A Lush and Seething Hell

by John Hornor Jacobs

  The man Frontenac called from the porch for Augie, who turned back. They exchanged a few words on the front steps of di Tonti’s and Augie returned to the truck, face tight. He got in the truck, placed his Stetson between us, started the engine, and backed the truck out and drove it from the slough, past the brakes and cypress stands, until we were running beside cotton fields.

  “Well, Mister Parker,” Augie said, after filling his cheek with tobacco. “Congratulations. You managed to get yourself kicked out of Fantine di Tonti’s, the finest whorehouse in this state and possibly the whole South, in a matter of just under three hours.” He worked the tobacco in his jaw and a look of disgust came over him. “I believe that is a record.”

  “I just asked the boy if he knew—”

  “I don’t care. Ain’t nobody around here will care. ’Cept Fantine. You’re just some carpetbagging Joe working for the government. But di Tonti will not lift a finger for you, ever again, and I suggest you not step foot in the Old Bottoms, for fear of your life.”

  “Surely, it can’t be so dire. I did not threaten or strike the boy, I simply asked about—”

  “Don’t matter. And that’s all the conversing I want to have on the subject,” Augie said. He shook his head, masticating the tobacco chaw. “Fantine didn’t like me much beforehand, goddamn it, and here I go bringing your silly ass to her,” he muttered. “I’ll drop you in Darcy. Got some tractor parts I need to pick up at the machine shop.”

  And after that, Augie would speak no more.

  21

  Harlan Parker: The Whitmore

  July 10, 1938

  The Darcy House is sprawling, amply appointed in furnishings and servants, but my thoughts chase me through the corridors of the mind back to the boy, his abject horror at the mention of “Crowned in Scarlet,” and my prohibition from di Tonti’s. A Negro servant of the Darcys’, a stout man named Georgie, has mentioned (at my prodding) that on Sunday nights Ozzie Munk sits in at the Whitmore and I might catch him there.

  So today, a Sunday evening, after supper but with an hour or so before sunset, I mentioned I might stroll about the town, and look upon the Mississippi River from the summit of the levee on the eastern part of downtown, and Jackdaw, having had a scotch, hopped up and begged to join me. I could not say no.

  Once out of the house, I had to inform him of my true purpose, hearing and speaking with Ozzie Munk once more.

  “That’s not a good idea,” Jackdaw said, shaking his head.

  “And why not?” I said.

  “I’d rather spare you being turned away from the door.”

  “Surely you must be joking,” I said. “Di Tonti cannot have that much sway here, at a hotel, among—” I did not know what to call them. We walked down Poplar, as idyllic a little street as any that might pop up in a confectioner’s American dream: neat lawns, automobiles in most drives, pecans heavy in boughs, crab apples falling, ripe blackberries running rampant on fences, the towering hedges crowded with children and matrons, filling buckets for cobblers. Fingers stained with juice. Bright voices and dogs barking. “All this.”

  “There’s not a man from Quapaw County that hasn’t, at some point, come within her grasp, Harlan, surely you understand that. A small town is like a cauldron, you only see the surface and not what bubbles underneath.”

  “In that sense, it’s also like a river, or a pond, or a cup of coffee, for that matter,” I said, but halfheartedly.

  “Except for the roil,” Jackdaw said.

  I had not the urge to dicker. So instead we walked and looked at the Mississippi, the blue herons and gulls that had traced its route from the Gulf and found the shores here good hunting: great slicks of mud broken by turtle-strewn logs. Summer clouds piled on the horizon, towering pink superstructures in the sky. Our shadows grew long.

  I convinced Jackdaw to at least walk down Main Street past the Whitmore on our way back to his home. He reluctantly agreed. As we drew near, past the boys out front yelling Boiled peanuts! Sody pop! Newspapers! Coca-Cola! NuGrape! Cigarettes! I could make out a piano plinking crazily from the mezzanine, a tobacco-smoothed voice crooning “Darktown Strutters,” which segued into “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and then on to some more modern popular tune I was not familiar with.

  “That’s not Ozzie,” I said. “The boy doesn’t have quinine jitters.”

