Red Sky in Morning A Novel of World War II

by Patrick Culhane

  They hung around and talked to Booger, who was a 4-F from L.A., and finally Roscoe and Marvin showed up, the kid carrying his sticks, Roscoe hauling the huge stand-up bass without a case, like it was something he’d found on the street.

  Once inside the ballroom-like club, they didn’t have to wait long for their turn on stage, the girl singer ahead of them meeting a tepid response to her pale Ella Fitzgerald imitation, and rushing through her second number just to get off.

  Soon they’d set up (the house band’s drum set and piano were made available to other acts) and were ready to go, the emcee strolling out onto the stage. The crowd had heard these boys before, and the band wasn’t the only ones that were ready: the crowd was, too.

  Even as the emcee—a tall skinny Negro in a tuxedo who claimed he was Cuban (not black and from a truck farm in Oklahoma), said into his fat microphone on its skinny stand, “Ladies and gentlemen . . .”

  Marvin clicked his sticks, counting off the opening to “Cow Cow Boogie,” a nice barrelhouse piano song that let Sarge show off a little. “. . . three, four.”

  “. . . the Sarge Washington Quartet!”

  The crowd clapped and hooted, and the music began.

  ete Maxwell kept a set of civvies in the metal music cabinet downstairs in his choir director’s office. Off duty for the day, he had returned to the chapel to change out of his uniform into a lightweight brown suit. He only owned two: a black woolen job for winter and funerals, and this one, bought for his June wedding to Kay three years ago. Under the suit, he wore a white shirt and a snazzy red tie with splashes of white and yellow.

  He was still riding high on the lunchtime vote and the Fantail Four’s subsequent bidding on the posting for the Liberty Hill Victory. The fine print had said volunteers with some college and sports background would be preferred— “good-sized men” only. Now, Rosetti wasn’t tall but he was good-sized by any yardstick, and both Pete and Driscoll had sports experience, and all four were college men.

  So the prospects seemed good.

  As the dying sun set fire to the ocean, Pete left the base, his battered horn case swinging easily in his left hand. He walked to a nearby corner, found a newsstand, bought a paper, and kept walking for another two blocks until he got to his favorite diner, LORETTO’S glowing in blue neon over the door. Inside, the place was clean, quiet, with only a dozen or so other patrons.

  Pete put the horn case down on one side of a booth near the counter and dropped gratefully into the other. A short, blonde waitress with a cherubic face and a ready smile hustled over with a glass of water.

  “Usual?” she asked.

  “Yes, Janey, please,” he said, and she flounced off, but he hadn’t even gotten his paper unfolded before she was back, setting the coffee on the table along with silverware.

  He thanked her, but she was already gone again. He glanced down at the two-inch black letters of the headline: ALLIES INVADE FRANCE.

  Eisenhower was taking the fight to the Nazis, banging on Hitler’s door at Fortress Europe and hoping to march all the way to Berlin. A little shiver ran up Pete’s spine—if this was how things were going in Europe, how long until the Allies pushed to march into Tokyo? And if a push was coming, Pete wanted to be a part of it. The Fantail Four may have made their move at exactly the right moment. . . .

  Just as he folded up the front section of the paper, the waitress returned with a huge platter that contained his burger, french-fried potatoes, and an ice-cream-scoop-sized mound of cole slaw on the side. She set down the plate and refilled his coffee.

  “Anything else?” she asked cheerfully.

  “This is enough. Jeez, Janey, there’s a war going on, y’know.”

  “Yeah,” she said, heading off, “and you’re helping fight it.”

  Was he?

  Reading the baseball scores while he ate was probably the only thing Pete missed from his life as a bachelor. He would never read the paper at the table while he was with Kay, so these few evenings when she worked late and he stopped at this diner were the only times he got to actually study the standings and box scores.

  Pete had been a lifelong fan of the St. Louis Cardinals; his pop had taken him to a number of games at Sportsman’s Park, and this year the Cards were in first place. Sure, it was only June, but his team was bucking for their third straight National League crown, having lost to the hated Yankees in the World Series last year and getting bounced by the Bronx Bombers in five the year before. Felt good to be rooting for a winner.

