Uptown Blues

by Seth Pevey

  “So, he’s a prodigy?” Melancon asked.

  “Yes,” Julian said, straightening his back and heaving his chest out a few additional inches, “I suppose that is the word that one might use.”

  “What word would you use?” Felix asked.

  The music instructor turned his head towards Felix, strode past him and walked over to the far wall, on which were more instruments, pictures, and framed records. He looked them up and down, addressing the detectives over his shoulder.

  “That lad is destined for greatness.”

  “Greatness…,” Felix echoed.

  “Or perhaps I should say was destined for greatness, seeing as how he has suffered an unspeakable tragedy during one of his formative, crucial periods of development. Trauma like that, at such a young age, does not bode well for Andre’s future.”

  Melancon put a hand to his chin. “And so why this blank space on the wall where Andre should go? The other kids are the same age and they’re already playing for kings and queens. I suppose Andre hasn’t been invited to play Carnegie Hall just yet?”

  “That is why, in fact. Andre is great to be sure, but his greatness, his potential, has yet to be realized. His endurance, his purity of tone, his soulful musicality so free of ego. Andre is the kind of trumpet player that comes along once a century. His life, if stewarded correctly, is to be a series of accolades, accomplishments, and universal acclaim. He may have started off a poor boy from the Seventeenth Ward, but he would certainly not end up that way given the right guidance. Though, based on what you’ve told me, I fear it may be too late.”

  Felix raised an eyebrow. “I’m still not getting it…I mean, what’s the holdup? These other kids aren’t much older than Andre and they’ve already been making such big moves. Why hasn’t Andre?”

  Julian looked down onto the old cypress floor. “It is not for me to decide. Nor to comment on such things, but I suppose you’ve spoken to Andre’s psychologist? She’s just down the street, after all.”

  “No.”

  “You mean you came here first?”

  “Well, like we said,” Felix went on, “we knew he liked music. That’s about all we know. We thought maybe you could help us find him.”

  “Find him? I don’t follow.”

  The two detectives looked at one another.

  “You mean to tell me that you’ve lost one of this generation’s most promising musical minds?”

  “Something like that, yeah,” the older detective said. “Any idea where a kid like that might get off to?”

  “Detectives, you are aware that Andre does not speak, correct?”

  “He didn’t speak to us, anyway. Though we have heard he does speak a bit to people he feels comfortable around. We were hoping that maybe you two had that kind of relationship…that maybe he was a bit more comfortable with you.”

  Julian shook his head sharply. “The boy and I have worked together for over two years now, and he has never spoken a word to me. He is, however, a great student. Highly intelligent and attentive, utterly capable. He has focus, persistence, and an ear like you wouldn’t believe. I must say that—”

  Just then, Melancon’s phone started to ring. He put a finger up to Julian and left Felix to finish the interrogation.

  Out on the porch, he answered the call. It was Janine.

  “David.”

  “Hey there. Kind of busy at the—”

  “We’ve got a guy in custody. ID’d him from a camera on the corner of Oak and Carrollton. He was running full sprint away from the crime scene, specks of blood on his shirt. Turns out he has a rap sheet a mile long. We need to bring Andre in to ID him, just for confirmation. Now I’m not asking your permission, I’m just asking for your blessing, we need to—”

  “Damnit, Janine.”

  “Don’t curse at me, David. Now I thought you’d be happy to hear about this, but if you aren’t going to be a willing participant in this, then—”

  “We’ll be down there soon. I’ll explain later.”

  He hung up before she could let him have it, and silently wished he had given himself a few more drinking years before drying out.

  Ten

  Louis Armstrong is thirteen years old and has spent all his young life mostly just needing someone to point him towards a good place. In the Waif’s Home for Boys he would find Mr. Peter Davis, who knew the way to the best place. Somehow, he knew. The books don’t say how it all happened, but I’ve played it out in my mind so many times it’s like a video I can start and stop anytime I want.

  Think of it like this.

