Night Song

by John A. Williams

  They placed Eagle on the bed. “Open his clothes,” Keel commanded. “Get his chest exposed.” He went into the kitchen and returned with a handful of ice cubes. “Got to shock this cat back,” he muttered, and he placed the cubes on Eagle’s chest above the heart and slid them around.

  Nothing happened. “Slap the mother,” Keel said.

  Hillary understood the purpose of hitting Eagle, but he hesitated. “Go on,” Keel said softly. “It has to be done. Got to shock this mother all the way back home, man. We don’t want to lose him. Go on, hit him.”

  Hillary swung. Not hard enough. He knew without Keel telling him. He swung again and watched for a reaction. “Try again,” Keel said. Keel grunted when there was no reaction from the next blow either. “Get me some more ice,” he said.

  Day had come, Hillary observed on his way to the kitchen. Life was jamming through the streets; kids were on their way to school, workers were heading for their offices. Cars and busses had piled up, horns blaring. But inside, where they were, there was only silence with death unobtrusively near. Suddenly Hillary felt the urgency Keel had been trying to communicate to him. Now for the first time he could close with the presence. He hadn’t known it before—with Angela there hadn’t been time. Hillary dropped the ice cubes in the sink and rushed into the bathroom where he turned on the cold water.

  “Keel!” he shouted. He ran back for the ice cubes and dropped them into the bathtub. “Keel!” Now he rushed again into the bedroom where the two figures were, one motionless on the bed, the other motionless in exhaustion. “Let’s get him into the tub. C’mon.”

  Keel looked up with bloodshot eyes. He understood. “Think it’ll work?”

  Hillary shrugged. Already he was tugging at Eagle’s clothes. They dragged the nude form between them. Keel stuck his fingers in the water. “Damn,” he said, “it’s cold.”

  “Let’s go,” Hillary said.

  They lifted Eagle into the tub. He did not respond and disappointment clouded their eyes—but a second later, Eagle emitted a groan. “Good!” Keel shouted. Hillary ran for the few remaining ice cubes. “Break off some of those icicles from the window,” Keel said, “and throw them mothers in here. Hurry, man.”

  Eagle groaned again and an arm moved, clutching for salvation. “We gotcha, baby,” Keel said, joyfully. “We got your ass.”

  “Let’s get him out,” Hillary said. “Can’t keep him too long.”

  Eagle was moaning steadily now, and once the word “Goddamn” slipped through his lips. They dried him and carried him back to bed. Keel looked at his eyes again; this time Eagle drew away.

  “All right, Prof. Sit with him while I fix some coffee. You’re a great cat, baby, you know that?”

  Hillary smiled. There was so much to learn. “Baby.” It carried with it some kind of love, not the love of one homosexual for another, but perhaps the love of one human being for another. Hillary felt good.

  Richie Stokes was coming to. The room blurred, fuzzy and cold and out of focus. For an instant he wished he were back in his old room in his Aunt Jessie’s house in St. Louis. It was her presence he wanted. St. Loo was as hard as this room, and his life there as cold under the kaleidoscope of Big Jaw Foster’s running club, the Magicians. Those jokers could sure play ball. He had spent many an afternoon waiting for them to come in from Chicago, advised by the notices Foster had put up on the fences along 18th Street.

  St. Loo. What a dizzying whirligig that town was: the hincty Negroes in the political machine; the bootlegging dives along the river section; the “Buffet Flats” all over; and the sharpies in their box-backed coats and shoes called “Mississippi Flats.” And what a stink the slaughter houses gave off with their endless streams of cattle up from the Panhandle. The mobs controlled everything illegitimate. Whores and pimps everywhere, bum liquor, marijuana—everything was cheap and you grew into manhood using these things. In some towns you grew up to go to college, but in St. Loo you survived up—if you could—and you had to be bad to do it; you had to find some nigger and build your reputation on him. Or you could attract a name like “Stud.”

  The most glamorous people in that town were the musicians, sharp gentlemen whose travels brought them frequently to St. Loo, for the town was loaded with suckers who wanted to spend money on pleasure—and their music was that. Tippy Dunbar and Roscoe Dykes. They had taught Richie something special: Tippy how to get the most out of an alto; Roscoe, how to build chords and the intricacies of harmony.

