The Jazz Palace (14 page)

Hannah shook her head. She knew it wasn't just drink that made the dark bile pour out of her son with the stench of sulfur. “He must have eaten sausage from the filthy Poles.” Hannah spoke in Yiddish, which was her language for secrets and curses, and Leo seemed to believe her. But even Hannah didn't believe that this was just from eating something in the street. This must be the devil's work. Someone had cast a spell on her son. She made him packs of ground onions, cayenne, and baking soda to draw the sweat. She spoon-fed him warm milk laced with honey to coat his stomach and this he kept down. The next day she fed him chicken broth.

For three days he rocked from side to side. His head was going to split in two. He felt as if his insides were gone. Even in his delirium, he swore he'd never smoke reefer. He vowed he would never touch another drink. Hannah watched him, troubled by what had become of her boy. Leo sat with Hannah at their son's side. When he was well enough to work, Leo made one concession. He wouldn't put Benny on the floor where he could ruin his hands. But he wouldn't give his son the South Side either. He kept him on the Near North where his caps went to bakeries, not saloons.

Then one wintry day a delivery boy called in sick, and Leo had nobody to make the run down to the stockyards so he told Benny to go. It had been months since Benny had walked those bloody streets. Even in the cold wind off the lake he smelled the rotting meat. Blocks away, Benny heard the animal cries. As he brought his caps to the loading dock, the black workers taunted him. “Hey, honky, where ya been?”

“To hell and back,” Benny shouted at them. When he finished his run, he took the “el” north, but only as far as Thirty-First Street. Buttoning his jacket and pulling his cap down against the blistery chill he walked the icy streets to the tavern. Twice he slipped on black ice and almost fell. He came to the door, but it was padlocked. He looked around, up and down the alley. Perhaps he had the wrong place. He knocked hard. But no one was there.

A woman stuck her head out of the window upstairs. He'd never seen her before. She said that those other people were gone and good riddance to them. “Nothing but trouble.” She told him to get out of here, too, and she spat down at him.

Benny stepped off the curb to avoid her spit and walked back over to State. Honey Boy and Velvet were gone, making him wonder if they'd ever really been there. He started walking and kept heading north. On his way he passed the redbrick building that seemed to offer people a second chance and read the inscription above the door.
TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE; THERE ALL HONOR LIES
. It was Jane Addams's Hull House. Pausing, he heard music coming from inside. The sweet sound of the clarinet. Another Benny was taking lessons there. He was only eight years old, but in six years he'd be playing with a band. “My namesake,” Benny Lehrman would one day joke. Another Chicago white boy, Benny Goodman, was practicing inside.

That night he sat down at his mother's piano and played a perfunctory Beethoven, but his fingers kept slipping into honky-tonk. Hungry, he went to his mother's pantry. Rummaging through he found a jar of poppy seeds. Benny reached his hand in and pulled out a fistful. He thrust them into his mouth. They were gritty between his teeth, but the black seeds tasted crunchy and sweet. He licked his hand clean.

Over the years Pearl had taken to ignoring her birthday. While other siblings celebrated theirs with cakes and cards, Pearl had chosen to forget about hers. It was a date filled with sadness and grief and, since she seemed content to let it pass unnoticed, her brothers and sisters tended to forget it as well. She no longer thought much about why she didn't celebrate or that she'd even had one in the first place. She viewed the birthdays of others with their cakes and gifts, their parties and songs, as curiosities, rituals, as foreign as Christmas. But each July she became aware of some subtle change that was taking place in her life that she marked silently, without fanfare, simply acknowledging herself to be one year older than she'd been the day before.

But now Pearl felt herself easing into womanhood. Her body was plump but firm, filling in her blouses and her dresses. Her periods came every thirty days with the full moon, the same as Opal and Ruby, with whom she still shared a bed. When she paused to admire herself in front of the long mirror Anna had kept in the hall, Pearl saw her trim waist, her ample breasts. She wore long green or gray dresses, cinched at the waist. Her skin was clear and olive, and she made a point of staying out of the sun except when she went to the lake. Her lips were full and so red she didn't need lipstick, not that she would dare to wear any. Every morning her sister, Fern, who had
just opened a beauty salon in a colored neighborhood, ran a brush through Pearl's sleek, black hair, then pinned it for her on top of her head. Pearl liked what she saw.