  “Hmm, that’s strange.” A proprietorial air seemed to come over Jackdaw and he pardoned himself and ducked into the hotel and then returned a few minutes later as I was smoking a cigarette.

  “It’s Burr Saddles playing,” Jackdaw said. “Ozzie did not show up. It seems that the Munk boy has disappeared with one of Fantine di Tonti’s girls and fled south. Probably to New Orleans.”

  At the look on my face, Jackdaw chuckled.

  “You are the harbinger of doom, Harlan,” he said. “Di Tonti has been known to punish men for far less than losing her the boy and one of her girls.”

  “I am at a loss to understand how I am the cause of all this,” I said. “And do you not have some interest in di Tonti’s endeavors?”

  Jackdaw’s face clouded. “No interest other than I am her landlord and she my tenant. But she won’t harm you.” He became sour. “Let’s get back.”

  I am now typing this in the room I sleep in on the second floor with its own private, if small, gallery looking out over the town. The room seems to have once been a boy’s—lead soldiers and cannoneers lined up in phantom and miniature formation on shelves, a baseball bat and glove hung on a wall like some rifle from the War Between the States. An oil painting of some unknown Southern general on rampant horse, sword drawn, glowering at a far tree line, men rallied behind him. The books are expensive and copious and smack of a good education: gold-embossed Encyclopaedia Britannica occupying two rows on its own; texts on nature, hunting, Audubon; and Naturalis Historia. Histories from Greece to Rome, Egypt, the Middle East, Persia, and beyond, but stalwarts of Latin and students of it: Herodotus, Xenophon, Livy, Sallust, Caesar, Suetonius, Tacitus. An older radio. Jackdaw informed me this was his older brother’s room, and that unfortunate soul had drowned in the Great Flood, swept away as one of his friends watched.

  Just as Ozzie was swept away by whatever currents brought me here.

  22

  Harlan Parker: Return of the SoundScriber

  July 11, 1938

  The SoundScriber and my funds have arrived, courtesy of Spivacke, and consequently Jackdaw and Persephone today arranged for members of the Darcy Arkansas Folk Society to come for dinner and drinks at their home to see an exhibition of the use of the recording device and to listen to some of the acetates from my travels.

  It was a merry occasion, with many interested and educated questions. The gathered crowd—full of Darcys and McDonalds and Howards and McHughs and Rheinharts—seemed delighted when I recorded a young woman whose name I don’t remember singing “Goodnight, Irene” and played it back for the crowd. We worked through many of the acetate discs and I gave a small lecture on the meaning and value of the song “Stagger Lee” that I think made some of the people gathered understand how music can express the desires and wants of a larger society than the singer. Or maybe not. For these gathered, race music is a curiosity, a glancing thought, of no seriousness. This society is, I’ve learned, good for a nice dinner every few months with drinks.

  However, I signed some books presented to me: West Africa to New Orleans and From Cradle to Song. The alcohol was copious and of good quality. In the end, attention drifted away from Smoot Sawyer, Gramp Hines, and Steck, and the Victrola began spinning Gershwin, saving me from speaking any more. It would not have done for the crowd to insist on hearing all the acetates—one in particular might be dubious to play in front of a mixed crowd. The one with laughter. Screaming. The sounds of flesh slapping against flesh.

  I felt uneasy and smoked too much, drank too much. I could not sleep. I cannot sleep.

  When I returned all the discs to their case, and packed away the S
oundScriber, the loss of the last recording of Gramp Hines—the disc of “Crowned in Scarlet”—dealt me a small, private, and wholly unnoticed blow.

  I leave tomorrow for Cummins State Farm, where I’ll find Honeyboy, and get the “shadow of a shadow” song that might well lead me to “Crowned in Scarlet.”

  Can’t sleep. This Darcy manse shifts around me, creaking, moving. Off, unseen in the distance, the Mississippi flows, inexorable.

  It’s said you can’t enter the same river twice. It’s like music in that way. A constant flow of no rests, no stillness. There are no endings there, only beginnings.

