Waltzing with Bears - 3. Part 3. Blackie and Mike

Eddie stops and drinks some water. He’s been looking at me intently through this whole story, but now he’s looking down for the first time since he started. I don’t know what to say, where to start. So I say the obvious. “Your Uncle Walter was gay.”

“Yep,” he says. “Uncle Walter was gay. Most of the guys at Pete’s weren’t. They just liked to step lively and blow off some steam, maybe keep in practice until the great day when they had enough money to court a girl.”

“Most of them,” I say.

“Almost all of them,” he says. “Joseph seems to have been an exception. And I’m pretty sure Mike Daley was another.”

“Who was Mike Daley?”

Eddie hesitates. “I think I’m going to need some pie to get me through this next part.”

I call the waitress over and she recommends the pecan pie. We each get a slice. I’m impatient to find out what happened. “So who was Mike Daley?”

Eddie finishes a bite of pie and says, “Mike was a logger, like most of them. He was on Joseph’s work crew. Did I say that Joseph was a logger? A really good, smart one, too. Joseph didn’t get any more in his pay packet than anyone else, but in practice he was the foreman. But he was a Negro, so he had to be really careful and not appear to be giving orders. When the crew were laying out who was to do what and where, Joseph would get them all together and ask each one for his advice and gradually bring them around to his way of thinking until they all thought it was their idea in the first place. And nobody had a problem with Joseph except Mike Daley.

“Mike was a short, muscular red-head. Big chip on his shoulder. Did not like Joseph at all. Kept muttering about ‘niggers taking over.’ Sorry to use that word, but that’s how Mike was.

“And at Pete’s, Mike asked Uncle Walter to dance a few times, after he saw Joseph and Walter dancing together. And Uncle Walter would always decline, politely. And that chip on Mike’s shoulder got bigger and bigger.

“Now at a certain point, when Walter would go out back to visit Blackie, Joseph would sometimes come with him. And either before or after the dance with Blackie, Joseph and Walter would kiss for a while and maybe do more. And I guess Mike saw them at it, at some point.

“So one night, Uncle Walter’s out back in Blackie’s cage. Joseph isn’t there. Walter’s pretty drunk and he hasn’t closed the cage door behind him. Mike comes out back and gets in the cage with them. He says, ‘May I cut in?' And it’s not a request, it’s a demand.

“Walter says, 'No, thank you, I’m dancing with Blackie.’

“Mike grabs Walter’s arm and says, ‘Come on. Just one dance.’

“Walter says, ‘No, I don’t want to dance with you,' and pushes Mike away.

“Mike comes back and they get into a scuffle. Blackie is getting agitated. Mike is grabbing Walter and saying, 'Dance with me. Dance with me!'

“Walter says, ‘No! Let me go! Get away from me!’

“Mike gets angry and says, ‘You’d rather dance with that black brute than with a white man? He’s not even human, he’s just an animal -- you goddamn nigger-lover!'

“So Walter realizes what this is about, and he has a moment of sheer terror, and then he’s furious and he attacks Mike, which surprises Mike, because Walter is so calm and mild normally. But less than a minute later Mike has wrestled Walter to the ground and he’s ripping his clothes. And then Blackie jumps in and grabs Mike’s leg in his teeth and drags him off Walter, and then Blackie is really laying into Mike, tooth and claw. And Mike is screaming and he pulls out a knife and stabs Blackie a couple of times. Blackie roars and knocks Mike in the head with his paw and then runs out the cage door and disappears into the woods.

“Pete and a few men from the bar have heard the commotion and run out back. They find Mike pretty badly mauled but still fighting mad. Now that he has an audience, Mike says to Walter, 'I’m telling everyone. Everyone’s gonna know what you get up to with that black bastard.' And everyone knows he’s not talking about Blackie.

“Pete says, ‘Where’s my bear?’

“Walter says, ‘Mike knifed him. He ran off.’

“‘He was gonna kill me!' Mike says.

“Pete says, ‘Get him out of here.' And Mike’s friend Gabe -- yes, believe it or not, Mike had at least one friend -- helps Mike limp away.

“Pete wants to go look for Blackie, but it’s the middle of the night and Blackie could be a long way away. He decides to wait until morning. He brings Walter in and has him sleep upstairs.

“Unfortunately, early in the morning, Blackie tries to break into a farmhouse, and the farmer shoots him dead. When the farmer finds out that this bear was Pete’s Blackie, he’s real sorry. But sorry doesn’t bring Blackie back to life. The house had a black wrought-iron fence at the front. Maybe that reminded Blackie of his cage; maybe that’s why he was trying to get in. Pete comes over to the farm in the afternoon to get the body. Uncle Walter goes with him. Pete is grim about it. Walter can’t stop crying.

“Somehow Walter gets home by evening. My mother is furious with him. ‘Where have you been all this time, out all night like a common drunk!’ she yells. Uncle Walter doesn’t even answer her, just goes straight to his room and stays there for the next few days. Doesn’t even come down for meals. I bring him leftovers and sandwiches.

“After Mike gets patched up, he starts making good on his threat to tell everyone about Walter and Joseph. Now this is not really news to a lot of people, but as long as no one talked about it, they all looked the other way, because almost everyone likes Walter, and Joseph too. But once someone starts talking about it, it becomes a matter of public morals, and people like my mother who want a respectable community won’t stand for it.

“Joseph disappears. He knows his position is precarious enough at the best of times, and he doesn’t want to end up at the wrong end of a rope.

“And me? I don’t handle all this very well. If anyone repeats Mike’s gossip, I call him a liar. I get into quite a few fights with other kids. My mother does not approve. I’m just one more relative bringing the family down.

“After about a week, Uncle Walter starts going back to Pete’s. A lot. But never to dance, only to drink.

“Mike gets around on crutches and complains a lot. Pete bans him from the saloon. And Pete takes down Blackie’s picture from the wall.

“And Walter takes down my picture of him dancing with a bear. He stays in his room, playing records like ‘The Kiss Waltz' and ‘Parlez-moi d’amour.' There’s a fear in his eyes I hadn’t seen before, every time he ventures out the door of his room. He’s afraid of my mother, he’s afraid of my father, he’s afraid of everybody.

“I decide that what will keep him safe is if he follows some rules. So I make up a list of things like going to church every Sunday and not falling asleep during the sermon, saying hello to everyone who says hello to him instead of dodging them, getting out of bed by six every morning, getting dressed and not sitting in his bathrobe, coming down to the dinner table and thanking my mother for the food. He looks at the list and starts laughing. He can’t stop. I tell him to stop laughing. Then I realize he’s crying. I tell him he doesn’t have to follow all those rules. He shakes his head and says, ‘No, you’re right. I’ll follow your rules.’

“I bring him the newspaper every evening and he reads to me, occasionally with his old quirky take on events. I pretty much pretend that nothing ever happened.”

Eddie pauses. There’s too much for me to respond to. I say, “Was that the end of it, then?”

Eddie sighs. “Not quite.”