Straight Life (9 page)

(Benny Carter) I was greatly impressed by Art's talent, his sound, his concept of playing lead, and his creative ideas. He was a handsome, clean-cut, and most mannerly boy with a very affable disposition. I wasn't aware at all of Art drinking heavily or using drugs. I liked him and have only positive memories of him at that time.

THANKS to Benny, when I got with Stan I was able to play lead. But while it had been possible to play solos by ear with Benny, with Stan things were different. He had a syncopated style, very original; things were built on an eighth note, three quarter notes, and another eighth note. It wasn't easy to hear when you played a solo, and it got increasingly difficult. Finally, when we played the first record date that we did, on Capitol Records, and I did a solo on "Harlem Folk Dance," it was just impossible. That's when I realized I had to learn something about chord structure and the theory of music, so I started asking the guys in the band, "What happens with this? What happens with that?" And I gradually learned to read the chords. Red Dorris helped me a lot. He played tenor and sang with the band. He sang on that first date "Do Nothin' Til You Hear From Me."

Patti came to the jobs. She never did anything to excess. Sometimes she'd have a drink, and later on she smoked a little pot, but all she cared about was making love to me and watching me play. There I was. I had been a child living in my fantasies. Now I was a married man making lots of money. One of the first things I did, when I was still with Benny Carter, I took Patti downtown and bought her a watch with diamonds and emeralds. I remember that watch cost me a hundred and seventy-five dollars, almost a month's salary. I'd buy her sexy panties and when we were riding on the bus I'd put my hand up under her dress when nobody was looking. We'd play games. Sometimes I'd make her pay her own way on the bus and we'd sit in separate seats like strangers. Then I'd start talking to her. We'd end up getting off the bus together and all the people would see it; it was so obvious. Guys would watch: "I didn't think she was that kind of a girl! He must have a great line." I'd look back and they'd all be staring. We were living down toward Los Angeles, downtown. We'd wander around and see an old hotel or one of those apartment houses and walk in the front door and down the hallway. We'd sneak into the hall bathroom, lock the door, and lie down on the floor and make love.

We'd go to the market together, and coming home I would slow up and walk behind her. We did this so many times and neither of us ever did anything to ruin it. I'd say, "Oh, pardon me, young lady, do you live around here?" She'd say, "Yes, I live down the street with my husband." And I'd say, "I thought so because I've seen you and you sure are beautiful." She'd say, "You shouldn't say that because I'm a married woman." I'd say, "I just can't help it. You're so gorgeous. I'd give anything in the world if I could make love to you." I'd walk home with her. She'd go up to the house and look in. She'd come back and say, "Well, my husband isn't home. I don't know where he's at. I guess you could come in. You could maybe kiss me or something." I'd get all excited. We'd go in. I'd put my arms around her. I'd kiss her. Then she would say, "Please stop. I told you I'd give you a kiss but that's all. I'm sorry, because you are a nice boy; you are handsome; and if I wasn't married . . . " I'd say, "Oh, please, please, please! Anything you want I'll give you. I'll do anything. Just let me look at you. Just let me look at your breasts." "Don't say that!" "Oh, please!" "Will you promise that's all you'll ask of me?" "I promise. I swear." So she'd pull up her sweater and take her brassiere off and stand there posing with her titties hanging out. And I'd ask if I could just touch them....

I used to like to scare her, too. She'd go to the store and I'd hide in the closet. She'd come home and she'd shout, "Art? Where are you? Come on, Art, please. I know you're here." Then I'd start making noises. Growling. She'd say, "Come on out. Don't act silly. Please!" And she was always scared. I'd sneak out of the closet, and she'd turn around, and there I'd be with this horrible Frankenstein look I had. She'd say, "Oh stop it, honey, please." I'd yell, "Hhhrrruuuuuaaaahhh!" And she'd shriek, "Stop that!" I'd be coming toward her with my hands in front of me; I'd be jumping-little, fast, jump-steps. I'd be bouncing and I'd have this horrible look on my face. She'd scream, "Stop that!" And she'd start running. "Stop that, Art!" I'd be bouncing after her, "Pt-pt-pt-pt." She'd be hysterical. I'd chase her all around the room, into the kitchen and into the bathroom, and she'd scream, "Please! Please!" Finally, I'd kiss her, and everything would be alright.

