A Free State

by Tom Piazza

  “Go on play your banjo,” she said, frowning as if he were trying to put something over on her. “I don’t give a God damn, and if anybody doesn’t like it tell them to see me.” She surprised Henry, a few days later, as he was passing through the courtyard on his way somewhere, by asking with characteristic abruptness, “What song was that you was just playing?”

  “The last one?” Henry had said. “That was ‘Black Betty.’ You like that one?”

  “‘Black Betty,’” she said, as if memorizing instructions. Then, “Why else I ask you if I didn’t like it?”

  People kept to themselves in Bottle Alley. No one asked where you came from or why you were there or where you were going, and that suited Henry fine. His room had no lock, nor even a knob or latch; only a crude hook-and-eye to keep the door shut while he was out. No one there had much of anything, and theft was not a problem. With the dirt floor and the scrawny tree, the chickens Zena kept, it all reminded him of The Tides, but in a pleasant way, as if Master James weren’t a part of it. A little patch of the country in the middle of the city. The easy comfort of other black folks.

  Outside, on the streets, he was invisible. No one saw you unless you gave them a reason to see you. You could watch people going about their business, study their faces as if you were a ghost. That was something you could use to your advantage. Even as he realized this, he was beginning to need something more. The one good thing about The Tides was the opportunity to perform, to be seen and admired. He wanted that now, as he became used to Philadelphia. He wanted to see where it could lead. Slowly at first, testing, he began spying out likely places to perform. Playing for the parties at The Tides had taught him how to make people laugh, make them dance, make them wistful. Twice he had gone as a valet with Stephens to Richmond and watched very closely at the musicales they had attended. And he had seen traveling shows, and there had been a hand who worked at The Tides for a few months, and of course, the few things Enoch had taught him. He learned quickly, and he remembered what he had learned.

  He found a spot near the foot of Chesnut Street by the Black Horse Tavern and, later, one down by Spruce Street, and another at the top of Callowhill. Each one offered nearby alleys and other possible escape routes should trouble appear.

  Playing on the street was an education in what people wanted, what they expected, and the range of responses when you subverted those expectations. What kept their attention and what did not, and what kind of attention you wanted. There was power that came, like magic, when you performed. Time expanded, changed shape, slowed down so that once he cast the spell he could move, unseen, while his listeners sat, bound by the illusion he spun, as if they were listening to someone else. You had to divide yourself. First there was one of you and many of them; then there was one of them, and many of you. At the same time, you kept something private that nobody could see or touch. It was a way to live. He knew that this power could end up being a vulnerability, as if he were daring the world to call him by his right name.

  And now, this James Douglass. He didn’t ask Henry too many questions, and that was a good thing. At certain moments, Henry found himself relaxing with him, enjoying a joke or sharing some observation; then he’d pull himself back, as if he had fallen asleep while riding a horse. You could never take off the mask.

  And there was the girl. One day he thought he saw her, walking on the street, and he followed until she stepped into a doorway between two shops on Walnut Street. He could not follow her inside, of course, but in his mind he did. All afternoon he followed her in his mind. Was that where she was “kept”? Where she let the fiddler have his way? He wanted her to see him, think about him, watch him. He was tired of being invisible. In a short time, he would perform onstage, in a real theater. It was nobody’s idea of what he was, or what he would do. You were free as long as you chose your own mask. The more masks, the better. He would not be one more of everybody, subject to the same vanishing. He would not vanish.

  7

  Rose and I both arrived early on the night of the performance to make sure that all was in order. There was a service entrance around back of the theater, and I told Henry to come in that way around five thirty, so there would be no chance of his being seen and stopped. Rose had outdone herself with Henry’s costume. It was worthy of Sweeney. She got the idea perfectly. She had whipped up a confection of long, silver-and-green-striped satin breeches, a white shirt with enormous green dots, a red bow tie, and an orange plaid jacket that was intentionally too large, but with the sleeves shortened so as not to interfere with his banjo playing. I had described Sweeney’s top hat, and she had replicated that as well.

  I paced restlessly, running through the scenarios over and over. Rose and I had gotten everything necessary laid out in her workroom. I imported a jar of blacking from the troupe’s sanctum, along with a wig and some other items; we would make Henry up in Rose’s room, before the members of the troupe arrived, so I could present him as a fait accompli.

  As five thirty drew near, I walked back and forth, through the area where we stored some unused sets and drops, double-checking to make certain that the rear entrance was open. Just after the half-hour struck, Henry rounded the edge of a building into the alley that led to the rear entrance. He carried his banjo in its sack, and he wore a cloth jacket with the collar turned up and a wool cap pulled low on his forehead, a somewhat dramatic touch. Henry, like Rose, had a faculty for the theatrical in everyday life. I ushered him in and closed the door.

  “Are you ready?” I said, as we made our way through the lost harbor of stage sets back toward Rose’s room.

  “Yes,” he said. He was otherwise quiet as we walked, and it seemed to me that he was holding something very close inside. I couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind. I was silently running through a list of other details myself, hoping that the reporter from the Bee would be there; I had tipped him off that we had a new attraction that I thought he might enjoy.

