Half-Blood Blues (23 page)

But then Chip cracked one eye open, his lean wet lips drawn down. ‘Hey.’

I gave him a sleepy old look.

‘Hey,’ he said again. ‘Sid.’

‘What?’

‘Hey, you remember Panther Brownstone?’

‘Mmm.’

‘That old gate who give me my first go at the skins?’

I grimaced. ‘First go at the skins is right. What was that gal’s name?’

‘Shit.’ Chip smiled a little, but thoughtful-like. He sat up, started grinning for real. ‘I forgot about that. Hell. Yours had a chassis made you want to buy the whole damn car.’

‘She was my first love, that girl,’ I said.

‘Best damn trombonist you like to meet.’

I chuckled. ‘Anyway, what brought back that memory?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. All this, I guess.’ He gestured at the strange greyness passing us by. The long wide stretches of field and farmland. ‘Something about it gets you to thinking.’

I nodded. ‘What about him?’ I said after a minute.

‘Who?’

‘Panther Brownstone. What about him?’

‘Nothing. I was thinking he seemed like a son of a bitch, but he wasn’t.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

But he
was
a son of a bitch. I remembered it clear. A rainy Tuesday, Baltimore all sultry and stinking of piss. I was shaking like crazy, following Chip down into that club. I ain’t never seen nothing like it. Thirteen years old. That joint stinking of rubbing alcohol, dark as my shirt, with cheap wood tables set crazily over the checkered floor in the shadows. And Panther Brownstone, lean and bony as a broom, got up from a table in the back and stepped up onstage, winking at old Chip.

‘We got a special guest tonight,’ he announced. ‘Ladies and gents, just in from the Heights, put your skin together for Charles C. Jones!’

‘Chip,’ I remember hissing at him. ‘What’s going on?’

But he just gave me that old grin. ‘Lower your pipes and mind me,’ he said.

Then he’d bounded onstage, shaking out his legs and arms as if trying to get the rain from his clothes. I tell you, I almost hit the floor.

He sat himself down at the kit. Couple of folks laughed from somewhere in the smoke, he seemed so crazy, so coltish. But with a nod from Panther, he hit his sticks together, and they kicked off into the set.

Hell. I known he played the drums a bit, but nothing like
this
. I watched in awe as Chip skipped gently on the cymbals, worked his skinny thigh into a rhythm on the bass. Holy hell, my boy could
wail
. Limbs all twitching, his very skin seemed to peel back on the harder hits. Was one of those moments someone comes unclothed, you see this whole other life in them. I was trampled flat.

After the set, the audience was like to tear off their clothes, they so damn delighted. They roared and slapped the tables, ladies flapped their stained drink napkins. When Chip come down off the stage, I flung my arms so hard around him he damn near fell down.

‘How you learn to play like that, Chip man?’ I yelled. ‘Where you learn?’

Panther come up then, in his plum three-piece suit, and put one big hand on Chip’s shoulder. He wore a big gold watch on his skinny wrist, and his nails was perfectly manicured. And so damn
clean
. I ain’t never seen such clean hands on a grown man before.

‘Boys,’ he said smoothly, ‘I’d like to stand you a drink.’

I was in love. Pure and simple. This place, with its stink of sweat and medicine and perfume; these folks, all gussied up never mind the weather – this,
this
was life to me. Forget Sunday school and girls in white frocks. Forget stealing from corner stores.
This
was it, these dames swaying their hips in shimmering dresses, these chaps drinking gutbucket hooch. The gorgeous speakeasy slang. I’d found what my life was meant for.

Panther Brownstone, he led us to a corner table he emptied just by his presence. Man, I thought, that’s power. We sat at the knifed-up chairs, while he snapped a tan handkerchief out of his front pocket and whisked the nutshells and cigarette butts to the floor. His eyes glistened like beetles.

‘A scotch, neat,’ he said to the barmaid when she come over. ‘Two lemonades for the boys here.’

She smiled at us, looking like my mama’s sister. Hell.

‘I’d stand you boys some real drinks,’ he said smoothly, ‘but I ain’t no Socrates. I don’t corrupt no kids. Just everyone else.’

And he grinned this gruesome toothy grin.

‘I’ll get right to it. Charles, you ain’t half bad. You ain’t half good, neither. Not yet. But that old crowd loved seeing you up there. Like a dog driving a automobile, I guess. If it was up to me, I’d have you in here gigging with us every Saturday. How that sound to you?’

