The Freewayfayers' Book of the Dead

by John Okas

  When they break there’s a round of applause both from those in the room and from those outside listening in the hall. Then conversations, laughter, and the phonograph start and drinks are poured. A well-dressed couple who speak with a Gourmet accent get up to congratulate Earl and Bones. The four go over to join the sitter on the couch. Curious Gloria watches intently, and keeps her sharp ears out, too.

  “It’s been too long since I’ve gotten to loosen up,” Laudette says. She rises, goes to Harry Swan’s liquor closet, and comes back with a bottle of gin. She pours a round for the others and takes the same for herself. Gloria has only seen her sitter take one drink, never more. Tonight, as the conversation rambles from fish and chip joints to expensive Gourmet restaurants, Laudette has a second.

  “I tell you,” Earl says to the Gourmet lady, “once they get that Reichmann devil out of old Elysée, Bones and I plan to move chez vous.”

  “Oui, oui, mon frere,” says Bones, “where the bread is fresh, the wine is old, and jazz musicians get some respect.”

  They all sigh, imagining post-war cafe life.

  Relaxing a bit more, Laudette has still another surprise for Gloria. She says, “Hey, you know what I’ve been thinking about? Something I haven’t had since I came back east. Do you boys have any of those cigarette treats I used to have for you?”

  “Is the Holy Peter a Patriano?” Bones asks and gets up and goes to his sax case which is on the floor near where Gloria is sitting. She watches as he opens his box of reeds and takes out a slim, festive-looking cigarette. He makes a vague, fumbling attempt to cover it up, so she can’t see it, which of course only draws her attention to it.

  Gloria is hip enough to know that all cigarettes are not rolled equal. She knows that this smoke is illegal: marijuana, the coolest of cool things. But she is confused. Did Lawdy really just ask for it? She sees the old sitter is on the couch looking at the cigarette with a bulbous goggle in her eyes. Yeah! They’re fixing to get high!

  Bones takes a seat on the coffee table, lights the stick, and passes it to Laudette who draws a whale of a lungful. As she exhales, hissing viper mad, her eyes get tranquil and a grin glows on her face so big and bright it matches the broad beam of her backside. Hoo whee! The big sitter is home at last, completely careless about whether Gloria is getting wind of what is going on. Others, seeing that the smoking lamp is lit, take out hemp sticks of their own, light up, and pass them around.

  In her young heart, Glory applauds the tea party. Ah, the good life, to live and let live. Being responsible for yourself and not setting rules for others, that’s when the good times roll.

  Earl and Bones play again, this time the old swing favorite Mellow Jive. The group in the hall laugh and clap their hands to beat the band. Laudette shakes her roly-poly legs from her big bottom to her booties. When the music crashes to a close, everyone claps, whistles, and shouts. Laudette bangs the coffee table with delight. “Hee hee hee,” she says. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire. I don’t know if you’re playing any better, boys, but that boo sure made listening a breeze. Earl, honey, where do you find all those notes? And, Bonesy, your voice comes out of that bell smooth as if it had butter on it.”

  Again, the teenager is filled with respect and admiration for her sitter, seeing her on such intimate terms with her idols, drinking and using illegal drugs, saying “fuck you” to sobriety and to society. At the same time, her curiosity is more than she can bear. The kitten wants some experience, and she knows where she can find the catnip. When there is another break and the grownups drink, smoke, talk, and laugh some more, Gloria sidles over to her Uncle Bones’s leather case, slips a hand in, and takes one of the cigarettes from among the thin strips of cane in the reedbox. Now she can take a break herself. She steps over and around the bodies on the floor, goes upstairs to her bathroom, stands over the toilet, ready to flush on the off-chance that someone tries to roust her, and smokes.

  She never had so much fun. She hisses like a dragon with the smoke between her teeth. She knows that she is taking a drug, and that drugs are supposed to bring pleasure, good feelings, or at least relief from pain, but as far as she can tell, after smoking the cigarette down to the stub, she feels the same as she did when she started. Maybe I didn’t smoke it right, she thinks as she goes downstairs, disappointed that nothing happened.

