by J.F. Powers
New York may be all right, he hummed to himself, but Beale Street’s paved with gold. That’s a lie, he thought; I been down on Beale. And Chicago, same way. All my life playing jobs in Chicago, and I still got to ride the Big Red. And that’s no lie. Jobs were getting harder and harder to find. What they wanted was Mickey Mouse sound effects, singing strings, electric guitars, neon violins, even organs and accordions and harmonica teams. Hard to find a spot to play in, and when you did it was always a white place with drunken advertising men wanting to hear “a old song”—“My Wild Irish Rose” or “I Love You Truly.” So you played it, of course, and plenty of schmaltz. And the college kids who wanted swing—any slick popular song. So you played that, too. And always you wanted to play the music you were born to, blue or fast, music that had no name. You managed somehow to play that, too, when there was a lull or the place was empty and you had to stay until 4 A.M. anyway.
Baby got off the streetcar and walked the same two blocks he saw every night except Tuesday. The wind had died down almost entirely and the snow whirled in big flakes end over end. Padding along, Baby told himself he liked winter better than summer. Then he came to the place, said, “How’s it, Chief?” to the doorman, an Indian passing for Negro, went down three steps, and forgot all about winter and summer. It was always the same here. It was not so much a place of temperatures as a place of lights and shades and chromium, pastel mirrors, the smell of beer, rum, whisky, smoke—a stale blend of odors and shadows, darkness and music. It was a place of only one climate and that was it.
Baby’s overcoat, hat, and scarf went into a closet and settled familiarly on hooks. His old tuxedo walked over to the traps. Its black hands rubbed together briskly, driving out the chill. One hand fumbled in the dark at the base of the big drum, and a second later a watery blue light winked on dully and flooded the drumhead, staring like a blind blue eye. Immediately the tuxedo sat down and worked its feet with a slight rasping noise into the floor. The fingers thumped testingly on the hide, tightened the snare. They knew, like the ears, when it was right. Gingerly, as always, the right foot sought the big drum’s pedal. The tuxedo was not ready yet. It had to fidget and massage its seat around on the chair, stretch out its arms, and hug the whole outfit a fraction of an inch this way and that. Then the eyes glanced at the piano player, signaling ready. The drumsticks paused a moment tensely, slid into the beat, barely heard, accenting perfectly the shower of piano notes. Everything worked together for two choruses. Then the piano player tapered his solo gently, so that at a certain point Baby knew it was his. He brought the number to a lifeless close, run down. Too early in the evening.
“Dodo,” Baby said to the piano player, “Libby come in yet?”
Dodo sent a black hand up, slow as smoke, toward the ceiling. “Upstairs,” he said, letting the hand fall to the keyboard with a faint, far-off chord. It stirred there, gently worming music from the battered upright. Notes drew nearer, riding on ships and camels through a world of sand and water, till they came forthright from the piano, taking on patterns, as the other black hand came to life on the bass keys, dear to Dodo. Baby picked up his sticks, recognizing the number. He called it “Dodo’s Blues,” though he knew Dodo called it nothing. Every night about this time, when there was no crowd and Dodo hadn’t yet put on the white coat he wore servicing the bar, they would play it. Baby half closed his eyes. With pleasure he watched Dodo through the clouds of rhythm he felt shimmering up like heat from his drums. Baby’s eyes were open only enough to frame Dodo like a picture; everything else was out. It was a picture of many dimensions; music was only one of them.
Here was a man, midgety, hunchbacked, black, and proud—mostly all back and music. A little man who, when he was fixing to play, had to look around for a couple of three-inch telephone directories. Piling them on top of the piano bench, he sat down, with all their names and streets and numbers and exchanges under him. He had very little of thighs and stomach—mostly just back, which threw a round shadow on the wall. When he leaned farther away from the piano, so the light slanted through his hands, his shadow revealed him walking on his hands down the keyboard, dancing on the tips of fingery toes. Sometimes it seemed to Baby through half-closed eyes, when Dodo’s body was bobbing on the wall and his hands were feet dancing on the keyboard, as though the dim light shaped him into a gigantic, happy spider. When he became a spider you could forget he was a man, hunchbacked, runtish, black; and he, too, could forget perhaps that he had to be careful and proud. Perhaps he could be happy always if his back and size and color and pride were not always standing in the way. The piano made him whole. The piano taught him to find himself and jump clean over the moon. When he played, his feet never touched the pedals.
