In the Night of the Heat

by Blair Underwood

  The sawdust had been swept up, but there was no crowd to appreciate the effort. The jukebox was silent, and I didn’t smell food cooking. If not for three men at the back table, I wouldn’t have thought the place was open.

  Three black men sat at a corner table, arguing with such passion that they might have been talking about religion and politics. The men were thick-bodied, in their twenties and thirties. The larger one was in a blue jumpsuit, and I realized he was the mechanic from Minit Auto Repair who’d danced in front of the jukebox. None of them glanced toward me when I walked in. All of them had drinks, but no one was eating.

  The waitress, Janiece, came to greet me from the bar, practically meeting me at the door. She was the only part of Pig’n-a-Poke that looked better in daylight, even in her silly dress. She smiled and gave her hair a sassy shake. She didn’t seem shy anymore.

  “I was hopin’ you’d be back,” she said.

  She might have been flirting. Nobody had told her how to adjust her posture from a slouch to a rolling strut, so the effect fell flat; but her smile was nice. I can almost always find features to appreciate on a woman’s face.

  “This is funny…” I said. “Jamal Jones just told me I need to see Wallace Rubens.”

  She nodded. “They were both here last night.” That smile wasn’t bad at all.

  “So I’m the last to hear.” I gave her a grin, and I saw lightning flutter behind her eyes. “Just want to talk about some land. You expect him for lunch?”

  “If he’s not still fishin’,” she said.

  The men at the table grew louder. An unusually short man stood up, waving his arms to make his point. He was barely five feet tall, but built like a fireplug. His husky voice dominated their angry volleys. I was glad they weren’t pissed at me.

  “Damn, they take those ball games way too serious,” Janiece said, raising her voice so the men would hear. She beckoned me. “Come on back where it’s quiet. Bear’ll be ’round.”

  Janiece led me past the bar to the now-empty room where the jam session had been held. There were two small tables near the front, both set for customers. The stage was more professional than I’d thought, raised a foot from the ground, polished wood. Center stage, between two microphones, a gorgeous royal purple Fender stood on a guitar stand.

  Rubens’s guitar, I guessed. Apparently, he didn’t expect anyone to walk away with it.

  “On Fridays, hard lemonade’s fifty cents,” Janiece said. “Might as well have one, ’cuz it’s the first thing he’s gonna axe when he meets you: ‘How’d you like the lemonade?’ Mr. Rubens don’t trust nobody who won’t take a drink. Plus, it’s his grandmama’s recipe.”

  It was as if she’d taken a personality pill overnight. Worked fine for me, as long as it got me closer to Rubens. “Then gimme a lemonade and a beef brisket sandwich.”

  “Lemonade’ll be right up,” she said. “But we gonna need a minute for that brisket.”

  The performance room’s walls were wood-paneled. An upright piano that looked like an antique stood against the wall beside the stage.

  Janiece was back with my drink within thirty seconds. Her service had improved, too. In the next room, I heard the men at the table bellowing at each other.

  I touched the piano’s middle C note. The piano sounded bright, perfectly tuned. Music might build rapport with Rubens. Could be an option.

  “Go on and play if you want,” Janiece said. “Folks do it all the time. Just don’t spill none of that lemonade on the keys.” She spoke over her shoulder, on her way out.

  I puckered when I tasted Grandma Rubens’s hard lemonade. Too much sour, not enough sweet. But I drained my glass in case Rubens showed up and asked me how I’d liked it. I would only order one. Alcohol slows reflexes.

  While I waited for my food, I strolled the large room. I noticed a framed Jet magazine on the wall near the piano, the middle pages spread open. The article was dated January, 1967.

  Jet had written a feature about the Sunshine Bowl in 1967! The pages were slightly yellowed, but the magazine had been in the frame for years. There was a close-up of Wallace Rubens, his face enlarged from the Tallahassee Democrat photo I’d found on the university’s website. The caption read: “(UNOFFICIAL) MOST VALUABLE PLAYER: WALLACE RUBENS.” The determination on Rubens’s face was mesmerizing.

