Rails Under My Back (49 page)

What?

Baby, them chinks love them some jazz.

—and harbored a trunkful of stories.

But I was talkin about the junkies. Baby, most of them cats were junkies. Hank leaned in close and put distance between the words and his wife’s pious ears. And H makes you all constipated. Imagine Trane digging up his crack, trying to pull out a rock-hard lump of doo-doo.

Ah, man.

And thieves. H makes you steal. Bird would steal your mamma’s draws, brown stains and all. Steal the flea collar off a dog’s neck. Bird only looked after himself. He used to say, This is a solo flight and you may take no one with you. Talkin in that phony British accent.

I never heard nothing bout that.

Had to put on airs cause that H had taken everything else he had. Why you think he played a plastic horn?

Creative. He wanted to be
—

Miles used to have to loan him a suit to play in. Skinny old Miles and fat old Bird. You know he was lookin silly. Sleeves too short and flood-high pants. But Miles took the H train too. And you know Bird and Miles were sissies.

Come on, Hank. I know Miles was on the H. But I never heard
—

H, horn—he and Bird would toot anything, if you know what I mean.

Hank
—

H brings out the fag in you. Make you do things you wouldn normally do.

Hank
—

And Billie, you know she was a mess. She would kiss a roach for a quick fix. And she would eat anything for a buck. And I do mean anything. The joke was, she had sensitive teeth. Get it? Sensitive. S-i-n. Sen-sen.

Hatch laughed, belly-hard. Then his laugh caught in the mitt of his throat. He spoke to himself: I shouldn’t be laughin about Billie, Lady Day. Show some respect, he told himself. Respect. R-e-s-p-e-c-t.

And she had this little dog named Melody. Billie’d come in the club and sit down at the bar with a stiff drink—you know how that alcohol ate up her voice. Used to sing so sweet. Billie’s bounce. Well, she come into the club and sit down at the bar with a stiff drink and spread her legs. She never wore no draws. That dog start to lickin her and lickin her like greasy chicken.

Hatch shook his head. Now, why’d you want to tell me something like that? Hank, you talkin bout Lady Day, man, Lady Day!

By the way, she didn’t like to be called Lady. (Prez called her Mamma. Bless his soul.) She said, Lady, that’s the name for a dog.

The pinnacle of his career, Hank shook hands with Charlie Christian.
Yeah, we were workin this gig and Charlie came in as we were leaving. Ole Charlie was tough. Lots of cats used to copy his style. Convert their style to coincide with his.

After Hank gave up the life, he put in thirty years at a paint factory.
I played a gig here and there. Man, I used to work with all those cats when they came to town. Prez, Monk, Bird, Miles, Trane—I used to buy all those guys hot dogs. I still can’t understand it. Why do a guy want to be a junky to play a horn? a guitar? That’s why I gave it up in 1945. I was afraid to go on the road.
The paint had wrecked his body. He stood reed-thin, knees squeezed together like a girl needing to pee. Took him ten minutes to quit a room.

Face to face with Hank, Hatch’s mind often drifted, trying to image two persons in one, the young Hank, the hepcat—cuff-linked shirt, suspenders, painted tie, patent-leather kicks, and a sky red as autumn day—in the old Hank. The language was there—
I had this long cord. The longest in the world. Made it myself. I’d leave the stage and go table to table, running riffs and hustlin in tips. On Sunday nights we’d go down to Lamb’s Cafe when the symphonic session was on. We going to church. But most nights the cats hung out at the Red Onion. The P.I.’s wore these big diamonds, big as dimes. Seen a few bigger than a quarter. And the hot women wit those big behinds. That was the place for cats to jam. But people wasn’t paying much mind to what was happening onstage. Then the cats in the band would start to mess up. I used to ride the drummer for not playin the sock cymbal on the afterbeat. Mop-a! Like that.
Mop-a—but the flesh was long gone.

