Half-Blood Blues (14 page)

It was late summer outside. But here in the club, all its lights down, it felt cool, nearly cold. I lived in my overcoat. The stage was dim, the houselights real low, and the broken chairs was piled up in the shadows under the stage. The air reeked eerily of old roses. I glanced up as I stepped into the wings and seen Delilah sitting up in the flies, at the edge of the platform, staring down at me.

Hell. I crossed the boards, picking my way between the cords and loose axes, then climbed up that creaking old ladder. My ribs throbbing as I hauled myself through and onto the rough wood platform. Delilah give me a look, then glanced away. She was balled up against one railing, her head made magnificent by a huge golden headwrap. The fabric shimmering every time she turn her face.

‘You changed you hat,’ I said.

She shrugged disconsolately.

‘You okay? We goin be alright.’

‘Ernst is scared. I can tell.’

‘Shoot, girl, Ernst ain’t scared of nothin. ’Cept when Chip get goin on his licorice stick. That scare all of us though.’

She looked away. ‘Where did he come from?’

‘Who?’ I said foolishly. I followed her eyes down to the kid, dragging a old trunk into the wings. He look small, vulnerable from that height. ‘Hiero? He from Köln, I reckon.’

She turned, studying me. ‘But where did he
come
from? He just appeared, out of nowhere, without having played with anyone? Just showed up like this?’

I wanted to ask, like what. But I ain’t wanted to hear her answer.

She shook her damn head, her spidery eyelashes downturned. ‘Lou was like him. When he was young. Would you say Lou’s
talented
? Do you still call it talent, if it blooms without any kind of nurturing? That’s got to be something else.’

She made talent sound like a damn insult. I felt something sour and gravelly in my throat. I set my scratched palms against the rough planks.

‘Paul brought him down to us,’ I said after a moment. ‘Paul discovered him.’

‘No one discovers that.’

I shifted uneasily.

‘What was he doing in Köln?’

I shrugged. ‘Paul’s aunt lived in the same neighbourhood. Paul was out visitin her when he heard Hiero playin from a window across the way. His aunt said somethin like,
Oh, that’s that poor little Falk boy. He’s black.
Somethin like that. Paul gone right on over, ain’t even put on his damn shoes.’

‘The poor little black boy,’ she muttered. ‘Jesus. Imagine if he hadn’t been practising just then.’ She give me a look. ‘Or maybe he’d have found his way to the footlights regardless. A gift like his, it leads, don’t you think?’

‘Aw, he
good
,’ I said cautiously. ‘I ain’t sure he ready to lead so much yet.’

She narrowed her sleek green eyes. ‘He’s the best player I’ve heard since I first heard Lou. And that’s the truth. He’ll be famous long after you and me are forgotten, Sid.’

There wasn’t no sorrow in it, no regret. Just some slow-burning excitement. Hell. I felt sick, rubbed my sore ribs, stared down at the kid. He was pulling out a blond wig, setting it on his head, turning side to side in front of the costume traces. He do a little curtsey, cocked one hip, then took it off and kept rummaging through.

‘What is it with you and Hiero?’ I said, hearing a sourness come into my voice.

She give me a odd look. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothin, nothin. Just, you watchin him a awful lot.’

‘Oh.’ She stared thoughtfully down at him.

‘Like that,’ I said.

She looked at me, then smiled distractedly.

What I was really thinking was, maybe the damn kid
known
she up here. Maybe he was messing with that damn trunk there in the wings cause he
wanted
her watching him. The son of a bitch.

‘He talk like us, you know,’ I said all a sudden. I ain’t sure why.

She ain’t understood. ‘He speaks English?’

‘No. No, I mean his German. It’s this weird sort of mix. Like he catchin our old accent, mine and Chip’s, mimickin it. Like he ain’t got his own way of talkin. His horn playin’s a bit like that too.’

Down in the damn wings he’d put on my hat, was tipping it with one finger down at a rakish angle. Hell. What he doing with my hat? He slouch his shoulders in a exact imitation of me. His suit look damn filthy.

‘He looks up to you so much,’ she said, smiling.

‘Hell he do. I reckon he just tryin to provoke me.’

Delilah shook her head. She put one cool hand on my wrist, and a fierce thrill coursed up through me. Holy
hell
. ‘There’s a real goodness in you, Sid. I could see it right away. I understand why he follows you like he does.’

I felt a quick surge in my chest. I stood abruptly, nearly shaking her hand off.

