William Kennedy - Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

Claudia speeded up her words, volume rising.

“He tellin’ this saint of a priest we can’t see him no more? This little bozo, he be the one cut off Father’s head so he can’t see us no more?”

Then she screamed: “They cut off his head! They hate us. They hate us’cause we black. THEY HATE US!” She jumped straight up with both feet, fists pumping, then jumped again, screaming, “We black and they hate us!” She jumped and jumped, her face streaming with tears. She jumped and no words now, just a long cry of rage and a long wail, and then she stood still, weeping. A nun came and gripped her huge left arm with both hands and led her to her chair. Claudia sat and could not stop weeping.

First Presbyterian pastor Bob Lamar stood and sang and the crowd joined him: “Oh-o freedom, Oh-o freedom,

Oh freedom over me, over me.

And before I be a slave

I’ll be buried in my grave,

And go home to my Lord and be free, and be free. .”

When the song had run its course another voice rose from the back: Tremont’s.

“Hey! Mighty powerful, Claudia,” he said. “What you said about bein’ black, I’m black, and my daddy was blacker than me. I love that song about bein’ a slave. Slaves need them songs. My daddy was born and raised in Albany and he got slave ancestors back to the old timey Dutch who built this church we in. My daddy was a vaudeville singer and everybody knew him as Big Jimmy Van. He sang all over this country, made money, come home and went into politics. Wasn’t no politician in this town he didn’t call by his first name. He had power and he said a whole lot of what he wanted to say by singin’, and I want to sing one of his songs, which he got a big kick out of ’cause hardly anybody liked it. But it was one of the biggest song hits in this country.” And Tremont sang: “. . My gal she took a notion against the colored race.

She said if I would win her I’d have to change my face.

She said if she should wed me that she’d regret it soon,

And now I’m shook, yes good and hard, because I am a coon.

Coon, coon, coon, I wish my color would fade,

Coon, coon, coon, I’d like a different shade.

Coon, coon, coon, mornin’, night and noon,

I wish I was a white man ’stead of a coon, coon, coon.

“Hey, all you coons,” Tremont said.

People were hissing and booing, standing up to get a look at this maniac, who the hell is he? But Tremont saw Claudia smiling, and then Quinn was pulling him by the arm, moving him through the crowd into the vestibule and up the stairs to the street.

“You gotta get out of here before they lynch you,” Quinn said.

“Lynch me, lynch my daddy,” Tremont said.

Quinn saw Tremont was drunk, again, but drunk now doing an encore for Big Jimmy, suicide by music, a new way to go.

At the DeWitt Clinton Matt went in with Vivian and George to make sure nobody got lost again. In the lobby George looked around at the marble walls and said, “This is the DeWitt. Jimmy Walker lived here. His wife was never with him. He’d say to her, let’s go out and see a show, let’s go to a nightclub, but she wouldn’t go out of the house. That’s what happened to him.”

“What happened to him?” Vivian asked.

“He went out with somebody else,” George said.

The ballroom was full of people eating dinner, but Quinn wasn’t here and neither was Tremont. A six-piece band was playing the “Beale Street Blues.” Vivian negotiated with somebody in charge of tickets.

“Thank you for a lovely evening, Father,” Vivian said.

“You knew Martin in the old days,” Matt said.

“For a few years. We went to the same places, dances, excursions on the boats. He was well known, famous, really, after the McCall kidnapping. He brought the kidnapped boy home to his father. I read his column all the time. Everybody did.”

“You know he’d probably like this concert, if he’s up for it. If he is will you keep an eye on him?”

“That would be lovely,” Vivian said. “He’ll be my second date.”

Matt checked the front desk for room rates and availability, park him here for tonight, why not? All Matt needed was money. He’d borrow it from Quinn, or somebody. He liked all this — instant shelter, dinner, distraction, and Cody’s great piano. He booked a double room, maybe he’d stay here himself. He told Martin the plan, which jazzed him.

“You live a hurly-burly life for a monk,” Martin said.

Matt checked him in, sent his bags upstairs, gave his last twenty to the ticket-taker, and, penniless, walked his father into the ballroom for dinner, a concert, and a radical transformation of his evening.

Martin had been at the Ann Lee Home six months, a casualty of age, time, bad knees, retirement from the newspaper, inability to write anything else, and the death of his wife, friends, and ambition. He had never saved money, and retired on Social Security and periodic royalties from revivals of the plays of his father, Edward Daugherty, mostly The Flaming Corsage , his scandalous masterpiece. Martin’s own books were all out of print. He gave up on living alone and cooking for himself and moved into the Ann Lee Home for the aged run by the Albany County Democratic machine, which took him in as a guest, one of their own, after a lifetime of association with the party’s high and low, from machine boss Patsy McCall down to the exercise therapist who worked on his knees. As a guest he did not have to sign over his Social Security to the County as inmates did; he kept it in a savings account that Matt monitored. He viewed the Ann Lee as an inexpensive hostel. He could come and go if he could walk, and he still could, with difficulty. He went out for occasional dinners with Matt, who visited often and was on tap for emergencies, except today when he had an emergency of his own. When Martin moved in he knew a dozen or more guests and inmates, a few of them gone mindless, some still ready to talk politics and history, but he needed conversation less and less.

“This is probably Cody’s last concert,” Matt said as he walked Martin to George and Vivian’s table. “He’s dying.”

“He doesn’t have a corner on that market,” said Martin.

“The concert’s a fund-raiser for his medical bills.”

“So this is ‘So long, Cody,’ a wake while he’s still alive.”

“I guess that’s it.”

“A work of mercy. Celebrate what’s left of the man.”

The band struck up a fast version of “Twelfth Street Rag.”

“Are you really up for this action?” Matt asked.

“I didn’t think I’d be in a scene like this again. I think it quickens my pulse.”

“I’m glad you’re out of that place.”

“It was handy. Easy, and quiet. They make very tasty egg salad.”

“You’ll live to be a hundred. But you wouldn’t have lasted there, I always thought it was wrong. We’ll get you a new place. I’ve got some ideas, maybe we’ll get a place together.”

“In the friary?”

“No, an apartment. Downtown maybe.”

“Downtown? You’re moving to Downtown? Isn’t that pretty radical for a priest who’s supposed to be campused and silent?”

“Who said I was a priest?”

Martin stopped walking and stared at him. “You did. Since you were fourteen.”

“That was yesterday,” Matt said.

“Bless us and save us, said Mrs. O’Davis. I’m witnessing a miracle.”

“More like a shipwreck,” Matt said.

“ Dominus vobiscum , boy, whoever he is. Dominus vobiscum .”