Paradise Alley (62 page)

Trying to be even smaller than the rest, tucked away in an even darker corner.

“Don't you go anywhere, neither.” He smiled at Tad, running a finger over his talisman. “I don't want to have to go look for you again.”

He got a brief, involuntary smile from the boy. Then he was flying up the stairs, after the sergeant, running up to the first floor. Murphy staring at him as if he had lost his mind—his lips flattening into a knowing exasperation.
He thinks I am going to run out—

“It's no good, son, there's too many of 'em out there,” Murphy started to tell him. A serious young Irish face beneath his high Metropolitans hat, a thick, red-brown mustache creeping down to his chin to make him look older. His eyes, at least, betrayed a certain sympathy—a sympathy for them all, trapped as they were in his basement.

“You'd never get through, not even alone. Best try to make it out the back, with the others. We'll hold 'em off so long's we can—”

“I'll be right out here,” Billy Dove told him.

Reveling in his freedom, now, knowing what he was going to do.
Is this the only real freedom you get? At the end?

He bolted on out the front door, before either of the sergeants could stop him. A little woozy in the sudden glare of the sun, the sharp taste of smoke in the air, after so many hours down in the cloistered dark. Forcing himself to walk straight, at least at first—not wanting the white cops to think that he was afraid.
Still possessing that much pride, at least.

Yet he did feel fear when he saw how many they were. Three or four dozen of them, at least, standing and crouching around their keg, just across the street from the precinct house. They looked blooded, too—reeking of smoke, their coats sooted. Smoking their pipes, laughing a little too loudly as they held their cups up to the tap.

Like so many other, bitter groups of men he had seen, crouched around their stills. But freed now—just like him—to do as they pleased. To take out all their bitterness on whoever they chose—

He had thought that if worst came to worst, he could fight, or flee—pull them away from the precinct house. But seeing their number now he realized they could easily tear him to pieces right here, and there would be nothing he could do about it. Nor was he sure yet of just what he would do—letting the inspiration of the moment drive him on. Moving into the trap this time, at least, with the full knowledge of what he was doing.

Free or not free—

He put the tremble back into his legs as he approached them. Not as if from fear but from inebriation—a condition he knew much better. Starting to weave and stumble as he walked toward the white men, letting his mouth fall into a slack, drunkard's grin. Remembering what he had learned, back when he used to dance for eels along the dock.

He was only a few feet away before they even noticed him. Crowding around the whiskey keg, a name stamped on it.
Spelman's—
no doubt the establishment they had taken it from. They were still making wandering, drunken, self-important speeches to each other but they fell silent, one by one, when they saw
him
coming. The amazement etched plainly across their faces as they watched this drunken black man walking straight up to them.

“
Hail, all ye bummers!
” Billy shouted out at the top of his voice, waving a hand dramatically over his head in salute. His audience completely, dangerously silent now. Stunned and uncertain but still just watching him, like dogs deciding whether to sic.
It would not do. There had to be something more.

He braced himself, and made a sudden, wild leap, landing right on the head of the whiskey keg—just praying that it did not cave in, or fall over. Making sure to balance drunkenly, nearly falling over one way, then the other—holding on to the surprise.

“
Dislike me not for my complexion, fellow bummers!
” he shouted again.

Alone there among dozens of the white men, closing in around him. Their coats covered with blood and ash, still wide-eyed and silent. Yet even as they moved in, he could see some of them start to snicker. More showing their teeth, their mouths pink and jagged—

“We live in a happy day, oh my bummers! And I am happy to be able to address so respectable and intelligent an audience as that now before me.”

There were more snickers, some outright laughs—a few suspicious looks as well. The white men seemed just like those at the docks, who used to watch him dance. Suspecting, perhaps, that they were being made fun of but unable to admit to any such thing. Unable to see him as anything more than a crazy, drunken nigger, for if he
were
anything more—if he were able to actually mimic and abuse them so faithfully—then they would require some restitution beyond what even their knives and ropes could give them.

