A Summer of Kings (10 page)

Pip knelt down beside me and touched my head. He always had the lightest, gentlest touch. "Are you okay, Esther?" he asked, panting near my ear. I could feel the heat of his body above me.

I rolled over, wiping my nose as I rolled, to see if it was bleeding. It wasn't. I sniffed. "I'm okay."

"What hurts?" Pip asked, looking down at my bloody knees.

"Everything," I said. I sat up and lifted my arms to show him my hands and elbows. "Everything hurts."

"That was dumb of us," Pip said, sitting back on his legs. "We weren't even halfway through today's run and we were racing. From now on, no more racing."

"Sorry," I said. I started to get up but Pip held me back. "Just sit there a minute, why don't you."

I sat back down. "You said yourself that we still had more than half the run left. I don't want to get cold."

"You can take it easy just for a second," Pip said, taking my hands in his and turning them palms up to look at them. They were bright red and smudged with dirt, but the skin wasn't torn.

Then out of the clear blue sky he said, "What's scary?"

I took my hands back. "Huh?"

"You said King-Roy was scary, too. What's so scary about him?"

I brought my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. I could smell the blood and dirt embedded in them. It smelled like rust.

I lowered my voice as though I thought King-Roy might be hiding behind a tree and said, "He brought a gun with him. He's got a gun."

"A gun!" Pip sprang back, falling off his knees as though I were holding the gun on him right at that moment. "Do your parents know?"

"They know he brought a gun, but he gave it to Mother to throw away. But then he took it back out of the trash and hid it in his pants, and they don't know that. I'm the only one who knows that."

Pip stood up and glared down at me with his hands on his hips. "What?"

I nodded and stood up, too. I brushed myself off, gave my knees one last glance, then I said, "Let's run," and we were off again. We turned right and headed along the path toward the pavilion, moving at a gentle pace, and I started from the beginning and told Pip everything about the gun and white devils and the Nation of Islam—everything.

By the time I had finished, we had almost reached the edge of the woods and I could see our lawn and fields, green and moist and pretty. Once through the woods, we slowed to a walk and took our time going through the lower fields. Up ahead were the grape arbor and the pavilion, and beyond that, the rose garden and the house. We hadn't planned on slowing down. Usually our final tagging spot was the stone porch outside the ballroom, but for some reason, without saying anything to each other, we both just started walking.

We had stopped talking, too, and I suppose we were both deep in thought about what I had told Pip about King-Roy and the gun and everything that had happened the night before, so we didn't hear the tapping sounds until we were almost up to the grape arbor. We both heard it at the same time and we stopped to listen. When we stopped, the taps stopped. Then we heard someone talking. It was King-Roy and he was talking to someone inside the pavilion.

The low pavilion walls were made of stone, and thick wooden pillars supported the roof. Between the roof and the walls was open space, so we could hear everything anyone was saying inside. We heard King-Roy say, "I didn't think anybody else was up at this hour."

Then another voice, Beatrice Bonham's flirty voice, said, "Let me set you straight about this place, King-Roy, there's always somebody up, at any hour, day or night. So if you've got any secrets, you'd best hide them well, and don't count on the distance of the pavilion from the house to keep your secrets for you."

"Yes, ma'am," King-Roy said, "I already found that out."

"Well, your tap dancing will be our little secret."

That was the sound we'd heard when we came out of the woods, tap dancing! I heard Beatrice say those words and I got so excited, I jumped out of hiding and started for the pavilion, but Pip caught hold of me and pulled me back behind the grape arbor. "Hold on," he whispered, "or they'll see us out here."

I looked at Pip's frightened expression—as though we were in some grave danger—and did as he said. I crouched down with him and peered up through the grapevines at the pavilion. From our new position, closer to the action and with a view of the open entrance, I could see King-Roy pretty well. He stood shifting from one foot to the other the way some kids at school do when they're nervous giving a book report in front of the class. He kept his hands in his pockets.

"You're quite good," Beatrice was saying. "Ever think of taking it to the stage?" Beatrice stood with her back to us, so I couldn't get a good look at her face, but I could see that she had on the same sexy peignoir set she wore the day before and she had silver slippers on her feet, with their puffs of white fur on top.