‘Sid?’ she said, startled.

‘Hold up,’ I said. ‘Just a minute.’ I climbed down that rickety ladder, jogged over to the bar, pulled up a bottle of the czech from its sheath. Put two small glasses in my suit pockets. Then I come back up the ladder, that bottle gripped careful in one fist.

‘Oh, what’re you doing?’ She smiled.

‘Just warmin our old bellies.’ I grinned and poured us each two fingers. ‘Where I from, folks call this a Cossack Conference.’

‘You’re not going to start dancing on me, are you?’

‘Up here? Shoot. Not till we get deeper into the bottle.’

We clicked glasses. I still able to feel the burn of her fingers on my wrist, like it left a sear there.

‘How you get together with old Armstrong?’ I said.

‘We’re not together. Not like that.’

‘No. I meant, how you and Louis meet?’

‘I know what you meant. Everyone sees us and thinks it.’

I could feel the heat emanating off my face.

‘Lou discovered me,’ she said with a soft shrug. ‘Well, Oliver discovered me. Lou, he just was the one who knew what to
do
with me. He taught me how to sing.’

‘
Lou
,’ I said softly, shaking my head. ‘You call him that, for real?’

‘What I call him I can’t repeat in public,’ she said, smiling.

I give a quick laugh. ‘Aw, can’t figure at all why folks would think there be anythin between you two. So you ain’t from Orleans?’

‘I’m from Montreal. I met Lou in Chicago. Before him, I was just running around Little Burgundy, singing at weddings and such. The church choir.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Sure. Me and Chip use to play railway stations. We ain’t had no axes, just made the sounds up with our mouths. We was kids though.’

‘You been together a long time, you two.’

‘We ain’t together. Not like that.’

She laughed, soft, unexpected. It sound a little like stepping down a river bank, through the soft reeds, like air bending and lifting some green thing.

‘It been our whole lives. We grown up on the same damn block. Chip got me into jazz.’

‘So it’s his fault.’

‘He the guilty party.’ I smiled. ‘So, old Chicago. When was you in Chicago? We like to been there same damn time. Eddie Condon was there? Earl Hines?’

‘You know Eddie?’

‘Aw, not personally,’ I said quickly. ‘He a dazzlin gate though. Chicago used to seem so damn glamorous.’

She snorted. ‘When you weren’t sleeping it off in a park, maybe.’

‘Maybe we was on a bench next to each other.’

‘I was a sixteen-year-old girl from Montreal, Sid. I slept in the
bushes
. Terrified for my
virtue
.’ She laughed again, real soft-like. I studied her crooked little teeth, feeling this big welling-up of desire in me. Hell. What was
wrong
with me? She went on, ‘I was sure –
sure
– I just needed to find King Oliver, let him hear my voice, and it’d all start up for me. He’d just put an arm around me and introduce me to his Creole Jazz Band. Crazy, hmm?’

‘Aw, not so crazy.’

‘I thought, talent knows talent.’

‘Sure it do.’

She leaned back and studied me, laughing. ‘Look at you. I’ve got you tied around my little finger, don’t I?’

I flushed.

‘I’m teasing.’ She give me a strange little smile, glanced away. ‘I was so young.’ I seen her eyes drifting over to the kid. He was still sorting through that trunk. Chip had come out, standing in his stained and grimy shirtsleeves, his old skull swaddled in that bloodstained bandage. Jesus. He pulled out a long sequined gown, holding it up to the kid like to check his size. I heard the kid laugh.

When Chip turned round I seen last night’s dried blood crinkle stiffly on his back.

Delilah said, ‘One night I was outside Lincoln Gardens when Lil Hardin came out. Did you ever meet Lil? Oliver’s pianist? Well, it doesn’t matter. Lou lost his mind for a bit and when it came back to him he found he’d married her. Poor Lou. But that was later. So I saw her coming out and I got filled with all this arrogant hope. I thought Oliver might still be inside. So I slipped in.’

‘Sure. Shy sixteen-year-old jane from the provinces think her idol be inside, she just slip on in. I can see it.’

‘I never said I was shy,’ she smiled sly-like.

I laughed. ‘And?’

‘And he was in there alright. I guess he liked what he saw.’ She sat back, took a sip of her drink, the bangles on her wrist clacking softly.

I watched her for a moment, then leaned forward, shaking my head. ‘Aw, no way, no way, girl. You ain’t gettin off that easy.’

She laughed that dark watery laugh.

