Night Song

by John A. Williams

  “Richie, put me down, please.”

  Eagle dropped her to the ground, and she scrambled for an instant to keep her balance. She straightened. “We can’t go now.”

  “Why not?”

  “That character—”

  “Sheeet. What’s wrong with all you cats. You know Eagle don’t bar nobody.”

  “You’re impossible. If I could only get in touch with Keel, he’d straighten you out.”

  “Shut up. I’ll drive. Gimme the keys.”

  “No,” she said, flinging herself away from him. “I’ll drive.” She opened the door for him, slammed it and went around to the driver’s side.

  “Let’s do it here,” Eagle said. He bumped his head against the dashboard as he doubled up with laughter. “Goddamn,” he said and struck it with his fist.

  The car moved, slowly at first, then faster. Lights shot by Eagle’s head like bursts of ack-ack he’d seen in the movies which floated up slowly and then zoomed by when they got close. The car was without sound; it was a phantom dashing along a trail between trees. On the George Washington Bridge the lights came faster and the bridge struts raced endlessly on into the sky. Speeding down the highway, Eagle looked for his ship, the Liberté, but it was already gone. He felt disappointed.

  Candy drove without speaking. She handled the big car with ease and moved her slim leg from gas to brake expertly. Eagle watched the leg and clucked. Where should they go? Candy wondered. Not to her place. It mustn’t happen there—if it was going to happen. She didn’t want it to happen at all, but it could and because it could she steered her way downtown, eased through the Village until she came to Eagle’s apartment. “Be quiet,” she warned, “it’s very late.”

  They got out. Candy walked the few steps to Sadik’s and knocked on the door, hoping to arouse Hillary. After a few futile knocks, she gave up and returned to Eagle who was sitting on the steps of his building mumbling to himself. “I’m afraid,” she said, looking down at him.

  Clumsily, Eagle got to his feet. He touched her shoulder gently. “Don’t be afraid. Ain’t nothin’ to be afraid of.”

  “But you won’t be careful,” Candy said. They had started moving up the steps.

  “I’m not afraid. I mean people are evil as hell but they ain’t that evil and ain’t that foolish.” He looked at her. “You want to go on home, don’t you?”

  Candy didn’t answer.

  “Awright. You go on home.”

  “I should stay with you.”

  “Now how much good you gonna do me if somethin’ happens?”

  “I don’t want you to be alone.”

  “I’m awright, I keep tellin’ you.”

  “Will you call Keel as soon as you get upstairs?”

  “Yeah, I’ll call Keel.”

  “Oh, Richie—” she said.

  He was climbing slowly up the stairs.

  “Richie!”

  He stopped and blinked his eyes at her. “Huh?”

  “Let’s just drive around until day.”

  “Hell, I’m tired ridin’.”

  She ran back up the stairs after him. “Please.”

  He shook her off. He started up again and stopped. “Hey, ain’t you gonna kiss me good night?”

  Candy nodded and Eagle came down the stairs. The embrace was not heavy or cruel; it was not even tense. There was a quality of absent-minded tenderness which made Candy want to cry again. “Go on. Get the hell outa here,” Eagle said, and he started climbing the stairs again. Just as his feet went out of sight, Candy noticed a hole in the heel of one of his stockings.

  She went downstairs and into the street, still thinking. Richie was an adamant man. A thing once said became fact; no one could change his mind. This knowledge gave Candy little comfort. She started the car and pulled away from the curb. Headlights from a car moving slowly behind her glared from her rear view mirror, then slid to the side. Candy looked up again and saw that the car had pulled into the spot she had just vacated.

  Who, she wondered, was that?

  At dawn, Keel and Hillary paused before the shop. “We might as well try his crib since we’re here,” Keel said. “To hell with the shop this morning. Get some sleep, hear?”

  Hillary nodded and they started up the street to Eagle’s. They climbed the stairs wearily to Eagle’s apartment. Keel took out his key.

  “You won’t need it,” Hillary said when they arrived at the door. “It’s open.” Keel looked at him. “Well,” he said, and pushed it wide, paused just inside as Hillary came crowding up behind him. “I don’t know,” Keel found himself whispering. They moved through the rooms to the bedroom.