I was doing well. People were getting to know me in the music business. I was starting to get a little following. And I was in love-after seventeen years of loneliness. I knew it couldn't last. Then, one day in the latter part of 1943, after six months of marriage, I got my greetings from Uncle Sam.

4

The Army

1944-1946

THAT WAR was a real war. Every day the papers had casualty lists showing thousands of Americans killed. You'd go to movies and see newsreels of bodies. I was praying for some miracle. I was just one little person. Maybe they'd make a mistake and overlook me. And then I got the greetings.

I wish I could describe the feeling. It was as if I'd been given six months of happiness and now I was going to be killed. I did everything in my power to get out of it. I wanted to fail the physical so I kept taking the strips and bennies and drinking. I'd get in the shower on a cold night, put my clothes on, and, still soaking wet, walk around the block barefoot so I'd catch TB or something. I stopped eating. I stayed up for days at a time. I ran into a chiropractor. He checked my heart. I had a slight murmur, and he said I didn't have anything to worry about. He wrote a long letter to the draft board to take with me when I went to my physical. I didn't know that the word of a chiropractor is valueless, so I paid him and continued my escapades, and when I went to my physical I was so weak I could hardly get to the place. I went through the first part; they tell you to touch your toes fifteen or twenty times and they listen to your heart. I touched my toes once and was going down the second time and blacked out and nearly fell over. My heart was pounding, and I thought I had it made, but it didn't work out that way.

I was inducted into Fort MacArthur on February 11, 1944. My dad drove me down, and I went in. I was a loner. Even playing with the bands, I was a loner. The only times I could act out or talk were when I was drunk. Sober I was completely cut off. Now I was in the army. I had trouble going to the bathroom; I couldn't urinate in front of people. I couldn't do the other thing.

I stayed at Fort MacArthur having physical examinations and being miserable, and then they sent me to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. You took seventeen weeks' basic training to prepare you for overseas. We did everything imaginable at Fort Sill. We marched. We drilled. We scrubbed. It was a field artillery base so we fired all kinds of weapons. Whit, one of my stepfathers, had taught me how to shoot a .22, and I was an excellent shot. I got an expert's medal. After that we threw hand grenades, and then we went through obstacle courses, climbing ropes, and infiltration courses with barbed wire around them. You crawl up onto the course from a trench and you have to stay flat on the ground because .50-caliber machine guns are being fired over your head, four feet in the air. If you raised up, you'd get killed. They had holes with land mines, and the land mines would explode, so you'd feel as if you were in battle. Since we were in Oklahoma there were water moccasins and copperhead snakes. They used to crawl down on the course, and a couple of people were killed while I was there because they ran into a snake, flipped out, stood up, and got shot. You go through it twice in the daytime and once at night, and at night every fourth or fifth bullet in the machine gun clip is a tracer, which means it lights up. You could see these flashing bullets going over your head.

The only other person that wasn't from the south in my platoon of seventy-eight men was a guy named Dennis from Kansas. All the rest of them were from Texas and Oklahoma and Arkansas, and they really disliked northerners and me especially because I was from California-"Hollywood" they called it. They used to make fun of me so I got into a lot of fights.

Dennis was a real towhead with cowlicks and everything, a Dennis-the-Menace type kid; he was open for anything; he just wanted to have fun; and we liked each other. We used to go into town on weekends, Lawton, Oklahoma. They only had threetwo beer, but you could get drunk on it, and every now and then you'd run into a bootlegger who'd have whiskey or gin smuggled in from Texas.

One night Dennis and I went to town and really got wiped out. We came back to the post at about two or three o'clock in the morning and went into the latrine, a big, separate building out in front with showers and rows of toilets and rows and rows of sinks. There was nobody in there but us, so we started acting crazy. We were so uptight and frustrated we started knocking things down. We broke things. Then we took the toilet paper out of the supply room and threw it all over and we lit it; it really started to blaze. We didn't know what to do then, so we ran out. We snuck out of the latrine and into our barracks.