King-Roy shook his head. "There are three things I won't ever do for a living. I won't pick up other people's garbage; I won't do any of those yes-ma'am-yes-sir kind of jobs, like butler or chauffeur or bellhop; and I won't be a tap dancer. There's no dignity for a black man in any of that."

Beatrice shrugged one shoulder and said in her sexy, smoldering voice, "Mr. Johnson, if there's dignity in the man, there's dignity in the job."

"Well, ma'am, I don't quite see it that way." King-Roy's voice sounded bitter, and I waited for him to say more, to explain his bitterness, but he didn't, and Beatrice asked him, "What about acting? You're handsome enough. You could be an actor if you had the proper coaching."

"No, thank you, ma'am. I'm not interested in the stage one whit."

Beatrice ignored this and said, "Of course, I wouldn't be the one to coach you. Nobody around here takes my acting seriously."

I supposed her idea about dignity being in the man, not the job, didn't hold true for a woman, and I figured she probably didn't mean what she said in the first place but was only using it as a way to work the subject around to her, which is what she did.

King-Roy had started to say, "I wouldn't know about that, ma'am. I only just got—," when Beatrice jumped in and said in a pouting voice, "I've been here almost three years. Three years right under Herbert Nelson Young's nose, and he's never once suggested I audition for one of his plays." Beatrice let out an exasperated-sounding sigh and added, "He doesn't take my acting seriously at all. It is so frustrating I could scream. Really, I could."

Pip nudged me and rolled his eyes.

King-Roy said, "Well-uh, I-uh, don't rightly know about—"

"No, you wouldn't understand how desperate an actor gets when they're not performing if you've never been on the stage before. I tell you, King-Roy, one taste of the stage and you never want to leave it. Never! And here I am, right here in this house with Herbert, and soon he'll be casting for his next play and I know I'd be perfect for the part of Vera." Beatrice held out a rolled-up script she had in her hands and shook it at King-Roy.

"Well," King-Roy said, drawing his head back out of the line of her script. "I don't know about acting, but I've been on the stage before and you can take it. I don't want any part of it."

Beatrice lowered her script. "But I thought you said you'd never been on the stage."

King-Roy shook his head. "I said I never acted, but I was onstage—with my daddy, Johnny 'Shoeshine' Johnson. Maybe you've heard of him? He's who taught me to dance. We used to travel together some, and he put me up on the stage to draw the crowds."

"Then, you know," Beatrice said, moving in closer to King-Roy. "You know how it is to be born for the stage. I don't know how I'm going to cope. I hate being out of work. I need to work. I need the stage, King-Roy."

Beatrice took another step closer and sort of leaned against King-Roy, and I couldn't stand it any longer. I didn't want to hear Beatrice prattle on about her pitiful career. I wanted to see King-Roy dance. I wanted to find out about his tap dancing. I wanted him to teach me. I loved tap dancing. I loved the rhythms. I'd never tapped before, but I loved watching it in old movies on television, like the Shirley Temple movies.

I'd had enough of Beatrice and her flirty ways, so I burst through the grape arbor, ignoring Pip's tug on my T-shirt, and ran up the steps of the pavilion and said, "King-Roy, could you teach me to tap? I love tap dancing. Could you teach me, do you think?"

Beatrice jumped in the air and squealed when I appeared on the top step of the pavilion, and before King-Roy could answer me she said, "Esther, where on earth did you come from all of a sudden? You scared me half to death." She clutched at her chest for emphasis.

I looked back at Pip and the arbor and said, "Oh, I was listening in on you back there behind the grapevines—me and Pip."

"'Listening in'?" Beatrice stood on tiptoe and looked past King-Roy to the grape arbor. Then she returned her gaze to me and said, "Esther Young, your honesty unnerves me! For goodness sakes, 'listening in.'"

I ignored her, and looking at King-Roy, who stood with his face so calm I couldn't tell what he was thinking, I said, "Please, King-Roy, I'd love to learn how to do tap. I told Mother that I would take tap if she would let me drop the ballet classes, but she said no real lady should take tap lessons, because it makes their knees swell like melons, but I—"

Beatrice interrupted me. "Esther, I was in the midst of talking to King-Roy myself. You can't just barge in on another person's conversation like this and expect anyone to want to do anything for you."