  And nothing does until Earl and Bones start playing again. First, it’s another ballad, Moody Moon. Earl, the master of opposites, whirls up and down the keyboard, his gentle giant hands twisting out braided strands of black and white notes, classical and classy. Gloria’s mind rolls jelly-jelly with his every insinuation. Bones sings the melody through his horn, soft, deep, full moon tones, reflected in the rippling piano. The good listener rises with the glistening high register bridge. She can’t count how many ways the music says “I love you.”

  And while her appreciation for the musicians is deepened, she wonders if they are really doing all that or if it isn’t in some measure in her. The drug confirms her Cootie Club experience of being the creative audience. It seems to her that she hears the music a split second before they play it, and when they play it satisfies her expectations perfectly, even going a little further, giving her sounds she didn’t know she craved.

  Next Earl counts to four and races into an up-tempo original of his. The birds in his hands stretch the limits of the old Red Robin Boogie. Bones bops off the swing beat and flies bravura into a long loud complex melodic line. Gloria, too, catnip playful and giddy, is flying. The dizzying harmonics fill the bill of her wildest dreams.

  All ears, she sits quietly, thoroughly transported for an hour that seems like days, and when everyone says goodnight and she goes upstairs to bed with all she’s heard still ringing in her ears, replaying in bits and snatches in her mind, she thinks she is too high to put her head down, but when she does she finds her pillow soft as a cloud. She thinks she will never drop off to sleep but finds herself falling nonetheless into dreams of Elysian Fields, a city of sound that never sleeps, whose fertile night air is filled with musical minarets, pagodas, obelisks, domes, all outlined in strings of sparkling colored lights.

  The Inside Dope

  Things happen fast. The four stooges call Sunset Sam and give him the inside dope about the party.

  “I take a whiff and what do I smell but marijuana coming from the parlor,” says Mona, “and I tell you, that girl never goes to school anymore either.”

  Kitty and Shepp describe the amounts of wine and liquor consumed.

  “Without doubt, these jazz people are a bad element,” swears the anchor spy Pearly Gates, “and their blinkity-blink-blank music has a corrupting effect on the soul. I’m no theologian, but I have a brother in the seminary, so I think I know what I’m telling you when I say that the music God intended us to listen to does not make us want to shake our a-double-ess, if you catch my gist.”

  The privileges of wealth are immense. From the oversized ranch house on her Lonesome Bull Ranch, Hilda Swan calls the Mayor of the Empire City to tell him of her concern for her step-niece. At the same time she makes a generous contribution to the Big Apple’s Finest pension fund.

  The Party’s Over

  For every bee a bop was born, and for every cee a cop comes in.

  In the wee hours of the morning on the first of November, everyone’s dreams of Elysian Fields are shattered when the men in the blue coats come knocking with a warrant to search the museum. Pearly lets them in and the doors to the back parlor, where Earl and Bones are sleeping, fly back. Officer Chance frisks Bones’s saxophone and find two sticks of catnip and a small quantity of heroin that Bones takes when his back acts up.

  “Does your back hurt too, boy?” asks Officer Demaio when he finds a leather pouch in Earl’s jacket pocket, containing some pills, the “vitamins” the Real McCoy takes when he gets tired. Further search turns up another small amount of marijuana, this cache corked in a glass vial.

  Hearing the commotion, recalling that ni
ght in the Golden Gate when the police came for Corn Dog, Laudette throws on last night’s dress and comes down. Officer Chance finds a suspicious looking cigarette stub in her pocket.

  “Gee, a whole ring of fiends, and living in this swell joint!” exclaims Officer Dimaio.

  The tip they got really paid off.

  The party’s over. The three are charged with possession of narcotics and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. They’ve got the right to remain silent, are handcuffed together and taken away to the Empire City slammer right in front of Gloria’s disbelieving eyes.

  Nor does Gloria get away free, for she must witness the search party going through the museum. They are well-supervised by Lieutenant Butler, a polite man who is intent on making a clean bust. Gloria’s blood goes to her feet when the uniforms hit the locked door on the private collection.

