THERE WERE FIVE MORE LIKE THE FIRST. Five more scraps that Benjamin found in the next few months as Ms. Clara May’s belly grew and gradually our shows tapered off as Benjamin said he had Ms. Clara May’s best interests in mind. He would shrug his shoulders and kind of stare at me as I mentioned we were really just starting to roll again and that maybe we should keep going. But I knew he meant for her health of course, and sure enough A.D. agreed with him all the way down the line, for anyways it seemed the money from the latest record had all but done its business growing as Benjamin had said it would. He’d made a few investments on the side, and as he doled us out our shares the summer sped away till its end and like it or not I seemed to be gathering more and more of the names Benjamin had found and that even I heard and wrote down in my own doings. As if I were magically called to them myself. Or more likely, in the wake of A.D.’s abandoned search of them, the names became my calling. As if I was the lonely magnet that pulled them up out of their obscurity, up from the nothingness and strife they’d become. That just by holding them, by arranging and rearranging them by place and age and distinction, I’d already breathed on them a little bit of life that might bring them back into being.
O there were an intolerable amount of them by then too. And as I stacked each one atop my hearth, I always had the inclination to toss them into the fire each night, when I threw my logs on, after the blueness had faded, and I thought on A.D. and Ms. Clara May’s contentment, at their lives spinning away proper and true as she’d always hoped they would. I’d look at the names on each slip and think of the song attached to it and the story, and then imagine A.D. and Ms. Clara May’s child soon living and laughing and playing amongst us. A child. His child. With her. Whenever I let the words pass through my lips it tore at me too, I tell you, to know it, to know all that happiness and succor would be theirs soon enough and not mine. Not mine for all these years and maybe forever. That was the hardest part, too. To know my own life was slipping away, even as theirs was just taking shape.
How can I say it? He was my friend. He was more than my friend. He was the only man left for me in the world to know and trust and even I in my weakness did not wish him well. In fact, I took down the names on them papers one by one and touched them, rubbing them together to try and extract from them their own lost secrets, their hidden source or spark even though I knew it weren’t no good. The papers just stared at me in the flickering light and would seem as dead and still as stones to my fingers. Only A.D. could truly breathe life into them again. Only A.D. had the fever to retrieve the sadness in each one. Even though I knew Benjamin Marks in all his anxiety had set it in his mind for me to do it now, to track them down and keep our bevy of songs rolling in fresh and new and beyond the power of any other (including Runnymede’s recent string of hits), I knew it was not my place to be their interpreter, or conduit, as it were. That was for A.D. alone to complete, because the voice of these songs was my voice. I could no more interpret them in A.D.’s special way as I could interpret my own story. I was so much closer to the source in being black, in being poor and once as much a slave as most the men and women who’d somehow survived long enough to sing and write these songs, that it couldn’t have worked for me even if I tried. And I did try. Shoot, I’d look at those slips and names and think about all those songs passed down and worked on in the ridge for no fanfare or money. Just for survival. For the sheer fun of it, too, but for blood most likely. To keep the blood true and the memories true and the world from forgetting it all in its ugliness and blight, in that time when we were nothing more than chattel to be thrown away and used, and it made me immobile almost to think on it. It paralyzed me.
But A.D. hadn’t suffered in that same way and that was why he was able to change them, I think, to find in their ancient rhythm and sorrow a speck of brightness, something to build all his burning ambition and hope around. All laid out on his blank emotional slate. Sent out as a child, unformed, untethered, able to bridge some lost divide, bringing them all back into the power of their new form, as he’d always been moving to begin with and couldn’t be paralyzed in the least by the emotion, by the grand sad feeling of it all. Besides, it had all sat ill with me from the beginning, if I am truthful. I’d once thought it an abomination what he done, taking credit and not saying nothing about it, but just smiling all the more in his recognition, accepting his success. Even with all those out there who’d done most the work for him and who’d suffered to write their pieces.
