Why do I sit here and insist that the clue to my life is the music of some beatup bean picker named Richie Stokes? thought Keel.
A bus passed, a slow sliver of light from Keel’s angle. Down in the street music echoed from the juke box of the coffee shop. The Polish band across the way had taken a break and the young polka dancers had come out into the street to talk.
Yards’ muted horn carried insistently into the night, the sounds insolent and sad as he moved through a chorus in the middle register. Yards had never been able to think high, and therefore, Eagle had explained, he could not blow high. Yards’ sojourns through the middle had become as much a trademark as his mute.
But Keel was not thinking too much of Yards or his music as he turned out the lights and went down to the street. He was thinking of Hillary.
David Hillary was the first real competition he had had in his involvement with Della. Other men, certainly, had made sallies in her direction, but they had been shunted off either by Della herself or by the musicians. Besides, earlier, Keel had had supreme confidence in his ability to express his love. But he no longer had that and he was painfully conscious of it. Apparently Hillary knew nothing of his lack; Della had not told him. Thinking of this, he thought first that since Della was involved in the handicap, she would not be likely to discuss it except with an analyst, and he felt that she, like he, was past that. On the other hand—this idea made him feverish sometimes—she might have disclosed it in order to gain sympathy for herself so that her needs could be fulfilled without guilt. Della being what she was, he was sure she would not have disclosed it to the musicians, not to anyone but Hillary, if, indeed, she had told at all.
Keel was halfway to the shop now, walking slowly.
His thoughts, murky and confused, were filled with numerous dangers: the foremost, the loss of Della. Why kid my damned self? thought Keel.
A more positive approach to the problem was through Hillary. Hillary liked Della; he had need of her. But it was without love. He had improved: he looked better, dressed better and was on his way back. In fact, he might have taken another job instead of waiting to get cleared through the University again. The living here, Keel understood, was an experience from which Hillary had derived much and could derive more, but only a fool could fail to see that the reason the instructor stayed was Della. Had she been—“kind” to him? Probably, Keel reasoned. Shamefully, he admitted to himself that he preferred Hillary to Eagle (who would, despite the sense of honor in which he held their relationship, allow himself to weaken) or to Kilroy or any of the others.
All right, if Hillary was the cause of so many problems, he should be sent away.
Keel lingered on the steps of the shop and listened to the sound of soft voices and to the music which had been turned down. Why the hell did they always turn up the sound when Yards played?
Hillary stays, Keel thought, because he is important to me also. He smiled. I need Della as well as he does to prove that I, too, am a man—a man superior to him. If he takes Della, and he won’t the bastard, then he proves himself in his eyes, as I do in mine, superior to me.
He stepped inside the shop.
Della moved through the flickering shadows and the forms of sitting people. As Keel came through the door she studied his face quickly and decided that it had gone all right. She had said nothing to Hillary when he came and went silently into the kitchen to clean up. He had sense enough at least, Della thought, to not endanger the cups and saucers, the furniture, or patrons with his occasional stumbles. Keel came to her.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello,” he said.
“Come with me into the kitchen.”
“Why?”
“I want to kiss you.”
“Where’s Prof?”
“In the kitchen.”
“No.”
“But I want to kiss you.”
Sometimes she could be like this and Keel remembered that it was always nice; it gave him a fine feeling. Yet now he asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Darling, why does anything have to be the matter?”
“I don’t know. Feels like this has been a long time.”
They walked toward the kitchen. Keel waved as they passed the Musicians’ Room and was answered by a chorus of voices. He greeted some of the regulars.
Then they stepped inside the kitchen. Hillary plunged his hands deep in the dishwater, and heard behind him the silence of their embrace.
Keel, holding Della so that he could see Hillary’s back, watched it tense, as though Hillary were holding his breath. Della, in Keel’s arms, her back to Hillary, sensed the watchfulness of Keel, his satisfaction at kissing her in the room with Hillary. Now it was done, the kiss over.
