The King of Colored Town

by Darryl Wimberley

  I frowned. “Mostly, I guess. It just makes sense.”

  “So if I gave you something you had not seen before. Say, some other piece of Mozart. Or a pop tune. Or a hymn, say, do you think you could play it?”

  “I could read it. I could hear it in my head. But I’m not like Mama; playing takes practice. Mr. Pellicore’s helped me with the playing.”

  For a moment nobody said anything. Then Dr. Weintraub turned and looked straight at Dr. Ransom. Didn’t say a thing. Just the look.

  “Jeremy.” Dr. Ransom nodded to his not-yet-graduated assistant. “Close the door on your way out, would you? And hold my calls. We are going to have ourselves a recital.”

  It took an hour. They wanted to hear everything except “Oklahoma” and “Impossible Dream.” I played my reduction of “Ode to Joy” first, with variations. Then I switched to the horn for Mozart’s famous marriage.

  “The part where Figaro plays like he’s making love to the Count’s wife?” I explained the opera’s storyline. “It’s really Figaro’s wife Susanna disguised as the Countess, and Figaro, he really knows it’s Susanna, but he don’t tell her that.”

  “Why doesn’t he, Cilla? Why doesn’t he tell her that he has pierced her disguise?”

  “He’s just jerking her chain, really,” I perched on the edge of the bench. “See, the Countess, he been after Susanna and it drives old Figaro crazy, so now he just lettin’ Susanna know how it feel—feels. Kind of put the shoe on the other foot. Just to make her jealous, a little.”

  “Jealous? Really? You mean he actually is not in love with the Countess at all?” Dr. Weintraub’s eyes split into crow’s feet when she smiled.

  “Oh, no, ma’am,” I assured her. “He loves Susanna to pieces. She loves him, too, once she gets over being mad. They make up and it’s some nice music.”

  “Speaking of nice music, let’s hear yours.”

  So I spread my “Dirty Guitar” on the piano’s stand.

  “May I?” Dr. Ransom joined me on the bench. “When you’re ready.”

  I ran it through. It wasn’t much, just a snatch, really.

  “Let’s do that again.”

  I played my score through once again, only this time he stopped me at different intervals.

  “You might think about slowing the beat through these two measures…. Nice bridge, here…. And then substitute a dominant seventh, I think. Instead of a minor chord?”

  “You think so?” I pursed my large lips.

  “Well, you can try it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was only two or three minutes of music. But everybody was tapping their feet. Dr. Ransom’s laces never quit slapping his leather shoes. I ran the keyboard when I was finished, just like Jerry Lee Lewis.

  “Bravo!” Dr. Weintraub pronounced, and everybody gave me a nice applause. It was the first time anybody actually put their hands together in appreciation of something I performed.

  “Well, well,” Dr. Ransom pushed away from the piano. “A confession, Miss Handsom—I don’t really think anything I offered actually improved your music, and to be honest that wasn’t my primary reason for suggesting changes. I just wanted to see how you’d react to a critique, whether you’d balk or give it a fair try.”

  “Did I do good?”

  “You did fine. I was glad to see you were not afraid to try new things. I noticed a good bit of improvisation as you played, but that’s all right. Your score keeps you on track with that solid melody. A good mix. Reminds me of Ellington.”

  I told him all about “Rocks in My Bed,” and Mr. Raymond’s radio and how I used to listen to The Duke and Satchmo and even some Bird and Coltrane, but he was complicated, Coltrane was. I had a lot to learn before I could follow a sax like that.

  “Back to your original composition, Cilla,” Dr. Weintraub pinned me with those blue eyes. “Exactly what is a ‘dirty guitar’?”

  “I, uh, I don’t think Miss Chandler would want me to tell you,” I stumbled, and was rewarded with chuckles all around.

  “That’s all right,” Dr. Weintraub relented happily. “An artist is allowed her inspiration.”

  Had she called me an artist?

  They had me run through a few more things on my horn and on the piano, scales and things like that. There was a discussion directed mostly at Miss Chandler, concerning test scores, grade point averages. Nothing, it seemed to me, that had anything to do with music.

  Then it was over. We were finished. Almost finished, anyway. “Cilla, would you mind giving us a moment with your teacher?”

  “Just step out to the hall, Cilla,” Miss Chandler suggested, and I obeyed.

  But I kept my ear close to the door. A verdict was coming, I had some sure sense of that, and I had no idea what it would be. The first snatches I could make out were not encouraging.

  “…she’ll be far behind most other students.”

  “I know,” came Miss Chandler’s voice. “I know that.”

  “There are almost no Negro students on campus, Miss Chandler. You know that. You understand?”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Dr. Ransom? What is your decision?”

  Then there was some back and forth I couldn’t catch and then I heard Dr. Weintraub’s clear, direct voice.

  “…do not let her become distracted, Miss Chandler. Cilla’s senior year will be crucial. But if she can graduate in good standing, with good grades and reasonable assessment, and if she is willing to stick with the French horn, I personally guarantee that I will find a way to bring Miss Handsom to this university.”