Suffered. O A.D.’d had a hard time of it, for sure, but he hadn’t suffered like those folks. And the more I thought on it and touched the papers with the solemn and lost names etched upon them, the more I was moved to agree with A.D.’s intentions instead, and slowly understood the stark wisdom of it all. How it was just another part of their survival really. The songs, that is, with the names.
This was how the songs were sustaining themselves, by allowing their voices to be changed, tweaked ever so much, even as the spark of them remained, the truth, buried deep in the blood rhythm. The songs were the ones moving through A.D. to be born again, as if moving through a door as ancient and dormant as hope perhaps? Something with a will and truth beyond me, beyond anything I could ever say or do. Lord, it was too much to even think on, with the mystery of it all, and so the more I thought on it, the more I drank and kept one particular wrinkled receipt in my hand. I began to take it everywhere, this one name. This one name more than any other that gave me pause. That kept me up at night, and generally made a mess of everything I touched from then on.
WHAT’S THAT? A.D. SAID WHEN WE WERE FINALLY ALONE, at the end of another rehearsal. Benjamin had already offered to drive Ms. Clara May to the midwife to go over details as to what herbs or whatnot to use, and which cotton linens were best for the delivery, and how much witch hazel was to be used to wipe out the baby’s eyes.
What’s what?
In your hand, he said and nodded at me.
My hand?
Sure, he said and smiled at me. In. Your. Hand. Annunciating each word to see me so serious and innocent for once, for he must have seen something as I’d moved away from him. It had become habit to me by then to put the paper back in my palm as quick as lightning after I’d finish playing the guitar. O I’d hold it there in the curve, perfectly molded in the middle of my palm, for it felt right being there; it felt part of me. If it’s strange, I know, but it was as if my body sensed its loss when it was away for the few hours of our playing. Or even in the few moments I needed to fix my pants sometimes. Or slip on my boots. Or buckle my belt and any other inconvenience that had me use both hands for an instant. But when I’d slide it back into place, I’d feel such a sense of ease wash back over me, it was as if I’d been out bathing beneath a cool mountain stream, it was so enveloping and easy. All the while it was gone, my flesh was like a gray fire missing its most elemental piece—that name, that source—but the feeling of it, that old smoldering feeling of putting it back in place, would then seem to quell my skins’ crying out for this missing and essential spark.
It’s nothing, I finally said as I turned from him and looked out on Bristol. Nothing my foot, he said and touched my shoulder and tugged at me almost playfully. It might have been the first time I’d felt his hand in months, for as I spun from him he laughed and the note fell to the rug so that I had to put my boot out to cover it, but I was too slow. He’d already stepped there—his legs were so damn long—and he just looked at me after he did it and winked something mischievous for he didn’t know what it was yet, and I’m ashamed to say I’d already decided to let him see it. O there was nothing else to it. He would hold it up and see it in the dim light and the name would work its power on him like before and we would be back out there moving in the right direction, as far as I was concerned. Racing along the ridge, chasing down each name, each song, chasing our fortune. Even if it meant something awful might happen to him and Ms. Clara May later on, even if it meant that.
Now I’m not saying I di
dn’t care about their relationship. It was just that I cared that much more for finding my wife and baby girl, and maybe I let a little bit of that jealousy seep out of me just then. The jealousy I felt about him having a child and not caring that much for it, in not realizing the powerful gift of it, the magic, for I’d never even heard him speak on it. Not once, and so I stepped back and bowed my head and just watched as he smirked at the dramatics of it all, before groping with his long fingers to hold it to the light. The name. I seen it just as he did and could tell that he knew what it was as soon as he spied it. I imagine he must have felt it in his bones even before he looked, because a soft gurgling left his lips as he focused on it. His head twitched imperceptibly, and a red flush rose in his cheeks as I’d seen it do in Ms. Clara May’s before. Shaking his head violently, he held the name out at arm’s length, squeezing his eyes shut, saying, No, no, no, no.
