And then me and Booker got the hell outta there best we could.
• • •
HERB WATCHED from the edge of the balcony as the Basie Band played and the dancing night progressed. The Judge and Carlos still hadn’t danced. They sat together, both talking to Lillian, all three laughing, drinking. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry. They seemed to do nothing but talk. After a while, though, the band vocalist, a young man in a tux, came down to the floor from the bandstand and approached their table. The singer leaned over the Judge, who whispered something in his ear. The singer went up to the leader, the great Count Basie, and whispered in his ear. The Count nodded, leaned over to his great guitarist Freddie Green, who cued the band to a halt after the number was done.
Basie, who normally never strayed from his piano during concerts, rose and walked to center stage to speak in the microphone.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, as we do every year, we dedicate this one to Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Johns.”
Herb watched in wonder as the Judge, Carlos, and Lillian Johns got up and proceeded to the middle of the floor, surrounded by other dancers. The Basie singer strode to center stage and began to sing “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.”
Herb watched, entranced, as the threesome danced. Carlos danced like a ballet dancer, graceful, holding lovely Lillian Johns like she was a gardenia, guiding her around tenderly and cautiously, spinning a web on the floor. They moved like angels, while the old Judge circled them like an attentive, clumsy, soused guardian, using his cane as a magic wand, a conductor’s baton, waving it over the couple’s heads, conducting a symphony only they could hear, smiling, laughing, joking, narrating as the couple whirled. With each twirl and glide, the Judge spun his cane about in the air, following along, half dancing, half limping, dancing with the cheer and lift of a thousand ballerinas. The macabre trio floated about the dance floor as couples smiled and noted them.
Because that was what Clifford Johns promised his wife. That’s what Carlos told Herb before he sent him on his way. That after the smoke had cleared and the Americans had driven the Germans back, he and the Judge had walked down into Sommocolonia and found the body of Clifford Johns in the church tower, along with seven Americans and some forty-three dead German soldiers, and in Johns’s pocket was a letter he was set to mail to his wife, Lillian, which said, “I may not be the greatest dancer in the world, but when I come home, I am going to take you Christmas dancing every single year. We will dance to Count Basie at Minton’s on Christmas Eve while he plays ‘Polka Dots and Moonbeams.’ And at that moment I will be the best dancer in the world, because I am dancing with the best woman in the world. And we will do that every year until we die.”
Herb watched them spin across the floor, an odd trio: Carlos leading the way, smooth and suave; Lillian following gracefully; and the old Judge floating alongside, waving his cane and dancing like an angel, clearing the way, narrating, dancing the promise a man made to his wife thirty years before. Dancing in a way that only an angel can make possible. Making good on a promise made so many years ago.
THE FISH MAN ANGEL
During the Civil War, it was not unusual for the great President Lincoln to take long, solitary walks to the War Department in the dead of night. The War Department was just a few blocks away from the White House, and Lincoln often went there alone, to review telegrams and the latest news from his generals on the front. He took this solitary walk much to the dismay of his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, and his personal bodyguard, Alan Pinkerton, who deemed his midnight walks foolhardy. He had received numerous death threats, which he dismissed. His walks, the president insisted, were the only way for him to escape the daily madness of the White House, his quarreling Cabinet members, and a faltering Union Army led by a bumbling George McClellan, who called up reinforcements again and again, only to be whipped by the cunning of the great Confederate general Robert E. Lee and Lee’s gloriously talented Southern counterparts.
So it was on this chilly March night when the tall and melancholy figure in a stovepipe hat emerged from the basement west side door of the White House and made his way toward the main gate that led to Pennsylvania Avenue and the War Department. The figure nodded at the sentry who was posted there, glanced over his shoulder, and then, instead of walking toward the War Department, turned away from the gate and doubled back along the side of the building to the rear of the White House. He nodded at a second, silent rear sentry who patrolled the south side of the White House, then stepped into the alcove of a rear doorway. He waited in the shadows until the sentry had turned away, then slipped into the nearby tree-lined grounds and strode with purpose across the weeds and thick bushes toward the horse stable.
