The King of Colored Town

by Darryl Wimberley

  There was a chair at the foot of my bed. Sheriff paused beside that obvious accommodation.

  “May I sit down?”

  He asked my permission.

  “Yath thuh,” I granted it and then to my astonishment he picked up the distant chair and walked it right up to my bedside.

  Right by my bedstand and my pitcher of water.

  He was studying that steel jug like it was a painting. Anything to keep from gazing at me, I suppose.

  “’Saw ride,” I gave him permission.

  “Errbody loog ad id.”

  (Everybody looks at it.)

  His eyes met mine, then. Gelid orbs out of place in the hard seams of that anthracite face. No pity there, but no aversion, either. I thought I must be imagining sympathy where there could be none. This, after all, was still the Sheriff of Lafayette County.

  “Nurse says it might be easier for you to write.”

  I nodded. “Yath thuh.”

  “I got some paper and a pencil. Take your time. Joe Billy’s already given me his statement, but you might have some additional information. Even something little could be a help.”

  “Hith bet,” I said without hesitation.

  “’Scuse me, what was that?”

  I reached for the offered pencil, planted a legal pad on my knee and scrawled.

  ‘J.T.’s belt. The one with the snake.’

  And then I sketched it. The snake, how it was inlaid the length of that leather strap. Its silver tongue. Like J.T. himself.

  That silver-tongued devil.

  The muscles in Collard’s jaws tightened like a vice as he accepted my penciled artwork.

  “This is good,” he said huskily. “Damn brave of you, Cilla, to have the presence of mind to remember anything.”

  “I gan do moah,” I mouthed painfully and then to my utter and further surprise he reached out and he took my hand.

  “Just write it. Write it all down.” Then he gathered up his hat, nodding to the doctor. “I’ll wait outside.”

  Collard rose and was past the foot of my bed when he stopped, rolling on the balls of his feet. There was no contact of eyes at that juncture, just a partial rotation of his head to let me know his words were meant specifically for my ears.

  “I might not be sheriff after this May election, Miss Cilla, but don’t you worry. One way or the other I will find the son of a bitch did this to you. One way or the other. And by God when I do, he will wish to hell he’d never seen a dogwood tree.”

  I had my first nightmare that evening. It would recur in identical detail through the years. A cross of dogwood, a crown of thorns in my brilloed hair. A rattlesnake coiled below, vicious, striking at will, its pearl fangs seeking my sex or my mouth.

  I had my second visitor not too many nightmares later. I did not see a face, at first. I was inclined, even before my mutilation, to avert my eyes, a habit that had become compulsive. It was embarrassing for me, even painful, to risk face-to-face encounters with a physician or nurse or orderly unfamiliar with my circumstance, to absorb their shock or disgust. So I spent a lot of time looking at shoes.

  You’d be surprised what you can discern by the manner in which a person shoes his feet. I knew right away, for instance, that my new visitor was not a nurse. Nurses tend to be a practical, no-nonsense lot, partial to some variety of industrial shoe, the kind of footwear you can get in a catalog. The newcomer entering my room had not got her shoes from any catalog. She was more elegantly appointed, a female in open, low-heeled footwear fashioned in an expensive leather the color of blood.

  “Cilla? Can you look up at me?”

  It was Dr. Weintraub. She held what looked like the case for a shotgun in her hand.

  I pulled my sheet up to my chin.

  “May I sit with you a moment?”

  Seemed like everybody was asking my permission. I nodded.

  “Eunice Chandler called to tell me what happened.” Doctor Weintraub put the dimpled black case on the floor beside my bed and then, abjuring the chair, settled along the edge of my bed. Her thigh was full and warm.

  “Miss Chandler asked me to convey her ‘hello’, by the way. Let you know everybody has you in their prayers.” She delivered this last offhand, fishing as she spoke into the pocket of her smartly tailored jacket.

  She was wearing a light wool skirt, pleated, same material as her jacket. Beneath the jacket was a cotton blouse that rose to what I would later know was a Mao collar. A very small cross hung to the swell of her breasts.

  Jade eyes. Pale skin. Hair like straw.

  “I gan blay my hon!” I blurted as though in confession and felt water run from my eyes.

  “I know.” She pulled a Kleenex from the nightstand beside my bed. “I’m surprised you have any tears left to cry.”

  “Me doo,” I snorted.

  Dr. Weintraub gave me a moment to settle down. Then she slapped the pillow beneath my head, puffed it up. “Better?”

  I nodded. “Thag you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now Cilla, I bring some good news. Very good news. But I want you to take it slowly; Dr. Hosni tells me that even good news can be a problem in the wake of what you’ve experienced. And I also bring a caveat, a condition. A challenge, really. So let me start by making sure you remember me.”

  I nodded my head.

  “Dogdur Wine Troud.”

