Song of the Exile

by Kiana Davenport

  “Now I’m on King Street, friends beside me in a car. Look, there’s Casino Ballroom, dancing, jazz. We pull in, rowdy as gangsters. Now I’m swaying on the dance floor. Heat. Rum and Coca-Cola. Someone in that crowd will change me, save me from my narrow life. I wake up to his profile. Keo . . .”

  She thrashes, calling out his name.

  N ‘IKE NA ‘AU

  Revelations That Come from the Gut

  HONOLULU, MID-1930S

  SALIVA SHAKEN FROM BRASS JOINTS, MEN TAKING APART THEIR instruments. Even when they finished playing, he sat paralyzed, his body an organ of hearing. He wanted what they had—a future. Jazz. When they talked of mustering out, going home to Memphis, New Orleans, Keo felt sick, something in him physically revolted.

  He watched his mother darning women’s prison uniforms, his father’s face tinted gray from years of breathing formaldehyde. Younger brother Jonah, still in high school, part-time beachboy at the hotel where his sisters and cousins were chambermaids. All stuck in a life of servitude. Jazz seemed his only deliverance.

  The night before Handyman, the drummer, transferred back to Chicago, they gathered for an all-night jam, sliding from blues to ballads, from ensemble choruses to solos. Keo tossed down drinks, working up his nerve, finally approached the bandstand. These were pros, they could tell if a man had talent just by the way he cleared his throat. The piano man stood, bowed him to the bench.

  Keo sat down. “For Handyman.”

  The band winked back and forth, then launched into “Stardust,” New Orleans style, everyone stomping, roaring in together. They settled into Memphis style, establishing a theme in the first chorus, then each man taking a solo, each executing his own variation. When his turn came, Keo inhaled, starting slow and cautious. Then he went berserk, galloping through “Stardust” like a madman, on into “Black Bottom” and “Sister Kate,” thundering blindly into Bach, Stravinsky, Chopin’s Études—music he had absorbed from a broken radio every night for months and years. Music he couldn’t comprehend, like hot, slippery glass that dripped through the seams of his slumber, marking him forever. The others leaned forward, stunned.

  What Keo played was on the verge of being recognizable but was obliterated by left-hand explosions coming out of nowhere. There were nervous seconds of fingers shimmying up and down keys, a dance that congealed into a sleepy pause, a meditation, one finger tapping a key like a clock’s second hand. Then he went berserk again, like two men playing different songs but somehow blending them, then staggering off in different directions. This wasn’t music, it wasn’t jazz. They could not name what it was.

  He played on, possessed, pounding out all he knew or felt. Then he invaded compositions from the here and now—dance songs, pop melodies that screamed through his fingers as he slaughtered sound. Miraculously, by way of tortured, twisted paths, he came back to “Stardust,” but the chorus shattered, haunted and brand-new. Sweat poured down his face and arms, puddling the keys. His fingers slid off and fell into his lap. He picked them up and played till he was blinded, lungs sobbing, his forehead on the keyboard. He had played nonstop for twenty-seven minutes. They stared at him in silence.

  He raised his head, looking round. “The truth. Am I . . . any good?”

  Dew cleared his throat, answering softly. “Tell you what you ain’t, Hula Man. You ain’t ordinary.”

  After that, nothing stopped him. He still couldn’t read sheet music, could hardly tell one wind instrument from another, but he was learning. Musicians mustered out of the army, others took their place. Keo waited for them outside Hickam and Schofield, then played with them all night in backs of barrooms.

  Some nights he couldn’t sit still, felt the need to physically embrace sound. In the midst of a piano solo he’d kick off his shoes, jump up from the bench, and dance. No one knew what he was doing—knee movements to the Hawai‘ian War Chant, something from Kabuki, a matador’s ballet. He danced like he played, a thing unleashed, leaping, darting, turning his body into the instrument. Somehow his crazy movements cohered, a necklace strung with wild rhythms firing up the band. They blew until they were all but howling, then Keo flung himself back down on the bench, attacking the keys.

  Dew loaned him records, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller. For background, the mythic ragtime sounds of King Oliver. He bought a used Victrola. Neighbors sat out in the lane with folding chairs and fans, watching his head bowed at the piano, trying to follow the music.