  The article read: “In a shameful display of desperation, Florida University fans screamed racial epithets at the Spartans, whose win was led by the Negro players on the team’s offensive line, particularly Wallace Rubens (Mercy, FL). While the Negro players’ concentration and discipline ruled the day, a tragic turn befell Wallace Rubens when he was seriously injured in a car accident after the game. At press time, Rubens’s grandmother says it is possible that he will never be able to play football again.”

  My mouth felt dry, suddenly. I tried my glass, but even the ice tasted sour. They should pay us a dollar to drink it.

  “Now, that was a day…” a voice rumbled behind me.

  Wallace Rubens had come in while my back was turned.

  He was only six yards behind me, so close and wide that I had to turn around to take him in. He might be in his sixties, but I imagined what it had felt like to face him across the line of scrimmage. He was still impressively big and broad, built like that black guy from The Green Mile. Six-foot-six, easy, but he had put on a lot of fat since his college days. It didn’t sag; more like marbling, but enough marble for a good-sized fireplace.

  Instinct roared that I should take a step away from his reach, but I held my ground, cursing myself for my carelessness. I would only get one mistake on this trip to Mercy, and I might have just made it.

  “Was that a life-defining moment?” I said. At least Rubens had brought up the Sunshine Bowl first. I’d landed my fish already. “I’m John Gage.”

  Wallace’s face widened by inches. “‘A life-defining moment?’” he said, exaggerating my Yankee accent so that it sounded British. “Where you from, John Gage?”

  “From Philly,” I said, sticking to the story I’d told Jamal Jones.

  “North Philly? West Philly?” His tone was friendly, but his questions were rapid-fire, on the heels of my every word.

  I felt mild panic, but kept my face clear. I’d been to Philly plenty, but I wished I had chosen New York instead. When I was an escort, I spent half my time in New York.

  “Mt. Airy, actually,” I said, choosing an area where a high school friend lived. “We moved from Brooklyn Heights last year.”

  “Where you get your hair cut in Philly?”

  “My wife cuts my hair.”

  He eyed me with a glimmer that looked almost like a smile.

  “So, John Gage…” he said. “What do you consider a life-defining moment?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe your last football game. A lot of work. A lot of dreams.”

  Slowly, he nodded. He pursed his lips, looking thoughtful. When he sighed, I smelled beer and cigarettes. His breathing sounded heavy for a man at rest. Sweat beaded on his skin in the folds of his neck. His earlobes were creased vertically. Man had sampled entirely too much of his own cuisine. Rubens drew his words out like dripping molasses.

  “If that’s your definition, the Sunshine Bowl was that.”

  My mind raced, but I remembered my father’s advice: Take it slow. Rubens took my empty glass and set it on a coaster on top of the piano. “My niece says you play.”

  I hadn’t realized that the waitress was his niece. I was glad I’d been polite to her. “I dabble some. Wouldn’t call it playing.”

  Rubens jumped up on the stage. He had to weigh three hundred pounds, maybe sixty above fighting weight, but he carried his mass like a round black grasshopper. He picked up his guitar and draped the strap over his shoulder. He knelt to plug his guitar to the amp.

  My stomach suddenly felt queasy. “I gotta warn you, I don’t play blues…”

  “What can you play?” he said, not looking up at me as he wired up.

  “Th
ree chords. C, F, and G. That’s what I learned in seventh grade.”

  Wallace Rubens gave me a scolding look, lips curling in a smile. “Three chords is all you need to play blues, John Gage. Go sit down.”

  I didn’t like the way he kept saying my name, almost mocking it. Could he know I was lying? One call from Hankins…

  “All right, I’ll give it a try,” I said, and pulled out a wooden piano bench that whined across the hardwood floor. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  The speaker beside the stage squealed to life as Rubens tested a bluesy riff. His guitar was out of tune, but only slightly. He plucked a string, tuning. “Play the C chord. Like this…bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah, in six-eight time. I’ll nod to count off. One, two…”

  After fumbling to remember the C chord, I tried to match Rubens’s tempo. Just when I was ready to give up, my fingers synchronized with his nodding head. I was playing it!

  Rubens answered with a blazing riff up and down his guitar.

  By some miracle, we sounded good.

