A Free State (4 page)

“I'm sorry,” I said. “Please, if that was intrusive . . .”

She regarded me with the queerest expression, searching my eyes as if to discover any ill intent. I had steered us onto a submerged reef, and I was at a loss for a correction.

At length she said, “You know, James, that I am spoken for.”

“No,” I said. “I did not know. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable . . .”

“No, you didn't,” she said. “You didn't.” She looked down at the table, where she worried a crumb with a lovely finger. “The world has not used me kindly.”

If she had more to tell me, she kept it to herself. Behind her beautiful façade, apparently, lay some landscape of pain she chose to keep private. She trusted me sufficiently to let me know that it existed, yet I also understood that our relations would remain on a professional footing thenceforth. I wondered who the fortunate fellow was who had spoken for her, and how he had earned his position.

The answer arrived one afternoon, perhaps a month later. Dan Powell made some innocuous remark about Rose before a performance, and Eagan shot back, “That'll be enough of that.” He had, we learned through his remarks here and there, installed her in her own apartment, which he referred to as a “bird's nest.” A gilded cage was more like it, especially as he had a wife elsewhere. Whom we never saw.

In any case, I had more than enough to preoccupy me then. The fact was that our troupe's financial situation had become increasingly precarious, and things had approached the point
at which our very existence could be in jeopardy if we did not find some way of attracting larger numbers. I kept this from the others to the extent that I could. But no matter how many birdcall impersonators, or jugglers, or Shakespearean parodies, we added, our receipts continued to fall steadily. I walked the streets, my head full of attendance figures and strategies for promotion, possibilities for new sketches, a thousand details, all the while feeling that I was missing something that lacked a name. We needed something to set us apart, again—to reclaim the public's full attention. I dreamed of Sweeney, of the elusive magic. I kept thinking that we needed something closer to the root of what had started us in the first place, the mystery in the tent, the dark outside, the shadows, the sense of something Other that was invisible by the light of normal daytime. And it was at that time that I first saw Henry Sims on the street corner.

He disappeared, that afternoon, as described, but he lodged in my mind. In those few minutes he summoned up for me the same sense of joy mixed with pathos, of humor, and of possibility, that I had felt seeing Sweeney in the tent. Yet here was no impersonation, no masquerade—he was the thing itself. I did not know his name then, nor anything about him. But it struck me that if there were some way of presenting him in the show, he might add exactly the element that was being diluted. The possibility of a kind of fruitful competition between him and Mulligan, orchestrated for maximum effect, offered itself. My imagining collected around him—a solo performer, as Sweeney had been, yet far more skilled.

There was one drawback, of course. He was a Negro.

Negroes did not appear onstage at that time, unless perhaps at some abolitionist meeting. To have a Negro appearing with a white troupe was unheard of—for that matter, against the law. Presenting him could easily get us closed down. One would have to think of some subterfuge, if one were even to attempt it in the first place. There was also the question of my partner, who was nothing if not proud of his own abilities on the banjo. In any case, before any of that, I would need to find him again.

I finally saw him some weeks later, playing outside the Black Horse Tavern. A crowd spilled out from under the awning that overhung the sidewalk, and two boys had climbed into the branches of an oak tree in the little park across the street in order to have a view. I was determined not to let my attention be distracted, even if a building were to collapse behind me. This time I would talk to him.

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 annoyed. “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.”