At the stable, he checked over his shoulder again to make sure he was not being followed, then silently slid his giant frame inside, closing the door quietly behind him.
There, along a row of stalls, he found Tinker, the pony belonging to his son Willie.
The child had fallen sick with fever two months before. One day he was fine, the next he coughed and lay down, complaining of chills. His wife summoned the best doctors in the city—in the land. The best nurses. Long days passed, long nights, with the anxious president, his giant, six-foot, four-inch frame pacing up and down the dim corridors of the White House in dressing gown and flapping carpet slippers, anxiously consulting the doctors as his wife sat fretfully at her son’s bedside. Everything possible had been attempted to save their son, but in the end, nothing could be done. Neither the greatest doctors in all America nor the will of its most powerful citizen could supersede God’s will.
The boy’s suffering had been long and painful, his breath coming in slower and slower gasps until he was gone. He succumbed to death at age eleven, when most boys are climbing trees and turning the corner toward young manhood.
The sight of the president wandering aimlessly down the halls of the White House sobbing, “He’s gone,” was a memory that most of the White House staff preferred never to recall.
The president entered the stall, withdrew from his pocket an apple, and offered it to the pony. “There now,” he said brightly. “How’s that for a treat?”
The pony, having eagerly climbed to his feet when the president entered, gave him a good sniff and gobbled up the apple. Even in the stable’s darkness Lincoln could see Tinker’s eyes shine with delight.
“Easy now,” Lincoln said. “Don’t want to eat my hand, do you? I’ll need it to pick a few more in your favor—” and suddenly he burst into tears. He leaned his head upon the pony, his long fingers draped over the creature’s back, his stovepipe hat falling to the floor as he sobbed.
He cried for several long minutes, his huge shoulders wracking with loud, debilitating sobs, his head bowed over the pony’s back, his high-pitched voice echoing eerily through the empty stalls and passages like a knife clattering across a marble table.
Finally he came to himself. He wiped his face on his sleeve, patted the pony, and with a sigh reached his long arm over to the edge of the stall and grabbed a blanket. He wrapped it over the creature’s back. Grabbing a pitchfork from the corner of the stall, the president of the most powerful army on American soil, whose single pen stroke across a piece of paper sent tens of thousands to their deaths, pitched the hay into a neat pile. He led the pony to the corner of the stall, coaxed the animal to the floor, then removed his tie, opened his waistcoat, unbuttoned his shirt, and lay down next to the pony, resting his head upon a bit of straw. Within seconds he fell asleep.
He was awakened several minutes later by the noise of footsteps. He lay without moving. His first thought was that he was dead. Many times Alan Pinkerton had warned him that assassins lingered about the White House, anxious to lure him out. He had ignored him and now was sorry for it, for there was only one doorway in and out of the stable, and judging by the number of steps he heard, the contingent that entered was more than one in number.
> “Over here,” he heard a voice say. It was that of a Negro.
The president lay immobile, listening intently. His eyes, now used to the dark, watched through the spaces between the slats of the stall as the aisle was illuminated by a gas lamp. The light shown on the face of a Negro he barely recognized, a stable hand whose name he could not remember. The man was followed by a Negro boy of about eleven, and then another lantern, and the president, with relief, recognized the familiar coat, shiny brass buttons, and tiny paunch of his regular coachman, Walter Brown, who led into the barn the team of horses that drove his presidential coach.
“Put ’em up, Simmie,” Walter said. “President’s gone to the War Department by foot again.”
“Maybe we ought to keep ’em out a little longer,” Simmie, the stable hand, said, “less’n the president might summon them for the ride back.”
