through the melody. I played the three-part tune through twice as he munched on his bun, watching me and emitting a periodic “Huh” if he heard something worth grunting about. He finished the bun at about the same time as I completed my audition, and he wiped his mouth with evident satisfaction.

  “You know,” he said, extending his hand to reclaim the bones, “in the third part you can decorate the long notes this way.” Taking the bones, he demonstrated an effect that with a minimum of apparent effort extracted multiple clacks for each turn of the hand. I watched closely but could not see how he did it. He slowed down to half speed and still I could not make it out. He was watching me, as I watched his hands.

  Finished, he replaced the bones in a small pocket sewn onto the side of his banjo’s sack. “What do you want with me?”

  I outlined in general terms that which I had in mind, my feeling about all the extraneous elements that were being added to the central part of the minstrel show, which central part was the Negro dimension. Glass harmonica players, operatic pastiches . . . As I spoke I got more passionate. I told him about seeing Sweeney, and the other minstrels, the pioneers of blackface. I told him of the exhilaration of hearing the music, playing it, and, above all, the feeling of freedom that had come from blacking up. “When I first heard the minstrels,” I said, “I felt as if I had been freed from a life of oppressive servitude.”

  I suppose I conceived that this was all a kind of tribute to him, and his race, yet he was watching me with a face that might have defined irony. I stopped speaking.

  “Have I said something wrong?”

  With a look half amused and half derisive, he said, “Your eloquence is admirable.”

  “Will you come to the theater some time and have a look? You can enter with me, and I can install you in the audience, and afterward perhaps we can work something up. You may have an idea and I may have one . . .”

  “Do you propose to pay me?” he said.

  “I will pay you out of my own pocket if need be.” I watched him register this. “Will you come, then?”

  He stood, hefted his banjo in its sack, and said, “I’ll have to see if I’m free.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Will you tell me your real name?”

  “Henry Sims.” He said this in his Spanish voice, so that his surname sounded like “seems.”

  “Where may I find you? Can we discuss this further . . .”

  “You found me twice,” he said. Then he walked away, leaving me puzzled, and with the distinct feeling that I might never see him again.

  I made my way back to Barton’s, where we were to hold an audition for a group of Alpine yodelers. I was disinclined to sit still for this performance, yet it was my responsibility, along with Mulligan, to conduct these auditions. Mulligan and I sat next to one another in the fifth row of the dark cavern of the hall as the troupe trouped onstage in their ludicrous outfits. The women as well as the men wore leggings apparently intended to make them resemble sheep, but which only made them appear ridiculously hirsute. Mulligan found this impossibly humorous, which was not common for him, and he began making remarks to me, sotto voce, as the troupe ran through their audition songs.

  “They really ought to shave their legs,” he said.

  “Quiet,” I said, sliding deeper into gloom.

  “Really, it is a troupe of epicene centaurs,” he said.

  “Will you stop.”

  “I wonder if they are equally hairy on their arms. We ought to present them completely undressed.”

  I let this pass.

  “Perhaps we could breed them and shear them for profit.”

  Onstage, the group was doing some kind of truncated Morris dance and slipping into an antiphonal falsetto that was beginning to strike me as absurd. Mulligan continued chipping away with his deprecatory epigrams, and the troupe dipped and stomped and yodeled, and I was overcome finally with an attack of giggles which I tried in every way to stifle, unsuccessfully. Hearing my cackling, the troupe stopped in mid-yodel, and Mulligan, who was himself laughing, hollered to them, “You’re hired! Mr. Douglass will talk to you about specifics when you are in your street clothes.” As they filed offstage, accompanied by my helpless laughter, Mulligan said to me, “We can insert them in the middle of the second half. They will be perfect.”

  When I had myself under control, I walked backstage in a lightened mood.