  When he exited Lorreto’s, dusk was darkening to night, still a little early to hit the jazz clubs, so he walked his supper off, enjoying the mildly breezy San Diego weather, smoking a Chesterfield. He’d been a smoker since sixteen, but stayed at a pack a day, because he didn’t want his singer’s throat to get too rough.

  As Pete strolled past shops displaying colorful dresses, skirts, and blouses, his thoughts turned to Kay. Where the invasion in France would be good news for him, he knew it would upset her.

  They’d had the conversation more than once.

  “Come on, baby. Don’t you think Hitler’s got to be stopped?”

  “Of course I do. I just think that can happen without the intervention of my husband.”

  Then he would have to tell her about the Liberty ship posting, and how he and the others had put in for it. There would be tears, possibly anger, but finally she would support him. She always did.

  San Diego was a sleepy place for a big city, and the people—a lot of them his folks’ age or older—were friendly enough. But he remained surprised, even shocked, by the constant signs in restaurant and shop windows saying WHITES ONLY or NO COLOREDS. Growing up in a small Iowa town, Pete hadn’t come into contact with many colored people, or prejudice against them, either, besides “Sambo” jokes. His parents and Sunday school had taught him that all men were created equal, but maybe that was an easy tenet to believe when everyone in town was the same color.

  He had occasionally seen Negroes on his trips to Des Moines for Reserves training, but he had never interacted with any of them. The same was true of his short time at Simpson College, except for Tyrone Green, the son of a school janitor, who sometimes bussed tables in the cafeteria.

  To Pete, Tyrone Green—who was saving up to go to a Negro college down south—had been as nice a guy as any on campus; and some casual conversation revealed their mutual appreciation for music, particularly jazz and big band. Tyrone had loaned Pete some Louis Armstrong sides that were out of this world, and Pete had shared Benny Goodman with Tyrone. Still, Pete had taken some guff from a few other students for making a friendly acquaintance out of Green; nothing he couldn’t handle.

  Some colored sailors were housed on the far side of the base, but they’d never auditioned for the choir, so Pete had no dealings with them. Maybe he should have sought them out, because there sure were some great Negro singers in the world—like Paul Robeson, or Mahaliah Jackson. And President Roosevelt had called for the integration of the armed forces; but truth was, the presidential proclamation had been more window dressing than actual policy. Pete knew that if he’d recruited colored singers, he might lose some or all of his white choir members—this was one base with two different navies.

  Pete had met a really interesting colored fella off the base—a saxophone player named Willie Wilson from St. Louis, a steward’s mate, lowest of the low in the Navy, a glorified busboy and all but invisible. Willie had this sober-as-ajudge expression all the time, but a dry sense of humor that could blindside a guy.

  The two Navy men had found themselves walking out of the base one night, in civvies, and each noticed the other was carrying a horn case. They exchanged a polite hello and walked together for a while, finally starting to talk some music—Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, Louis Jordan.

  Wilson had asked him that night, “Sir . . . if you don’t mind my askin’ . . . what’s a white boy like you doin’ listenin’ to race music?”

  Pete blinked and thought abou
t it and then grinned. “I never thought of it as race music. I mean, I dig Artie Shaw and there’s a place for Glenn Miller, too.”

  “Yeah, but we might not agree on the place.”

  Pete laughed. “Come on, it’s a nice sound. Even if it’s kind of . . .”

  “White bread?”

  “Are you telling me you don’t sop up the gravy with white bread like us Iowa boys?”

  Willie smiled slyly. “I been known to.”

  “Anyway, race has nothing to do with it. Good music is good music.”

  Pretty soon Willie had then told Pete about the Silver Slipper, a jazz club frequented by Negroes, where the music was “red hot.”

  As he walked, the traffic thinned, the lights dimmed and before long he found himself in a neighborhood he might not ordinarily have ventured into, the red and white and blue of neon signs on bars and joints not seeming particularly patriotic.

  Finally he saw the glowing white neon and white-bulbframed entrance of the Silver Slipper, the only “genuine nightclub in this shithole city” (as Willie put it) that catered to colored.

