by Ravi Howard
“It’s behind me now, Mrs. Lomax.”
She was a stranger to me, but a sincere one. Still, though, she was a journalist, and the last time I had been in the paper, my name was turned to scandal. So I didn’t need to be anywhere close to a front page unless I was reading it at breakfast.
With Mrs. Lomax off that bicycle, she seemed ready to talk for a while. Getting into folks’ business was her trade and craft. All the same, it was all kinds of wrong to leave a woman standing and me not offer her a seat, so I did.
“No, thank you. I ride thirty or so blocks on Thursdays, so standing’s not a problem. I just want to let you know a few people out here remember your name. Nat Cole included, it seems. He was a smart man to hire you.”
She looked me over after saying as much, studying. Maybe she thought my face would answer her question before she asked it. But I had learned to put a little more stone in my face.
“Mr. Weary, you being hired by Nat Cole isn’t exactly a secret. Just like Augustine Tate was a prizefighter. Half the drivers and bodyguards were boxers. The rest, the ones like you, have a fighter’s sensibility. That look on your face might make a troublesome man think twice before he jumps a stage.”
All I could say was maybe, because it was no telling what a man might do.
“In any case, I’m not looking for information on your employer. I’m more interested in what I’ve been hearing about the situation in Montgomery. The busses. Have you heard anything about the busses?”
She studied my face some more, trying to read what I hadn’t said yet. I was careful about my hands giving me away. That newspaper was nothing more than something to twist or hold too tightly. It might as well have been a bell.
“It would be better if I kept my name out of anybody’s paper.”
“It’s not anybody’s paper, Mr. Weary, it’s mine. It’s just that I only know a handful of folks in Montgomery. Great-aunts and distant cousins can only get me so far. I need a few more folks I can call. Just like I imagine you have to learn your way around Los Angeles.”
I nodded then.
“Claudette Colvin was the young lady arrested back in March. You know her?”
“Some of her people. Montgomery’s only so big.”
“I was here trying to write about her from two thousand miles away. Posed some difficulties.”
“More like twenty-two hundred and some change.”
“All the more reason to make friends in Montgomery.”
She looked back and saw my neighbor on his front porch. He had been fighting a losing battle with the squirrels that emptied his bird feeder, and he’d tied all manner of wire to keep them off. He was trying wind chimes now, and Mrs. Lomax turned around when she heard the racket he was making with his pliers.
“Looks like an Eagle under his bushes. Good way to lose readers, putting a newspaper in the dirt. Excuse me for a second.”
Mrs. Lomax wiped her fingers on the rawhide flap of the news bag like a pitcher fingering the rosin. She threw the paper sidearm, splitting the telegraph pole and the apricot tree, planting the Tribune in the middle of the porch.
“What’s his name?”
“Upshaw. Cyrus Upshaw.”
She raised her voice just short of yelling and gave him a nice wave while she said her hello. He waved back, but that look on his face had some confusion in it. He had no idea who she was. But he walked over and got his paper, settled onto his porch swing, and put his head in that front page I still held rolled in my hand.
“I’m also in charge of marketing. I have people in Louisiana, too. Down that way they have a word for what I gave Mr. Upshaw—”
“—a lagniappe. Something on the house.”
“Exactly. I hear that word more here than I heard it down south. Half the people here come from back home. I wrote a story last year about the black folks in Baton Rouge boycotting their busses. What happens back home happens here, so I need people in both places. Folks who I can trust, and ones who trust me right back.”
“Considering where I been, me and trust have been apart for quite a while. I learned to live without it.”
“I can’t say I blame you. You don’t know me after all.”
She looked down then, and her eyes and her hand searched through that bag.
“In any case, I wanted to give you something else.”
She checked her fingers for ink, and wiped them against the leather again. She pulled out another paper, yellowed, and handed it to me. The headline stretched across the top, as big as the name of the paper. “Soldier Saves Cole from White Mob.” The photograph of me beneath the headline was the same size as the one of Nat.
“Where’d you find this picture?”
“I called the yearbook office at Alabama State College. They gave me the number to that little portrait studio on Thurman Street that took the school pictures. I offered to buy a copy, but they gave it to me free. Said it was the least they could do for you.”
“The last time most people saw my face was when the white paper ran my mug shot.”
The college sophomore version of me in that picture was a long time gone. Driving a cab had put a little money in his pocket, enough to buy a decent tweed jacket and that tie.
“Police send the booking photos for free. I could have gotten that one, but when some people see you holding a number across your chest, they assume you did something wrong.”
The picture was only the half. The story ran onto the next page, underneath a cartoon drawing of a man, me, with outsized fists, a starburst where my knuckles had lifted the attacker’s chin. Nat had his head back, singing with his eyes closed, and a small constellation of notes floated in the limelight. In that version of things at least, the show never stopped.
The paper wasn’t shaking in my hands, so the trembling I felt was still on the inside. To see the truth in my hands, without having to say it, without having to plead my case or look at a judge, was a brand-new feeling. Something warm on my neck where all that weight had been.
“Do you have any more papers?”
“Which ones?”
“The last ten years.”