Would it suffice, for Della, to show Hillary how she really wanted things? Would he leave now since Keel was not going to send him away? That would help her. Since the afternoon, all evening, she had been thinking of possible solutions—even the one where Hillary, drunk, would tell Keel, when he found him, about their times together. Let it explode, she had thought; and if it didn’t, she would take things into her own hands as she had just done.
Let Hillary, sorry as she was for him, get out of their lives! He was too easy to have and too resentful of Keel—it had been pretty obvious that afternoon—for things to continue without incident.
Keel released Della and returned to the shop. Della sighed and poured out an order of American coffee. Hillary remained bent over the sink, his hands slipping aimlessly over the dishes in the water.
CHAPTER 11
Hillary and Keel mopped the floors of the shop in silence; they hadn’t said much to each other in the past two days. The door was open, as usual, and the sunlight that came in begged for cheerfulness. Both turned at the sound of Kilroy’s voice; he was accompanied by his perennial companion, Background. They came down the steps, walked into the shop without any greetings and sat grandly at one of the tables. Hillary and Keel exchanged glances.
“You know,” Kilroy was saying to Background, “there’s an awful lot of fine square broads hitting the scene these days.”
“I’m hip,” Background said.
It was only ten in the morning, but they were both still glowing from a night of drinking. They continued their conversation as though Keel and Hillary were not there, and Hillary and Keel kept exchanging looks and small smiles. It was nice to see friends together, even if they were high and attempting a loftiness they would never have tried when sober.
“Them broads,” Kilroy was saying as he waved his sodden cigar in the air, “ain’t like the old ones, y’know, them country babes that didn’t have no sense, an’ you could say gimme an’ you got it.”
“Sure ain’t,” Background agreed.
Kilroy was right, Keel thought. A new wave of middle-class, white collar, female workers, or imitators of same, had appeared.
“I mean them square ones is fine!” Kilroy said. “They’s secretaries, an’ teachers, an’ social workers—”
“Yeah, baby, I dig ’em on the scene,” Background said, nodding his head in a sage leer. “But them broads is hard to make, man.”
“You right,” Kilroy thundered. “You’s absolutely right. Why, baby, you’d think it’d be harder to grind one o’ them gray broads—”
For his own benefit and Hillary’s, Keel growled, “Watch your mouth, man.”
“But it ain’t. It ain’t,” Background protested.
For the first time in days Keel and Hillary smiled broadly at one another; the two musicians were along in a world they had been building all the night before.
“You two old cats ought to be playin’ with your grandchildren and leavin’ those chippies alone. They’ll kill you.”
Kilroy bristled and this time addressed Keel directly. “Never met a woman I couldn’t handle. Never!”
“Me neither,” Background said, turning awkwardly to glare at Keel.
Stung, Kilroy changed the subject. “Went with Ruppert t
he other day up to Yordan’s office.”
“He back, is he?” Background asked.
Keel and Hillary divided the stack of fresh tablecloths and began placing them on the tables. Both moved slowly as though swift movement would jar the conversation of the two musicians.
“Yeah, he back.” Kilroy suffered the interruption. “Anyhow, soon’s he hit the scene he calls me up and says, ‘Look man, I got to make it over to Yordan’s and pick up my bread: make it with me.’ So I goes. This cat got his paper with all his figures on it—y’ know, the bread Yordan owes him for three months on the damn road? We get some coffee and Ruppert goes to a phone and calls the man and tells him he’s back and that he will be in the office in one hour, please to have his bread ready!
“Then we dribbles on up to the office and Ruppert takes off his coat.”—Kilroy interjected hastily, “We done stopped at the bank now and picked up some money bags, y’ dig?”
Background bent over the table and laughed. Hillary turned swiftly, and Keel, grinning broadly, shook his head.