  She shrugs, “My Mummy left her things in there. I don’t have a key.”

  Gloria must sit down on the bed and try not to faint as the police locksmith picks the lock.

  In a jiffy, a giggling Officer McGurdy’s voice comes from inside. “Porno! Are we going to seize this stuff, Lieutenant?”

  Let it be! Let it be! Let it be! Let it be! Let it be! Gloria prays, her heart popping like Independence Day fireworks.

  This time a woman’s rights are respected. “Let it be for now, boys,” says Butler. “Who knows where the line on this stuff is, anyway. Our warrant says we’re looking for drugs not filth. The Captain says he wants this arrest to stick. This stuff’s under lock and key, it might be hard proving the kid can get at it. I’ll make a note of it in my report. Let’s lock it back up. There’s nothing else here.”

  ‘A Mighty Serious Charge’

  Gloria imagines the butler actually did it. Pearly and the rest of the staff turned them in to the police. Of course she cannot prove it. And who would be interested? The police are home-invaders, no better than the unfaithful servants who contaminate her house.

  There’s darkness in front of and behind the scenes.

  Chief Rally calls Hilda Swan personally, to thank her for her benevolence. Her contribution to the pension fund is more than he expected. The Chief and Gloria’s step-aunt exchange opinions concerning the problem of the rise in the crime rate in the major cities and how it relates to the general decline of order in the modern world.

  “The problem starts in the courts,” says Hilda, “turning hooligans back out onto the street who ought to rot in jail.”

  Chief Rally agrees, “The police can only do so much to clean up crime. It’s the lawyers’ fault there’s no order in society. They all read the same law books but see things different ways, and how can there be justice with lenient judges on the bench. After all, what is a judge but just another sneaky lawyer? Even those drug fiends that were abusing your niece—oh don’t you worry, we got them clean and can make a conviction—but if they can make bail, and afford a lawyer, or get a smart-assed public defender, they might come away with only a slap on the wrist, and not even spend one night in jail.”

  Hilda’s got the picture. “I see what you’re saying. What’s a record for these criminal types but a feather in the cap? It’s doing some time that teaches them.”

  No one says anything about the police losing paper work or delaying due process, but the day goes by, with Gloria ready to put up all her treasures for bail, yet there is no word of where or when the arraignments will be. She calls the station several times inquiring when the three prisoners are to be brought before a judge. The desk sergeant has no idea whom she means. “If they were arrested on the Eve of All Hollers, Miss, they’re in a backlog. It’s almost as bad as New Year’s Eve for nut cases. You should see all we got to process. Call back tomorrow. We should be caught up by then.”

  Tomorrow is such a long time, especially alone in the house with only the staff. With Laudette gone there is no one to enforce their termination.

  Oh Lawdy, I never knew how good you were until now that you’re gone. Please come back and save me from Pearly Gates and his company of creeps.

  The next day Gloria calls back, and is told that there is still no record of the arrest.

  “Sergeant, I saw my friends taken into custody with my own two eyes the day before yesterday. Do you mean to tell me that they have not yet been booked, brought before a judge and formally charged with a crime? If not, I want to report some missing people.”

  “Let me look into it for you and I’ll call you later.”

  Gloria waits by the telephone and it never rings. Mona and Pearly keep making calls and tying up the line. When Gloria calls back the first sergeant’s shift is over and she has to start her story all over again with the new man.

  “There can’t be people detained without being arraigned because that’s illegal,” says the sergeant. “The police don’t do things that are illegal, Miss. We’re here to uphold the law not to break it.”

  She goes to the telephone directory, and looks for an attorney. After thirty calls, with Mona or Pearly continually cutting in, she comes up dry. Either the lawyers are not in or are in a meeting with a client. The few she does speak to, when she explains she’s a fourteen-year-old girl, calling on behalf of her baby-sitter and a couple of friends, say they’re not taking on new clients.

  She calls the public defenders’ office and pleads with a man named Mister Martinez. At first he is testy; he doesn’t want to help her because she has no case number to refer him to.

  “That’s just the problem, man! There is no case number!”

