by David Payne
“You seem to know a lot about it.”
Ran couldn’t help but preen a bit. “Oh, not really, man. I just heard Clive give this speech so many times I could do it in my sleep. He wanted to make damn sure this redneck cracker from the other, lesser Carolina grasped the undeserved good fortune that had fallen in his lap. But, hey, I don’t know, Cell, maybe all this shit makes you feel strange. Can I say that without starting World War III?”
Marcel smiled. “You can say it.”
“So, does it?”
“A bit.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Ransom said. “It’s not like the clank of chains or old spirituals drifting on the wind, but there’s something on this land.” Ran stared over the water, his face contemplative. When he turned, he found Marcel studying him. “You feel it?”
“There’s something.”
They held each other’s eyes, having stepped by accident, through an unapparent door that neither probably could have found again, into a place where the backlog of their grievances did not exist, or simply ceased to matter, where they were just two men, old friends. Arriving, each remembered he had been here many times before.
Ransom was the first to turn away. “See that over there—that thing that looks like a wooden guillotine? That’s called a trunk gate. The blade is called a riser board. They raise and lower it to let river water on and off the fields.”
“They have them in Madagascar, too.”
Ran blinked at him. “No shit. When were you in Madagascar?”
“With Baba Olatunji.”
“Right,” said Ran. “Claire mentioned that. Nice gig?”
“We had fun. I learned a lot from him.”
“You know, man, I really ought to say, I’ve followed your career from afar with a certain awe.”
“Awe?” Jones asked skeptically.
“Well, awe may be overstating it,” Ran admitted. “Seriously, though, you’ve done good. You should be proud. I’m proud of you. Maybe even a little envious. Oh, what the fuck, I’m envious as hell.”
Marcel smiled. “Thanks, Ran. I appreciate you saying that.”
“So, can I ask you something? I’m dying to know what you think of RAM’s song.”
“‘Talking’? I like it.”
“It’s better, isn’t it?”
“Than ours?”
Ran’s expression hardened involuntarily.
“You know how you feel at the multiplex?” Cell said, moving on. “At the end of some romantic comedy—some pretty good romantic comedy—when the couple finally gets together, and the sound track swells, and you get that little lump in your throat?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s how RAM’s version makes me feel, Ran. I liked it a lot the first four times. Maybe five? Now it feels pretty much like wallpaper. Yours…”
“Ours…”
“Whatever…”
“I guess we never got that straight.”
“I guess we never did. RHB’s, to me, has some of what you feel when you go outside in the bright sun and have to face your life without the swelling strings to buoy you along. That’s why it’s as fresh today as it was then.”
“So you don’t think the cream always rises?”
Marcel laughed. “Hell, no. Who told you that one?”
“Ponzi Gruber, among others.”
Marcel shrugged. “Sure, Ran, the cream rises. Once in a hundred or a hundred thousand times it does. What comes up mostly, though, is whey and skim and one-percent. That’s what I think. But, hey, I’m probably prejudiced.”
“Hey, you probably are. I won’t hold it against you, though.”
“Good one,” Cell said, smiling back and conceding five when Ran held out his hand.
“But this is getting kind of touchy-feely, isn’t it?”
“A bit,” said Cell.
“So, trunk gates…,” Ransom said. “How the heck do trunk gates get from here to Madagascar?”
“They came the other way,” said Marcel, laughing. “Not from Madagascar, but West Africa.”
“You’re kidding? That’s not true, is it?”
“Sure, it is. You think Claire’s people brought rice cultivation out of Sussex? County Cork? No, Ran, the Yoruba and Ewe, the Bantu-speaking people from the Congo River delta—they’d been growing rice for hundreds of years. They brought this whole business with them out of Africa—not just the labor, but the know-how, too.”
Ran considered. “Damn, so the white man stole that, too?”
Marcel’s expression turned wary.
“I swear to God, we’re a predatory lot, aren’t we?” Ran said. “Somebody should have exterminated the whole lot of us like Norway rats before we spread.”