  How often he had stood in the morning, not having slept all night because of blowing down in the park, and watched the cats come and go at the “spook breakfasts” at the club: Pres, Basie, Lunceford, Mary Lou, Harlan Jackson, McShann, Lee Jones—the whole goddamn bunch. And he had watched the paddy boys who were in town step up to take a few choruses, how many depended upon how much they swung the group they played with. Then one morning, Richie Stokes had stepped on line, clutching a new Selmer with fast action and had tried to double-tempo “Body and Soul” until Lee Jones had cymballed his ass right out of the club, and sent him to the woodshed, up in the mountains, to learn some damned music.

  There was a marriage too, though even then he knew he wasn’t in love—hell, love was for white folks anyway. It was just that the girl was big and it was the thing to do, but that didn’t last long. At the same time Shooby died, and no one knew why or how but Richie Stokes, who had been with him when they took the heroin. For most musicians, pot, nutmeg, and bennies were enough, but not for Richie Stokes nor for Shooby.

  Disaster didn’t rain—it poured. The skies just opened up and let loose, shit all the way down; he was sixteen. The mobbers caught his father shortchanging on hooch and cut him in two along the old country road. And Jennie took their baby and cut out. He had to leave St. Loo, where everything seemed to have happened at once.

  Richie made it to Chicago, blowing some borrowed horn and stealing, and then to New York, brushing against Dizzy and a few others before he returned home to play with Maddon. That lasted a while and was good. Maddon was like Mingus in a way: he rehearsed you until you could do what you had to do in your sleep. But Richie left again, back to New York, staying until he couldn’t make it there. Art Tatum and Willie The Lion Smith were cutting everything in sight, and Benny Carter too. They said he should try to play like Benny, should get a little vibrato in his tone, because it was too stark, too damned angry.

  He returned to Maddon and they toured the Southwest; he had ideas now springing out of his mind all day and he wrote them down. They made the Apple, Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit where they left him for dead, him and his heroin and his orange-haired baby, Mamie.

  It began to go better. Burt Owens stuck a tenor in his mouth. It was a big horn, but they said he played the hell out of it, even if he didn’t like it. “B” formed his own group and he went with it. The sounds were new and the damned band swung like a Seth Thomas. It was the first band with the new sound, and Richie felt at home.

  But there was too much talent there; everyone wanted his own group and “B” couldn’t record because the war was on. Rigor Mortis. Back in New York, Richie formed his own combo, fighting against the drivel of Charley Spivak, Glen Gray, the Dorseys, Kay Kayser, Glenn Miller, and all the rest. Only Ellington was swinging, but in a different way, he and that sweet-blowing Johnny Hodges who mauled an alto.

  52nd Street on the west side leaped with clubs and small groups, though Billie said it was a goddamned plantation where the owners made the money and the musicians slaved. But for Richie it was work. Sometimes he ate, sometimes he didn’t, but he never failed to amaze. Twice he was left for dead, zonked on junk, but he straightened up in time to make it to the Coast where, his mind shrinking and collapsing like a worn bellows from his need, he folded and was put away for six months. He gigged around for a while with Haskins and Yards who’d made it out there too, then returned to New York to make it for better or for worse.

  It turned out for better. Yards, between Juillard an
d Richie, learned his music. A succession of pianists, bassists and drummers came and went. Chet had been the best drummer, but, hell, all his players were good, only somehow he reached a point in each of the relationships that made it difficult for them to stay. Yards went in 1949 to work with Shanahan and Black—and that same year, Richie met them in Paris for the first annual jazz festival.

  The Parisians were nice, better in many ways than Americans, and Richie, dabbling between champagne, pot, and heroin, had been elated. Somehow, however, he sensed that in their leaning over backwards to be kind to him, the basis for their actions lay in a region not far removed from that of white Americans. The realization of this made him sullen and he missed two shows.

  Back in the States he signed with Demetriades. He knew he had to give up the pure jazz idiom, lean back into the bosom of commercialism so that he might eat and send money to each of his mulatto children here and there across the country. Now, three years later, the contract with Demetriades was about to run out and Demetriades was taking his time about renewing it. Richie had caused trouble; he knew it but he had no alternative. It wasn’t his world, it was the world of all the Demetriades’ placed head to foot around the globe. Richie Stokes and those like him merely existed in it.