  Martinez assumes he is speaking to one of the city’s many victims of child neglect, calling city agencies, hit or miss, for help. A compassionate man, he listens as she tells her story.

  “If what you say is true, Miss, we’ve got a real problem. It isn’t going to be easy to get a warrant to search the jail! But let’s not worry about your baby-sitter for a moment. What about you? Do you want to come in, get a hot meal. I’m sure we can help you find a shelter.”

  “I don’t need a shelter, Mister Martinez, I’m H Thornton Swan Junior’s step-daughter, and I’m living in the Swan Mansion over on East End.”

  Easy Street? When he hears this, Martinez excuses himself. He doesn’t think he should be wasting his time and the taxpayer’s money talking to rich girls.

  Gloria calls the Cootie Club and talks to “Cootie” Grayham, the owner. “It’s not the first offense for Earl and Bones, Miss Black. They once had a tailor shop that sold more than buttons and threads. The last time they used a lawyer named Horace Grabble. He let them pay what they could. But don’t expect miracles, the guy’s a legal dove.”

  Gloria gives Grabble a call and tells him the story: she explains exactly who she is, how she will be rich someday, but has no real money now. “I don’t expect you to work for free, Mister Grabble. I give you my word and my IOU that you’ll be paid.”

  “Don’t worry about the money, Miss Black. If Cootie referred you that’s enough for me. Tell me your story.”

  Grabble is very sorry to hear that Earl and Bones are in trouble again. It’s not the first time he’s heard about prisoners that seem to “disappear.” “It’s illegal, Miss Black, but they do it sometimes. They chalk it up to human clerical error if it ever comes out. There’s not much we can do.”

  “We’ve got to do something. Go in there, scream and yell! Fight for what’s right.”

  Grabble says he thinks it’s better not to be too insistent with the police. “It just seems to make them mad and they can make things worse for the prisoners.”

  Gloria sees what Cootie meant: you get what you pay for. Grabble seems much too mild-mannered to be effective as a lawyer.

  “Mister Grabble, I’ve already asked them politely, many times. It got me nowhere.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Two hours later he calls, “They say they don’t have them.”

  It’s no surprise. Gloria is shy about standing up to authority, but if she has to, she will. She ta
kes a taxicab downtown and stands in front of Sergeant Vogel at his high desk, telling him the whole story: how Lieutenant Butler and a whole squad of police in uniforms took her friends and now they are missing persons, no record of their arrest. “Could it be that they were kidnapped by men impersonating officers of the law?”

  “Lieutenant Butler, is it? He’s a great cop and a good family man. I hope you’re not telling me he’s taken prisoners without filing paperwork.”

  “I don’t know what to think, Officer.”

  “No, I’m sure that’s not the case, Miss. Let’s not jump to conclusions here. Listen—”

  “No. You listen, Sergeant. You’re breaking the law and you’re going to hear about it. You’re keeping unbooked detainees!”

  “Unbooked detainees?” the sergeant says, taken aback. “How dare you even think such a thing! That’s a mighty serious charge you’re making there, Miss. If I were you, I wouldn’t make it unless I had something behind it to back it up.”

  The logic runs around while Bones and Earl live in the fumiest of tombs, a place that reeks of rotten piss, the bowels of the city jail, a special holding pen for special cases.

  “Guard,” says Earl, “This is a violation of our civil liberties. We haven’t been charged, haven’t seen a judge or a lawyer, or been allowed to make a phone call and I’ll bet the lady we were arrested with has been treated the same. It’s not the Freewayfarers’ way to bury prisoners alive like this!”

  “Boy,” say the guards, “if you ever try telling us what’s the Freewayfarers’ way or what ain’t, we’re going to break your hard head.”

  “Lord,” Laudette groans somewhere off in her own sub-basement can in the women’s house of detention, sandwiched in between a hooker and a he-woman. She prays her heart out, goes through every suffering step of Emanual’s passion. “If this cup would pass, I promise never to drink gin or smoke gaga weed again. And what about my poor Baby? I should have fired those snakes while I had the chance.”