  Little Louis Armstrong is blue. He’s sitting by the window in the Waif’s Home. Sometimes he has these fat tears quietly rolling down his cheeks, sometimes not. He tries to make sure that no one can see them when they do show up. All of the other boys are studying French, repeating lines from a textbook, but not Louis. He doesn’t care about French much, because he doesn’t know how one day he will dine in Paris, how he will someday bring New Orleans to Old Orleans. Right now there is a huge cloud over him, getting bigger and darker, and he just cares about the fact that he is completely alone in the world. Are there bars on the window? Probably not. Can he see the city living outside? He must, at least at a distance.

  The one thing he can never see is the future. But that doesn’t stop him from painting a picture of it anyway. There are no kings and queens and magazines in the future he sees, though. From where he sits, everything ahead looks dark and gray and hateful. It looks poor and hard and small and maybe not worth carrying on with at all, which is kind of how I feel right now, standing in his park under his statue and hearing that music come drifting down to me, pulling me towards it. But where is it coming from?

  Mr. Peter Davis sees the boy crying. He keeps on with the French lesson, for now.

  But he knows about Louis. Somehow. He sees that satchel mouth and those blubbering tears. He sees the big, broken heart. He sees his soul, maybe.

  And maybe, even, he sees the future.

  Because afterwards Mr. Davis calls Louis into his office. Peter is a tall man with wooly hair and a large, bobbing Adam’s apple. He’s got big, kind eyes just like Louis does and a wind that won’t quit, just like little Louis. He’s got musicality, and so maybe he can spot it in a waif as well. He smiles down at this boy in his office, this boy who looks to be disappearing. Maybe Mr. Peter Davis had something magic about him, because what he did next changed the whole world to be at least ten percent more wonderful than it would have been otherwise.

  “Louis,” he said. “Louis, look here.”

  And then Mr. Davis put an old case down on the desk between them, snapped the buckles off, lifted the lid. Where did it come from?

  The hinges creaked; Louis peered inside.

  Sitting there was the treasure he had been missing his whole life. It wasn’t a daddy. It wasn’t dirty coins picked up off the street. It wasn’t a gun.

  It was brass.

  It glowed there in that office, maybe, that weapon that would win every fight without a drop of blood. Maybe it glowed or maybe it was old and tarnished and pitiful looking, the books just don’t say. I think it was somewhere in between.

  Airports, stadiums, statues. Louis on a camel in Egypt, blowing for the dead pharos. The cameras all zooming in from a thousand angles across all the places he would go, all in Technicolor, right on his sweat-dropping, grand-smiling face. Right into the heart of everything beautiful and happy that comes up from the wet, slimy gutter of this place. For five decades he would give the world unbridled joy from the fat end of the—

  “Go ahead, pick it up,” Mr. Peter Davis said.

  I can’t stand it anymore. The music is coming from somewhere. I can’t stop myself. I can’t find it but I’m desperate to try. I run and run some more. Towards the music, or at least, I hope. I trip over an egg crate, pick myself up and keep running.

  “Pick it up, Louis. It’s a cornet, you ever seen one before?” Mr. Peter Davis asks.

  I
run as fast as I can until my wind gives out. A car screeches its tires and honks at me.

  Little Louis hoists the cornet, his eyes getting wide and his breath getting still.

  “Go on, see if you can blow it, Louis.”

  I run through the streets, past the shuttered-up buildings. This is all Storyville. A place that is gone and lives only in the past and is now something completely changed. But the music, the sound is still there, and I am headed towards that brass-belching, gold-throated music. It is getting louder, closer, warmer.

  When I get there, I find three boys, young men really. They’re older than me. When I see them I stop and finally put my hands on my knees and lean forward in my too-large army jacket, gasping for breath. For a second, I imagine that I’m going to vomit, and it’s lucky that none of them have looked my way just yet. They’re proper teenagers, now that I see them clearly, much older than me, maybe eighteen or nineteen, all jerseys and denim and beanies marching through the streets with big, hard instruments swinging out ahead of them. They have muscles and move with purpose.