  “Close enough. And you remember our discussions about music? About the possibility of your coming to the University?”

  I nodded again, “But I gan blay.”

  “One thing at a time, Cilla,” she cautioned. “Now. First thing. We were never interested in you simply because you could play the French Horn. Don’t misunderstand me; we were impressed with your horn. I couldn’t believe you had been playing less than six months and had perfect pitch. But much more significant to Dr. Ransom and me was your overall sense of music, your intuitions regarding structure and form. Your ability to improvise. And to compose! I don’t think you realize how rare that is. And finally your ability to conceptualize. To, in your words, ‘hear the music in my head.’ Miss Chandler says you were writing like a demon before school started?”

  “Yeth ma’am. Bud nod now.”

  “Understandable. Y’know we have a policy at Florida State.”

  “Pawicy?”

  “Policy, yes. We allow all abused and tortured students to take a break from original composition.”

  Until she winked I thought she was serious.

  “We don’t even bill them. So don’t feel like you’re slacking off, okay?”

  I felt my lips pulling against the stitches. Dr. Weintraub patted my leg with her pale hand. “That’s better. Now. Miss Chandler has mailed me some of your work. Some amazing stuff here, Cilla. And I have to say it’s the best use of grocery bags I’ve recently seen.”

  I even laughed at that. It hurt. The stitches again.

  “So let me start by saying that you have a scholarship for a freshman year to the Music Department at Florida State.”

  I put my hand over my heart.

  A scholarship? Mine?! They didn’t take it away?

  “Here,” Dr. Weintraub poured me a tall glass of water.

  I slurped the offered beverage like a hog at a trough. She remained unperturbed. Just waited for me to finish.

  “Thag you!” I nearly choked. “Thag you!”

  “You earned it. By the way you scored thirteen hundred and twenty on your sat exam, did you know?”

  I shook my head.

  “That puts you in the top ten percent of applicants to the entire university, so don’t believe anyone who tries to say you got in the back door, Cilla. This is not a sympathy gift. You didn’t squeak in. You earned this scholarship. More than earned it.

  “Some details. Dr. Ransom has made me your advisor; normally you don’t get an advisor until graduate school, but in your case we think it’s imperative for you to have a faculty member in frequent contact right from your freshman year on.”

&nbs
p; “I gan dalk do you?”

  “Yes, you can. Any time. Well. Anytime I’m not talking to someone else.”

  It was hard to believe. I was going to study music! Write music? Compose?!

  “But there is a condition, Cilla.” She seemed to read my mind. “Here’s the deal: To keep your scholarship you must become competent in another instrument.”

  I didn’t understand what she was saying.

  “The Music Department requires graduates to be able to perform, even those studying theory or composition.”

  At that I dipped back into despair. The prospect of tackling another instrument, of any kind, was depressing beyond belief.

  I had just lost my horn!

  “Wy gan I juss study music?” I asked.

  “It’s a requirement,” she was firm. “They’ll give you a ride your freshman year. In light of circumstances. But after that you will need to demonstrate competency, and, Cilla, I mean college-level competency, in some instrument.”

  My head sank like a stone into my pillow. I turned to find the trail of tears on the side of my chilled and metal pitcher. The vagaries of boiled steam.

  “I know it seems a lot right now,” Dr. Weintraub’s voice was distant. “But I will help you. Miss Chandler will help you.”

  “I guezz I gud blay biano.” I slurred the words without enthusiasm.

  “Play the piano? Why, yes, you might,” she answered. “You might. You need to consider, though, that there are many more orchestral opportunities for winds than for the piano. That means more opportunities to perform. More avenues to find work after college, to build a career. So before you retreat to the piano, there’s something I’d like you to see. Something I hope you’ll want to keep. Cilla? Take a look. Please?”

  She displayed what looked like a plug of whittling for my inspection.

  “You know what this is?”

  I did not.

  “It’s a reed. Double reed, actually. A particular reed for a particular sort of instrument. A very demanding instrument.”

  Very demanding?

  “I know you like the feeling of a wind-driven instrument. You’ve told me. ‘Like running’, I believe you said. Well, I want you to think about converting from brass to reed, from the French horn to the bassoon.”

  A bassoon? It was not immediately familiar.

  “A bassoon is a wind instrument, like your French horn. But not brass. It uses this reed to set up the vibration in its chamber.”

  “Buh I gan’ mag win,” I shook my head. “I gan wo!”

  (But I can’t make wind. I can’t blow.)

  “Oh, yes, you can,” she contradicted. “See, you don’t need to purse your lips to play the bassoon, Cilla. You do have to be a damned good musician. In fact, my best musicians are generally my bassoonists. And you have to get quick hands. The keywork is demanding, thirteen thumb keys alone. But you do not have to pucker your lips.”

  She gathered my hands from beneath my sheet, gently, as if retrieving ducklings.