“I’m not trying to piss you off, Ransom. I’m just telling you a simple fact. I’m sorry if it doesn’t fit in with your views on white supremacy.”
“White supremacy?” He laughed. “It’s just like our old dispute over rock ’n’ roll, isn’t it, Marcel?”
“Let’s don’t go there, Ransom.”
“Okay, let’s don’t.”
“Nobody knows better than you that rock came out of the blues.”
Ran laughed happily.
“I remember you sitting there hour after hour, driving everybody crazy with that old piece-of-shit MCI reel-to-reel, playing phrases over and over, back and forth—Leadbelly, Johnson, Son House—breaking them down into fundamental particles, till you could play them lick for lick, even the mistakes. You were like some sort of junior Alan Lomax. Why are we having this conversation?”
“Everything you say is right, Cell. Rock came out of the blues. The blues came out of Africa. African roots, African rhythms, all filtered down through slavery. The blues are black, one hundred percent. One hundred and ten. But rock and blues are not the same. Rock was a response to blues, and it was preponderantly, overwhelmingly a white response, and rock ’n’ roll is preponderantly, overwhelmingly a white creation.”
Cell sighed heavily.
“To me, the blues is like moonshine, Cell. When you gotta have it, nothing else will do. There’s some great moonshine and some legendary shiners, but in the end you can’t compare it to a great French wine. The Beatles and the Stones, Dylan, Led Zeppelin—maybe the Who? And Hendrix—I’ll give you Hendrix, even if they said he wrote white-boy rock until he died…. You can argue over who should make the cut, add or subtract a couple from the list. But, give or take, those are the great rock ’n’ roll chateaux, and all of them but maybe one are white. Which is not to disrespect black music or the blues, but just to say that whites added something to it, some crucial ingredient. That ingredient allowed rock to set the world on fire, which the blues never did and never will.”
“And maybe it’s like Mitch Pike’s easy-listening version versus RHB’s,” Cell said. “Just because rock reached a wider audience doesn’t make it better, Ran. If you ask me, it’s very goddamn likely people will still be listening to Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters when the Beatles and the Stones are dust.”
“You really think so?”
“Yeah, I really do.”
“Then you concede my point that rock is overwhelmingly, preponderantly white?”
“I don’t concede it. I’m not conceding shit. And here’s another thought: what say we just agree to disagree and leave it go.”
“But why?” Ran said, his face intense now, and sincere. “I’m not trying to piss you off either, Cell. You gave me your facts about rice cultivation. I’m giving you mine about rock and roll. Why is this incendiary?”
“You know exactly why.”
“Well, I know it’s one of two reasons: either it’s incendiary because it’s incorrect and racist, or it’s incendiary because it’s true and doesn’t fit with your notions of white inferiority.”
“I think you know which way I lean.”
“So you think I’m a racist, too?”
“I’m not sure you want to know what I think in that regard.”
“Who know
s, Marcel, the truth may set me free….”
“All right,” Jones said. “All right. You want it?”
“Give me your best shot.”
“I think you were a poor kid from that town up there….”
“Killdeer,” Ransom said.
“Killdeer. I think your dad abused you. I think you grew up telling nigger jokes and despising black folks because they were the only people on a lower social rung. I think you pulled yourself out of there on talent and sheer desperation, which is something you deserve some credit for. I think you went to New York and had some great early success. You impressed Christgau and Lester Bangs, you bought a Comme des Garçons suit and went to Le Bernardin because you read somewhere that Jagger went there when he came to town. You figured out which fork and spoon to use and ordered some thousand-dollar wines. But deep inside you never felt like you deserved it, so when you reached a certain level, you always made sure to self-destruct, which is what you’re doing now. And it’s a shame, Ransom, because, racist or not, asshole or not, you have a certain genius in you. It comes out when you play guitar, and sometimes in your lyrics, too. There are guitarists I like better, but no one plays like you. When you hear a Ran Hill solo on a good night, it can’t be anybody else. It stays with you. I still remember some of them, and that’s why ‘Talking in My Sleep’ is still kicking after almost twenty years. And the sadness in the music is what stands out the most.
