A Conversation with the Mann (57 page)

I said nothing.

Chet said to Bob: “Let me talk to him a minute.”

Bob nodded, got up. He started to go but first reduced the entire discussion to its essence: “Jackie, do not fuck with Ed
Sullivan.” He left his office to Chet and me.

Chet washed his face in the palms of his hands, then slid them up to his head, slicked back his hair. Little rituals for calming.

He said, asked: “What are you doing?”

“I'm doing my act.”

“You're killing yourself, that's what you're doing. It's like … it's like you're taking a gun—God, I can't even believe you'd
… It's like you're taking a gun and putting it to your head and spreading your brain all over a wall. It's suicide.” Chet
worked loose the knot of his blue spotted tie. “The Sullivan show! Why in the hell would you—”

“He saved my life.”

“… What?”

“Medgar Evers saved my life.”

Chet didn't know what to say to that. He tried a couple of times to come up with something, but it didn't amount to much more
than his mouth opening and closing.

“Years ago. Kept me from getting beat to death.”

“So now you've got to … what? You gotta do a memorial to him?”

“No. Not for him. I think I have to do this for me.”

“Okay. Okay, that right there is the problem: For you, you're doing this for you. You even thought about what you're doing
to Bob? You're putting a fire to his ass! He went to bat for you! I—” Chet's hands clenched up, he rolled one of his fists
on his forehead, made a couple of sharp, herky-jerky moves, working hard to check his anger.

After he rode it down: “I went to bat for you, Jackie. You come to the agency, you come to me, you say you want Sullivan.
I get you Sullivan. I make the calls, I put on the pressure, I—GET—YOU— SULLIVAN! I put my neck out for you and now you're
swinging the ax. Christ!” Chet did a little more anger-wrestling. Anger was getting the upper hand.

I did what I'd been trying to avoid. I looked Chet in the eye. No rage there, not like I'd thought. There was some hurt. There
was a lot of pleading.

“Yeah, you know something, your set was funny. That stuff about race, civil rights … you can do things with that. Monday morning,
you can do some serious damage with those jokes. Monday, after Sunday, after Sullivan, after you're a star, If you want to
do something for yourself, make yourself a star, Jackie.”

If I wanted to do something for myself … Was I doing this, doing my San Francisco set, for myself? Was I being selfish? Was
I so desperate to soothe my grief over a man I hardly knew, my guilt that a man who worked for positive change was dead while
I, working for nothing greater than more money and better fame, was still very much alive, that I was just putting all that
ahead of the reality of the situation? Was I just trying to make me feel good about the shit of a human that I was?

I didn't know.

I didn't know. I'd been lying to myself so long, lying about what was right or wrong or okay to do for the sake of getting
ahead that I didn't know what was truth anymore. Chet had put himself out for me. He had delivered as promised. He had gotten
me Sullivan. How fair was it for me to turn around and do every unkind thing short of hitting him with a shovel so I could
feel righteous about myself?

It wasn't fair at all. That much I knew to be truth.

Monday. Come Monday I could tell just about any joke I pleased just about anywhere I desired. Monday after Sunday there'd
be plenty of chances for me to do things the way I wanted. But for now …

“Okay. Tell them I'll do the other jokes.”

T
HE SMOOTH AND STEADY SWEEP
of a bright-red second hand over the plain black-and-white face of the clock that was hung up on the wall. Minutes now. Minutes
instead of years, days, hours. Minutes until eight o'clock P.M. Eastern Standard Time, until the start of the Sullivan show.
From my dressing room I could hear a dull hum, the audience filling the house with their bodies and their swelling excitement.
I didn't think anything of it. I remained relaxed.

At intervals a voice would come over a loudspeaker, staticky, giv ing instructions to the crew and counting down the time
to air.

Minutes.

Chet was off somewhere else in the studio, shaking hands, greasing wheels, getting the world ready for Jackie Mann. Fine.
I was glad for the time to think and be still. And I would be very glad when all of this was behind me. I was tired of the
struggle. For as long as I could remember, the Sullivan show had been the focal point of my) existence. It had been my Sunday
nights, my escape, my dreams. In a way, in a very real way, it defined me. It had been my life. I wanted my life back.

I started to go through a mental checklist, give myself little reminders: Stand straight. When you walk out onstage, stand
straight. Smile. Make sure you smile for the people. Be confident. Own the moment. Why shouldn't I own it? I'd been paying
for it on installment for years.

A knock at the door. It came as a gunshot, made me jump. I was more nervous than I would admit to myself. Even now, always
lying.

It was Bob. “All set, Jackie?”

“Yes,” I said.

“It's going to be a great show.” He stuttered a bit. “I'm glad we could work things out.”

“Sorry about all that. I owed you better for what you've done for me. I owed Chet, too.”

“He's a good agent. I was glad to hear it when Sid told me you went with him. Nothing against Sid, mind you, but William Morris
…”

Bob talked on, but I sat for a second, maybe it was a couple, not hearing him, not hearing what he was saying but processing
what he'd just said. “Sid told you?”

“Yes.”

“You talked to him?”

“When I called to tell him I wanted you to audition.”

“You called Sid?”

“Yeah. He'd been working me for you a good long while. When I called him, told him I was ready to give you a look, he said
you were with William Morris now, and I should—”

“And then
you
called Chet.” Slow. Deliberate. “
You
called Chet and
you
told him you wanted me to audition?”

