A Country Rag Gloria!
DANCING IN THE DARK by Gary Carden
When I remember Jackie, I always see him dancing at the Ritz. He is
wearing a pair of powder-blue slacks, a pink shirt and a dark blue,
sleeveless sweater. His hair glitters with pomade as he taps across the
narrow strip of flooring before the movie screen. In the summer of my
sophomore year in Sylva High, he always danced on Saturday nights just before
the Owl show - the Ritz did the zombie and spook films then. In the
fifteen-minute intermission before the werewolves and vampires appeared,
Jackie would do what he called "dance medleys." He would move effortlessly
from Charleston to tango to mountain "buck and wing," the taps on his shoes
making sharp, satisfying clickety-clacks that carried clear out to the lobby.
The audience loved it, and they would throw pocket change on the stage.
Sometimes, he was still picking up quarters when the lights went out and the
movie began.Two years older than me, Jackie moved through the halls at school with little shuffles and twirls, like he was still dancing at the Ritz. I guess I was awed by him, and I yearned to move through life like Jackie did. I worked at the Ritz - popped the popcorn, swept the theater, and put the big letters on the marquee. Jackie came almost every night, and when business was slow, he would stand in the lobby and talk to me. We both loved movies, and since the Ritz only showed two each week, plus the western and the Owl show on Saturday, we both saw them over and over. I remembered them, but Jackie memorized them. Sometimes, in the lobby, after Doris the ticket-taker had gone, Jackie would dance, mug and sing. Sometimes, we played the game, the wonderful game. "Harley, who is this?" Jackie would turn up the collar of his blue blazer, hang a Winston in the corner of his mouth, squinch his eyes in a parody of sadness and wrinkle his brow. "Jimmy Dean!" He would smile, pleased by my quick response. Then, maybe he would lurch about the lobby, grasping the walls for support, his breath hissing through clenched teeth, grasping his stomach, and giving me a stricken grimace. "I'm a hundred dollar a day newspaperman...." Sinking to his knees, he said, "You can have me for nothing." Then, he fell on his face. "Kirk Douglas in The Big Carnival." Then, he would do Cagney and Glenn Ford, or dance like Astaire and Gene Kelley. He was the best of all the movies I had ever seen. He was magic. "Are you going to be an actor, Jackie? Are you going to be in movies?" I guess I asked that a dozen times that last summer before Jackie vanished. "Not likely, Harley. Gotta take care of Mom." I knew about old lady Campbell, the lush that sat in Velt's late at night, drinking black coffee, her cheeks rouged like a Christmas Santa. Sometimes, Jackie would do a parody of her, his eyes unfocused, his mouth agape, just the way she looked sometimes in Velt's. "Jackie, have I been to the bathroom, or am I going?" he would say in a nasal whine. But, he would add with a smile, "She's a drunk, but I love her."
His father had left town with a carnival when Jackie was six. He had
been back a few times, a big man who talked too loud and too much; but mostly
Jackie got postcards. From Winter Park, Florida; Palm Springs; Tia Juana.
"Maybe next time he comes back, he will take me with him. I could do stuff
in the carnival."
Usually, when I cut the lights and the big red and white neon tubes in
the marquee bled to black, Jackie would be standing out front, shuffling
back and forth in front of the ticket booth snapping his fingers, his taps
doing little stacatto riffs as he stared up and down the street. Sometimes,
a car would pass, horn blaring - usually college students from Western
cruising our lone street with its single, pulsing caution light. Sometimes,
Jackie waved. Sometimes, as I sat in the back booth at Velt's, pumping nickels into the jukebox and talking to Gentry, the short-order cook, I would see Jackie pass the window. His mother was usually sitting at a table drinking coffee and staring at the empty street. She never knew that her son had passed, and he never came in. Then, the college guys beat him up.
The morning after it happened, everyone was talking about it. Griff
Middleton, the sheriff, had found him in a ditch two miles out of town.
Charlie Kay, my best friend at school, said he overheard "Baldy" Coggins, the
principal, talking to the sheriff. When I got to the hospital that afternoon, and found Jackie's room, I thought I was in the wrong place. This couldn't be Jackie, livid with bruises and his eyes blood-shot and swollen. The blond hair was mostly gone, his head laced with stitches. I sat for a moment, wondering if he knew I was there. Then he said, "If you think I'm going to squeal, copper, you're wrong." It was Cagney, and it was Jackie! He laughed and tried to smile at me.
"So, what happened, Jackie?" He turned his face away. |
"You did, though!" I waited. "Right?" He shook his head. "Some farmer milking his cows said he saw the car and the college jackets, but nothing positive." "So, what happened?" After a while, he said, "Maybe I'll tell you someday."
But Gentry told me. That night when I sat in Velt's, Gentry said,
"Three football players. They are probably going to get away with it, too." I'd heard the word, of course. I guess I had some vague idea of what it meant. There was the local pharmacist, a fat man that prowled the Ritz on Saturdays. Some of the boys told stories about him, but even so, I didn't know. What did he do? Exactly what did queers do?
Gentry told me in graphic detail. And he told me that Jackie had been
standing under the dark marquee at the Ritz for over a year, waiting to be
"picked up." I thought of the nights when I had locked the doors and found Jackie beneath the marquee, shifting and turning, dancing in the dark. "I'm waiting for someone," he had said.
"I don't believe it." Jackie didn't come back to school. I was relieved because I didn't know how I would react. I was repelled by what Gentry had told me, and I knew it would show in my face. But, a night came when he returned to the Ritz, mounting the steps slowly like an old man. There were no powder-blue slacks, no pink shirt; that night it was T-shirt and jeans. He stopped by the popcorn machine and smiled. "Ah, sure, and it's a fine night, but me bones are achin' 'n I shouldn't be here a'tall, a'tall." Barry Fitzgerald. We looked at each other. "So, now you know." I nodded. "I see it makes a difference, and I am sorry for that. I'm going to miss you, Harley." He turned away.
"Why do you do it?" I blurted. Jackie turned back then. I think he came that last time to the Ritz to tell me that. I never saw him again for forty years. His mother continued to sit in Velt's and although I wanted to ask her about Jackie, I didn't. Sometimes, I wondered if she knew he was gone. She died two years ago.
Last month, I heard that Jackie was back. Gentry told me, of course.
"Tested H.I.V. positive," he said. "Came home to die."
We talked a bit more, but Jackie was visibly tiring. As I rose to go,
I said, "I would like to ask you something." When I got to the car, I turned to wave goodbye, but I couldn't make him out. I heard music and saw what might have been a wavering figure on the dark porch.
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