  Two house bands alternated nights, a trio headed by a smooth-voiced young singer named Nat “King” Cole, who was starting to get some radio air play, and a wild outfit led by saxophonist Illinois Jacquet. Tonight, like every Tuesday, was amateur night, which was what drew Pete and his horn to the Silver Slipper.

  A large Negro stood near the door. He wore a black suit with a white shirt and black tie, like a bus boy, only this guy looked more likely to bust a table in two than clear it. Three inches taller than Pete’s six feet, the doorman was a yard wide, blacker than the inside of your fist, with a short, nappy haircut and an expression that registered instant dislike. This guardian at the Slipper’s gate had dark little eyes that managed to burn right through Pete and yet stay ice cold.

  “Evening,” Pete said, not giving the guy a chance to say no, not even slowing down as he yanked open the door and slipped inside. His eyes adjusting to the dim light, Pete checked over his shoulder to see if the doorman was following him. So far so good. . . .

  The colored hatcheck girl gave him a surprised but not unfriendly look, but Pete had neither hat nor coat to check, and he just moved on into the club. Bigger inside than the outside suggested, the Slipper reminded Pete of the Col Ballroom, which a combo of his had played a few times in Davenport, a bigger town upriver from Liberty Hill. Like that room, this one was deep and high-ceilinged, with bars at both left and right, and tables crowded together to form a U around an endless gleaming dance floor.

  Music from a quartet on the classic proscenium-style stage washed over him: Duke’s “Take the A Train,” a nice job on a big band sound from a handful of players. He was smiling, enjoying the tune, as his eyes slowly scanned the room and told him, quickly, that he was the only white person here.

  The joint was jumping, couples filling the dance floor doing gyrating, gymnastic variations on the jitterbug, and a cloud of smoke hung so thick you could have sliced it for bacon—he could barely make out the band up on stage.

  Still, Pete could feel the sea of eyes on him. He felt a queasy sort of nervousness, as if he had just set foot on a strange yet eerily familiar planet. No one said a word to him as he slowly made his way to the bar at right, but the unspoken question—“What the hell is a white boy like you doing here?”—rang out as if the hall were empty and not a note was being played. . . .

  The wait at the bar was two deep, but as Pete approached a space opened—somehow simultaneously respectful and threatening. The bartender, a tall, thin Negro with pressed hair and a pencil-thin mustache, said nothing, and his halflidded eyes appraised Pete like a cockroach crawling across

  a kitchen counter.

  “Beer,” Pete said.

  “Tap or bottle?”

  “Tap.”

  “Pabst or Miller.”

  “Pabst.”

  The bartender drifted sullenly away.

  Ignoring glares all around him, Pete turned his attention to the quartet on the stage. The drummer was a small man who looked like a teenager and who played without a suit coat, his sinuous arms moving smoothly, like fluid shadows extending from the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt. The bass player was a rangy man in a black suit, his hair cropped short, eyes closed, lost in a private smile as he played.

  The sax player was Willie Wilson, the steward’s mate who’d told Pete about the club. Willie was soloing now, his eyes shut as he snake-charmer swayed, his fingers dancing over the keys, jitterbug couples on the floor showing their appreciation by pausing to watch and whoop and applaud.

  As Willie’s solo wound down, Pete joined in the clapping. Man, these colored players could riff like crazy. . . .

  The surly bartender returned with half a glass of beer. “Buck,” he said.

  “A buck? For half a glass?”

  The bartender just stared at him.

  Pete knew damn well that a full glass of beer should cost him no more than a dime. But he flipped a dollar onto the bar and returned his attention to the band. He was here for the music.

  The piano player had taken over the solo. His skin shone under the lights, giving him an almost blue cast. Eight-ball bald, the pianist watched the audience shimmy to the notes he played, but he didn’t smile, serious as a surgeon, operating on this crowd through the music. Pete could make out scars riding high on the man’s left cheekbone like two black caterpillars clinging on to dark skin.

  The solo wound round and round and finally found its way back to the melody, where the quartet played through another chorus, no riffing, and ended it.

  The crowd went wild, and Pete was right with them. They were good for an amateur-night band, darn good. He caught Willie’s eye, gave him a smile and a wave.

