Dancers on the Shore

by William Melvin Kelley

  The place was jammed! There was more people there than that first Friday night.

  Mister Friedlander said: “After you called, I put a sign in the window saying: Bedlow here tonight. Those people, they’re here to see him. That’s what the riot is.” Then he asked me if I read that New York Sunday paper which weighs so much and ain’t got no funnies. I told him No.

  “Well, that Friday night your Uncle Wallace was here, there was a guy here from that paper. And the next Sunday he wrote an article—wait, I’ll show you.” So he ran behind the counter and come out with this page of a newspaper that he got magnified around forty times and pasted on cardboard. At the top of the page was this title: Big Voice Crying in the Wilderness.

  The article under it was about Uncle Wallace. It told all about that other Friday night and said that Uncle Wallace was a voice speaking for all the colored folks and that to hear him was to understand the pain of discrimination and segregation and all that kind of stuff, which seemed like a lot of B-S to me because I didn’t understand Uncle Wallace hardly myself; I didn’t understand why he sang folk songs when he could sing rock-and-roll or jazz. So how the hell could he be my voice or the voice of anybody like me? But that’s what this writer said anyway.

  When I looked up from the story I must-a been frowning, or maybe looked like I didn’t get it because Mister Friedlander grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. “Don’t you see? Your uncle is the hottest thing to hit New York since the Chicago Fire. He’s a fad!”

  And all the time he was telling me this, Uncle Wallace was standing by the window looking out at the people, not realizing this was all about him. That was when I started to dig something about him I never had before, and when I started to really like him and decided I’d have to look after him, even though he was old enough and big enough and smart enough to look after his-self: Uncle Wallace was innocent. To him you didn’t sing for money, or for people even, but because you wanted to. And I guess the most important thing was that he wasn’t some guy singing about love who never loved, or hard work who never worked hard because he done all that, loved women and picked cotton and plowed and chopped trees. And even though he was in show business, he wasn’t at all like anybody else in it. He was more real somehow.

  Anyway, I could say he was better that night than he was before, but that wouldn’t be really honest because I didn’t dig his music so I don’t know if he was better or not. I think the people liked him better, but I can’t be sure of that either because when he finished, they was in so much pain, they never snapped their fingers for him, just sat staring, sad and hurting like before.

  After he sung three sets and was sitting back in the kitchen drinking gin and fruit juice, this man come in with Mister Friedlander. “Bedlow, this is A. V. Berger. He wants to speak to you a minute.”

  This Mister Berger was five feet tall—tops—but weighed close to three hundred pounds with black hair, straight and greasy. He was wearing a black wool suit—this was in midsummer now—with a vest and a scarf, which was black wool too. And the English this man spoke was fantabulous! I can only try to copy it. He hemmed and hawed a lot too so it sounded like:

  “Mister Bedlow, (hem) I’m a concert producer. And (hem) I have been watching you perform. It seems quite likely that (hem) I can use you in a concert (hem) I’m staging at Carnegie Hall.” He stopped there. I could see he was looking for Uncle Wallace to jump in the air and clap his hands. I knew what Carnegie Hall was, but I bet Uncle Wallace didn’t. Mister Berger thought Uncle Wallace was playing it cagey.

  “Mister Bedlow, (hem) I’m prepared to offer you a good price to appear in the show.”

  “What’s it to be? A dance?” Uncle Wallace said. “Sure, I’ll play for a dance. That’s what I done down home.”

  “No, Mister Bedlow. You (hem) misunderstand. This will be a concert.”

  “Like what?” He turned to me. “Like what, Carlyle?”

  “A concert, Uncle Wallace. That’s when a whole lot of folks come and just sit and listen to you sing.”

  “You mean just like here?”

  “No, Uncle Wallace. It’s like a church.” I was thinking about how the seats was arranged, but he didn’t get me.

  “But I don’t sing church music, Carlyle. My songs is too dirty for church. They never let me sing in no church.” He looked back at Mister Berger. “What kind-a church you running, mister, that they sing my kind-a songs in there?”

