Mary And The Giant

The couple glanced up as she brought over a chair and seated herself. Nitz broke off what he was saying long enough to greet her. "How are you?"

"Fine," she said, "where's Tweany?"

"He just sang. He'll be back."

She felt a surge of tension. "Is he in the rear?"

"He probably is, but you can't go back there. Eaton'll throw you out on your ear."

At the side of the table appeared Taft Eaton, still fuming. "Goddamn it, Mary, I can't serve you. If the cops find you in here they'll close the Wren."

"Say I came in to use the john," she murmured. Pretending to ignore him, she began sliding out of her coat.

Eaton glowered at Nitz, who sat picking a bit of thread from his sleeve. "Don't you buy her anything. Contributing to the delinquency of minors-you and Carleton. You ought to be in jail." Taking her by the scruff of the neck, he said in her ear, "You ought to stay with your own race, where you belong."

Then he was gone, leaving Mary Anne to massage the back of her neck. "Drop dead," she muttered. It hurt, and she felt humiliated. But then, gradually, the pain left; and the need of Tweany resumed its usual dominance. "I'm going back and see if he's there."

"He'll be out," Nitz assured her. "Sit still ... you and your hurry. Relax."

"I've got things to do. Where was he last night?"

"He was here."

"I don't mean here; I mean afterward. I went over to his pad at two-thirty and he wasn't home. He was out."

"Maybe so." Nitz dragged his chair around and returned to the listening couple. "Look at it this way, lady," he said, addressing the woman, a plump, somewhat pretty blonde. "Would you call Stephen Foster's stuff folk music?"

The blonde considered at excessive length. "No, I guess not. But it was based on folk themes."

"That's my point. Folk music is not what you have, but how you go about it. Nobody can plop himself down and write a folk song; and nobody can get up in white tie and tails in some plush cocktail lounge and sing a folk song."

"Does anybody sing folk music, then?"

"Not now. But they did, once. They sang, they added verses, they put together new material constantly."

She became aware of the nature of their discussion. It had to do with Tweany, and they were attacking him. "Don't you think he's a great folksinger?" she demanded, addressing the blonde. In her world, loyalty was a vital pillar. She could not understand this veiled undercutting of a friend; it seemed her responsibility to defend him. "What's wrong with him?"

"I've never heard him. We're still waiting."

"I'm not talking about Tweany," Nitz said, evidently aware of his moral lapse. "Not particularly, I mean. I'm talking about folk music in general."

"But this Tweany is a folksinger," the blonde said. "So where does he stand?"

Nitz uneasily sipped his drink. "It's hard to say. I'm just the intermission pianist ... a mortal."

"You don't like his stuff," the blonde's companion said with a knowing wink.

"I'm a bop player." Nitz reddened and avoided the girl's accusing glare. "To me, folk music is like Dixie: a dead horse. It stopped growing back in the days of James Merritt Ives. Show me a folk song that's come down since then."

She was quite angry now; the need to defend Tweany, to keep the greatness of him intact, made her bristle and say: "What about 'Ol' Man River'?" Tweany sang "O1' Man River" at least once a night, and it was one of her favorites.

At that, Nitz grinned. "See what I mean? 'Ol' Man River' was written by Jerome Kern."

He broke off, because at that moment there was applause, and Carleton Tweany appeared on the raised platform. Instantly, the girl forgot Nitz, forgot the blonde and everything else. The conversation fell into a vacuum.

"Excuse me," Nitz murmured. He crawled back to his piano, dwarfed, she observed, by the huge figure of Tweany.

"For my first number," Tweany rumbled in his furry singsong, "I will sing a work that expresses the bitter terror of the Negro people in their ages of bondage. You may have heard it before." He paused. " 'Strange Fruit.' "

A flutter of excitement stirred the room as Nitz picked out a few opening chords. And then, his arms folded, his head down, forehead wrinkled in contemplation, Tweany began. He did not raise his voice or shout; he did not bellow or snarl or shake his fist. Thoughtful, deeply moved, he spoke directly to the people around him; it was a highly personal communication and not a concert rendition.

When he had finished telling them the story of life in the South, there was silence. Nobody clapped; the people clustered around waited with fearful expectancy, as Tweany considered his next communication.