The Dying Crapshooter's Blues (33 page)

He took his first tiny sip of coffee. As he watched her putter about, what she'd said in the bedroom came back to him.

“Did you say Baker was outside?”

May Ida stepped to the table with his slice of toast. “Yes, he's in the car,” she murmured, and put the plate at his elbow.

“Well, my lord!” The Captain pushed the chair back and lurched to his feet with an angry glance, which she returned with a stare so chilly that it gave him a small start. She took it with her as she retreated from the table.

“Don't let the man sit out there in the cold,” he said, losing some of the snap in his voice.

When she didn't make a move, he went to the front door, opened it, and waved the corporal inside.

Baker lumbered up the walkway and followed the Captain into the kitchen, where he sat in vacant silence, keeping his coat and hat on like he was some peasant waiting for a train. The Captain finished his coffee and only half the slice of toast before heading to the bedroom to dress, leaving May Ida alone with the corporal. She gave Baker one brittle glance, then ignored him completely. She was relieved when her husband stepped into the kitchen doorway and waved the corporal to his feet. He did not say good-bye.

 

By the time they turned the corner onto Hunnicutt Street, the Captain had erased May Ida and everything except the important matters at hand from his thoughts.

Once he emerged from his hangover, he began to feel in his
bones that this was the day. It had been a long time coming, and on a risky path. As they rode into the city, he could picture how the last act would play out. Everything was in place. By sundown, all accounts would be settled, and in his favor. Just to be sure that nothing slowed him, he was carrying the rest of the paregoric in his coat pocket.

When they arrived at headquarters, he gave Baker his instructions and sent him on his way. Upstairs, he walked into the detectives' section to see Lieutenant Collins and Sergeant Nichols at their desks, along with a few of the other men. The lieutenant was in the process of organizing the prior night's arrest reports. Nichols didn't look up from the hopeless stack of files.

When Collins rose to follow his superior officer, the Captain waved him off. The reports would wait, and there was nothing he needed to know, anyway. He closed his office door behind him and crossed to his desk. Snatching up his telephone, he went about his first order of business, and called the administration desk at Fulton Tower with instructions regarding the prisoner Pearl Spencer.

 

The procession for Little Jesse's last ride began outside the Eaton Funeral Parlor on Nelson Street. It would take a route along Trinity then west over the bridge behind Terminal Station to West Side Cemetery, a walk of a little more than a mile.

It was cold enough for humans and horses to puff little clouds into the morning air. The congregation was all Negro, except for Joe and two other white men, rounders who knew Jesse and were too low-down to have to worry about color. As soon as the hearse started to roll, a woman with a good voice began a hymn. Much of the crowd joined in. This was against Jesse's wishes, but he couldn't exactly object, so once it started, it just went on. Willie walked with Joe, his guitar slung in front, his face etched in sadness.

Most of those in attendance knew Joe and nodded their greetings. Then they stared at the bruises. No one asked where they'd come from.

It took a half hour for the parade to wind through the lower streets and arrive at the entrance to the cemetery. Normally, it would have been an easy fifteen-minute walk. However, a number of those in the procession were still feeling the effects of drinking through the night and couldn't stay in a straight line.

Joe knew he shouldn't be taking the time, not with what he had hanging over him. But he'd never hear the end of it if he missed Jesse's funeral. And the truth was he didn't know where he'd go and what he'd be doing anyway. He'd been a step behind all the way and he wasn't going to catch up in the last twelve hours.

As they ambled along, he told Willie what had transpired that morning. The blind man was irked at Joe bluffing his way into the Tower.

“You're lucky you got out with your damn ass in one piece,” he said.

“Or anything else,” Joe quipped. “They got some hungry women in there.”

Willie snickered over that, then asked if Joe had figured anything more than he did the night before. Joe shrugged off the question; the less Willie knew, the better. All he would say was, “The Captain told me I have until tonight, and then it's all over. If I don't come up with anything, I'm done. I'll be back in jail. I can run, but he'd still have Pearl, and Sweet will get sent down to Milledgeville. That's the deal.”

