Still, I must say for him that he"s doing his level best to oblige. But what with him trying to remember to keep the eyes rolling and the lips smacking, and the director yelling at him through that megaphome to do the next step this-a-way or that-a-way, he"s presently so muddled up in his mind that it seems like he can"t get nothing at all accomplished. It makes me feel actually sorry for him; but I ain"t sorry for the director. One of "em is ignorant and willing to admit it; the other one is ignorant but is trying to cover it up by behaving bossified and making loud sounds and laying the blame on somebody else. Leastwise, that"s how I figures it out. I says to myself, I says:
"It"s all wrong frum who laid the rail. Yas suh, I"ll tell the waitin"
world they don"t neither one of "em onderstan" the leas" particle "bout n.i.g.g.e.r actions an" n.i.g.g.e.r depotemint."
I must"ve said it out loud without thinking, because right alongside me somebody speaks up and says:
"What do you know about this business?"
I turns my head and looks, and it"s that there quiet little man with the big gla.s.ses on, name of Mr. Simons.
I says to him, I says:
"I don"t know nothin" "bout this yere bus"ness, but I does know somethin" "bout bein" cullid, seein" ez I is one myse"f."
He sort of squints up his eyes like he"s got an idea. He says:
"Could you take the director"s place there and show that man how to get through with his scene?"
"Who, boss, me?" I says. "No suit! I mebbe mout could tek his place pervidin" w"ite folkses didn"t mind havin" me th"owin" awders at "em, but even so, I couldn"t never plant the right idees in "at other gen"elman"s mind."
"Why not?" he says.
""Cause it"s plain to me," I says, ""at in the fust place he ain"t got no notion ez to how a black boy would carry hisse"f whilst waitin" on a table. "Scuse me fur sayin" so ef he"s a friend of yours, but tha"s the facts of the case, boss--the feelin"s ain"t thar."
"All right," he says, "then could you play the waiter"s part yourself?"
"Well suh," I says, "mebbe I could ef they wouldn"t "spect me to act lak a actor but just "lowed me to act lak a human bein". I ain"t never done no actin"," I says, "but I been a human bein" fur ez fur back ez I kin remember."
"You"ve got it!" he says. "What this business needs in it is fewer people trying to act and more people willing to behave like human beings. How would you like to put on the jacket and the ap.r.o.n that man is wearing and see if you could get away with the job he"s trying to do?"
"Ef "twould be a favor to you--yas, suh," I says. "But I"m" skeered the directin" gen"elman mout object."
"I think possibly I could fix that," he says. "I happen to be the owner of this plant. I"ll go speak to him."
"Hole on," I says, "ef you please, suh. The onliest way I could do it,"
I says, "would be fur you to tell me jest whut you wanted done an" "en you"d have to mek all hands stand back an" keep quiet whilst I wuz tryin" to do it. It sho"," I says, "would git me all razzle-dazzled to have some gen"elman yellin" at me th"ough "at megaphome ever" half secont or so."
"There"s another idea that"s worth experimenting with," he says. "I"ve thought the same thing myself before now. You stay right here a minute."
Well, to make a long story no longer, he goes over and whispers something to the director and first-off the director he shakes his head like he"s dead set against the proposition but Mr. Simons keeps on arguing with him and after a little bit the director flings up both hands sort of despairful and goes over and sets down at a little table, looking very sulky. Then, Mr. Simons he tells the blacked-up man to take off his ap.r.o.n and his jacket and tells me to put "em on me and then he tells me very slow just what he wants me to do, but he says I"m to do it my own way and if, as I goes along, I thinks of anything else which a real colored waiter would do under such-like circ.u.mstances, why, I"m to stick that in, too.
"Try to forget that it"s all pretending," he says, "and try to forget that there"s a camera grinding in front of you. Just remember that you"re a waiter in a cheap dump serving a couple of young people that have run away from home to be married and are in a hurry to get something to eat. Try to register your expectations of getting a nice big tip from the young fellow. And when you slip the girl the note that"ll tip her off to the fact that her old sweetheart is waiting outside and wants to see her, you want to make sure that the man at the table with her can"t see you, but that people sitting out in the audience watching the show will see the note pa.s.s. Get me? We won"t have any rehearsals--too much preliminary stuff might make you self-conscious. I"ll have "em start shooting just as soon as you come on. Now go to it!"
