Read Online Juba! by Walter Dean Myers - Free Book Online

stick.”
    â€œI said it, but I don’t know how I’m going to get it done,” I said. “Pete wants it sometime during the next two weeks, and I don’t know where to start. I’ve never thought about getting a forty-minute program together.”
    â€œYou can have breaks like they have in the regular shows,” Stubby said. “Have somebody dance for three minutes, and then have a five-minute break. That’s eight minutes gone already. So you have five dances, which is going to add up to fifteen minutes, and then you have five breaks, which will add up to twenty-five minutes. Fifteen and twenty-five make forty. Nothing to it.”
    â€œJuba, why are other people’s problems so easy to solve?” Jack said. He pulled the blankets around his thin shoulders. “All you needed to do was to call on Stubby and your problems are solved! Of course, you’ll have a show with mostly breaks in it and Pete will want to skin you alive, but Stubby will have an answer for that, too.”
    â€œYou don’t owe Peter Williams anything,” Stubby said. “You’re doing him a favor.”
    â€œAnd he’s putting up twenty dollars cash money to pull this thing off,” I said. “So if I don’t get it right, he’s going to want his money back.”
    â€œDid he actually make a promise to give you the money, or did he just talk about it?” Jack asked.
    When Pete had started talking about money, I had felt the same way Jack Bishop did, that it was going to be all talk. But then Pete had taken out a small leather pouch and put it in the middle of the table. He had asked me if I knew what was in the bag, and although I had heard the clink of coins, I had just shrugged my shoulders.
    Pete emptied the bag onto the table and dumped out twenty silver dollars. He made sure that the pouch was empty and started putting the coins back in. Then he pushed the pouch over to me.
    I’d already figured that Peter Williams was rich, but I didn’t think he was so rich he could just hand out twenty dollars like that. When I looked at him, he was staring at me directly in the eyes. What I figured him to be thinking was that I would be really impressed with the money. I hadn’t fainted, but my knees were beginning to feel weak.
    I took the pouch from my pocket and put it in front of Jack Bishop.
    â€œTwenty dollars—I counted it four times,” I said. “He wants a forty-minute show, with black and white performers, and they’ve got to be classy. Plus I have to make a meal for about fifteen tables. Pete says he’ll sit special guests at the tables and treat them royal, and everybody else will just be in regular seats around the room.”
    â€œIf you let some of your guests eat off the good plates andthe fine linen, then everybody will think they’re being treated like swells,” Jack said. “Are you sure Peter isn’t English? He sounds sneaky enough.”
    â€œYou think I can pull it off?” I asked.
    â€œYou can if you don’t hang all your clothes on one nail,” Jack said. “Look around and see who you can call on to help you. You know who can dance and who can sing. You know who’s got clean shirts and who don’t, too. All you have to do is get them all lined up, see what’s in it for each of them, and let their interests take over.”
    â€œYou can leave the cooking to me,” Stubby volunteered. “If they’re looking for the top drawer, then I’m your man.”
    â€œGive him a shot, Juba,” Jack said. “He’ll make you proud of him.”
    What Jack was saying made sense. I did know most of the entertainers in Five Points and some from as far away as Twenty-Third Street. They were all hungry to show off their talents, and most of them would work for nothing if I asked. When I went over what Stubby had said, about only needing five acts, it gave me a way to think