John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“A woman who writes,” Colonel Waddell muses behind his paper, “is like a singing dog. The fascination is not that she does it well, but that she does it at all .”

Dorsey always starts around the ears, tiny little strokes to outline the sideburns. The Judge has a large mole on the left side he has to be careful of.

“The key,” says the Judge, finger jabbing underneath the cloth to make a point, “is to have some sort of qualification as to who is allowed to vote. That’s what the Founders envisaged. Responsible government issues from informed voters.”

“You’re suggesting a literacy test.”

“That is one possibility, yes.”

“An awful lot of them can read now. I see them at my store with the — what’s it called, Dorsey? Your colored paper?”

“The Record , suh.” Dorsey advertises in the Manly brothers’ paper for his other shop, where they cut colored hair.

“Do you read it?”

“No, suh. Don’t have the time.”

“Well, there is a group over in Brooklyn got them a bit more leisure,” Turpin winks to the Judge in the mirror. “Unless it’s to wrap fish in, I see an awful lot of em look like they read it.”

“I would not propose that puzzling out the limited vocabulary displayed in a colored daily constitutes literacy,” says the Judge. Dorsey can do his neck if he’s steady. “If we were to take a section of the state constitution and have the voter demonstrate his competence by explaining its meaning—”

Mr. Turpin laughs. “We’re going to do that with every voter in the city?”

“Selectively, yes.”

“Selectively.” Hoke is bending close to clip out Turpin’s nose hairs.

“We administer the test to those whom we — we su spect of being illiterate, on a ward-by-ward basis.”

“I would su spect that half the poor whites in Dry Pond might fail that test, Judge. Including a goodly number of loyal Democrats.”

“Well, of course, if there is a tra di tion of voting in the family—”

“Record turnout in the last election, Judge—”

“Selling your vote for a glass of whiskey does not qualify as a tradition. What I’m suggesting is that if you can prove your grand father was a registered voter—”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“—you would be passed unchallenged at the polling place.”

“The Louisiana clause,” adds Colonel Waddell. The old gentleman been in office himself, before Dorsey’s day, rumored to be a great one for the oratory. He is always very quiet in the shop, but well-spoken, using words like impecunious and recondite that Dorsey makes sure to look up in his dictionary when he gets home and then slip into his conversations at Lodge meetings.

“Of course, given the present infestation here and in Raleigh, such an amendment to our statutes would stand no chance.”

“I wouldn’t give it up so easily, Judge. When his back is pressed to the wall, the true white man is capable of—”

Dorsey catches the Judge’s look in the mirror, just a tiny nod of warning to Mr. Turpin. Hoke is rapidly snipping air with his scissors, made nervous by the turn of the conversation.

“What?” says Mr. Turpin. “Dorsey? Dorsey doesn’t mix in politics, do you, Dorsey?”

“I try to keep my nose out of em.”

Hoke shakes the cloth out and Mr. Turpin stands. “What I tell you? The good ones know enough to steer clear of it.”

“Almost all absurdity of conduct,” Colonel Waddell observes, “arises from the imitation of those we cannot resemble.”

Turpin steps a little closer. Dorsey can feel him over his shoulder, watching him do the Judge’s cheeks. “You planning to vote this coming election, Dorsey?”

The Judge cocks his head. Colonel Waddell lays the newspaper in his lap, waiting to hear the answer. Hoke retreats to get the broom. Dorsey always voted, ever since he was old enough, but nobody made any fuss about it till lately.

“No, suh,” he lies softly. “Don’t suppose I will.”

“If the rest of your people show that kind of good sense, it’ll stay peaceful in this city.” It sounds a bit like a threat, but he can see Mr. Turpin is smiling in the mirror, gently tapping the thin layer at the top of his head with his fingers. “Say, Dorsey, how come a good-looking young fellow like you isn’t hitched yet?”

Dorsey flicks lather off the blade, rinses it clean in the pan. “Oh, I been studyin it, Mr. Turpin. Got a gal picked out.”

“That’s good to hear.” The pharmacist winks. Dorsey always hates it when they wink, especially if there’s a nasty story coming after. “Before we know it you’ll have a whole tribe of pickaninnies to support.”

Dorsey turns away, strops the blade hard on the leather. “Whatever you say, Mr. Turpin.”

“The tyranny of numbers,” grumbles the Judge. “If we bred like damned jackrabbits we might stand a chance.”

Mr. Turpin leaves two nickels on the counter and turns at the door. “Don’t you worry, Judge,” he calls. “Plans are being formulated. Prominent citizens are involved.” With that he steps out onto the street, setting his hat over his haircut before the breeze can muss it.

Colonel Waddell settles into the next chair as Hoke flaps the cloth out and drapes it around his neck. “If a move to remedy the situation is afoot,” he says, frowning, “I have not yet been informed of it.”

The Judge seems lost in thought, and the lather has been sitting on his face long enough. Dorsey reaches two fingers under but doesn’t quite touch him. “Chin?”

The white man grunts and tilts his head back for the razor.

Miss Loretta envies the colored girl her fingers. Her own were never long enough, never nimble enough to do justice to Chopin, her left hand adequate at tempo but her right fumbling to arpeggiate his harmonies. She had to think too far in advance, worrying about what pitfall lay ahead, and would lose the emotional thread of the music. But this one, Jessie, glides over the keys, rocking back and forth slightly as she plays the nocturne, closing her eyes for the darker passages and talking softly to her teacher, not so much distracted from the music as allowing it to take on the color of her mood.

“I love him so much .”

She does not mean Chopin.

Miss Loretta does not allow herself to smile. She can recall making much the same statement, in much the same desperate tone, to old Aunt Kizzy while the servant combed her hair out at night. “ Chile ,” Kizzy would say, shaking her head, “ you got yo life all in a knot .”

“Being in love is a state to be envied,” Miss Loretta responds, flipping through the sheet music in her lap as Jessie lets the final tone decay. “Let’s go back to the études — try the Number Three.”

The colored girl picks out a single E, hums it, then rocks forward into the Tristesse .

She has worked so diligently, this one, advancing between lessons much more than she does during them, working at the purely technical exercises without complaint, listening to criticism and acting upon it gracefully. But there is something more, beyond what application and hours at the bench can achieve. She has the gift.

“This is a stroll through a beautiful wooded glade,” Professor Einhorn said once when Miss Loretta, in her own student days, was struggling through one of the lovelier preludes. “You, young lady, are pulling up stumps.”

She had been the favorite target of his epigrams, and after each she would press on all the more doggedly with her inadequate digits, clenching her jaw, humiliation roiling within her but never allowing it to color her performance. Not like this one—