Chapter Five. The Count of Central Avenue

Johnny picked up a Racing Form and Ed the latest issue of Titter, which they read while having their shoes shined at the Greyhound station.





They agreed they could not bear to waste another beautiful spring day holed up at home. They considered catching a game at the ballpark but finally decided to go to a bar.




They had met Chuck's kind in bars in Duquesne, in Philly, in Manhattan. In Santa Fe and Tucson and even in Veracruz. Stolid, phlegmatic, nondescript, and just friendly enough.






"Boy, I can still remember when I saw Frankenstein at the Stratford theater," Ed said. "Scared the pants off me!"





"Like Mantan Moreland as the Wolf Man! And Rochester as Frankenshine!”
“Yeah! And Hattie McDaniel as the Bride of Frankenshine!”





“Somebody quieter," said Johnny. "With that, what do you call it, dignity.”
“Paul Robeson!” Ed boomed.




"How good an actress do you have to be with your head wrapped in bandages anyway? I’m just thinking of that shape, brother!”





“It’s screwy what those people get offended by," Johnny said. "Remember at that party in New York, there was that colored writer, that Ellison joker, who kept trying to tell us that Amos ‘n’ Andy was offensive to Negroes?”




Central Avenue on a warm spring night was a swirl of shiny cars and nattily dressed pedestrians.




Ed hoped the place they were going didn’t have valet parking. It was bad enough having to maneuver the boxy, sputtering Nash among all those curvaceous new Lincolns and Cadillacs without having to pull it up to some young black man with a dapper uniform and an amused glint in his eye.





“When I was a kid once they showed Hearts in Dixie at the Baptist Church,” Johnny continued. “I swear to God, the whole damn congregation pissed its pants when Step started in clowning.”




"Yeah," Johnny said wistfully. "They had faces then."




Lincoln Perry was not having a good day.




He'd been awakened by the sound of a collections man trying to hot-wire his Cadillac.




That evening, as he drove down Central, his mind drifted back to the days...



...when his entourage of purring cars, white-spatted cats and high-yellow kittens had stopped traffic on that very street.




At last he arrived at Jack’s and his table in the corner and the rum-and-Coke that appeared like magic the moment he walked in the place. Some people still knew who he was.



The woman giggled again. “Damn, Lincoln! And I always thought you were one of the good ones!”



Just then the young man heard applause and looked up to see the jazz trio coming down from the bandstand.



“Damn,” he said, standing up and grabbing an upright bass that leaned against the wall. “You made me miss Bird with your bullshit.”




"Is he a white gentleman, sir?" asked the saxophonist.





As Ed left the Basket House he heard a wave of laughter rising from the crowd behind him and wondered if good old Step was up to some of his hijinks.