Free A Conversation with the Mann by John Ridley Page A

telling
     jokes and asked if I wanted to do a few bits. I didn't even have to think about it. Just the idea of being in front of a crowd,
     having people hoot and clap for me same as they did for the TV comics, gave me a jazz.
    “Real glad to hear that,” Dax said. “Figure we ought have one of you for the rest of the colored boys.”
    The next couple of days got spent trying to work up a routine. Excitement kept me from thinking of much else. Not thinking
     of much else almost got my head taken off when I got into “the bite of a line,” the snap of a tow cable that sent it flailing
     like a steel whip. To this day I believe ducking my father's blows gave me the speed to dodge the line. Most of it. While
     I was getting stitches where the cable had torn my shoulder, I made the obvious decision to save my joke-arranging for nights
     as I lay in bed. I'd mumble bits to myself while my worn-out body begged me for sleep.
    Sunday night came around. The main hall was packed with people—workers, management. Everyone wanted to see the show, sup port
     their friends. That, and in the middle of a forest in Washington State with no money to spend and nowhere to spend it, an
     amateur night was the best and only bet. Some of the boys in the camp were not untalented, and the ones Dax had picked for
     the show were very good. Good singers. Good instrument players. The excitement I'd been feeling through the week got dialed
     over to nervousness, only then the gap between being funny for a few people and being horribly unfunny for several hundred
     becoming obvious to me. I felt something tapping against my leg. I looked down. It was my shaking hand.
    Then all of a sudden it came time for me to take the floor. I got introduced, went out to the center of the room. Whatever
     applause there was died off. Maybe nerves were making me supersensitive, but I became aware of an odd split second of quiet
     between the clapping and my telling a joke. It was an emptiness that, in my mind, just hung in space, waiting to be filled.
     I filled it with some bits from the television comics, jokes old and hackneyed but funny enough to coax out a few laughs from
     the audience. Then I went into some bits about life at camp, the hard work and long hours and how we were rewarded for it
     all with some writing in a passbook and bad food. Basically I made fun of the whole operation.
    The laughs started coming in waves.
    And when I did impressions of some of the workers and managers—the way someone talked, or exaggerated one of their mannerisms,
     mugged their facial expressions reminiscent of how Pop used to mock the neighbors on one of his weed jags—the joint went nuts
     with screams and hollers.
    From the corner of my eye I caught a glance of that tall white boy, the one from our koogie that wanted to beat in my head
     for not knowing the route to “niggerville.” The tears in his eyes said he couldn't laugh any harder. Everyone was busting
     up.
    Everyone except for Li'l Mo. Mo wasn't laughing. He didn't seem to find it too amusing, me clowning around in front of a bunch
     of whites. But as I finished up, all that was in my mind was that a room full of people—some who didn't know me, some who
     out-and-out hated me—were applauding me.
    Dax had arranged for a special dinner after the show for the performers, a thank-you meal of steak and potatoes and a hunk
     of pie. I went back to the kitchen and got my plate same as the rest of the acts. The steak still sizzled when the cook plunked
     it down. Juice percolated from the skin of the potatoes. I started outside so I could get to eating while it was all still
     hot.
    “Jackie,” Dax called to me from a table. “Where yew goin'?”
    “Outside,” I said.
    Dax sort of laughed a little. “What in tha hell for?”
    Because I was hungry and I wanted to eat. I was going outside because I was black and everyone else was white. Blacks didn't
     eat with whites, and it never occurred to me that