Whispers in the Night Page 26

  She eyed the video camera over his shoulder, a hot knot of foreboding forming in her stomach. She wanted to believe the camera had been there the last time but knew it had not. Tailor’s last words to her echoed in her memory. Between them, her pain, abject hunger, and the cold gusting around the edge of the door, it was all she could do to stay conscious—never mind sane.

  “Kristen—” Captain Tailor looked directly at her, his tone even.

  For twenty-two years, Kristen, Senator Burke’s daughter, answered when someone called her name. The new Kristen, woman snatched from her native soil, cried when she heard her name for the first time. She made no sound, only shook with her pain. Every other heartbeat, she gasped for breath. Her hands hung loosely in her lap, and her head dropped straight down into her chest.

  Captain Tailor reached behind him to turn the camera around. And started his questioning.

  Kristen broke before the ship reached the Tropic of Cancer. She told Tailor all the answers to his questions. All the ways her passage differed, bettered. Listed all the things she didn’t go through, mentioned the medical care she’d received. Learned his brutal lesson. Tailor had to reload the camera she talked so much. In between answers, she guzzled from a goblet of amber-colored liquid.

  Before agents overran the ship and liberated what was left of the senatorial sons and daughters, Tailor threw away his own draft and broadcast Kristen Burke, dirty, ragged, and grateful, as his statement.

  Mr. Bones

  Christopher Chambers

  “MINSTREL, n. A nigger with a color less than skin deep and a humor more than flesh and blood can bear.”

  —Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

  Nanh-unh, Mr. Bones, I hissed inwardly, I’m not done with your black ass yet! I plopped him on the stool before his dressing room mirror. I cleared the stink of his whiskey breath from my nostrils. The stink of his words still assaulted my ears.

  “Brudder gwine guide me home . . . bright angels gwine biddy me ta come . . .”

  I felt my stomach shoot down in my knees when he said that. Oh, I heard him mumble when he was drunk before, or high as a cloud from his Chinaman’s pipe, sticky with opium. Yet tonight, he looked like he’d sucked down a cask just to die and spite me . . . as if that was possible. And the words? Not his usual liquor-induced grunts or fitful dreamy whining about what he did that night in Tennessee, when I first met him. He was just a child then. Still was, to me. At least I thought so, until tonight, and so I was shivering and pacing and wondering who’d gotten to him. Crazy fool’d ruin it for us! Worse for him, though, if it got ruined. Far damn worse.

  I snapped open the gold watch dangling from my vest fob. Quarter past six. I snapped it shut, paced again. Another forty-five minutes to curtain call. Took that long to sober him up, get on his makeup. But I had to know. Shit. Bright angels biddy me to come . . .

  He stirred. That great brown bald pate swayed toward its reflection in the mirror. He must’ve felt my eyes boring into him, because his eyes opened, and he reached for a handkerchief to wipe the slobber from his lips.

  “Y’all still heya, Scratch?” he wheezed. “Lawd . . . ah ain’t neva be rid y’all’s taint. . . .”

  Better to coax him to get ready for the performance. Easier to root out why he said what he said later. I sighed, and my pulse ratcheted down a bit when I saw him grab his cotton rag and the black greasepaint. One swipe, another. I calmed with each layer of black on his brown face. Red next, for his mouth. Red as new blood on those meaty lips. Slowly, quietly but for a few sniffles and belches and nary a complaint, Mr. Bones came to life in the mirror. Good-bye, Jim Trice. So long, this wanna-wet-my-draws feeling!

  You know, white folks loved the red lips. Don’t know why—Jim started out back with Zip Coon & Christy’s Minstrels with white lips and the audiences hated it. Then we opened at the Beaux-Arts in Cincinnati with the red and a bass-toned chant and song and flip and reel. Lord, did you see those fat, pie-faced sots jump up in their seats, hooting and cheering? That’s when Christy fired ol’ Zip, tried to get Jim. Mr. Bones. Everyone wanted Mr. Bones. Even Zip came to me for help. Heard he got lynched a few years back, down in Indiana, and then smoked like ham. Poor Zip. Rich Jim, for yes, I, Scratch Jones, stage name “Professor Miscegenation and da Interlocutor,” signed Mr. Jim Trice of east ass-bugger Tennessee with Messrs. Feeley & P.T. Barnum for two hundred and fifty dollars a week. Got free accommodations on any Pullman car compliments of Mr. George Pullman the Elder as long as he could use Mr. Bones’s likeness in newspaper advertisements, handbills. Couple thousand Negroes working on Pullman sleepers and dining cars, and not one is allowed to sleep or dine on them! But we are. Scratch Jones and Jim Trice. Fine living even for a yellow nigger (or am I red?), and downright heavenly for a country raggamuffin like Jim.

