Dancing in the Dark (4 page)

Eventually he decided that the misery of the Hollenbeck Hotel, where the verbal insults were often compounded by a swift boot to his seat, or a sharp tug at his jacket, or on one occasion being spat upon, seemed on balance to be no worse than life with the medicine shows, and so, when his former employer pleaded with him to reconsider his premature retirement from the entertainment business, he decided to strip off his bellboy uniform and leave the Hollenbeck, and team up with three white boys and try to make a living touring the lumber camps in the northern extremes of the state. These were rough, wild places where boys who sang and danced were a poor alternative to liquor and women, and these untamed men had no hesitation in letting the youngsters know this. The three white boys would go on first, to test the audience, and then all being well Bert would come onstage for the third song-and-dance number, which would usually bring forth a crescendo of hooting and whistling and more often than not a volley of bottles and the crack of a pistol being discharged into the open sky. The crowd regularly descended into a howling pandemonium, with the reeling white men furiously raining coins at the boys, and their enraged voices screeching vile insults, but the four of them would press on with the show knowing that payment was dependent upon their getting through the whole act. A generous camp owner might smuggle them to a hut and give them a chunk of pie and a place to sleep, but they were often shortchanged and simply told to scoot. Thereafter, they would bunk down for the night in the forest and pray that it wouldn’t rain. There were, of course, those nights when his colleagues were offered food and shelter and Bert was left out, but
without giving the matter a second thought the three boys stood by him and refused to accept either food or shelter unless the colored boy could share in the spoils. On each occasion the outraged camp owner hastily withdrew his offer to the white boys, which eventually soured the relationship between the four of them for in such dire circumstances it was impossible for the three white boys to hold their resentment at bay. Week after week they struggled from one lumber camp to another, dodging insults and trying to ignore the emptiness in their stomachs. Young Bert began to feel increasingly redundant
and
responsible, and at night he heard them talking and wondering whose idea it was to bring the coon along as the novelty part of their act. Why had their employer been foolish enough to think that the addition of the tall nigger boy would make them special among the scores of other lumber camp troupes who were parading the northern reaches of the west coast? Bert endured long nights in which he listened as the white boys’ tempers began to fray, and then unity was finally achieved as they fell into fits of laughter and shared with one another crude imitations of Nigger Bert and his heavy languid singing style while Bert lay “sleeping” under the tall, doomed trees of the lumber camp, all the while trying to shut out these noises of betrayal. And then one morning he shared with them the news that he could take no more of the treatment they were all receiving, and he asked if they would forgive him if he returned alone. The three boys stared at him in astonishment. Guilt caught them unawares, and they pleaded with him that he stay and finish what they had started as a team. Their insincere words disappointed him, but he simply let them know how grateful he was for their support, both now and in the past, yet he insisted that it would be best for everybody concerned were he to leave them to tour by themselves. This time there were no objections and nobody tried to make him stay, but Bert knew that it would be difficult for him to return to Riverside and face his father after this latest misadventure.
Desperation sent young Bert to San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, where he eventually accepted work as a Hawaiian impersonator singing some of the favorite coon songs of the day, but it was a chance encounter with a member of Martin and Selig’s Minstrel Show that changed his destiny. A jet-black nineteen-year-old boy stood with his banjo working the corner of Market and O’Farrell Streets, hoping that he might find a talent to complement his own. Hoping that he might find an end man. Hoping that he might find a friend.

He first sees George in the fall of 1893. The boy is down on his luck, toes poking out of his shoes, backside hanging out of his pants, but he gives off confidence as he tries to scratch a living on the Barbary Coast. This strange boy, who he guesses to be about the same age as himself, is standing on a street corner clutching a banjo and eyeballing all who pass him by. Bert stares at the little man, who looks as though the word “defeat” has been knocked clean out of his vocabulary, and then it occurs to him that if he too is going to be scraping a living he may as well do so in the company of somebody with whom he might talk. But it is George who takes the initiative and touches the imaginary brim of his invisible hat. “They call me George Walker. I’m from Lawrence, Kansas. How about yourself?” He stares down at the short, black man-boy and begins to laugh, at first quietly, but then he loses the shoulders and begins to roar. “So they call you George Walker?” But his new friend isn’t laughing. He continues to look down at the short man-boy and he wonders just what kind of banjoclutching colored creature he has stumbled across. “I’m sorry, Mr. Walker?” He wipes the tears from his eyes with the back of his sleeve, and then he extends a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Walker. Maybe the two of us should get ourselves acquainted.”

