by Kate Kelly
“Were you married to Leland James then?” Lisa asks. She has always been curious about her grandmother’s love affair with Leland.
“Yes. Leland followed me to Peterborough, and eventually we married. Leland would come to the readings; he would even read some of the parts, and he was good. He had a keen sense of humour, and that sharp wit was always there behind the words.” Ruby says, smiling in recollection before lapsing into an introspective silence. Minutes pass, and Lisa worries if these memories may be too much for her grandmother. But then Ruby continues abruptly, speaking mostly to herself before turning back to Lisa. “But he had no desire for the stage. He encouraged me, though, and he loved watching me on stage. He was at every performance and all the closing parties afterwards, of course. They were some wild times, let me tell you! Ha! You’d never think it now, but we were so young, so full of life.” Fingering the side of her glass, her gaze turned inward again, she thinks for a moment before continuing. “Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing; age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.”
“That’s quite profound,” Lisa says, her voice flat, her mind still lost in the past with Ruby and Leland.
“It’s not me, honey. It’s George Bernard Shaw,” Ruby says, smiling. “I heard it when I was young. Now I think I understand it. When I was a young woman, I was too impatient to figure it out. You really wouldn’t have recognized me…” she says and looks over her glass and directly into Lisa’s eyes, “…and my wilder side.”
“No, Nan. I think I can,” Lisa says. Looking at Ruby, she glimpses, not for the first time, the vibrant woman her grandmother had been. “I often imagine how you would have been when you were young, when you and Leland were together. I wish I could have been there, been part of that whole story. You were forging new roads, going new places, and having great parties, by the sounds of it.”
“Yes, we were that! The evenings after performances were always wild, when everyone’s adrenaline was pumping, emotions soaring—we didn’t want it to end. Everyone would end up back at someone’s place, sometimes ours, and the kids would be woken up by the noise, the music, the singing, going all night. The birds would be calling to the morning, and Leland and I would just be going to bed, still feeling too alive to sleep.”
The scene comes to her, vibrant and real: their bedroom, washed in the ghost of morning light, the feel of Leland’s body, warm and solid against her, the sweet smell of liquor on his breath as he kisses her lips, her ear, her neck. His broad hand running the length of her body, pulling her against him, and the sheer exhilaration of wanting him, of wanting to open herself up to him, kissing his chest and inhaling the scent of him, then pulling his face to her lips as he enters her slow and hard and present.
“Are you thinking about Leland?” Lisa leans forward and touches Ruby’s hand, her grandmother’s skin smooth and dry against her own.
“What?” Startled, Ruby looks up from her glass, the condensation capturing prisms of light like crystals.
“Were you thinking about Leland James? I can always tell when you are.”
“Yes, lovey, I was.” Ruby smiles to herself. “I was thinking of Leland James.”
“Well, I think we better drink up. I’ll go pay our waitress,” Lisa says, looking at her watch and rising from the table. “We have to find the train that goes to Chicago, although we do know the track number.”
“Yes, time waits for no man!” Ruby says playfully. “You go pay, and I will get myself moving after I finish this drink. The pleasures in life are too few to waste when you get to my age. Ha!”
As she waits for the bill, Lisa watches Ruby, her white hair so distinctive, her movements so familiar as she raises the glass to her lips, savouring the last drops and nodding to the couple at the next table. Lisa can’t hear what she is saying, but the couple laugh in reply and Ruby joins them in their laughter. Then for a moment and without warning, Lisa feels a cold knot tighten in the pit of her stomach. Looking at her grandmother and watching the interplay between them, the nuances of Ruby’s movements, Ruby’s laughter alive in her ears, Lisa knows she will never again have this, this moment, this epiphanous understanding of the woman who is her grandmother. What is happening to me? Lisa wonders, reproaching herself and wiping the tears from her cheek. This is ridiculous, she thinks. Her emotions seem to push against her with physical force.
“Did you want to pay cash or debit?” the waitress asks, breaking into Lisa’s thoughts and releasing her from the moment.
