The bar was in a fairly narrow corridor—most of the space it should have had was crowded out by the partitioning for the package store—but there were approximately twenty-five stools, and a short service bar at the far end. Only one bartender was on duty, and there was only one customer sitting at the first stool. The customer sat with his arms locked behind his back glaring down distastefully at a double shot of whiskey. At night, with a fair-sized crowd a bar this long would require at least two bartenders.
Beyond the bar there was a large square room with a small dance floor, a raised triangular platform in the corner for the musicians and two microphones. There were about thirty-five small circular tables, with twisted wire ice-cream parlor chairs stacked on top of them. The walls of the large room had been painted in navy blue. Silver cardboard stars had been pasted at random upon the wall and ceiling to simulate a night sky. The ceiling was black, and the scattered light fixtures on the ceiling were in various pastel colors.
Between the bar and nightclub section there were two lavatories, with their doors recessed about a foot into the wall. A crude effort at humor had been attempted on the restroom doors: One was labeled SETTERS and the other POINTERS. After sizing the place up, I sat down at the far end of the bar and made the sign of the tall one. As I reached for the stein with my left hand, I handed the bartender the slip of paper with my right.
“I only work here,” he said indifferently, eyeing my guitar. “The James Boys are supposed to play out the month, but the boss is in the back.” He pointed to a curtain covering an arched doorway near the right corner of the bandstand. “Go ahead and talk to him if you want to.” His face colored slightly as he realized I couldn’t talk, but he smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “His name is Mr. Vernon. Lee Vernon.”
As soon as I finished my beer, I picked up my guitar, dropped a half dollar on the bar and headed for the back, pushing the curtain to one side. The hallway was short. There was a door leading to an alley, and two doors on either side. I opened the first door on the right, but it was a small dressing room. I knocked at the door opposite the dressing room and didn’t enter until I heard “Come in.”
For a nightclub owner, Lee Vernon was a much younger man than I expected to meet. He was under thirty, with a mass of black curls, a smiling well-tanned face, and gleaming china-blue eyes. There were three open ledgers on his gray metal desk and a few thick manila folders. He tapped his large white teeth with a pencil and raised his black eyebrows. I removed my guitar from the case before I handed him the slip of paper.
Lee Vernon laughed aloud when he saw the word JOB and shook his head from side to side with genuine amusement. “A nonsinging guitar player!” he exclaimed, still smiling. “I never thought I’d see the day. Go ahead”—he looked at my name burned into the guitar box—“Frank, is it?”
I nodded, and wiped my damp fingers on my jacket so the plastic pick wouldn’t slip in my fingers. I put my left foot on a chair, and cradled the instrument over my knee.
“Play anything, Frank,” Vernon smiled. “I don’t care. I’ve never turned down an excuse to quit working in my life.”
I vamped a few chords and then played “Empty Pockets” all the way through. Mr. Vernon listened attentively, tapping his pencil on the desk in time with the music. This was the shortest of my three songs, but it sounded good in the tiny office. The ceiling was low and there was a second-listen effect reverberating in the room, especially during the thumping part.
“I like the sound, Frank,” Vernon said. “You’re all right. All right. But I don’t think I can use you right now. I’m trying to build the Chez Vernon into a popular night spot, and the James Boys pretty well fit the bill. I pay them eight hundred a week and if I pay much more than that for music, I’ll be working for them instead of for myself. Do you belong to the union, Frank?”
I shook my head. The idea of any free American male paying gangsters money for the right to work has always struck me as one of the most preposterous customs we have.
“Tell you what,” Vernon said reflectively. “Do you really need a job?”
I nodded seriously.
“Okay, then. The James Boys play a forty-minute set, and then they take a twenty-minute break. They play from nine till midnight, an extra hour if the crowd warrants it, and till two a.m. on Saturday nights. In my opinion, a twenty-minute break is too long, and I lose customers sometimes just because of it, but those were the terms I hired them under. If you want to sit in by yourself on the stand to fill the breaks I’m willing to try it for a few nights to see how it goes. I can give you ten bucks a night, but that’s the limit.”
For a few moments I thought about it, but ten dollars was too much money to give me when I only knew three songs. I held up five fingers.
