THE TAP SHOES
Two layers of box-cardboard packed with carefully placed loosely screwed-up newspaper was the ideal: preferably the New York Times. It didn’t keep the frost from forming but was an ideal double insulation against the bitter cold of the New York, winter nights. Whirlwind Prevel woke up in his favourite doorway of a condemned tenement building in New York City just off of 42nd Street. He knew the cops wouldn’t move him on as long as he was gone by 6am and his built-in clock never let him down. Besides the cops rarely moved him on these days on account of his age. He slept on top of his dancin’ shoes so as no other bum would steal ‘em and sell ‘em, and his tap mat he used as a pillow. The pair of tap-shoes were well worn down, and he was savin’ up his dimes and cents for a new pair that he had seen in the pawnshop window. He kept the money in a leather money-belt round his waist, next to his skin. He had only two dollars more to go before he had enough. He had six dollars saved and the new taps were eight dollars.
He made his way to the 42nd Street sub-way, laid out his tap mat and started to dance. He had only the one pair of shoes: his taps. The rhythms in his head were always the same: improvised blues. He started slow as his limbs needed to warm up some. The time step was great for this purpose of warmin’ up. Then he started to improvise the time step in double time. By this time his stomach was aching with hunger. Some guy put a few cents into his carefully laid out straw hat. He always wore a straw hat, an English boater, the kind gentleman used as they punted their ladies up the Thames, least so he had been told. If the hat was placed too near the folks were apprehensive, maybe they thought that he might dance on their hands; and too far away and some kids might steal it! So distance was crucial. The first ten cents always went on hot, sweet, black coffee. Then he’d go back to dancin’ again and the next ten cents bought him a doughnut. That was breakfast taken care of. He had a system of saving: what was left over, once his food and coffee was paid for, went to save for new ‘taps’ and if there was any left over from that he used to buy whiskey. He wasn’t a drunk, no sir! He didn’t have to lean on drink, but he enjoyed an occasional belt. Kept the cold out. He didn’t just dance for money nither! No sir! He danced for the shear joy of dancin’. His momma always said that he was born with too much go in him; even inside of her she said he was “a-kickin’ and a-pokin’ me fit to bust!” He could hear her now, roaring with laughter as she put his favourite meal of red beans and rice on the table before him, all steamin’ and such. He smiled as he danced, remembering how she took him to shows down town in Louisville near the great Missisippi where the great hoofers of the day strutted their stuff and he, Whirlwind Prevel, so wanted to dance like that, SO wanted to be like them. AND HE WAS! He was learnin’ to do the thing he enjoyed the most. DANCIN’! When barely in his teens he joined a team of hoofers and was billed as Young Hoofin’ Harry. The older dancers took him under their wings – literally – they taught him how to wing: a complicated combination of dance steps and he became the fastest winger of them all. An agent saw him and he was soon in New York and the Cotton Club dancin’ solo with Duke Ellington. Man, that was quite somethin’, dancin’ with the Duke; in fact he WAS quite somethin’, somethin’ extra special. He was married for a short while to a singer called Maizie May. Man was she sexy with a voice that kinda purred out like pure honey, she sang out the blues like nobody else; then ran off with a horn player named Lick Gorden. That was the last he saw of her. You didn’t pay no mind to divorce in those day and he became a single man again living the life of a black dancer, snappily dressed and always with a girl on his arm and in his bed: always out front on stage but always out back when it came to hotels: always the tradesman’s entrance, even when your name was in lights. That’s the way it was in them days. But everybody gets old, the bookings dried and nobody wanted him no more. So he took to working the subways. He had friends in the subways, and in the winter it was warm. He could still wing, though not as fast as he used to but still fast enough to dazzle the folks, HIS public, HIS friends, his regulars! Then he had a coughin’ fit. There was some blood this time around!
He stared into the pawnshop window at the patent leather tap shoes. He was getting’ through a pair every six months! Once was a time when he was getting’ through a pair every three months. There were always ’taps’ for sale off 42nd Street. Every hoofer that trod the boards of the little theatres dotting New York City, when they fell on hard times, hocked their ‘taps’, just as musicians hocked their instruments. But ‘taps’ became rarer and rarer. Tap Dancin’ went out of style. But not for Whirlwind Prevel, he dropped the name Hoofin’ Harry many years ago and his stage name became what he was born with: plain Whirlwind Prevel. At the time, when his momma named him, little did she know that the name ‘Whirlwind’ was very apt, very apt indeed and she lived just long enough to see his name up in lights: “WHIRLWIND PREVEL IS NOW APPEARING WITH THE DUKE ELLINGTON ORCHESTRA…”
His momma was reflected in the pawnshop window next to the shoes. He turned around quickly…but there was no one there!
Wearing his new ‘taps’ he started winging in the subway giving the best performance of his life; he started slow, the blues rhythm playing in his head, and then he got faster and faster, the new ‘taps’ just a blur. The crowd that gathered started to clap in time to his shoes, the faster they clapped the faster he danced until the crowd were gathered about him and he saw his momma in the crowd and she was clapping too, he tapped nearer and nearer to her, dancing for no one else but his momma. She put out her hand and led him, still dancing, still tapping, up the subway stairs leaving the little audience of people - quiet now - staring down, down at the body of the little black tap dancer that they had grown to love!