  The biggest, a stocky boy with orange hair, has a tuba. A skinny one with dreads and a blue jersey has a trombone.

  And then I see the big bass drum, carried by a sad-faced kid with a Saints cap. I see the words written on it.

  “Big Waif Brass Band,” it says.

  I wipe my mouth with the sleeve of the jacket, catch my breath as quick as I can, pull out my trumpet. Then I step out in front of them.

  They keep playing little ditties, small licks and scales, more tuning and horseplay than anything. They step around me without a second glance and go marching on down the street. I count them. And then I count them again, considering the instrument that each of them carries.

  They have no trumpet.

  I don’t know if there is such a thing as destiny or not, but I run down another block, meet them again. This time I press my horn to my lips but am stopped still by some big invisible grip on my chest.

  I don’t know what to do. The boys are big and mean looking. I’ve seen their type before. They keep moving past me, like water moving around a rock in the river. I try to smile at them but I can’t. I try to call out for them to stop and see me, but I can’t do that either.

  The next block, orange-haired Tuba finally asks me, “What you want, kid?”

  I press the horn to my lips, imagine I am standing somewhere I’m not really standing. A place far away. I’m in Storyville and it’s 100 years ago. Before all these lights and cement and overpasses. But also, I’m in a place that hasn’t even happened yet, so far ahead that it can’t be seen. When I get to where I’m going, my lungs fill with air on their own, my lips purse just right on the mouthpiece without even trying, and I let out one long, pure note. The high C.

  Tuba cocks his head. Framed by that great circle of metal, with the orange hair, it looks almost like an old painted portrait. Trombone nods and Bass Drum slams a few deep thunder rolls.

  “What’s your name, kid?” Tuba asks me.

  I shake my head at him.

  “Your folks not around?” he asks, looking behind me.

  I shake my head at him.

  “What you doing out here?”

  I shake my head again and play him a flurry of notes, a rainstorm of sound twisting up in a great crescendo. I put my whole chest into it and near split my lip. The echo of it goes down the long street and bounces off the hurricane shutters and front porches and oak trees.

  The Big Waif Brass Band gets real quiet. Trombone stops making its little runs. Bass Drum’s arms hang down long at his side.

  “Where you learn that?” Tuba asks.

  I shake my head.

  They lean into each other, talking in low voices, casting glances back at me.

  “How old are you, boy?”

  I shake my head.

  They talk more, making little sideways glances in my direction. I put my horn back up to my lips and am about to blow again when they turn back around, all as one.

  “You want to make some money, kid?”

  I nod my head.

  The young men go back to ignoring me, walking now in a more serious way, like something had sucked the music right out of them for the moment. But Tuba waves his arms for me to follow and keep up. We lug our instruments right down to Esplanade, where we turn towards the river. There are more people on the streets now, some of them wild-eyed, some of them dressed in black with tattoos covering their faces. None of the teenagers ask me any more questions or try to talk to me again, which I am very glad for. They talk amongst each other, though—about girls and a fight they saw the night before.

  We walk on the neutral ground, past circles of cardboard with shirtless men squatting in the center of them. These men are dirty, hairy. Their faces are thin, and some of them look up at me with pure disgust and anger. One has a bone going right through his nose and he snarls and growls at me just like a dog would.

  I’m glad I have the gun. I’m glad I’ve fallen in with these rough teenagers, too. I know that I might never feel really safe again in my life and I try and tell myself it will be okay. My heart is getting real loud in my chest and I’m wondering if my choices have been the right or wrong ones.

  We get down to Frenchman Street, which I’ve only laid eyes in the daytime up until now. Now, at night, something has changed about it, something in the air. An energy, all charged up and neon.

  We come down to a particular corner and stop. The big teenagers are shaking hands with other big teenagers, and I try to keep mostly out of sight behind Tuba. There’s a blue wall behind us that belongs to a building that’s all boarded up and dark. There are clubs up and down the block, bright blue and pink and green light falling out of their doors. I smell beer and hear distant music, but this spot where we’re stopped is mostly quiet, mostly abandoned.

