Like they say, love is blind. I know now that sometimes love can be stupid, too.
The following week, Chris’s disposition improved. She was back to being a loving, attentive wife. Her mood swings had dissipated. One evening we had her parents over for dinner, which even gave us the opportunity to reconcile with her family.
There were forty thousand people at the kickoff of the Newport Jazz festival. Because I was still on crutches, when it was my time to go onstage, Chris escorted me onto the gigantic platform. At the microphone, she curtsied to the riotous applause of the stadium. She exited stage right with a fulfilled look on her freckled face. Al Abreu, our saxophonist, came over to my ear and whispered, “Your old lady loves that you’re hobbled. She gets to be in the spotlight.” It had never entered my mind that Chris could be that manipulative, but Abreu’s comment stuck with me as I started to count off our opening song, “Son of Ice Bag.” The crowd went berserk from the very first eight bars we played, and as the clouds gathered above us, the entire stadium went into a frenzy.
When we got to our second-to-last song “Bajabula Bonke—the Healing Song,” I began to introduce the band: “On bass, from Riverside, California, Henry Franklin; on drums, from Watts, California, Chuck Carter; on piano, from Cincinnati, Ohio, Billy Henderson; and on sax and everything else, from the Bronx, New York, via Puerto Rico, Alfredo Abreu.” The crowd went bananas. From the corner of my eye, I caught Dizzy and Stewart sitting in the back of our limousine behind the stage, toasting me with a vial of coke they were passing back and forth between them. They were dying from laughter every time I looked their way with envy. Lightning and thunder struck when we broke into “Grazing in the Grass.” It began raining hard when I went into the first solo of the song. The crowd never left; they just kept on dancing, bumping and bouncing and hollering, under the torrential showers. When the song ended, they hollered for more. It was pouring rain, but we played “Grazing” again. Still that wasn’t enough. The crowd wanted it a third time. We obliged, then bowed and left the stage to their thunderous applause.
Back in the dressing room, Peter Davidson walked over to Chris, who was helping me change into dry clothes.
“Chris, I’m confirming seats for our flight tomorrow for Pittsburgh. I need to know now if you are traveling with us. It’s summertime, plus it’s the weekend and the planes are usually full. Do you want to come?”
She declined, saying she wanted to go shopping and would be waiting for us when we returned to New York on Monday.
“Okay, Chris, don’t change your mind.”
The next morning Peter, Stewart, and the band picked me up at the hotel for the flight to Pittsburgh. We were at the departure lounge waiting to board the plane when Henry Franklin, our bassist, started in on me.
“That Chris is really something else, Hughie. I’m telling you, you married a hell of a chick, brother.”
Balancing myself on my crutches, I said, “Henry, why the fuck would you be thinking of Chris right now? Can’t you give us a little break from that girl?”
“I wish I could, Hughie, but she just ran by us.” The whole band and some of the other passengers who were waiting in line with us turned around, and running down the terminal was Chris in a floral minidress, doing a slow trot so as to make sure somebody would catch her if they gave chase.
Peter and Stewart instinctively shot out after her, bringing her back, as if they were the policemen and she the fleeing thief. She was sobbing. I said, “Chris, you kept the limo so you could go shopping. Peter asked what your plans were. You never mentioned coming to the airport.”
She said, “I waanna go. I wanna gooooo.”
I said, “Peter told you the plane would be full on Sundays. Now you are here, causing a scene. Chris, what the fuck is the matter with you, baby?”
She insisted, “I want to go, goddammit, Hughie. Talk to the fuckin’ captain. I’m comin’ with you, man.” By now everyone within earshot was focusing in on this tragicomedy. I told her again that the plane was full. “Full, my freckle-faced black ass. You got influence, Hughie,” she said, biting her nails and shaking nervously. I said, “I’ve got work to do, Chris, and you are wasting my time, good-bye.” I hobbled onto the plane with the band behind me. Airport security came and pulled her away from the gate while she kicked and shoved, protesting vehemently.
Inside the first-class cabin, Stewart looked at me sadly. “Whatchoo gonna do about this bitch, Hughie? She seems to be losing it more and more every day.” I just shook my head in utter amazement. I had not thought about the possibility of cutting loose from Chris until right that second. But I said nothing to Stewart.