“Cash, thank you,” Lisa says, forcing a smile as she regains control of her emotions. The transaction gives her a focus, freeing her mind from her fears and allowing her thoughts to race ahead to the train and the journey, to her aunt Phoebe and the excitement of Chicago.
4.
“I THOUGHT I’D FIND YOU HERE, Danny boy,” Michael says, moving in along the bar. He places his hand on his brother’s shoulder, feeling the muscular warmth beneath his shirt. Daniel nods in recognition but doesn’t take his eyes from the stage, where Clara Smith is improvising with staccato vocals around the piano notes in the smoky, charged atmosphere of the North Side Chicago night club.
“Do you want another?” Michael asks, nodding toward Daniel’s empty beer and catching the bartender’s vigilant eye.
Clara Smith finishes, the notes still hanging in the air like liquid honey. Daniel turns and nods at Froggy Green, the bartender, who smiles with genuine affection. “You all wantin’ the same thing, Mr. Daniel?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Froggy. What are you having, Mick?” Daniel asks, turning to his brother and catching his eye for a moment.
“I’ll have the same as Danny, thanks.” Michael says, nodding to Froggy and adjusting himself on the bar stool.
They are the only two white men in the night club, and although Daniel is comfortable and at ease, Michael is less so. “I don’t get the attraction, Danny,” Michael says, indicating the room with a nod of his head.
“You don’t have to,” Daniel says, shrugging slightly while lighting up a cigarette. He inhales deeply and then slowly pushes the smoke from his lungs, watching the pale grey stream make its way up toward the dim lights above the bar.
The band starts up again and the music soars encouragingly through the room, vibrating through their bodies, soothing and exciting at the same time. “But I gotta admit, the music is pretty good,” Michael says, his eyes trained on the band.
Daniel nods. “That it is.”
The drinks arrive. From the corner of his eye, Michael watches Daniel down the bottle, the liquid measured in the effort of his Adam’s apple, moving almost rhythmically to the music. He can hardly recognize his young brother, who has returned from the First World War immersed in a deep pool of silence. At times, the Daniel Michael he knew seems to have disappeared, leaving a stranger in his wake. Daniel frequents the black nightclubs, soothed by the sounds of the new music that has made its way up the Mississippi from the Deep South, flourishing in cities like New Orleans, Cincinnati, New York, and Chicago.
Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and the First World War have encouraged the migration of black people from the soil of the rural south to the pavement of the urban north, their second diaspora. They have brought with them the pain of their history, the strength of their spirit, and the music of their souls. The drum beats of Africa, the melancholy of the spiritual, the syncopation of the marching band, the history of the folk song, the pining of the blues, all becoming a homogeneous mix in the melodious, discordant vernacular of American jazz, original and raw.
Jazz calls out in creative chaos; it is the sound of a burgeoning country, of a people scrounging to find an identity within different ethnic societies. In its musical strains, Daniel hears the struggle of the individual spirit, the struggle of a people, the struggle of an evolving nation. The painfully discordant notes add to the fullness and depth of the music; they speak of a
people struggling to find harmony and meaning in the confusion of becoming. An adolescent country becoming aware of her feelings, her growing needs, her surprising desires; it is an exciting, confusing time full of pain, introspection, extravagance, love, desire, elation, and despair, a time of lost boundaries, of disillusionment, of loss, of hope. All this is reflected in jazz. In the music, Daniel finds some escape from the memories of the Western Front, from the months of rain and chill and mud, of trench warfare, and the menace of the Forest of Argonne. Daniel, frightened and bewildered, exhausted and disillusioned, is one of over a million American men who, alongside their tired and broken Allies, pushed the German army from France entirely.
In the new music of the age, Daniel finds a way to forget about the weeks of attacking and retreating, the taste of fear in his mouth, and the feel of heavy stone in his gut as he and the other desperate young men he commanded put their lives at risk day after day. Exposed to artillery mortar, machine gun, rifle fire, and gas, Daniel’s regiment, the seventh infantry, lost twenty-eight hundred of its three thousand men in twenty-eight days. He cannot expunge the horror, the stench, the revulsion that he felt surrounded by the decomposing bodies of boys who would never live to be men. Their faces were contorted or surprised, or sadly peaceful in the chaos of the Dante-like inferno around them. Worse yet were those with no faces at all, lying in goading parody of human bodies, grotesque and hypnotizing at the same time. They were all etched into his mind with indelible ink. And for what? The question haunts him through his waking hours. Only music can offer a distraction.