“But however far you’ve traveled, you’re still that hick kid from that jerkwater town, and when you see me—this black guy who grew up with advantages, who went to boarding school and has a cottage on the Vineyard—you just can’t help yourself, it rocks your world. I’m some kind of oddity to you, this Negro Fauntleroy, and you have to pick and jab to see if you can’t get a rise, and maybe you just want to make me hurt as much as you do. I think that’s why you call me ‘nigga,’ Ran. I think it’s why you did it in the old days, and it’s why after eighteen years that has to be the first word from your mouth. And the truth is, you knew I didn’t like it then, and you know I don’t like it now, just like you know I don’t like ‘Cell Phone.’”
“Hey,” said Ran, “you can’t blame me for that.”
“I can and do.”
“Everybody called you that.”
Marcel shook his head. “No one. Ever. Not until I joined your band.”
“Tyrell and James…”
“Tyrell and James picked it up from you. Why wouldn’t they? It was your band. They took their cue from you. And what really pissed me off was that you thought I wasn’t smart enough to get the joke.”
“This is interesting, Marcel,” said Ran. “It’s interesting as hell. What joke was it you thought I thought you wouldn’t get?”
“Come on, Ran, you called me ‘Cell Phone’ because I was so much not the kind of guy who’d ever have a street name of that kind. I was so much not the kind of guy who called his buddies ‘homies’ or went around bustin’ caps or moves. No one in my whole life ever called me ‘dog.’ You called me ‘Cell Phone’ to rub my face in that and plant the subtle implication, Can a guy like Marcel Jones, who comes from what he comes from, be considered a ‘real’ black man? If I consider you a racist, it’s for that.”
“So I guess I can assume you do.”
“Correct,” he said. “I think you’re a racist and a redneck and you have a questing, yearning heart and some great beauties of spirit, and you can also be as mean as hell and lower than a snake. On balance, what I think of you is something you can surmise from the fact that I left RHB eighteen years ago and didn’t choose to stay in touch. And, despite your offer earlier, I don’t think I’m going to be seeing that much of you now, either.”
“Do I get a turn?” said Ran.
“Go ahead.”
“As fantasy, this is semi-interesting, but I think it’s all about the song. RAM covers ‘Talking,’ and suddenly Claire and I have money coming in. It’s stirring up old bitterness about me stealing your labor and knowledge. You’re the black man who grew up with fried chicken as your heritage, and suddenly I’m the Colonel who stole the recipe and is getting rich. And you’re pissed off and want your taste. What do you want for that line, Marcel—my heart? My liver? Will you take a lung? Is one enough, or do you want both? Isn’t this what’s going on?”
“You aren’t even in the ballpark, Ran,” he said. “Yes, you fucked me over. Claire, too. Yes, I thought we were friends, and what you did is something friends don’t do. If our positions had been reversed, I wouldn’t have. Yes, I was pissed. For six months or a year, I was. But that was eighteen years ago. I put all that behind me. I’m not in need financially. I don’t want for anything. If you and Claire have money coming in, I’m glad. In fact, it’s actually a relief.”
“A relief,” said Ran. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“I think you make it awful hard on Claire.”
Ran’s expression emptied. “I make it hard on Claire….”
Marcel held his stare.
“I make it hard on my wife….”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
They held each other’s eyes, and suddenly they were in a different, darker room, one where words were done and something else seemed possible, if not required to finish the transaction.
“Ransom! Cell!” Claire’s cry broke the spell.
Balancing Charlie on a hip and ushering Hope ahead with her free hand, she ran onto the porch. “Come here!” she called. “I need you both. Please come in the house right now!”
SIXTEEN
The rocket streaks skyward, spilling sparks like red confetti, and then it bursts over the river and forms the trailing fronds of a golden willow tree that wink and stay—one second, two, longer than one would expect—before they fade.
Scattered applause and “Ahs” rise from the yard, where the last guests await carriages to bear them off. After a tearful parting with her aunt—who’s staying at Chicora Wood tonight—Addie stands with Harlan at the bedroom window, watching, and the fireworks call to mind the twelfth, when the firing awakened her at four thirty in the morning. At five, Harlan’s carriage rolled up to the curb downstairs.
