Jazz

by Toni Morrison

  “I taught both you all never kill the tender and nothing female if you can help it. Didn’t think I had to teach you about people. Now, learn this: she ain’t prey. You got to know the difference.”

  Victory and Joe had been joking, speculating on what it would take to kill Wild if they happened on her. If the trail of her all three of them sometimes saw and followed led straight to her hide. That’s when Hunter said it. About how crazy people have reasons. Then he looked right at Joe (not Victory). The low fire galvanized his stare. “You know, that woman is somebody’s mother and somebody ought to take care.”

  Victory and Joe exchanged looks, but it was Joe’s flesh that cooled and his throat that tried and failed to swallow.

  From then on he wrestled with the notion of a wildwoman for a mother. Sometimes it shamed him to tears. Other times his anger messed up his aim and he shot wild or hit game in messy inefficient places. A lot of his time was spent denying it, convincing himself he misread Hunter’s words and most of all his look. Nevertheless, Wild was always on his mind, and he wasn’t going to leave for Palestine without trying to find her one more time.

  She wasn’t always in the cane. Nor the back part of the woods on a whiteman’s farm. He and Hunter and Victory had seen traces of her in those woods: ruined honeycombs, the bits and leavings of stolen victuals and many times the signal Hunter relied on most—redwings, those blue-black birds with the bolt of red on their wings. Something about her they liked, said Hunter, and seeing four or more of them always meant she was close. Hunter had spoken to her there twice, he said, but Joe knew that those woods were not her favorite place. The first time he’d looked for her it was a halfhearted search after a couple of hours’ spectacular fishing. Across the river, beyond the place where the trout and the bass were plentiful but before the river went underground heading for the mill, the bank turned around an incline. On top of it, some fifteen feet above the river was a sheltering rock formation, its entrance blocked by hedges of old hibiscus. Once, after pulling ten trout in the first hour of dawn, Joe had walked past that place and heard what he first believed was some combination of running water and wind in high trees. The music the world makes, familiar to fishermen and shepherds, woodsmen have also heard. It hypnotizes mammals. Bucks raise their heads and gophers freeze. Attentive woodsmen smile and close their eyes.

  Joe thought that was it, and simply listened with pleasure until a word or two seemed to glide into the sound. Knowing the music the world makes has no words, he stood rock still and scanned his surroundings. A silver line lay across the opposite bank, sun cutting into the last of the night’s royal blue. Above and to his left hibiscus thick, savage and old. Its blossoms were closed waiting for the day. The scrap of song came from a woman’s throat, and Joe thrashed and beat his way up the incline and through the hedge, a tangle of muscadine vines, Virginia creeper and hibiscus rusty with age. He found the opening in the rock formation but could not enter it from that angle. He would have to climb above it and slide down into its mouth. The light was so small he could barely see his legs. But he saw tracks enough to know she was there.

  He called out. “Anybody there?”

  The song stopped, and a snap like the breaking of twigs took its place.

  “Hey! You in there!”

  Nothing stirred and he could not persuade himself that the fragrance that floated over him was not a mixture of honey and shit. He left then, disgusted, and not a little afraid.

  The second time he looked for her was after the dispossession. Having seen the smoke and tasted the sugared air on his tongue, he delayed his journey to Palestine to detour back toward Vienna. Skirting the burned ground and fields of black stalks; looking away from the cabins that were now just hot bricks where a washtub once stood, he headed for the river and the hole in it where trout multiplied like flies. When he reached the place where the river turned he adjusted the rifle strapped to his back and dropped to his haunches.