“Anyway, soon’s we make the scene, all them broads up there is: ‘Here comes Mister (!) Ruppert, Mister (!) Ruppert,’ and they openin’ books and stackin’ bread up on the tables—” Kilroy paused for breath and to allow the three other men to break in with laughter. Hillary wondered why so much emphasis on “Mister Ruppert.” “That’s a tough cat, that Ruppert,” Kilroy added. “Then he takes out his paper and starts count-ing the bread. Me, I’m sittin’ over in a corner, blowin’ a Chesterfield, an’ this cat ain’t sayin’ shit to nobody, baby, he’s just counting that bread!
“Now listen. Some damned body was a nickel short: man, you shoulda heard that mother take off! He had Yordan out there, counting that bread until he got it straightened out, you hear me?”
By now Background was one flopping mass of laughter, bouncing on the table. Keel, through his own laughter, shouted, “Damn, Background, don’t break up the furniture.”
Hillary sensed that the laughter ran deeper than he imagined, but he laughed too, because it was contagious and it had brought him up out of himself.
The laughter ran into quiet chuckles as Kilroy went on. “Finally Ruppert gets all the bread counted and we stack it in the bags. He signs a receipt—Ruppert never did dig no checks. Too many o’ them damn agents passin’ rubber around ’cause they done spent up all the musicians’ bread while they out tryin’ to make one nighters six and seven hundred miles apart.
“Then,” Kilroy said, acting out his tale, “he grabs up three bags o’ bread and I grab three and we split back to the bank—”
“An’ Ruppert makes the whole scene again,” Background anticipated.
“Yeah!” Kilroy howled, his eyes widening. They both fell on the table and laughed.
Keel glanced again at Hillary and behind his smile saw his uncertainty of the cause for all the laughter. Someday, Keel noted, he would have to tell him that Ruppert, alone among the musicians, refused to toy with agents; he borrowed no money from them, ate and drank with none. He was all business and was, perhaps, the only musician the agents addressed as “Mister.” Ruppert was and did what the majority of Negro musicians would like to be able to do. Thus it was a good and gleeful thing to hear how Ruppert handled his business at the expense of the “whities.”
“He run into Eagle anywhere out there?” Keel asked.
The laughter died.
“Yeah, Minneapolis. All tore up, but they could talk, y’ dig? Demetriades just before they left added some more cities to the tour—cat sure likes to make his bread. The cats was on a two-day layoff.”
“What’s added?” Background asked.
“Lessee—Erie, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Onondaga Falls, Utica, Albany—”
“Damn,” Background said. “That’s a whole new tour.” There was a momentary silence. Background and Kilroy thought of the towns; they knew them and had spent years traveling through them, playing in them on tortuous one-nighters.
“That’s my town,” Hillary said. “I used to teach there.”
“Which?” Kilroy asked, prepared to talk about any town Hillary named.
“Onondaga Falls.” He paused. “I’m waiting to go back now.”
“That’s a raggedy-assed town,” Background said sourly.
“How’s Eagle blowin’?” Keel asked. He gave one reassuring glance at Hillary.
Kilroy said, “Ruppert didn’t say.”
If Eagle had been playing well, Ruppert would have mentioned it.
Voicing his thoughts Background said, “Poor Eagle. He looks damned near as old as me.”
And Background was over fifty. Background remembered Eagle from the old days at The Woodside and at Minton’s. This memory gave him a sad sense of permanence; he was still around, doing a lot of studio work and sometimes helping out when Chico came to town without a cellist, or sitting in with Mingus when the bassist felt he had an audience appreciative enough to enjoy some of his string pieces. Eagle, on the other hand, was already on the way out.
“Place looks good,” Hillary commented, lighting up a cigarette now that most of the work was done.
“Sure does,” Keel agreed. Kilroy and Background had leaned their heads together and were already involved in another discussion about Eagle. “Those guys are somethin’ else, aren’t they?” Keel said, nodding toward the two musicians.
Hillary started to laugh softly again.
“Oh, hell, he’s doin’ it to hisself,” Kilroy boomed.
Hillary and Keel turned to listen to the raised voices.
