THE GREAT WHITE WAY

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All Rights Reserved

Vaudeville was dead, but Harry “The Hoofer” Hookstratten still had five minutes left to live.

Harry had to close up shop before he did anything— that was in the script. He did the grill and he did the counter. He re-filled the napkins against the spring, and he dumped and wet down all of the ashtrays. Then Harry closed the blinds. He locked the front door with the dead-bolt, and then he started to sweep up.

His time was up, but Harry had no idea he was about to die—how could Harry have known? It’s not like the waiter taps you on the shoulder and looks at his watch.

True, Harry was half-again old enough to die—half-again older than Ginger, his current and last wife—and just about everyone Harry knew from the old days had kicked off ten, twenty years ago. It was curtains for them like yesterday, the way it was for him today.

“I’ll tell you the difference between them and me,” Harry would tell you. “They’re dead now, and I’m not.”

If the counter crowd was light, Harry would go on to tell you he was still kicking because he was basically a hoofer, which Harry pronounced like who-fer. If Harry felt like dancing—and Harry always felt like dancing—Harry could just walk up the street to Roseland and let her rip. If you hung around while he closed up shop, Harry would tell you Ginger and all of his wives were great hoofers, but that none of them could really keep up with him on the dance floor. Whenever they danced in those dance marathons, it would be Harry dragging around his then-wife for hours, like she was a ball and he had a chain. It happened with every one of his wives, like clockwork.

“Those other crum-bums?” Harry would tell you. “They stopped dancing and they got dead. Me? I just go over to Roseland with Ginger.”

Sweeping up was the only thing Harry did not like about the shop, and if someone had told Harry that this would be the last time he had to sweep—his last performance—then Harry probably would have said, Good riddance! But if no one were left in the shop, like tonight, sweeping could turn into an excuse for hoofing. Anything could be an excuse for hoofing, and Harry could hoof with anything or anybody, living or dead, a top hat like Astaire in “Top Hat,” or—without getting pushy about it—even the stick handle of a broom.

Naturally, Harry had no way of knowing this was going to be his last time as a living person dancing with a broom. Not that it would have mattered to Harry—Harry danced every dance like his life depended on it—and this time Harry heard Some Enchanted Evening dancing through his own head. He danced it the way he always did, like this was the last dance of his life.

When the music stopped, Harry bowed to his partner and pulled her back to her hook in the back room against the back wall. He took off his dirty apron and he threw it into the pile marked Dirty Aprons. Then Harry did what he always did. He put on the Brooklyn Dodgers cap he got for nothing at Cap Day, and he let himself out by the back door into the big wide world out there.

It would be no exaggeration to say Harry hoofed it home, or to say Harry, pardon the expression, had a spring in his step. Sometimes Harry tap-danced all the way home, not in any out-and-out screwball way, just a few quick taps at stoplights while everyone else was looking up, then maybe a few more tap-taps before Harry had to hoof it across Broadway.

Hoofing it all the way home tonight, Harry was tapping the sidewalk on Broadway and thinking about Ginger— Harry and his Ginger, not Astaire and his Ginger—and how his Ginger used to have some of the color of the real Ginger’s hair, how she used to have some real wattage in that what-next smile of hers.

Harry could not figure out what happened to Ginger’s wattage. The legs went first on his other wives, but Ginger had fine long legs that still came to a point. No, Harry knew wattage had been the first thing to go with Ginger. Ginger still had beautiful legs.

“My dancing days are over, Harry,” Ginger said to Harry last week.

What did Ginger expect Harry to do? Harry wondered. Was he supposed to get a new partner—again—at his age?

Harry knew that he could always find another wife like Ginger up at Roseland—women were always looking for a man who could hoof it—but Harry loved Ginger when they danced together, and Harry even loved Ginger here and there when they were not dancing, when dancing was something they would do later or maybe not even.

Harry was tapping faster onto Broadway now, thinking about Ginger with his feet.

By the time he turned toe-first onto his block, Harry’s feet were happy again, his heels and his toes drumming against the sidewalk like a marching band waiting in the End Zone, real Sousa stuff.

Harry decided to talk to Ginger tonight, and to explain to Ginger why Ginger had to keep hoofing it with Harry no matter what, till death did them part. Harry would explain to Ginger that hoofing it was not something you could walk away from overnight.

Harry stopped tapping because there was this big crowd in front of his building. Blue and red lights were dancing around together, but out of synch, and Harry could see a police car and an ambulance cheek-to-cheek, blocking traffic both ways on his one-way street.

Harry walked up to the back of the crowd. There was no way to get through, but Harry could see the ambulance driver and his partner were carrying somebody out of the building, somebody beneath a white sheet on a stretcher. A young woman with long beautiful legs like Ginger’s was standing next to Harry on tip-toes, like she could balance that way on her toes all day long.

“Some old guy kicked,” long legs said to a friend.

“Someone you knew?” her friend said.

“Nah,” long legs said. “I never knew the old guy. The Hoofer, they called him.”

Harry thought about this: maybe he was dead but did not know it.

“That’s his wife over there with her boyfriend,” long legs said. “I know all about them. Everyone did—except for him, the poor old bastard. She probably gave the old guy a heart attack from all that dancing.”

Harry looked to where long legs was looking at his Ginger. A man Harry had seen maybe once before, a man younger than Harry, though not much, was kissing Ginger on both of her wet cheeks. This man Harry had seen only twice in his life held Ginger in his arms like he owned her, like they were dancing a slow dance.

“Hey—hey—Mister!” Long legs took Harry by the arm. “You don’t look so good.”

“Got to dance!” Harry said it like the song.

Harry always had great timing. Though he arrived after his own final curtain, he knew this was it—the hook. Harry loved vaudeville, but Harry also knew when to get out—before it was too late—and now he knew when to get out of his own life, too, while he still could.

You could not call what Harry did next hoofing—his dancing days were over—but to Harry never danced better in his whole life.

It all came back to Harry now—every step, every spin, every style, every song.

Harry turned the corner, and all of his old wives were waiting for him up there along Broadway, even Ginger when she was younger, and all of his friends, too—how about that?—everyone lined up along Broadway in top hats and evening gowns, waiting for Harry to join them on The Great White Way.

Harry could see and hear all of them now, like it was opening night one last time.

“Break a leg, Harry,” they were saying. “Drop dead, kid.”