  In Rose’s room we began our preparations. Henry and Rose seemed rather shy around each other, and I tried to warm the atmosphere with some chatter, showing Henry the fine points of the costume, the wig, all of it. He undressed behind a screen in the corner to don his stage trousers and shirt. Then he stepped out, and Rose and I helped him with the rest of it, tucking and pinning. We left the shirt unfastened at the top, and Rose placed a towel around his neck, like a collar, and we got him seated at a small table in front of a looking glass to get him blacked up.

  I showed him the technique—three fingers, held together and flat, so as to apply the cork evenly, in successive, incremental arcs following the curves of the jawline and cheekbones—and he set to work applying it under our gaze. I saw him look at himself before applying the first swipe, as if he were looking at a friend who was departing for a long journey. His copper-colored skin, the long eyelashes, the green eyes. He brushed his fingers across the surface of the coal-dark mixture and, watching himself eye-to-eye, spread a first swath of black across his forehead, then a next one, and I watched him slowly transform himself. When he had finished, with a couple of touch-ups suggested by Rose, he sat staring at himself in the glass for several moments.

  I retrieved the wig from a stand on another table, slipped the netting of tight black curls over Henry’s own hair, adjusted it slightly. We all three regarded his image in the glass.

  “Now you’re one of us!” I said.

  He looked at me in the mirror with a cryptic smile, barely more than a glint in his eyes.

  I left Henry and Rose and headed back to the dressing room, where Mulligan and Burke were getting themselves ready. Shortly after I entered, Eagan and Powell found their way in, and we all got down to the business of remaking ourselves.

  “Tonight is the night for the Banjo Phantom, isn’t it?” Burke asked.

  I said that it was.

  “Where is he?” Powell asked.

  “We had to get him fitted down at Rose’s,” I said, noting a quick alertness from
Eagan. “He is pathetically shy, I think because of the language barrier as much as anything. I’ll retrieve him and bring him in so everyone may get acquainted before curtain.”

  “It would not have been a bad idea to rehearse beforehand,” Eagan said, not looking at me.

  “It was not in the cards this time, Michael,” I said. “At any rate, all we have is some patter, and then he will step out front, do his tune, and that will be that. Not much rehearsal needed. We’ve been through this, haven’t we?”

  Mulligan was being quiet and even a bit sulky, I thought.

  When I was blacked up and dressed I walked back to Rose’s room, where Rose was laughing at something. Henry sat upon the edge of the divan, with one leg jiggling up and down.

  “Well,” I said. “Time.”

  We were within view of the dressing room now, and we held up walking.

  “I told them you were very shy about meeting them,” I said, running through our plan one last time. “You just smile and nod. I’ll act as if I’m translating, and we’ll converse in our false Spanish, and we’ll see what transpires.”

  “You’re sure none of them understands Spanish?” Henry said.

  “Not this crew.”

  “Tell me again about the others.”

  “All right,” I said. “Mulligan I told you about; he’s sure to be a bit jealous of you, so be as solicitous as your language limitations will allow.”

  Henry nodded.

  “Then there’s Powell, on tambourine—I’ll introduce them, no need to remember it all. Eagan and Burke . . . All right, now”—the dressing room door was ajar, across a section of backstage—“Spanish it is.”

  I walked into the open door, and Henry waited outside.

  “Gentlemen,” I announced, “please meet Juan García. Juan?” I looked toward the door. “He’s very shy. Juan?”

  Into the room Henry stepped, long-legged, tentative, like a heron wading into an unfamiliar pond, carrying his banjo, eyes wide, a scared grin on his face, his lurid satin costume a hallucination in a room full of comic tuxedos. The men, all of whom had applied the cork to their own faces, stared at him from behind the black masks.

  “Buenos tardes, señores,” Henry said, in creditable enough Spanish.

  They stared at him through a long moment of strained silence.

  “What is this, Douglass? A joke?” This was Eagan.

  “Certainly not,” I replied.

  Predictably, Powell was the first to take things on face value. He leaned back in his chair and offered his hand to Henry. “Pleased to meet you, brother. Dan Powell.”

  Henry looked into the man’s eyes. “Mucho gusto,” he said, bowing. “Juan García.”

  Burke and Eagan then greeted Henry, Burke with some amusement, Eagan rather coldly.

  The last of them was Mulligan, who had remained seated. Noting his resistance, I stepped in, saying, “And the man who never learned manners, seated there, is John Mulligan.”

  Henry popped his eyes wide, looked back and forth between Mulligan and myself. “Mulligan? Eso?” Mulligan, squinting, watched Henry and me, in succession.

  I nodded.

  Turning to Mulligan, Henry launched into a torrent of self-abasing pidgin. “Señor . . . que tenga las banderilleras de todos los arboles y cuatros bolantes infinitas, a las sombras . . . a las montañas . . . el nombre de Mulligan es lo bandito sobresaliente de la playa de banjo, los palabras de los cojones prodigiosas . . .” on and on, that left Mulligan frowning and looking to me for aid.