“You want fifty dollars?” Vernon asked incredulously.
I shook my head and snapped out five fingers.
“You’re a pretty weird cat.” Vernon laughed. “Not only do you not sing, you’re honest. Five bucks a night it is, Frank. But I’ll tell Dick James to clean out his kitty between his sets, and any tips you get on the breaks belong to you. You’ll pick up a few extra bucks, anyway.”
I nodded, shook hands with my employer and returned my guitar to its case.
“Come in about eight thirty, Frank,” Vernon concluded the interview, “and I’ll introduce you to the James Boys.”
I returned to the hotel and stretched out on my bed for a nap. Although I had taken a lower figure than the ten he offered, I still felt a little uneasy. After Lee Vernon heard me playing the same songs all evening he wouldn’t be too happy about it. But during the days, maybe I could make up a few more. If so, I could ask for a raise to ten. The immediate problem was remedied. I could pay my room rent of three dollars a day and eat on the other two until I could work my way out of the hole with an ingenious plan of some kind.
A few minutes later I was asleep.
7
THE JAMES BOYS were very good. If Lee Vernon was paying them eight hundred dollars a week, they were worth every cent of it.
I sat at the end of the bar where I could take in the entire room, enjoying the music and the singing, and the antics of the patrons at various tables. Not many of the couples danced. It wasn’t the smallness of the floor that prevented them from getting to their feet, it was just that the James Boys were more amusing to watch than they were to dance to. They wore red Western shirts with white piping on the collars and cuffs, but they didn’t restrict their playing to Western music. They seemed to be equally at home with calypso and rock ‘n’ roll. Each of the boys, in turn, sang into the microphone, and they all had good voices.
Dick James was at the microphone, and his face had a mournful expression. He said, “It is now my sad duty to inform you, ladies and gentlemen, that for the next twenty minutes we will be absent from the stand.”
He held up a hand to silent the murmurs of disappointment. “We don’t want to go. Honest! It’s just that we can’t afford to drink here. We have to go down the street to a little place where the drinks are cheaper. And I might add,” he said disingenuously, “unwatered!”
A very small ripple of laughter went through the room. Perhaps the patrons of the Chez Vernon thought their drinks were watered.
“But during our brief absence, the management has obtained for your listening pleasure, at great expense, one of the world’s greatest guitarists! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Frank Mansfield!”
I had been so engrossed in watching and listening, and drinking a steady procession of beers, I hadn’t realized how quickly the time had passed. To a burst of enthusiastic applause led by the four James Boys, I threaded my way through the close-packed tables to the stand. As I sat down in a chair on the stand and removed my guitar from its case, Dick James lowered the microphone level with my waist.
“Good luck, Frank,” he said, and followed the other members of the group into the hallway leading to the dressing room. I was in shirt sleeves, but wore my hat.
I wished that I could have gone with them, picked up my coat in the dressing room, and made a getaway through the back door to the alley. In anticipation of fresh entertainment, the audience was fairly quiet. I felt like every eye was on me as I sat under the baby spot on the small, triangular stand.
I delayed as long as I could, well aware that I had twenty full minutes to fill before the James Boys returned, and not enough music to fill it with. I vamped a few chords, tuned the A string a trifle higher, and then played “Empty Pockets.” The moment I hit the last chord, I got to my feet and bowed from the waist to the thin, sporadic applause. Before playing “Grandma’s Quilt,” I went through the motions of tuning again, and slowed the tempo of the song as I picked through it. The applause was stronger when I finished. By this time the crowd realized that my music was unusual or, at least, different. My last number was the best, my favorite, and my nervousness had disappeared completely. There was hardly a sound through the audience as I played “Georgia Girl,” but when I finished and stood up to take a bow, the applause was definitely generous.
“I could take lessons from you,” Dick James said, as he climbed onto the stand. “You make some mighty fine sounds, Frankerino.”