  “(hem) I don’t run a church, Mister Bedlow.” Mister Berger looked sort-a bleak and confused.

  “No, Uncle Wallace, it ain’t in no church,” I said. “It’s in a big hall and they want you to sing for a couple thousand people.”

  “No stuff?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said.

  “That’s (hem) right,” said Mister Berger.

  “Go on, Bedlow,” chimed in Mister Friedlander.

  So he did.

  But that concert wasn’t until October and Mister Berger asked him to appear in early July, so there was a lot of time in between, when Uncle Wallace was making all his records.

  And there was that damn movie. It was about this plantation family and all their problems in the Civil War. It wasn’t really such a bad movie, but Uncle Wallace made it worse. I mean, he was the best thing in it, but after he was on the screen you couldn’t look at the movie no more.

  The movie would be going on all right and then would come Uncle Wallace’s scene. He be sitting on this log in raggedy clothes and they even had a bandana around his head. You know how they make movies about colored people in Hollywood; the slaves act like slavery was the best God-damn thing ever happened to them and all they did all day was sit around on logs and sing and love Old Master, instead of breaking their asses in his cotton field and waiting for the chance to run away or slit Old Master’s throat wide open. But that wasn’t the worst. Dig this! They made him sing John Henry. But it didn’t matter. They didn’t know Uncle Wallace. He started playing and singing and when he got through you had the feeling old John Henry wasn’t no idiot after all. I mean, I heard some guy sing that song once and I said to myself: what an idiot this John Henry must-a been, killing his-self to beat a machine, when he could-a joined a union, like my old man’s, and made twice the money and kept the machine out.

  But when Uncle Wallace sang John Henry you didn’t feel that way. You felt like old John Henry was trapped and he had to do what he did, like when a fellow says your Mama screws for syphilitic blind men, you got to hit him; you don’t think about it; it don’t even matter if he joking or not, you just got to hit him even if he beats all hell out-a you. Well, that’s what Uncle Wallace did to you.

  So when them white folks come back on the screen with their dumb problems, and started kissing it up, you could see they was cardboard; you could see they was acting and you got up and left out of there because you had to see real people again, and even when you got out in the street you sort-a felt like the people out there wasn’t real neither, so what you did was go back in and stand in the lobby until the next showing when Uncle Wallace come on again for his two minutes and you’d go in and see him. Then you’d walk out again to the lobby. There was always a whole lot of folks out there waiting like you and not looking at you because you was as cardboardy to them as they was to you, and you’d wait for his two minutes again, and like that all day until you got too hungry to see.

  After he made the movie he come back East and it was October and it was time for the concert at Carnegie Hall. And I guess you know what happened at the concert, but I’ll tell it again and also some things I felt about it.

  Mister Berger had-a told Uncle Wallace to play it cool and save his best until last, which meant that Uncle Wallace was to come out and sing a couple songs with only one guitar and then—bingo!—lay the two guitars on them. So they fixed me up in a tux and when the time come, I paraded out and give him the other guitar
.

  Uncle Wallace was tuning the second guitar when a voice come whispering up from the dark in the front row. “Hey, nigger, you the same one, ain’t you.”

  Uncle Wallace squinted down, and there in the front row with all them rich white folks was this dark little Negro. There was a woman with him and a whole bunch of little kids, all shabby-looking, all their eyes shining like a row of white marbles.

  “The same as what?” Uncle Wallace said.

  And the voice come back. “The same fellow what played at a East Willson café in 1948.”

  “Yeah, I played there that year.”

  “There was one night in particular, when a cripple white man was taping you, and we all danced until the next day.”

  “Sure, it was!” Uncle Wallace snapped his fingers. “I remember you. You was with a pretty girl.”

