It had been planned that Jan should sing a solo, dressed as a ragged colored man. “Oh, I can’t! I just can’t,” she wailed when they were back in the dressing room and the band was back on the stage.
“Oh, you’ll wow them!” Gale insisted.
And so, ten minutes later, dressed in a coat two sizes too large, striped trousers and plug hat, leaning on a cane, Jan slipped out on the platform alone. For ten seconds there was silence. Then a roar shook the treetops.
Jan had a strange voice. It wasn’t basso or tenor. It wasn’t contralto. Just a voice singing in a wilderness. But when she began to sing “Old Man River” there was absolute silence. When she sang on, rolling her eyes and swaying like a rolling river,
“That old man river, he must know something
But he don’t say nothin’
He jes’ goes rolling along,”
the silence continued.
When she sang,—
“Tired of livin’ an’ feared o’ dying,” a great silence hung over the forest.