Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  He followed in Dee’s tracks, sending a chill right down my spine, but he came to a stop before reaching the next street light. After a minute of confused glances between the box and the street ahead of him, he turned around and headed right back toward me, sending my heart right up into my throat.

  He saw me for sure, but I don’t think he recognized me. I let him pass, avoiding eye contact, and then followed.

  He’d been after Dee, I was positive, and maybe in his crazy old man way he thought he still was. He stuffed the box away inside his coat and took out a child’s xylophone and began playing it with a piece of beef jerky. He went to the subway station, the same one I used to get to work, hitting that damn xylophone with his jerky and listening to it like he was tuning a piano.

  I sat across from him and tried not to draw attention to myself. He had taken out a stethoscope and was holding the chestpiece against the stainless steel handrail next to him. His eyes were closed and he had a look of concentration like he was working three of them Sudoku puzzles all at once. He placed the chestpiece on another part of the railing, his eyes closed, that pinched look of focus still squarely on his face. Between his raggedy brown shoes was that metal case.

  By the time we’d hit two more stops I’d finally summoned the courage to confront him. I leaned forward between the Wall Street types and slapped his knee. He didn’t respond. I was just leaning forward to tap him again when he opened his yellowed and bloodshot eyes. He stared at me without a single ounce of charity, which, if you know me at all, only added fuel to the fire.

  “What were you doing in my apartment?”

  He blinked his eyes as if he hadn’t seen me at all until just then. “I weren’t nowhere.”

  “Don’t you give me that. You were in my basement last week doing something”—I pointed to the metal box—“with that.”

  He glanced up at the other people, who had started to watch the exchange. “Did no such thing.” He said the words, but his face turned sad, regretful maybe. The stethoscope was in his ears, and as the train rose along the track his eyes went wide. He placed the chestpiece back onto the rail and made a sound like meh-meh-ma, and listened carefully.

  Then in a flash he grabbed the box, pulled himself up, and bulled his way past the suits to the door as the train came to a stop at Grand Central. The second the doors opened he was blowing a bosun’s whistle and cutting through the crowd like a plow blade. While people began filtering onto the train like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, I stared, angry as hell he would just run off.

  I shot off the train right as the doors were closing.

  When I reached the main concourse I heard his whistle headed toward the exits. I followed outside into the bitter cold air, jumping above the crowd as I went, and saw him heading west, but then his whistling stopped and I lost him as I was trying to catch up.

  I had just given up and headed back toward Grand Central when I saw him sitting at one of the small tables in Bryant Park, his box resting just next to him. He was facing the trees while morning commuters walked past, but he wasn’t paying them no mind. He had a heartfelt smile on his face, and he was leaning to one side, toward an empty chair, and talking softly like you would with someone you love. He looked just like my granddaddy used to when the family came over for a barbecue. I’d hide and watch him watching everyone play on the back lawn. He seemed so happy, maybe the happiest he’d ever been, and I wondered what this old man was thinking as he watched.

  “Who you talking to?” I asked him.

  Like the bubble of his dream had burst, he looked up at me, then back at the bench, then at me again. The smile on his face hardened like mud cracking under the Texas sun.

  “Why don’t you mind your own damn business?”

  That just got me mad all over again. “What were you doing in my apartment?”

  “Told you I wasn’t.”

  He started rifling through his coat. I don’t know what he was looking for, and I definitely don’t know what came over me, but while he was occupied, I darted forward and grabbed his metal box.

  It was much heavier than I thought it would be. “What is this?” I peered through the small hole, expecting to see naked women inside.

  Instead there was the mouthpiece from a trumpet hung from the top of the box with a piece of black, curly hair. I grimaced, wondering if it was his own or someone else’s. Pasted to the sides were ripped pieces of maps, a lot of it Manhattan, but I recognized the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, even Jersey City.

  Pain ripped along my fingers as the old man jerked the box away. Then he grabbed my face with a grimy, burly hand and shoved me backward, hard.

  I remember hearing that mouthpiece clatter around the inside of the box as I fell and struck my head against the paving blocks. Pain rang inside my head as the man towered over me screaming obscenities, each word releasing a puff of white breath into the brisk winter wind. I cowered. I thought he was going to bring that box down on my head, but people had started to gather. When he realized that, he turned around and ran.

  The people at the library took me in and cleaned up the cut at the back of my head. I was an hour late getting to Bellevue, and my boss didn’t seem to like my excuse, even after I’d shown him the cut. He sent me home without pay and a request to think about what it was I wanted to do in life.

  I had calmed down somewhat by the time I got home, but my gut started boiling the minute I stepped foot off the elevator. My apartment was only two doors down, and I heard voices, kids laughing.

  I tested the door slowly, thinking it might be locked. It was, and I used the key carefully to unlock it and step inside.

  Dee was sitting on the couch along with Combs and two of his little hoodlum friends, all of them playing that damn chicken game on the PlayStation. On the long table just behind our beige couch were a few dozen prescription medicine bottles. I closed the door quietly, but when I turned around, the boys were all eyeing me.

