Coming Through Slaughter (6 page)

He came in through the window and sat down on the foot of the bed I was lying on, and started talking right away. Just like you. He sat down and he talked, god he talked, just complaining. It was about Frank Lewis or something. Someone had passed him on the street and not spoken, probably hadn’t seen him. He went on and on. Then I started in saying how I was fed up too, that I didn’t want to be judge any more to all these fights. I had my own problems. This was the first time I’d said this you know and I thought he might be interested but within a minute he started to show how bored he was of it. You know, just irritated, looking around the room, sniffing, clucking, as if he’d heard too much of this sort of thing. So I shut up and he went on. Then left about an hour later. By this time even I wasn’t listening. Went out of the window saying they were probably watching the door.’

If
Nora had been with Pickett. Had really been with Pickett as he said. Had jumped off Bolden’s cock and sat down half an hour later on Tom Pickett’s mouth on Canal Street. Then the certainties he loathed and needed were liquid at the root.

Nora and others had needed the beautiful Pickett that much. To see her throwing bottles at Pickett in the rain to brush him away gave her a life all her own which he, Bolden, had nothing to do with. He was aware the scene on the street included a fight which did not include him. Pickett earlier so confident he knew her thoroughly, her bones, god he knew even the number of bones she had in her body.

Bolden imagined it all, the wet deceit as she hunched over him and knelt down under him or drank him in complex kisses. The trouble was you could see all the way through Pickett’s mind, and so the moment he had said he had been fucking Nora Bolden believed him. In the very minute he was screening his laughter at Pickett’s fantasies he believed him. Tom Pickett didn’t have the brain to have fantasies.

He called Cornish. Everybody’s ear. Made him drink and listen to him.
LISTEN
! Drinking so much the rhetoric of fury at everyone disintegrated into repetition and lies and fantasies. He dreamt up morning encounters between Nora and the whole band. Towards 4 o clock in the morning both of them were frozen with drinks in their hands, unable to move. Bolden was lying across three chairs muttering up to the ceiling.

Well I got to go Charlie.

NO! Don’t go just tell me what you think of the bitch.

Well you don’t know that, she’s a beautiful lady Charlie.

Well what the hell—he mimicked—I’m a beautiful. Bursting into peals of laughter and sliding arms first onto the floor in order to laugh more fully. And then as Cornish had finally reached the door, Bolden on the floor saying, You know … in spite of everything that happens, we still think a helluva lot of ourselves! And more laughter till Cornish was gone and his chest and his throat were tired from it.

He lay there crucified and drunk. Brought his left wrist to his teeth and bit hard and harder for several seconds then lost his nerve. Flopped it back outstretched. Going to sleep while feeling his vein tingling at the near chance it had of almost going free. Ecstasy before death. It marched through him while he slept.

For a while after that Frankie Dusen the trombonist took over some of Bolden’s players. They called themselves the Eagle Band. Bunk Johnson, seventeen years old, took his place. And Bolden arrived at Lincoln Park and saw him playing there, up front centre, and just turned around and walked back through the crowd who stepped aside to let him pass. Dude Botley followed him and tells this story which some believe and which others don’t believe at all.

‘He steps out of the park like a rooster ignoring everybody, everything and goes up Canal. I trail him back to the barber shop. There’s wood planks all over the broken glass window and he just rips one out and climbs in, steps off the ice-shelf onto the floor and paces around his arms out to the side like he’s doing a cakewalk. I watch from across the street and soon he’s just sitting there in one of the chairs looking into a mirror. Pretty dark there, not much light. There’s light in the back of the shop and it pours in all over the floor of the shaving parlor and Bolden is restless as a dog in the chair. He shouldn’t be there because he don’t work there any more. This is about eight at night and I’m on the other side of the road shuffling to keep warm because it’s cold and I should be dancing. I can even hear Lincoln Park over the streets.