Which I does it all according to orders. I must"ve gave utter satisfaction, too, because when we gets through, everybody setting round claps their hands and applauses me same as if they was at a regular show--that is, everybody does so except the director; which he continues to act peevish. This here Mr. Simons he goes yet farther than applausing; he comes over to me and he says I has put him under obligations to me by helping him out and if ever I feels like doing some more moving-picture work just to call on him either down at his office or up here at the studios, because he says there ain"t no telling when he may have another show with a part in it for a smart spry colored person. And with that he slips his card into my hand and along with it a ten dollar bill, which that is more money than ever I has earned before in my whole life for a light job, let alone just acting natural for about five or six minutes.
He starts on away then but suddenly he turns round like a notion had just hit him between the eyes and he comes back to me and says he wants to speak to me a minute and I follows him back around a corner where n.o.body won"t be liable to hear us.
"I want to ask you about something," he says, when we arrives there.
"You seem to be a person who keeps his eyes and his ears open; besides, you"re colored yourself and what I need here, I think, is somebody who can look at a proposition from a colored man"s slant rather than from a white man"s. And finally, my guess is that you haven"t been away from your own part of the country very long and that probably means you haven"t lost your perspective. Do you get my drift?"
I wouldn"t know a perspective if I met up with one in the big road but I ain"t aiming to expose my ignorance before this strange gentleman. I tries to look like I"m mighty glad that I"ve been so careful as not to lose it and I tells him yes, sir, I gets his drift.
"Good," he says. "Well, making it snappy, the idea is just this: New York City is full of colored actors--not merely singers and dancers but real artists, some of "em, who can act and are especially strong in comedy. That"s point number one. In nearly every good-sized town in this country, North and South, there"s at least one moving-picture house catering to your people. That"s point number two. But day after day and night after night those patrons see nothing but pictures written by white people, directed by white men, and acted by white people. That"s point number three. Now, I"ve been carrying round a scheme in my head for quite awhile--a scheme to try the experiment of turning out a line of two-reelers, say, done by colored casts, and selling them, if I can, to these three or four thousand houses run by colored people and playing to colored people. I"ve got the studio right here--I"ve got the organization and the equipment. And at any time I need it I can put my hand on plenty of acting material--colored people, I mean--who"ll only need a little training to make "em fit for my purposes. Some of "em have already had some training--as extras around the local plants. As I dope it out, if I can produce pictures which will appeal particularly to your people I"ll have a steady market through the big exchanges; because, if I know anything about the tastes of the general public, white people will enjoy all-colored comedies--if they"re done right--almost as much as colored people will. And that"s point number four. Now then, give me your idea of the value of the notion?"
"Mister," I says, "I kin only tell you how one cullid pusson feels, w"ich "at one is me: The way I looks at it, you ain"t needin" to bother much "bout fancy scenery an" special fixin"s--wid a crowd of n.i.g.g.e.rs the mainest p"int will be the actin". The actin" part is whar you can"t fool "em. An"," I says, "ef you kin git holt of a crowd of cullid actors w"ich is willin" to ack lak the sho"-nuff ole-time cullid an" not lak onbleached imitations of w"ite folks, it seems lak to me the rest of it oughter be plum" easy. Mostly I"d mek the pitchers comical, ef I wuz you. You kin do "at an" still not hurt n.o.body"s feelin"s, w"ite nur black. Ef you wants to perduce a piece showin" a lot of n.i.g.g.e.rs gittin"
skinned, let it be another n.i.g.g.e.r w"ich skins "em. Then," I says, "w"en, at the last, they gits even wid him it"ll still be n.i.g.g.e.r ag"inst n.i.g.g.e.r. An" ef, once"t in awhile, you meks a kind of a serious-lak pitcher, showin", mebbe, how the race is a-strivin" to git ahaid in the world, "at ought to fetch these yere new-issue cullid folks w"ich," I says, "is seemin"ly become so plentiful up Nawth. But mainly I"d stick to the laffin" line ef I wuz you--n.i.g.g.e.rs is one kind of folks in "is country w"ich they ain"t afeard to laff. An" whutever else you does," I says, "don"t mess wid no race problem. We gits mouty tired, sometimes, of bein" treated the way we of"en is. Tek my own case," I says. "I ain"t no problem, I"s a pusson. I craves to be so reguarded. An" tha"s the way I alluz is been reguarded by my own kind of w"ite folks down whar I comes frum," I says.
"Say," he says, when I gets through saying this, "I think you"ve earned another ten-spot." And with that he shoves one more of them desirable bills at me; which he don"t have no real struggle inducing me to take it. Because I"m a powerful easy person to control in such matters. And always has been, from a child up.
"I was practically convinced all along that the proposition was worth trying," he says. "What you say helps to confirm a judgment I already had. Well, don"t forget about coming to see me if you want work in my line--there may be plenty of it if this thing pans out." And he shakes hands with me again and walks off.