When the plane pushed away from the boarding gate, Henry started laughing. I said, “It ain’t funny. Just cut it out.” He quickly replied, “Oh yeah, it’s funnier than a motherfucker, man. This shit is too funny. Just look through your window, Hughie. Man, this Chris is just too fucking much. I’m telling you.” Everyone in first class jumped for the windows, to see Chris being chased by six security officers. She was running toward the plane screaming, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” with her hands waving high over her head and her dress up to her stomach in the breeze, with only a skimpy pair of panties covering her ass. The security officers lifted her off the ground and onto their shoulders. Even I had to join the laughter on the plane, but truthfully I felt badly for Chris. I thought to myself, this poor girl is really suffering.
My band, Stewart, Dizzy, Ben Riley (Monk’s drummer), and some of the members of Blood, Sweat and Tears were seated in my dressing room suite, smoking “ice pack” at the Pittsburgh Convention Center before the show, listening to Cannonball Adderley tell us stories about past music-business antics. We were all laid back and laughing when Henry started up again about Chris. But before he could get in full stride, in walked Chris, her fingernails bitten down and bleeding, her freckled face red with remorse. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Yeah, so you thought I couldn’t get here, right?” Within seconds the group disappeared as if the narcotics squad had arrived. Only Henry stayed back, not wanting to miss any potential fireworks, but I asked him to leave, too.
I was filled with so much anger and bitterness for the first time, and I wanted Chris to understand just how I felt. I said, “Chris, I don’t know what you are trying to do, but this is my livelihood you are upsetting here. I have been kind and patient with you, and have tried to understand whatever it is that is bothering you. But this disruption is beginning to anger me deeply, and if you don’t stop, I am going to have to turn you loose, baby. I am very sorry, but you are busting my balls, man. And I am not prepared to take this shit anymore. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”
“I just want to be with you, Hughie,” she said. “Why are you pushing me away?”
I stood up and she rushed to hand me my crutches. I took them and continued, “Chris, I am going to get someone to go and find you a seat in the show. From there, I expect you to enjoy the festival without disrupting anything. If you do, I will have you legally and forcibly removed. Now, are you gonna cooperate with me, or should I have you thrown out now?”
I think Chris understood that the game she was playing had gone far enough. She didn’t give anyone any trouble the rest of the evening. After the show, she returned with me to my hotel suite, where I spoke with her almost till dawn. I told her that she had to pull herself together. She promised to change her ways, and apologized to me and to the band. Later in the day, Chris and I flew back to Philly to pick up our things from the hotel. We took the limo back to New York. Our driver was shell-shocked from the Sunday airport experience. He hardly said a word to us during the ride. We never saw him again. I suspect he must have begged his company never to assign him to us again.
For the next three weeks Chris was extremely well behaved, except when she would sneak out to consult with her clairvoyant, who kept telling her that I was going to die soon. I finally told Chris that I was going to have her clairvoyant murdered. She stopped t
alking about my imminent death, and probably warned her fortune-teller about my threat. I never heard about her again.
Now and again Chris would sleep for two days without waking up. I suspected that she was on some serious downers. I soon discovered that she was taking Placidyl, a barbiturate that I really got to like because after I took it I could easily go to sleep when the cocaine kept me up. Around this time Stewart introduced me to Artie Ripp and the other executives at Buddah Records. Even though “Grazing in the Grass” was still number one, and I was signed with UNI Records, these guys were hellbent on signing me for their label. Ripp was also fascinated by my reported prowess with women. He said he knew this chick named “China” who could bust my balls and put me away in bed. He swore “China” could tame me. I thought all of this was odd, and perhaps Stewart was behind all this because he wanted me to get away from Chris and her madness and disruptive behavior. With Chris sleeping most of the time, I began to hang out with “China.” Iris—her real name—was a pretty blonde with a beautiful smile and the body of a Congolese Amazon who had been raised in the depths of Zululand. Stewart would lend me the keys to his suite at the Drake Hotel, and there I would rendezvous with Iris during the day when Chris was on downers and sleeping away, sometimes for days on end. Instead of “China” bringing me to my knees, she fell madly in love with me and the joke was on Artie Ripp, or maybe on me. By this time I had had it with Chris and didn’t care anymore about our marriage because she didn’t seem to give a shit. I was seriously contemplating ways to call it a day, but she kept begging me to give her another chance. “I’ll get well, Hughie. You’ll see. Believe me.”