  And so I heard my meal ticket croak, “Ah cain’t stan’ dem electric lights o’ Mr. Edison’s, Scratch.” He started with the white paint. “Ah like de ol’ lime footlights. . . dis ’lectricity jus’ anudder piece o’ man’s vanity over Gawd—ain’t that right? Vanity.”

  I kicked over a brass spittoon to catch his last whiskey heave, then passed him my clean handkerchief. “Listen, Jimmy,” I said. “You having a sort of dream whilst you were passed out? Partner, you drank like you had a cancer and was trying to kill it.”

  He shrugged. He’s murdering himself with liquor and scaring me white and all he can do is shrug?

  I was at his shoulder. “Crying to the angels, Jim?”

  He twisted away from me. “Ah open’d da gate,” he suddenly whispered. “Ah open’d da gate, an’ he say he gwine take car’us . . . me, my mama. Ah open’d da gate . . .”

  That he did. “Too late for regrets. We got a show.”

  Maybe it wasn’t anyone getting to him. Maybe it was just nerves. Tonight, the snow was falling like a billion cotton bolls in Buffalo, but Irish Quinn said we’d have a full house nonetheless. The Pinkertons and the cops were already there inspecting the stage, the exits and entrances. President Grover Cleveland himself, escorting his new young wife, would be up in the box draped with red, white, and blue crinoline and festooned with Old Glory. In the other gilded boxes would sit none other than Mr. Jay Gould, Mr. Vanderbilt, and Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan and their respective families. Freezing outside but in the Orpheum, hot as hell itself with the shrieks of delight and applause for Professor Miscegenation’s Darktown Review. And we’d carry that endorsement across the Atlantic to play before the crowned heads of Europe, from Queen Victoria in London to Czar Alexander in St. Petersburg, Russia, and back again!

  Then Mr. Bones’d be free. And plain old Jim Trice could wander back to Tennessee. Dig in the nasty mold that was Fort Pillow before he dies. Angels going to biddy him nowhere!

  Little plump white girl with rosy cheeks came in with some cider and some cakes, and I saw Jim eyeing her. Made me feel better but I had to point out that even we couldn’t break the law so flagrantly. Wait for the whores at the Ontario Hotel, I counseled. “Reward for a good show.” I checked the time again, then told him we needed to get our lines clear.

  He nodded. I was only on with him during the Line, wherein I and the rest of the Darktown Cakewalkers would feed him bits and he’d slay the audience. Come the Olio, or second act, there’d be songs and a sketch or two, plus Mr. Bones would do a duet with “Titty Pigeon Pea,” a dusky girl named Loretta Sims from North Carolina. Come the third act, it was all Mr. Bones dancing, singing, clacking on the castanets, and banging his tambourine. Bringing down that curtain. Making the audience happy.

  I, as Professor Miscegenation, didn’t need to go in blackface. I used white paint with just a hint of jaundice. I prompted Jim to begin the quick rehearsal. “G’head, Mr. Bones—”

  “Pardon de integer-rumption, Mr. In-ter-locu-tor,” Jim began, aping the white man’s language, “but did y’all heya dat anudder mulatto professor did die o’ da mos’ terrblrifical malefliction?”

  “You don’t say, Mr. Bone
s!” I answered, on cue. “Was it Dr. Cliftonwitz Carpetbagger of the prestigious Claflin and Howard and Booker T. Tuskaweegee Culud College? Killed by the Knight Riders?”

  He was supposed to mug and bug his eyes and say, “Pob’ly not dem Knight Riders. Pob’ly fom all dem words he had ta spit out he mouff jus’ ta say he name!” The liquor was hammering his head no doubt. The dressing room door slammed and I think we both thought it was either Irish Quinn or the chubby, bosomy white girl. If the latter, I’d have her fetch him some seltzer water with a pinch of laudanum for that headache. So Jim mouthed his next lines as best he could. It was supposed to be a malapropism on Don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched. I had to speak the line for him: “Y’all should neva spek-ulate on da amount o’ yo’ juvenile poultry untilst da proper pro-cess o’ ink-u-bation hab t’ough’rly come ta fruit-tit-tion.. . .”

