Chapter I: An All-Coon Cast

Mr. Shirley Rouke was one of the first-born sons of the silent drama.

The first moving picture ever thrown upon a screen in the city of New Orleans was projected by the capable hand of this red-headed Irishman.

In the famous resort known as West End, on Lake Pontchartrain, half of the inhabitants of the Crescent City assembled to watch the revelation of a two-hundred foot film which showed a man walking down the street, a dog trotting across the street and a horse and buggy going up the street!

Thrilled by this vision, the people roared their applause until the porpoises sporting far out in the lake dived for deep water.

In a short time the thrill and novelty of a plotless jumble of pictures wore off, and Mr. Rouke was quick to inform the Gitagraft Company that the people wanted stories--the pictures must have a punch and tell a tale. Then came an era of real plays and real actors and dramatized novels and scenarios written by authors whose names were famous across the continent.

“Do the newest thing first!” was Rouke’s motto. His active brain devised novelties like a liver secretes bile, and after each sensational innovation the Gitagraft Company counted its receipts, raised Rouke’s salary, and told him to go the extreme end of the limit.

Just as the theatrical managers delight to announce an all-star aggregation of actors, so Shirley Rouke had been the first motion picture director to feature an All-Native picture showing the native haunts and the natural characteristics of one race or tribe of people and using the natives and actors in the films.

At the foot of the Rocky Mountains he produced an All-Indian picture. In the far north, where the midnight sun casts a shadow on the snow, he got an All-Eskimo picture. At the entrance of the Shoguns’ temple in Tokio he began an all-Japanese picture which moved in exquisite beauty through the blossom-laden cherry groves, the wistaria-festooned tea houses, across the sacred bridge at Nikko, and ended at last with the happy lovers climbing the Jacob’s Ladder on the island of Enoshima.

He had just returned from China with an all-Chinese picture which began in the Botanical Gardens of Hong-kong, concluded its first reel at the Temple of Confucius in Canton--“One Minute Please!”--sailed down the Canton River on a Chinese flower boat, and concluded its fifth reel with a public execution on the northern frontier of the Mongolian Empire under the shadow of the Great Wall.

He was now taking a two days’ rest in the office on Fifth Avenue and looking around for more worlds to conquer when, lo!--

“Niggers!” he bawled, springing to his feet and slapping the back of Peter Pellet, his camera artist. “An All-Coon Cast! Pack up your night-shirt, Peter! Us for the slimy cypress sloughs of the Sunny South!”

Peter Pellet’s participation in Rouke’s wild innovations had taught him that life, like his name, was a pill. He swallowed it loyally, but he reserved the inalienable right to petition and protest whenever Rouke grabbed him by the nose, pried open his mouth, and offered him another bitter dose.

“Aw ferget it!” he began. “A nigger can’t act. The nigger minstrels are all white men.”

“Sure!” Rouke agreed. “But they imitate niggers. That’s what makes them so funny. Nigger minstrels make a hit all over this country. Oh, sugar! the latest line of laugh looseners! Be ready, Pete! We leave on the night train.”

“May I ask what part of the South you expect to invade?” Peter inquired in a sour tone.

“We’ll honor the Pelican State with our presence,” Rouke grinned. “I know a man who knows niggers just like he had been a red corpuscle of their blood and had gone all through ’em. His name is Gaitskill, and he’s the loudest tick at Tickfall, Louisiana.”

Four days later Mr. Shirley Rouke sat beside the mahogany table in the office of Colonel Tom Gaitskill, president of the Tickfall bank, and told him of his plans.

“Do you know anything about negroes, Mr. Rouke?” Gaitskill inquired.

“Not a dang thing!” Rouke grinned. “Their faces and hands are black and I presume they are also black under their clothes, but I don’t know. All of them seem to answer promptly to the name of George. The Pullman porters are accommodating everywhere except in Mississippi, which has an anti-tipping law. I spent a month in New Orleans about twenty years ago, but didn’t get chummy with any smokes.”