‘Go on, Delilah. What you say to him?’ Saying her name aloud like that felt so damn intimate, so soft, I start to flush again. I lowered my eyes, picked at a bit of dust floating on the surface of my drink.

‘You want to know what I said?’ she asked.

‘Go on. Tell me you secret.’

‘You’re really interested?’

‘In how a girl from Canada break the bigtime? Who ain’t interested?’

‘The
bigtime
,’ she muttered, but there was a dark note to it. ‘My name doesn’t even reach from Paris to Berlin.’

‘Aw, girl. We livin in a soap bubble here. We ain’t get no news of the world at all. You know that.’

She look embarrassed then. Looked away.

‘Go on,’ I said again. ‘Tell me what happen with King Oliver.’

She start smiling soft, like she remembering something from a long time ago. ‘Have you ever seen King Oliver? I mean, in the flesh, up close?’

‘I was in his cab once,’ I said. ‘Well, he just gotten out of it one block back.’

She give me a funny look. ‘Well, he’s a big fellow. Very soft in the middle, sort of like your Fritz. The moment I came up behind them all standing there I knew it was him, I could tell just by the roll of his shoulders. But my god, he was so
fat
. I thought,
Good god, he looks like a big ol’ baby
.

‘When he turned around and saw me there, all of sixteen, he just laughed, and asked who let the baby in. And I said,
I’d of thought you let yourself in, baldie
.’

I grinned. ‘You pullin my leg. Ain’t no
way
you said that.’

‘Oh, it gets worse,’ she laughed. ‘He wasn’t offended at all. Oliver? He’s got a hide thicker than a kettle skin. He asked if I’d come in to eat or to drink, and I just gave him this long long look, and said,
I’d say eat, but you look like you about cleaned out the place
.’

I shook my old head.

‘The gate standing there with him started laughing and laughing. Well, that was Louis. I guess it must have been funny. I was just this tiny rail of a thing, talking big to old Oliver like that. Anyhow. Oliver didn’t know what to do with me, but Lou took me home with him, put some hot food in me, gave me a place to sleep. Like an older brother would do.’ She nodded, sort of thoughtfully, and stared down at the kid. ‘Old Lou saved me.’

I got this dark feeling. ‘So
that’s
how it’s done, gettin in with the bigwigs.’ I forced a smile. ‘You just talk rough to em. I reckon old Chip’s due for some big things.’

‘Chip? He’ll go far alright,’ she laughed.

I snuck a glance at her. She ain’t hardly touched her czech.

‘I always liked nightclubs after hours, after closing,’ she said after a moment.

I nodded. ‘When all the folks is gone. Sure. Chip always say they feel lonely, hopeless. I sort of think the opposite. Somethin so
unexpected
bout them.’

‘Yes. Like something could happen any moment. It’s all so
possible
.’

She smiled.

Then I wasn’t thinking anything at all for a long, long moment. She was so beautiful.

‘What you two doin up there?’ Chip called up. He and the kid was standing with hands pressed to their foreheads, staring up at us in the flies. Delilah give a little wave.

‘We hidin from the Boots,’ I said. ‘What you think?’

‘I think that ain’t what you doin,’ said Chip.

The kid start laughing.

I glanced over, embarrassed, but Delilah ain’t seemed to notice. ‘Why do you call him Chip?’ she said.

‘He hates Charles.’

‘Why?’

‘Aw, he reckons it makes him sound like a preacher’s son.’

She was silent for a moment. ‘What does his father do?’

I grinned. ‘He a preacher.’ Then I reached across, tapped her ankle. ‘Hey, girl, you want a laugh?’

She give me a suspicious look.

I smiled. ‘For real. You want a laugh, ask Chip what the C stand for.’

‘The C?’

‘In his name. The C. Ask him what it stand for.’

‘Charlie,’ she called down. ‘What does the C stand for?’

He look up, grimacing like he got a sore tooth. ‘Chip, sister. It just Chip.’

‘What does the C stand for,
Chip
?’

I shook my head. ‘He ain’t told no one his middle name. Not ever.’

‘I can hear you,’ he called up at me. ‘You ain’t invisible.’ And then, to Delilah: ‘Girl, a man got to keep some things to hisself.’

‘Some men could keep even
more
things, if they of a mind to,’ I said. ‘I ain’t sayin. I just sayin.’

‘How bad can it be?’ said Delilah. ‘What is it, Clayton?’

Chip stared at her in disbelief. ‘Holy hell. You
guessed
it. First try.’