Chapter III: The Moving Picture Writes

When Rouke entered the Shoofly church next morning, he found the pulpit chair occupied by the Reverend Vinegar Atts, while forty of his parishioners sat in mute and reverent attitude in the pews.

Rouke stood for a moment in the dusty, smelly, dilapidated building, gazed at the rude benches scrawled with names and dates and letters, and at the windows whose broken panes had been mended by different colored glass, and his artistic soul got a cold chill. The place looked like a morgue and the occupants reminded him of stiffs.

“Bring your congregation out in front, Atts!” he called. “I want to see ’em in the sunlight!”

Standing in the churchyard, Rouke got his first look at some of our old acquaintances: Skeeter Butts, small, wiry, dressy, his face saddle-colored, his hair close-cropped with the part in the middle made by a razor, his shirt-collar so high that he resembled a sorrel mule looking over a whitewashed fence; Figger Bush, with his kinky wool, his ratlike eyes, and his shoe-brush mustache; Hitch Diamond, massive, solid, built like a rock quarry; and a dozen more men and a score of women filed out behind them and stood about the steps of the church.

Skeeter Butts suddenly left his place, passed around to the other end of the group, and stood close beside a certain girl.

Rouke, watching him, found in that moment the bright particular gem for the Jewel of the Jungle.

Lalla Cordona was well worth looking at.

She stood among the others as distinct as a polished diamond lying in a slag-heap, slim and straight as a javelin, graceful as a stalk of waving corn, the features of her coal-black face as clear-cut as a cameo, her flexible, expressive lips curling smilingly over absolutely flawless teeth--she was as exquisite as a statue carved in ebony by the hands of Beauty and Grace.

But over all and through all there poured the flame, the personal magnetism of the girl, that unanalyzable something which makes the perfect moving picture type--the fire, the soul, which glows in the eyes, quivers in the cheek, distends the nostrils, curls the lip, or when the lip is still, reposes there, making the lip palpitant with its presence.

As for Skeeter Butts, love had made him a fool. No beggar ever groveled before a princess at the distribution of alms, no dog ever fawned before his mistress, as Skeeter acted in the presence of this ebon divinity.

“Skeeter’s done kotch it at las’,” Hitch Diamond grinned, as he watched the infatuated barkeeper. “He acts as proud as a monkey wid a tin tail, an’ as shy as a houn’ pup whut’s tumbled in a bucket of tar!”

“She’s sot up shiny and purty jes’ like a autermobile, ain’t she?” Figger Bush remarked in admiring tones.

“Huh,” Hitch Diamond grinned, “eve’y woman is sot up jes’ like a autermobile. A autermobile costs money to git it, an’ it costs money to keep it, an’ when it takes a notion to stop nothin’ cain’t make it go, an’ when somepin gits de matter wid it, not even Gawd knows whut de trouble am. Ain’t dat jes’ like a woman?”

This edifying dissertation was terminated by the stentorian voice of Vinegar Atts:

“Eve’ybody listen to me: dis here white gen’leman is named Mr. Rouke. He specify dat he gits up shows an’ takes koodaks fer a livin’. He wants us niggers to he’p him. Eve’ybody gits a free picture. Eve’ybody is ’lowed to speak a piece on de platform. Eve’ybody gits a few loose change fer deir time an’ wuck. I now resigns in Mr. Rouke’s favor!”

Vinegar sat down on the church steps and fanned himself with his hat.

“I want to teach you folks to play a drama entitled _The Jewel of the Jungle_,” Rouke announced in crisp tones.

“Whut is a draymer?” Figger Bush wanted to know.

“It’s a tragedy,” Rouke informed him. “Not a funny play, but a show full of love and fighting, and brave men and women.”

“Don’t us be allowed to bust no jokes in dis here draymer?” Vinegar Atts wanted to know.

“No!” Rouke told him. “You won’t have to say a word. You don’t talk. You act!”

“Huh!” Skeeter Butts proclaimed. “You cain’t git up no lock-jaw play wid niggers. Ef a nigger cain’t whistle and sing and pat his foots, he’d druther be dead!”

“You don’t understand,” Rouke said sharply. “This is a motion picture play. Didn’t any of you folks ever see a movie show?”

“Naw, suh!” came a chorus of voices.

“All right!” Rouke answered. “Follow me and I’ll take you down to the theater and show you one!”

The negroes fell in line, and Rouke led them through the mazes of Dirty-Six, up the main streets of Tickfall and into the little theater.

Peter Pellet was perched aloft, having made all arrangements with the owner of the house for this exhibition.

The negroes seated themselves close to the front, a circle of light flashed upon the screen, a slight whirring sound came from the projection room and a title fluttered before them:

THE DANCE OF DEATH

Then for twenty minutes the negroes were transported to a tropic island in the South Pacific Ocean.

They beheld a bamboo village, the little naked children playing in front of the huts, the dogs lying in the sun or slinking among the cooking-pots, the men and women wearing the rude, barbaric garments of the tribe, their legs and shoulders bare.

