A Conversation with the Mann (9 page)

Then all of a sudden it came time for me to take the floor. I got introduced, went out to the center of the room. Whatever
applause there was died off. Maybe nerves were making me supersensitive, but I became aware of an odd split second of quiet
between the clapping and my telling a joke. It was an emptiness that, in my mind, just hung in space, waiting to be filled.
I filled it with some bits from the television comics, jokes old and hackneyed but funny enough to coax out a few laughs from
the audience. Then I went into some bits about life at camp, the hard work and long hours and how we were rewarded for it
all with some writing in a passbook and bad food. Basically I made fun of the whole operation.

The laughs started coming in waves.

And when I did impressions of some of the workers and managers—the way someone talked, or exaggerated one of their mannerisms,
mugged their facial expressions reminiscent of how Pop used to mock the neighbors on one of his weed jags—the joint went nuts
with screams and hollers.

From the corner of my eye I caught a glance of that tall white boy, the one from our koogie that wanted to beat in my head
for not knowing the route to “niggerville.” The tears in his eyes said he couldn't laugh any harder. Everyone was busting
up.

Everyone except for Li'l Mo. Mo wasn't laughing. He didn't seem to find it too amusing, me clowning around in front of a bunch
of whites. But as I finished up, all that was in my mind was that a room full of people—some who didn't know me, some who
out-and-out hated me—were applauding me.

Dax had arranged for a special dinner after the show for the performers, a thank-you meal of steak and potatoes and a hunk
of pie. I went back to the kitchen and got my plate same as the rest of the acts. The steak still sizzled when the cook plunked
it down. Juice percolated from the skin of the potatoes. I started outside so I could get to eating while it was all still
hot.

“Jackie,” Dax called to me from a table. “Where yew goin'?”

“Outside,” I said.

Dax sort of laughed a little. “What in tha hell for?”

Because I was hungry and I wanted to eat. I was going outside because I was black and everyone else was white. Blacks didn't
eat with whites, and it never occurred to me that things should be any other way.

Apparendy it should have. Dax waved me over to a spot next to him. “C'mon over heyah, Jackie. Eat outside, tha flies'll git
in yer food.”

As I sat down, as I cut into my steak and chewed on the first hearty mouthful, I remember Dax's hand coming down firm on my
back.

“Funny as hell, boy. Where'd you learn to get so funny?”

T
HE AMATEUR SHOW
was four or five days in the past. I was working a skid trail trying to keep my mind on the boss and off the applause that
was still ringing in my ears and the taste of the steak that was resurrected with my every swallow. As I worked at that chore,
a Jeep came around driven by one of the camp managers. He stopped below my station, called me down from the line. I went to
him, smiling, thinking he had something good to say about my act. Five days later and I'd still been getting the warm hand
from people who'd seen me. Not this time. When I got close enough to read the manager's face, it told me and told me plain
that whatever he had for me wasn't pleasant.

“Get in.” Two words. To the point. And when the second I spent trying to figure out why was too long in passing: “Well, c'mon,
boy. Get in. Let's go,” the camp manager prompted again whip-cracking-style.

I started climbing into the Jeep. The manager barely waited for me to finish before pulling away.

I got ridden back to the administration building. I got walked to an office. Inside was another camp manager, looking less
happy than the one who'd driven me. With him were a couple of frowning policemen.

“These here men are from the police,” the manager told me in case their blues, badges, and guns weren't hint enough. “Your
father's looking for you. Says you run off from home.”

Most of the time Pop was too lit up and strung out to find his way from the couch to the floor. But somehow across the length
of the country that smoker was able to stretch out and point a finger at me.

The manager said: “These officers are going to take you back to Seattle, put you on the first train for—”

“I don't want to go home.” I tried to sound firm about it, but the only thing greater than the begging in my voice was the
pleading. “If I go back home my pop's going to—”

“You're not eighteen.” The manager didn't care a thing for my plight. He demonstrated his non-caring by not so much as looking
my way. “You're not eighteen, you can't work. We'll get you on the train, we'll get you home.” To further elaborate on his
non-caring, the manager picked up some papers from his desk, stared at them. His furrowed brow indicating that the papers,
and not me, now had his full attention.

I started to go with the policemen.

I stopped.

I asked the manager: “Where do I go to get my money?”

“You're not eighteen, you can't work. You can't work, you can't get paid.”