  “The bassoon is a natural for you, Cilla. You already have a brilliant sensitivity to music. You have enough piano to make playing a snap. The rest is practice.”

  Practice. At that moment the word carried the weight of anchors.

  I made no reply.

  She nodded to the case on the floor.

  “This is my instrument. One of mine.”

  That revelation got my attention.

  “You blay?”

  She displayed her reed, that whittled plug of wood.

  “Made of a special bamboo, you know. From France. You can always tell a bassoon player; we carry these damn things around like worry beads. And this—”

  She dug back into her jacket pocket. Came out with some kind of cutter. Smaller than a pocketknife.

  “It’s called a reed knife,” she informed me. “You use it to create a reed, which involves paring a blank to the particular demands of your mouth, your tongue. I keep a half-dozen going all the time. Gives me something to do when I’m in front of the TV .”

  She swiveled the nightstand around, and dropped the carved reed into my glass of water.

  “Takes a while to soak. Ordinary water works fine.”

  “Bud I gan’ blay !”

  “So you’ve told me,” she acknowledged, leaning down to heft her case from the floor. “But if you find the courage to try…”

  She stood to lay the case beside me on my bed. A black, leather case. Brass keeps, two of them. The locks opened in syncopated time. Snap-snap. The leaves of the case spread on soundless hinges and there, snugged in velvet, were the most beautiful cylinders of wood I had ever seen. Hardwood. Maple.

  “Let’s start as the poet does with the naming of parts,” Dr. Weintraub assembled her instrument. “We have the bocal, where the reed is fixed. Looks like a swan’s neck, doesn’t it? This one’s from Germany, plated in silver. The bell, here, just as your horn. And then the various chambers, long joint, wing joint, boot joint. Seat strap. You sit on it. You see? So that the instrument doesn’t have to touch the floor…”

  As she spoke I realized that somewhere in the collection of operas and symphonies in Pellicore’s office there had to be parts for bassoons. I probably had actually been exposed to this double-reed, if only on a record and buried beneath a symphony of strings and brass and other winds. I must have heard a bassoon. But I certainly had never seen one.

  “And now shall I play you something?” Dr. Weintraub’s offer was accompanied by a fully assembled bassoon.

  I pushed my head into my pillow.

  “Cilla,” Dr. Hosni urged gently from the door. “Surely there’s something? Anything.”

  “Nod Oagahoma,” I returned.

  Dr. Weintraub chuckled.

  “Not “Oklahoma”. Okay. That’s a deal.”

  She paused a moment to pull over the chair. Her fingers ran over the keys absently as she fit the seat strap into its brass hook.

  “Oh,” she said. “I know.”

  And then without preamble she launched into Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, but not in scores familiar to me. Nothing, certainly, that I had ever heard performed.

  “Weh—? Weh ah yo?”

  (Where are you?)

  Dr. Weintraub’s paused with my badly elocuted question.

  “The Fourth Movement,” she moistened her lips. “About halfway through, at the beginning of the chorale. You get the strings, first, twenty-four bars of melody. And then when the melody repeats the bassoon comes on top of the strings to counter. Some really nice stuff. See what you think.”

  I had heard the bassoon before, as I said, but only briefly, on recordings, and never without the company of other instrumentation. The device in the doctor’s hands offered a range and timbre I had not imagined, a primal invitation, a moan, a sigh, an exultation.

  She filled the room with Beethoven, did my visiting professor. I could feel the music, see the score in my head. It was, after all, written on my heart. She played and played and I knew then, surely, why Dante’s art would always fall short of Heaven’s. My alien physician edged back into my room. The nurses, one by one, paused at their stations or lingered at the door, hanging on every stop and fret of that brief, ebullient concert.

  When she finished a great pain began in my chest and burst through my lungs, my throat, my mouth. An awful cacophony.

  “CILLA?”

  Dr. Hosni rushed to my bed.

  “CILLA, CALM DOWN.”

  “I GAN’ BLAY!!” I bellowed. “I NEVAH BLAY OHGAN!”

  Then there was the needle, the small burn in my vein. I saw Dr. Weintraub pale and white.

  “Tag id away,” I shoved the case off my bed.

  (Take it away).

  “I doan wan id.”

  Chapter eighteen

  “Negroes Found At Old Mill Site”

  — The Clarion

  I was released from the hospital in Gainesville somewhere near the middle of April. Reverend Dipps came to get me in a battered stat
ion wagon. Windows down. No air conditioning. No radio, either, which was a disappointment. Miss Chandler accompanied the preacher. It was she who checked me out of the hospital. I saw her sign a paper where it said, “Parent or Guardian.” I hoped I didn’t need guarding.

  Preacher Dipps loaded my things. On the way home I saw an aging and stained copy of The Clarion wadded up on the floorboard. The headline caught my eye: “Negroes Found at Old Mill Site.”