Page 49 of Shadow Ticket

---

“Saw you play the Majestic once, Mr. Fields, fun-filled evening for sure, but could you put Boynt back on?”

“Have we been keeping something from you? Answer is yes, moron, of course we have, and was there anything brzzghhllkk-kk-kk—”

“Hello? Hello, Boynt, there’s some noise on the line—”

“Ghzzmm ngngngng zzzngtt—” The line goes dead. No operator to apologize, no background hum, nothing. In his idiocy Hicks keeps trying. Broken connections, runarounds, wrong numbers, busy signals, hung up on, told not to call anymore, telephonically 86’d, till finally after a while the coins don’t even register when he drops them in.

He goes to a Western Union office and wires Milwaukee—60¢, means he’ll have to skip lunch,You Crazy No Dice Wire Fare Home Soonest, leaving him two words under the limit, the two words that come to mind not being allowed, and stranded on the “beach” in front of the Palace Theatre along with jugglers, ventriloquists with dummies, ukulele virtuosos, casualties of acts no longer sure, in these final days of vaudeville, of being hired anywhere, not even along the death trail stretching southwest through farm towns, broken country, and deserts toward L.A. like a panhandler’s arm seeking the tiniest handout of mercy from the source of its sorrows.

Hicks ends up later that night with Connie McSpool and a few of the boys, at Club Afterbeat up in Harlem, where there’s a radio show in progress.

Whoopin and troopin,

Doin’ th’ Heav-y-side Bounce,

Swingin and sportin,

Snortin up, ounce af-

-ter ounce…

c’mon and

let’s…

go…

truc-kin on down-that floor…all

night-till

quarter to five, ’n’ then

th’ cops’re arrivin, ’s when

we’re jivin on out, the back door,

until

th’ very-next evening—just, as, th’

sun, goes, down—

once again…o-

-ver-the-ra-di-yo,

herecomes thatfar-away beat,

Street by street—

it started

down-by-the levee-side,

Hmm!

soon it will be at your,

---