A Conversation with the Mann (6 page)

That—that right there—was the other truth I learned: You can't make people love you, but there isn't anybody who doesn't like
a man with money.

Almost nobody.

One afternoon, after school, Nadine had smiled her way into getting me to take her for ice cream. Late for the date, I came
rushing into the apartment to load up on cash. I went for my room, opened the door, started to make for my money jar.

I got stopped by the sight of Pop sitting on my bed.

The room was dark, his head was hung low, but from what I could see, Pop was in rough shape. Going dry and deep into the DTs,
he was desperate for a drink but beat back the need in favor of waiting for me. The effort so great it made his muscles jerk
and sopped him with his own sweat.

But he just sat there.

No matter how much he ached for a brace to get himself right, Pop just sat with his eyes locked on what he held in his hands:
my little jar full of money.

In a heartbeat a story told itself: Pop wakes up from a bender that he tries to dope himself back into, but the house is drug-free
and his pockets are empty. He goes scavenging through my room, looking for bills or change, looking for whatever I've got
that spends, anything that'll get him so much as a nickel closer to a fresh shot of liquor. But what he finds …

What he finds …

Pop raised his head slow, as if the rage it contained almost made it too heavy to lift. And that same dry-drunk anger boiling
inside him distorted his face, made my own father almost unrecognizable.

“What dis?”

“Pop—”

“WHAT DIS!” His voice was summer thunder.

“… It's money.”

I didn't see the jar coming, much less have time to juke out of the way. For a jittery drunk marking time with the shakes,
Pop had some speed to him. Speed and accuracy. The jar caught me between the eyes dead, solid perfect. My father, the Cy Young
of boozers. When I came to I was lying down, looking up at my room that was slouched over at a funny angle and was newly decorated
with fuzzy edges. My hands sort of moved around by themselves, and my mouth did its own talking in a language that to this
day I've never heard again.

And into all that stepped my pop, towering above me Japanese monster movie-style done over in an angry black.

“Don't you never,” Pop said—said as best he could through his struggle with sobriety, “don't you never let me find you was
holdin' out on me. You'll be sorry, boy. Tell you that. You hearin' me?”

I responded some way or other in my new tongue.

“You be damn for sure sorry.”

No more sorry than I already was.

Blood from a gush where the jar smacked my forehead ran down into my right eye, made it flutter.

Pop left me like that: stretched out and bleeding. First he took the money; then he left.

T
HERE, AND GONE
. Onstage, then off. They were a good act. They were a flash-dance act; two middle-aged guys and a younger one tap stepping
at lickety-split speed. Race onstage, then race right off. There and gone in a flash. Between the racing they filled their
show lime with a few numbers clone yowsah style, working up a big sweat that rolled down over their bigger smiles—do you likes
me now, massa, do you likes me? Buff-shined patent leathers sliding over parquet. The screech of metal, then tickety-tac,
tickety-tac. Some hand claps thrown in. Beat-bobbing heads to go with the shining ivory. A hesitation step when you think
you can second-guess the rhythm, a tease, then the screech of metal again. Tickety-tac, tickety-tac. Strictly vaudeville by
way of minstrel show. Strictly opening fare. How about a nice hand for the Will Mastin Trio? Now bring on the headliner.

Still, they were a good act. They were on
Toast of the Town
, so they must have been good. Good but not great, the same way Teresa Brewer was good but not great. The same way Al Hirt—trumpet-blowing,
New Orleans jazz Al Hirt—was good but not great. The same way David Frye was good but thoroughly unrememberable. Anonymity
was waiting to collect them all.

Except, the trio wasn't completely forgettable. Will might have been. So was his partner, Sammy Davis. But the young one was
pretty much like something you'd never seen before. Standing center stage between the two older men, Sammy Davis, Jr. was
black lightning; human energy. A little man, he was concentrated entertainment. Put a spotlight on him and stand back. Song
came busting out of him. Dance came bursting out, steps that were impossibly good and impossibly fast. Steps that made the
other two of the trio look like they were standing still if moving at all. Legs, feet twisting, sliding, gliding in ways that
made you say: “He can't, he can't do that.” Then he'd do it again just to prove you wrong. I watched with the same breath-held
viewing I gave to high-wire acts. Sammy Davis, Jr. had that kind of abandon. He worked without a net.

Ta-da!

Orchestra up.

Sammy and the rest of the trio bowed within the confines of the picture tube. The speaker of Mae's Philco pulsated real-time
as the audience exploded with applause for them. As the audience applauded for
him
. For Sammy. And they applauded in the same vigorous way they did for the white performers. Ed stepped over, shook hands with
them. Shook hands with
him
. Same as he did with the white performers. Adulation without distinction, that's what black entertainers got on TV. Sammy
got it. The rest of the trio got it just for being around. Pearl Bailey got it. Got a sponsor-be-damned hug, too. Billy Eckstine
and Sarah Vaughan got it. Ed wouldn't think of not giving some to Nat King Cole. “Always a pleasure to have you on the shew.”

“Thank you, Ed. The pleasure is mine.” “It's always such a thrill to be able to perform for you and the audience, Ed.” “Ed,
I'd just like to take a moment to thank my many fans across America for their support.” They were articulate. The black entertainers
on the show were always articulate and well spoken.

Well spoken. You would hear that from whites sometimes: “I saw Nat King Cole on
Toast of the Town
, and he was so well spoken.” It was clubhouse talk for acceptable. They were well spoken.