“Your education has been sadly neglected,” Gaitskill laughed. “But you are now in a fair way to overcome its defects. Sir, you have my sincerest sympathy.”

“If you mean you are sorry for me, I don’t see any cause for your heart-break,” Rouke declared. “This is a simple business proposition. I’ll look around a little, get my locations, write my scenario, employ my actors, pay ’em a good salary, take my pictures and hike!”

“It sounds easy,” Gaitskill remarked gravely.

Then he laughed. Finally he asked: “Did you ever see a photograph of a negro?”

“Sure! I’ve seen Booker T.’s mug!”

“He don’t count,” Gaitskill said. “It’s a long, long way to Tuskegee, and these niggers around here could not pronounce that word if they practiced for a week.”

The door opened and a squat-legged, pot-bellied negro entered, removing his hat. His head was bald except for a tuft of moss-like hair growing above each ear, making him look like a fat-faced mule wearing a blind bridle. His thick lips pouted like the lips of a fretted child.

“What’s aching now, Vinegar?” Gaitskill asked.

“Marse Tom, ’bout dat left-handed screw driver dat you sont me out to borrer dis mawnin’; de black-smif tole me dat he loant it to Sheriff Flournoy, an’ de sheriff tole me dat Doc Moseley done borrered it, an’ Doc Moseley tole me dat he had Hitch Diamond wuckin’ wid it because Hitch already had such a powerful lef’ hook, an’ I hunted up Hitch an’ Hitch tole me I wus a dam’ ole fool. Hitch specify dat dar ain’t no sech thing as a left-handed screw driver!”

Gaitskill began to cough violently and ran to the window for fresh air, where he could also conceal his face from Vinegar Atts by turning his back.

To Mr. Rouke that cough sounded like a smothered laugh, but he had no interest in a screw driver and concentrated his attention on the negro.

Gaitskill had almost recovered from his fake cough when he chanced to turn his head and see Mr. Rouke. That brilliant New Yorker was gazing at Vinegar Atts with a scrutiny so intense, so penetrating that it seemed to go beneath the negro’s skin and pierce to the very marrow of his bones; while Vinegar gazed back into the Irishman’s blue orbs with the vacuous solemnity of a horse. That started Gaitskill in another fit of coughing.

Finally Gaitskill said:

“I’m sorry I put you to so much trouble, Vinegar. Here’s a half dollar to pay you for your work.”

“Wus you prankin’ wid me, Marse Tom?” Vinegar asked, as he pocketed the silver.

“Oh, no,” Gaitskill grinned. “How could I know there was no such thing as a left-handed screw driver?”

“Dat’s so,” Vinegar agreed. “Nobody cain’t find out nothin’ ’thout axin’.”

“I’m glad you happened in just now, Vinegar,” Gaitskill said, changing the subject. “This gentleman sitting here is Mr. Shirley Rouke of New York City.”

“Glad to meet yo’ ’quaintance,” Vinegar mumbled.

Rouke rose and held out his hand.

Gaitskill watched Vinegar with a smile: a negro positively hates to shake hands with any white man who is not his personal friend.

Vinegar looked down at Rouke’s hand, then reached out and caught hold of it about as a man would handle the tail of a vicious rat.

“Glad to meet you,” Rouke murmured, to whom this comedy was hidden.

“Yes, suh, dat’s right, suh!” Vinegar responded.

“Vinegar Atts is a preacher, Mr. Rouke,” Gaitskill remarked. “He is the leader of the negro race in Tickfall. I suggest that you talk over your plans with him and engage him to help you.”

“Thanks, Colonel,” Rouke said. “And now, not to detain you longer from your business, I’ll take a walk with Atts and we’ll have a talk.”

“My automobile is at your service,” Gaitskill said, as he shook hands. “I’ll be glad to help you in any way. Make yourself at home in this office.”

When the door closed behind this oddly assorted pair, Gaitskill broke out in a loud laugh.