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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 75: Brown 308
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 24
It was another Friday night, and the band had finished its set, leaving them to enjoy pie with coffee. Derek found that he agreed with Maurice that coffee was best with ample sugar and heavy cream, but he could not settle on which pie he preferred, and had a great deal of difficulty avoiding overindulgence. With a sigh, he decided that he was going to have to put in several hours of aerobatics on the weekend, and had another slice.
There was a commotion a few tables away which caught his attention. One of the waiters was arguing with a white man--Derek would have called him elderly, but he realized that despite his years he had that lack of perspective the young usually have, and this man might have been anywhere from just under fifty to maybe a well-preserved seventy-five. The waiter was speaking.
“I’m sorry sir; this area is reserved for the musicians.”
“Ah don’ want a scene, son. I want to reprimand a miscreant.”
“I can’t let you hassle any of the musicians; they’re guests of the house.”
The man stopped, and pointed directly at Derek. “You,” he said, rather accusingly. “Brown. Ah say that you have sinned against God and decency, with your miscegenous marriage to that African and your commingled combo. You are promoting an immorality in this city, and I am here, as a Christian, to call you out.”
The room became silent; all eyes were on him. Slowly, calmly, deliberately he stood, then casually brushed some pie crumbs off his shirt before returning the man’s stare.
“Firstly, sir,” he said, “my dear wife is not African; she’s Persian. That puts her in the northern part of the middle east, and people argue about whether that’s part of Europe or part of Asia, but no one thinks it’s Africa. Before you make accusations, you should get your facts straight.”
He straightened up and glanced around the room, then continued.
“Secondly, I went to Sunday School for quite a few years, and I have served the King of Kings to the best of my ability in many times and places, and the one thing that has always seemed to be at His heart is that He wants us to love each other and come together in community. What you call commingling I call fellowship, a loving commitment to one another based on the fact that we are children of the same God, one family, one race, one people--one human people. My companions and I are not perfect, but we are a microcosm of that, of people from every race and color coming together in the service of our God. That has to happen in the entire world; more importantly, it has to happen right here, in New Orleans, or the Devil will take this city.”
He bit his lip; probably that was enough, but he felt like he should say more. He thought of what.
“The reason that The Living Colors Dixieland Gospel Band works,” he said, “is, I think, mostly that I’m not the leader and I’m not the star. We have five decent musicians--I daresay each of them is better on his instrument than I am--but what matters is that not one of them is trying to be the star. My job is to make each of them sound good; their job is to make each other, and me, sound good. As long as we are pulling together by working to make each other sound as good as possible, we make good music. If we were to try to be stars, to stand out individually, it would all fall apart. That’s what the people of this city have to do, to work to raise each other up, instead of trying to climb over each other to reach the top. If we can do that, we can be a great city, the envy of the nation.”
Someone said that knowing what to say was important, but knowing when to stop saying it was more important. Derek concluded, “Good evening to you, sir,” and sat down.
There was silence for about a quarter of a minute, and then someone--he thought perhaps Alfonso--started clapping slowly, joined by a rising ovation through the building, several persons getting to their feet. As to the man who had failed to introduce himself, he tried to say something over the noise, but then just huffed and stormed out of the building.
“That was well said,” Pierre told him.
“Yeah, good stuff,” Maurice added.
Lei said, “You speak well.”
Derek just looked around, a bit embarrassed, put his arm around Vashti, and said, “I think I need another cup of coffee,” and the rest of the group laughed.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #509: Character Challenges. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