From his place, Lincoln watched as Walter’s face, a glittering mass of white teeth and shining shimmy-sham that greeted him every morning with a joyful grin and a hearty huckabuck good morning, twisted into a grotesque mask of derision and rage.
“Who is you to sass me, Simmie? I am the president’s coachman. I could have you throwed right back to South Carolina to the bondage of masters you runned off from. You and your boy here!”
“No disrespect intended,” Simmie said. “Just thinking that the president might want his coach.”
“Don’t think beyond yourself, nigger! The president don’t need you to think for him about his horses or his laundry or his cooking. If this country was left up to niggers like yourself, we’d all be slaves still. Keep your coat on, pus head! And learn to work slow. Don’t be calling for more work. The man wanna walk, let him fool-walk! The runnings of this coach is for me to decide. Not you. Not him, even. He gived me this coach to run. So you coming at me to make me run it more makes me look bad to myself. You wanna make more work for me?”
“No. I was just thinking of the pres—”
“Shush now! Don’t backtalk me. Being that I works for the president, I am practically a white man,” Walter said. “And you is just a stable nigger. So as to teach an unstable stabler like yourself to be obedient and sanctified by the white man, you best get to practicing more. From here out, nigger, call me sir, since I am doing a white man’s job. Besides, we in wartime now, you unstable stabler, and no-count niggers like yourself cleaning up all the time, picking up dust and trying to make me look bad in front of the white folks, is not good. This white man’s army’s fighting for freedom, nigger. Your freedom. Understand?”
“Walter, just ’cause you wasn’t in bondage like I was—”
“What you call me?”
“Sir. Mr. Walter, sir. Just ’cause you wasn’t in bond—”
“Shush your mouth and do as I say. You get your black ass ’round these horses and put ’em up, water ’em, and have ’em ready. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
Lincoln watched the stable hand’s face. Simmie was a tall, regal man, dressed in tattered clothing with battered shoes. Simmie’s face twisted in painful recognition as he separated the horses while his son stared. Simmie glanced at his boy and addressed the coachman.
“I reckon it ain’t necessary, Walter,” Simmie said softly, “to speak to me that way in front of my boy here.”
Lincoln watched as Walter’s face twisted into a deeper rage.
“Nigger, I will take this horsewhip and do you and your boy with it. Y’understand? I am tired. I want to sleep. I been setting up waiting for the president all night. And when he takes it to his mind to walk, I still got to sit there in the cold and rain. Now you, you broke-horse, low-country, wool-headed, yellow-bellied, dirt-faced nigger bastard. You will feed, water, and wash these horses. You will clean them down to the bottom of their hooves. And you will call me sir. And if you don’t call me sir from here on out, I will see that you is sent out into the road. I can get any number of starving niggers wandering ’round these parts to take the warm food and shelter from out your mouth and your boy’s mouth. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, sir.”
Walter turned on his heel, the bottom of his white horseman’s tailcoat flickering in the lamplight as he stomped toward the barn door, where he stopped and, his back to Simmie, said: “I gots a hard job. I got to keep this yard tight, y’understand? I’m the president’s man, y’see. Closest thing to a white man this yard has. Being ’round the biggest white man of all has gived me smarts, Simmie. You can learn from me. If I decides to, I might even learn you a thing or two.”
“Yes . . . sir.”
“Good night, nigger.”
With that Walter departed, closing the door behind him.
Lincoln watched as Simmie silently led the team of horses to adjacent stalls across the aisle from him. He gently led them inside, then closed the gates. He stooped to grab a bucket as his son addressed him.
“Pa?”
“Yes, son.”
“Why does he sass you so?”
“He don’t mean nothing by it, son. Don’t you worry ’bout it.”
“But he ain’t got to sass you so.”
“His words don’t hurt me. He’s tired, is all. The Lord brings all evil to judgment. Let’s get to these horses. And when we’re done, we’ll clean up Willie’s pony and run him ’round soon as it’s light. You feed him?”
