Tom Smith - Agent 6

– Have you decided?

– I don’t know. I just don’t know. Standing on the sidewalk outside the United Nations, giving a speech? I’m not proud, Anna, but it’s not like an invitation to perform at Madison Square Garden. It’s not what I had in mind for us. I don’t know how I feel about it all.

– Jesse, I can’t take tonight off, not at this late notice, I’ve got to work.

– I don’t even know if I’m going, so there’s no point you waiting around.

She was uneasy.

– I don’t want you to think that I’m against it, should you choose to go.

– I know that.

– I’d never ask you not to do something when you believed in it, when you thought it was the right thing to do.

– Anna, what’s wrong?

She looked like she was about to cry. It was only for a moment, a ripple of emotion across her face, and then she recovered her composure. Anna never cried.

– I’m late, that’s all.

– Then don’t waste any more time worrying about me.

Anna kissed him on the check, but instead of pulling away, she remained close by his face, whispering:

– I love you.

Those three words were too much for him to bear right now. Jesse looked down at the floorboards, his voice faltering.

– I’m sorry, Anna. For all this trouble, for all this…

She smiled.

– Jesse Austin, don’t you ever apologize to me, not for what they’ve done, not for something that was never your fault.

She kissed him again.

– Just tell me you love me.

– Sometimes ‘I love you’ doesn’t sound like it’s enough.

– It’s all I’ve ever wanted.

She let go of him, straightened her clothes, opened the door and hurried down the stairs, without looking back and without shutting the door behind her.

Jesse waited by the window. Anna appeared on the street, snaking her way through the card games on her way to the restaurant. Almost out of sight she stopped, turning back and waving at him. He waved back and by the time he’d lowered his hand she was gone.

It was time to decide. He checked his watch. There was only an hour until he was meant to address a group of unknown demonstrators. He didn’t even know what they would be demonstrating about. In all likelihood they would not recognize him and he’d struggle to be heard. The concert started at nine. According to the Russian girl it only lasted seventy minutes. Jesse tapped the face of his handsome watch bought in better times. As he pondered on whether to accept the invitation, the memory of another watch crept into his thoughts, a watch he’d never worn. It had been given to him at the very start of his career while he’d been on his first national tour. The manager of the concert hall had been so pleased with the unexpected success of the performances, three sold-out events in the town of Monroe, Louisiana, that he’d presented Jesse with a handsome box, containing a nicely made watch with a leather strap with MADE IN MONROE embossed on the back. Jesse didn’t remember too much about the watch itself but he remembered the manager very well. The man had knocked on his dressing-room door after the final performance, snuck in with the stealth of a mistress. Anna had been in the room and witnessed the manager nervously offering Jesse the watch as a token of his gratitude before hurrying out again. Jesse had laughed out loud at the odd manners of this pleasant man until he’d noticed that Anna wasn’t laughing. She’d explained that man wanted show his gratitude, he just wasn’t able to show it in public. He couldn’t come onto the stage at the end of the show and give Jesse the watch. He couldn’t invite them to dinner sie he didn’t want to be seen with Jesse and Anna in a restaurant. He could employ Jesse to sing, he could be seen applauding, but as soon as Jesse stepped off that stage he couldn’t be seen near him. It was a fine watch, a handsome watch, par ticularly for a young man who’d yet to make much money, but Jesse hadn’t kept it, leaving it behind in the dressing room with a note: Dinner would’ve been plenty.

He’d never been booked there to play again.

Anyone could love a person while they were singing and dancing on a stage. Jesse had learnt this lesson when he was seven years old. He and his family had been living in Braxton, Mississippi, before they’d made the decision to move north. Autumn 1914, a night so hot that after walking no more than a hundred paces Jesse’s shirt was as wet as if a cloud had followed his every step. His mother and father had made him promise that he would stay inside tonight, they both had to work and they were leaving him alone. But just last week, they’d run out of wood and his father had scolded him for not pulling his weight around the house and Jesse didn’t want to be told off again, deciding it would be better to find some more wood. So he’d been collecting timber without too much trouble since everything on the forest floor was a dry as thatch, bark coarse in his hands. Twigs crunched underfoot, the snap of dry wood, noises that echoed through the trees. Though he’d never admitted as much to his family, he’d always been afraid of the woods – his imagination ran free, his mind played tricks on him. He’d call himself silly. Sometimes he’d even call himself silly out loud.

– Jesse, don’t be scared. There’s bugs and mosquitoes in these woods, that’s all there is.

But when he stopped talking the sound of voices continued. He shook his head as though there were water in his ears. The voices continued, not one, but two or three.

– You’ve done it wrong!

– Like this!

– Stand there.

– Help me over here!

– That’s it.

– Get the camera ready!

He moved in one direction, deeper into the woods and the voices became softer. He changed direction, heading out of the woods, towards town. The voices became louder. He should’ve run home. He should’ve dropped his bundle of wood and run but he carried on, following the sounds.

Coming to the edge of the forest, not far from town, Jesse was surprised to see a large crowd, surprised since his parents had been so vocal in ordering him to remain inside that night when it seems so many other people were doing just the opposite. The crowd had their backs turned to him, in a semicircle, maybe one hundred in total; less like a crowd, he realized, and more like an audience. Those at the back and on the edges were holding burning branches, flickering lanterns, stage lights spitting red sparks into the night sky. They needed the lanterns since there wasn’t much moonlight, only a glimmer every now and then when the heavy clouds lumbered out of the moon’s way. Jess thought that this was a well-dressed group of people, considering they were in forest. There were women in crisp dresses. There were girls wearing matching outfits. The men wore shirts, tucked into their pants. It was like they were dressed for church, or the theatre. Some people were fanning themselves with straw hats, ladies were shooing away mosquitoes and flies with dainty swipes of their dainty fingers, but Jesse could see the sweat stains on their backs; they weren’t so different from him after all.

They hadn’t noticed little Jesse, standing silently behind a tree – his arms full of wood, his hair knotted with leaves, his clothes as scruffy as if they’d been knitted from the foliage on the forest floor. The audience were captivated by what was happening in front of them but Jesse couldn’t figure out what could be so entertaining this far into the woods. He was too short to see what was happening and he didn’t dare move from behind the tree for the audience was all white and it wasn’t wise to interfere.

As though a spell had been cast, every single man and woman and child in the clearing looked up into the trees at exactly the same time. Jesse looked up too, hoping to see a firework, a burst of brilliant stars. Instead, he saw what they had gathered to watch – it was a dance, two legs dancing in the sky; a jerky dance, not like one he’d ever seen before, a dance where the two black, shoeless feet didn’t touch the ground, a dance without rhythm and without music, a silent dance that lasted no more than a minute or two.