Chip’s old eyes was near wet with excitement. But his voice sounded steady.

‘Saturdays?’ he said, as if checking his schedule in his head. ‘Saturdays? Well, I guess that could work. Okay. I guess it sounds pretty good, Panther.’

Panther’s eyes flicked to me, then back to Chip. He got this little old smile creeping up under that pencil moustache. ‘How old’re you? I don’t mean in dog years.’

‘Sixteen,’ Chip said.

‘Thirteen,’ I said.

Chip kicked me hard under the table and I gave a start, reach down, rub my damn shin. But Panther wasn’t looking at me.

‘Thirteen,’ he said quietly. ‘Thirteen. I figured you just a bit younger.’

‘Younger!’ Chip shouted.

Panther started to laugh then, from deep in his chest. ‘Easy there, son. Ain’t no way you boys coming in here regular anyhow. Even sixteen. We get shut down for sure, we got kids in here. You understand?’

Chip said nothing. His eyes got real small, real mean.

‘Look, kid, don’t be sore. You hit them skins good for you
age
. But playing good for you age don’t mean you playing good for the ages. ’Less you a Bolden, or a Jelly Roll or something. And they don’t come along but maybe twice a
century
. Listen, jazz, it ain’t just music. It
life
. You got to have experience to make jazz. I ain’t never heard no one under eighteen even sound like he know which end of his instrument to hold.’

‘I know what I’m doin,’ Chip said.

Panther held up his hands. ‘I know you do, kid. I know.’

The scotch and lemonades arrived.

‘Here you are, sugar,’ the barmaid said, giving Chip his glass.

He ain’t said nothing.

Panther gave him a long appraising look. Then he lifted one long bony arm and snapped his fingers. A lady walked up, her friend lagging behind her. They looked old, man, maybe even old as twenty. Their chests popping out the tops of them dresses.

‘Gals,’ said Panther. ‘You be sure to take care of these boys here.’

‘Sho thing, Panther,’ the first one said. She gave a sort of seductive smile, her upper lip hitching up.

I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t think of nothing to say.

Panther looked at Chip with this suddenly cold, ferocious glint in his eye. ‘I see you around, kid,’ he said. ‘You keep at it, now.’ And then he stood from the table, took his glass, was gone into the smoke.

‘
Ass
hole,’ said Chip loudly.

‘Honey, I thought you played real fine up there,’ the first woman said to Chip.

He gave her a look.

‘What’s your name, sweetie?’ the second one said to me.

‘Sidney Griffiths, ma’am,’ I said.

‘I was the one played,’ said Chip, giving me a look. Staring at his tiny smug eyes, I wanted to slam my heel down on his toes.

‘And you was real fine, honey, real fine,’ the first one said again.

‘I bet you be just as good, you gave it a whirl,’ the second one kept on at me. Well, holy mother. I seen I’d scored the prettier of the two, with her slanted seed-like eyes, her toffee skin, her lips like split fruit. Wasn’t one piece of her didn’t remind me of food.

‘What you boys drinking?’ the first one said.

‘Lemonade,’ I said.

‘
Strong
lemonade,’ Chip cut in.

The second one giggled. ‘Why don’t you get us some drinks, sweetie? Two sidecars.’

‘Now you on the trolley,’ grinned Chip, like he’d thought of it himself. ‘Sid, go on over the bar get us somethin put some hair on you chest.’

‘Why don’t you go?’ I whispered at him.

‘Go
on
,’ he hissed. ‘They
lookin
at us.’

Took me three weeks’ allowance to buy them drinks. And the bartender near laughed himself stupid, pouring them out for me. I was stumbling through veils of smoke back to the table when my cat-eyed girl met me halfway. Taking the two drinks from me, she set them on the nearest table, so that half the liquor splashed out.

‘Aw, what you doing?’ I said. ‘Ain’t you going to drink it even?’

But she just grabbed my hand, led me through humid bodies to a stairwell dark as a heart chamber.

‘Where’s Chip?’ I called ahead to her. ‘We got to tell Chip where we going.’

She waded through groups of groping couples, to the first landing, where she thrown open a door and pushed me in. Well, knock me down with a feather. It was a
bedroom
. I stared at the yellow satin sheets, torn and stained in places, the windows dimmed with what looked like grey paint but was probably just years of tobacco smoke. My heart begun stuttering in my chest.

‘You live here?’ I said in surprise.

She closed the door, then come around and grabbed my front collar so hard she almost choked me.