  At the door came a woman’s voice, but it wasn’t the white girl’s, or even Loretta Sims’s. The voice was clear, crisp, and bit right through me as it recited: “Imagination! Who can sing thy force?” Whereupon that bastard . . . that dullard black bastard Jim Trice . . . found his own voice and in the best King’s English he’d ever mustered, replied: “Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?”

  It was a Negro woman. Short, slight. Wetness glistened on her cloak and wool cap so she must’ve snuck in a stage door from the snow outside. There was a whole line of coons outside in the cold, hoping to get an autograph from Mr. Bones, an invite to our after-soiree at the Ontario, or proffering their own invitations for us to grace their juke joints down Niagara or Lackawanna way. But she didn’t belong to them. I saw her eyes. Eyes that beamed so sweetly at Jim yet burned at me.

  So I cursed at that bitch to leave and hollered for Irish Quinn. Jim mumbled sheepishly about a handbill he saw for some Negro players reciting the work of some long-dead coon wench named Phyllis Wheatley onstage at a nigger church. I thought that was a joke! Colored folk paying to hear poetry? Who was “Phyllis Wheatley”? Nah, they spend their nickels on a shaky tail feather and a Minstrel Line and Mr. Bones! Beloved by niggers and howling whites alike!

  Yet now I could feel my blood boil and my face must’ve turned as red as Mr. Bones’s lips, for he surely backed up off that stool....

  Get a hold of yourself, Scratch, I said to myself. No need for Quinn. Handle this quietly. Maybe it was this bitch who got to Jim, filled him with notions of angels. “You know her, Jim?” I asked. “We only been in Buffalo for two days, partner.”

  “Oh, he knows me, Mr. Jones,” the woman said. “He’s always known me. I was there at Fort Pillow, too. Fort Pillow, Tennessee, Mr. Jones.”

  I felt the chilblains spike down my back to my balls and down my calves.

  “When Nathan Bedford Forrest Confederates attacked, 1864, a traitor opened the fort’s gate . . . a traitor with the small, trembling hands of a child . . . a traitor who meant no one any evil but did evil nonetheless. And the garrison surrendered . . .” She turned toward Jim and he sank his painted face. “. . . then they killed every colored soldier and every soldier’s wife, save for one. Bayoneted every colored child. Save for one.”

  “You mean two?” I pointed out. “Including you? You said you were there on that horrible day when Forrest murdered all those folks, and you about Jim’s age, eh?” Then I got slick. “Listen, miss . . . can we talk outside? I think I may have something for you.”

  “Your money means nothing,” she snapped.

  No, cash and coins wasn’t what I would offer, but I did get her out of there. I whispered a promise to her.

  We left the dressing room, slipped past the scurrying stagehands, the other players slipping into their swallowtail coats and top hats, the orchestra members tuning fiddles, horns, and banjos. My pulse was pounding again, but not in that awful way when Jim sang for angels.

  We reached the cold alley lit by a sputtering lamp. The alley turned a dogleg to the street, so everything was hushed but for the gentle hiss of falling snow on the wet cobblestones. Her eyes stabbed straight at me, but mine darted like a fox’s. My gaze arched and dipped and swung, and then I indeed locked eyes with her. I smiled. I’d already pulled the stiletto from my trouser pocket. Carried it purely for self-defense, of course—never know what roughnecks you’ll met on the road, and I hated guns....

  The thin blade slid into her throat as if the flesh was air. Blood gushed in a single stream, even as she toppled, eyes still stabbing me as surely I stabbed her. Not a look of terror or even surprise, though. A few twitches and I knew she was gone.

  It was only then that I realized we weren’t alone.

  An old tramp, trembling in the snow. Moth-eaten wool coat barely covered him. He smelled of urine and the same bad whiskey Jim snorted. Terror in his eyes, all right. I knew what to do. Put the stiletto in his hands. Call for help. And I told him he wouldn’t hang for killing a Negro woman. Best scenario for him if he confessed, as he’d be guaranteed a warm cell, three hot meals a day. His hands still grasped that stiletto, yet his tongue was like glue when the Pinkertons and cops came running. Damn shame. I went inside to find Mr. Bones.

  You know that fool didn’t even ask me about the woman! All the commotion over some ruckus in the stage alley, and he didn’t have a clue why! He’d even donned his stovepipe hat and got his spats fastened. Face coal black with red slips and white teeth and white gloves. Ready for curtain call and here I didn’t even have my own costume ready. He didn’t even look at the white girl come to collect the cider and cakes, and showing him some ankle. She was too stupid herself to even note the murder outside. Hell, I’d take her to the Ontario now, ride her like a mare. But the chilblain sliced again when Jim saw a spot of blood on my face.