She looked at me, not searching my face anymore though, just watching me while I held the two papers she’d brought.
“I was on a road crew at Kilby. Every once in a while we’d find a piece of newspaper somebody threw out. I went ten years without reading a paper front to back. I got some catching up to do so I can know where I am.”
She had her arms folded, and breathed into a nod.
“We get each year’s worth hardbound and keep them next door to our office. I call it a library, but it’s a storeroom on the second floor of the Dunbar. You’re welcome there any time.”
I nodded, and I believe I said thank you, but she had caught me off guard. It was hard to hear my own words in the middle of seeing that school picture. That day was too far gone to remember.
“That’s why I’m asking, Mr. Weary. I don’t want to be in your business, but it feels like the busses are everybody’s business.”
I don’t know why I looked around before I said it, but I’d never been one for loose-mouth talking and putting business in the street.
“I have a sister on the Women’s Council. My brother helped to start the Taxi Guild. You give them a holler, and they might tell you something.”
Mrs. Lomax reached into that bag again and pulled out a notepad, flipped to the first clean page, and wrote down the names and numbers I gave her.
“Make sure you tell them I gave you their names. They’ll trust you then.”
“I will indeed.”
Her son and daughter rode down Towne Avenue and stopped to talk to a man and woman, schoolteachers it seemed, walking among the children toward the school. They looked down the block to their mother, who pointed to her wrist, though she wore no watch. The first of the school bells, the ten-minute warning, came ringing out. Mrs. Lomax’s son gave a boy a ride on his handlebars, and her daughter rode beside a group of g
irls with saddle oxfords on their feet and gym shoes around their shoulders.
“I hope I didn’t hold you too long, Mr. Weary. Wouldn’t want to keep you from Mr. Cole. Where are you all off to today?”
“I don’t talk about my work.”
“Like I said, I’d be the last to dig for dirt on Nat Cole. I admit we’ve been hard on him, but we’ve been hard on all of the singers. He shouldn’t have been singing in a Jim Crow theater in the first place. Don’t sing to a crowd you can’t sit in, it’s as simple as that.”
“I guess television changes all that. Sing to everybody all at once. Jackie Robinson of television is what they’re calling him.”
“Nothing wrong with Jackie, but a Willie Mays of television is what we need. They say Mays could catch hell in his glove if he got a good jump on it.”
With that she was back on her bicycle and riding toward Avalon. I lost her behind the cars and the few scattered trees, but the flight of her papers marked her path along Seventy-Fourth Street, as a week’s worth of headlines landed on those doorsteps. It was a mighty good notion, knowing that in the middle of her brand-new news she had brought me a little bit of my old time. And I didn’t have to track through my mind to reach Montgomery. I could read about it on my front porch.
Chapter 16
Got a call from your reporter friend last week. Said her name was Lomax,” Marie said.
“I was supposed to call you first. I intended to. You were nice to her I hope.”
“When have I not been nice? So I need a stranger to remind my brother he has people back here who want to hear from him every once in a while?”
Marie’s voice came from a familiar place. She and Pete had moved in with my father a few years back. Her children made the same noise we had in those rooms. The echoes didn’t change.
“As much as I call, I never catch you at home. How are you, dear heart?”
“Fine. It’s not hard to keep busy, so I do.”
“That’s the best thing to be.”
Every so often the house on the other end went quiet. Marie must have placed a hand over the receiver while she corrected the children. The room would be quieter when she spoke again. I didn’t mind a bit of noise, though. It saved me the trouble of asking if the kids were fine, since I heard for myself.
“Nat Cole from up the street on television. And you out there with him. Folks are talking about it. Next best thing to a real show.”
“What you think?”
“You know I could listen to that man forever. I’ll have to miss the next one. We have a meeting Monday night about the busses. They arrested another woman on the City Lines. A seamstress at Montgomery Fair. Yesterday. Took her to jail right in front of her job.”
“They hurt her?”
“People who saw it said no. Your friend Mrs. Lomax wanted a phone call when something happened. And it just did.”
Montgomery Fair was just across from the Court Square Fountain, where the biggest Christmas tree in Alabama was always lit the Friday after Thanksgiving. The bell ringers were out, and Santa Claus had a throne set up in the front lobby, with lines of white children wrapped around the place. Half the downtown busses had stops at Court Square, so there might have been as many people waiting for the bus as riding it. When they arrested Rosa Parks, half of Montgomery was probably downtown.
When I drove in college, I’d circle the fountain looking for fares every Friday, weaving in and out of those busses. They kept up a racket, with every piece of loose metal rattling on the Court Square cobblestones. A cab was more money, but for some folks it was worth it, because the busses never had enough back seats. So a Negro rider might wait an hour just for standing room. The folks waiting downtown tried to look dignified when the drivers treated them any kind of way. Maybe it was worth the extra money of taxi fare. Taking a private ride with us was insurance against insult and embarrassment on the City Lines in the busiest part of town.
“We told everybody to stop riding tomorrow.”
I knew plenty of people who had sworn off the City Lines, but it was hard to imagine everybody doing so at once.
