The Hunger and Other Stories

by Charles Beaumont

  Finally, one night, at a two-weeker in Dallas, it tumbled.

  We’d gone through Georgia Brown for the tourists and things were kind of dull, when Spoof started sweating. His eyes began to roll. And he stood up, like a great big animal—like an ape or a bear, big and powerful and mean-looking—and he gave us the two-finger signal.

  Sky-High. ’Way before it was due, before either the audience or any of us had got wound up.

  Freddie frowned. “You think it’s time, Top?”

  “Listen,” Spoof said, “goddamn it, who says when it’s time—you, or me?”

  We went into it, cold, but things warmed up pretty fast. The dancers grumbled and moved off the floor and the place filled up with talk.

  I took my solo and beat hell out of the skins. Then Spoof swiped at his mouth and let go with a blast and moved it up into that squeal and stopped and started playing. It was all headwork. All new to us.

  New to anybody.

  I saw Sonny get a look on his face, and we sat still and listened while Spoof made love to that horn.

  Now like a scream, now like a laugh—now we’re swinging in the trees, now the white men are coming, now we’re in the boat and chains are hanging from our ankles and we’re rowing, rowing—Spoof, what is it?—now we’re sawing wood and picking cotton and serving up those cool cool drinks to the Colonel in his chair—Well, blow, man!—now we’re free, and we’re struttin’ down Lenox Avenue and State & Madison and Pirate’s Alley, laughing, crying—Who said free?—and we want to go back and we don’t want to go back—Play it, Spoof! God, God, tell us all about it! Talk to us!—and we’re sitting in a cellar with a comb wrapped up in paper, with a skin-barrel and a tinklebox—Don’t stop, Spoof! Oh Lord, please don’t stop!—and we’re making something, something, what is it? Is it jazz? Why, yes, Lord, it’s jazz. Thank you, sir, and thank you, sir, we finally got it, something that is ours, something great that belongs to us and to us alone, that we made, and that’s why it’s important, and that’s what it’s all about and—Spoof! Spoof, you can’t stop now—

  But it was over, middle of the trip. And there was Spoof standing there facing us and tears streaming out of those eyes and down over that coaldust face, and his body shaking and shaking. It’s the first we ever saw that. It’s the first we ever heard him cough, too—like a shotgun going off every two seconds, big raking sounds that tore up from the bottom of his belly and spilled out wet and loud.

  The way it tumbled was this. Rose-Ann went over to him and tried to get him to sit down. “Spoof, honey, what’s wrong? Come on and sit down. Honey, don’t just stand there.”

  Spoof stopped coughing and jerked his head around. He looked at Rose-Ann for a while and whatever there was in his face, it didn’t have a name. The whole room was just as quiet as it could be.

  Rose-Ann took his arm. “Come on, honey, Mr. Collins—”

  He let out one more cough, then, and drew back his hand—that black-topped, pink-palmed ham of a hand—and laid it, sharp, across the girl’s cheek. It sent her staggering. “Git off my back, hear? Damn it, git off! Stay ’way from me!”

  She got up crying. Then, you know what she did? She waltzed on back and took his arm and said: “Please.”

  Spoof was just a lot of crazy-mad on two legs. He shouted out some words and pulled back his hand again. “Can’t you never learn? What I got to do, goddamn little—”

  Then—Sonny moved. All-the-time quiet and soft and gentle Sonny. He moved quick across the floor and stood in front of Spoof.

  “Keep your black hands off her,” he said.

  Ol’ Massuh pushed Rose-Ann aside and planted his legs, his breath rattling fast and loose, like a bull’s. And he towered over the kid, Goliath and David, legs far apart on the boards and fingers curled up, bowling balls at the ends of his sleeves.

  “You talkin’ to me, boy?”

  Sonny’s face was red, like I hadn’t seen it since that first time at the Continental Club, years back. “You’ve got ears, Collins. Touch her again and I’ll kill you.”

  I don’t know exactly what we expected, but I know what we were afraid of. We were afraid Spoof would let go; and if he did . . . well, put another bed in the hospital, men. He stood there, breathing, and Sonny gave it right back—for hours, days and nights, for a month, toe to toe.

  Then Spoof relaxed. He pulled back those fat lips, that didn’t look like lips any more, they were so tough and leathery, and showed a mouthful of white and gold, and grunted, and turned, and walked away.