.   .   .

An hour later they are still standing together on the corner of Market and O’Farrell Streets. George asks him if he knows where he might smoke out a good end man for Martin and Selig’s Mastodon Minstrels, for he explains that he can’t go back to Mr. Selig until he finds somebody for the other end. Then, momentarily changing the subject, he leans his banjo up against the wall and volunteers the information that he has made his way out west from Kansas, singing, dancing, and suffering all the degradations of the colored road. Apparently Free Kansas wasn’t so free for George, who claims that he arrived in San Francisco penniless, cold, and hungry, but having at least picked up songs aplenty to place on his tongue and having acquired some classy colored strutting for his feet. However, he confesses to having discovered that for a nineteen-year-old colored minstrel boy, the west coast promises little and delivers less, but Bert already understands this.

For over a year the two boys move together, in and out of the city’s saloons and variety halls, where they learn to obliterate their true selves on a daily basis. Fourteen hours each day in the California fog masquerading as southern “plantation darkies” or northern “zip coons,” rubbing shoulders with Gold Rush dreamers from the Latin, Asian, and European worlds whose own identities appear to breathe free in the misty western air. However, on the Barbary Coast these two boys are expected to perfect clumsy, foolish gestures, and then retire to the wings and silently endure the discourtesy of people mimicking them. Eventually the daily trauma of having to look up to the colored people in the upper balcony and silently beg their forgiveness begins to take a toll on their young spirits. They have both chosen to eschew blackface makeup, which angers most theater owners, but Walker and Williams, with George as the comedian and Bert as the straight man, are now growing weary of trying to be something other than
the colored monkeys that the audience in the orchestra stalls assume they are paying to see. For over a year Walker and Williams sing and they dance, and they try not to live down to expectations, and they try not to look up to the upper balcony, and they remain true to their promise that for Walker and Williams, boys onstage dreaming of one day becoming famous men, there will be no blackface makeup.

The Midway Plaisance: I had been told that this place, which was located on Market between Third and Fourth Streets, was formerly known as Jack Cremone’s. It was the first melodeon or variety hall in San Francisco to feature hootchy-kootchy dancers (also known as torso tossers or hip wavers), women who were happy to wind and grind and who, the establishment was pleased to note, did not regard their virtue as their chief asset. For ten cents a white man might enjoy the pleasure of watching female entertainment, and for a little more he might enter one of the booths on the mezzanine floor that were protected with a heavy curtain behind which it was understood
private
female entertainment might be procured, the nature of which remained your own business as long as the liquor continued to flow. George and myself performed here, long hard days and nights, from 1:30 p.m. to 4 a.m., as Walker and Williams, providing comic relief to men from the redwood forests who had come to the Barbary Coast to spend a half year’s wages on champagne and girls who stuffed banknotes into the lining of their stockings, and who would roll their bellies and bare their bosoms for those rowdy, alcoholprimed men who still had money to spend and who were not yet ready to exchange female pleasures for a good old-fashioned knock-down, drag-out brawl. We performed in this atmosphere with myself as the straight man and George as the comedic banjo picker, each watching the other’s back, quick to spot flying chairs
or other missiles, determined to earn enough to eat, learning to understand that at best we would be either tolerated or ignored, until it was no longer possible for us to disregard the barking of the drunken audience, who would eventually cry out and demand that the women return, which was our cue to seek temporary refuge in the wings.