Willie frowned and shook his head. They dropped the subject and walked on. Presently the stones of the cemetery appeared out of the mist, and the line snaked through the open gate and along the path to circle the fresh grave. The preacher who had been brought along respected Jesse's wishes and stayed to the back,
rocking on his heels and keeping his prayers to a whisper. So the late Mr. Williams did not quite escape blessings.

One by one, men and women stepped forward to speak a few words about the man in the pine box. Some of the testimonials were heartfelt, some were comic, others were delivered by people who seemed not to have known Jesse very well, and one or two others sounded baffled by the whole business, as if they had been swept along by the wake and didn't know where they were or what they were doing there.

Joe and Willie stood back, listening to these bleary eulogies. The sun had broken through the clouds and dappled the brown grass and gray and white stones with patches of pale light.

“You gonna say something?” Willie murmured in Joe's ear.

“Just as well if I don't,” Joe said. “But it's about time you stepped up there.”

“I suppose that's right,” the blind man said, and started through the crowd. Everyone made way.

Joe watched as Willie shared a joke with Jesse, plowing toward the grave as if he had no sense of space and might fall in. Murmurs of concern rose up and a couple people stepped forward to catch him. Of course, Willie had located the edge of the grave exactly and stopped with his toes hanging over it.

The crowd fell silent. With the slow wind at his back, Willie strummed the first minor chord and sang “The Dying Crapshooter's Blues,” just as he'd promised.

For all the friends, enemies, and strangers Joe had seen laid to rest, it still affected him in a grim way. At the same time, a fair share of the Negroes at the graveside chose instead to celebrate the passing over into a better land, and to a glory that was beyond this vale of woe.

Still, he couldn't imagine Little Jesse in an afterlife being anything other than the same rounder he had been on the streets of Atlanta. Something about him in a gown of white sateen with
little wings attached and a halo over his nappy head didn't fit. Joe closed his eyes for a moment and smiled at the image.

As he mused about Jesse, he was aware of Willie's sweet tenor with the textured guitar beneath it and the lyric retelling of his final moments.

 

What broke Jesse's heart,

Why he was blue and all alone

Sweet Lorena had packed up and gone . . .

 

Something caught, like a windblown rag on a bare branch. Joe recalled sitting at Jesse's bedside and seeing the look on his face as he mourned a lost love, mourned his own fading life, mourned the life he was leaving behind. He had looked Joe right in the eye.
You know how a woman can break your heart, Joe.
Joe supposed he did know, though maybe not the way Jesse had meant it. One woman had wounded him almost thirty years ago, and it was true that he had never really gotten over it.

Jesse would claim that any female was capable of inflicting such heartache. Was that what he meant with that piercing stare? Joe would never know; it was another question unanswered.

Willie finished his song. It was followed by a murmur of low voices as the crowd broke apart. Some of them would make their way back to Jesse's rooms for one more round of drinking and carousing. Soon, tomorrow probably, the landlord would come around to sell off or give away whatever was left. Other than that, Little Jesse Williams wouldn't even leave a shadow.

 

They ran into Martha as they made their way out of the cemetery. She looked particularly bereaved, her back bent under the weight of her grief, and Joe felt sorry for her. Of all the women, she was the one who seemed to have loved Jesse truly, and so would most mourn his passing. She would never betray him, not like Lorena in the song, or any other—

“Mr. Joe,” she greeted him as they came up alongside her. “Willie.”

“I'm sorry for your loss,” Willie said.

“I'm sorry, too,” Martha said faintly. “Don't know what I'm gon' do now.”

They walked on in silence and didn't stop or speak until they got to the street and had to wait for the now-empty hearse wagon to pass by.