When the Newport Jazz Festival resumed, I left Chris at home, but occasionally she’d come along. And for a while, I must admit, she conducted herself properly. But as in the past, her good behavior didn’t last long. During one of our flights we were caught in a nasty and turbulent electric storm. The plane was bouncing every which way and the passengers were terrified—everyone, that is, except Chris. Staring at me with wide-open eyes, she hissed, “You are scared, right? We’re gonna die. It’s all over.” Stewart and I looked at each other in amazement. He was shaking his head in disbelief. While our plane was being tossed about and bouncing what seemed like one hundred feet at a time, Chris sang out in a deep, ominous voice, like Dracula’s in those vampire films, “It’s all over, Hughie.” We reached Louisville, Kentucky, safely, but I was now wondering about Chris. Where was she coming from with all the shit she was talking on the plane? Could she really be that weird?
Other than Susie, Stewart, Peter, and the members of the band, Chris did not have any friends. Aside from Toma Gero, Dennis Armstead, and the Gordon Parks siblings, whom she grew up with in White Plains, Chris spent most of her time shopping, traveling, or getting high alone or with me.
Toward the middle of July, the Newport Festival was winding down. We only had two more venues—Newport, Rhode Island, and Montreal. When we arrived in Newport, we rented two station wagons and drove to our motel near the festival venue. It was a beautiful, sunny summer afternoon and all of us were in a hilariously happy mood. We had a mountainous stash of about an eighth of an ounce of pure coke, a half-pound of prime Oaxacan “ice pack,” a slab of Afghani hashish, Valium, Placidyl, Courvoisier, Dom Perignon, half a fist of Thai opium, three books of Bambu giant rolling papers, and some amphetamines. At the Newport concert, there must have been more than fifty thousand jazz fanatics in attendance. It was late in the afternoon when we jumped into our first song, “Son of Ice Bag.” After four tunes, we played Marvin and Tammi’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” which was one of the most beloved songs of the season. By the time we got to “Grazing in the Grass,” all hell broke loose. People started dancing as if possessed by African demons of rhythm and voodoo—frenzy and abandon unleashed. I couldn’t stop shaking my head in delight, really amazed that music could have so much power. All of a sudden, in the middle of my solo, the crowd stopped dancing and began laughing and pointing to the stage. I couldn’t understand what was going on until I glanced over my right shoulder. Standing beside me was Chris, cool, calm, and flashing the audience her freckles and toothy grin. Stunned, I said, “Abreu, take a solo.” I turned around and hugged Chris gently around the waist. She followed my lead and we floated offstage, Fred-and-Ginger-style. I handed her over to Stewart, who was standing at the foot of the stage. “Hold on to her,” I said, rushing back on stage. After the show, Henry weighed in with his usual jabs. “Hughie, I just love that Chris.”
This was the last straw. Once we returned to our motel, I told her, “I would appreciate it if you would just go back to New York in the morning. I want you out of my life because you are driving us all insane, and nobody needs that shit here anymore. We’ve all had enough of your drama. I’m certainly not taking you to Montreal tomorrow.”
She snapped back, “Oh, shut the fuck up, Hughie. There you go whining again. Nobody else is complaining, man. Everybody enjoyed the show. What is your problem, anyway?”
“Fuck you, Chris! I’ve had enough of your bullshit. Can’t you get it? I’m not going to take any more of your shit, baby. You are going back to New York tomorrow and out of my fucking life, and that’s it. I don’t give a shit what you do with your life, but you ain’t going to fuck mine up anymore. It’s all over, baby. That’s it. You’re out of here, goddamnit.”
She studied me for a few moments, then replied, “Well, fuck you too, Hughie,” and walked out of the motel suite. About two hours later, around ten o’clock, she came back. No one paid her too much mind, but Henry greeted her with, “Hey, Chris, you’re really too much, baby.”