Mid-Winter Exposition, 1894: We were anthropological specimens at Golden Gate Park. When the “real savages” promised at the African Dahomeyan village exhibit were delayed en route to America, Walker and Williams were among those who donned animal skins, and through the long hard winter of 1894, and into 1895, we found ourselves close to Africa. We were instructed to impersonate “natives” steaming with perspiration, and we were obliged to kneel before our masters with the clumsy devotion of camels. I worried about George for, despite the discomfiture of our previous engagement, my partner actually missed the noise and the bustle and the girls of the Midway. The simple truth was, something in his spirit was being corroded by being forced to sit in a pen from sunup to sundown and have people stare and point at him. In fact, it soon became apparent that neither one of us could successfully play
primitive
, for there was absolutely nothing in our lives that had prepared us for this demeaning role. I watched as poor George sunk further into depression, and although I too was suffering,
I
chose to dull my pain by studying. At night I consulted John Ogilby’s
Africa
and other books on the dark continent, and I read about the place from which my “character” was supposed to have originated. This Dahomey was a West African country, slightly smaller than Pennsylvania, whose coastline gave out onto the Atlantic Ocean. I came to understand that this hot country was mostly flat, with some undulating plains and a few scattered hills and low mountains, and it was a poor
place where neither Christianity nor the English language had made much impression. Being in possession of these facts helped me to endure the long days of pretense and shame, but sadly George began to retreat further into himself and we spoke less frequently with each other. And then the Dahomeyans appeared, but it was immediately clear that these bewildered Africans were mystified and unable to comprehend what they were doing in this cold, damp place called America, and so the manager of the exposition made the decision to retain his imposters, who the public seemed able to relate to. He dispatched the Africans back to their “jungle,” but George no longer wished to participate and he began to drink excessively, and sometimes he would angrily tear off his animal skin and without warning leave the pen, and I understood that it was time for Walker and Williams to move on and seek fame and fortune elsewhere. As anthropological specimens we had failed.

The two young men share a room down by the water and take turns sleeping on the one narrow bed. Bert lies awkwardly on the floor and looks up at his smaller partner, who pulls deeply on a cigarette and stares at the ceiling. Sometimes George has a detached look about him that suggests he comes from no folks. After all, Bert discovered him on Market Street, just dropped down clear out of the sky. Now life is crushing the pair of them, and they both understand that they need to flee San Francisco, even though this will most likely mean joining a medicine show. George, however, has made it clear to his partner that he is ready to do whatever they have to do, for the city by the bay has nothing more to offer him. In fact, he is desperate enough to consider traveling out to the back of beyond and playing mining towns, places where colored performers generally fear to show themselves, for he understands that unless they act quickly one or both
of them are likely to abandon the stage for good. A dejected George lights another cigarette and then returns his gaze to the ceiling, and a worried Bert continues to observe his partner from the vantage point of the floor.

Cripple Creek, Colorado: This small, nondescript town possessed little in the form of government, and the tiny community was under the jurisdiction of El Paso County. In 1890 all of this changed when Gold Fever put Cripple Creek on the map and it rapidly became the fourth-largest gold-producing town in the world. Tent cities sprung up everywhere, and wooden storefronts suddenly lined the dusty streets. The booming town is high in altitude, and none of its forty mines stand below an elevation of nine thousand feet, while some are situated over eleven thousand feet above sea level. This is a tough, volcanic landscape where the dry land is chiseled in rocky ridges and the odd scraggly dwarf tree manages to cling on to a cliff face, but little else flourishes in this first range of the Rockies save mountain grasses, wildflowers, and over five thousand desperate fortune seekers foolhardy enough to have moved eighty-five miles southwest of Denver along wagon-cut roads, and then climbed skyward in the hope of prospecting for new veins by sinking hole after hole into the parched earth. These are crazy times, when a man might arrive on a passenger coach heavy with people, and with nothing to his name but the dusty clothes on his back, and days later the same man might possess the wealth to buy a dozen mansions in any of the fanciest eastern cities. Young Walker and Williams enter Cripple Creek as part of a medicine show, fatigued from days and nights and weeks of rough living, but they still dress well, and they keep their spirits afloat with a high-energy performance that never fails to achieve laughter. But they both know that their chief aim is not to produce laughter but to distract the liquor-filled
prospectors so that these desperate and bitter men cannot think clearly about who or what is in front of them. However, here in Cripple Creek, with its newly acquired wealth and its rampant sense of its own importance, the sight of postperformance Walker and Williams in fine clothes causes some prospectors to scratch their heads and think all too clearly about what and who is in front of them and so, at the point of a gun, they strip the fancy clothes from the nigger boys’ backs and force Walker and Williams to wrap themselves in burlap sacks before escorting them to the edge of the town. At ten thousand feet, and bereft of jacket, shirt, pants, and shoes, the young performers walk barefoot out of Cripple Creek with laughter ringing in their ears. They understood that going back to the medicine show circuit was always going to be a delicate business, but here in Cripple Creek, Colorado, the two young men finally discover the true extent of the danger and they decide, No more.