Blues for Mister Charlie Read Online Free

down.)
    LYLE : Well!
Ain’t
that something! But they’ll never convict me. Never in this world.
(Looks into crib)
Ain’t that right, old pisser?
    (
BLACKTOWN :
The church, as before.)
    LORENZO : And when they bring him to trial, I’m going to be there every day—right across the street in that courthouse—where they been dealing death out to us for all these years.
    MOTHER HENRY : I used to hate them, too, son. But I don’t hate them no more. They too pitiful.
    MERIDIAN : No witnesses.
    JUANITA : Meridian. Ah, Meridian.
    MOTHER HENRY : You remember that song he used to like so much?
    MERIDIAN : I sing because I’m happy.
    JUANITA : I sing because I’m free.
    PETE : For his eye is on the sparrow—
    LORENZO : And I know he watches—me.
    (Music, very faint)
    JUANITA : There was another song he liked—a song about a prison and the light from a train that shone on the prisoners every night at midnight. I can hear him now: Lord, you wake up in the morning. You hear the ding-dong ring—
    MOTHER HENRY : He had a beautiful voice.
    LORENZO : Well, he was pretty tough up there in New York—till he got busted.
    MERIDIAN : And came running home.
    MOTHER HENRY : Don’t blame yourself, honey. Don’t blame yourself!
    JUANITA : You go a-marching to the table, you see the same old thing—
    JIMMY : All I’m going to tell you: knife, a fork, and a pan—
    (Music stronger)
    PETE : And if you say a thing about it—
    LORENZO : You are in trouble with the man.
    (Lights dim in the church. We discover Richard, standing in his room, singing. This number is meant to make vivid the Richard who was much loved on the Apollo Theatre stage in Harlem, the Richard who was a rising New York star.)
    MERIDIAN : No witnesses!
    (Near the end of the song, Mother Henry enters, carrying a tray with milk, sandwiches, and cake.)
    RICHARD : You treating me like royalty, old lady—I ain’t royalty.
    I’m just a raggedy-assed, out-of-work, busted musician. But I sure can sing, can’t I?
    MOTHER HENRY : You better learn some respect, you know that neither me nor your father wants that kind of language in this house. Sit down and eat, you got to get your strength back.
    RICHARD : What for? What am I supposed to do with it?
    MOTHER HENRY : You stop that kind of talk.
    RICHARD : Stop that kind of talk, we don’t want that kind of talk! Nobody cares what people feel or what they think or what they do—but stop that kind of talk!
    MOTHER HENRY : Richard!
    RICHARD : All right. All right.
(Throws himself on the bed, begins eating in a kind of fury.)
What I can’t get over is—what in the world am I doing
here?
Way down here in the ass-hole of the world, the deep, black, funky South.
    MOTHER HENRY : You were born here. You got folks here. And you ain’t got no manners and you
won’t
learn no sense and so you naturally got yourself in trouble and had to come to your folks. You lucky it wasn’t no worse, the way you go on. You want some more milk?
    RICHARD : No, old lady. Sit down.
    MOTHER HENRY : I ain’t got time to be fooling with you.
(But she sits down.)
What you got on your mind?
    RICHARD : I don’t know. How do you stand it?
    MOTHER HENRY : Stand what? You?
    RICHARD : Living down here with all these nowhere people.
    MOTHER HENRY : From what I’m told and from what I see, the people you’ve been among don’t seem to be any better.
    RICHARD : You mean old Aunt Edna? She’s all right, she just ain’t very bright, is all.
    MOTHER HENRY : I am not talking about Edna. I’m talking about all them other folks you got messed up with. Look like you’d have had better sense. You hear me?
    RICHARD : I hear you.
    MOTHER HENRY : That all you got to say?
    RICHARD : It’s easy for you to talk, Grandmama, you don’t know nothing about New York City, or what can happen to you up there!
    MOTHER HENRY : I know what can happen to you anywhere in this world. And I know right from wrong. We tried to raise you so you’d know right from wrong, too.
    RICHARD :