  “What dis ‘ragtime’?” Mary Chang asked.

  Ricky Silva frowned. “Must mean time fo’ put rag in yo’ ear. Strange kine music—sound more like car crash.”

  Sometimes Keo hung his head for the ferocious miracle of Armstrong, playing his records until they were warped. And this other genius Earl Hines, who played like no one he’d ever heard. Other men, stride pianists mostly, were still locked into ragtime-seesaw rhythms. But Hines did anything he wished with beat, using single-note stabs with his left hand, chords and long single-note lines with his right. What Keo was attempting, Hines had already perfected. A whole new geography.

  Keo aped his style. Breaking up passages of songs with double-time or out-of-tempo explosions while still using a sort of metronomic beat. He decorated songs with tinsel sounds, small hesitations, then slaughtered them with sharp attacks, sometimes ending them with what sounded like a vibrato on a vibratoless instrument. He practised until he couldn’t tell a Hines recording from his own rendition. But here was the difference, and he knew it: he was copying someone else. It wasn’t original, wasn’t pure jazz.

  He tried carving out his own idiosyncratic sounds, digging for the marrow of a song, the truer truth. After a while something came, something a little of his own. He took a melody like “Sunny Side of the Street” and, wanting to understand the street, the weather, the mood of its folks, he let his mental eye wander until it stuck—a shaft of sunlight, a rover that crossed over, someone’s worries left on a doorstep. He froze that detail, dissecting it, fingers sweeping up and down keys, until it became the essence of the street, the landscape, the meaning of the song.

  Some nights Malia sat listening. “I thought jazz was original. Seems to me you’re copying someone else’s style.”

  He stared at her. “It’s my interpretation—”

  She waved her cigarette. “Brother, you’re playing a song someone else composed, you’re interpreting it by miming this guy Hines. How original is that?”

  He threw his hands up in the air. “You want original?”

  He laid into a monster boogie-woogie that slid into a Charleston of the twenties, then a throbbing tango that dragged down to a dirge, the moans of dead things dragged from graves. Then back to the monster boogie-woogie that had folks toe-tapping in the lane.

  Malia bent over laughing. “You’re a wild one. But you’ll outgrow this.”

  Keo sat up, stunned. “Outgrow jazz?”

  “Piano.” She dragged on her cigarette, exhaling theatrically. “You can’t really scream on piano. And you need to scream.”

  He ignored her. She loved drama, loved saying things that threw him off. But one night he pounded the keyboard so hard, he broke a finger. He couldn’t even wait tables. For days he haunted pawn-shops, not sure why until he saw the trumpet. He held it in his hands, smelling it, studying it. In a park, he put his lips to the mouthpiece and blew. It sounded awful, like something being slaughtered. Still, it felt good, felt right, the right size. He lay down, looking at the sky, the horn resting on his chest.

  He dozed, hearing songs he and this horn would play, thoughts and feelings he would express, all the facets of his life. The man who waited tables at the Royal. The “golden beachboy” catering to tourists. The jazz-driven camp rat. He would explore all these men with this horn and, in time, he would abandon them. There would be room for nothing but jazz. He would learn to play this horn so well, it would talk back to him, his fingers following its urge before he knew what he was playing. He walked the streets of Honolulu feeling just
-born, that he could live forever. He had found a form of expression he could carry with him.

  One day his older brother, DeSoto, took him out in his canoe. After hours of drinking beer and gutting ‘ahi, Keo fitted the mouthpiece into place and blew his horn, tongue thrust carefully against his teeth, the force of air expunged from his lungs making his gut tight. His sounds were dwarfed by the sea and—recalling his days at Kamaka ‘Ukulele, a deaf man teaching him how fingers could be ears—he concentrated on depressing valves, lowering the pitch, “hearing” through nerve ends in each finger.

  DeSoto listened, then finally asked, “ ’Ey. Why you stop piano? Was beginning to sound real good.”

  Keo hesitated. “This trumpet, well . . . it’s like it’s connected to my brain, my mouth, to what I want to say as soon as I feel it. With piano, you have to wait till the message gets to your fingers.” He shook his head. “Maybe I’m a fool.”