  “There’s that mother,” Keel said with a sweeping grin that took in Eagle’s form on the bed, still fully clothed, and Hillary’s relieved smile. “BOO!” Keel shouted, almost gleefully. “BOO!”

  “Must really be out,” Hillary said as they approached him. They leaned over him, smiling.

  The beret was cocked down over one eye. The shirt was stained, the shorts wrinkled. Only the stockings looked ridiculously neat. “Hey, man—” Keel started to say. He bent forward quickly. “Ah, shit,” he said, quietly.

  “What?” Hillary asked.

  Keel felt Eagle’s forehead, then bent down to his chest and listened, looking up at Hillary with an empty expression.

  “What is it?” Hillary asked in a whisper, knowing already what it was.

  Keel stood and whispered in a voice filled with disbelief: “He’s dead.”

  Hillary looked down. The knobby legs looked ludicrous with the big belly and the big behind. The arms, he noticed, were in a curiously gentle position. There was a hole in the heel of the left sock. The shoes, Hillary found himself noticing foolishly, were scuffed and run-over at the heels. “Dead?”

  Keel had moved closer to Eagle now. The face seemed gentle and at peace. There were two or three fresh scratches high inside the left bicep. “Yeah.”

  “Look.” Hillary pointed to the syringe and bent spoon on a nearby table.

  Keel nodded grimly. He stepped toward the phone and whacked the cold buttocks. He glanced at Hillary, then dialed. When he hung up he said, “You’d better run over to my crib and stay there until I came. No point in getting involved.”

  “I’ll stay.”

  “No, Prof, go on ahead like I asked you.”

  Hillary went out without a word. As he closed the door behind him, he saw Keel taking a seat not far from the bed.

  Keel sat and waited and listened to the sounds of the morning: the busses and cars in the streets, a radio faintly heard, an occasional loud voice, footsteps on the stairs; and thought: there should be more than this. Outside the door on the stairs, a man and a woman traded laughter and continued on up to the next landing.

  Keel spoke hoarsely, and a little self-consciously. “Hey, man, dig.” For an instant he had almost expected an answer. “Dig, baby. ‘Howl, fir tree; for the cedar is fallen; because the mighty are spoiled: howl, O ye oaks of Bashan; for the forest of the vintage is come down.’” Keel’s mind skipped over the next inapplicable lines and he continued aloud, “The pride of Jordan is spoiled.” He leaned back in the chair and stared at the body. “That’s better than Aunt Jessie could do, man. No shit.”

  He rose and went to the record player, changed his mind and returned to his seat to wait, and soon, out of the chorus of morning noises, came the whine of a siren. Keel got up again and peered through the window down to the street, then walked to the door to let the police in.

  CHAPTER 17

  There seemed to have been three or four wives, each of them with the proper credentials, each extremely attractive, so that if you had seen any one of them walking down the street with Eagle, you would have had to look twice, and each of them wanting the body for burial. But it was returned to St. Louis accompanied by Aunt Jessie and one of the wives, the one whose credentials had the earliest date on them.

  Signs cropped up on the walls of buildings which read: “Eagle Lives” o
r “The Eagle Still Soars.” The exposé magazines tore open their files on Eagle and some of the women he’d known, and as a result two or three big names went to Rome to await assignments in films or clubwork. But the magazines didn’t know of all the women; no one did.

  Friendly columnists recalled the quips Eagle had made during his life, and the unfriendly writers repeatedly underlined the cause of his death. All called him the king of “Be-bop.” A certain listlessness fell over the musicians in the city, and their wives gathered to discuss the help they could give the children. This was a thing they did when checks from Europe were late coming from their husbands, so they were well versed in action aid. A search was pressed for Eagle’s union and any other kind of insurance.

  Then the legends came to the fore, just as the legends of Paul Bunyan must have developed—to fill a communal need.

  But even before the headlines—BOP KING DIES OF ADDICTION—Background had been putting together a concert, the proceeds of which would go to Eagle’s children. Death being the god to whom all people forever pay tribute, hoping to escape its inevitability, the concert drew a crowd which spilled over in the mid-town street on that hot, spring evening.