  “Okay, go to F,” he said. Rubens called out three notes in the F chord, and my fingers muddled their way into the pattern. When I finally got back on the tempo, Rubens followed with another soulful solo.

  “Now the G chord,” Rubens said. “That’s G, B, and D.”

  I could almost see the music staffs on my seventh-grade chalkboard again. This time, I made the key change without losing tempo. Rubens let out a hoot and followed me in G. We sounded so good that I wished someone had been there to witness it.

  “Half of life’s fakin’ it…” Rubens sang in a baritone into the live microphone. “The rest’s just the luck of the draw…”

  The song made my fingers feel fevered. I was playing! Rubens had just met me, and he’d already taken me to school.

  “Go back to C,” Rubens said, and repeated the lyrics. I followed him in the next chord change without having to be told. “Lord, I know Bear ain’t been perfect…but help pull these thorns out my paw…”

  We ended with a flourish, almost in unison, and we couldn’t help smiling. But Rubens’s smile was gone so fast, it might have been my imagination.

  “What you wanna ask me, son?” Rubens said, sliding his fingers up and down his strings. A series of ugly chords. “You wanna ask me about that game?”

  My gut told me to back off, that I might have come on too strong. “Actually, Jamal Jones said I should talk to you about real estate in Quincy.”

  His guitar went silent as Rubens gazed at me. “Naw, I don’t mean that. I’m talkin’ ’bout how you had your nose pressed to that magazine story about a football game in 1967. That same story hung on my grandmother’s wall until the day she died. So…what you wanna ask?” Emotion crept into his voice. Not anger, I didn’t think—more like sadness.

  “I guess I just wondered…where that disappointment goes.”

  “Go? It don’t go nowhere,” Rubens said.

  “How do you get past it?”

  “You don’t,” he said. “You change.”

  “The story said you got hurt…”

  Rubens walked closer to me. He sat at the edge of the stage, cradling the neck of his guitar. “Car crash. My leg got broke in four places. To this day, when it gets cold, I limp.”

  “Sorry to hear it, man.”

  He only shrugged, buffing his guitar with his shirtsleeve.

  “So…was it really an accident?” I said.

  Rubens stopped buffing. “What do you mean?”

  “I was just wondering how bad the town took it—losing the game like that,” I said. My heart was pounding so hard that I felt dizzy. “You sure nobody rigged it? The accident?”

  I winced when I heard myself say the word rigged, but Rubens’s face didn’t change. He seemed to consider it, then he shrugged his hulking shoulders. “They weren’t sad about it—but nobody rigged it.

  “How did—”

  “The accident was triple-B. Too much Beer. Too much Balls. Not enough Brains.” Wallace Rubens grunted, rocking himself to his feet. “Let’s do another duet. I’ll teach you three more chords.” He said something else, but I missed it. At the time, I blamed my ear.

  I wasn’t in the mood to play, suddenly. “I don’t think…”

  Rubens caught my gaze, dead serious. “Never waste a chance to make music, son.”

  I didn’t have the will to argue. While I sat waiting for his cue with my fingers on the keys, I noticed a plastic-covered menu standing in front of me in the sheet-music rack. Numbers caught my eyes, so blurry that I had to lean over to see them clearly.

  PIG’N-A-POKE: OPEN WEEKDAYS 3 P.M. TILL 3 A.M.

  I’d lost track of time, but it couldn’t be later than twelve thirty. No wonder the restaurant had been so empty! Pig-n-a-Poke wasn’t a lunch place. It was closed. In retrospect, it was obvious.

  I suddenly realized how dizzy I was. I swayed in my seat; my toes tightened in my shoes as I pressed my soles against the floor. I felt like I was on the deck of a rocking ship.

  Adrenaline drenched my pores even as I felt the weight of my muscles trying to drag me to the floor. Shit, shit, SHIT. I was in trouble. My heart’s frantic racing only made my dizziness worse. My heart knew something was wrong.

  Judging from the fast-acting effects, they’d slipped me Rohypnol or GHB, which were choice date-rape drugs: loss of judgment, motor skills and consciousness. Amnesia. From my dizziness, I’d ingested a lot. Too much. Mixed with alcohol, I would be lucky if I could stand. I thought about grabbing the nearest microphone to bash across Rubens’s head, but I didn’t trust my coordination. I would have to bullshit my way out of the room.