His wife, a yellow woman with a healthy wave of straight hair—
Used to be fine in her day. Wish I had known her when she was eighteen
—often interrupted a lesson. Hank, ain’t you tired? You know you need your rest.

Mary, wait. Hatch pay his five dollars for thirty minutes. His time ain’t up yet.

She was a follower of the New Cotton Rivers—
Hatch, why don’t you come to church with us Sunday. Sky Church (the closed-circuit temple) is in a refined neighborhood
—and would often shout biblical curses.

Each week, Hank showed Hatch the same two tunes, Red Top and Take
Five.
Music ain’t nothing but mathematics. Play chromatics, scales, that kind of stuff. The theory part. You know what I mean?
Week after week, Hatch improvised on the changes, missing riffs and hitting wrong notes.
That’s okay. Coltrane said there ain’t no wrong notes. Play sharp fives, flatted fifths, ninths, whatever.

One day, Hatch played the tunes, blew the changes, paid Hank five dollars, took back the Trane albums he’d loaned Hank, waved Hank farewell, and shut the door firmly behind him.

PUT SPIN’S TAPE BACK IN, Hatch said. Take that shit out. His ears were exhausted from Abu’s raw beat dragging the music—
that I wrote, that I produced
—down in its flow.

Abu killed the music instantly, fingers pinching out a live match. He slapped in Spin’s tape. There. You happy!

Hatch made no reply. He shut his eyes. The speaker extended out of itself, slowly, gradually, sail-like. Sound approached, a distant train, faint, humming. Reached him in the darkness. Motion touched every cell of his body. He entered the blackness and found a space inside the accelerating music.

The lane went straight beneath the moon—the sky thick with stars, blurring the constellations on the rare chance that you could identify them—boarded on each side by shadow-thick trees, the branches like thick black cords, weighted under the heavy moon. Yes, tunnels of trees rose in night’s full leaf. You tried to feel with your feet as you walked. Paths first pale then invisible in the moonlight, felt rather than seen. Paths uneven as lumpy scars beneath your feet. (And after a rain, muddy potholes stewed booted feet.) Only Mr. Baron had the gift—this Peruvian Indian, adopted by German-American parents when but an infant, ever-present under his ridge-high Smokey the Bear hat (campaign hat, he called it), with his ever-present knife-straight tie, dark green to match the light green of his uniform. The only one who could negotiate the dark, the only one who knew the path without hesitation. The troop was guided by the compass of his eyes. It’s his Indian blood, they thought—he had that Indian-black hair, pomaded to keep it from blowing wild in the wind like a smoke signal; and he was short like most Indians but packed in white skin; when you thought Indian you thought red, least Pappa Simmons’s yellow-red skin in Porsha’s photographic words; the handlebar mustache also refused the word Indian; and he preferred a sleeping bag to a swinging, swinging hammock, though once or twice you saw him nap on the hard forest floor—stumbling, stretching out their direction-seeking arms like blind men.

Sang:

Saturday night. Tents arranged around the center of the camp where a fire burned. Each tent sat on a wooden platform, raftlike, and inside the tent, two rusty coffee cans, one filled with water, the other sand. Abu loved building the fire more than the fire itself. He collected more twigs of dead wood, dry brush, and grass than any other Scout. Built a house of wood on a foundation of four thick logs. You loved the fire. Quiet and dark. Explosions of dry rhythmic crackling rose in the dark through the black sky. And leaping flames that preceded the invading heat. Warmth and light. The troop sat in a circle on the ground, arms around knees pulling them close to the chest and drawing the circle tighter. Eating hot dogs and marshmallows flavored with smoke and grit. You felt the cool knees of the Scout next to you. Caught the pulse. Around the breathing body—red veins of smoke bleeding the night—someone issued the call, struck double syllabled song for the rankin session to begin.

That was Stumpy’s favorite song, Mr. Baron said.

Stumpy?

