Free Mr. Bones by Paul Theroux

from his gleaming black face, his white-outlined mouth, his woolly wig askew, and rapping his tambourine after he spoke.
    â€œDad,” we said, pleading.
    â€œDad done gone. ‘That was prior to his decease, Mr. Bones.’ I says, ‘He had no niece.’”
    Shika-shika-shika
went the tambourine.
    He was happy, not just smiling but defiantly happy, powerfully happy, talking to us, teasing us in ways I’d never heard before. He had once been remote, with a kindly smile that made him hard to approach. Now he was up close and laughing at us and he wouldn’t go away.
    He was someone new, convincingly a real man, as though he’d been turned inside out, the true Dad showing. Swanking in the role of a comical slave, he’d become a frightening master to us, and because he was so strange we had no way of responding to his tyrannical teasing.
    Something else I discovered, because I kept going to the store to lurk and spy on him, was that instead of sitting silently alone in the shoe department he’d been hired to run, he now had company: Mel Hankey, John Flaherty, Morrie Daigle, and two men I’d never seen before. All of them with their heads together, sitting in the customers’ chairs, whispering, as if they were cooking something up. So odd to see this in a store where everyone else was working or shopping or being loudly busy.
    That was his secret. Mine too. The whole affair looked more serious than just black faces and songs and jokes. These men were like conspirators, with a single plan in their minds, and the sight of them impressed me, because Dad was in charge. I could see it in his posture, sitting upright like a musician holding an instrument; but the instrument was his hand. Wearing white gloves, he seemed to be giving directions, issuing energetic commands. Mr. Bones was their leader.
    So, after all, he had friends—these five whispering white men, who were black conspirators. We had taken him to be a man with no friends outside the family, no interests outside the house and the church; but here he was with his pals, Tambo, Lightning, Mr. Interlocutor, and the rest whose names I didn’t know.
    But that same night, as though to dispute all this, he came home after dinner in blackface and floppy coat and wig, and said, “Listen to Mr. Bones.”
    Fred was fiddling with the radio, Mother was at the sink with Floyd, I was looking at a comic book.
    â€œI says, listen to Mr. Bones!”
    He spoke so loud we jumped, and as we did, he banged and clicked his tambourine. He was like a drunk you couldn’t talk back to, yet he hadn’t had a drink.
    Â 
I ain’t never done nothin’ to nobody,
I ain’t never got nothin’ from nobody, no time!
And until I get somethin’ from somebody, sometime,
I don’t intend to do nothin’ for nobody, no time!
    Â 
    He searched us, shaking his head, and moaned, “Nobody, no time!”
    Was it a song? Was it a poem? Was it a speech? It was too furious to be entertainment. We sat horrified by the sight of Dad in blackface, rapping his tambourine on his knees and his elbow and then bonking himself on the head with it.
    Even though it was painful to hear, it was being spoken by a man who had our full attention. We had to listen; we couldn’t look away. That proved he was the opposite of the poor soul he was describing—he was stronger than we were, but I recognized the “nobody” he spoke of. It wasn’t Mr. Bones, it was Dad.
    After that, he went over to Fred and said, “What are you going to do for Mr. Bones?”
    â€œCollege,” Fred said, blinking fiercely.
    â€œKnow the difference between a college professor and a railway conductor?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNo what?”
    â€œNo, Mr. Bones.”
    â€œOne trains minds and the other minds trains. Which one do you want to be?”
    â€œCollege professor, Mr. Bones.”
    But Mr. Bones had turned to Floyd.