The Walls of Jericho by Rudolph Fisher

Author:Rudolph Fisher [Fisher, Rudolph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2021-01-18T17:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVI

WHILE he couldn’t compare it with the Lafayette Theatre of course, still Joshua Jones considered it a pretty good show. At least it would have been if the dumb-bells hadn’t jumped up and down so often.

It began with music, a chorus singing far away behind the audience outside the church, it seemed. The singing came nearer and entered at the rear, and Shine obeyed the impulse to turn and look, but before he could determine what the trick in it was, Linda pinched his arm sharply and brought him about, puzzled and resentful, to see her shaking her bowed head with ill-concealed vigour. Thereupon he noticed that everyone else stood like Linda, motionless, with lowered head, as if it wasn’t proper to look and he wondered what manner of performance this was, which one might attend, but on which one might not gaze.

Into his surreptitious sidewise vision first came two kids carrying enormous lighted candles. The kids wore black bordered white robes and seemed to have an awfully hard time waiting for the rest of the procession to catch up. Then came the leading man, distinguished by his sedate bearing and singular position, also in a flowing white robe. Shine saw the lean face with its sharp profile and pallid skin and concluded that this guy didn’t much enjoy his job.

There passed, following the leading man, a countless succession of increasingly taller couples, all in robes, all singing lustily without ever once consulting the books they carried before them: not much of a chorus, since the costumes made it almost impossible to distinguish the chorines from the chorats. Good singing though, funny, slow, no pep, but something about it.

Eventually they all found their places up front. There followed fifteen minutes of many and mysterious diversions: The two kids playing a game with the candles—lighting a lot more candles arched over the stage, seeing who could light the most. That ended in a draw. The leading man singing a solo with the whole chorus coming to his rescue every time he paused for breath or seemed to falter. The leading man was all right, but he sure couldn’t sing. More singing—this was better—with the audience joining tardily in. Much jumping up and down on the part of everybody. And now the taking up of admission—Shine exhibited a quarter to Linda questioningly. She nodded and presently he dropped the coin into the proffered box, murmuring, ‘Well, y’ can’t go wrong for a quarter.’

This marked the end of the first act. The leading man rose in his place at one side of the stage and began to talk. His deep-set black eyes seemed to fasten themselves on Shine, who soon found himself watching and listening intently. If ever as a youngster he had heard this tale at the Orphanage Sunday School, it had been in so different a guise that now it appeared brand new.

He told it to Jinx and Bubber later, and told it with great accuracy:

‘It was all about a bird named Joshua, a great battler some years back.

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