She brushed Henry off and addressed me. We were all seated on sofas and armchairs, passing joints and vials of cocaine and drinking cognac and Dom Perignon. Chris said, “Well, Hughie, since you don’t want me around here, give me the fucking keys to the car and I’ll drive to New York and get out of your fucking life. Come on, give me the fucking keys.”
I said, “Chris, you don’t have a driver’s license and you are fucking high out of your mind. You wouldn’t even get out of town without getting stopped by the cops. Do you think I’m crazy?”
Determined, she persisted, “Give me the fucking keys. I can drive, and no cops are gonna stop my fucking ass. Just give me the fucking keys.”
I said, “Go to hell, Chris. I ain’t giving you shit, and I don’t care what you do. I’m tired of your shit. You hear me?”
I stood up and began to walk toward her, but she walked out and hollered over her shoulder, “Fuck you, asshole, I’ll hitch a ride back to New York. I don’t need your ass. Fuck you, Hughie.” With that, she disappeared into the night as we continued our party. Around midnight, Chris returned, stared at us, and mumbled something. Her speech was slurred.
“Oh shit,” Stewart said. “She’s OD’d on some downers. Somebody get lots of black coffee.” He went over to Chris and caught her just as she slumped into his arms. Realizing we needed to call for help, I began shouting orders to hide the drugs. Al Abreu rushed in with a jug of coffee from where I don’t know. It was a messy situation, and we were panic-stricken. Soon the police arrived, along with paramedics who took Chris to the hospital. We were relieved that the cops didn’t have time to sniff around. Stewart, Susie, and I rode with Chris to the hospital.
As she was being wheeled to the emergency room, Chris suddenly came to and began screaming and kicking. “Don’t help me. I want to die. I want to fucking die.” A nurse gave her a shot and she passed out. Susie stayed with Chris because Stewart and I had to catch our flight to Montreal. I was exhausted and I had to go to work. She was in good hands with the hospital staff and Susie standing by. That morning as we flew to Montreal, Dizzy said, “Man, I used to babysit that girl when I was in her father’s band. She was always throwing all kinds of shit in my face. The girl’s always been out of it, man. I wish you luck, boy. You’re gonna need it. Oooweee.” Periodically, Henry Franklin would shake his head and whi
sper, “Man, oh man.”
On our flight back to Newport from Canada, Stewart and I sat alone, exhausted from the gig, yet relieved that Susie had called and reported that Chris was doing fine and would be ready to travel to New York. Stewart broke the silence. “Hughie, whatchoo going to do with this girl, man? She’s completely out of her mind and driving you up the wall. You’re beginning to look like a skeleton. You’re hardly eating anymore. All those uppers and downers the two of you are taking. The endless coke and cognac, man. You are looking really bad, Hughie.”
I had no idea what to do. I knew I couldn’t leave her in that condition, but I was exhausted by the thought of Chris. Deep down, I wanted to leave her. I had had it. Stewart then hit me with some heavy news. “I’m cutting Susie loose. We’re getting a divorce. Susie is going to an ashram somewhere in upstate New York, where she’s joining the Maharishi and going to find herself. I can’t get into that shit, man. She’s really deep into it. We’re calling it quits. No hard feelings.” All I could say was “Damn.”
Chris and Susie were waiting at the motel. “How do you feel, Chris?” I asked, not so much because I was interested, but for lack of anything else to say. I was exasperated with her by now.
“Hughie, I’m sorry. I am really sorry. I don’t know what came over me. Please forgive me, Hughie. I’ll be really good. I swear I’ll be good. Please take me to New Orleans.” Nuffie was from New Orleans and Chris had always wanted to go there to see her mother’s hometown. She somehow felt there was something magical she would find in the Crescent City.
Listening to her beg, then cry those crocodile tears, I said, “Listen, finish packing so we can check out.” At the front desk, Stewart asked me if I was going to take Chris to New Orleans. “I have to, man. I can’t leave her alone at the apartment. I’m afraid that in the condition she’s in, I just might come back to find her dead.”
Still Grazing Page 29