  Slowly, breathing softly through his mouth, he crawled toward the rocks shut away by greenery grown ruthless in sun and air. There was no sign of her, nothing he recognized. He managed to climb above the opening, but when he slid down and entered the rock place, he saw nothing a woman could use and the vestiges of human habitation were cold. Had she run away, escaped? Or had she been overtaken by smoke, fire, panic, helplessness? Joe waited there, till his listening made him drowsy and he slept for an hour or more. When he woke the day had moved and the hibiscus was as wide as his hand. He hauled himself down the incline and, as he turned to go four redwings shot up from the lower limbs of a white-oak tree. Huge, isolated, it grew in unlikely soil—entwined in its own roots. Immediately Joe fell to his hands and knees, whispering: “Is it you? Just say it. Say anything.” Someone near him was breathing. Turning round he examined the place he had just exited. Every movement and leaf shift seemed to be her. “Give me a sign, then. You don’t have to say nothing. Let me see your hand. Just stick it out someplace and I’ll go; I promise. A sign.” He begged, pleaded for her hand until the light grew even smaller. “You my mother?” Yes. No. Both. Either. But not this nothing.

  Whispering into hibiscus stalks and listening to breathing, he suddenly saw himself pawing around in the dirt for a not just crazy but also dirty woman who happened to be his secret mother that Hunter once knew but who orphaned her baby rather than nurse him or coddle him or stay in the house with him. A woman who frightened children, made men sharpen knives, for whom brides left food out (might as well—otherwise she stole it). Leaving traces of her sloven unhousebroken self all over the county. Shaming him before everybody but Victory, who neither laughed nor slant-eyed him when Joe told him what he believed Hunter meant by those words and especially that look. “She must be tough” was Victory’s reply. “Live outside like that all year round, she must be tough.”

  Maybe so, but right then Joe felt like a lint-headed fool, crazier than she and just as wild as he slipped into mud, tripped over black roots, scuffed through patches of dirt crawling with termites. He loved the woods because Hunter taught him how to. But now they were full of her, a simple-minded woman too silly to beg for a living. Too brain-blasted to do what the meanest sow managed: nurse what she birthed. The small children believed she was a witch, but they were wrong. This creature hadn’t the intelligence to be a witch. She was powerless, invisible, wastefully daft. Everywhere and nowhere.

  There are boys who have whores for mothers and don’t get over it. There are boys whose mothers stagger through town roads when the juke joint slams its door. Mothers who throw their children away or trade them for folding money. He would have chosen any one of them over this indecent speechless lurking insanity. The blast he aimed at the white-oak limbs disturbed nothing, for the shells were in his pocket. The trigger clicked harmlessly. Yelling, sliding, falling, he raced back down the incline and followed the riverbank out of there.

  From then on his work was maniacal. On his way to Palestine, he took every job offered or heard about. Cut trees, cane; plowed till he could hardly lift his arms; plucked chickens and cotton; hauled lumber, grain, quarry rocks and stock. Some thought he was money hungry, but others guessed that Joe didn’t like to be still or thought of as lazy. Sometimes he worked so long and late he never got back to the bed he bunked in. Then he would sleep outside, sometimes lucky enough to be near the walnut tree; swinging in the tarp they kept there for when they needed it. After Palestine, when the cotton was in, baled and spoken for, Joe got married and worked even harder.

  Did Hunter stay near Vienna after the fire? Move back to Wordsworth? Fix himself a little place up country—like he talked of doing—and work the world his own way? In 1926, far away from all those places, Joe thought maybe it was Wordsworth Hunter moved near to, and if he could ask him, Victory would remember exactly (assuming he was alive and prison had not rattled him) because Victory remembered everything and could keep things clear in his mind. Like how many times peahens had used a certain nest. Like where a henna carpe
t of pine needles was shin-bone deep. Like whether a particular tree—the one whose roots grew up its trunk—was in bud two days ago or a week and exactly where it was.

  Joe is wondering about all this on an icy day in January. He is a long way from Virginia, and even longer from Eden. As he puts on his coat and cap he can practically feel Victory at his side when he sets out, armed, to find Dorcas. He isn’t thinking of harming her, or, as Hunter had cautioned, killing something tender. She is female. And she is not prey. So he never thinks of that. He is hunting for her though, and while hunting a gun is as natural a companion as Victory.

  He stalks through the City and it does not object or interfere. It’s the first day of the year. Most people are tired from the night before. Colored people, however, are still celebrating with a day gathering, a feast that can linger into the night. The streets are slippery. The City looks as uninhabited as a small town.