Jammed between the two cops like a public enemy, I got walked to their prowl car and put in back. It was a long drive to Seattle,
and on the whole of it there was no conversation among me and the officers. Once there, at the train station, I was left with
a ticket for New York. Probably the lumber company paid for it. Taken out of what they owed me, they got off cheap.

Nearly three days back to the city. Outside the Vista-Dome, mountains melted into desert, which blended into … I had no money.
A porter took pity on me, snuck me some leftovers from the dining car.

At the changeover in Chicago I gave consideration to getting off the train and running off to somewhere to do … something.
Then I thought about how well I'd get along in an alien city, pockets empty, no one to feel sorry for me and slip me food.
I got on my train and finished my ride to New York.

When I got to Penn Station there was no one there to meet me. I had no change for the subway and was too scared to try fare-jumping.

I walked home.

When I got to our apartment my father was high or drunk or some other form of passed out. On the couch. Right where I'd left
him months ago. I went to bed.

In the middle of the night, on a jag, Pop busted into my room and welcomed me home belt in hand. His rant was something to
the tune of: “I'll teach you to run off! I'll teach you to think you're somebody! ”

For the next twenty minutes he taught me well.

T
here was no other thing. No other way. I was going to be—I had to be—famous. I decided that. More rightly, the circumstances
of life decided it for me. I turned eighteen, graduated high school, got a job with Li'l Mo at a moving company because it
was the only job either of us could get, and I needed something more regular and better paying than the piece work I'd been
doing. I worked the job almost a year, carrying other people's belongings down from one apartment, piling them into a truck,
hauling them across town, then up into another apartment. Dressers. Beds. Tables. Boxes loaded with dishes and books and knickknacks—heavy
like they were full of bricks. Heavy until you could barely lift them. But you did. You lifted them because moving them was
the only way to get paid. You lifted, you got your money, and you wore the ache of the job long after it was done. You went
home, slept a little, you woke up too early, you went out into the day and did it all over again.

At the end of that first three hundred some days I took a look at my future. I didn't see much waiting for me, and what I
did see wasn't much good. The prospects for a black man in the fifties were limited to being famous or to being nothing. To
be something other than one of those two, a doctor or lawyer … not that it couldn't happen. It could. It did. For some blacks.
But to want to wear a white collar was little better than wanting to walk on the moon. Beyond that, without higher education
that I couldn't afford if I wanted, couldn't get if I could afford, I was looking at a life sentence of manual and menial
labor: sweeping floors and shining shoes and polishing cars and stocking warehouses. Moving furniture. I was looking at a
future that looked just like my past.

But to be famous …

You'd see famous blacks on TV and in the movies, out on the playing fields: Harry Belafonte, Dizzy Gillespie, Ms. Lena Horne.
Jackie Robinson and Sugar Ray Robinson and Bill Bojangles Robinson and … And famous blacks got to go where they pleased, do
as they pleased and got treated just about as if they were white. You saw their pictures in the paper or a magazine, saw them
at this party or that in fine clothes, drink in one hand and the other draped around a white, and the white didn't have any
problem being near— being touching-close to—a famous black. Sure they didn't. I'd learned that a good time ago: You've got
money or status and real suddenly no one gives a thought about being around you. And the more I saw of rich blacks and famous
blacks, the more it filled me with ambition. Ambition that burned hot, burned away all else and left only what mattered: want.
I wanted to be rich. I wanted to be famous. Not such a crazy dream. Althea Gibson had emancipated herself right out of this
very Harlem. So had Dizzy. So had Sammy D. So could I.

With absolutely no other skills, and based solely on having made schoolkids and fellow tree cutters laugh, I figured—brashly,
desperately—comedy was my best chance for mating my twin desires. Best, only. Neverminding the fact that I could list the
truly famous black comedians of the world on a three-fingered hand, I blindly started a road.

First: I needed an act. Easy. I stole one. I watched
Toast of the Town
. Different from before, just sitting and enjoying the show, I studied it, the comedians, their style and mannerisms. The
best bits I borrowed. Re-borrowed. Most of the jokes were already public domain—common in form, old in existence. It's the
way comedy was: generic lines presented by pleasant guys with good timing whose suits were more unique than their acts. Using
the jokes, I bargained with myself, was just temporary. Once I got going I'd work up an act of my own. As I'd done when I
was teaching myself to be “well spoken,” I did time in front of the mirror in my room. I watched myself as I mimicked Will
Jordan, Myron Cohen, and Alan King. Lots of Alan King. Thirty-seven times he was on Sullivan. His act I got to know real well.