“Danny?” Michael’s hand is on his arm, his voice layered with concern and apprehension. Daniel focuses on the voice, pulled toward the present, toward the secure darkness of the night club, toward the music, toward life.
“Yeah, Michael, I’m good,” Daniel says with a weak smile, an effort on his part to dissipate the fear in his brother’s face. “I’m making it through.” Daniel forces a tone of joviality into his voice, into his consciousness. “So, are you looking for me for a specific reason, or are you just looking for me?”
Michael, relieved, smiles his crooked smile and leans against the bar. He turns his attention to the business at hand, suddenly much more comfortable. “Dean wants a meeting with ya’.”
“I’m hardly back from one war and O’Bannion wants to enlist me in another?” Daniel asks, his eyes meeting his brother’s for a moment.
“Well, word is that Torrio’s got a new wing man, a guy called Al Capone, and they’re building strength on the South Side. I think Dean wants to use your superior intellect, if you know what I mean.”
“I already told you to tell him that I’d do the books. I doubt anyone’s touched them since I’ve been gone. There’s no big rush.”
“I don’t think it’s about the books, Danny,” Michael says, looking from Daniel to the stage, his measured words cutting through the music.
“Then what?” Daniel asks, turning toward his brother, genuine interest in his voice.
“Have ya’ heard about that amendment? Some Bible thumpers and the women’s sobriety movement are trying to push it through in Washington.”
“Prohibition?”
“Yeah.” Michael nods. “I’m telling ya’, with the war and everything, those lily whites have been able to force their opinions through, and now we’re looking at a dry country. Can you imagine?” Michael asks incredulously, shaking his head and taking a long pull on his beer.
Daniel finishes his beer and nods to Froggy for another. “So, what does this have to do with me? Dean wants me to go to Washington and argue the case against prohibition?” Daniel laughs.
“Not quite,” Michael says, his smile fading quickly. “I think he’s setting up connections in Canada so if and when there’s no liquor available here, Dean can bring it down from the north.”
“That sounds interesting but tell me, since when did Dean get so far thinking?”
“I think Torrio is bringing out the best in him.”
Daniel laughs. “I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Actually, one of the snitches told Dean months ago that Torrio was setting up his own connections in Canada in case the amendment passes. Which he thinks it will.”
“Well, he’d know. Torrio answers to Mike Merlo, and everyone knows Merlo has a pack of government men on his payroll.”
“Yeah, that’s what Dean figures. Merlo’s probably given the nod, and Capone has been busy as a blue-arsed fly setting everything up for Torrio. So, Dean’s been busy trying to get the jump on him. He figures he’s got a good connection in Canada, and he has something all hooked up. He just needs a representative to go up there and seal the deal.”
Michael stops to take a drink and then continues, his enthusiasm evident. “And Dean’s under the gun, so to speak, to beat Capone in setting this up. There’ll be millions to be made, Danny, and not much risk. Merlo don’t like violence.”
“Yeah, Mike Merlo doesn’t like violence, but he plays both sides of the fiddle, and that’s always a dangerous game, especially with hot heads like Torrio. And who’s this other guy? Capone?”
“Al Capone. He’s a Brooklyn boy from the Five Points gang. Came to Chicago and started out as Torrio’s bodyguard, but now he’s wielding his own power in the South Side. He’s a new breed.”
“It doesn’t sound good to me, Michael. Merlo’s Unione Siciliana is a power to be reckoned with, and we’re just a bunch of Micks from the North Side. O’Banion is no match for the likes of Mike Merlo and Torrio.”
“Merlo won’t let anything get outta hand, Danny. His political reputation won’t allow it. He’s the only reason there ain’t more blood on the streets.”