Bob couldn't quite figure what to make of my reaction. He couldn't figure why I looked so shocked, hurt. Why I looked as if
a knife—long and jagged—had been slid, none too gently, deep inside me.

“Yeah. I called Chet. … He's your agent.”

The god-voice came back over the speakers, told us it was three minutes to air.

“I've got some things to take care of, Jackie. A page will come get you about five minutes before your spot. Break a leg.”

Bob left.

I'm not sure what I did.

I
WAS STANDING IN THE WINGS.

Ed was before the cameras. “… Right here, on this stage … Sensational young … Television debut…”

Couldn't focus on the words, couldn't even …

Out of the corner of my eye, somebody giving me the thumbs-up.

From Ed, my name.

The orchestra. People clapping.

My legs begged to shake. My palms slicked up.

I walked out to center stage …

Stand straight. Make sure you walk out straight.

Walked out to a little star that was painted there …

Be confident. Own the moment.

My heart went supersonic, the sound of it pumping made me deaf to the world. I looked at the audience but couldn't see them
with the electric white of the lights in my eyes. Just dark silhouettes—that living ink blot. Clapping shadows—and the television
cameras. Three bulky beasts staring me down. The whole of America looking at me through them.

And smile. Make sure you
…

Couldn't work up a smile.

Couldn't.

The applause died out.

It got quiet.

The quiet again. Same quiet I'd spent so many years facing down. The empty void.

Only …

This time the void wasn't empty. This time, as if I were watching a movie show of my life just prior to dying, pictures of
the past jumped up before my face. Call it: Story of a Man. Me, years ago, seventy blocks and a world away, watching Ed Sullivan
up at Grandma Mae's. Me working the burly-ques, the Village clubs, the Copa, Tahoe and Vegas, the stars I'd opened for, the
shows I'd closed. I saw the road traveled and the mountain climbed. I saw all it took to get me to the very moment when I
stood where I stood.

All it took.

I saw me shuckin' and jivin' so the crackers at a lumber camp wouldn't beat me. Dancing so rednecks wouldn't lynch me. Dodging
while Frances put her career on the line just to kiss me. There's me getting chased from Liliah by Hollywood thugs. Me marrying
a woman I didn't care for. Me letting the woman I'd loved more and longer than anything else slip further and further away.

And then there's me cutting Sid Kindler out of my life so some other guy could grab the credit for getting me where I was.

All it took.

All it took …

All it took from me.

In the void I saw Jackie Mann ducking and sliding and kowtowing and yawsuhing and bootlicking and cowering and truckling and
groveling and chipping, and chipping, and chipping away at himself until what was left couldn't even occupy the space where
he stood.

Jackie Mann.

Jackie Mann?

Jacking Nothing. Not one single thing. I was nothing.

Jackie Mann?

Jackie Mann.

I said to the audience, I said to the world: “Hello, I'm Jackie Mann … I'm a Negro. I have to tell you that because I wasn't
always a Negro. Used to be colored. As I understand it, pretty soon we're going to be calling ourselves black. We keep changing
what we call ourselves all the time. I think we're hoping we can confuse white people into liking us: 'I hate them.' 'Who?'
'Those col … Ne … bla … Never mind!'

“I think Negroes are finally starting to get respect. Used to be if you were a Negro you had to sit at the back of the bus,
wait at the back of the line. Now they're sending soldiers over to Vietnam, everyone's like: 'Oh, no, please, you Negroes
go first.' See, I think Negroes are going to make real good soldiers in Vietnam. We're going to get sent to a strange place
where we're hated and people want to kill us for no good reason. For us, that's like another day in Birmingham, Alabama. I'm
not even sure if there's any fighting going on over in Vietnam. I think Governor Wallace finally figured a way around integration:
‘Now, yew Negroes jus’ git on this heyah boat, 'n' sail away … we all come 'n' git ya later.”

People didn't laugh. The hell they didn't. People screamed. People screamed and they screamed in waves. That hip, smart, New
York audience had never seen, never heard, never conjured up anything like me, a young black man not talking about his mother-in-law
or the last crazy date he went on—cooning with himself. I was taking the stage full of confidence, making a stand. Standing
up for myself, my people. I was joking with a point of view. I had a perspective.

I had a voice.

I hit one bit—won't pick cotton from a bottle of aspirin—and I had to stop dead for all the cheering and clapping. I had to
wait for the audience to clap themselves out.

In my mind I started cutting jokes, fearing I'd run three minutes long over my original five.

Five minutes.

And I filled them. I filled them until they burst. If there was a smoother comic, you tell me who. If there was a funnier
man alive, you give me his name. For those five minutes I was fresh and sharp and dangerous. The best I'd ever been. As good
as I would ever be.

And no one outside that studio would ever see or hear a word I said.

I
THINK THEY WERE READY FOR ME
. After my little show at rehearsal, despite my promises otherwise, they were ready for Jackie Mann to go off the page. Or
maybe, being live television, they were always ready for anything. But there must have been someone somewhere with his finger
over the kill switch. As soon as I started my first bit, just as soon as I started talking about being black, the switch got
thrown. I got cut off. Most of the country saw five minutes of
PLEASE STAND BY.