  Eagle opened his eyes.

  “Ummmm, shit!” he said.

  Hillary turned. “How you feel?”

  “Give me a cigarette.”

  Hillary lighted one for him and placed it in his lips. Eagle drew hard, then let the smoke trickle back out of his mouth. “Been dreaming,” he said.

  It was almost night. The room stretched dark and listless around them and Eagle knew what had happened. “Where’d you find me?”

  “At Candy’s.”

  Eagle frowned. “Don’t know why it is I always wind up with that broad. Must be as sick as she is.”

  Hillary didn’t answer.

  “Where’s Keel?”

  “Should be back in a minute. Went to get some soup for you.”

  “How long I been out?”

  “All day.”

  Eagle wiggled his lips for another draw on the cigarette; when he’d inhaled the smoke, snuffling on it like it was pot for his mind was still fogged, and finally exhaled it, he said, “Bet you mothers thought I’d been done in.”

  “We did,” Hillary said. He placed the cigarette between Eagle’s fingers, watched them tighten on it.

  “You don’t use anything but whisky, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t. No matter how bad it looks. Don’t touch that shit.” Eagle emphasized every word and it tired him. His arm shook as he raised the cigarette to his mouth and drew on it; he let the limb flop back on the bed where the ash toppled on the spread.

  Keel came in. “He talkin’?”

  “A little.”

  Keel approached the bed. “Eagle?”

  Eagle opened his eyes and smiled or rather intended to, but what appeared was more like a sneer. “Hey, mother. How you makin’ it?”

  “You almost didn’t. You was dead, nigger, you know that?”

  Hillary felt uncomfortable.

  Eagle laughed softly. “But I ain’t now. When I get up, I’m gonna whip your ass to show you how alive I am—mother.”

  “Ain’t you bad,” Keel retorted with a sad smile. Serious, he said, “You almost had it last night, baby. If it wasn’t for Prof there, we’d be out right now tryin’ to dump you in the river.”

  Eagle tried to laugh.

  “You too hot to keep around, man. Have to put your ass in the river,” Keel said, shaking his head for emphasis, though a little smile played around his mouth. “You die and half the pushers on the East Coast starve to death.”

  Eagle closed his eyes and smiled.

  “How about it, Eagle?”

  “What?”

  “Turkey, man. You know what I’m talkin’ about. That damned cold turkey.”

  Eagle sighed and began speaking in a soft voice. “Keel, I told you: that’s for the movies and books. I been on for twenty years, man.” (Twenty years, Hillary noted). “The stuff is a part of me. I’m nothin’ without it. I don’t mean musically. Hell, junk never helped any cat to wail better. I mean my good health demands it. Any cat’ll tell you that.” Eagle smiled from behind his closed eyes. “Cold turkey—hah!” He opened his eyes now, or rather, peeked out of them. “Why don’t you pray for me, man?”

  Keel shot a glance in Hillary’s direction, then returned his gaze to Eagle. He said, “Prof, give this guy some soup. I got to see about the shop. Della’s down there now.”

  “What’s wrong with you all?” Eagle drawled as Hillary reached and took the butt of the cigarette from him.

  “Nothing,” Keel said.

  “You an’ Dell ain’t actin’ right, Keel.”

  “We do all right,” Keel answered curtly.

  Hillary wished Eagle would keep quiet.

  Keel was at the door now.

  “You’re a lyin’ mother,” Eagle said. He closed his eyes and said nothing more until the slammed door announced Keel’s exit.

  Hillary roused himself and prepared the soup. He returned to the bedroom and found Eagle sitting dazedly on the edge of the bed. “You’d better get back in bed, Eagle.”

  “Hell, I’m all right.”

  “Rod Tolen was looking for you last night. Said he had gig for you.” Hillary gave Eagle the bowl of soup.

  “That mother. A gig, yeah,” Eagle sneered. “Gets four or five cats together, wants ’em to blow all night, then lays twenty dollars on ’em and thinks he’s swingin’. He’s been pullin’ that crap for the past twenty years. Him an’ his goddamn gigs. Ought to go back to sellin’ pegs.”

  It was all meaningless to Hillary.