People were beginning to fill the place. They finished off the number, Baby smiling his admiration, Dodo scrupulously expressionless.
“For a young man . . .” Baby said.
Dodo got down off the telephone directories and threw them under the piano at the bass end, beyond the blue glow of the big drum. He had seen Libby come down the steps from the dressing room—a red dress, a gardenia. Dodo went behind the bar and put on his white service coat. Libby sat down at the piano.
Helplessly attracted, several men came over from the bar and leaned on the piano. They stared, burdening Libby’s body with calculations. Singly at first and then, gathering unity, together. Libby sang a popular song. The men went back to the bar to get their drinks, which they brought over and set on top of the upright. Libby sang the words about lost love, and the men licked their lips vacantly. At the end of the song they clapped fiercely. Libby ignored them with a smile.
“Say, that was just fine,” one man said. “Where you from anyhow?”
With a little grin Libby acknowledged Baby. Baby, beaming his veteran admiration of a fine young woman, nodded.
“Where you from? Huh?”
“New Orleans.”
“Well, you don’t say!” the man blurted out joyfully. “We’re from down South, too . . . Mississippi, matter of fact!”
Icily, Libby smiled her appreciation of this coincidence. She looked at Baby, who was also registering appropriately. Just think of that! Small world! And welcome to our city!
“Well, what do you know!” crowed the gentleman from Mississippi. “So you’re from down South!” He was greatly pleased and already very drunk. He eyed his friends, four or five of them, distributing his discovery equally among them.
“You never know,” he explained. Then he appeared to suffer a pang of doubt. He turned quickly to Libby again, as though to make sure she was still there. His eyes jellied blearily and in them an idea was born.
“I know,” he said. “Sing . . . sing—sing ‘Ol’ Man River’ for the boys. They all’d sure like that.”
Without responding, Libby looked down at her hands, smiling. She measured chords between her thumbs and little fingers, working her amusement into the keys. Baby stared at the mottled hide of his snare drum, at the big one’s rim worn down from playing “Dixieland.” The gentleman from Mississippi got worried.
“Aw, sing it,” he pleaded. So Libby sang a chorus. The gentlemen from Mississippi were overwhelmed. They loved the song, they loved the South, the dear old Southland. Land of cotton, cinnamon seed, and sandy bottom. Look away! Look away! They loved themselves. Look away! Look away! There was the tiniest touch of satire in Libby’s voice, a slightly overripe fervor. Baby caught it and behind the bar Dodo caught it, but the gentlemen did not. Dodo had put down the martini glass he was polishing and look away! look away!—good.
At the bridge of the second chorus, Libby nodded “Take it!” to Baby. He stood up, staggering from the heat of the fields, clenching his black, toilworn fists. In profound anguish, he hollered, giving the white folks his all, really knocking him-self out.
“Tote dat barge
Lift dat bale
Git a little drunk—”
Baby grimaced in torment and did his best to look like ol’ Uncle T
om out snatchin’ cotton.
Behind the bar, unnoticed, Dodo’s sad black face had turned beatific. “—And you land in jail!” Dodo could not see the other faces, the big white ones, but he could imagine them, the heads fixed and tilted. It was too dark in the place, and he could make out only blurrily the outlines of the necks. Ordinarily he was capable only of hating them. Now he had risen to great unfamiliar heights and was actually enjoying them. Surprised at this capacity in himself, yet proud he could feel this way, he was confused. He went further and started to pity them. But his memory stood up outraged at his forgetfulness and said, Kill that pity dead. Then he remembered he was really alone in the place. It was different with Libby and Baby, though they were black, too. He did not understand why. Say their skin was thicker—only that was not why. Probably this was not the first time they had jived white folks to death and them none the wiser. Dodo was not like that; he had to wait a long time for his kicks. From his heart no pity went out for the white men. He kept it all to himself, where it was needed. But he had to smile inside of him with Libby and Baby. Only more. Look at that fool Baby! Jam up!