‘Hey,’ I shouted. ‘Hey, what you doin? Don’t you try nothing or I call Chip.’

‘Aw, sweetie,’ she smiled.

And then she leaned down and kissed me.

Well, son of a bitch. It wasn’t no sort of ordinary kiss neither. Her tongue got in my mouth, sent blood rushing to every damn pocket of my body. Her lips was hot, like the ridge of a cooking dish, her breasts all pressing up against my chest. She smelled just like almonds, even her hair.

Then she pulled back, gave me this sly look.

I didn’t know what to say. ‘You real pretty,’ I whispered.

She smiled. ‘Think so?’

I nodded.

I didn’t understand when she sunk to her knees. I started to drop down too, but she stopped me, pushed me up again. She kissed my button fly, then tugged the buttons open, yanked my pants down, my drawers. Before I known what was happening, she had me in her mouth, all hot and moist and velvet. My skin tingled all over at the impossible softness, like being hit with hot and cold water all at once. It almost hurt.

Afterwards, I didn’t know what to do. I felt sort of embarrassed, ashamed. Breathing hard, I kneeled before her on the floor, putting my hand up her dress, wanting to please her.

She pushed my fingers gently away. ‘That one be a freebie, cause you so cute, honey. But you want to jass, you got to pay up.’

I ain’t understood. The truth come to me slow, as if through layers of smoke. ‘You a
whore
?’ I said.

She frowned, leaned back on her haunches, gave me a cold look. ‘You going to use that language in here? After what all I just done for you?’

I blushed. I ain’t known what else to call her.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘You real young, kid. I thought you was older than that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, trying to make it better.

Frowning, she got to her feet. ‘Call me a whore and I sure as hell gonna act like one. Cancel that freebie. Pay up. Pay me now or I callin Vaughn.’

Hell, where’d this come from? Everything turned suddenly ugly. I ain’t never in my life been in such a fix. Panicked, I scrambled into my pants, dove wildly across the room for my coat.

‘Don’t you bolt, fucker,’ she said, her wet lips all twisted up.

‘I got to get my wallet,’ I said, knowing damn well that while my wallet may be in my coat, wasn’t no scratch left in it.

I buttoned my fly, straightened my shirt. She watched me with a hawk’s eye. Reaching into my pocket, I got hold of the door at the same time and thrown the goddamn thing wide open. Scrambling down them stairs, my heart slamming in my ears, I heard her yelling, ‘Stop that nigger!’ But I could be a real jack-rabbit in a crisis, and I was too quick to be caught by no one. Knocking folks down right and left, I burst outside, my breath catching on the muggy air. I run down South Broadway, turning onto East Pratt then zigzagging back to South Bethel and Eastern Ave. Only when I stopped to get my breath, cars all blaring in the streets, did I reckon I’d forgot poor Chip. ‘God
damn
,’ I hissed under my breath. Sighing hard, I started running on back.

Lucky for me, Chip done already left the club. Unlucky for him, he lay out on the pavement of South Broadway.

‘Shit, Chip,’ I said, fixing to help him. His nose been bashed up real good, blood messing up his two-tone jacket. I helped him up. We sat side-by-side on the pavement, panting.

‘Well I known
mine
was a whore,’ said Chip, smug like.

I begun laughing. A long, loud crackling laugh. Chip, he tried to look all serious, all adult, but he couldn’t help it and started laughing too. There we sat on South Broadway, howling like two escapees from the Spring Grove asylum.

The jazz life. I was hooked.

In time we passed through dead fields. Passed makeshift barriers tangled with rusted barbed wire. Passed ancient wooden houses left to rot like so much garbage. I known places like that. Reeking of harsh soap and cheap tobacco, their living rooms full of doilies, cobwebs, widows.

Every hour or so we’d stop at some abandoned crossroads, some dusty old driveway, and another passenger would climb down and drag their old luggage from the undercarriage and disappear off into the landscape. Already, it seemed like half the passengers had got off. Ain’t no one else climbed aboard yet.

‘Poland,’ I murmured.

I nudged Chip. He grunted.

‘Why you reckon Poland?’ I said.

‘What you saying?’ Chip was trying to prop his feet on the seat across from ours but his legs was too short. His face looked like slack leather, the skin exhausted, the mouth drooping. ‘Why Poland what?’

‘Why’d he come here? Of all places?’

Chip just sort of grimaced. ‘Hell, brother, ain’t nothing of his life make sense.’