It was a hot summer, but Pearl couldn't go to the beach. That July a black boy named Eugene Williams was floating on his back, his eyes closed, relaxing in Lake Michigan. He didn't notice that he drifted onto a white Chicago beach where he was struck with a stone and drowned. The riots that ensued tore the city apart. White thugs beat black youths with baseball bats. An old white lady was dragged off a bus and had her head bashed in. Pearl couldn't get the image of that boy out of her mind. His startled face, his hands groping, flailing. Gasping for breath. At times she thought about drowning. What it would be like to feel the tug of the water on you, pulling you down? Your lungs filling with water?

The White Sox were losing the World Series and some suspected they were throwing it. In a year women would vote. Meanwhile men had discovered that women enjoyed pleasure, and F. Scott Fitzgerald declared that the Jazz Age had begun. The praying women who'd flung themselves on the floors of saloons and beat their breasts for temperance won. In the fall the Volstead Act was passed and the city dumped gallons of beer into the river. The police commissioner posed with giant padlocks he intended to bolt on saloon doors. Clubs were raided and closed, only to be reopened hours later on “technicalities.”

As bulletins were posted on telephone poles, Lev Walenski, the butcher, wept at the bar, cursing his wife who was marching through the streets, waving the banners of her victory. Mrs. Baum's dead husband appeared for what he assumed was his last drink. Bud Hansen and Bert Winkler placed bets on what the Chimbrovas would do. As the neighborhood mulled over public notices, and Moss and Jonah debated whether to turn Chimbrova's into a café that served tea and finger sandwiches, Pearl was upstairs making curtains out of green damask. She had learned well in the hours she'd spent listening to the ragtime and jazz that seeped up from the saloon. More and more musicians were moving north.

Since the day she'd dissuaded her mother from drowning her and
Opal in the lake she'd come to love, Pearl had a plan. While Jonah pondered how the family would live, Pearl saw the opportunity. The rallying cries of the suffragettes inspired her. Women would soon be voting. Why couldn't she run a business? She was good at math and she had an ear for music. Sometimes she knew when the piano was flat even before Vlado Slovak, their soused piano tuner who got his drinks on the house. She'd come to know when a musician had great chops and when he didn't. She hadn't spent years on the stairwell listening to Napoleon blow without learning a few things.

Since Anna's death the year before, the candy shop had been neglected. Even when she was alive, she lost interest. Anna, who'd never recovered from the loss of her boys, didn't seem to die as much as fade away. The lemon drops and sassafras balls left in their glass jars had turned into sugary bricks. Dust coated the counters. Doing what her mother never would have approved, Pearl had her brothers build a sturdy door with a slot that slid open between the candy shop and the saloon. This way they could see whoever was trying to get in. They could also bolt it shut if need be. If barbershops and shoe repairs and, Pearl had heard, even police stations were fronts for saloons, why not Anna's candy shop? Pearl had the candy jars scrubbed, the counters washed clean. She set Opal to work making sponge taffy and peppermint canes.

With the death benefit they'd received from Western Electric, Pearl convinced her brothers to refurbish the bar with Honduran mahogany. They put in a rococo glass chandelier and purchased French bistro tables and chairs that she placed along the wall. They had the oak floors polished and a small raised platform built, large enough to hold the piano, drums, and some horn players. Above the bar Pearl hung that old picture of her mother standing in front of the first Ferris wheel at the 1893 World's Fair.

Off to one side Pearl created a space for dancing, but not too large because dancing would cut down on the drinking. They hired a small band that came with a redheaded cabaret singer named Fifi La Belle who went from table to table singing “Yes, We Have No Bananas” and “I'll See You in My Dreams.” If the saloon was to earn a living, its customers needed to sit and drink, and Fifi kept
them in their chairs. Then Pearl made a deal with a druggist around the corner who was selling bathtub gin from his back room, and deliveries began on a regular basis to the saloon.