They witnessed the preparation for a great feast, the camp filling up with wild, cruel savages, both men and women.

Then the village princess danced before them, a frenzied whirl of bare arms and bare limbs, while a band of musicians beat upon rude instruments whose melody they could not hear.

They beheld a white man appear upon this scene, peep at the dancing princess, through the interstices of the jungle, fall in love with her infatuating grace and beauty, and later seek her out in her bamboo hut.

Betrayed by her white lover, the Black Swan sought revenge.

The white man was captured, bound to a stake, and in the midst of a horrible revelry of torture a posse of white men arrived, rescued the victim of savage hate, slaughtered most of the inhabitants of the village, burned the bamboo huts and departed.

But the Black Swan had escaped the slaughter, and the negroes watched her with breathless interest as she trailed the rescue party until they came to a narrow defile in the mountains. She climbed the mountain side and stood, at last, silhouetted against the sky, as graceful as the bird whose name she bore, looking down upon the posse in the valley below. She called to her faithless lover, hurled a javelin through his body, then turned and fled, leaping like a deer from rock to rock.

With tense bodies and aching eyes, the negroes watched the flight of the girl and the pursuit of the posse until the girl was cornered, stopping at last on a high, sharp crag, overlooking the sea.

Then as the rifle bullets of the pursuing mob splashed against the rock at her feet she poised like a bird prepared for flight, leaped far out from the precipice, curved like an arrow in its course, and plunged head foremost into the rolling flood of the ocean beneath.

The picture vanished and the negroes found themselves looking with popping eyeballs at a bare, white screen!

“Dar now!” Hitch Diamond bellowed in a mighty voice. “Whut do Gawd A’mighty think about dat?”

“Lawdymussy!” Figger Bush squawked. “Dat little gal dived so fur she’ll stick head down in de mud in de bottom of dat puddle like a cypress stump!”

“Dat white man shore got his’n,” Vinegar remarked. “’Tain’t no way fer a white man to do--hangin’ aroun’ nigger cabins like dat!”

The electric light flashed up, and Mr. Rouke, stepped to the front.

“Now, folks,” he began, “you understand what a moving picture play is. There is no talking. The people act. I have a fine act for all of you to take part in, and I want you to meet me at the Shoofly church this afternoon at one o’clock. That’s all now!”

The negroes filed out in silence and scattered to different parts of the town.

Rouke and Pellet went to the hotel for lunch, and at the time appointed walked out to the church.

There was not a negro on the place. They waited for three hours and not one appeared, not even Vinegar Atts.

They began a search for Atts, and found him whitewashing a fence for Colonel Tom Gaitskill.

“What’s the matter, Atts? Why didn’t you niggers show up?”

Vinegar wiped the splashes of whitewash off of his black face and answered:

“Dey said dey didn’t want to come, boss.”

“Who said?”

“All of ’em, excusin’ dat little gal named Lalla Cordona, whut says she visitin’ here from N’Awleens. She wus game fer it, but nobody else wouldn’t mess wid it no more!”

“Why not?” Rouke snapped.

“Dey say dey wusn’t gwine play no play whar de white folks peeped at ’em through de bushes----”

“Aw, that’s not in the play--” Rouke began.

“Yes, suh ’tis! Dat’s wut de movin’ picture wrote down on de wall at dat little theater----”

“Yes, I know, but you don’t understand--where are all those people?”

“Dey’s all gone out to Lake Basteneau fishin’, boss. I’se gwine out as soon as I git dis fence whitewashed. A new coon done come to town and tole me he was de beau of dat Lalla Cordona. He’s done fotch her a red ruben necklace an’ a ruben ring, an’ I guess dat’s so. He hired me to drive him out dar.”

“I’ll go out there and bring them back,” Rouke said.

“’Twon’t do no good, boss. Dey won’t ack. All dem mens and womens say dey ain’t gwine do it. Dey got conscience scruples.”

“What’s the trouble?”

Vinegar scratched his head and answered, choosing his words with care:

“Well, suh, dey is all agreed dat dey ain’t gwine hab deir pictures took sashayin’ aroun’ in de woods widout no pants on!”

Rouke sat down on the end of a log and fanned himself with his hat. Then he said:

But why record what Shirley Rouke said?

Nothing but the _Diabolos Gazette_ printed on asbestos paper on O-hell street in Purgatory Bottom would dare to publish the language of anger and disgust and exasperation to which Rouke gave vocal utterance.

Vinegar Atts, appalled to the core of his ecclesiastical soul by this thunderous fulmination of anathema, picked up his whitewash bucket and slunk away.

Turning a distant corner, he stopped and peeped behind him.

“Lawdymussy!” he sighed. “Dat yuther man is done j’ined in now! Dem white mens is shore tellin’ Gawd all about us niggers!”

Ten minutes later, Rouke, having relieved his mind, looked up and grinned at Pellet.

“Peter,” he said in a quiet voice, “would you mind leading me to the private office of Colonel Tom Gaitskill in the Tickfall bank? Since I’ve been associating with the negro inhabitants of this village, I don’t believe I have sense enough to find that office.”