  When I close my eyes, I see the Amoiras, and the dancing canker man, and the burning tent, and Bunny’s face. I hear the sound of Hines and his children’s voices, and that other tone layered on top of their pained melody. There are no rests, no fermata. A river in music.

  Notes upon notes.

  We are sound waves crashing against the shore with no SoundScriber to take down our likeness, our facsimile. Words like these are just echoes of that original sound. We are but small vibrations on the face of the universe.

  In the dark, I went downstairs and found a drink. A decanter of whiskey left out from the night’s earlier gathering. I gulped down a glassful, and then poured another tumbler to the brim, and now I’m smoking and decidedly not sleeping. Every bit of me itches, but I cannot find any mosquitoes in my room. I am uncomfortable and wonder if I should visit a doctor—could it be malaria or some other insect-borne illness?

  I don’t know.

  I lay in bed earlier and felt my ribs and my prick and balls. The muscles of my thighs. The rush of blood to my member something I needed to address, even if just for clarity of thought. There was a soft woman in New Orleans who had a bright voice and attentive eyes and spoke to me like I was part of her circle of friends, confidants, rather than some lost man. I thought of her, gripping myself in the dark. Her face, her breasts. The round curve of her unblemished cheek.

  Can’t sleep.

  On the gallery, in the cool of the night, I look to the river, hidden behind the levee and the rooftops of the houses of planters’ sons. It’s out there, churning in the dark.

  With no silences, no rests.

  There are no endings there, only beginnings.

  23

  Harlan Parker: Cummins State Farm

  July 12, 1938

  It would look like most other farms if not for the fences and gun towers. But beyond the fences, green fields. The Negroes worked the rows in squads—mostly cotton, some beans, but no corn, too easy for a convict to disappear in—while white inmates or trusties watched them on horseback. From the towers, men with rifles watched the trusties. The rows of cotton disappeared into the distance and wavered in the heat.

  The Studebaker had begun belching smoke with every gear change and making strange noises as I left Darcy and put Quapaw County behind me. I did not have the way with it that Bunny had, and it was rebelling at my ill use of it. With the Mississippi behind me, I had my regrets. I wished I could have had more time with the Munk boy. An amazing musician. But it was not the music I thought on the most; it was what he said. The drowned lady, the soldiers, so many dead men. A gray man, with his hair burnt away and water pouring out his mouth.

  I pulled up to the Cummins farm gatehouse and introduced myself to the trusties there—two ill-kempt inmates with snaggled teeth and sallow complexions stinking of stale tobacco who had no record of my impending visit and would not let me enter the penitentiary grounds without the say-so of their “whippin’ boss,” a white man named Captain Crossley, who appeared disgruntled and disheveled, like a man awakened from a hot summer’s nap—which he very likely just was.

  “You that gubmint man?” Crossley asked, tucking in his shirt and strolling up from the stockade. The Cummins farm spread out behind him. Austere two-story buildings painted white, evenly spaced. There were no trees, no shrubs. No shade or shelter from the pounding sun. A water tower of galvanized tin shone in the light. The ground was packed dirt and scrub grass.

  “Yes,” I said. “I should be expected.”

  That satisfied Crossley but judging from his gut spilling over his belt and his slovenly appearance, he was a man easily satisfied, if you discounted the dinner table. He waddled around the Studebaker and got into the front passenger seat and directed me through the farm to one of the white two-story buildings. Inside, it was infinitesimally cooler than the summer inferno raging outside. We entered through a simple wooden door—if a bit heavier than normal—passing into the plain, bare penitentiary constructed of heavy cinder blocks and poured concrete. There was no woodwork to speak of with the exception of signs and desks and chairs, and the high ceilings held electric lights behind cages to protect the tungsten bulbs. There were many kerosene lanterns hanging in various places, easy to hand, which made me think that the electrical power was irregular at best. In the outer holding area, a single sleepy-looking guard stood watch, and seemed alarmed at my appearance but diligently took my name and marked it down in his ledger. He unlocked the metal door leading to the interior of the building, and pulled it open with a squeal. Another holding area inside the first gate—where a table of white men in state uniforms smoked, drank coffee, and held hands of blue Bicycle playing cards. There was loose change on the table. The jailers did not rise from their card game.

