It was a mark that stayed with her for years. Something subtle and off color that you might not have noticed if you hadn’t known where to look—almost as if it was little more than a shadow of our ragged collection of lives. Like a smudge she might have gotten from leaning her head against a dusty lintel, or cooking above a woodstove without washing. Or even, from the graceful fall of an autumn leaf, though it was certainly something none of us ever wanted to talk about. Especially not with the smooth way Ezra had with her that night, of speaking right into her fears about her father and the mortuary and the deep sense of fire in her. O the fire! And the bleak augury of that man that still laid somewhere hidden behind his lips, an augury perhaps that Ms. Clara May might have discovered if we’d stayed there just a moment longer, her head burnished in the wheel of fire, the crowd pushing in on all sides . . . Listen to me, going on like Ezra Lee was something sane to behold, something true, with words for everyone. For I can honestly say that that mark might have easily faded from her before anyone could have witnessed it. Anyone but me, that is. For I seen it, and would to this day, I reckon, if she were here.
But I digress, and apologize, for I’d asked A.D. about those red doors and what was behind them on several occasions, and why he’d even been there in the first place and what Ezra had seen in him. But he just looked at Ms. Clara May standing there pretty and unconcerned a few steps away, mixing something in a wooden bowl, or looking on him from their opposite high-backed chairs, where they sat in her apartment reading, and he’d mumble something sparse and nebulous about seeing in person Ezra Lee’s silver harmonica, and that was it. He’d stick his nose back in his book as if I’d never asked. O but I knew inside he was hiding something else about his visit to Ezra Lee’s, and so I stepped back to consider him and let him ease off a bit from my suspicion. I had other plans anyways that involved A.D., and even Ms. Clara May, plans I’d only recently concocted and hadn’t brought up yet with Benjamin Marks. For he figured in them too, I suppose, even though he’d only recently resurfaced. The very next week, after we were still a bit awestruck about our narrow escape from Ezra’s wheel of fire, there he was again to prod us about our next pressing engagement.
In Leesburg, he said, and I thought he was kidding since he’d heard us mention Ezra Lee at least once throughout the course of the morning. Though after that we shortened it to just E’s on account of the unease it sent shivering through us, quivering like an arrow. Yet when I watched him, I got the feeling there was something more about Benjamin, something in the wrinkles of his tired eyes that made me suspect he’d known more about it than he let on, as if he himself had been there that night. That maybe he was a regular in that house of the dead, trudging into those dank, clove-scented rooms. The little hunchback seeking his pleasure from that carousel of anonymous flesh, indistinct from the others, the depravity and suffering of man and woman alike, who could not quell their desires. For when he stepped close enough to me that morning, taking off his corduroy coat (we were well into January by then and already cold), I caught a whiff of that burning wheel, of the black creosote and hypnotic oil on that wooden rim. The scent rose round me in a vapor, and must have mixed in the creases of his white calico shirt, for it brought out the vision of Ezra Lee upon my eyes. I had to stand then in the small apartment and strum my guitar by the window just to rid myself of it, I was still so uncertain I could ever get that ghastly face behind me. And now that A.D.’s nose was so far in those poetry books of his, I wondered if I’d ever get him to play the songs we’d so loved to find, and if Ezra and those damnable red doors had more to do with his reading then I supposed?
Leesburg? I finally said, looking out on State Street, as Bristol shook off its Sunday finery and settled back into its Monday morning drudge. A thin white veil of snow had fallen, and seemed some abnegation, or wearing away, as if the white bony meal of life lay bare now for all to see.
That’s right, Benjamin said and twisted in his chair to watch Ms. Clara May, taking out his ridiculous brass pocket watch all the while. It was a gesture someone must have told him would give him a refined character and high-falutin’ air in the music business (though I don’t even think the thing worked, since I’d seen the glass cracked in not a few places and the twin hands wrenched). But he loved it so, and snapped the case shut after opening it as if his time was of a timbre and eminence more important than what anyone else could have had. O he had that sort of snobbishness down pat, and that was one of the things I liked about him, since at least I knew where he stood. But I sure couldn’t say the same for what he might have wanted underneath it all, bubbling in his soul. He had the beadiest little brown eyes that swung about the room almost continual as he spoke, but which finally froze on Ms. Clara May. For he sure liked watching her, and I wasn’t sure, but I wondered if he’d noticed her glassy skin too, he seemed so particular in his watching as if looking for a sign from her only he could see.