  Inside, in the theater wings, group after group waited to come on if only for a few minutes. They came out, one behind another, each sounding like Eagle’s 1943 combo, trumpet, sax, piano, bass, drums. But whatever the instruments, the shadow of Richie Stokes hung over the entire audience and the street too where loudspeakers had been set up. Occasionally a vocalist came on to break up the repetition. Rod Tolen served as master of ceremonies, and he interrupted his studied, low-pitched monologue once to tell the audience, with appropriate sadness, of his last conversation with Eagle about the pegs.

  From the wings Yards said, “All right, man, get off and let us get on.” Rod broke into a chuckle, backed away from the mike and brought Yards’ group on, muttering as he passed, “You better cool it, Yards.”

  “Eff you, man,” Yards said.

  Later Kilroy got on and tried to do twenty choruses of “Eagle’s Nest” with lyrics he’d written himself just for the benefit. Background and Rod managed to get him off.

  Down in the first row Della said to Keel, “They all sound the same.” Keel glanced at Hillary on the other side of Della, and at Candy next to him.

  “Even the damned guitar,” Keel grunted. Paul Moss, the blind guitarist who had once asked Eagle and Keel why they called one another “niggers,” but got angry when a white person called them that, was playing. “He should drop dead,” Keel said. Della laughed; Keel had told her about it.

  Up on the stage the artists came on, all very cool, very sure, very cold on the stand, acting not at all the way Keel remembered colored musicians behaving ten, fifteen years before. Maybe that too was something from Eagle. No teeth, no sambo smiles. That might have been his biggest contribution.

  Applause and another group. Applause and another group, endlessly. People appeared who had not been scheduled on the program and demanded to be allowed to go on. The hall was stifling now and four hours had saturated the rows of uplifted white faces with, here and there, like foreign matter, a brown or black face accepted, anachronistic. To even his own Eagle was an enigma, thought Keel, claimed by them, deified by them and often avoided by them; they preferred steel drums and Fats Domino. The others, the whites, were dilettantes, understanding little some of them, but building nevertheless an adequate foundation for jazz. They paid its way.

  “Suddenly I feel like drinking,” Keel said.

  “Why?” Della asked, startled.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Reaction,” she said, rubbing her thumb over the knuckles of his hand. “That’s crazy. Let’s.”

  “You’d better say ‘let’s.’” He paused. “God, all of a sudden I’m thirsty,” he went on. “When was the last time I had an ice cold beer, so cold you could hear bits of ice rattling against the can?”

  “Two years.” Della looked at him. “Honey, are you all right?”

  “Only thirsty.”

  They clutched hands between the seats and turned back to the stage, where Rod Tolen, sweating profusely now, introduced another group. Background scrambled down to the first row where he knelt beside Keel and whispered, “Come backstage, man, we’re gonna split to a party later.” He walked, half-bent, back to the stage entrance.

  Keel leaned over and touched Hillary on the elbow. “You want to stop in at a party before you make your bus?”

  “Let’s see how the time runs,” Hillary said.

  “Oh, please,” Della said, grasping his arm. She looked at Candy.

  “Not me,” Candy said.

  “Well?” Della said to Hillary.

  “Let’s see what time we get out of here,” he said.

  Della turned back to Keel, who asked, “You want to go?”

  “It’s been a long time since we’ve been to a party, baby. It might be good. Let’s go, it might be good.”

  “All right, but I know just about how good it’ll be.”

  “We’ll stop in for just a little while, before they start shouting and punching one another around. The liquor won’t cost us anything. Better be practical now, you know, save the bread.”

  “Wait,” Keel said. “You can’t take care of me if you’re gonna too.”

  “Gonna what?” she said. She laughed in his ear.

  “Get drunk!”

  “We’ll take care of each other, love.”

  Keel continued the game. “If you promise to look out for the old boy, we’ll go.”

  “I promise, if you do.”

  “Do what, baby?”