I see him walk to the back of the parlor where the light is and he come back with a bottle and the cornet. He try first to drink but he begin crying and he put the bottle in the sink. The tears came to my eyes too. I got to thinking of all the men that dance to him and the women that idolize him as he used to strut up and down the streets. Where are they now I say to myself. Then I hear Bolden’s cornet, very quiet, and I move across the street, closer. There he is, relaxed back in a chair blowing that silver softly, just above a whisper and I see he’s got the hat over the bell of the horn … Thought I knew his blues before, and the hymns at funerals, but what he is playing now is real strange and I listen careful for he’s playing something that sounds like both. I cannot make out the tune and then I catch on. He’s mixing them up. He’s playing the blues and the hymn sadder than the blues and then the blues sadder than the hymn. That is the first time I ever heard hymns and blues cooked up together.

There’s about three of us at the window now and a strange feeling comes over me. I’m sort of scared because I know the Lord don’t like that mixing the Devil’s music with His music. But I still listen because the music sounds so strange and I guess I’m hypnotised. When he blows blues I can see Lincoln Park with all the sinners and whores shaking and belly rubbing and the chicks getting way down and slapping themselves on the cheeks of their behind. Then when he blows the hymn I’m in my mother’s church with everybody humming. The picture kept changing with the music. It sounded like a battle between the Good Lord and the Devil. Something tells me to listen and see who wins. If Bolden stops on the hymn, the Good Lord wins. If he stops on the blues, the Devil wins.’

4763 Callarpine Street. Where the Brewitts live.

Webb arrived in front of the house at 7.30 in the morning. He slept in the parked car till 9. Till he thought they would be awake. There would be Bolden and there would be Robin Brewitt. And maybe Jaelin Brewitt. Ugly trees on the lawn, he went by the side of the house and climbed the stairs to the first floor. Knocked at the door. No reply. He went into the apartment, could see no one. He knocked on a door in the hall and looked in. Robin Brewitt asleep in bed.

What?

Sorry. I’m looking for Buddy.

He’s up somewhere. Maybe the bathroom.

He nodded and closed the door quietly. Went down the hall. Knocked on the bathroom door.

Yep!

And went in and found him.

He sat on the edge of the tub where his friend was having a bath. At first Bolden was laughing. He couldn’t get over it. He wanted to know how. Webb gave him all the names. Nora. Cornish. Pickett. Bellocq! Yes Bellocq’s dead now, killed himself in a fire. What do you mean killed himself in a fire? He started a fire round himself.

They could hear Robin through the wall in the kitchen. And that’s Robin Brewitt? Bolden nodded into the water. And Jaelin Brewitt comes and goes. Bolden nodded. And your music. Haven’t played a note for nearly two years. Thought about it? A little. You could train in the Pontchartrain cabin. I don’t want to go back, Webb. You want to go back Buddy, you want to go back. Webb on the edge of the enamel talking on and on, why did you do all this Buddy, why don’t you come back, what good are you here, you’re doing nothing, you’re wasting, you’re —

Till Bolden went underwater away from the noise, opening his eyes to look up through the liquid blur at the vague figure of Webb gazing down at him gesturing, till he could hardly breathe, his heart furious wanting to leap out and Bolden still holding himself down not wishing to come up gripping the side of the tub with his elbows to stop him to stop him o god jesus leave me alone his eyes staring up aching, if Webb reaches down and tries to pull him up he will never come up he knows that, air! his heart empty overpowers his arms and he breaks up showering Webb, gulping everything he possibly can in.

Breathing hard, yes ok Webb ok ok ok. Hunched and breathing hard looking at the taps while Webb on his right tried to brush the wetness off his suit beginning to talk again and Buddy hardly listening to him, listening past him to Robin and the morning kitchen noises that he knew he would lose soon. Webb was releasing the rabbit he had to run after, because the cage was open now and there would always be the worthless taste of worthless rabbit when he finished.

Robin hit the door. Is he staying for breakfast, Buddy?

Silence. Like a huge, wild animal going round and round the bathroom. Just before he closed his eyes he saw her standing, years ago, holding two glasses of orange juice. Yes. He’s staying for breakfast.

Train Song

Passing wet chicory that lies in the fields like the sky.

Passing wet chicory that lies in the fields like the sky.

