It was a very fine old-time down-home dinner table get-together like some of the very special ones for very special out-of-town company that you remember from childhood. And as Royal Highness and Stewmeat Anderson and I headed back to the drawing room to settle down and puff on the extra-special Cuban cigars that Royal Highness would choose for us from his antique buccaneer humidor while Cherry Lee took Eunice on a tour of the apartment, the topic was the band again. And when Cherry Lee and Eunice rejoined us, I had been brought up-to-date on the band’s current tour, and Royal Highness went on to say again what he had said early on about how pleased he was over the fact that I had decided to spend the time I had spent with the band between graduating from college and going on to graduate school.
That’s something you’ll never regret you decided to do, young soldier, he said. Then as he turned to Eunice he said what he said about having very special high hopes for me not because he thought I had all of the earmarks of a young man on his way to fame and fortune in the usual everyday sense of becoming a widely publicized celebrity with a big income and lots of expensive possessions, but because my earmarks were those of a young man who just might someday be able to fulfill the ambition I finally settled on. Whatever it was, he said. And that was when he also said what he said about how it was perfectly normal for some people to make up their minds about their line of work way back in early childhood and about how some can remember exactly when, where, and why they did and others can’t remember when they had not already done so. And then he said what he said about how it was also perfectly normal for some others, some very special ones, to spend a lot of time still trying to get themselves together and on to some definite course even after their formal schooling was well into the postgraduate level because they were the ones who saw themselves as having so many possibilities to pick and choose among.
Anyway, he said, as he stroked Eunice’s hand, what I’m talking about is what I saw when this one turned up here holding down old Shag Phillips’s job like that, mainly just because he needed a temporary gig for the summer after graduation from college. When the Bossman brought him up here, the earmarks I saw belonged to a young fellow with as wide a range of eligibility and potential as I’ve ever come across. And I’ve covered some territory, Miss Lady.
Which was the very point he came back to at the end of the visit as we stood up to shake hands and head for the door. As he gave her his ceremonial four, one for each cheek, kisses, he said, I hope I didn’t say anything to give you any notion that I think you didn’t already know what you were letting yourself in for when you hooked up with my young soldier here. I just want to let you know what kind of impression he made on me and the Bossman and all them old thugs in the band, too. So I’ll just say this. All of us think that maybe what he’s still trying to figure out is how to do something that none of us even know we need him to try to be the one to try to do for us.
Then as we headed for the elevator he said, Now that you’ve been up here and seen us for yourself, don’t be no stranger.
X
Taft Edison was the one who made sure that I was alert to the so-called revolutionary political recruitment operating procedures that you were likely to encounter in New York City in those days. But it was through Roland Beasley that I became more sensitive to New York City variations on old confidence games that he pointed out as having been a universal element of city life ever since the first trading and business settlements came into being and the first bargains and markdown sales were offered and special escort and guide services part-time or full-time became available for hire or for free.
Not that Roland Beasley thought that I needed any of the usual fundamental orientation to big-city life as such. After all, when he met me in Paris I was on my own after having been in most of the biggest cities in the United States. And as for my being a down-home boy, the fact that I was also a college boy who had worked with the band that I had worked with in order to go on to graduate school was not likely to be lost on him either, not to mention the fact that not a few of the most notorious big-city slickers in just about every region of the nation were once down-home boys.
I think Taft Edison may have assumed that the time I had spent in the band with Joe States looking after me had pretty much taken care of the big-city initiation part of my postgraduate orientation. But I also think that he may have felt that I probably did not know very much about political recruitment because the band never stayed in any one town long enough for any revolutionary political recruiters to make any effective follow-up on whatever may have been set up by any initial contact. And I also think that Taft Edison may have felt that I was a more attractive possibility to political recruiters because I was a graduate student than I had been when I was a musician who was not a headliner with a lot of worshipful fans. As a graduate student I was a potential revolutionary intellectual technician who