  “Hallelujah!” I heard Miss Chandler’s fervent response.

  I whooped like an Indian. A pair of buttoned-down sophomores walking by must have thought they were looking at a crazy girl jumping up and down in the hall.

  I don’t even remember the ride home except that Miss Chandler suspended nearly every rule of formality. She kept calling me by my first name. Kept saying such nice things. Holding my hand like I was her sister.

  “I never expected to hear anything like that in my life, Cilla!” She had a grin like to have split her face. “You were so good. Sooo…competent! I just never imagined. Never dared to imagine! Hallelujah!!”

  Hallelujah, yes ma’am. And I guarantee if I’d known anything about Handel or his “Messiah”, I’d have been singing “Hallelujah” all the way home.

  We got back to school in time for band practice. Miss Chandler accompanied me to my director’s office, to convey the good news. Mr. Pellicore was not overjoyed to hear that my audition had taken a path which he had not approved.

  “Beg your pardon, are you saying that Cilla is not being considered for the marching band?”

  “Actually, the scholarship Dr. Ransom and Dr. Weintraub hope to award will steer Cilla toward music theory.”

  “Music theory?”

  “And composition, yes.”

  “So Miss Handsom will not—?”

  “No, sir,” Miss Chandler could not keep the pride out of her voice. “Cilla will not be marching at Florida State.”

  “But I wouldn’t have got anything without you, Mr. Pellicore.” I hoped to assuage a dangerously wounded pride. “That music you gave me? Those records and things, they helped. And the piano lessons? That’s what did it. That’s what made all the difference.”

  He frowned. “The law of unintended consequences applies, I suppose. But I hope you won’t neglect responsibilities nearer to home. We have our Homecoming game tomorrow. Not to mention the parade.”

  “Oh, yes, sir, and I’ll do good, Mr. Pellicore. I won’t let you down.”

  His smile was brittle. “Of course not. Congratulations, Miss Chandler.”

  “Congratulations to you, too, Mr. Pellicore. Oh, and Dr. Ransom said to be sure and thank you for preparing Cilla and for thinking of Florida State.”

  “He did?”

  He, in fact, had not.

  “Well, then,” Pellicore brightened. “That improves the odds for some other st
udent’s success, don’t you think? A rising tide lifts all ships!”

  “It does,” Miss Chandler encouraged that interpretation. “It’s good for everybody.”

  With a claim to that larger triumph, Mr. Pellicore was assuaged. He even made an announcement before the gathered band that Miss Handsom had completed an audition which had concluded with the offer of a full scholarship to the School of Music at Florida State.

  I was stunned when the entire band hall stood up to cheer. Everybody—except Bonnie Hart—came over to thump me on the back or shake my hand. Rodney Morgan led the whole trombone section over.

  “Cilla. Cool,” he pumped my hand.

  Jerry came down from his drums to congratulate me. “First Saint ever to get a full ride to Florida State! Or any kind of college! Ever! Righteous.”

  Then Juanita Land came running up and crushed me in a bear hug, her small belly pressed into mine like a cup to a saucer. “I’m gonna tell The Clarion ,” she declared, tossing that fine ponytail. “’Bout time they had something nice to say in that paper.”

  But my small success was not to be covered in that week’s paper. That week’s Clarion was devoted, ink and quill, to Laureate’s Homecoming Week, its ritual parade a prelude to the long-awaited contest between the lhs Hornets and the Lake Butler Bulldogs. The parade was always held the day of the game, a Friday. Bonnie Hart was elected Homecoming Queen that year. Cody Hewitt was her escort. Cody and Bonnie waved from a float skirted in pink Kleenex. I may have stuffed part of the chickenwire that bunted their trailer. There were five floats, one constructed by each class nine through twelve and one especially dedicated to veterans by the Future Farmers of America. A small convoy of convertibles followed the floats, then a fire truck. Mr. Pellicore’s Marching Saints led the way.

  The whole business was anticlimactic for me. I was required to march with the band, of course, exposed on the right flank as we stepped down Main Street. I tried to cage my eyes on my sheet music as I marched, but there were distractions impossible to ignore. Cutter Land and Digger Folsom jeered epithets from the curbside, their letterman’s jackets in confederate colors, their hands pushed to their balls inside the pockets of their Levi jeans. I could hear the anger in their vulgar commentary, could feel it.

  Black people had never been able to observe the parade from the street before, but that year was different. I saw Miss Chandler and Miss Hattie standing like bookends on either side of the black students who stood with white students along the street. I spotted Shirley Lee and Pudding and Chicken Swamp. Johnny Boy was not there that day. Lonnie Hine was, Lonnie waved. The little ones were there, too, those small black faces bright with hope. I hoped the children could not hear the filth coming from Cody’s minions down the street.

