Free Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt Page A

it to him? The whole point, I finally realized, was that I would never know.

    If I happened to be walking along Bull Street in the late afternoon, I would invariably see a very old and very dignified black man. He always wore a suit and tie, a starched white shirt, and a fedora. His ties were muted paisleys and regimental stripes, and his suits were fine and well tailored, though apparently made for a slightly larger person.
    Every day at the same time, the old man walked through the cast-iron gates of the grandiose Armstrong House at the north end of Forsyth Park. He turned left and proceeded up Bull Street all the way to City Hall and back. He was very much a gentleman. He tipped his hat and bowed in greeting. But I noticed that he and the people he spoke with—usually well-dressed businessmen—played a very odd game. The men would ask him, “Still walking the dog?” It was perfectly clear that the old man was not walking a dog, but he would respond by saying, “Oh, yes. Still walking the dog.” Then he would look over his shoulder and say to the air behind him, “Come on, Patrick!” And off he would go.
    One day, as I came through Madison Square, I saw him standing by the monument facing a semicircle of tourists. He was singing. I could not make out the words, but I could hear his reedy tenor voice. The tourists applauded when he was done, and one of the lady tour guides slipped something into his hand. He bowed and left them. We approached the crosswalk at the same time.
    “That was very nice,” I said.
    “Why, thank you kindly,” he replied in his courtly way. “My name is William Simon Glover.”
    I introduced myself and told Mr. Glover that it seemed we oftentook the same walk at the same hour. I said nothing about the dog, figuring that the subject would come up on its own.
    “Oh, yes,” he said. “I’m eighty-six years old, and I’m downtown at seven o’clock every morning. I’m retired, but I don’t stay still. I work as a porter for the law firm of Bouhan, Williams and Levy.” Mr. Glover’s voice had a bounce to it. He pronounced the name of the law firm as if an exclamation mark followed each of the partners’ names.
    “I’m a porter, but everybody knows me as a singer,” he said as we started to cross the street. “I learned to sing in church when I was twelve. I pumped the organ for a quarter while one lady played and another lady sang. I didn’t know nothing about no German, French, or Italian, but by me hearing the lady sing so much, I learned to say the words whether I knew what they was or not. One Sunday morning, the lady didn’t sing, so I sang instead. And I sang in Italian. I sang ‘Hallelujah.’”
    “How did it go?” I asked him.
    Mr. Glover stopped and faced me. He opened his mouth wide and drew a deep breath. From the back of his throat came a high, croaking sound, “Aaaaa lay
loooo-yah!
A-layyyy-loo yah!” He had abandoned his tenor and was singing in a wavering falsetto. Forever in his mind, apparently, “Hallelujah” would be a soprano piece as sung by the lady in church so many years before. “Allay-
loo
-yah, a-lay-loo yah, a-lay-loo yah, a
-lay
-loo yah, a-lay-loo-yah, a-lay-loo-yah!” Mr. Glover stopped for a breath. “—And then the lady always finished by saying,
‘AAAAAAAAhhh
lay
looooooo
yah!’”
    “So that was your debut,” I said.
    “That’s right! That’s how I started. That lady learned me to sing in German, French, and Italian! Oh, yes! And I’ve been musical director of the First African Baptist Church since 1916. I directed a chorus of five hundred voices for Franklin D. Roosevelt when he visited Savannah on November 18, 1933. I remember the date, because that was the very day my daughter was born. I named her Eleanor Roosevelt Glover. I can remember the song we sang too: ‘Come By Here.’ The doctor sent word up tome, ‘Tell Glover he can sing “Come By Here” for the president all he damn pleases, but I just come by his house