Reveille rang in the morning. They'd blow a bugle. The sergeants screamed at you to get up. You threw your clothes on, ran out of the barracks, and lined up in the little parade ground. Each group of barracks had their own parade ground out in the middle. We ran out, me and Dennis, really hung over. We lined up and looked at the latrine. It was a mess. It hadn't burned to the ground but it was burned bad. They had roll call. Then the lieutenant came. The captain came. They started wigging out to see who had done it, and everybody in our platoon looked around at me and Dennis. They said they'd better find out who did it or the whole company would be put on quarantine; there'd be no passes. They dismissed us, and then when we started to go back into the barracks our platoon surrounded us. They said, "Where were you guys last night? We know you did it. You're the only guys that would do anything like that."

We all went to the latrine and we all had to clean. Everybody kept ranking us, accusing us. Finally I flipped out. I remember saying, "I didn't do it, but I wish I had! That's what I think of you bastards!" They tore our clothes off and threw us in the shower. They gave us a "GI bath" with strong brown soap with lye in it and scrubbed us with big brushes made out of wood sticks. We were hollering and fighting, and finally I told 'em, "Yeah, I did it, you motherfuckers!" Then somebody came and stopped it, one of the officers. And so they put us on KP for a couple of weeks. From then on it was open warfare, me and Dennis against the rest of the platoon.

When I first got to Fort Sill I used to cry at night and think, "How can it be? How can I be here?" I couldn't believe that this could be happening to me. I couldn't believe that I might die with these people I hated.

Before you finish basic training you're allowed a visit. The family chipped in, and Patti came to Lawton. I hadn't seen her for three months. It's hard for regular soldier's wives to get rooms in towns like that; if you're not an officer they think you're scum. But Patti had such a nice way about her, she talked a lady into renting her a room in a house in town, and finally the night came for me to go to her.

We had had an especially hard day. I'd had to go over an obstacle course, climbing and running and doing all sorts of outrageous things. I took a shower and cleaned up. I was all excited. I got a bottle of something and went to town; I went to the place and the lady of the house came to the door, a nice southern lady with the accent and everything. I introduced myself and then Patti appeared at the top of the stairs. She had a silky, clinging dress on with all kinds of colors in it; it set off her white skin. She was wearing those high-heeled pumps that made her legs look so pretty, and her hair was just hanging down. Her eyes were glowing and glistening and she was smiling. And when she smiled she had little dimples that showed. Her face looked like a child's.

I was so happy to see her. I couldn't stand to have anything to do with the girls I'd see in town. One time I was drinking some beer in a bar, and this little chick that looked nice came up to me and said hello, and we talked, and for a moment it was pleasant, and then she called me "Joe." I said, "What did you call me that for?" She said, "Well,-that's what we call you soldier boys." I said, "I'm not a soldier boy!" I got so angry I wanted to strangle her. Joe! I'm not Joe! So seeing Patti I was seeing someone that was mine, somebody I meant something to, and it was wonderful.

We went into the room and had a couple of drinks. We talked and kissed and Patti told me how worried everybody was and how unbearable it was for her: she was so lonely. She cried. Then we got into bed and started making love. Up to this time, so that she wouldn't get pregnant, I had pulled out. I assumed that that was what I would do this time, and when I felt I couldn't keep from coming I told her, "I'm going to come!" But as soon as I said that she threw her legs up over my back and held me, and she threw her arms around me and grabbed me, and she had so much strength, and it had been so long since we'd made love, and I was so passionate, and I was fighting her to get out of her, and I couldn't do it, and so I came. And I remember thinking how marvelous it felt and what a shame we couldn't always do it that way. And I thought, maybe just this one time, maybe nothing will happen, maybe she won't get pregnant. But I knew that she would. I knew as soon as it happened that she was going to get pregnant. She held me and told me that they had decided she had to have a baby. My folks had told her to force me to come in her in case anything should happen to me overseas-so there'd be something left of me. And she said that that was what she wanted.

I felt awful because I didn't want to have children. I knew that I didn't want to have any children. I had even gone through one of those operations because I didn't want to have any children, ever; I didn't want to share Patti with a child. I knew I wouldn't make a good parent.