  Would have been marvelous, I guess, for those white boys to bring their special rage to purpose on the football field. But as predicted, the Lake Butler Bulldogs whipped our Hornets like they was a stepchild, adding insult to battery on the final play of the game when a second-string cornerback intercepted Cody Hewitt for an eighty-yard return. The evening’s performance guaranteed that lhs would again fail to make the conference playoffs. It also scotched Cody Hewitt’s chances at FSU or any other respectable school.

  We performed “The Impossible Dream” at halftime and I could not wait for the nightmare to end. I came off the field as emotionally and physically exhausted as any padded player. I shucked my wool uniform, downed a quart of orange juice and a banana and secured my instrument, and emerged from the band hall to find Juanita Land and a score of Saints waiting.

  “Go Cilla!” Juanita pulled me into that cohort for a round of extended congratulations. “Go Florida State!”

  Cody Hewitt passed along the perimeter of that friendly band, shorn of armor, sullen and furious and resentful. If I did not gloat at the boy’s public fall from grace, it was not because I was noble, but because I was terrified of jinxing my own chances for success.

  I missed Joe Billy. I could gloat in private with JayBee. I wanted him to see me surrounded by admiring white people, to be caught in the penumbra of my small triumph. Sometimes wishes are granted.

  “Is this my college girl?”

  There he was. Big grin and tight jeans.

  “Didn’t think I’d miss your last gig, did you, girl?”

  I let him take me in his car to our rude loft. We had not coupled in weeks. He came almost as soon as he was inside, a quick ejaculation the consistency of shampoo and colored like pearls. He fell asleep quickly, as usual, and then I touched myself. It was sinfully arousing to masturbate beside a sleeping man. Like I was having an affair, somehow. Sneaking around. Which in a real sense, I was.

  I got up after a while and did not wake Joe Billy. I had to get back to my own bed before sunrise or Grandma would know, if she didn’t already, where I had spent the best part of the night.

  I entered my bedroom through its shuttered window. Hard On was deaf to my entry. Corrie Jean was asleep, sucking wind through her inarticulate mouth. It was normally an aggravation for me, that constant sough, but that night I had longed for her familiar refrain, the rhythmic exchange of my mother’s lungs in perfect time with the beat of her daughter’s heart.

  “I did good tonight, Mama.” I slid like a spoon into the bowl of her withered flank. “You’d of been proud.”

  Chapter fourteen

  “Negro Birth Rate Rising”

  — The Clarion

  I soon learned that my new fame did not extend to Colored Town. The Friday after Homecoming I was pumping water at Mr. Raymond’s and nobody mentioned my yet-to-be-granted scholarship. It was Fight Night; the gathered men were there to cheer Joe Louis or Patterson or some other pugilist. No bastard child’s accomplishment could compete with that spectacle. It was only minutes before the bell, Mr. Raymond was coaxing the tuner and I heard a name break through the static. Something about a man name of Medgar Evers.

  “Roll back on that, you don’t mind, Mr. Raymond.” Pudding’s father made the request.

  The story was being broadcast from WSAI in Cincinnati. I knew when Mr. Reed quit churning ice cream it had to be important.

  “Cilla,” Mr. Raymond reached over to pull the unfrozen paddles from their bucket of rock salt and ice.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Dump this here bucket ’roud the ground of my antenna. Quick, girl, they’s somethin’ tryin’ to come in.”

  I dumped the water and salt. Even with the improved ground, the carrier howled. But intermittently through the aether you could make out a broadcast.

  “…Attorney General Robert Kennedy issued a statement today saying that the Justice Department will conduct an independent investigation into the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers. Evers, the NAACP field secretary in Mississippi…”

  “Mr. Raymond?”

  “Hush, girl.”

  He leaned closer to the wireless’s fabric-covered speaker, absorbing details that absent context were meaningless to me. I did not understand what was meant by “the NAACP ” or “civil rights” and was distressed that my own recent triumph could so easily be eclipsed by any news from Mississippi.

  The men were all huddled around the radio as I left, and no one was talking about the fights. I was leaning hard into my ’Flyer and its load of ten gallons of water when I saw the Sheriff’s cruiser turn onto the unpaved street leading to my home. I didn’t think much about it, at first. The Sheriff was known to pass through the quarters at will. Passed our house all the time. But at some point I realized he was coming for me.

  I heard more than saw the Sheriff’s undisguised approach. The tick of the radiator trying to cool that massive v-8.

  “Hold up, girl.”

  His left arm loose on the door. I could see a Timex watch on his wrist. Could almost imagine I heard it tick, too.

  “Dammit, girl, I said stop.”

  My wagon didn’t roll an inch in that soft sand.

  “Look at me.”

  I could
see the film behind his eyes. I could see the blackheads lodged in the deep crevices of his pale, scarred face.

  “You’re Joe Billy’s girl, ain’t you?” he drawled. “Well, what about it?”

  “Sometimes, maybe. Yes, sir.”

  “‘Sir’, now I like that. Almost like a white girl.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get in the cruiser.”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me, get in.”

  “But my water?”