Both men drink, the music momentarily forgotten.
“Where in Canada is this connection?” Daniel asks, fingering the bottle in front of him and watching the condensation slide down the side. “It’s a big country.”
Michael swallows a mouthful of beer, then turns his head and burps. Turning back, he answers, “Montreal.”
“Montreal?”
“Yeah, they speak French there. And since you’ve been to France…”
Daniel barks out a laugh. “I don’t speak French.”
“No, but you’ve been to Europe, you’re educated, and you’re intimately acquainted with the French.” Michael lifts his beer in salute, as if everything is settled.
“The only thing I’ve been intimately acquainted with in France is the mud,” Daniel says with no hint of humour in his voice.
“Weren’t you in Paris?”
“Yeah, when I was on leave. I spent my time in bars and brothels like any red-blooded male.” Daniel smiles.
“Didn’t you have to speak to those French women? Tell them what to do? Or did they already know?”
Daniel’s eyes dart toward his brother as he takes a drink. He lets the question hang in the air like the smoke from his smoldering cigarette.
“Come on, Daniel, you’re knowing what I mean,” Michael says, slipping into the brogue, a sign of intimacy he knows his brother cannot ignore. “You got sophistication and smarts. You’re an officer who passed that army test with flying colours. The rest of us are just bums. We don’t know our arses from our elbows. And what else will you be doing with yourself, Danny boy, now that you’re in your civvies?”
Daniel smiles despite himself. His brother’s patter never changes. Plus, the distraction of working with O’Banion might take his mind off the war. “Okay. Set it up. I’ll meet with Dean and hear him out.”
Michael smiles, thumping Daniel’s shoulder hard. “Good!”
“Now shut up, Mick. Let’s listen to some jazz. Did you know Jelly Roll Morton is coming here next week?”
“He is?” Michael answers, nonplussed.
Daniel smiles at his brother’s lack of interest, and pushes on. “Yeah, why don’t you c
ome with me and hear him? Jelly Roll Morton and the Red Hot Peppers. They’ll be at the Green Mill Jazz Club on…”
“Yeah, I know where it is—North Broadway. It’s Capone’s club in our territory, Daniel.” Michael raises his eyebrow and looks across his beer at Daniel, his voice hard.
“It’s music, Mick. It knows no territory, and it’s the only thing I can really enjoy since I got back.” Daniel looks down at the drink in his hand, the smile at the corner of his mouth belying the seriousness of his tone. “It helps me hold on; it gives me hope for the human race.”
“If you say so, Danny.”
“All you have to do is listen to it, Mick. It’s music that transcends the human condition at the same time as it recognizes it for what it is.”
“Oh boy-oh! You’re getting a little too deep for me!” Michael laughs with embarrassment.
“Well,” Daniel shrugs, “sometimes, there’s nowhere else to go but inside. And guess what you find when you look there, Mick?” Daniel continues without waiting for an answer. “That music. Blues and jazz. The power of the human spirit to overcome and celebrate in the face of all the struggles that life has to offer.”
Michael is aware of the music’s effect on his brother. Daniel’s distance, his moody silence, the turmoil that has been swirling around him since his return from France has disappeared. Daniel’s smile has returned, reaching his eyes and bringing a little of the old Danny to the present moment.
For the first time since he returned from the war, Michael feels comfortable enough to probe Daniel’s thoughts. “It was bad over there,” he says softly. It’s not quite a question.
He hasn’t pushed Daniel for details about the war; until now he has been unable or unwilling to acknowledge Daniel’s lingering pain, present in every moment.
“It was bad,” Daniel answers, his words as flat as his eyes. He pulls on his beer, swallowing his anger and disillusionment along with the alcohol.
Falling into an awkward silence, Michael avoids looking at his brother; he doesn’t have the language or the understanding to help Daniel, and his impotence frustrates him. Daniel is one of the many hollow men returning to a life without meaning, desperate to find it. Some turn to alcohol, some religion, some family, some deviance, all of them looking for a lifeline, a mooring. After a moment, Michael shrugs and continues, “Well, if the music helps.”