Well, what’s in Leesburg? I said, redirecting him.
A raspberry jubilee. He smiled and looked up at me. A veritable winter festival. He turned back to Ms. Clara May expressing himself by touching the raggedy ends of his mustache now and then, twirling the thin strands between his fingers and thumb, and as A.D. didn’t budge one inch from behind his big dusty book to acknowledge him, I had to be the one to get his attention off her. Someone down at the Mercantile was discussing it proper like, he said, and with the crowds coming in and the bands already lined up, well straight away a telegram come in about the Hardy Family attending care of me, your manager. For a right pretty fee too. So I come out here on the heel to tell you.
Raspberries? But it’s January, Ben, and I never liked raspberries to begin with. They get caught in my teeth, and I smiled then showing him my bright white choppers.
Dang it, Isaiah, just forget about the raspberries for a second. Geez. Raspberries? Who cares about the raspberries, for they can jar them can’t they?
Yeah, I suppose they can jar them, I said. I hadn’t thought of that.
Well, why not focus on that last part instead, about the pay. How about that?
O I heard it, I said, and bent a few notes on my guitar to heighten whatever anxiousness I thought I might transfer from myself about Ezra and his silent auguries onto Ben. I seen it had the affect I wanted, because he cringed up right nice, scrunching his eyes and furrowing his heavy brow so I let the sound linger a while and set the guitar near the window. Now I could look on him all passive and cool and show how much mettle I’d brought to this meeting. Well, as far as I could hear, I said, it all come right after that part about attending care of you and such and such as our manager.
Well, ain’t that right? he said and shook his head at me, his fat chin kind of wobbly as his mouth opened a bit and I heard a panting breath escape his round hanging belly. Are you saying I ain’t managing you two?
Managing what?
Why work, he said, and getting it! That’s what I brung you, didn’t I? And here I had to travel clear over Bristol just to find you, too. He was hot. His square little cheeks were red as summer beets and I had to chuckle to see how easy it was to work him into a lather. Here he was calling himself our manager and I didn’t even rightly know the man nor how many buttons he had to push, nor if others besides me in the business could push them, too. So I had to feel him out myself, as it were. Hell, I knew A.D. wasn’t going to do it. I didn’t even know if he was ever going to play again. But I knew Benjamin would have to be on my side for anything involving this here Hardy Family from now on, if we were ever going to get my plan into any kind of fruition. So I eased off a bit on the old boy. I eased off and played more to his strengths, I guess you could say, buttering him up on both sides.
Say, ain’t raspberries the sweet kind? Not like them blueberries at all. I guess I was thinking about blueberries all along, Ben. Sure. Blueberries.
Jesus Christ, he muttered and looked at me half-dazed to hear my line of thinking and how it had gotten wrapped up with what berry it
was. (See, a kind like that always wants to feel more intelligent anyways, so that’s what I gave him, that angle over me, and he ate it up with a spoon.) Why that’s right, Isaiah, he said now all soft and syrupy-like, condescending now that he knew he was so obviously superior in his way of thinking. Them raspberries are sweeter, and he mumbled something else I couldn’t hear, but smiled to see me come around to his line of thinking and rubbed his thin watery lips watching me, for I had his whole attention now. Even though Ms. Clara May had since stood and went to the stove to tend the kettle boiling for tea.