Passing wet chicory lies

like the sky,

like the sky like the sky like the sky

passing wet sky chicory

passing wet sky chicory lies

When he left we sat with the remains of breakfast. The two of us knew at precisely the same time. When Webb was here with all his stories about me and Nora, about Gravier and Phillip Street, the wall of wire barrier glass went up between me and Robin. And when he left we were still here, still, not moving or speaking, in order to ignore the barrier glass. God he talked and sucked me through his brain so I was puppet and she was a landscape so alien and so newly foreign that I was ridiculous here. He could reach me this far away, could tilt me upside down till he was directing me like wayward traffic back home.

Here. Where I am anonymous and alone in a white room with no history and no parading. So I can make something unknown in the shape of this room. Where I am King of Corners. And Robin who drained my body of its fame when I wanted to find that fear of certainties I had when I first began to play, back when I was unaware that reputation made the room narrower and narrower, till you were crawling on your own back, full of your own echoes, till you were drinking in only your own recycled air. And Robin and Jaelin brought me back to that open fright with the unimportant objects.

He came here and placed my past and future on this table like a road.

This last night we tear into each other, as if to wound, as if to find the key to everything before morning. The heat incredible, we go out and buy a bag of ice, crack it small in our mouths and spit it onto each other’s bodies, her tongue slipping it under the skin of my cock me pushing it into her hot red fold. But we are already travelling on the morning bus tragic. Like the ice melting in the heat of us. Dripping wet on our chest and breasts we approach each other private and selfish and cold in the September heatwave. We give each other a performance, the wound of ice. We imagine audiences and the audiences are each other again and again in the future. ‘We’ll go crazy without each other you know.’ The one lonely sentence, her voice against my hand as if to stop her saying it. We follow each other into the future, as if now, at the last moment we try to memorize the face a movement we will never want to forget. As if everything in the world is the history of ice.

Morning. Water has dried tight on my chest and stomach. I wake up crucified on my back in this bed. There is no need to turn. Blue cloud light in the room. There is no need to turn my head for Robin is gone. Already my body has unbuckled out into the space she left. Bending my left hand over my body and then crashing it down as hard as I can on her half of the bed. And it bounces against the sheet. And as I knew, she’s gone.

He went to Webb’s cottage on Lake Pontchartrain on a bus. His hands dead on his thighs and his body leaning against the window, the wet weather outside and this woman on his right in the dark dress who smiled as she took the seat, scribbling something on paper that she is hunched over. Her legs twitching now and then as if her brain is there.

He tried to take in the smell of her. The taste of her mouth in the next hotel room they passed along the road. He knew the shape of her body. As she would stand in front of him, the small breasts cold in the room, the heart of her. He went with her for months into the relationship, awkward first fights, the slow true intimacy, disintegration after they exchanged personalities and mannerisms, the growing tired of each other’s speed. All this before they went one more mile—as she wrote on and he thought on into the heart and mind of her, not even glancing at her as she got off alone at Milneburg for she was an old friendship now and he could guess the expressions, her face for all the moments. Accidental lust on the bus carrying her new into his dead brain so even months later, years later, pieces of her body and character returned. What he wanted was cruel, pure relationship.

Got here this afternoon. Walk around remembering you from the objects I find. Books, pictures on the wall, nail holes in the ceiling where you’ve hung your magnets, seed packets on the shelf above the sink—the skin you shed when you finish your vacations. Re-smell your character.

Not enough blankets here, Webb, and it’s cold. Found an old hunting jacket. I sleep against its cloth full of hunter sweat, aroma of cartridges. I went to bed as soon as I arrived and am awake now after midnight. Scratch of suicide at the side of my brain.

Our friendship had nothing accidental did it. Even at the start you set out to breed me into something better. Which you did. You removed my immaturity at just the right time and saved me a lot of energy and I sped away happy and alone in a new town away from you, and now you produce a leash, curl the leather round and round your fist, and walk straight into me. And you pull me home. Like those breeders of bull terriers in the Storyville pits who can prove anything of their creatures, can prove how determined their dogs are by setting them onto an animal and while the jaws clamp shut they can slice the dog’s body in half knowing the jaws will still not let go.

All the time I hate what I am doing and want the other. In a room full of people I get frantic in their air and their shout and when I’m alone I sniff the smell of their bodies against my clothes. I’m scared Webb, don’t think I will find one person who will be the right audience. All you’ve done is cut me in half, pointing me here. Where I don’t want these answers.