They did not “sound” black, so black entertainers were acceptable. To a point. A point much further than other blacks of the
day could ever hope to reach. To see that, to be a young boy and watch blacks on coast-to-coast coaxial broadcast television
being treated as equals, being treated better than most, it was like bearing witness to a miracle. To be a young man and watch
that on TV made me want. I wanted to not “sound” like a black. I wanted to be acceptable. I wanted to be well spoken. Well
spoken. Spoken white. I got a dictionary from Mae. I read it and I learned words. Big, long, white-sounding words. I took
a master class in talking white. Television taught me. Droll Jack Benny taught me. Dry Jack Webb taught me. Smooth and cool
Steve Allen taught me. My final consisted of me standing before a mirror practicing all I had learned.

Ready? Begin

Ed, I must tell you what a distinct pleasure it's been appearing on your program this evening. I can only hope that at some
point in the future I can look forward to returning to your stage. And, if I may, a sincere thank-you to all my fans wherever
they may be viewing.

Pass? Fail? Didn't matter. I had no idea what do with my new skill. No matter how I sounded, no matter how my new voice made
me feel, I was what I had always been: a poor black boy from Harlem. But then, so had Sammy Davis, Jr. once. And now he was
so well spoken.

T
HE SCHOOL YEAR
was a day from ending. I was twenty-four hours from completing the eleventh grade and the start of the summer vacation. My
plans for the next three months centered around working six of seven days just as I had for each week of the six years that
had passed both too quickly and too slowly since my mother had died. I planned on staying out of my father's way the best
I could. I planned on spending whatever free time I had spending whatever extra money I had on Nadine Russell.

Li'l Mo changed my plans.

He showed me an ad in the
New York Post
.

I read it.

I said to Mo: “You must be out of your mind.”

“Twenty-five dollars a week,” Mo said back. “That sound crazy to you?”

No. That wasn't crazy. Twenty-five dollars a week back then was good money Rockefeller-style. It was the rest of the ad that
made me think Li'l Mo was suffering a spell.

Wanted: Men 18+ to work logging camp in the Pacific Northwest. Earn $25 a wk and up.

The ad gave an address where, and a time from when to when you could apply if you were out of your mind enough to apply in
the first place.

Mo pointed to the part where it said $25 a wk and up.

I pointed to the part that said men eighteen and older. “You and me are seventeen.”

“Twenty-five dollars a week.” Mo echoed the ad by way of argument. “And up.”

“And the Pacific Northwest? That's up in …” I wasn't sure where it was exactly, but my ignorance just confirmed it was way
far away from anywhere I'd even been close to before. “That's way the hell far away,” I went on. “We're supposed to just pick
up and go off to wherever?”

“Okay, so this here camp is way off somewhere, an' we gotta fake how we eighteen an' all. But why shouldn't we try an' go
out to there? You got somethin' better to do for the summer?”

I had other things to do, but they weren't much better.

Mo saw me starting to hesitate my way from no to yes, and his selling went into high gear. “How long till school start up
again? Three months? Twelve weeks. That's …” Mo did some math, taking a little time with it. Math and Mo were never very friendly
with each other. I would've helped out but got along with numbers no better than Mo did.

“That's near about three hundred dollars. Now, I been your friend too long an' too good not to know what three hundred dollars
means to Jackie Mann.”

Money meant a lot to Jackie Mann. But … “Eighteen? We're not—”

“We tell 'em we eighteen. Them loggin' people don't care how old we are long as we can cut wood.”

“And what do we know about cutting wood?”

Li'l Mo waved his hands clearing the air of my bad ideas. “The ad said they want-men. Didn't say nothin' about being no log-cuttin'
expert.”

“You telling me your folks are just going to let you go?”

“My folks could use some of that three hundred.” Li'l Mo was getting annoyed. The bother of talking me into something so obvious
was, objection by objection, wearing him to the core. “My family knows I ain't no little boy no more.”

“I'm no little boy either.”

“Not sayin' you are. But I got a sister an' a little brother that need takin' care of. I ain't afraid to do what I gotta to
help out.”

“You don't think I help out around my place?”

“Help what? Help buy your pop's booze, help pick him up after he drinks himself down?” No slip of the tongue, Mo threw that
jab with a boxer's timing, quick and sharp. He threw it so it hurt.

“I help out plenty,” I said. “I'm the man of my house.”

“Then why don't you be a man an' help yourself to some cash. I'm going down to apply for this here job. You coming, or aren't
you coming?”

Was I going, or wasn't I?

I went. Not so much because I wanted to go wherever and cut trees, or even because I wanted that money I knew would feel so
warm and spend so well. I went because I wanted to show Li'l Mo the man I was.

The recruiting office was in Midtown. Afternoon of the morning of the day the ad ran, and already there was a string of people
stretching from the office door. Boys way younger than Mo and me. Old men whose years were surpassed only by their desperation
for a job. We waited among all of them—a millipede of people doing a slow shuffle for the office—thinking there was no way
there'd be anything left for us by the time we applied. That's if they didn't just toss us on our black behinds for trying
to pass for eighteen. We shuffled … we shuffled. … Men came out of the office smiling. Men came out of the office crying.
We shuffled an hour and a half of the day away. We shuffled like a bunch of characters waiting to see the wizard who'd grant
us the great and good favor of giving us work. But once inside the office, all that happened was we got looked up and down
by one of a number of white fellows sitting behind one of a number of desks. He asked when could we start work.