  We swung into Twelfth Street Rag in such a hurry!

  And it got kicked under the sofa.

  But we found out something, then, that nobody even suspected.

  Sonny had it for Rose-Ann. He had it bad.

  And that ain’t good.

  Spoof fell to pieces after that. He played day and night, when we were working, when we weren’t working. Climbing. Trying to get it said, all of it.

  “Listen, you can’t hit Heaven with a slingshot, Daddy-O!”

  “What you want to do, man—blow Judgment?”

  He never let up. If he ate anything, you tell me when. Sometimes he tied on, straight stuff, quick, medicine type of drinking. But only after he’d been climbing and started to blow flat and ended up in those coughing fits.

  And it got worse. Nothing helped, either: foam or booze or tea or even Indoor Sports, and he tried them all. And got worse.

  “Get fixed up, Mr. C, you hear? See a bone-man; you in bad shape . . .”

  “Get away from me, get on away!” Hawk! and a big red spot on the handkerchief. “Broom off! Shoo!”

  And gradually the old horn went sour, ugly and bitter sounding, like Spoof himself. Hoo Lord, the way he rode Sonny then: “How you like the dark stuff, boy? You like it pretty good? Hey there, don’t hold back. Rosie’s fine talent—I know. Want me to tell you about it, pave the way, show you how? I taught you everything else, didn’t I?” And Sonny always clamming up, his eyes doing the talking: “You were a great musician, Collins, and you still are, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got to like you—you won’t let me. And you’re damn right I’m in love with Rose-Ann! That’s the biggest reason why I’m still here—just to be close to her. Otherwise, you wouldn’t see me for the dust. But you’re too dumb to realize she’s in love with you, too dumb and stupid and mean and wrapped up with that lousy horn!”

  What Sonny was too dumb to know was, Rose-Ann had cut Spoof out. She was now Public Domain.

  Anyway, Spoof got to be the meanest, dirtiest, craziest, low-talkin’est man in the world. And nobody could come in: he had signs out all the time. . . .

  The night that he couldn’t even get a squeak out of his trumpet and went back to the hotel—alone, always alone—and put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, we found something out.

  We found out what it was that had been eating at The Ol’ Massuh.

  Cancer.

  Rose-Ann took it the hardest. She had the dry-weeps for a long time, saying it over and over: “Why didn’t he let us know? Why didn’t he tell us?”

  But, you get over things. Even women do, especially when they’ve got something to take its place.

  We reorganized a little. Sonny cut out the sax—saxes were getting cornball anyway—and took over on trumpet. And we decided against keeping Spoof’s name. It was now Sonny Holmes and His Crew.

  And we kept on eating high up. Nobody seemed to miss Spoof—not the cats in front, at least—because Sonny blew as great a horn as anybody could want, smooth and sure, full of excitement and clean as a gnat’s behind.

  We played across the States and back, and they loved us—thanks to the kid. Called us an “institution” and the disc-jockeys began to pick up our stuff. We were “real,” they said—the only authentic jazz left, and who am I to push it? Maybe they were right.

  Sonny kept things in low. And then, when he was sure—damn that slow way: it had been a cinch since back when—he started to pay attention to Rose-Ann. She played i
t cool, the way she knew he wanted it, and let it build up right. Of course, who didn’t know she would’ve married him this minute, now, just say the word? But Sonny was a very conscientious cat indeed.

  We did a few stands in France about that time—Listen to them holler!—and a couple in England and Sweden—getting better, too—and after a breather, we cut out across the States again.

  It didn’t happen fast, but it happened sure. Something was sounding flat all of a sudden like—wrong, in a way:

  During an engagement in El Paso we had What the Cats Dragged In lined up. You all know Cats—the rhythm section still, with the horns yelling for a hundred bars, then that fast and solid beat, that high trip and trumpet solo? Sonny had the ups on a wild riff and was coming on down, when he stopped. Stood still, with the horn to his lips; and we waited.

  “Come on, wrap it up—you want a drum now? What’s the story, Sonny?”

  Then he started to blow. The notes came out the same almost, but not quite the same. They danced out of the horn strop-razor sharp and sliced up high and blasted low and the cats all fell out. “Do it! Go! Go, man! Oooo, I’m out of the boat, don’t pull me back! Sing out, man!”