Martha sighed and said, “I jes' keep thinking that if he'd have gone to jail like he was s'posed to, ain't none of this would have happened. He'd be locked up, but at least he'd be alive.”

Joe didn't know what she was talking about. “Jail for what?”

“For running that game.”

“When was this?”

“About . . . a month ago? Somethin' like that.”

“But he's been running games for years. Everybody does it.”

“All I know is they came and busted it up,” she said. “And then they took him in. I went to see him in his cell. He thought he was a goner. Said they told him they was gonna th'ow away the damn key. But then later on that same day, they drop the charges and let him go free. They'd a kept him, he'd be alive right now.”

“You remember who arrested him?”

“No, I don't know nothing else about it,” Martha said.

Joe was curious. It was the first time he'd heard this, and it didn't make sense. Why break up a game in the first place? There were dozens of them running every night, all over the city. At the worst, some cops looking for cash so they could buy lunch or a bottle of beer might come by, get their money, and go. All the big games paid regular graft to the beat patrolmen.

The wagon passed, its wheels creaking. Instead of stepping into the street, Martha stood looking back toward the grave site.

“Don't none of it matter no more, does it?” she said. “He's gone.”

She didn't seem inclined for company, so Joe and Willie left her standing there as they started the trek back into the city.

 

They came to let Pearl out at 11:40. The matrons, the same two who had brought her in, walked her to the desk to collect a paper sack of the clothes she had been wearing when she came in, and made her change right there in front of them, watching with their porcine eyes. She noticed that her jewelry, two rings and a silver bracelet, had disappeared, and knew better than to say anything about it.

All the way to the door, she was sure she would hear a shout and feel rough hands that would drag her back inside to spend now and forever in that place. Then she was standing on Hunter Street, and her feet were carrying her back downtown, and she got lost in the morning crowd, her shoulders hunched and head bent to the sidewalk.

She had been unable to eat what little of the awful food they gave her, especially after the Captain's visit, and her stomach was wrenching. Still, she was desperate to find Joe. After his stunt at the Tower early that morning, she was afraid he would try something else just as reckless and drag them all into deeper trouble.

So she headed for the Hampton. As she made her way along, a momentary reverie overtook her, and she imagined him next to her, his head on the pillow, his face soft and pale with sleep. It was dark and quiet, with only the sound of raindrops tapping the windowpanes, and it seemed that time had stopped.

Someone passing by jostled her and she snapped out of it. She was coming up Peachtree Street and crossing Poplar when she was startled to see a familiar gray coat as the man from her daydream appeared, cutting at an angle through the busy traffic to her side of the street. She felt a rush of relief and thought to call out, then caught herself. What if someone was watching? Better to follow him and wait for the right moment.

A half block on, he turned into James Street, a short and narrow thoroughfare. He was halfway to the next corner and she was just about to call his name when she saw a white woman with wide hips and jutting bosom step out the back door of Rich's Department Store. The woman barely glanced at Joe, but then moved casually in his direction. Pearl read instantly from their postures that they were meeting, though neither one spoke a word or made a gesture of greeting.

She watched Joe stroll past the woman, who waited until he had gone on another twenty paces before following behind. She felt her gut churn. Joe Rose, her
hero,
was meeting a woman, a fancy white woman, while she was supposed to be locked up in the Tower.

She seethed, imagining how the tryst would unfold. He would lead the woman in a loop around the block and through the side streets to the back door of the Hampton. She would find her way upstairs and into the same bed in which Pearl had laid not thirty-six hours before. The thought of it made her want to kill the both of them.

The moment passed and she got hold of herself. She couldn't afford to cause a scene. And as she calmed down, she noticed that there was something not quite right about this little interlude, and in a sudden moment it came to her who the woman was and why she was meeting Joe in that place. She went through it in quick jumps, frightened about what it meant and yet spellbound by the intricate drama—a spider's web. She knew what he was doing, and knew she would have to let it happen. There was no other choice. Sadly, he was doing it for her.