Right after that a young white gentleman he comes looking for me to take down my full ent.i.tlements and he says I will be honorably mentioned by name on the program of the picture which they now is making, when it"s done. And Mr. Dallas he tells me I can take the rest of the day off for to celebrate having broke into the movies.
CHAPTER X
_Black Belt_
But I figures I has got something better to do than just to be gallivanting to and fro on a frolic. A notion has busted out insides of my brains. So right off I puts off across town for West One-Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street hoping for to find one U. S. G. Petty, Colored.
Some time back, as I remembers, I made brief mention about having affiliated myself into the Pastime Colored Pleasure and Recreation Club, Inc. Only, the last word--_Inc._--is not usually spoke when you is naming the club, by reason of its sounding so much like a personal reflection upon the prevailing complexion of some of the members. Still, that is the way it is wrote out on the letter-heads and the initiation blanks.
I has belonged for going on more than a month now and I spends much of my spare time in the club-rooms. I feels more comfortable among my fellow-affiliators than I does any place else in this town. Looking back on it I"m convinced "twas up there I first began to get shut of the grievous homestick pangs which afflicted me so sorefully following after our advent into these parts. Up to now I has not spoke of my being homesick because it seemed like to me the mainest job was to set down what come to pa.s.s without paying much heed to private sensations upon the part of the scribe thereof, but, if the truth must now be confessed, I oftentimes was mighty nigh completely overcome by my sufferings from the same during them opening weeks of the present sojourn.
At the beginning I used to get so tired, night-times, tramping about streets which was full of utter strangers and not never speaking a word to n.o.body nor seeing a friendly face, that I liked to died, dad-blame if I didn"t! If I stood still they"d run right on over me and if I walked on I didn"t have nowheres to go and I"d be so exhaustified from looking at sights all by myself that I"d get to wishing I"d never see another sight again as long as I lived, without I had somebody I knowed along with me to help me look at it. And then I"d come morosing on back to the apartment and probably Mr. Dallas he"d be out and n.o.body there but that there slick-headed j.a.panee boy. I tried sociable talk with him once or twice but you really don"t derive no great amount of nourishment from talking with somebody which thinks language is sucking your breath in through your front teeth and once in awhile grinning like one of these here pumpkin Jack-mer-lanterns. So I soon learned the lesson of just letting him be.
I"d go on back to my room and take off my shoes for to ease my aching feet; but whilst taking off your shoes is good for your feet it don"t help the ache in your soul none. I"d set at the window and look out on them millions and millions of lights, all winking and blinking at me like hostile bright eyes, and away down below me in the street I could hear old automobile horns blatting like lost ghosts, and every now and then there"d rise up to my ears a sort of a rumble and a roar, like as if New York City was having indigestion pains; and I"ll say it positively was lonesome. I could shut my eyes and see my own home-town with the shade trees leaning down towards the sidewalks like they was interested in what went on underneath them, and I could hear the voices of the neighbors, both white and black, calling back and forth to one another and I could seem to smell frying cat-fish spitting in the skillet at old Uncle Isom Woolfolk"s hot snack-stand down back of the Market House, and I also could smell that damp, soothing kind of a smell which it rolls in off the river on a warm night and then--oh, my Blessed Maker!--something would hurt me like having the misery in your side.
That"s the way it was very frequent at the outsetting. But pretty soon I gets acquainted with a couple of colored boys which works in the apartment house next door to ours--not West Indians but regulation colored boys, one being from Macon, Georgia, and one from Memphis, Tennessee--and they takes to escorting me round with "em at night, mainly in what the white folks calls the Harlem Black Belt. Fussing back and forth, thuslike, I makes yet more acquaintances and then--_bam_!--all at once there"s a quick change in me and I ain"t so choked up with lonesomeness like I was. All of a sudden my having lived heretofore always down in Kentucky has become to me just a kind of a far-off dream and it"s almost like as if I had been a New York residenter for years past. "Specially does I feel so when I goes up to the Pastime Club; which I joins it by invitation about a month ago and is now already being talked of for one of the honory offices at the next annual election which will come along in about five or six weeks from now.