The doctor who performed the vasectomy had been a friend of Patti's mother's. He had tried to talk me out of it, but I told him, "Man, I want it done!" I got on the operating table, and I had no anaesthetic. They shaved me, put Mercurochrome all over me, and then he made an incision in my testicle. The pain was beyond description. He pulled out the cord with some prongs, and he took a needle filled with Novacain, and all the time I'm going through this the doctor's got someone he's showing how he does the operation. I can hear them talking. This person says, "Isn't the pain bad?" And the doctor says, "Well, it's just for a moment, and this is the best way, really, to nullify it. From then on, once you get the needle into the cord ... " And so he stuck it in, and after a while it took effect, but while I was still pulsating from the pain he started interrogating me. I'm delerious, and he's asking little questions. Finally he said, "When's your birthday? How old will you be?" So he discovered that I wasn't eighteen, and he couldn't perform the operation. He sewed me back up without cutting the cord. I didn't know. I waited to have the test that would tell whether I was sterile or not, and at last he told Patti, and she told me.

I waited until I was eighteen and went back to the same doctor to have him perform the same operation. He cut the cord this time, but he didn't cut a piece out of it. He tucked it underneath a membrane, in case I changed my mind, so it could be repaired. The cord found itself back together. And later, when I gave a sample of my sperm to see if I was sterile, I wasn't.

Twice was all the courage I could muster. I couldn't go through that thing again. But you can see how I felt about having a child, and when I realized that Patti was going to get pregnant I was really angry. I was mad at my folks and at her. That was the only time I came in her, that one time, and she went back to Los Angeles, and she was pregnant.

When I finished basic training they shipped me to Camp Butner, North Carolina, and put me in the combat engineers. And while I was at Camp Butner I heard that Benny Carter's band was going to be in Durham, and they were having their concert on a Saturday night when I'd be free.

I went into Durham and found the auditorium. I bought a ticket. I noticed the ticket said "loge." I said, "What's the loge?" The guy tells me, "That's upstairs." I said, "I used to be with this band: they're old friends of mine and I'd like to be close to the stand, where I can say hello to them." The guy says, "Well, you can't do that. Whites aren't allowed downstairs." When Benny had told me I couldn't go with the band down south I didn't understand it. I had been all around Central Avenue for years as a kid. I couldn't understand what he was talking about, and my eyes were still closed at this time. I was shocked, and I tried to argue with the guy, but he said, "You either take a loge ticket or you don't go in."

I went in and took my seat. I looked downstairs. The whole bottom floor was black. The people upstairs were white. The band started playing, and I started drinking, and finally I just walked downstairs because I had to see them. I snuck through the dancefloor. I walked real fast and as I approached the stand I could feel the people staring at me, and then they started moving and all of a sudden they just closed me in. All of a sudden there was a circle of black people around me and they were saying, "What are you doing down here? What are you doing down here, white boy?" I said, "I used to play with this band. I want to say hello." They said, "You get outta here!" And they all started yelling. One guy screamed, "You killed my grandparents, you son-of-a-bitch, you white bastard! You beat my grandparents to death, you son-of-a-bitch!" I said, "I didn't kill anybody! I didn't do anything!" But they kept raving, so I got mad. I shouted, "I don't want to hear any of your fuckin' shit! I didn't do anything to you!" Someone said, "You better get outta here, boy, if you know what's good for you!" I said, "Fuck you all, man!" They grabbed me and one guy hit me in the back; another punched me, and I was screaming and swinging around; by this time I was close to the bandstand and the people taking the tickets saw what was happening and rushed out. I was raging, "I used to play with this band!" I think I hollered, "Benny!" And he jumped off the stand and ran down there. The ushers were saying, "You've got to get out of here! Someone's gonna kill you!" Benny comes up to me and says, "Oh, man!" I said, "What is this? What kind of shit is this? I just wanted to say hello!" He said, "This is what I was talking about before. I thought you knew about these things." I was crying by this time. They despised me. They wanted to kill me. Benny said, "There's nothing I can do, man. Come around after. We'll see you outside, around by the bus." The ushers escorted me out.