“We, fellow bummers, are the foundation of New York City! And if the foundation moves, you know, the structure falls!”

He had them now, the men laughing despite themselves. Actually giggling—these gang
b'hoys
and hod carriers, laborers who toiled all day in the construction pits or the stockyards. Taking him for what he wanted to be, for what
they
wanted him to be. Shouting back to him as they might shout the familiar responses to a Bowery minstrel show.

“It
is
falling!”

“Bully for you! Go on, darkie!”

He tottered above them, unsure of just what to say now. Unsure of what he
could
say, of what he could get them to do. He tried to think of what there was, and what he might lead them to, way up here, on the rim of the City. Longing for the quicksilver, slippery way his brain worked when he had lubricated it with alcohol. Yet knowing that it was just as well, that he could not afford a single slip—

“Hey, c'mon now, Juba! Don't stop now. Give us a little breakdown!”

The voice belonged to a particularly tall white man, who had pushed his way to the front. He had cold blue eyes, and a goatee cut in the minimal, affected style of the French emperor. Billy thought that he detected a drawl. The man was smiling, at least showing his teeth, but there was no real mirth in his face.

“Let's see it now, bummer! Breakdown!”

“Yeah, a breakdown!”

The others took up the cry, and slowly, awkwardly at first, Billy began to go into the dance he had last done so long ago, down on the docks. Slipping into the old steps—the bowlegged squats and kicks that the white men had never understood as a mockery of their own, self-important struts.

The same, humiliating dance that he had hated, so many years ago, that had made him swear he would just as soon throw himself in the river if that was all he could do. If he could not walk off this damned island—

Only making sure this time to exaggerate it even more—keeping in mind that he was supposed to be drunk. Weaving back and forth as far as the barrelhead would allow. Wobbling on the very edge, nearly falling off a dozen times—until the whites below him were actually rushing to the edge to catch him. Cheering and clapping and hallooing with each new twist and bend he made.

“Go it! Go it, boy!”

The cheering and laughter kept up until at last he wound down. Admitting desperately to himself that he still had no idea of what to do next, knowing only that he could not dance anymore. He moved slower and slower, until he finally stood, wobbling—truly exhausted—on the edge of the keg. The Paddies still cheering him. But he had nothing else to give them and here they still were, just outside the precinct house and all the children tucked away in its basement. The blue-eyed Southerner standing directly below him now. His mouth still smiling, but not his eyes.

“All right. All right, now,” he drawled. “That was pretty good. Jump on down here now, boy, let us stand you to a drink.”

He made to climb down—but the Southerner stopped him with a hand.

“No, no. I said
jump.
Go ahead an' jump, we'll catch ya. Or don't ya trust a white man?”

“Jump, jump!” the rest of the men right around the barrel began to chant, picking up the idea. They stood before him, their arms outstretched as if they really would catch him.

“Jump, jump!”

This wasn't good—he was letting them call what he should do now.
Billy could see the Southerner sneaking little smiles, and winks and nods to the other white men—some hint of real amusement on his face for the first time. But there was nothing for it now. Billy struck another exaggerated pose, holding his nose as if he were about to dive into water.

“Jump, jump!”

He let himself go then, falling forward, straight off the keg—the gauntlet of grinning, jagged faces coming up at him fast. At the last instant, though, just as he had suspected, they all pulled away—leaving him to fall face first onto the pavement. The street struck his face and his body with brutal force and he felt something in his nose and mouth crack, a wetness spurting up along his cheek. The fall had nearly knocked him out—which he knew would be fatal. As it was he had to lie there for a long moment, prostrate with the pain, fighting to retain consciousness.

“Aw, we missed you!” he heard the Southerner's voice boom above him. “How'd
that
step go, niggah?”