  The solo lasted almost seven minutes. When it was time for us to wind it up, we just about forgot.

  The crowd went wild. They stomped and screamed and whistled. But they couldn’t get Sonny to play any more. He pulled the horn away from his mouth—I mean that’s the way it looked, as if he was yanking it away with all his strength—and for a second he looked surprised, like he’d been goosed. Then his lips pulled back into a smile.

  It was the damndest smile!

  Freddie went over to him at the break. “Man, that was the craziest. How many tongues you got?”

  But Sonny didn’t answer him.

  Things went along all right for a little. We played a few dances in the cities, some radio stuff, cut a few platters. Easy walking style.

  Sonny played Sonny—plenty great enough. And we forget about what happened in El Paso. So what? So he cuts loose once—can’t a man do that if he feels the urge? Every jazz man brings that kind of light at least once.

  We worked through the sticks and were finally set for a New York opening when Sonny came in and gave us the news.

  It was a gasser. Lux got sore. Mr. “T” shook his head.

  “Why? How come, Top?”

  He had us booked for the corn-belt. The old-time route, exactly, even the old places, back when we were playing razzmatazz and feeling our way.

  “You trust me?” Sonny asked. “You trust my judgment?”

  “Come off it, Top; you know we do. Just tell us how come. Man, New York’s what we been working for—”

  “That’s just it,” Sonny said. “We aren’t ready.”

  That brought us down. How did we know—we hadn’t even thought about it.

  “We need to get back to the real material. When we play in New York, it’s not anything anybody’s liable to forget in a hurry. And that’s why I think we ought to take a refresher course. About five weeks. All right?”

  Well, we fussed some and fumed some, but not much, and in the end we agreed to it. Sonny knew his stuff, that’s what we figured.

  “Then it’s settled.”

  And we lit out.

  Played mostly the old stuff dressed up—Big Gig, Only Us Chickens and the rest—or head-arrangements with a lot of trumpet. Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky . . .

  When we hit Louisiana for a two-nighter at the Tropics, the same thing happened that did back in Texas. Sonny blew wild for eight minutes on a solo that broke the glasses and cracked the ceiling and cleared the dance-floor like a tornado. Nothing off the stem, either—but like it was practice, sort of, or exercise. A solo out of nothing, that didn’t even try to hang on to a shred of the melody.

  “Man, it’s great, but let us know when it’s gonna happen, hear!”

  About then Sonny turned down the flame on Rose-Ann. He was polite enough and a stranger wouldn’t have noticed, but we did, and Rose-Ann did—and it was tough for her to keep it all down under, hidden. All those questions, all those memories and fears.

  He stopped going out and took to hanging around his rooms a lot. Once in a while he’d start playing: one time we listened to that horn all night.

  Finally—it was still somewhere in Louisiana—when Sonny was reaching with his trumpet so high he didn’t get any more sound out of it than a dog-whistle, and the front cats were laughing up a storm, I went over and put it to him flatfooted.

  His eyes were big and he looked like he was trying to say something and couldn’t. He looked scared.

  “Sonny . . . look, boy, what are you after? Tell a friend, man, don’t lock it up.”

  But he didn’t answer me. He couldn’t.

  He was coughing too hard.

  Here’s the way we doped it: Sonny had worshiped Spoof, like a god or something. Now some of Spoof was rubbing off, and he didn’t know it.

  Freddie was elected. Freddie talks pretty good most of the time.

  “Get off the train, Jack. Ol’ Massuh’s gone now, dead and buried. Mean, what he was after ain’t to be had. Mean, he wanted it all and then some—and all is all, there isn’t any more. You play the greatest, Sonny—go on, ask anybody. Just fine. So get off the train. . . .”

  And Sonny laughed, and agreed and promised. I mean in words. His eyes played another number, though.

  Sometimes he snapped out of it, it looked like, and he was fine then—tired and hungry, but with it. And we’d think, He’s okay. Then it would happen all over again—only worse. Every time, worse.

  And it got so Sonny even talked like Spoof half the time: “Broom off, man, leave me alone, will you? Can’t you see I’m busy, got things to do? Get away!” And walked like Spoof—that slow walk-in-your-sleep shuffle. And did little things—like scratching his belly and leaving his shoes unlaced and rehearsing in his undershirt.