  “Promise to take care of me.” Even though she understood once the words were out that they had a double meaning, Della continued to smile at him, wishing they had not been spoken.

  But there was nothing demanding in her eyes, Keel saw, only a, smile as soft, as clean, and as deep in its depths as one can see down in clear water. “I promise,” he said in her ear, “to take care of you, but only if you promise to love and obey me. Obey, baby.”

  Della hid her laughter behind her hand. It had been a long time since they engaged in repartee. “What about honor?”

  “That’s for mothers and fathers. Save it for them.”

  She took his hand and playfully dug the nail of her thumb into his palm. “Mothers” had had a double meaning.

  “We’d better go see about this party,” he said. “C’mon, Prof, Candy.” They moved from their seats and through the door Background had used. As they went, Keel wondered over the absence of his usual fear for later when he would be alone with Della, for so far it hadn’t come, hadn’t slowed him up or thrown him into silence. He smiled, pleased, and he was still smiling when they came upon Paul Moss heatedly telling Background and Yards that all the money from the concert didn’t have to go to Eagle. Some of it, by law, went into the union fund.

  “Eff the union,” Yards was saying.

  “The union gets shit,” Background added. Hillary, watching him, suddenly could not recall ever seeing the musician sober. He smiled at Background’s demeanor.

  “I’ll report the gate myself,” Moss said.

  Rod Tolen stuck his head in long enough to say, “Shut your damned mouths you dumb mothers. We tryin’ to put on a show out here.”

  Why, Hillary wondered, did Tolen emulate the speech of Kilroy? that ragged jargon meant to amuse, to relax, to throw one off guard with its simplicity and crudeness? Did Tolen require a smoke screen too?

  Yards had shifted his horn to his left hand and had moved close to Moss. Ignoring Tolen, he said angrily, “Background, turn out these damned lights, then me and this goddamn Moss’ll be even and I’ll kick the shit outa him. I’ll outen him—everything’s gotta be by the book, by the book, the paddy cat’s book. This man is dead and left his kids nuthin’!” Yards jostled Moss with his shoulders. Della gasped. Candy said, “Oh, Yards—”

  “Kids, man,” Yards bellowed, trying to get a
bove the sound of music from onstage. “Let the kids live. I’ll blow all damn night myself to pay the damned union, and I won’t need none of you mothers to help me. Gotdamn!”

  Yards turned away from Moss, his anger was so intense, and Keel noted with satisfaction that Yards was aware of it. “Gotdamn,” Yards said again, then quietly, bitterly, “Eagle ain’t even cold yet and you cats are effin’ over him already.” He turned back to Moss. “Gotdamn you, Moss.”

  Moss had stood with his sightless eyes, his body braced against the attack. Now he said, “Don’t talk to me that way, Yards. I’m not one of your boys, y’ dig.”

  Yards flipped the trumpet back into his right hand and his words were cold and hard. “You goddamn right you ain’t one of my boys, you with your ricky-tick-ass guitar playin’—ought to put your ass on the street with a damned dog—”

  “That’s enough, Yards!” Keel took a step forward and grasped Yards’ elbow. The trumpeter spun away. Out on the stage another group started playing as the one that had just finished came into the wings, looked at them curiously, and filed out. Applause rolled up. The new group had vibes: a welcome change, Hillary thought.

  Keel watched Yards and wondered why all his emotions came out as anger.

  “I don’t want to go to the party, baby,” Della said.

  “Neither do I,” Keel said. “Let’s just eat and have a drink, drop Prof off.”

  “I’ll get him.”

  Hillary was across the floor talking to Candy.

  “We’re getting ready to leave. Like split,” Della said, and laughed. “Drop you off?”

  “I’ll join you out front,” Hillary said.

  “Bye, Candy,” Della said. She had a feeling she wouldn’t be seeing her any more.

  Candy shook her hand, then brushed past it and kissed Della on the cheek. “Take care of Keel.”

  “I will,” Della said softly, moved by Candy’s kiss. Candy had always been cold. “I will,” she said again. “I’m sorry, Candy,” she said, thinking suddenly that the musician’s death meant more to the blonde than any of them had realized.

  Candy turned away.