I nodded, smiled and wet my lips. The James Boys were also unaware that my repertoire only consisted of three homemade numbers. Lee Vernon, a tall drink in his hand, crossed the room and congratulated me. He whispered something to Dick, and readjusted the microphone. I had returned my guitar to the case and was halfway to the bar when Vernon’s voice rasped out of the speakers in the ceiling.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there’s something you don’t know about Frank Mansfield!” His voice stopped me, and I looked down at the floor. “In view of his great manual dexterity, it may be difficult to believe, but Frank Mansfield is the only deaf-and-dumb guitar player in the world! Let’s give Frank another big hand? Let him feel the vibrations through the floor!”
As the drunken crowd applauded wildly and stomped their feet on the floor, I ran across the room, pushed aside the curtain to the hallway, and rushed blindly into the dressing room. I supposed Lee Vernon meant well, but I was angered by his announcement. Not only did I want to quit, I wanted to punch him in the nose. In view of his stupid announcement, he would be damned well embarrassed when I played the same three songs forty minutes later.
There was an open bottle of bourbon on the dressing room table. I hit it a couple of times and smoked five cigarettes before my next appearance on the stand. Tiny James, the bass player, came and got me.
“You’re on, Mansfield.” He jerked his thumb. “Dick’s announced you already.”
I returned to the stand and got out my guitar. The room had twice as many patrons and the air was blue with smoke. Vernon’s announcement had created a morbid interest. The bar crowd had pushed their way in and standees blocked the way to the service bar. The moment I picked up my instrument and strummed a few triplets, there were shushing sounds from the tables and the room was silent.
Indifferently, expertly, I played through my three numbers without a pause. The applause was generous. I put the guitar back in the case and made my exit to the dressing room. When the door closed on the last James Boy I took a pull out of the open bottle of whiskey. Lee Vernon entered the room. His face was flushed and he was laughing. He held out a hand for the bottle and, when I handed it to him, freshened the drink in his left hand.
Watching him sullenly, I took another drink out of the bottle. Vernon let loose with a wild peal of happy laughter.
“Those are the only three songs you know, aren’t they?” he said.
I grinned and took another drink.
“That’s wonderful, Frank,” he said sincerely. “Really wonderful!” He smiled broadly, showing his big white teeth. “Did you make them up yourself?”
I nodded.
A frown creased Vernon’s flushed face, and he placed his glass down carefully on the narrow ledge in front of the mirror. He’s going to fire me, I thought. The moment I put the five-dollar bill in my pocket I’m going to knock his teeth out.
“I think that’s terrific, Frank. I really do. Any fool can take a few lessons and play ordinary songs on a guitar. Hell, I can play a little bit myself, and if I sing while I’m playing, I can drown out the mistakes I make. But you…” He shook his head comically. “To deliberately master the damned guitar the way you have and compose your own songs—well, I can only admire you for it.” He picked up his glass and raised it. “To Frank Mansfield! You’ve got a job at Chez Vernon for as long as you want to keep it!”
He drained the glass and opened the door. His shoulder hit the side of the door as he left, and he staggered slightly as he walked down the hall.
I closed the door and sat down, facing the back of the chair. If a man accepts life logically, the unexpected is actually the expected. I should have known he wouldn’t fire me. A nightclub owner, by the fact that he is a nightclub owner, must necessarily accept things as they are. Vernon had accepted the situation cheerfully, like a peacetime soldier who finds himself suddenly in war. There was nothing else he could do.
I had wanted to quit, but now I was unable to quit. I was in an untenable position. I had only one alternative. Every time I played my twenty-minute stint, I would have to improvise something new. If I couldn’t do it, I would have to walk away and not even collect the five dollars I had coming to me. It was unfair to keep playing the same three songs over and over.
I took another drink, a short one this time. I was beginning to feel the effects of the whiskey on top of the beers I had had earlier. I made my decision. When my turn came to play again I would improvise music and play something truly wonderful.