Pearl entreated Ruby who was by now always sketching and drawing to paint a mural in honor of her brothers who had drowned. She wanted a forest scene, filled with birds and wild things. And scattered on the forest floor, as if from a jeweler's pouch, would be the semiprecious stones. The gem sisters. Opal, Ruby, and Pearl. Ruby began sketching while Pearl removed the old
CHIMBROVA'S SALOON AND SWEETS
sign that had hung in front of the saloon since their father had run it years before. She wanted to give the place a real name and decided to call it the Night Owl Saloon in honor of a tune Napoleon had written for her when she was a frightened, insomniac girl.

When Napoleon came in one night after hours, Pearl told him the new name. Thinking he'd be pleased, she was surprised when he frowned. “You can't call it that.” He rubbed the gris-gris bag around his neck. “It's bad luck. It's bad for my music.”

Pearl remembered her own mother who spat into the air to keep evil away. “Well, what should I call it then?”

Napoleon took a look around. He gazed at the mural with the woodland plants and birds, the magical, twisted trees, and the shore that opened to the lake. Boats painted into the sky. Musical instruments woven in. Mirrors that reflected the gold and silver strobe. The bandstand with the set of drums, the old upright piano. “Ain't no place that looks like this one. Looks like a jazz palace,” Napoleon said. “That's as good a name as any if you ask me.”

And Pearl agreed. While no sign would hang above the door, soon everyone on the North Side knew where the Jazz Palace was, and anyone you asked could direct you there.

The posters of shrieking women and swarthy men graced the walls of the Regency Theater. Most of these posters had been up for years. Benny had walked by them dozens of times, so it wasn't the posters that made him pause. It was the sign taped across one of them.
PIANO PLAYER WANTED
.

Milo Peyton, who was chief operator, ticket taker, and projectionist, explained to Benny as he purchased his tickets that the woman with the chopsticks in her hair had quit abruptly the week before and given no notice. Benny sat through the silent film, made all the more silent because no one played the trills, but he couldn't concentrate on the movie. It was a boring series of images, building pointlessly on the next, without tunes to hold it together. When the film was over, Benny went up to Milo Peyton and asked if he'd hired a new piano player. “It's better with music.”

“Don't you think I know that, kid. But after all these years that gal just walked out on me. Know anyone who can?” Peyton asked, chewing on an unlit cigar.

Benny took a deep breath. “Well, I play…,” he said.

Peyton knew Benny. He'd been coming there for years. Peyton considered himself someone who had an eye for such things and doubted that the boy could play honky-tonk rags. “Is that so?” Peyton
said to humor him. “Okay, let's give it a try.” Peyton put on the house lights. “Play something for me.”

“You mean, right now?” Under the harsh lights Benny saw how shabby the Regency was with its tattered sheet, its crumbling walls covered in a coat of black paint. Dust and soot and stale popcorn coated the floor.

“Now's as good a time as any.” Peyton spat onto the floor. He went to the projector and put on a film that Benny had seen half a dozen times before. Then he snapped off the house lights and sat back to listen. In the dark room, illumined only by the light from the projector, Benny fumbled with the greasy, yellowed keys which sounded flat; a few of them stuck. He didn't think he could get much sound. He struck a chord, did a glide. He smelled Peyton sitting in the first row of folding chairs. Though Benny couldn't see him, he could hear Peyton's foot tapping the floor. Benny wanted to forget about him. He didn't want to think about someone sitting there.

On the screen a girl on her way home paused at the railroad tracks, looking both ways. The man crouched beside a shack, eyeing her. Benny looked for a rhythm to follow along. Nervously he tried to remember some of the first numbers he ever learned. As he worked his way through “Maple Leaf Rag,” Peyton coughed and shifted in his seat. Benny ground his way through a few other Joplin numbers and went on to popular tunes he thought Peyton would like to hear. He played through “Livery Stable Blues” and a little “Darktown Strutters' Ball.”

