The Magic Keys

they have another attitude about all this stuff. It’s not just some kind of light entertainment to them. Like that old guy. Some old professor somebody over there told me one time. I can’t call him by name right now and he’s not in any of these clippings but I’m bound to have it around here stuck in somewhere and maybe a picture, too, and I’ll recognize it as soon as I come across it. But anyway, he’s the one that said dancing came before music as such. He was talking about way back there, if you know what I mean. All the way back in what they call prehistoric times. And he was also the one who also said that the first floor of the theater is called the orchestra because that used to be the word for dancing space. I don’t remember exactly what he said about how that word got to be the word for a big band. Maybe because that’s where they used to sit before somebody came up with the idea of the pit. But anyway, the main thing for me was that dancing came first. He said, Dancing came first, then music. So that’s the boss for you, and that’s why he’s the emperor.

I tell you what, Hortense Hightower said as we finished our fountain Cokes and stood up. Since this thing has come back around to me, and I’m the one that brought you into it in the first place, why don’t you just go on and get your campus stuff in the groove and maybe by, say, Thanksgiving, you will have had enough time to think about how all this can really fit in with what you went on beyond college to graduate school to learn.

Believe me, honey pie, she said, the last thing I want is for you to feel that we are rushing you into this thing. I haven’t forgotten and never will forget what you told me more than once about what they taught you and what they absolutely did not try to decide for you down there at that Mobile County Training School under your Mr. B. Franklin Fisher.

But even as she was saying what she was saying and did not say what she did not say, it was as if you were listening to, Miss Lexine Metcalf herself again in her school bell morning enchanted classroom through the wall-length windows of which you could see the Chickasabogue sky beyond Bay Poplar woods even before it was your turn to stand erect and make your way past the bulletin board, the globe stand, and the map rack to the blackboard realm of schoolboy verbal and numerical derring-do.

Miss Lexine Metcalf, Miss Lexine Metcalf, Miss Lexine Metcalf, I said, Mama, Miss Tee and Miss Lexine Metcalf who was the one Miss Tee took me to when Mama let her be the one to take me to the campus to be registered when the first day of my first school bell September morning arrived that year. And Miss Lexine Metcalf took us to Miss Cox in the primer grade room and said, I will be waiting for you when you reach the third grade.

Miss Lexine Metcalf, who would be the one who would say what she said about me to Mr. B. Franklin Fisher himself, who said of himself Fisher—yes, Fisher, as in fisherman. Fisher of men. Fisher of men of special promise. Men worthy of the women who bore them and nursed them. Who said, Many are called but few are chosen. And my question is, Who will be one in that number??

Then on the day he came back to add my name to that year’s list of prospects selected for matriculation in the Early Bird Preparatory Program when you reached the ninth grade, she was the one who said, Who if not you, my splendid young man? Who if not you, my splendid young man, from all the way down in Meaher’s Hummock on Dodge Shingle Mill Road near the cypress swamp by the bottoms and the L & N Railroad. Who if not also you, indeed.

As Hortense Hightower took me around to see the changes that she and Giles Cunningham had made in the Dolomite since I graduated and left en route to Cincinnati to try out for the summer job with the band before going to graduate school, every time she pointed out and explained another addition or renovation, you could see she was not only pleased with what she and Giles Cunningham were doing but also with where they had decided to do what they were doing.

Which meant she was also pleased with the choice she had made when she decided to leave the band she had gone on the road with when she finished her college courses at Alabama State.

XXIX

Remembering the trip out to the Dolomite as I settled myself at the desk of my carrel in the arts and letters stacks of the library that next afternoon, I suddenly found myself thinking about old Deke Whatley saying what he said as we stood at the curb outside his barbershop after I had popped in to say hello that first Thursday afternoon.

I just wanted to thank you for dropping in on us like this so soon after you got back in town. It tells me a lot. It tells me you still the kind of homeboy I took you for when you just set foot in there as a freshman. So I also just wanted to step out here and tell you how much I appreciate the postcards from some of the different places you got a chance to see for yourself after reading about. That tells me something.

That tells me something about knowing what education is really about, he said, and then he said what he said about education and self-satisfaction, and that was when he went on to say, Man, I