After Dick James announced me, I sat quietly in my chair, the guitar across my lap, a multicolored pick gripped loosely between my right thumb and forefinger. The room was filled to capacity. Under the weak, colored ceiling lights I could make out most of the faces nearest the stand. There was a hint of nervous expectancy in the room. Here is a freak, their silence said, a talented, deaf-and-dumb freak who plays music but cannot hear, who plays for applause he can only feel. This was the atmosphere of the Chez Vernon, caused in part by Lee Vernon’s earlier announcement, and by my last session on the stand when the listeners had heard a different kind of music. Vernon sat at a table close to the platform, his face flushed with liquor, a knowing smile on his lips. On his left was a young man with long blond hair, dressed in a red silk dinner jacket, white ruffled shirt, and plaid bow tie. On Vernon’s right, a tall pink drink before her, was a woman in a low-cut kelly green evening gown. She was in her early forties, but she was the type who could pass easily for thirty-nine for a few more years.
Her lips were wet and shiny, and her dark eyes were bright with excitement as I caught them with mine and held them. She nodded politely, put long tapering fingers to her coal black hair. The woman and the young man at Vernon’s table stood out from the crowd. Most of the patrons were wearing short-sleeved sport shirts. Only the younger men with dates wore coats and ties. Lee Vernon raised his glass and winked at me.
The microphone was less than a foot away from my guitar. I tapped the pick on the box. The sound, amplified by six speakers, sounded like knocking on a wooden door. Scratching the wooden box of the Gibson produced a sound like the dry rasping of locusts. The locusts reminded me of the long summer evenings in Mansfield, Georgia, and I thought about the bright silvery moths circling the lamp on the corner, down the street from Grandma’s house.
I played their sound, picking them up and flying and flickering with them about the streetlight, teasing them on the E string.
Down the block, swinging to and fro on a lacy, metal porch swing, the chains creaking, complaining, a woman laughed the joyful, contented laughter of a well-bred southern woman, a mother perhaps, with two young children, a boy and a girl, and the little boy said something that amused her and she laughed and repeated what the child said to her husband sitting beside her.
I
played that.
And I repeated the solid rumbling laugh of her husband, which complemented her own laughter, and then my fingers moved away from them, up the staff to pick out the solid swishing whispering smack of a lawn sprinkler and a man’s tuneless humming a block away. And there came a boy in knickers down the sidewalk, walking and then running, dancing with awkward feet to avoid stepping on a crack, which would surely break his mother’s back! He bent down and picked up a stick and scampered past a white picket fence, the stick bumping, rattling, drowning out a man’s lecture to a teenaged girl on the porch of that old white house two doors down from the corner, the house with the four white columns.
And I played these things, and then the sounds of supper and the noises, the fine good clatter in the kitchen when Grandma was still alive, and Randall and I sent to wash up before dinner in the dark downstairs bathroom where the sound of water in the pipes made the whiney, sharp, unbearable spine-tingling noise and kept it up until the other tap was turned on and modulated it, turning the groaning into the surreptitious scraping of a boy’s finger on the blackboard, and sure enough, we had the schoolteacher for dinner that night and she was talking with Mother, monotonously, like always, and I hated her, and the dry, flat registers of her authoritative voice would put you to sleep in the middle of a lesson if you didn’t keep pinching yourself, and Daddy pulled out his watch with the loud ticks and it was suppertime, the solid ring of the good sterling silver, the tingle-tinkle of the fine crystal that pinged with a fingernail and listen to the echo! And the rich dark laughter of Aimee, our Negro cook in the kitchen, and after supper I was allowed to go to the movie but Randall wasn’t because he was three years younger and had to go to bed so I played these things and what a wonderful movie it was! Young Dick Powell, handsome, in his West Point uniform, and the solid ranks of straight tall men marching in the parade and only vaguely did the old songs filter through the story, Flirtation Walk, and the lovely girl under the Kissing Rock, and then the movie was over but I stayed to see it again, and repeated it very quickly because nothing is ever any good the second time and I was late, it was dark, and I was running down the black narrow streets, the crickets silenced ahead of my slapping feet, and the grim and heavy shadows of the great old pecan trees on our black, forbidden block. As I reached our yard, safe at last from whatever it was that chased me, Mother was on the front porch waiting with a switch in her hand, and she intended to use it, I know, but I began to cry and a moment later she pulled me in close to her warm, wonderful, never changing smell of powder, spicy lilac and cedar and sweet, sweet lips kissing me and chiding and kissing and scolding and damned if the G string didn’t break.
Cockfighter Page 8