An amber light flared in the darkness as Peyton lit his cigar. But Benny didn't care about Peyton or the bitter smell of cigar smoke that filled the air. He was listening to himself play. His sound lay dead by the side of the road. How soon could he get out of here? He flubbed notes, missed chords as Peyton puffed on his cigar. At any moment Benny expected Peyton to walk out of the room. He would if he had to sit there. Benny moved on to a few numbers Honey Boy had played. He improvised on the melodies he'd heard in the garbage-strewn alley of the South Side. But none of them felt right.

Benny stopped and shook out his hands. He took a deep breath. He forgot about what he was doing there. He picked up the sounds
he'd heard on the Stroll, but then he took off and went beyond what he remembered. The movie danced in black and white against the sheet. The girl let herself into her house. The villain followed. Benny anticipated a fall, a dive, a plunge, a knock, a clap, a scream. The refrains weren't written down and didn't seem to come from anywhere. He was inside a globe like a paperweight and around him the music swirled, shaking, and what had been outside was inside of him now. It didn't matter if someone was listening or if he was alone. He moved away from a world where mistakes happened and things went wrong. A mistake was just his next chord. He went wherever it took him—out of this dingy building, out past the city and into the world.

When the film ended, Benny sat back, trembling. He was out of breath as if he'd been running for miles. When he looked up, Peyton was sitting very still. He didn't speak until he was sure Benny was done. “Come back tomorrow and I'll run a few more pictures for you. You gotta work on your slaps and claps. The sound of somebody falling down. Playing with the picture. Practice a little; then you start next week. You work nights and weekends and matinees. I'll give you a penny on every two bits I earn,” Peyton said. “The more people who come here, the more you get.”

“That's it?” Benny asked, incredulous. “I have the job?”

“That's right. You have the job. But you can't be late and you can't miss a show.” They shook hands, and that was the deal.

I
t was dark as Benny made his way home. He'd gone into the theater during the day, and now it was night. There was a lightness in his step as he hummed. With his palms he made a clap noise, a knock, a slap. He'd dredge these sounds from the piano. He would do this job for a few months and then, when he had some real experience, he'd take his red suitcase and his friend Moe and get out of town. They'd go to St. Louis. Or New York. Maybe down to New Orleans. And they'd make music.

Benny wondered how he'd tell his father that he was leaving the job at the factory. He'd found another one, and it was something he wanted to do. For years now it had seemed to Benny that there
was no reason not to do what one wanted in this world. He would explain to his father that he planned to play piano in a darkened movie house. And a man named Milo Peyton would pay Benny to do it.

But Benny never had the opportunity to tell his father because, when he walked in, he found him in the living room, the newspaper folded on his lap. “Benny, sit down,” his father said. “I need to talk to you.” Benny pulled out the piano bench. “You see,” Leo began, “I missed a payment on a loan for those embroidery machines. Just one payment.” Sitting in the armchair, his father looked like a diminutive version of himself. His nose hairs were black in the light, and something about him made Benny want to laugh, though he resisted. “Twenty years with the same bank and they threaten to foreclose on you for one payment.”

A cousin had paid off the loan of ten thousand dollars so that Lehrman's Caps could stay open, but he'd have to scale back and fire the Slovakian women. Leo would now be indebted to his cousin for the rest of his life. All the boys would have to work, and even Hannah would have to take in sewing.

Benny told his father he'd already gotten a job, managing a small theater, and that he would be paid about a dime a night.

“That's not enough,” Leo said.

“I can still work for you during the day. This would just be extra.” Benny told his father perhaps he would help run the business. He was good at math. He could help with the books. His father seemed pleased that this was one less thing he had to worry about, so Benny went to the Regency where every night he played to an almost-empty house. At the end of each show Peyton gave him a few pennies or a nickel for his efforts most of which Benny placed in the jar in the kitchen, as did his brothers from their paper routes and shoeshine stand. He also added a few quarters that he'd kept from the piano lessons he'd never taken, and that his mother had never mentioned. Slowly he would pay her back.