Yes, I said, to answer him coldly. Yes, and I heard my voice changing now, delving into some deeper register, into something that coincided with the vague and hazy light outside.
But I don’t want it, Isaiah. You know that. I can’t no more. I just can’t.
Sure you can, I said. You can and you will, and I stepped closer as he held it out, his arm growing limp at the suggested power of it, one little slip, the name. Hell, I said, you already seen it. You already know, and though I can’t tell you where the words came from or my dark tone, I imagine I’d become something else in that moment. A shade of myself as another mood crept inside me and seemed to hush and stalk him as I rose up as a cloud or rainstorm to goad him on, tempting him toward his doom. As I spoke, the words came faster and stronger until I was worked up most into a tempest to stand before him, waving my arms, narrowing my gaze, grasping for the weakest part of him. Just look on it, I said. Just think on it. Think what it was like to be that man in that time and to write something to save your soul from the world happening around you, from the death and misery and hatred. Just think on it and tell me you can’t no more. Just tell me that, son. Go on. Just tell me that ain’t the name right there of the song that saves someone after you change it, after you bring it back to the world new. Just tell me that.
I was all the way in front of him now, for he’d shriveled up with each word. So that I could look straight into his face imploring him on, bringing him over to my dark side of the room, to my dark way of living, now that I needed him to continue. Now that I needed him to rise back up into the fever of gathering in the things that had pushed him on before, and that I knew would push him on still.
I can’t, he said. You know that. I can’t, and his voice was soft and broken as he collapsed from his own conflicted desire. Still holding the paper in his hand, still touching it with his fingers, he sank to his knees, his head bowed. His long face wet from the tears, so that I could just make out my own dark shape reflected in his cheeks, and had to gasp to see myself like that. Lording over him like some plague or misery, devouring him entire. As I watched him, I seen again the young boy on his first day at the Peabody carrying a sack full of books, just in off the streets, and knew I couldn’t no more. I couldn’t. For all I could think of then was What have I done to him now? What have I done?
Reaching out, I touched his hot sweaty head, as of a baptism or ordination, before taking the slip and slinking out without even looking back to see the damage I’d done to his frail and crumbled soul. To the one I’d disposed of so easily, with the mere suggestion of a name.
Whiskey was all that allayed me then, whiskey and silence. As I stumbled along State Street, the darkness I’d seen before covered the whole ridge as only bolts of lightning seared the heavens periodically and told me of a story far off in its making. Something eerie and electric in the ether. As of another layer composed and plastered upon the world. A layer I would never see, at least not upon that night, for it was only taverns that reared before me then. As I crept from the first to many, I finally found the lowest of the low where my color was not an issue. Where no one gave pause to see a tired old nigger slumped in the corner with a half bottle of whiskey. Where the music was slow and rumbling, even as I heard the rainstorm and thunder and mumbling crowd dispersed into an eddy of unrelenting rhythm. Ah, the music of it, even in that place—the life of it—something just audible to the attentive ear. I placed the slip of paper by the candle and stared at it, stared at the name that so deterred my A.D., my boy, and knew there was nothing for me to do but cease in this effort of winning him away from his family and comfort and ease, to cease from this sad way of wounding him.
But after another shot and another burned inside my soul, I admit I had not given up entire on tempting him to the names because so much rested on chasing our fame. I didn’t know how or where to begin if the names didn’t work, if all those precious names didn’t tempt him no more. And as I turned to see the latest surge of revelers stumble in, as if drawn to my own dark schemes, there he was, my answer, as if raised from the night itself—my nightmare and curse and command. Come out of the pale blue smoke and beer-piss smell of the place to confront me in all his proper glory: Runnymede McCall. Singer Extraordinaire. Lately of the Piedmont Pipers. Staring me square in the face.