  DeSoto grabbed him by the arm. “ ’Ey! No need explain. Practise. Practise. One day you be on fire wit’ dat horn. I seen plenny bands in Tokyo, Hong Kong. Big t’ing now, jazz. Folks talking Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, dat dead haole wit’ funny name—Big Spida’ Back.”

  “Bix Beiderbecke.” Keo laughed, loving his brother.

  “Tell you somet’ing, Keo. Best place fo’ practise—best fo’ solitude—right here.” He pointed to the sea, mantas soaring in the distance. “Give you time build up—whatchoo call it, confidence. You take my boat out anytime, I give it you.”

  Keo studied his brother. Prototype Hawai‘ian—husky, fearsome—brooding brow, wind-sculpted face of ancient voyagers. A loner, always a little outside of time. Named after a dream car his father would never own because he had had kids instead, DeSoto had left school at ten to help support the younger ones. His only language was Pidgin, yet he had crossed the Pacific seven times, seen Antarctica, Bombay. When he was home, he spent his days fishing.

  “Brother,” Keo asked. “I always wondered . . . what do you think when you’re out here alone?”

  He shrugged. “Tides, weathah, what kine fish I going catch. How I going cook it. Steam. Fry. How much gingah, how much soy. How ‘ono it going taste.”

  Keo tried again. “What do you think of when you pau fishing, pau eating?”

  DeSoto studied him. “Whatchoo looking fo’? Key to existence? Dis da key. Right now. Nobody own tomorrow.”

  After that, he paddled out alone, far beyond surfers and fishermen. He would pull in his paddles, wipe his mouthpiece, and blast away with his trumpet. Some days he lost sight of land, canoe swirling in waters so deep the ocean turned blue-black. Sometimes a whale followed, oboeing to his bleating horn. Even dolphins leapt, answering him in click-song.

  Days he played past exhaustion—spent lips, spent lungs—he would lie back, point the canoe toward shore, and hope the tide would take him in. Some days he knew terrible thirst. After a while he got used to it, confused the thirst with burning drive. Years later he would remember those days—exhausted, empty, half drowned by crashing waves. And he would wonder if, in fact, he had been practising, or finding out how much he could bear.

  LEILANI SWAYED REGALLY DOWN THE LANE CARRYING A LARGE empty bowl. She smiled up at the tofu man, breaking his heart a little, his eyes going doggy because she was so lush, real old-kine Hawai‘ian beauty. Brown skin burnished with gold where the sun pulled out her cheekbones and fleshy shoulders. Black hair a waterfall. Eyes deep, chocolate as kukui, teeth taro-tough and radiant. She leaned against his wagon, brooding. In large Saloon Pilot cracker cans, blocks of tofu floated in fresh water. She dipped a finger midst the swirling creamy squares, and saw her shivering reflection.

  The tofu man leaned down. “ ’Ey, Leilani. How Keo doing? Still playing strange kine music?”

  She flung her head back. “You wait. My boy going come famous. Blowing horn mo’ modern dan manaka ‘ukulele!”

  She swayed back up the lane with her bowl of tofu, head high, afraid they were laughing behind her. She had begun to dread the fish man, the poi man, neighbors in the lane. Even the sound of squid deep-frying, rice pots chortling on stoves, conjured for her kitchens full of gossipers, folks whispering her son was pupule, that he talked to his piano and screamed into a horn.

  His finger healed, his lips grew sore, and for a while he went back to piano. Neighbors heard him muttering in the nights, slapping at mosquitoes, pounding faulty keys. But now and then he played something they recognized, played with such longing, such a going-to-pieces, in their beds folks turned and held each other.

  Some nights he was aware of Jonah sitting in the dim garage. As a boy Jonah had felt a rivalry with Keo, motivated not by envy but by self-defense, a need to be recognized as more than “younger brother.” Now tall and muscular in his teens, Jonah had become a star athlete, an honor student. Secure in himself, he grew closer to Keo, almost protective.

  One night, sensing his presence in the shadows, Keo turned to him. “Jonah. What you doing there?”

  “Watching. Listening.”

  “You understand this jazz?”