I turned and glared at Beatrice. "I heard what you said about my father, and I can solve your problem for you real quick."

Beatrice crossed her arms in front of her, making the tops of her breasts pop up from beneath her peignoir. "Is that so," she said. "And how would you do that, pray tell?"

"Easy," I said. "Dad does serious stuff, dramatic stuff."

Beatrice closed her eyes. "I think I know better than you what your father directs."

I heard Pip coming up the steps until he was right behind me, breathing on my neck, as though he wanted to protect me from Beatrice's barbs, or from King-Roy, I wasn't sure which, but I didn't need his help. I put my hands on my hips and said to Beatrice, "Oh, you think you know better, do you? Well, tell me this. How come all the sexy actresses and all the comediennes have blond hair? Look at Mae West and Marilyn Monroe. You're like—like some cheap imitation of the two of them. So why would Dad ask you to audition for any of his plays? Dye your hair brown and wear real clothes, for Pete's sake. You look like—like a floozy."

"Esther! I cannot believe I just heard you say that!" Beatrice flapped her arms and looked around at her audience. "Anyway, I am who I am," she added, adjusting the neckline of her flimsy outer robe.

I glanced at King-Roy, whose facial expression hadn't changed since I had arrived on the scene, then I returned to Beatrice. "You're an actress, so act, then. Play the part of a serious actress. Better yet, play the part of Vera.
Be
her. Come down to breakfast fully clothed for a change, and don't put your makeup on at the table. I mean, really, Beatrice, use some basic common sense, why don't you."

"I am not going to stand here and take the advice of a silly ratty-haired girl like you," Beatrice said, moving toward the steps to where Pip stood. "King-Roy, we'll talk later, when we can have some privacy. I told you this house never sleeps."

Pip hopped out of her way, and Beatrice, stepping sideways down the stone steps and holding up the hem of her peignoir, made her exit.

After Beatrice left I pleaded with King-Roy to show us some of his tap dancing, but no amount of begging could get him to dance. "I'm not a puppet on a string you can yank around," he said. "And I'm not gon' teach you to tap."

"Why not?" I asked. "Is it because you don't like us? Is it because I'm white? Don't you think white people can tap dance?"

King-Roy shook his head. "Esther, it's not because of you. I don't perform for people anymore, not since my daddy died."

I nodded. "Because it makes you sad to remember."

"No." King-Roy pushed off the wall where he had been leaning. "Because it makes me angry. Before my father saw I could tap just as well as he could, he thought I was too stupid to waste his good money on feeding me. Since I didn't talk, he didn't want anything to do with me. Then one time I got angry at him for pushing my little brother into a wall, and all I could think to do was to dance. I pulled him off my brother and started tapping, doing all his stuff, all his routines, and he just threw his head back and laughed like crazy. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. He had no idea that I had been watching him practicing and had picked up all his steps. Well, after I showed him, he carted me around the South like I was a trick pony."

"Didn't you like traveling with your father?" I asked.

King-Roy shook his head. "No. There wasn't any fun in it. Tap was going out of style. Tap was the going thing in the thirties and forties but not anymore, and the only way my father could get anyone to book his show was if he included me. He used me for the act, then stashed me away in some dirty hotel by myself every night while he ran off with his pals to drink and party with the ladies."

King-Roy crossed his arms and shook his head, then he looked over to where Pip was standing, lifted his chin, and said, "I don't think we've met." He held out his right hand and said, "My name's King-Roy, King-Roy Johnson."

Pip came out from behind me and said, "I'm Jonathan Masters, but people call me Pip. I live across the street."

I could see Pip giving King-Roy the eye. He didn't smile the way he usually did when he talked to people, and I was afraid King-Roy would think Pip was one of those white devils he had talked about, so I said, "Pip's my best friend. He's everybody's friend, really. Everybody likes Pip and Pip likes everybody."

Both of them ignored me.

King-Roy shook Pip's hand and ducked his head to peer out across our property to Pip's house. From where we stood, all you could see of his house was a balcony and the third floor and the rooftops of the house and some outbuildings.