  “Will I speak to the warden?” I asked.

  “Hell naw,” Crossley responded. “Warden don’t concern himself with the ins and outs of the farm. But the assistant warden will be through here on the evening rounds, to make sure our darkie squads are healthy enough for another day in god’s country, chopping cotton.” He wiped his nose with his sleeve. “He’ll let you know who to record and where you’ll be set up.”

  “Could I get some help moving the SoundScriber from my car?” I asked.

  “We’ll get some boys to tend to that,” Crossley said. He kicked at a leg of the card table, rousting the guards, who shuffled off and returned with a gang of workers from the barracks, many of whom had bandages on their arms and hands, some on their heads. Crossley said, “Sick squad, can’t chop cotton for one reason or another. But they can still tote shit back and forth.” I accompanied them back to the Studebaker with the guards and managed the transfer. On a whim, I grabbed a couple of bottles of whiskey from the trunk and brought them in with me, offering them to Crossley and his guards. He said, “Can’t have none of that in here, this is a state-run penitentiary. ’Fraid I’ll have to confiscate it,” and made the bottles disappear quickly to accompanying smiles from the other guards.

  They offered coffee, and cigarettes, and I drank and smoked until the afternoon grew late, judging from my watch. There was very little natural light in the building. I felt it would be easy for time to slip away here—which is probably exactly what the architects of prisons want.

  “Mister Parker.”

  It was a hard country voice. There are those who think Southerners soften their vowels, and maybe in South Carolina they do, but in very few other places will you hear them speak in such a way. In Mississippi, in the delta of Arkansas and northern Louisiana, they speak in harsh tones, clipped syllables, as if their entire morphology of communication were angry and inflamed.

  “That’s me,” I said, standing.

  In contrast to the guards, Assistant Warden Horace Booth was clean-shaven, with a neat suit and oiled hair.

  “Join me in my office, will you?” he said, and took me up a small set of stairs to a cubby of a room, with a set of double windows looking out over cotton fields and a sky striated with pink and purple clouds as the sun dipped toward the rim of the world. An overhead fan stirred the air, and another General Electric fan hummed behind Booth’s desk, wafting the scent of the man at me. Pomade and dirt and tobacco and sweat—none of them displeasing smells. He sat, somewhat heavily, and withdrew an envelope and tossed it in front of me.

  “That’s a letter from Jack Darcy. He sits on the board of t
rustees for the Arkansas Department of Corrections. He says I’m to let you make recordings of the boys here.” He crossed his hands in front of himself. “Says you’ll want to record the n——, too. Them most of all.”

  I remained silent, as I couldn’t discern a question in his words.

  “Darcy’s got friends, that’s the only reason you’re sitting here. But I need to know something first . . .” He fell quiet. I could not tell if he was thinking or just pausing for dramatic effect. He was obviously a man used to being in charge, and men like that often have the need for the theatrical.

  When I did not rise to his bait, he rummaged in his desk and withdrew a crisp, neatly typed letter and placed it before me. He finally continued on. “Let me see your government credentials, and I’ll need you to sign this affidavit swearing and affirming that you will conduct only the business of recording of music and make no other report or write any sort of government description as to the conditions you find here.”

  “And if I don’t?” I asked.

  “You’ll have to find yourself another state farm to record n——, Mister Parker. And it won’t be in Arkansas. Word tends to travel fast around here.” He gestured to the telephone hanging on the wall, its cord in a messy snarl below it.

  I quickly read the letter—there was nothing in it that could bind me—and signed it, readily. That seemed to satisfy Booth. He withdrew a bottle of whiskey from his desk—I was startled to find it was one of the ones I had brought to the guards—and Booth broke the bonded papers and poured us two generous measures in smudged glasses.

  “Can’t imagine why the hell you’d want to record these darkies. I’m more of a Benny Goodman or Bing Crosby man, myself. Darcy’s letter said you wanted to record Honeyboy in particular. That is one baaaad n——. A straight-up killer.”