Free Dancing in the Dark by Caryl Phillips Page B

He sits and thinks and drinks by himself and colored people respect the fact that this is his way. He remembers the first time he played with a crudely assembled white medicine show out west. Waiting in the cold outside a restaurant that it was impossible for him to enter alone, hoping that a fellow performer from the company might walk by and say, “Hello, young Bert! What are you doing here?” Maybe walk in with him and give him a chance to make himself at home. But nobody came by. Back in those days, Christian charity seemed to be forever in short supply. He takes another long drink and signals to the barman for a refill. The man always offers to leave the bottle on the table for him, but Bert understands that it would not be right. After all, he would not want to disappoint his father. A nervous crease of a smile wrinkles his lips whenever he thinks of his father, way back across the country in California. He watches the barman push the stop back into the top of the bottle, and he notices that the man’s face is rough with stubble. Most likely he’ll soon visit a barbershop where talking is encouraged and easy topics are pursued with vigor. The many ways that a colored man might prevent himself from contracting syphilis. Whether skin-lightening creams really do work. Whether a plate of tripe fried in batter with hot biscuits and bacon on the side beats out a night spent removing silk slips and panties from a whole harem of willing young ladies. He watches the barman move back behind the bar, and then he looks closely at the othersolitary drinkers, who all seem to relish this quiet place that throws them back upon themselves. Funny, he thinks, what men will do to release themselves from the burden of human companionship.
    Metheney’s opens at noon, every day except Sunday. First, Clyde D unlocks the door and then he steps back so that the smell of the previous evening can pass him by and hurry on down the street. When it is good and gone he enters the gloom, knowing full well that Metheney will be upstairs sleeping off the night before. The man has never learned how to do much of anything except turn off the lights and stagger in the direction of the stairs, but sometimes he is carrying too much liquor to even manage this and he makes a bed of the floor. Once Clyde D came in early and found one of Metheney’s wooden-faced whores pushing bottles of liquor into a bag and ready to make her getaway. Clyde D looked down at the floor and he could immediately see that old Metheney was passed out cold. He imagined that the girl had already stuffed Metheney’s takings into her pocketbook, having previously slipped something into Metheney’s gin so that he wouldn’t hear nothing, or know nothing, and now it was down to Clyde D to put his unwashed morning self between the girl and the door and take back the man’s money. Keen to avoid a beating, the frightened girl suddenly offered Clyde D what rightfully appeared to belong to any man who was hungry enough to take it, but Clyde D recoiled from the sour bursts of her breath in his face, and then he snatched back the money and the liquor, before pushing the girl out into the street and setting about his business. After first sweeping the floor (careful to avoid Metheney), and then pushing back the tables and dropping the chairs into place, he stepped behind the bar, where empty bottles and filthy glasses were lined up and ready for his attention. Metheney stirred andrubbed a gnarled hand into his face and then, without saying a word, he dragged himself to his unsteady feet and lurched in the direction of the wooden staircase, which groaned under his weight. Mercifully, this morning, Metheney is already upstairs, no doubt still asleep, with his mouth wide open, and sprawled across one of his girls who specialize in late-night secondhand love. The first customers of the day usually wander in while the bar top is still sopping wet from Clyde D’s having wiped it down, and they