O she had chamomile and rose hips and hibiscus all laid out on the counter and even some little jasmine leaves she’d carried with her from an oriental store in Baltimore that she visited near the Peabody. I had not seen nor smelled any tea like that my whole life and asked her to try some then as she was making her own and lord, when I tasted it, it was as if I was back in my own parcel with my Annie gathering clover. The kind we’d brew a spring morning in the glass pot with a sprig of mint and cinnamon and I had to set down and listen to Benjamin go on for a bit as he was determined to reveal his worth to us and I didn’t want him to see the tears dewing my eyes. I didn’t want him to see me so wounded by the taste of a memory gone and then returned so easily in that small white cup. My Annie was in there, I thought, and looked back up at him still yakking about contracts and the going concerns and keeping this thing moving now that so many had heard us with the radio blasting out that first big hit every day between Runnymede’s other numbers, and I just had to sigh.
Runnymede? A.D.’s forehead wrinkled then. I watched him close his big black book and thought maybe this Benjamin Marks might be worth a damn after all to bring A.D. up out of his funk or whatever else he was in after seeing god-knows-what behind those red swinging doors at Ezra Lee’s. Runnymede McCall?
The one and only, Benjamin said. He was standing now, though I wouldn’t have known it if I hadn’t heard his cheap Sears Roebuck cowboy boots click clacking on the floor. He started to sway and soft shoe now to some song of Runnymede’s that must a been circling in his head, for he hummed the same tune I heard Ms. Clara May hum outside Ezra Lee’s in the car, when I thought it the siren call of hell itself. Well, I guess it was some good conjuring, because I got sort of hazy then too in my senses listening to it. Or maybe, it was just because Ms. Clara May had joined in humming, and her voice was of that sweet note again. A voice that rose high in the bright motes of sunlight flashing across the dusty sofa and rickety chairs and bookcases, so that I didn’t feel tethered in that moment. I just floated. I felt my body as so much sunlight floating too. A substance unformed and reworked that had just come across the many million miles to find its way and feel the shape of sound emerge from Ms. Clara May’s throat as that one divine note persisted. Even sweeter than the sweetest note she sung before, and as we all hushed up to listen, even Benjamin Marks had to steady himself just to hear it.
Clara? A.D. finally said, after she’d been singing in front of the stove for some time, moving cups and washing a bowl where she’d made some egg salad before putting in a loaf of wheat top to heat for jam later that she’d brought out of the pantry. Clara, is that you? A.D. stood from his chair without thinking, and I believe, more importantly, to remember. Sure. He’d set outside her rehearsal room many days at the Peabody when it was just him in the dusty corridor listening to her voice raised with so many others on the other side. And often, when he told me later about her solos and the clear crystal feeling inside him, the emotion her sound stirred in his bones and fingers—as if lifting into the heavens themselves—I thought he might collapse on his cot to tell me for the heat and exhaustion it caused him. So that almost immediately he’d have to go off and search through languages of Italian and German and even Russian to look up the lyrics and translate what she’d sung to get them into words that he might say back to her so she would know he’d been in tune with her from the first. You, he said and just stared at her. When was the last time you sang?
Me? she said, and brushed her curls up past her eyes as she touched the back of her smooth glassy neck, puckering her lips, before looking at us all innocent and sweet. Lips that were glistening and wet from the tea and that all three of us men watched and lusted after then for the sweetness of the aching sound that still lingered on them, in each plump crease. So that in the course of under two minutes Ms. Clara May Staunton had sewn up my own plan for me without me even lifting a finger.
XIX
That perfect counterpoint ~ The hook ~ The catch ~ The worm ~ The echoing canyons and chambers of his mind ~ That sharp red flare of ambition ~ Descendent from some lost lamp or lantern ~ Into its endless lines of brick and granite indifference
SHE WOULD COME WITH US TO NEW JERSEY. That was it and we wouldn’t hear another word even when she said she wasn’t ready and hemmed and hawed and said the Hardy Family didn’t have that kind of sound yet. She knew we wanted her to join us and give us something that A.D. said even old Runnymede didn’t have in his music—that high clear soprano—that perfect counterpoint. O we needed a voice that ached with the sweetness of the ridge, with a depth of innocence that surpassed most any I’d heard before and yet contained the raw pain she’d suffered in that fire. The pain of her skin and what it meant for her appearance and how people saw her and how she saw herself from then on. I’m certain both A.D. and I thought straight away what Mr. Ralph Peer might say when he heard us all harmonizing and playing. For I literally saw the fever spark again in A.D.’s brain as we gathered all breathless and expectant in that dimly lit living room and commenced our first formal rehearsal with Ms. Clara May now officially in the fold.