“Naw,” Background said.
“Ain’t nobody doin’ it for him,” Kilroy said.
“Eagle got brains. That man is gifted. He’ll talk about anything you want and score on you. I talked with the man night and day for almost two years,” Background said indignantly. “If I told you some of the things he talked about the F.B.I. would be right in here—”
“If they ain’t been already,” Kilroy said.
“I don’t want to hear that shit,” Keel said, knowing that Kilroy was teasing him, but pleased to join in the game.
Kilroy took it up again. “You can’t tell about them cats, Keel. I remember they was on Eagle for nine months one year.”
“Hell, Eagle too slick for them squares,” Background said.
A sudden clicking of heels down the two stone stairs made them turn. Candy came walking rapidly, her face whiter than usual and more drawn. Dark splotches hung downward from her eyes; she had gotten up early. Instinctively Keel knew this and moved toward her. Ordinarily Candy would not have been up until two or three in the afternoon.
“Keel,” she said, then, seeing Kilroy, stopped. “Oh.” There was something about her agitated movements that dissipated Keel’s contempt for her. Candy pulled out a chair and sat with the two musicians. “Coffee?” Keel asked. He turned toward the kitchen and saw that Hillary was already on his way there. He sat down at the table.
“Ruppert is in town,” she said.
Kilroy said, “Is he? I’ll be damned.” He turned to Background. “You hear that, man? Ruppert is in town.”
“Goddamn you, Kilroy, don’t put me on.”
“What the hell is it?” Keel said.
“Minneapolis. Just got a call from a chick out there. Eagle goofed.”
Keel wondered: Could this woman really be worried about Eagle? “What do you mean?”
“He shacked up with this guy’s wife—” she broke off. “If I could talk to Ruppert he might tell me where Eagle is now.”
“Isn’t he with—?”
“No, he didn’t leave Minnie with the band and the guy’s hired someone to do him in.”
“Shoot, Eagle can take care of himself better than five men,” Background said, dismissing it.
Frantically Candy said, “The guy who’s going to do it is a pro!” She made her right hand up into a pistol and bent the thumb several times.
“Does Eagle know?” Keel asked. He took the coffee Hillary ha
d just brought and placed it before the blonde.
She shook her head. “No. Nobody knows where he is.” She searched the eyes of the men around her. Hillary, who had pulled a chair to the table, felt a sudden flash of sympathy for her.
“Can’t we get in touch with Ruppert?” he asked. He fought hard to suppress a smile. Ruppert, he thought, what a name.
“You call Ruppert and tell him I want to see him,” Keel said, rising from the table, snapping off his apron. “Tell him if he can’t make it down here, I’ll go up there, but I want to see him right away.”
Kilroy shot to his feet and left the shop with Background trailing behind him. There had once been a phone in the shop, but there had been too much traffic, too many unusual people who showed up, shortly after a call had been made, only long enough to shake hands with the musicians. Then the women were always calling, and if it was not women it was other musicians looking for someone. Keel had had the phone removed.
“You look beat,” Keel said to Candy. “Finish the coffee and run home. I’ll keep in touch with you.”
“I knew it would happen some day,” she said between gulps of the hot coffee. “I only hope it isn’t now.”
It was in Keel’s mind to say: I didn’t know you cared; but he didn’t. Instead he spoke gently. “I’ll call you soon’s I get some word from Ruppert.”
Candy rose, clutched her light coat about her and said, “Thanks, Keel.” The way she said it made Keel think that some reevaluation of her would be necessary. Hillary too felt different about her as he watched her go out.
Kilroy and Background trailed back in. “Candy gone?” Kilroy asked. Background, still dazed, followed his friend’s gaze.
“Yeah,” Keel said. “What’s he say?”
“He say for you to come to his crib, man.”
“I knew it.” Keel gazed around the shop and his eyes fell on Hillary. “Like to go?”
“Yes,” Hillary said.
“You cats want to sleep it off until we get back, or split?”
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