  “I just want to see her. Tell her I know she didn’t mean what she said. She’s young. Young people fly off the handle. Bust out just for the hell of it. Like me shooting an unloaded shotgun at the leaves that time. Like me saying, ‘All right, Violet, I’ll marry you,’ just because I couldn’t see whether a wildwoman put out her hand or not.”

  The streets he walks are slick and black. In his coat pocket is the forty-five he pawned his rifle for. He had laughed when he handled it, a fat baby gun that would be loud as a cannon. Nothing complex; you’d have to fight your own self to miss, but he isn’t going to miss because he isn’t going to aim. Not at that insulted skin. Never. Never hurt the young: nest eggs, roe, fledglings, fry…

  A wind rips up from the mouth of the tunnel and blows his cap off. He runs to get it from the gutter it swept into. He doesn’t see the paper ring from a White Owl cigar that sticks to the crown of his cap. Once inside the train he perspires heavily and takes off his coat. The paper sack thuds to the floor. Joe looks down at the fingers of a passenger who reaches for the bag and returns it to him. Joe nods a thank you and shoves the sack back into his coat pocket. A Negro woman shakes her head at him. At the paper sack? Its contents? No, at his dripping face. She holds out to him a fresh handkerchief to wipe it. He refuses; puts his coat back on and moves to the door to stare into the swiftness and the dark.

  The train stops suddenly, throwing passengers forward. As though it just remembered that this was the stop where Joe needs to get off if he is going to find her.

  Three girls pile out of the train and clack down the icy stairs. Three waiting men greet them and they all pair off. It is biting cold. The girls have red lips and their legs whisper to each other through silk stockings. The red lips and the silk flash power. A power they will exchange for the right to be overcome, penetrated. The men at their side love it because, in the end, they will reach in, extend, get back behind that power, grab it and keep it still.

  The third time Joe had tried to find her (he was a married man by then) he had searched the hillside for the tree—the one whose roots grew backward as though, having gone obediently into earth and found it barren, retreating to the trunk for what was needed. Defiant and against logic its roots climbed. Toward leaves, light, wind. Below that tree was the river whites called Treason where fish raced to the line, and swimming among them could be riotous or serene. But to get there you risked treachery by the very ground you walked on. The slopes and low hills that fell gently toward the river only appeared welcoming; underneath vines, carpet grass, wild grape, hibiscus and wood sorrel, the ground was as porous as a sieve. A step could swallow your foot or your whole self.

  “What would she want with a rooster? Crowing on a corner, looking at the chickens to pick over them. Nothing they have I don’t have better. Plus I know how to treat a woman. I never have, never would, mistreat one. Never would make a woman live like a dog in a cave. The roosters would. She used to say that too. How the young ones couldn’t think about anybody but themselves; how in the playground or at a dance all those boys thought about was themselves. When I find her, I know—I bet my life—she won’t be holed up with one of them. His clothes won’t be all mixed up with hers. Not her. Not Dorcas. She’ll be alone. Hardheaded. Wild, even. But alone.”

  Beyond the tree, behind the hibiscus, was a boulder. Behind it an opening so badly disguised it could be only the work of a human. No fox or foaling doe would be so sloppy. Had she been hiding there? Was she that small? He squatted to look closer for signs of her, recognizing none. Finally he stuck his head in. Pitch dark. No odor of dung or fur. It had, instead, a domestic smell—oil, ashes—that led him on. Crawling, squirming through a space low enough to graze his hair. Just as he decided to back out of there, the dirt under his hands became stone and light hit him so hard he flinched. He had come through a few body-lengths of darkness and was looking out the south side of the rock face. A natural burrow. Going nowhere. Angling through one curve of the slope to another. Treason River glistening below. Unable to turn around inside, he pulled himself all the way out to reenter head first. Immediately he was in open air the domestic smell intensified. Cooking oil reeked under stabbing sunlight. Then he saw the crevice. He went into it on his behind until a floor stopped his slide. It was like falling into the sun. Noon light followed him like lava into a stone room where somebody cooked in oil.