  Dion at least had the decency to look ashamed. The others, though, stared at me like I was some little bitch stepping on their turf. Combs moved around the couch and started stuffing medicine bottles inside the pockets of his oversized winter coat. The other two stared at Dion.

  “What is going on in this house, Dion James?”

  “Nothing, Mama.”

  “Leave that stuff there,” I said to Combs, but he just glared at me and kept stuffing medicine bottles, filling my home with the rattle of hundreds of tiny pills.

  I stepped forward, heart pumping like a steam engine. It was all I could do not to let it show, to start screaming for Dion to go to his room and for the boys to get out. But this wasn’t just weed. This was serious crime right here, something that’d get Dion time for sure if the cops got involved.

  I stepped up to Combs and stared him straight in the face. “I said leave that there.”

  “Hell no. This here’s mine.”

  “You think the police’ll agree?”

  “You ain’t going to call no police, Moms. You’re going to shut your mouth and leave this here to me.”

  “Get out of my house.”

  He put the last of them in his pockets and then turned toward me. Even though he was only sixteen he already stood taller than I did.

  “We going...” He stepped closer, and I don’t think my heart had ever beat faster than at that moment. “Gotta go see the man, anyway. But we cool, right?” He stared down on me, his eyes half-shaded and cool. I could smell alcohol on his breath.

  I practically whispered my next words. “I told you to get out.”

  Combs smiled, a smile that promised what he would do if I did call the cops. “Yeah, we cool. Come on, y’all.”

  They left, the other two staring at me like Combs now that I’d been backed into a corner.

  The moment they were out into the hall, I slammed the door and locked it. Then I rounded on Dee. He backed up behind the coffee table. “What are you doing, boy?” I ran around it and slapped him across his head
. “What are you trying to do to us?”

  He cowered and dropped into the lounger in the corner, but I kept wailing on him until he was screaming for me to stop.

  “I’m sorry, Mama!”

  “Don’t you sorry me!” I pointed to the table where the medicine had been stacked. “What is this?”

  “I don’t know. It’s for some guy Combs knows.”

  “They stealing those?”

  “No.”

  I stared at him, not believing a single word coming out of his mouth. “Are you stealing those?”

  “No! I go with, but not into the houses.”

  I reeled back. I could feel Dee slipping away from me. The way he was staring at me, the way he’d been acting lately, especially these past few months. I’d become the enemy. I swore I’d send him out to Oklahoma to live with his grandma he kept messing with boys like Combs and skipping school. But the idea of him leaving... I don’t know what I’d do without him.

  “We’re talking to the counselor about this,” I said.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Get to your room.” I slapped the crown of his head. “I can’t stand to look at you right now.”

  He didn’t say a word as he marched past. The door to his room clicked shut a moment later.

  “And I’d better hear Wynton-fucking-Marsalis coming up out of that room for the next two hours. You stop, your lips better be bleeding like Bleek’s, you hear me? There better be a cut the size of the Rio Grande.”

  He played for hours, but it was as bad and lifeless as ever.

  I was sitting close to the stage, where the school orchestra was arranged in a half-circle. Dion was playing with the brass section on the left side. I couldn’t help but smile. Times had been tough, but Dee had tried hard these past few days, and he was doing real well tonight. Real well.

  Then came Dee’s song. It was an extended version of “Summertime” where seven of the kids came up to the podium for a solo. As the song started and moved on I hardly heard a note. I was too busy watching Dee and smiling when he looked over. Lord, how my heart swelled seeing him up there in his black pants and red sweater and white button-down shirt. He wore his clothes with flair. He was gorgeous, my baby boy.

  As little Marilee stepped down with her clarinet the crowd erupted like it was the Apollo, and Dee wove through the other kids onto the podium.

  The song faded to a whisper. Dee started to play, and it was fine—not perfect, but fine. That night, I couldn’t hear a wrong note anyway.

  But then a shiver went down my frame like an old car refusing to stop. Dee had started to play well. Real well. His eyes, instead of watching the crowd, closed, and his face hardened into a soulful look of concentration like he’d been lost in the song for so long he couldn’t find his way out.

  Had I not seen what had happened last week in Dee’s room, I might have simply accepted it, but the playing was perfect. Miles Davis perfect. Lord, Louis Armstrong perfect.

  I got up from my seat and walked right up onto that stage. Dee didn’t see me, but he woke up when I grabbed his arm and shook the trumpet away from his mouth. One last high-pitched squeak filled the auditorium as the instrument fell from his hands and clattered to the stage.

  The band stopped. There wasn’t a sound in the place, but then everyone started talking, a low rumble that filled the auditorium with my shame. Everyone was staring at me, wondering if I’d lost my mind.

  I didn’t care. I scanned the audience and found him sitting near the back. He got up immediately—taking his little metal box with him—and stormed out through the middle set of doors.

  I pulled Dee off stage and whirled him around.

  “Who are you?”

  He squinted and shook his head. “Mama, why’d you do that?”

  “Do you even remember being up there?”

  He glanced back at the podium, then back at me with a confused expression on his face. “I don’t... A little. Didn’t I do well?”