  “I couldn’t catch all of it,” I said. “But I think he said that you are his hero, the greatest banjo player who ever lived, and that your fame has spread even to his country.”

  Mulligan seemed to soften slightly, offered his hand from his sitting position, and said, “Obliged. Welcome to America.”

  There ensued a few moments of silence, and then the fellows began to turn back to the task of preparing themselves for the night’s show, and I joined them.

  “Douglass, where do you learn to speak Spanish?”

  “He’s not Mexican. Not with the green eyes. Who is he, really, Douglass?”

  Mulligan was tuning his banjo, an elaborately carved instrument with a scroll on the head and inlaid wood up and down the fingerboard. I watched Henry regard the banjo with something like awe. The banjo tuned, Mulligan exercised himself with a number of quick and very dexterous runs up and down the fingerboard, ending with several variations on “Essence of Old Virginny.” Henry looked across the room at me, and I shot him a look that said, He may be an ass sometimes, but he can play the banjo. Henry nodded and smiled.

  “Qué escabeche!” he said.

  “You like that, eh?” Mulligan said. “Let’s see yours.”

  Remembering to feign incomprehension, Henry smiled and nodded.

  Mulligan said, “Tell him I want to see his banjo.”

  I made gestures to this effect, and Henry handed his banjo to Mulligan, who took it, turned it to look inside the rim, examined the head, the joining of the neck to the rim, the peghead. Satisfied, he flipped the instrument around into position and threw off a few runs quickly, then a very fast version of some little rhythmic bagatelle. He nodded once, brought it to a stop, and handed it back to Henry, whose face expressed ecstasy.

  “Not bad,” Mulligan said, “Now you play something.”

  “Tocar,” I offered, from across the room.

  Feigning consternation, and after a few protests, Henry played a restrained version of the “Grapevine Twist.” I watched Mulligan’s expression—one of pleasure, since the level of skill on display was just below his, although obviously of high competence. Henry was nothing if not competitive, however; he came to the final chorus and between two of the melody lines slipped in a very tricky phrase that involved raking down across the strings with the nail of his index finger and somehow inserting two perfectly timed thumb plucks on the high string as he did it. A quick frown crossed Mulligan’s face and I could almost hear Henry think, “My compliments.” He was not able to finish before Mulligan interrupted.

  “Here,” Mulligan said, “how did you do that?”

  Henry looked at him helplessly, looked over at me, back at Mulligan. “Qué?” he said, pathos itself.

  I told Henry in pidgin what Mulligan said, and Henry responded in an elaborate sentence that ended in a look of supplication.

  “I believe he said that he doesn’t know how he did it,” I said. “He plays purely by instinct.”

  “Instinct,” Mulligan said, turning back to the dressing table. “Huh.”

  Henry remained backstage during our first half. The show went well; the theater was only about two-thirds full, but the crowd was noisily appreciative, raucous even, and I hoped Henry wouldn’t be thrown by the occasional shout or unceremonious address from the balcony. We had a stock of ripostes ready to use in response to any wit in the audience, and we could certainly pick up the slack if Henry were momentarily unsettled.

  The half ended with “Across the Sea,” and we were borne offstage on a tide of whistles and hollers and applause. We made straight for the dressing room, where we had fifteen minutes to refresh ourselves, confer, touch up our corking, and make any costume changes that might be necessary. The audience, during that time, was invited to buy beer and spirits in the lobby, and our second half was always more boisterous than the first on the other side of the proscenium.

  Henry was there in the dressing room, and I ran through the setup for the second half, reminding everyone of the routine, with Henry sitting stage right, in back until I cued Powell to ask me who he was. Henry pretended not to understand, and I told everyone that I had walked him through and explained it to him already, with difficulty.

  When it was time, we all made our way to the stage, where the curtain was down. From the other side we could hear the excited rumble and stirring of the audience; I might almost have been as tense as Henry must have felt. I got him situated—chair stage right, rear, but angled so
that I could watch him and either send or receive a signal if needed.

  We got ourselves arranged in the front line, which occupied a shallow concavity almost against the curtain, and we sat, adjusting our suits and composing ourselves. Eagan, thumbing his strings, made slight tuning adjustments, Mulligan the same. I glanced back at Henry, wondering what was going through his mind, encountering this roar behind the curtain, as if on the other side were a vast stockyard of restless animals. The sound was oceanic, textured yet indistinct; periodically a voice would rise out of the general boil and become a dominant theme for a few moments, to be joined by another and then be swallowed up in a general babble again. This, I thought, must indeed have been what the Greek army felt like, massed inside the Trojan horse, waiting for the gangplank to drop. I saw Henry run his thumb very lightly over his strings to check the tuning one more time.

  The noise from out front abated slightly, suddenly, then reached a new crescendo of applause, hollers, and catcalls, which slowly eased down as a voice arose from the other side of the curtain—Gilman, our house manager and master of ceremonies, announcing the second half. We all straightened up, faced the curtain directly in front of us, and got our instruments into position.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Gilman began. “It is my great pleasure once again . . .”

  A voice from the audience hollered, “I’m no gentleman!” and the theater was again awash in hollers and whoops.