  “She don’t have to explain. She don’t have to say a word. I know how it is. She might think it’s jealousy, but I’m a mild man. It’s not that I don’t feel things. I’ve known some tough times. Got through them, too. I feel things just like everybody else.

  “She’ll be all alone.

  “She’ll turn to me.

  “She will hold out her hand, walk toward me in ugly shoes, but her face is clean and I am proud of her. Her too-tight braids torture her so she unlooses them as she moves toward me. She’s so glad I found her. Arching and soft, wanting me to do it, asking me to. Just me. Nobody but me.”

  He felt peace at the beginning, and a kind of watchfulness, as though something waited. A before-supper feeling when someone waits to eat. Although it was a private place, with an opening closed to the public, once inside you could do what you pleased: disrupt things, rummage, touch and move. Change it all to a way it was never meant to be. The color of the stone walls had changed from gold to fish-gill blue by the time he left. He had seen what there was. A green dress. A rocking chair without an arm. A circle of stones for cooking. Jars, baskets, pots; a doll, a spindle, earrings, a photograph, a stack of sticks, a set of silver brushes and a silver cigar case. Also. Also, a pair of man’s trousers with buttons of bone. Carefully folded, a silk shirt, faded pale and creamy—except at the seams. There, both thread and fabric were a fresh and sunny yellow.

  But where is she?

  There she is. No dancing brothers are in this place, nor any breathless girls waiting for the white bulb to be exchanged for the blue. This is an adult party—what goes on goes on in bright light. The illegal liquor is not secret and the secrets are not forbidden. Pay a dollar or two when you enter and what you say is smarter, funnier, than it would be in your own kitchen. Your wit surfaces over and over like the rush of foam to the rim. The laughter is like pealing bells that don’t need a hand to pull on the rope; it just goes on and on until you are weak with it. You can drink the safe gin if you like, or stick to beer, but you don’t need either because a touch on the knee, accidental or on purpose, alerts the blood like a shot of pre-Pro bourbon or two fingers pinching your nipple. Your spirit lifts to the ceiling where it floats for a bit looking down with pleasure on the dressed-up nakedness below. You know something wicked is going on in a room with a closed door. But there is enough dazzle and mischief here, where partners cling or exchange at the urging of a heartbreaking vocal.

  Dorcas is satisfied, content. Two arms clasp her and she is able to rest her cheek on her own shoulder while her wrists cross behind his neck. It’s good they don’t need much space to dance in because there isn’t any. The room is packed. Men groan their satisfaction; women hum anticipation.
The music bends, falls to its knees to embrace them all, encourage them all to live a little, why don’t you? since this is the it you’ve been looking for.

  Her partner does not whisper in Dorcas’ ear. His promises are already clear in the chin he presses into her hair, the fingertips that stay. She stretches up to encircle his neck. He bends to help her do it. They agree on everything above the waist and below: muscle, tendon, bone joint and marrow cooperate. And if the dancers hesitate, have a moment of doubt, the music will solve and dissolve any question.

  Dorcas is happy. Happier than she has ever been anytime. No white strands grow in her partner’s mustache. He is up and coming. Hawk-eyed, tireless and a little cruel. He has never given her a present or even thought about it. Sometimes he is where he says he will be; sometimes not. Other women want him—badly—and he has been selective. What they want and the prize it is his to give is his savvy self. What could a pair of silk stockings be compared to him? No contest. Dorcas is lucky. Knows it. And is as happy as she has ever been anytime.

  “He is coming for me. I know he is because I know how flat his eyes went when I told him not to. And how they raced afterward. I didn’t say it nicely, although I meant to. I practiced the points; in front of the mirror I went through them one by one: the sneaking around, and his wife and all. I never said anything about our ages or Acton. Nothing about Acton. But he argued with me so I said, Leave me alone. Just leave me alone. Get away from me. You bring me another bottle of cologne I’ll drink it and die you don’t leave me alone.

  “He said, You can’t die from cologne.