“Bend yo’ knees
An’ bow yo’ head
An’ pull dat rope
Until yo’re dead.”
Baby sat down with a thud, exhausted. The gentlemen from Mississippi brayed their pleasure. My, it was good to see that black boy all sweatin’ and perspirin’ that way. They clapped furiously, called for drinks, gobbled . . .
“And bring some for the darkies!”
Baby swallowed some of his drink. He looked at the beaten rim of the big drum, then at the sticks. He took out his pocketknife and scraped the rough, splintery places smooth. He glanced at Libby and ventured the kind of smile he felt and knew she did. He finished his drink. The gentlemen from Mississippi hung around the piano, getting drunker, shouting in one another’s faces. Nervously Libby lighted a cigarette. A college boy tried to make conversation with her while his honey-haired girl assumed an attitude of genuine concern.
“Can you play ‘Hot Lips’?” He was the real American Boy.
“Don’t know it,” Libby lied. She wished she didn’t.
“Can you play ‘Sugar Blues’?” Right back.
“Don’t know it.”
One of the Mississippi gentlemen, who had been hanging back, crowded up to the piano, making his move. He drained his drink and pushed closer to the piano so as to brush Libby’s left hand with the front of his trousers. Libby moved her hand, sounding a chord that Baby caught. The gentleman, grinning lewdly, tried to follow her hand up the keyboard.
“That’s all right,” he snickered. “Play lots of bass, honey.”
The first gentleman from Mississippi, drink in hand, stumbled over from the bar. He told Libby to play that “Ol’ Man River” song some more. Libby hesitated. Then she lit into it, improvising all around it, and it was a pleasure for Baby, but the first gentleman from Mississippi was not happy. He said if that was the best she could do she had better try singing. Libby sang only one chorus. The gentlemen from Mississippi, though they applauded, were not gratified. There was an air of petulance among them. They remembered another time they heard the song, but it was not clear now what had made it different and better. They saw Baby all right, but they did not remember that he was the one who had sung before, the good one that toted their bars, lifted their bales, and landed drunk in their jails. Something was wrong, but they saw no remedy. Each gentleman suspected the fault was personal, what with him drinking so heavy and all.
Dodo, behind the bar, had not enjoyed the song the last time, hating the coercion the white men worked on Libby and Baby, and feared his advantage was slipping away. In a minute he would be hating them to pieces again.
“Can you play ‘Tiger Rag’?” The American Boy was back.
“No.” Libby made a face and then managed to turn it into a smile for him. He held his drink up for the world to see on the night before the big game.
The honey-haired girl wrenched her face into a winning smile and hit the jackpot. “Can you play ‘St Louis Blues’?”
“How you want it?” Libby said. She put out her cigarette. “Blues, rhumba . . . what kind a way?”
“Oh, play it low down. The way you people play it.” So Libby would understand, she executed a ponderous wink, narrowed her eyes, and made them glitter wantonly behind the lashes. “You know,” she said.
Libby knew. She played “St Louis,” losing herself in it with Baby. She left the college boy and the honey-haired girl behind. She forgot she knew. She gazed at Baby with her eyes dreamy, unseeing, blind with the blue drum, her head nodding in that wonderful, graceful way. Baby saw his old tuxedo in the mirror, its body shimmying on the chair, and he was pleased. The drums, beating figures, rocked with a steady roll. They were playing “Little Rock Getaway” now, the fine, young-woman music.
And Libby was pleased, watching Baby. And then, somehow, he vanished for her into the blue drum. The sticks still danced at an oblique angle on the snare, but there were no hands to them and Libby could not see Baby on the chair. She could only feel him somewhere in the blue glow. Abandoning herself, she lost herself in the piano. Now, still without seeing him, she could feel him with a clarity and warmth beyond vision. Miniature bell notes, mostly blue, blossomed ecstatically, perished affettuoso, weaving themselves down into the dark beauty of the lower keys, because it was closer to the drum, and multiplied. They came back to “St Louis” again.