  “Now, hold on, Jim-buck,” I said. “Lemme just tell you—”

  He cut me off. “Ah hab some bad spot o’ blood on mah face, too, Scratch, when ah wuz a chile, dere at Fort Pillow. Lak she says, dem Rebs come an’ Bedfor’ Forrest bury colored chiles alibe. Know how dey get in when dey attack, Mr. In-ter-locu-tor?”

  “Somebody let ’em in, Mr. Bones. They stormed the walls but they didn’t break through until the gate opened. Somebody let them in. For a promise. But past is past and let’s move on, eh? We got work to do.”

  “Yeah-sur. Promise dat he lib. He mama lib. Den a promise dat he be rich an’ dem same crackers whut kilt his folk gwine come see he name in dey limelight . . . now Mr. Edison’s ’lectric light. An’ colored lub him lak de whites. Sing he songs. Buy he choc’late an’ matches an’ cornmeal flour dat he face be on. An’ now de pres’-dent gwine come see’em, too. All fo’ o’promise.”

  I shimmied out of my trousers, and the white girl giggled at the sight of my drawers and garter. I took my baggy pin-striped pants and slipped them on and just let him rant, go off in his fugue. As long as he sang, danced, cakewalked, cooned—no one would care. And that bitch was dead. Yet stupid me, I had to ask.

  “Who was she, Jim? Twenty years and we hadn’t had one bit of trouble.”

  He popped a wide melon-eating smile, clicked his castanets. “Ain’t tell you a thing. Say I can do better . . . we all do better than dese minstrel shows. Teach me a line or two ’bout good things. Imagination, by Phyllis Wheatley. Colored men doin’ Ot’hello by Mr. Shakespeare. Writin’ dey own shows, own music. Mo’dem poems. Ain’t Olio songs fo’ ig’rant niggahs to prance to. Not ’bout habbin’ money!”

  Spittle was flying. I couldn’t help myself. “She said all this, huh? When—the hotel last night? And where’re these handbills about some Negro play, Negro show at some church?”

  “Ah’s sober now, Scratch. Curtain call soon. President and all dem big white folk be waitin’ . . . waitin’ on Mr. Bones.”

  Artful, he wasn’t. And his story about that woman made no sense. He was hiding something, though. Irish Quinn shooed the white girl out and said we had two minutes to curtain, so what was I to do but trust him?

  Fanfare. Chickens and mules down on the farm; cakewa
lkers prancing in the town. Me, stage right. Him, stage left. We slayed. Act two. The Olio. I was calmer and everything was going better than I’d dreamed. Titty Pigeon Pea and Mr. Bones nailed their final duet, “Darky Sweeties,” and even I shed a tear as I wiped off my makeup. Act three. Mr. Bones, alone. Our finale. Hushed crowd as he entered, stage right, tambourine in one hand, clicking “bones” in the other . . .

  And then that son of a bitch dropped the tambourine and those bones to his feet.

  He took off his hat. That syrupy bass crooned a song I’d never heard. It was about a little boy’s nightmare. Blood. Fire. Pain. Shame. And a dream. Redemption.

  Oh no. Oh, shit no . . .

  More shame, this time aimed at the audience. A black finger pointed at them all, from the middling folk in the cheaper seats to the titans of industry and politics in the upper boxes. And a final song, like a nail dragged across tin. I wailed.

  “Brudder gwine guide me home . . . bright angels gwine biddy me ta come . . .”

  It was one of the Pinkertons who first saw the revolver. I guess he thought Jim was going to shoot President Cleveland, just like someone else, whom I knew, shot President Garfield some years before over a job the fool didn’t get. The agent drew his weapon, got off a round at ol’ Jim Trice. But Jim was dead before that bullet struck his liver—Jim having put one in his own head a split second prior.

  People rushed the stage, but I backed into the wings, mind spinning, heart exploding with every beat. I could feel a look on my back. A stabbing look, but with pain worse than I’d felt in a long time.

  I turned. He was there. The old tramp from the alley.

  He stood plain as he did on the third day, when the stone was rolled away from the tomb. He was smiling. And the bitch I killed backed him right up, not a smear of blood on her neck. The tramp had some blood. Oh yes. Where it usually oozed. From his wrists. And there, soaking through his torn socks.