  He was covering. He didn’t remember a thing.

  “Stay here,” I told him as Mr. Mitchell came my way.

  “Mama?” I heard as I headed quickly for the rear exit.

  “Stay right there! And call the police!”

  I ran out through the stage exit and headed for the front of the building. Snow was coming down in dime-sized flakes, and a fresh layer of it covered the street, but I had sensible shoes on. I hoped the old man had tripped or got hit by a cab on his way out.

  I saw him a block away by the time I came round to the front. I ran across the street—nearly got hit by a cab myself—and charged after him. Then he turned a corner, and I lost sight of him. I turned right and cut through an alley. I grew up around here—I knew me some shortcuts, and I was not about to let some fat old fool get away from me. No I wasn’t.

  I caught him near the playground. He’d tried to hop over the chain-link fence and his coat got snagged. When he saw me running, he tore it free and kept going but slipped on a patch of ice when he hit the basketball court. His metal box went skidding away from him.

  “What in the hell did you do to my boy?” I asked as I picked up the box.

  He tried to get up, but I used my foot to shove him down again.

  The street lamp nearby flickered, and then I realized he was crying.

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. You have a fine boy, and I didn’t do nothing.”

  Somewhere among the buildings of Harlem I heard a police siren turn on.

  “Then what happened?”

  He looked at me, and then the metal box I was holding tight. The lamp flickered like lightning and the siren came closer.

  I backed up as he rolled away and came to his feet. He held his hands out like he was showing me he wasn’t armed. “It won’t happen again. You can keep the box to make sure.”

  “So what won’t happen again?”

  He backed away farther as the sound of the siren increased sharply. “You keep it.” He turned and ran. “It won’t happen again.”

  I let him go, confused as I’ve ever been in my life.

  I rang the bell of number three at the gorgeous Brooklyn brownstone I found myself standing in front of three days later.

  “Yes?” came the voice of Evangeline Thurman over the intercom.

  “My name is Virginia Gaines. We spoke on the phone?”

  “And I told you I wasn’t interested in talking.”

  I swallowed. She was my only hope for figuring this out. “I brought the box, Ms. Thurman. It has some things from your son. I thought you might like to have it.”

  There was a pause. Every second that passed felt like my heart was going to pound right out my chest.

  The door buzzed. “Third floor on the right.”

  Her apartment was decorated with dozens of beautiful African artifacts. She sat across from me on a bamboo chair. She had snow white hair and pale skin for a black woman, but her eyes were bright and her smile could stop traffic. She looked more than a little bit like Billie Holiday. I wished I looked half as good at forty as she did right then.

  “The box?” she said.

  From my Strand book bag I pulled out the contraption. When I’d unscrewed the top of the box and peeled back the bits of map glued around the interior, I’d found yellowed old clippings from the Times referring to Rondell Washington. That clipping didn’t have a date, but another one did, and after a little research I’d found the obituary, dated December 25, 1986. My whole body had gone tingly as I’d read it. It talked about the suicide of a promising young trumpet player who’d killed himself by leaping from the Triborough Bridge on Christmas Eve. It spoke of a promising career in music cut short, of a recent audition with the Count Basie Orchestra, of the parents, Isaiah and Evangeline Washington, left behind. It hadn’t taken too much more to find her phone number.

  Evangeline leaned forward and took the box. “I’m familiar.” She began to inspect it.

  “He’s made others?”

  “A few
. The police, sooner or later, find him somewhere he shouldn’t be and they’ve taken them away from him. He won’t go near a police station nowadays, so they do what you did and come around, ask a few questions.”

  I hadn’t expected this. I had hoped that he wouldn’t be able to make another, that he’d stop chasing after my son and this whole problem would go away, but I guess in my heart I knew that that had been too much to ask for.

  “What did you do with them?”

  “I tossed them in the trash. What do you think I do with them?”

  “I think he uses them to find your son, maybe call him, I’m not sure which.”

  Evangeline nodded. “That’s what he believes, yes.”

  “What do you believe?”

  She raised one eyebrow, and I suddenly felt foolish before this graceful old queen. “They don’t do dick all, Ms. Gaines.”

  “Virginia.”

  “Virginia. My husband, even before he lost his mind, was obsessed with keeping the memory of our son alive. For months after the funeral, he’d play those sad little tapes he’d made of Rondell playing. He called in to work sick more often than he went, and they offered to help, but Isaiah wouldn’t have none of it. So what were they going to do? They had to let him go. But that just gave him more time to pursue his”—she sent a sour expression toward the box—“hobby.”

  “Please, Ms. Thurman. I need to find Isaiah.”

  Evangeline smiled and leaned further back into the creaking bamboo chair. “It’d be best if you leave this all alone. Call the police. They know about him. Tell them he’s bothering you and they’ll send some cars around, keep an eye on you.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t do that. My son’s involved now. He’s been...” It sounded strange now that I was about to say it aloud. “He plays the trumpet...”

  I stopped because Evangeline’s face had become cross.

  “Did he put you up to this?”

  “Who?”

  “My ex-husband is who.”

  “No, why would you—”