You saw Stumpy in the slim shadow of a tree trunk. You prodded the fire with a stick, roused clouds of soft brilliant sparks that sailed up into darkness. Stumpy melted in bark. Everybody in the camp knew the legend of Stumpy, but Mr. Baron spoke history, made him present, reminded the troop of the Scout who had lost his left arm under the accidental ax of a fellow Scout. For the last forty years, Stumpy had haunted Owassippee, choosing opportune moments to dismember Scouts with his double-headed ax, or freeze the red fearful blood in their hearts with his red eyes. Mr. Baron told the story to tenderfoot ears, novices.

Stumpy soared in the dim blue night air above the smoke.

Where does Stumpy live? Where does he live? The forest is his house.

You kicked the fire into blaze. The great red light strove and burst the sky aflame. Fire chased away the cold.

Platoon Leader Jones, Mr. Baron said.

Yes, sir? you said.

Are you trying to burn down the forest?

No, sir.

You let the fire die down. Cheeks puffed out, you had only to blow on the ashes where the pile of red sparks waited. Above the forest, Stumpy watched Owassippee, where flickering campfires shone like vast unsteady stars along the horizon.

Platoon Leader Jones, Mr. Baron said.

Yes, sir?

Keep charge. I have a meeting in the mess hall.

Yes, sir.

Mr. Baron lifted off of his haunches. The forest swallowed him.

Harris, you said.

Yes, Abu said.

Tend the fire.

Okay. Abu knelt down beside the fire, stick in hand.

The logs burned slowly with hot, invisible flames. The fire burned for warmth—Abu added dead limbs when ordered—firelight on faces.

Ding dong dong dong dong, you sang.

A ding
—

You hear that!

Yeah!

What was it?

Nothing.

It came from the woods.

Can you see anything?

No.

Make the fire brighter.

Yeah, make the fire brighter.

Abu made the fire brighter.

The troop draws out their knives. Whittle chips of wood, until the wood runs out. Whittle chips of song, until the song runs out. Chips of shadow, until the shadows run out. Chips of moon, until the moon runs out. And then, sliver by sliver, Stumpy’s dark body forms.

Look! Stumpy!

Help!

Night wafts in. And wind fans the fire. A red flame crawls out from under the white coals. Stumpy breaks through the comouflage of smoke.

Eyes closed, Hatch was better able to contemplate the entire course of his life. Abu had been there for most of it. Their years were one. Shadow of time. Shadow of blood. Morning and night, minute and month ran shapelessly together, the days rolling steadily beneath them, kith and kin.

MY NAME ABU. What’s your name?

Hatch.

Glad to meet you.

Hatch says nothing. He is not glad.

Where you live? The roly-poly boy with a soda-stained red clown mouth asks.

On Seventy-second Street between Constance and Bennett.

Hey, I live right round the corner from you.

Why he speaking to me? Why did he choose me? I don’t need nobody to play wit.

Yall live in a house?

No. A part ment. We got mice too.

Yall got mice?

Yeah. Do yall?

Yeah. You better watch out. Them mice grow into rats.

Damn you stupid. Don’t you know nothing? Mice ain’t no rats. They a different species.

Oh.

Hatch looks Abu over, needing bigger eyes to sight fully his fat. What’s that you wearin?

My uniform.

Uniform?

Uh huh.

You in ROTC or something?

Nawl. Kids can’t be in no ROTC. My dad was. I’m a Scout.

A what?

A Cub Scout?

That like a Boy Scout?

Yeah. And Weblos. Cept we little kids and they big.

Okay.

You want to become a Scout? Join my pack? Pack Five Hundred.

What’s a pack?

A group of bears.

Bears?

Baby bears.

Hatch thinks about it. Abu does look something like a baby bear. What I get if I join?

We go on trips, make fires, learn how to use a compass, recite our oath, go—

Is that all?

Abu watches Hatch for a moment. Well, my mother a den mother.