Benny didn't mind that he couldn't keep all the money from the Regency for himself. He loved to be in that theater with the dank smell of crumbling plaster and mildew, of cat piss and back-alley
trash, of stale popcorn and spilled ginger ale. In that darkened room he could play the way he wanted, and he was paid to do it.

On Thursday afternoons Benny went to the Regency, and Peyton screened for him the weekend's film. With a small pad on his lap, Benny sat at the piano, scribbling notes. He jotted down themes for heroes and villains, a lover's disappointment, a victory march. Sadness came in minor chords, a fall down a well with a big downward glissando, a slap became any quick chord. Alone in the theater Benny felt an impending sense, a supplicant before his calling.

One night he looked up and saw that the room was full. Even the balcony, which had always been empty, was packed. He was surprised because he hadn't noticed all those people come in and it didn't seem to him that the film was any better than before. But there must have been seventy people crammed into that shabby room. He was halfway through the first film and didn't miss a beat. He became aware of the sounds around him. A lady's gasp, a cough, the shuffling of feet, stockings rubbing together, random thoughts, a kiss in the back row, the memory of a ball game, an argument someone was having in the street, a baby's cry, a trolley passing by. He heard it all. A horn honking, a siren rushing to a fire, someone's loss—and the whole city and the whole world and the lake against the shore all became a part of the music he played.
This is who I am
, he said to himself as he pounded the keys, never coming up for air.
This is the best I'll ever be
.

T
hat night Benny got fifty cents. He stared at the coins, sitting in his palm. “It's too much, Mr. Peyton,” Benny said, but Milo Peyton shook his head.

“Don't be an idiot. You've earned it.” The next night and the nights that followed—despite the same dreary saga about a girl who was abducted and locked in a room—the movie house was packed. People leaned against the back wall. They sat cross-legged in the aisles. It was standing room only. They kept coming until Milo had to turn them away.

When Milo Peyton offered Benny a flat fee of five dollars a week,
Benny was amazed. It was more money than he'd ever earned in a month. “You don't have to do this, Mr. Peyton.”

“I know I don't have to, but I'm going to. Why do you think all these people are coming here, Benny?”

“To see the picture, sir?”

“Naw, you think they're coming to see that same dumb show, night after night?” Milo Peyton tipped his hat back as he spoke. “They're coming to hear you.”

Every night Benny performed. He didn't pay much attention to the picture or even the story line. He only vaguely followed “The Wandering Hand,” about a murderous hand that strangles unsuspecting victims. Or the ongoing episodes of Ken and Shirley. He was indifferent to the women who came back week after week to see what would happen to them.

He stomped his feet, one, two, three, found a rhythm, and played whatever came into his head. At first he followed the story, but then he just took off. He built up the tension slowly, easing his crescendos to a climactic moment, then went flying in whatever direction his fingers took him. When the movie ended and the lights came on, he was exhausted, spent. He never had any idea how long he'd been playing. He was lost, and it surprised him when he came back. Often he didn't know where he'd been. But one evening he couldn't lose himself. He felt someone staring at him. His eyes scanned the darkened room. In the back a small man in a gray fedora seemed to be leaning against the wall.

His father stood, staring at Benny. Benny blinked, looking twice to make sure that he was there. Without so much as a nod, Benny turned back to the screen. When he looked up again, his father was gone. When his gig was over, he didn't want to go home. He had no idea what he would say to his father. He had no idea if Leo would be angry or proud. Or if he'd tell Hannah where their son was working. Instead Benny headed downtown.

A bone-chilling wind blew off the lake as he hopped the tram that took him down Ashland to Division where he transferred to the streetcar that would take him to the Loop. As he waited, a cold Chicago Arctic wind came down from the north and hit the corner
where he stood. Benny's teeth chattered as he tried to find refuge from the wind. His jacket was old and threadbare. Hannah had promised to make him another, but he never sat still long enough for her to measure. It was almost spring, but in Chicago there was little mercy. In the Loop he changed to the Alley. Every time the doors opened, the frigid air blew in.