“Stop.” The first gentleman from Mississippi touched Libby on the arm. “When I do that to you, that means ‘Stop,’” he said. Libby chorded easily. “Some of the boys like to hear that ‘Ol’ Man River’ some more.” He straightened up, turning to the other gentlemen, his smile assuring them it would not be long now.
“Kick off,” Baby sighed.
But Libby broke into “St Louis” again. Baby, with a little whoop, came clambering after, his sticks slicing into the drum rim, a staccato “Dixieland.”
The first gentleman frowned, touching Libby’s arm, “Remember what that means? Means ‘Ol’ Man River,’” he said calmly, as though correcting a slight error. “Toot sweet. Know what that means? That’s French. Means right now.” No harm done, however. Just that his friends here, a bunch of boys from down South, were dying to hear that song again—up to him to see that they got satisfaction—knew there would be no trouble about it.
“We’ll play it for you later on,” Libby said quickly. “We got some other requests besides yours. How many you got now, Baby?”
Baby held up eight fingers, very prompt.
“Coming up,” he said.
The first gentleman was undecided. “Well . . .” he drawled. Libby began a popular song. The first gentleman faced his friends. His eyes more or less met theirs and found no agreement. The boys looked kind of impatient, like a bunch of boys out for a little fun and not doing so well. He turned to Libby again.
“We just gotta have that ‘Ol’ Man River’ some more. Boys all got their hearts set on it,” he said. “Right away! Toot sweet! Toot—away!” There he’d gone and made a joke, and the boys all laughed and repeated it to each other. Libby played on, as though she had not heard. The first gentleman took hold of her arm. She gazed steadily up into his bleary eyes.
“Not now. Later.”
“No, you don’t. You gotta play it right now. For a bunch of boys from down South. They all got a hankerin’ to hear that ‘Ol’ Man River’ some more.”
“So you best play it,” another gentleman said, leaning down hard on the old upright piano. “On account of I’m gonna take and give ear. We kinda like how that old song sounds up North. Whatcha all need. The drummer will sing,” he said, and looked at Baby. Baby looked back, unsmiling.
Libby chorded lightly, waiting for the gentlemen from Mississippi to get tired. They could not see how it was with her and Baby—never.
“You ain’t gonna play?”
Baby’s eyes strained hard in their sockets.<
br />
“We ain’t comin’,” Libby said.
Baby’s eyes relaxed and he knew the worst part was over. They felt the same way about it. They had made up their minds. The rest was easy. Baby was even a little glad it had happened. A feeling was growing within him that he had wanted to do this for a long time—for years and years, in a hundred different places he had played.
Secretly majestic, Baby sat at his drums, the goal of countless uplifted eyes—beseeching him. For it seemed that hordes of white people were far below him, making their little commotions and noises, asking favors of him, like Lord, please bring the rain, or Lord, please take it away. Lord Baby. Waves of warm exhilaration washed into him, endearing him to himself. No, he smiled, I am sorry, no favors today. Yes, Lord, they all said, if that’s the way it is, so be it.
But somebody objected. The manager’s voice barked, far below, scarcely audible to Baby in his new eminence. “. . . honoring requests,” he heard, and “. . . trouble with the local,” and “. . . wanting to get a sweet-swing trio in this place a long time now.” And the manager, strangely small, an excited, pale pygmy, explaining to the gentlemen from Mississippi, also small, how it was, “That’s all I can do in the circumstances,” and them saying, “Well, I guess so; well, I guess so all right; don’t pay to pamper ’em, to give ’em an inch.”
Baby noticed Libby had got up from the piano and put on her coat, the long dress hanging out at the bottom, red.
“I won’t change,” she said, and handed Baby the canvas cover for the snare drum.
“Huh?” Baby said foggily. He set about taking his traps apart. Dodo, not wearing his white service coat, came over to help.