  “You right, man. Here she is; my wife.” He turned to the woman. “Honey, get up and meet Mister Bedlow.” She did, and Uncle Wallace leaned over the edge of the stage and shook her hand. “Say, you know, I bought these big money seats because I wanted my kids to see you up close. Them is them.” He pointed at the row of kids. “The oldest one, he’s Bedlow. I named him after you because me and the wife wasn’t getting on so good until that night.” It was like they was all alone in that great big place, just those two down-home Negroes talking over old times. “And them others is Booker, Carver, Robeson, Robinson, and Bunche.”

  “Man, you do me proud. Pleased to meet you all. Say, you want to come up here and sit with me?”

  “Now, you do me proud.” So they all come up on stage like a row of ducks.

  Then Uncle Wallace started to play and the littlest kid, that was Bunche—he was about three—he sat there for about one minute and then I saw him jump on his feet and start to do these wild little steps, just his feet moving like little pistons. Then the man got up and asked his wife to dance, and the next thing I knew, everybody was dancing—even me; I danced right out on stage—and all the rich white folks was on their feet in the aisles and their wives was hugging strangers, black and white, and taking off their jewelry and tossing it in the air and all the poor people was ignoring the jewelry, was dancing instead, and you could see everybody laughing like crazy and having the best old time ever. Colored folks was teaching white folks to dance, and white folks was dancing with colored folks and all the seats was empty and people was coming on stage to dance. Then the other singers backstage come out and started to back-up Uncle Wallace and we was all dancing, all of us, and over all the noise and laughing you could hear Uncle Wallace with his two guitars. You could hear him over the whole thing.

  Then the air changed; you could feel it. It wasn’t just air anymore, it started to get sweet-tasting to breathe like perfume and the people started to run down the aisles toward the stage, and everybody on the stage started to dance in toward Uncle Wallace, and everybody, everybody in the whole place was sobbing and crying and tears was pouring down their cheeks and smearing their make-up and making their eyes red and big. I could hear Uncle Wallace singing louder than ever. The people was rushing toward him. They was all crying and smiling too like people busting into a trance in church and it seemed like everybody in the place was on stage trying to get near enough to touch him, grab his hand and shake it and hug him and kiss him even. And then the singing stopped.

  I pushed my way through the crowd up to his chair. The first thing I seen was his two guitars all tore up and smashed and the strings busted. Uncle Wallace was sitting in his chair, slumped over, his face in his lap. And this was real strange; he looked like an old punctured black balloon, deflated and all. There wasn’t a mark on him, but he was dead all right.

  Mister Berger called in a whole bunch of doctors, but they just stood around shaking their heads. They couldn’t figure out how he’d died. One of them said, “There isn’t nothing wrong with him, except he’s dead.”

  Now I know this’ll sound lame to you, but I don’t think anything killed him except maybe at that second, he’d done everything that he ever wanted to do; he’d taken all them people, and sung to them, and made them forget who they was, and what they come from, and remember only that they was people. So he’d seen all he wanted to see and there was no use going on with it. I mean, he’d made it. He got over.

  It’s kind of like that girl I was telling you about—the one who’d promised you some tail, and when you got it, you was sorry, because then you’d still have it to look forward to? Well, I think it’s like that: getting tail and coming out of her house and there ain’t nothing but pussycats and garbage cans in the street, and it’s lonely and late and you wished you hadn’t done it, but then you shrug and say to yourself: “Hell, man, you did, and that’s it.” And there ain’t nothing to do but leave, because it’s finished. But then there’s something else. You’re walking along and all at once you smile, and maybe even laugh, and you say: “Man, that was some good tail!” And it’s a nice memory to walk home with.

  ALSO BY

  WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY

  A DIFFERENT DRUMMER

  June 1957. One hot afternoon in the backwaters of the Deep South, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban salts his fields, shoots his horse, burns his house, and heads north with his wife and child. His departure sets off an exodus of the state’s entire black population, throwing the established order into brilliant disarray. Told from the points of view of the white residents who remained, A Different Drummer stands, decades after its first publication in 1962, as an extraordinary and prescient triumph of satire and spirit.

  Fiction

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