  He started to smoke weed in Alabama.

  In Tennessee he took the first drink anybody ever saw him take.

  And always with that horn—cussing it, yelling at it, getting sore because it wouldn’t do what he wanted it to.

  We had to leave him alone, finally. “I’ll handle it . . . I—understand, I think. . . . Just go away, it’ll be all right. . . .”

  Nobody could help him. Nobody at all.

  Especially not Rose-Ann.

  End of the corn-belt route, the way Sonny had it booked, was the Copper Club. We hadn’t been back there since the night we planted Spoof—and we didn’t feel very good about it.

  But a contract isn’t anything else.

  So we took rooms at the only hotel there ever was in the town. You make a guess which room Sonny took. And we played some cards and bruised our chops and tried to sleep and couldn’t. We tossed around in the beds, listening, waiting for the horn to begin. But it didn’t. All night long, it didn’t.

  We found out why, oh yes. . . .

  Next day we all walked around just about everywhere except in the direction of the cemetery. Why kick up misery? Why make it any harder?

  Sonny stayed in his room until ten before opening, and we began to worry. But he got in under the wire.

  The Copper Club was packed. Yokels and farmers and high school stuff, a jazz “connoisseur” here and there—to the beams. Freddie had set up the stands with the music notes all in order, and in a few minutes we had our positions.

  Sonny came out wired for sound. He looked—powerful; and that’s a hard way for a five-foot four-inch baldheaded white man to look. At any time. Rose-Ann threw me a glance and I threw it back, and collected it from the rest. Something bad. Something real bad. Soon.

  Sonny didn’t look any which way. He waited for the applause to die down, then he did a quick One-Two-Three-Four and we swung into The Jimjam Man, our theme.

  I mean to say, that crowd was with us all the way—they smelled something.

  Sonny did the thumb-and-little-finger signal and we start
ed Only Us Chickens. Bud Meunier did the intro on his bass, then Henry took over on the piano. He played one hand racing the other. The front cats hollered “Go! Go!” and Henry went. His left hand crawled on down over the keys and scrambled and didn’t fuzz once or slip once and then walked away, cocky and proud, like a mouse full of cheese from an unsprung trap.

  “Hooo-boy! Play, Henry, play!”

  Sonny watched and smiled. “Bring it on out,” he said, gentle, quiet, pleased. “Keep bringin’ it out.”

  Henry did that counterpoint business that you’re not supposed to be able to do unless you have two right arms and four extra fingers, and he got that boiler puffing, and he got it shaking, and he screamed his Henry Walker “WoooooOOOOO!” and he finished. I came in on the tubs and beat them up till I couldn’t see for the sweat, hit the cymbal and waited.

  Mr. “T,” Lux and Jimmy fiddlefaddled like a coop of capons talking about their operation for a while. Rose-Ann chanted: “Only us chickens in the hen-house, Daddy, Only us chickens here, Only us chickens in the hen-house, Daddy, Ooo-bab-a-roo, Ooo-bob-a-roo . . .”

  Then it was horn time. Time for the big solo.

  Sonny lifted the trumpet—One! Two!—He got it into sight—Three!

  We all stopped dead. I mean we stopped.

  That wasn’t Sonny’s horn. This one was dented-in and beat-up and the tip-end was nicked. It didn’t shine, not a bit.

  Lux leaned over—you could have fit a coffee cup into his mouth. “Jesus God,” he said. “Am I seeing right?”

  I looked close and said: “Man, I hope not.”

  But why kid? We’d seen that trumpet a million times.

  It was Spoof’s.

  Rose-Ann was trembling. Just like me, she remembered how we’d buried the horn with Spoof. And she remembered how quiet it had been in Sonny’s room last night. . . .

  I started to think real hophead thoughts, like—where did Sonny get hold of a shovel that late? and how could he expect a horn to play that’s been under the ground for two years? and—

  That blast got into our ears like long knives.

  Spoof’s own trademark!

  Sonny looked caught, like he didn’t know what to do at first, like he was hypnotized, scared, almighty scared. But as the sound came out, rolling out, sharp and clean and clear—new-trumpet sound—his expression changed. His eyes changed: they danced a little and opened wide.