  “Did you know,” Eagle asked when he had finished the soup, “that Keel was a minister?”

  The disclosure did not impress Hillary. He had known of Negro preachers; they were the butt of jokes among Negroes themselves. “Oh, yeah?”

  “I don’t mean an ordinary preacher. He had all that bullshit behind his name, B.D. and D.D. Went to some seminary at Harvard. A real heavy cat.”

  This made it interesting to Hillary, but then, Keel being what he was, he probably took some money and had been defrocked for it—or whatever Protestant churches did with their ministers.

  “He just quit,” Eagle said, and there was both wonder and pride in his voice. Hillary knew that Keel, then, had often puzzled Eagle. “Just quit and converted. Sadik Jamal,” Eagle said, as if tasting it. “He gave that up too.” He paused and drew on his cigarette. “I’m Mohammedan myself,” he said. “I always face the East when I sit or stand. Even now,” he said proudly.

  Hillary looked around and said dryly. “You’re facing due south, Eagle.”

  Eagle chose to continue his meditations in silence, cuting his eyes only once at Hillary.

  After Eagle had settled in bed for the night, Hillary left and went down to the coffee shop, expecting to find Keel, but Della said he had gone for a walk.

  “Why don’t we have some coffee?” Hillary suggested.

  Della grinned, moved her coppered head in the illusion of a nod and said, “Like, why not, man?”

  Hillary smiled. She had burlesqued the beat and the hip so briefly, indicating both tolerance and love as well as an amusement at where she found herself. The voice, calm and clear, with multiple shadings, had helped create this many-sided image.

  “Is Eagle all right?” she asked when she returned.

  “Fine. He’s doing fine.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Keel Robinson walked slowly along Third Avenue, down the Bowery until he reached Canal Street. Over the broad east-west thoroughfare, great trucks and cars bounced along, their light beams rising and falling, their engines growling, puffing and snorting. He turned west, then north again, and plunged into the darkness of the side streets where printing shops and rag and paper mills were located. It was quiet along here. In summer families sat in the
streets and the Italian club doors were open. But now all doors were closed and the people stayed inside, out of the biting cold.

  For the first time in twenty-four hours Keel had time to think and it was time he didn’t want. His concern for Eagle had equaled his desire to forget the hours he had spent earlier with Della. He was always forgetting the time he spent with Della. Had to spend, his mind corrected.

  Each day he awoke wanting her, but as the day wore on he forgot her until an hour or two before she was due to come. It was that period that frightened him most each day. He would think forward to the evening: each evening would be the one in which he would conquer it, but that evening did not come and now he despaired that it ever would. A year is a long time. How much patience had she? Why didn’t she stop coming? Why didn’t he leave?

  Keel settled down to a steadier pace, the better to think it out from the beginning. There had been a beginning so there had to be an end.

  The beginning had been so long ago that Keel seldom thought about it. Della had come, he always said to himself, when he needed her most, almost immediately after he had left the church, and at a time when he felt his obligations to his parents had been paid. For he had succeeded completely where they had only half-succeeded. Success to them meant status, and there was none, really, without a college background and a professional career. Money alone, which the Robinsons had acquired, was almost but not quite enough.

  The swing of the pendulum had carried him to what might have been considered a second extreme had Keel not been familiar with it already. It was there, in the world of cool, that he had met Della, there in that world of arrogant musicians and worrying nightclub owners, a world filled with admirers, detractors, tourists, hipsters, squares, policemen and weirdies, a world in which the days were really nights because you lived mostly in the dark and sang your song of life then. There had been instant communication between them and no little grappling with the things both had learned at other extremes in their lives.

  Keel found himself in Sheridan Square and, digging out fifteen cents for a glass of beer, went into the Riviera. The writers and painters had just begun to arrive. These were the people who labored at home through genuine day and entered the place at night, not merely to drink, but to have some fellow artist say in his manner, “Well done, baby.” For too many of them the burden of loneliness became too much. Since it was not a weekend night, there were no tourists at the bar. Downstairs in the well, the Dixieland group, probably tired, played “Saints,” while a record player in the bar itself vibrated with an Ella Fitz side. Keel looked in the mailbox above the bar to see if anyone he knew had received letters. You could go away for years and the people at the Riv would hold any mail for you. Better than the post office.