  Willie stuck out his fingers and wiggled them, like he was playing another riff on a sax that was no longer there.

  Pete frowned.

  Willie widened his eyes and swung his head in a “come here” fashion. For a split second, Pete wondered if he really should accept the invitation. He’d brought his horn, obviously in hopes of getting on that stage; but he hadn’t considered just how white he was and how black the Slipper would be. . . .

  Finally he sighed, heard his pop saying Nothing ventured, and guzzled down the warm beer—if only it had been as cold as the bartender—and as the applause started to die down, Pete headed across the dance floor toward the stage. The crowd parted, but not like Moses and the Red Sea, more like a bunch of Romans getting out of a leper’s way. As he neared the stage, Pete realized the rest of the quartet seemed pointedly less enthusiastic about his presence than Willie.

  Nonetheless, Pete climbed the stairs at one corner of the stage, and Willie came over and reached out a hand and shook with him. Though couples thronged the dance floor, the room had turned quieter than the Liberty Hill cemetery at midnight. The jitters he was feeling weren’t simple stage fright—he never got that—but fear, sweaty-palmed fright, as countless whites of eyes in dark faces fixed on him, the stage lights turning Pete paler, making a ghost of him.

  The silence took on a leaden heaviness, and everybody but Pete stood frozen in place. He pretended not to notice as he set his case down and knelt to withdraw his cornet from its velvet berth. He stuck in a mouthpiece, ran his fingers over the three keys and used the spit valve, then swung his eyes over to Willie Wilson, who seemed pretty nervous himself about now.

  Finally, the bass player broke the silence. “You expect me to play with some goddamn cracker?”

  Willie gave the big guy a look that would have boiled an egg. “Did you say somethin’? I thought for a second I hear you say somethin’.”

  The bass player was slowly shaking his head. “I don’t play with no candy-ass white motherfuckers.”

  With his sax in one hand and the other on the hip of his navy blue suit, Willie regarded the bass player with the expression of a disappointed parent. “Oh you don’t? Who the hell been raggin’ me to pick up a ho
rn player? Who the hell turned down the two colored boys we tried out? Wasn’t that you, Roscoe? Or am I imaginin’ things again, like when I imagined you could play your way out of a motherfuckin’ paper bag?”

  Roscoe’s forehead was wrinkled, his expression that of a hurt child. “I never said we needed no white horn player.”

  The piano player with the shaved head and the nasty scars spoke up. “Roscoe, put a damn lid on it.” His tone was easy but carried a hint of menace.

  “Do that, Roscoe,” Willie echoed.

  Swiveling toward the sax player, the piano player said, “You put a lid on, too, Willie.”

  “What? What’d I say, Sarge?”

  A sharp glance from the piano player silenced Willie. Turning his attention back to the bass player, Sarge said, “You wanna be treated equal?”

  Roscoe said nothing.

  “Well, then, how’re you any better than some nigger-hating redneck if you ain’t gonna give this white boy a chance?”

  Pete sneaked a peek out at the audience. They were bobbing around now, getting restless, and he wondered if it might not be the better part of valor to just pack his horn up and get the hell out before this really turned ugly.

  “Maybe so,” Roscoe said, “but Willie shoulda axed us first. He shoulda brung this clown’s white ass to practice, and—”

  Sarge cut him off with a look. “Since when do we stand on goddamn ceremony? I say we give the white boy a chance . . .” A big friendly smile blossomed. “. . . and if he stinks up the joint, we can kick the shit out of him, after.”

  Pete goggled at the piano player as the other band members laughed heartily at that. Some joke.

  “White Boy,” Sarge said, “you know ‘Caravan’?”

  Pete said, “Just tell me the key.”

  “C,” Sarge said. “And that ain’t Spanish.” Then he counted it off: “One, two . . .”

  And they were playing.

  Pete came in, taking the lead, playing the melody while the young drummer banged out a jungle beat like a kid Krupa. Despite never having seen any of these guys but Willie before, Pete felt at home with them, and for all the yammering about him being white, the five musicians fell in together, sounding good from the starting gun. Tapping his foot in time, Pete started into his solo and he let it rip, riffing like Bix.