I finds that the most of my race up here aims to copy their actions after white folks when they is showing themselves off in public. They is forever trying to talk like whites and trying to appear deeply oninterested in pa.s.sing things, the same as some white folks does, and even trying to think like whites, I expect. But when they gets off amongst themselves their natural feelings comes out on "em and the true coloredism breaks forth and they cuts loose and enjoys themselves regardless. That"s the way it is behind the closed doors of our club-rooms. Also, there"s suitable games and indoor sports such as c.o.o.n-can and two-bit-limit poker with the joker running wild and a round of rumdoodlums after every face-full; and when hunger gnaws at you there"s a Chinee restaurant right handy by, which it caters "specially to the colored trade. Here is where I first meets a crock of this here chop suey face to face; which it may be a Chinee dish but certainly is got a kind of an African flavor to it. If you can"t get a mess of cow-peas and some real corn-pones and maybe half a fried young spring chicken with an abundance of gravy, I don"t know of nothing which makes a more desirable light snack between meals than about fifty cents worth of chop suey with a double order of boiled rice on the side and some of that there greasy black Chinee sauce to sop it in.
It"s one time in the front room of the club that I first takes special notice of this here U. S. G. Petty, which he is the same person I goes a-seeking upon leaving the studios on this day in question. The way he comes to bring himself to my attention is this way: One night five or six of us Pastimers in good standing is setting round not doing nothing in particular, but just setting, when talk arises concerning of Gabriel, the Black Prophet of Abyssinia, which his name is now on everybody"s tongue, more or less.
It seems that the Black Prophet come a-projecting himself onto the local scene last spring, him claiming to hail from a far-off lat.i.tude called Abyssinia, and immediately he creates a big to-do, which is only to be expected considering of his general aspect. In the first place, he"s a powerful orator and just overflowing with n.o.ble large words. In the second place, he"s a great big over-bearing-looking man and wearing at all times a flowing garment of purple like the night-shirt of a king, and instead of having a hat on he"s got his head all bandaged up in many silken folds like he"s got scalp-trouble. Naturally, folks turns out to look at him; but language and curious clothes is not the sole things by which he recommends himself. He"s got something even more compelling to the colored mind than what these two is--he"s had a glorious vision, so he states, and he craves for to tell about it on all occasions where folks"ll give heed; which they freely does, because he certainly can explain the whyfores and "numerate the whereases and show the whereins.
But showing wherein is his main hold.
From the way he tells it, he laid down one night in his native country for to sleep and whilst he slept an angel appeared before him in a dream bearing a flaming scroll and a golden sword, and the angel anointed his brows with the oils of understanding and wiped the scales of blindness from off his eyes and smeared his lips with the salves of eloquence--altogether, it seem like the angel must a-been working on him half the night getting him greased-up to suit. And along towards morning the command is laid on him to go forth into the world and deliver his race from bondage in every hemisphere there is. So it transpires that he takes his foot in his hand and he comes on across the seas over to these here United States of North America and starts in his ministrations in New York. Leastwise, that is the account as he lays it down; which he calls it an inspired prophecy from On High but it sounds more to me like an inspired real-estate scheme, because the plan as he preaches it is that all us black folks everywhere must straight-away rise ourselves up and follow after him, which he will then lead us back to our original own country of Affika where he will cause all the white folks which has settled there to pull out and leave us in sole charge for to rule the state and run our own government and be a free and independent people from thenceforth on forever. So you pays down so much for to join and so much every month in dues and soon then--to hear him tell it--you will be happy on your way across the ocean to find your haven in the Promised Land.
But not me! I ain"t lost no haven. Moreover, if ever anybody does promise me one-such I ain"t aiming to go seeking after it under the guidnance of a dark stranger which he ain"t no credentials for to endorse him in my eyes, excusing it"s a purple silk night-shirt and a tale about him having been lubricated all over with a lot of different kinds of fancy ointments by an Abyssinian angel. No sir, if I has to do traveling in extreme foreign-off parts I"ll go along with some of my own white folks which I can put trust in their words and dependence on their acts. And, finally, the idea of my returning to Affika does not seem to appeal to me in no way nor at no time whatsomever. What"s the use of returning to a place where you ain"t never been? As I says to myself the first time the notion is expounded to me, I says:
"I ain"t frum Affika, I is frum Paducah, Kintucky. Some of my former folks may a-hailed frum there--leas"wise, tha"s the common rumor--but the Poindexter fambly is been away so long it seems lak I ain"t inherited the taste to "go traipsin" back. Mo"over, ef whut I heahs "bout it is correc", Affika is full of alligators an" lions an"
onreconciled Bengal tigers an" man-eatin" cannibals, w"ich I wouldn"t be surprised but whut they all of "em "specially favors the dark meat.
An" yere I is, a pernounced brunette! So, w"en they starts makin" up the excursion list they kin kin"ly leave my name off, "cause I "spects to be very busily engaged stayin" right whar I dog-goned is!"