Fate: Five Stories- III. “Is You Educated?”

Zeke dropped me off at the club, staying long enough to get me past the gauntlet of men at the bar, alone and in clusters, turning to glare openly at me as we entered. Some – sipping drinks, laughing, gesticulating, faces lit up from within – were arrested mid-gesture, like deer caught in the headlights, astonished by the presence of a brazen white boy in the heart of Harlem.

“Five-oh,” someone sniggered.

“What you doin’ in here, white devil?” another growled, stepping up to front me and Zeke.

Gold-capped teeth, grills in the parlance of today, flashed behind sardonic lips. A raised keloid of scar tissue, a worm beneath the surface, ran zigzag along the left side of his face. A thick moustache perched on his upper lip like a sassy black caterpillar. He was my height, average, but with the wide neck of a weight lifter and muscles bulging the sleeves of his sharkskin jacket. He tugged at his belt and slipped one hand around to the small of his back, resting it there, presumably on the hilt of a gun. He leaned toward me, menacing, sniffing me like a dog.

“What you want here, honky mofo?”

I recoiled from his breath, which reeked of gin and garlic, served up in a cloud of cologne. All the while, he kept his hand at the small of his back.

“He’s here for the band,” said Zeke mildly, wedging between.

“I ain’t addressing you, brotha,” he said, turning his wrath on Zeke. “What’re you? His protector?”

“Parker – Parker Sands, invited me. Is he around?” I interjected.

“Who he?” growled my nemesis.

“He’s in the band. Conga player. Tall, six and half feet, with a goatee?” I added, touching my chin.

“Parker Sands, huh?”

“We were at university together …”

He glared. And glared. Glared some more. The Keloid worm wriggled as he worked his jaw muscles, deliberating my fate. I could feel the rest of the bar patrons staring, enjoying my discomfort. I was trembling, from the gut up.

Suddenly, the tension rushed from his face; his hand shot out from behind his back – Don’t shoot me! No, please don’t, I prayed! – to clap me on the shoulder, while he roared with laughter.

“I was just dickin’ you, son!” he said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “You go on back there, now,” he said, pointing to the velvet curtained entrance to the music club. “You just ask for me, Tiny, the manager, the next time, eh? Nobody here’s gonna give trouble,” he chortled, as he propelled me gently toward the club entrance.

Before going in, I took my leave of Zeke, thanking him for saving my cookies on the train and getting me safely to my destination. I tried to give him the $5 I’d offered earlier but he refused.

“You going to be all right now?” Zeke asked. “You don’t want me to wait for you outside till later, do you?”

“Would you like to come in for the music? I’m sure Parker would arrange it with Tiny.”

He shook his head, allowing a smile to briefly open the light in his face. He nodded mysteriously. “I got my music tonight, thanks.”

“You take care, Zeke, and … God bless you,” I added, not wanting to let him go without somehow showing him more appreciation.

***

I parted the curtains and entered a narrow room with a raised stage at one end where the band was setting up. There were a dozen or so lounge tables arranged further back; a small lacquered dance floor shimmered with reflected lights. Klieg lamps lit up the stage; spots beamed down on the tables, isolating them in cones of light. The walls were painted black. At the far end, a zinc bar rippled in the dimness like a lucent mirage. It reminded me of something from the set of “Casablanca”. Was I Mr. Rick? If so, where was my Ilsa, my Ingrid Bergman? Just then Parker stepped onto the stage, saw me, and waved me over.

***

Parker’s band played late into the night to a packed house of boisterous, appreciative patrons. As I watched him pound the skins of his congas with powerful rhythmic strokes, his face ennobled, transported, beaming, I almost forgot that mine was the only white face in a sea of color.

And once Parker came down from the stage to my table after the first set and bear-hugged me for coming, others, friends of his, joined us, and now they were my friends. I made one faux-pas later – forgivable because of my naïveté – when I mistook the attentions of one of the women at my table for an invitation to romance and was politely slapped down by her secret admirer.

“Is you educated?” he asked pointedly, repeating it, glaring.

I started to tell him that I’d been to university, with Parker in fact, and yes, I was educated … but finally I got the message. She was his girl, or so he wanted her to be, and if I had any respect or sense, I would let it go. I did.

The train ride downtown was uneventful as I rode back with Parker and our party, to breakfast at an all night diner in the Village.

So began my real education, my education in life – the first of many lessons I was to encounter in the city – gleaned under duress, awarded because of my brash, obtuse character. Would there always be a Guardian Angel, a Good Samaritan like Zeke, ready to step up when my curiosity and lack of street smarts put me in harm’s way? Or would I learn to rely on my own powers of discrimination and survival skills? It remained to be seen.

***
(Read all parts here)

by EH Davis