There was a fresh burst of laughter—but harsher this time, more
raw and violent. Billy still struggled on the ground to get his breath. Realizing, stunned as he was, that now that they had hurt him—that the first blow had been struck—they would be all the more willing to finish him off.

The mood of the mob swinging at once, and he had already been reduced partway, from man to bleeding thing.
He knew that he had to say something—

“My fellow bummers,” he managed to croak out with what little breath he could gather, hoping they could hear him. Forcing himself up to his hands and knees—and forcing a comic grimace. Deliberately spreading his mouth as wide as the faces he saw on the posters for minstrel shows, curling back his lips from his teeth—

“My fellow bummers. The foundation has
indeed
moved. And the structure
has
fallen!”

There was a roar above him—their brassy, exaggerated, white laughter ringing in his ears. Then they were picking him up, even dusting off his blood-splattered clothes. The blue-eyed Southerner, he noticed, receding from the crowd right around him. The rest of them hauled him on back to the keg and filled up a tin cup with whiskey, pushed it into his hand. Standing, grinning, around him, as he sat on the curb. Knowing he could not refuse their hospitality, he put it to his mouth, lapping eagerly at the liquor.

“How's that, nigger? The best damned whiskey you ever had!”

They crowed above him, their laughter still echoing painfully in his head—and he had to admit they were right.
Spelman's
must be a first-class establishment. The whiskey went down smoother than anything he had ever tasted, like fine wine compared to what he was used to from the woods stills, or the block-and-fall joints by the river. He wanted to spit it in their faces.

“Hey, Juba—whattaya say? Come with us!”

“Yeah, come along with us! We'll keep ya safe—”

“First we'll burn that frog shop, over there—”

Pointing to the precinct house across the street—

“—then there'll be plenty more to bum an' drink!”

“Burn the
police
house?!” Bulging his eyes out, minstrel-like, as if the very idea filled him with fear.

“It'll be easy! If it's like the others we seen today, there won't be more'n those two cops in there—”

Pointing toward the sergeants where they stood, watching them,
just in front of the station-house door.
So they knew. Knew it was defenseless—even if they did not know the children were in there—

“Oh, no, oh, no thanks, boss,” Billy told them, putting up his hands. The fine whiskey hot and cloying on his tongue—but trying to talk, trying to
think.

“I just got outta there,
as is.
”

They laughed again, and he tried desperately to come up with something they might like, something else he could offer them. His mind wandering to the orphans, sitting with their legs tucked up, in the shadows along the wall, trying to be as small and inconspicuous as possible—

They were beginning to stroll on out into the street. A few of them already shouting things out to the sergeants, who only glared silently back from the door. More of them, back in the crowd, feeling around on the ground for loose stones.
All those children down there, trying to shrink into the wall, to shrink away from the fire.
Tad, clutching his tin horse under the stairs—

Then he had it. What was it that the Irish would love above all things?

“My fellow bummers!” he said, staggering up to his feet. Adopting the portentous, minstrel voice he had used before. Holding his hands up over his head as if he were testifying, and they stopped—at least for a moment they stopped, grinning slackly. Wondering if more fun were in store.

“My fellow bummers! Why should we risk our bodies to injury—to the outrageous fortune that may be visited upon us by those gentlemen over there?”

He nodded in the direction of Murphy and McCluskey, standing in the door like two blocks of granite. There were a few more snickers—but a hardening of the laughter now, in anticipation.

“Oh, ‘t'ain't gonna be no injury, Juba. They'll run like rabbits, always do.”

“C'mon, whattaya scared of, uncle?”

“Nay, bummers, why should we distress ourselves when we do not have to? Why should we even walk
—when we can ride?
”

That got their attention.

“What's that? What's the darkie on about?”

“Horses!” he bellowed at them. “I know where there's enough horses for all of us!”

That stopped them in their tracks. Each man of them, the poor earthbound Paddies, thinking what it would be like to ride, like a real lord. Their eyes betraying their eagerness as they turned to him.