  “Tell you what, man…” I called out to Rubens, trying to keep the slur out of my voice. I finally understood my father’s daily battle. “First I’m gonna go find the bathroom.”

  “Other side of the bar, to the left.” His voice sounded like someone gargling at the bottom of a well.

  While the room swayed, I brought myself to my feet, holding the piano to keep my balance. I was breathing harder. I suddenly felt violently sick to my stomach, on the verge of vomiting. I clenched my neck muscles tight.

  I felt myself take a step while Rubens played a series of chords. The loud strumming rattled inside my head. I bumped against the piano bench, which forced me to lean against the wall. I straightened as quickly as I could, hoping Rubens hadn’t seen. His music went on. Either he didn’t know the drug had kicked in yet, or he didn’t think I could get away.

  “Half of life’s fakin’ it…” his voice warbled. “The rest’s just the luck of the draw…”

  The air felt too thick to pull into my lungs, so I forgot about breathing and focused on moving one foot in front of the other. I hated to leave the wall; there was nothing but open air between where I stood and the doorway, merely a football field away.

  A woman’s blurry form appeared in the doorway. “You want another lemonade, baby?” Janiece called to me. She sounded as sweet as peach pie.

  “Lord, I know Bear ain’t lived perfect…But take this big ol’ thorn out his paw…”

  The room spun, and suddenly I could only see a sheet of white. The world pulled away from me, a speeding train. I stared up at the ceiling. Two fans spun above me.

  The floor thundered as Wallace Rubens walked toward me from the stage. My mushy head felt like I was drifting, a child’s balloon floating up against the ceiling, watching someone else’s luck turn for the worse.

  I couldn’t see Rubens’s face, but his legs were tree trunks above me.

  I rolled away from him, but not far. My body cramped, and vomit spilled from my mouth. I could taste everything that had been wrong with that hard lemonade, and tried to tense my stomach, heave out more of the poison. My lungs were frozen.

  “We got you, son,” Wallace Rubens said quietly. With a sigh, he slapped on a green fishing cap. When he walked away, the floor thundered again. “We got you.”

  My memory has holes in it. The next thing I
remember is the sound of angry shouts.

  The three men who’d been sitting at the table in the restaurant stood over me, although none of them was looking down my way. In my imagination I broke their legs and tore out their throats, but my body wouldn’t move. I vomited until my insides were on fire.

  “…because HE CAN’T THROW DEEP!” one of the men said, screaming. “Tell me the last goddamn time he threw a long ball! When has he done shit outside the pocket?”

  His friends shouted him down in a chorus. I tried to kick out, but my legs lay like lead.

  As the room dimmed, I saw a woman’s bare calves. I could smell the lotion on her legs. She knelt beside me, and a fingertip tapped my nose. Get help, I whispered. Or thought.

  “Sorry, baby,” Janiece said.

  She nudged me to my stomach with her foot, and I flopped down like a fish. Then she grabbed my hand and snaked it around my side until it rested at the small of my back. Next, my other hand. I tried to move before I heard the handcuffs, but she held on. She snapped the cuffs on like a pro. “Wish I coulda got you that brisket,” Janiece said. “You woulda liked it.”

  I wanted to run, but I was sinking out of myself. I didn’t think about Dad or Chela. Or April. The fight to stay awake was all there was.

  SEE? my Evil Voice screamed in the dark. EVERYBODY DIES—

  Just like in death, I forgot my own name.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I WAS DROWNING.

  I gasped, my eyes flying open as water clogged my nostrils. I spat and choked, shaking my head. I was drenched, but my face was swimming in sweetly scented air. It was dark in places, too bright in others. Night? Blinking at a light, I realized I’d been hearing a babble of voices, on and off, for what seemed like years. But the voices were gone.

  I couldn’t place the pieces that came into sight from the beam of a bright fluorescent lantern on the ground: Planks of wood. A large yellow bucket. Fast-food wrappers scattered on a leaf-covered floor. Was I indoors? Outdoors? I felt an immense space, but I couldn’t get my bearings. The ground felt like it was veering from side to side.