“I’m more relieved than anything. Been planning for a while, and now it’s here. Maybe it’s wrong to say I’m excited, because I didn’t have to go down to jail. It’s just about time, that’s all.”
“You all need to be careful.”
“Too late for careful,” she said. “Me and Pete volunteered to run a carpool out of the lot.”
“Like I said, be careful.”
“So you told me. Been tiptoeing around this sorry town all these years and got squat to show for it.”
That house was half-filled with our old furniture and some good, sturdy pieces she and Pete had built and covered. Two of the old living room chairs sat in front of shelves of books and records. Marie and Pete had me over before I left, and I’d drank plenty of their gin. Those chairs flanked the brass telephone table. Since she knew phone numbers by heart, she didn’t need her phone book. Instead, it doubled as a coaster, and the sweat rings from the tumblers had changed the yellow of the cover to some shade of gold.
“What did he sing?”
When I told her the four songs, she hummed the first line or two of each. “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” sounded good coming through the phone.
“Can’t understand why it’s fifteen minutes. Milton Berle’s got the whole hour.”
“Milton Berle’s got a sponsor.”
“Well, if I can’t hear Nat Cole from up the street on television, then I’ll hear him tonight. Hold on.”
Her voice changed, moving around when she shifted that phone on her shoulder. The albums were alphabetized, a chore for the children they turned into a game. The “C” section stood upright between a set of cast-iron jacks, and it had every one of Nat’s albums along with Ray Charles and Ida Cox.
When I had been there with them, I’d put some hours into listening on that hi-fi, sitting in that very chair, staring into the speakers, because what came out was clearer than anything I had ever heard. Some were on the charts and some years old, but they were new to me, like the needle had hit the vinyl while it was still warm from the press. I had left a few dimes for the children, pay for rearranging the records, so when my sister reached for an album, she knew exactly where it was.
“No ‘Christmas Song’?”
“Two weeks from tomorrow. He’s saving it.”
And no sooner than I said as much did the swell of those strings come up.
“I can’t wait two weeks to hear my song. After the weekend we had down here, two weeks seems like forever. No business waiting for my show and crying about missing it. I can hear it right now.”
“Crazy thing is I’ll never see it on television.”
“You won’t miss a thing. You’ll be in the room when he’s making it. That’s a show on top of a show.”
Marie swirled that ice in her glass.
“I’m supposed to be at the gas station early. Watch the bus stop across the street to see how many get on. It’s Monday, too. So the laundry girls will be waiting for that five o’clock bus. We got rides ready to go. The Lord may find it peculiar, but we’ll all be praying for empty busses. Dirty smoke and squeaking doors and all the rest.”
Sometimes I was glad to be rid of my hometown, but leaving and forgetting are nowhere close to being the same. I thought about home when Marie covered the phone and said good night to the kids. Her fingers weren’t enough to muffle my name, Uncle Nathaniel, as they told her to tell me good night. And even if a part of me hated that place, my people were in the middle of it.
“I told your friend to keep my name out of the paper. I could put her in touch with—with the executive committee.”
“You can say her name. I won’t fall to pieces hearing you say something about Mattie. She’s your friend.”
“You know, when that reporter called, knowing your name and everything, I thought she was your friend. Your friend friend.”
�
��Mrs. Lomax. That means married. With a bunch of kids.”
“She told me that, too. Not her then, but somebody, eventually.”
“I’m out here making Los Angeles feel like home. Turning strangers into friends.”
“I’m talking about finding one somebody.”
Truth was, I found me a few somebodies, just like I had at Mama Nonie’s. Los Angeles was a place full of strangers, and I made the most of it. I could be a brand-new man every other night or so. Let a woman call me by a borrowed name. It didn’t matter that she forgot it as soon as I was dressed and gone, because I forgot hers as well. The part of my mind where I did my loving and remembering had been cut back to the root. It would come back, eventually, but until then all I could handle was the skin-deep loving that I paid good money for.
“Everything’s fine. If not, it will be eventually,” I told her.
“That shows what kind of kin we are, dear heart. That’s my resolution. Not just New Year’s but from here on out. Make everything fine sooner or later.”
She was right about us being kindred as much in spirit as in blood. I drank some of the same liquor she and Pete had toasted me with before I left for California. And sitting there by my lonesome, I listened to the same music she had spinning back home.
Chapter 17
Being the driver of a Capitol Records star meant I could take a seat in the Studio A lounge in the back row of seats behind the audio board. At the first of Nat’s December sessions, a ten-minute break had stretched to half an hour on account of the squeak an engineer heard coming from one of the orchestra’s chairs. A stray noise could kill a song as fast as a scratch ruined vinyl. Nat’s engineer wore his headphones, listening as a maintenance man went down the rows and tested chairs with his weight. Each time Manny shook his head, the fellow moved on to the next one.
The folks from duplication made copies of the scores for the band, and they had come down from the fifth floor with a few handfuls of music changes. That was my first time seeing the two Negro transcriptionists, a woman and a man. As a general rule, I nodded to the other black folks in the place, whether I knew them or not. Nothing wrong with having a little company. Johnny Mercer sang about enough of us before he built Capitol, so it stood to reason that he should hire a few.