  For whatever reason, that night’s performance was stellar. We were, needless to say, never less than professional. Still, for the past months we had rarely been more than professional. Yet as any performer will tell you, once in a while something gets loose and, like birds gathered in a tree creating a racket, everyone is subject to the same mysterious visitation of energy. It was certainly so on this night. Our first half was robust if not epochal. After intermission, the Parakeet Impersonator (a German) whom we had added as that week’s specialty was received respectfully, but then we took the stage and “Across the Sea” extended itself under our feet and fingers and we all seemed to levitate six inches off the boards, and I remember looking across at Mulligan and feeling the hair rise on my arms. During the final number, “Clare de Kitchen,” Mulligan rose to his feet and squared off against Powell, and they jumped back and forth across the stage as if they were attached on strings to one another. Finally I rose to my feet as well and circled them, and Eagan—Eagan!—sank from his chair to his knees, playing variations I’d never heard before. Although the house was only half-full, I thought the audience would tear the theater down, and we had to play three encores.

  And yet, when the performance was finished for the evening, all went home in different directions, and one was left alone, alone. Descending abruptly from the peak of performance, one returned to one’s rooms, or to a tavern, to hear the chimes at midnight, or at three in the morning. It had been an extraordinary day, yet it was ending in a way that had become painfully familiar. Along the quiet street, through the gate which Mrs. Callahan locked at eight o’clock each night, down the quiet hallway, and into my parlor, where I shut my apartment door behind myself and lit the lamps. I was still a young man, I told myself. I sat on my divan and read for a while. And after a while I set the book down and went to bed. It was far better than carrying sacks of grain across a muddy field, as I had remarked many times. Yet it occurred to me to wonder, as I turned down the lamp on my nightstand, where Henry Sims was, and how he made his peace with the night.

  4

  It was springtime in Philadelphia, and my gloomy mood did not last. I got up early the next morning and walked through the bright, still-damp city, through the sidewalk tree shade along Sixth Street on my way to the theater. I thought I might show up early, take care of a few business matters. Three creditors were becoming insistent, and we had sufficient funds to satisfy only two of them. Birch and a crew were supposed to be building a small replica of a cabin, on rollers, as an enhancement to our Uncle Tom segment, and I needed to see how that was coming along, as well.

  The theater was alive with hammering and shouts, all of which emanated from Birch and two assistants. I made my way to the stage and regarded what they had done, whic
h was perfectly serviceable.

  “We’ll put a porch on it tomorrow,” Birch said, wiping his face with a rag.

  “Why does it need a porch?” I said.

  “For Burke? Didn’t you want him sitting out front?”

  “I suppose,” I said. “But won’t that make it more difficult to maneuver on and off the stage?”

  “We’ll make it so that it’s detachable.”

  I nodded, looked inside. “Put a chair or two in there, and maybe something on the walls,” I said.

  After they’d finished and Birch had left for the morning, I took lunch at Kolb’s, directly across from the theater. I liked the heavy, stained-wood paneling in the place, the lingering smell of beer and sauerkraut. I had my own napkin, and my own stein, and the house cat, Abel, knew he could count on a scrap or two from my plate. I lingered a while over one of my notebooks to finish scratching out a few notes toward a routine I was developing. Afterward, on the sidewalk, I stopped to let my eyes adjust to the day’s brightness. I looked across Arch Street at the façade of our theater—the stone steps, the two-story columns, the frieze above, with its lyre and laurel. A mockingbird had perched atop the bust of Shakespeare and sang in full voice. I’ve always loved those birds—the inexhaustible variation in their songs, the way they find the highest perch, the beautiful arrogance, the absolute freedom. I stood listening for a full minute, then I stepped off the curb, and as I did so I heard someone say my name. I turned, and there, in a doorway, stood Henry Sims. His banjo, in its bag, leaned against the door frame.

  I was so surprised to see him that it took me a moment to locate words. “You’re here,” I said, finally and brilliantly.

  “Can I see the theater?” he said. He wore spectacles now, and a brown plaid shirt and a pair of very fine hunting boots, which were utterly unfit both for the city and for the warm weather.

  “Well,” I said, “of course.” We continued to stand regarding one another for a moment or two, and then he picked up the banjo in its bag and we started across the street. He was younger than I’d first taken him to be. We were, I realized, not far from the same age; perhaps he was two years my junior. As we crossed, his gaze scanned the street up and down.