Free Juba! by Walter Dean Myers Page A

how I was looking at the Irish dancers. I’m not that big a fellow, but I’m bigger now than when Iknocked on your door this afternoon.”
    â€œWell, just don’t let that tongue of yours tie up knots that it can’t get loose.”
    â€œSo do you think you can help me pull it all together?”
    â€œWe’ll see,” Margaret said. “We’ll see.”

CHAPTER
FIVE
    I was lying in bed trying to make myself go to sleep, and Stubby was snoring away across from me, sounding like he was doing it on purpose. First he would give a couple of snorts, then a big noisy snort, and then a little wheezy sound would come out of him. Usually, him snoring didn’t bother me, but now everything was working on my nerves. What Margaret had said didn’t get under my skin that much, although I did think she got the flame under her kettle a little too high. What did bother me was how many people I was relying on to bring this show together.
    Peter Williams said he wanted a forty-minute program, andthat wasn’t much to think about when he was saying it, but the doing was something else. The only white dancers I knew up close were John Diamond and his friends. I didn’t want any part of John Diamond, because I knew he would sabotage anything I did. As long as he thought of himself as the number one dancer in Five Points, I was going to be a thorn in his side. But when he didn’t have his race on his side, as he did at the auditions, we were equals. And when it came to dancing, he was good, but I was still the best, and he knew it.
    Food was going to cost money, and I wanted to pay the dancers, too. Artists need to make money for their art so they can see it’s worthwhile, even if they love what they’re doing. I thought a dollar for each would be right, but when Jack and I worked it out, using seven performers, it was getting shaky.
    â€œSo you’re talking nearly half your money already,” Jack said. “And you haven’t actually hired a dancer or singer yet. Remember, you need some money in reserve for emergencies, too. Or costumes. Or musicians.”
    â€œYou having doubts?” I asked Jack. “You thinking I can’t pull it off?”
    â€œNo, just concerns,” Jack said. “Show business is a lot like stealing hams from a smokehouse. You stick your hand through a hole in the wall and grab a ham, and everybody thinks you’re wonderful. If you stick your hand through the hole and the owner is waiting inside with a meat cleaver andchops it off, then you’re a chump. You have to decide if the risk is worth it.”
    It was worth it to me. I hadn’t had to deal with that many people before, but I was already thinking that if I did put on the show and it made people happy, that was something I could do someplace else.
    I asked Fred Flamer to come to our room and talk it over, just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I asked Margaret, too, and she said no, that she didn’t go into men’s rooms.
    The meeting didn’t go well. Stubby was saying yes to everything I said, and to everything I asked, and he wasn’t even thinking about how much it was going to cost.
    Fred Flamer was even worse. He kept sitting on the edge of Stubby’s bed, nodding his head up and down and smiling, and I knew he was desperate for a chance to perform. I thought about asking him to “coon it up” for us, just to see if he would do it. That was wrong and I knew it, but to see anybody be so desperate was strange to me. Fred was a step away from giving up dancing, and he knew it.
    â€œI’ll take fifteen of the forty minutes,” I said. “Freddy, you can take seven, and we’ll give the white dancers and singers eighteen minutes. What do you think?”
    â€œSounds good to me,” Freddy said. “You know I can fiddle, too.”
    â€œWe’ve got to work it out with Margaret, because she’sgoing to help