I shook loose a fat roll of bills from my pocket and spread them out like an oriental fan, soothing my face with the cool air of bright promise, and said, Them raspberries be damned. We’re gonna make a record. We’re gonna go directly to the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey, as Mr. Ralph Peer had advised us once we felt so inclined. Well, sure enough that had old Benjamin Marks huffing and puffing to think we’d miss out on all that fine raspberrying and flesh-pressing at the Leesburg festival. But he hushed up considerable when I told him he could come to New Jersey too whenever we were ready to go with a new hit, because A.D. said he had a song he’d been waiting to work on for weeks. All he’d needed was the inspiration, and he had that now in spades as he watched his flighty gossamer of a girl drift and sway beside him in her blue corduroy dress and cotton scarves, dancing this way and that in that soft meandering style she had of stepping in her bare feet to the rug and then back to the cool floorboards. And that was the precise moment we started working on our new song, something like a sequel or reply to The Ballad of Clara May.
A.D. said the song had been in his head all the way back even before the Peabody. That it’d been sitting and stirring in there so long, but had finally only come out at Ezra Lee’s when he’d heard that sad singing behind those red doors. For he knew at last where the hook laid in it, as it was an old song from before his father’s own house burned down, when A.D. could still remember the faint outline of his mother’s soft hand sopping up warm egg yolk and jam with the crust of her day-old bread.
What singing? I asked. What mother? But of course A.D. didn’t mention those red doors again, or Ezra Lee by name, or even his own mother. He just mumbled about E’s place and something else. But from then on, I gathered he was considering all of these things, and maybe even the psychological state of Ms. Clara May in this new-fangled arrangement of ours, considering her pain and how it made her voice so true and real to touch. Even in her first soft utterings warming up, lilting as if through a grand lullaby or scale, her voice was like an arrowhead that burrowed through your rib cage, quivered into your heart, and buried itself in your bones. It had a sorrowfulness to it, a way of cleaving your soul through and through, opening you up to all the emotion and tender touches and everything else that you just had to fall in love with her and whatever it was she was singing
about. You just had to. And as A.D. and I listened again and smiled to know it was really true—her being there with us—we knew this type of music, this brand that was a bit brighter than the blues we took from the ridge, was for women just as much as for men. That adding her to the mix could only help bring in everyone else under our fold, so to speak. For we were singing now for everyone, not just for the sad colored folks and downhearted, but even for the poor white and rich ones, too. The ones that wanted to celebrate and dance for their good fortune in life.
It was something else to see her now, to see how all the sass had eased out of her just like that, in taking up and playing house with A.D. Not to mention how she felt when she saw how much we treasured and needed her voice. She was as easy and soft as a chamois cloth rubbed over polished teak. She just glided through the room and into her solos, and this ease even spilled into everything else she done. Now she said please and thank you and asked if I wanted honey in my tea whenever she brewed another pot (because she was always brewing more tea for her voice), and she just about fell to the floor when we asked if she’d sing with us a little louder and practice thrusting herself right out there for all to see as if we were onstage and she was in front as the lead singer.
You mean right out front? she said.
Right there, A.D. said, and positioned her as steady as could be to bring her on up out of the daze that come over her after almost every song. All she’d ever wanted her whole life was to sing, to be here in the center of that sound, in that moment, making it together with us—and with A.D. in particular—and for me that all worked out just perfect with the plan I’d devised to get us back on top, as it were. All with Ms. Clara May’s help, of course, for I needed to find my wife and daughter again, that much was obvious, and was all I’d ever really wanted.
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