XXIV
This man, this apparition ~ The wide white cream of his skin ~ Turpentine ~ The true spirit ~ Watching each by each ~ A turning inside ~ The true and forever things ~ Our name ~ A puff of black smoke ~ On commerce ~ With the deepest black ink
YOU’RE A HARD MAN TO FIND, he said and I shivered to hear his voice, to smell his subtle, almost minty aroma as he moved smooth as a thoroughbred across the floor. Was he really there? Could it be true? This man, this apparition materialized before me as if to do my very bidding, for my own devices, to maybe even tempt A.D. back to ridge riding again, to get him out there like he should have been?
I held my hand out and had a notion of passing it through the smooth powder-blue coat he wore, but thought better of it as he tilted his equine head back and watched me. His unhurried eyes were dark and unrelenting with nary a spark nor reflection nor impetus of mercy glistening in them—as if the blankness itself was of a seething condition that would rise up out of the center of him and conquer the world.
It’s not hard being found, I finally uttered, pouring out another shot and draining it as I watched him. If you want to be.
My, my, he said and grinned down at me. Your homespun bravado, friend, might only be exceeded by your theatrics, and as he slid into the chair across from me, I swear I felt a bolt of heat rise from inside me. A heat not from the whiskey, mind you, but from the very energy his appearance engendered. A supple, slick wave of it rippled through me even as he reached out so elegantly, grabbed my bottle, and held it to his still smiling lips, before turning it up and taking a healthy gulp.
I had a mind then not to say nothing. Not as he set the bottle back down or even when he stared at me while wiping his thin lips clean of every last drop. I could not speak as there was something so regal in his face, in the stunning contrast of it thrown and held and bandied about by the candle flame flickering in a glass jar on the table. I mean, here he was, the man we’d been chasing all these months, and maybe more, in the hidden meaning of our practicing and sweating and rehearsing way back even at the Peabody. Here he was and I had every last chance to smash that thick brown bottle into his pretty white face, and yet I resisted. I resisted even speaking as he eyed me, for my flesh crawled just to think of the wide white cream of his skin. The unnatural smoothness of it all. The perfection.
Turpentine, he said and nodded at the bottle still resting in his thick white hand. Is that what they serve here in lieu of the true spirit? His fingers fluttered on the neck of the brown glass, before caressing the wide shape of the bottle. Then with one powerful gesture, he pushed it out into the middle of the table, back towards me, and I could tell he knew more about me than I could ever fathom. I could see the cruel way he watched me, as if turning through the very pages of my mind, with how his steady eyes never shif
ted nor blinked nor wavered in the smoky half-lit room. Measuring my every move, I supposed, goading me on to speak, even as I’d hoped to goad A.D. on into ridge riding again. As if life was nothing more than a perpetual round of temptation played out against each other. I tempted you. You tempted me. The wind tempted the rock, and all and all worked backwards on itself to gain an advantage or edge, to come out on top.
What you know about spirits? I hefted the bottle and drained a shot as I watched his whole brash appearance flicker momentarily above the candlewick into nothingness, before flickering back as he laughed thrusting his wide forehead up. As he did, I could see into the black hole of his throat, so deep and endless, opening for a brief festive snort that faded into a silent chuckle that shook his massive shoulders.
Well, I know everything about spirits. I know they live, friend. He leveled his eyes upon me and held up his hand as if to waft aside the cigar smoke drifting in from the opposite table. But his hand never moved. Instead he just held it there, like the sharp mane of a white roan, frozen on a track. And that you’ve been chasing them all this time.
Chasing who?
Your wife, for one. And your little girl? He leaned forward as he said this last part, lingering on the lilting sound, and I could feel a turning inside me. A pain and wounding to hear it said aloud—that my family was nothing more than spirits to him—that they could have been gone a long time now and I’d have never known it. It was a fact I’d steeled myself for years ago. I’d denied it and forged on instead, relentless in my pursuit. And I would always deny it. To this day, I would. Forever. Amen.
They ain’t dead, I said. They can’t be.
Why not? he said.
Because I haven’t found them yet, is why. Because I still have a breath with which to find them, and a voice, too, and I will do it to the end of me, sir. To the end.
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