Lincoln watched the boy’s face droop. “I don’t wanna feed him no more, Papa. He reminds me of Willie.”
“That again,” Simmie sighed. “Son, Willie’s gone to glory. God knows it. He’s resting in the arms of the Lord, bless his soul.”
“I don’t care. I don’t wanna touch Tinker.”
“But Willie was a good friend to you, weren’t he?”
“As good a friend as any.”
“You wouldn’t want your friend displeased when he looks down from Heaven and sees Tinker all muddied up and not being proper cared for, would you?”
“No, sir.”
“G’wan then. Clean up his pony and water him good, and I’ll tend to the coachman’s horses.”
Lincoln’s heart froze as the boy turned and reluctantly shuffled his feet to the stall where he lay hidden. Then the boy stopped.
“Why do it please the Lord to take Willie, who was so good and kind, and when the coachman hollers like the devil . . .” And he burst into tears.
The president, blinking back his own tears, watched as the old stable hand set down his bucket and stepped over to his son.
“I ever told you the story about the Fish Man Angel your ma met?”
“’Bout a hundred times.”
“Lemme tell it again,” he said.
“What’s the point?”
“’Cause the retelling of a thing makes it come more and more true,” Simmie said. He was holding a pitchfork and set it down. “C’mere,” he said.
The boy moved to him and Simmie gently placed an arm around him, then grabbed a nearby lantern and moved down near the gate of the stall, where he sat on the floor, the boy next to him.
“Your ma, ’fore she passed, couldn’t have no children—”
“You told me this before.”
“Well, set tight, Mr. I-Know-My-Letters, for I’mma tell it again.”
The boy sighed and settled into his father’s armpit as Simmie continued.
“Your ma, she was what you call a barren woman. Couldn’t have nar child. When we married, we two was bondaged to a white man named Frank Dunbar. This was before the war. Well, Master Frank wasn’t a good master. Weren’t a bad master. Just a drylongso type boss. He was planning on going to the market and told your ma, ‘I’m going to the market in the morning. Get the eggs and butter ready,’ for he wanted to eat first. So she got up early to make his breakfast
, but it was too early to go out to the barn and milk the cow and feed the chickens. And she looked—she thought it was gonna rain—and she went ’round to the side of the house to fetch water. And standing by the well, just near the woods, she saw this man, covered with fish scales, standing by the well. Looked like a fish, but he was a man—”
“Was she scared?”
“A little bit she was. But he spoke to her and said, ‘Don’t be afraid. There’s something buried beneath the stones here.’ There was flat stones around the well. He pointed to a flat stone and said, ‘Take that stone and dig.’
“She dug down and lo and behold there was a chest there. And inside it was all the master’s money. Every bit of it. Gold and jewel pieces. Enough to make a soul rich for the rest of his life. Master Frank had buried his money there so nobody could find it.
“The Fish Man said to her, ‘Take that, it’s yours.’
“She said, ‘No, sir. I couldn’t take that any more than I could snatch a crumb from a bird eating it off the ground.’
“He said, ‘You can buy your freedom with it.’
“She said, ‘But this is marse’s. It ain’t mine’s.’
“He said, ‘You worked for your master. You raised his corn. You pulled his cotton. You picked his tobacco. So it is by rights yours, too.’
“She said, ‘If I take this I’ll be a slave forever to the wrong I done. I serve a living God, and I want my freedom clear.’
“The Fish Man Angel said, ‘Well, you are honest and true. So I’m gonna ask the Lord to bring you something special. I’m gonna ask Him to deliver to you a son, and I’mma ask him to give a promise to your boy that His Will and Deliverance will come to your boy’s life. I’mma give you four magic words . . .’”
And here the old slave paused, and his eyes twinkled and sparkled as he turned to look at his son. “And the words was these: here . . . thenceforward . . . forever-more . . . free.”
Simmie waited for the response. The boy’s face was blank.