“My dear, it is improper!” said her aunt Blanche. “I cannot let you leave!”
But Addie was too excited not to go.
By the time they arrived, the roof of the Mills House was already crowded with cheering spectators. It was a starless evening; over the harbor, a faint mist lay; the sudden flash of arcing shells pulsed in it like sheet lightning in summer clouds, lighting the bay like a false dawn. From James Island, Morris, Sullivans, Mt. Pleasant, over forty cannon opened simultaneously, rattling the windows of the buildings south of Calhoun Street, shaking the very cobbles in the streets. Addie later heard it said that Edmund Ruffin, that strange and terrible old man, yanked the lanyard of the columbiad at Cummings Point, after his fellow Virginian, Roger Pryor, offered the honor, could not bring himself to fire the first shot of the war. When dawn broke and the Stars and Stripes still flew over Sumter, the young Confederate gunners mounted the parapets, gave three cheers, and threw their hats for Major Anderson and the Union boys, who showed such pluck under fire. Flushed with fatigue and drink, his eyes glassy, strangely deep, Harlan chose that moment to propose, and Addie, swept up in an emotion she believed her own, said yes. Harlan sent the carriage on and they walked home through a town transformed. At every corner, church bells rang. On the battery, crowds of happy, drunken people strolled arm in arm in their best clothes; the harbor filled with the white sails of pleasure boats. The equal of the scene, they say, has not been witnessed since Paris in the Revolution of ’48.
She looks at him and smiles, and he smiles back. “These were my mother’s.” Harlan touches the handle of a sterling brush, part of a lady’s set reflected in the dressing table mirror. “I thought you might like them.”
“Thank you, yes, I would.” Addie is subdued after the scene downstairs.
A silence falls that neithe
r quite knows how to fill.
“I expect you’d like to see to your toilet,” he says.
“Thank you, yes.”
He smiles. “You have no idea how I’ve looked forward to this evening, Addie.”
Her face, gazing up at his, is grave but forthright. “I hope it will be…” Several possibilities suggest themselves. “…satisfactory, dear,” she chooses. “As you wish.”
“I have no doubt it will. And as you wish it, too, my dear. I expect you have anxieties, Addie. But I want to put you at your ease. The bedroom, dear, should be a place of frankness and freedom. And I want, above all…But I’ve made my speeches for the evening. Another isn’t what the occasion warrants, is it?”
And this, in its own way, is charming, and Addie, as he withdraws into the bath, focuses her attention on it, wanting to be charmed. Frankness and freedom seem, abstractly, to the good, though what they mean, in the specific context, she can only imagine. “As you wish it, too, my dear.” And how does Addie wish it? Strange to say, she has no wish, no fantasy, no tingle of anticipation, not even—as Percival alleged—any fear. Her imagination is disengaged, deader than a stone, and she, in truth, prefers it so. And why is this? Why is stoic resignation what she mainly feels?
Upon consideration, Addie doesn’t like the bedroom, which is painted the old color known as bittersweet, a yellow like crumbling Tuscan walls. It’s dominated by a tester bed, its reeded posts topped by urns that are severe and somewhat funerary, or strike her so. And when she picks up the brush, Addie is repelled to see a hair, a single long black hair, winding like a serpent through the bristles.
But how can she believe it? Addie can’t. She won’t! To believe it would be to entertain a grave doubt of his character and would therefore represent, from her, a grave disloyalty to him. And even were it true, clearly it is something in the past. Clearly. Their anger says as much. Didn’t Harlan say he’d like nothing better than to put her and Paloma on the first boat back to Cuba? And he would hardly be the first man Addie knows to fall prey to that particular weakness, to demonstrate that particular penchant. (Like Percival, she thinks—like father, like son!) Addie’s pacing back and forth before the window now. And perhaps it is his mother’s hair, left all these years…. Yet they’d have cleaned it, wouldn’t they? But who knew, after all, what sort of housekeeping these Cuban women practiced!