  People who are passing on the street start to notice us. Their necks crane and some of them slow down. Bass Drum lets out a few big strikes, and I remember that I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight.

  A couple of the same shirtless young men pass by, their cheeks full of metal. One of them has a big pit bull on a chain walking in front of them, and the dog stops too and turns to look at me. His girlfriend is lanky and has a dirty shit on that says “Love Not Hate.” There are also men with nice suits and women with nice dresses. Some of them are coming towards us now, forming a semicircle out in the street so that the cars have to pass real slow and honk their horns. I wonder what is going to happen, because the air getting is getting tighter and tighter somehow.

  Finally, Tuba announces in a big voice that we’ll start in five minutes. Another teenager appears with a box and a handful of CDs. Another appears with a red wagon, and in the wagon is an ice chest. They all shake hands with each other, but no one tries to shake with me, and for that I’m glad.

  “COLD BEER,” the wagon man shouts, scaring me with the suddenness of his voice.

  “COLD BEER, ONE DOLLAR.”

  His wagon has a squeaky wheel and he’s smoking weed. I can smell it settling over everything, funky and strong. I realize that it smells just like Uncle Melph’s jacket that I’m wearing. The crowd begins to crush in tighter and tighter. Some of them have red faces, some of them are kissing at each other, and some just look at me blankly. Now none of the cars on the street can pass, and the honking gets loud and constant but none of the people seem to pay any mind to the traffic.

  Now our band has grown. Two more musicians: a saxophone and a snare drum. Maybe they came out of the darkened alley behind us, or maybe they were there all along, growing out of the sidewalk like weeds. They announced themselves loudly with their instruments.

  And then the whole Big Waif Brass Band quiets down for a second, looking at one another, nodding, looking at me. They swing their long teenager arms, and Snare Drum runs a comb through his hair. The crowd is getting crazier with every lick or trill or drumroll: pressing in on us, pressing in on the street, grabbing beer cans
from the wagon man, screaming and hollering and dancing and arguing. Somewhere I hear a siren go off, but it doesn’t matter. There is nowhere else to go now. I am trapped in here by the crowd, we all are. I shudder, thinking how I can’t leave, but then my heart slows down finally because now I know it’s not a choice I have to make. It has been made for me. The wagon man passes me and presses a can into my hands, and now my hands are wet and cold. The smell of beer makes me queasy, and Daddy always told me not to grow up and become a drinker, but I nod at the wagon man anyway, putting the can down at my feet where I won’t accidentally decide to drink it. I’m already thirsty and I have no water.

  Tuba lets out a few deep, shaking growls—more orderly this time, leading up to something. Snare Drum follows, dancing lightly on the skin, then Bass Drum hits so hard that I can feel it in the soles of my shoes. Then Trombone starts to slide and we’re going off.

  I might never be happy again, I’m afraid. There’s no place for me to go after this is all over. But there is relief in the world for sadness and hurt, if even just for a moment. Not even relief, really. Just something that stops you from breaking apart into a million pieces.

  The brass cries out around me and I can stand here with the same sadness and pain in my chest, but for just a split second it’s okay to hurt such a way. The pain almost feels good, like when you scratch poison ivy, even though you shouldn’t, and it hurts worse later because you did.

  My fingers and lips start to itch, just like that.

  I’m thinking too much, until I notice that the whole band is looking at me in that way that people do when they’re expecting something out of you. I know it’s time for me to stop thinking. Bass Drum nods at me almost angrily, and Tuba’s bug eyes have me a little scared the way they press down into me.

  I’ve got to earn my right to stand here, and I know it.

  I bring the trumpet to my lips, try to think if I’ve ever been here before. I mean, playing for so many people. I’m a shy person, I guess. I almost have a panic attack, right there on Frenchman Street. But then I start thinking about Louis Armstrong and—