  “No . . . but I like watch you go fo’ broke. Good example fo’ me.”

  His admiration gave Keo strength. Someone was there, urging him on, halving his frustrations and fears by sharing them. Some nights after he played to exhaustion, they walked down to the sea, arms round each other’s shoulders.

  Dew would soon be mustering out, headed home to New Orleans. Now he coached Keo on horn, helping him read sheet music: how to decipher written notes, fill in gaps with proper chord sequences, take advantage of conventional breaks—basic things that gave him direction.

  “I can’t teach you to play. But I’ll tell you this—before you can be original, you got to know what’s traditional, what rules you gonna break.”

  He took the trumpet and blew notes with such clarity, such seeming ease, Keo almost hit him in the mouth. “I thought you only played sax.”

  Dew laughed. “I’m a musician. You better be one too, and not look down your nose at other instruments. You need them even when you’re soloing.” He relaxed a little. “What I just blew was nothing. One day you’ll dance all over that. You got fire in you, Keo. But don’t get vain.”

  He took him to Filipino dance halls, listening to bands from Manila. Keo found them excessive and flashy, even the crowds were flashy, competing and fighting. During police raids, hundreds of knives would hit the dance floor. But now and then someone caught his eye. A woman turned, hands on hips, willing to bear his weight for an evening.

  He was mid-twenties then, with normal drives. Some nights he’d take a woman to a hotel, pay what she asked, make love, laugh, even stay a while. He was always considerate, always detached, caught up with his horn. It was a kind of communion he shared with the thing, a love with no jealousy, no betrayal, a sense that whatever he invested in it, it would give back. Sometimes he pressed his nose against the brass, inhaling, stroking the horn’s flowing lines. This was his, his alone; whatever sounds came out of it could not be duplicated by another human.

  Some nights he propped up music sheets and played straight through without faltering. Then he laid the horn down, studying little flags and squiggles that made him think of seahorses and bald, drowning men. He started again, slower, with embellishments not in the score—sly skitterings, a swan-dive arpeggio. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes not.

  Still, he resented reading music. What he wanted was to blow out all his juices, let it go, never the same a second time. He wanted to paint sounds of violent, dripping colors. Then he wanted his music to gentle down from violent to penitent, from physical to felt, so folks would gasp, “How on earth? How on earth?” He wanted to exhaust them, so they would go home and forgive each other.

  Maybe Malia is right, he thought. Maybe I just need to scream.

  With most of his friends mustering out, he went back to taxi dance halls, studying the bands. In the late 1920s Filipinos coming to Hawai‘i had brought, with their native music, rich Lat
in sounds, influence of four centuries as part of the Spanish empire. This natural feeling of rhythms primed them for blues and jazz. They had evolved into Hawai‘i’s first corps of dance musicians, now playing in ballrooms all over town.

  Keo backed away from it. “Their playing is a joke. You were the one who said real jazz is mental. If it’s danceable—it isn’t jazz.”

  Dew looked at him with real affection.

  “Boy, you keep thinking that way, you’ll end up playing all alone. What these guys play isn’t ‘pure’ jazz, but they offer exposure to new sounds. All us military guys so far from home—where you think we get our juice, our inspirations? These Filipinos, and mainland bands. Dammit, Keo, stop picking my brain. Find your own inspiration.”

  He answered softly, like a child. “But you’re the best—”

  “You mean ’cause I’m ‘colored,’ ’cause me and my friends were raised on pig-feet/whorehouse blues?”

  Keo shook his head, unfazed. “I’ve listened to you for two years now. Nobody plays blues or jazz like Negroes. King Oliver. And Armstrong. That clarinetist, Bechet? They’re geniuses.”

  “Which is what you ain’t. Yet. You just want to grab that horn and use it like a blowtorch. Boy, you got to learn to be a team man, build on what’s established, play with who’s around. You got to be generous with other guys, harmonize and complement.”

  He hesitated, as if he were about to explain the afterlife, an incorporeal realm. “Keo, you’ve never seen the big time—Chicago, Kansas City, New Orleans. Maybe you will, you’re good enough. I’ll tell you one thing. You don’t respect the rules, those boys will wipe you off the bottom of their shoes.”