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“To get my clothes.”
He went to Troy’s dressing room and changed into his Sears, Roebuck suit. After all the contestants had gone on, Hunnicut announced that the winner was J.P. Winfield, who would soon be appearing on the Louisiana Jubilee with the rest of the band. J.P. combed his hair in the mirror and clipped the comb inside his shirt pocket. He left Troy’s sports suit unfolded on top of the chair. He rolled a cigarette and walked back to the wings where Hunnicut, Troy,
Seth, and the brunette were talking. The auditorium had cleared.
“You ain’t met April yet,” Seth said.
J.P. looked at her.
“This is April Brien,” Seth said.
“Glad to meet you,” she said. Her eyes moved up and down him. Her peasant Irish face had a dull expression to it.
“Evening,” he said.
“April does all the spirituals in the show,” Seth said. He put his hand on the small of her back and let his fingers touch her rump.
“Cut it out,” she said.
He gave her a pat.
“Lay off it,” Troy said.
Seth winked at J.P.
“Come in the office,” Hunnicut said. “I got a contract for you to sign.”
They went into Hunnicut’s office, which he had rented with the auditorium. His white linen suit was soiled and dampened. The candy-striped necktie was pulled loose from his collar, and the great weight of his stomach hung over his trousers.
“I start you on a straight salary at three hundred and fifty a month,” he said, “plus any commissions we make off records and special appearances. This contract says that I’m your manager and agent, and I take twelve percent of your earnings. We’ll see how you do, and later on maybe we can work out a pay increase.”
“You take a commission off the same salary you give me?”
“That’s right. But I’m the man that schedules all your appearances, and if you’ve got the right stuff I can push you right up to the top. I put a lot of people on the Nashville Barn Dance.”
“How about an advance? That was my last dollar I give to that fellow for his suit.”
Hunnicut took a black square billfold out of the inside pocket of his coat. He flipped it open flat on the desk and counted out several bills.
“Here’s fifty dollars. Will that do?”
“That’ll do just fine.”
That night he and Seth went to a juke joint and got drunk and picked up two prostitutes. They spent the night in an apartment next door to the bar, and J.P. awoke in the morning with a hangover and looked at the woman beside him in the light and wished he had stayed sober the night before. He put on his clothes and counted the money in his wallet. He couldn’t find his clip-on bow tie, then he saw the prostitute sleeping on it, and he pulled it out from under her leg and left the room and caught a taxi to his hotel.
He bought a new suit and a new pair of shoes and gave his old clothes to the porter. He checked out of the hotel and walked down the street, holding the guitar case by its leather handle. He thought about the long bus ride ahead with the band through the sun-baked, red clay country of north Louisiana. He thought about the money he would make singing, three times the amount he made as a sharecropper back home. And Hunnicut had said that he might go up to the Nashville Barn Dance. The sun was very hot, and he had to squint his eyes in the white glare off the pavement. It would be a long trip in the summer heat.
TOUSSAINT BOUDREAUX
A South American freighter had come into port the day before to unload a shipment of coffee and to pick up another load of machine parts. Down in the hold a gang of stevedores waited for the gantry to lower the cargo net through the hatch. The temperature was over a hundred degrees in the hold. The iron plates on the bulkhead would scald your hands if you touched them. Toussaint looked up through the hatch at the bright square of sky. The Negro watched the gantry boom swing around from the dock and drop the cargo net into the hold, loaded with crates of machinery. The gang loosened the net and pulled the crates free with their hooks and dragged them across the floor. Toussaint and another man whipped their cargo hooks into the wood and slid a crate into position against the bulkhead. It was almost quitting time. He watched the empty net go back up through the hatch. The work whistle blew and the men picked up their lunch kits and walked up the metal steps to the deck and down the gangplank to the dock.
Toussaint was fighting a four-round heavyweight bout at the arena that evening against an Italian from Chicago. He had wanted to get off work early, since his manager had promised him a main bout with a contender if he won tonight; but his gang boss wouldn’t let him off, and he had only a short time to rest before the fight. He ate a light supper and went to the pool hall to pass the time. He found a table in back and shot a game of nine ball. He liked the smooth felt green of the tables and the click of the balls. There was a horse board along one wall and a ticker tape machine that gave the race results. A couple of hustlers tried to get him into a game. He ignored them, chalked his cue, sank the nine ball, and had the boy rack the balls for another game. The hustlers played the slot machine and waited for someone else to come in. Toussaint looked at their clothes: the high-yellow pointed shoes, the knife-cut trousers, open-collar shirts without a coat, and short-brimmed hats with a wide hatband and a feather. He threw a dime on the table for the game and left.
He caught a bus to the arena. The preliminaries began at eight and he had the third bout. He carried his canvas athletic bag into the locker room and changed into his trunks and robe. The job he had on the docks was the best job he could find in New Orleans when he came to the city from his home in Barataria five years ago. But it was tough in the union and on the docks, and each man did his work and looked out for himself. It was very different from what Toussaint had known in Barataria. Most of the men on the gang, save a few, had accepted him by now; but when he first went to work he was treated with either indifference or resentment, and two men complained to the union about working in the same hold with a Negro.
He did some calisthenics to loosen up and sat on the rubbing table. There was no fat on his body, and the elastic band on his scarlet trunks was flat and tight across his stomach. He had fought once a month in the preliminaries for the last year. He had lost one bout, and it was after a split decision and the referee had decided against him because of a foul. Some of the people around the arena thought he could move up to the big circuits if he was handled properly, except he was thirty years old and his be
st years were behind him. He could punch hard, move around fast, and stand up under a beating. He had gotten his start when a fight manager had seen him in a fistfight down on the docks. Toussaint had fought another stevedore who had said that he didn’t like working with a Negro. The manager called him aside after the fight and told him he could earn fifty dollars for coming down to the arena and putting on the gloves. Since then Toussaint had become a promising club fighter with a good classic style.
