by Lewis Nordan
She might go into the room where her son slept on an army cot and wake up Sweet Austin and tell him what a no-count scoundrel his daddy was, and always had been, and she might tell Sweet Austin he was just like his daddy, just ee-zackly like him, and then she might crawl in right alongside Sweet Austin on the army cot and fall asleep and wake up full of regrets and no energy to apologize to her boy or to anybody else.
Or she might not come home at all that night, that was surely a possibility, a distinct possibility she herself might say, not if Al the Boogie Woogie Piano Player, who had two gold teeth in the front of his mouth and silver taps on his shoes, asked her to go somewhere with him after they turned off the lights of the Legion Hut and unplugged the slot machines and washed the last beer glasses and re-bagged the last of the pretzels and beernuts, especially if he asked her to go riding with him in his Oldsmobile, with the rag top down on this warm summer night and maybe kiss a few hard, whiskey-breathed kisses beneath the Confederate memorial.
She might sleep that night in Al the Boogie Woogie Piano Player’s bed where he lived for now in a damp room of the Arrow Hotel, and she might feel just so damn awful after she got there and got her stockings off at long last, that she couldn’t sleep and so she might ask Al to sing her a baby lullaby to help her drift off, she might ask him to sing a song she remembered from her own girlhood, on a record that she sneaked around to play on a wind-up Victrola, a song called “Let These Red Lips Kiss Your Blues Away,” and Al might actually know the song, since he knew every song in this bad world, but he would be too tired to sing it, and so Sweet Austin’s mama might have to go to sleep without it, it didn’t matter, she had gone to sleep sick and lonely plenty of times before, what difference would one more time make, none, it wouldn’t make any difference at all to anybody, why should it.
And so Big Boy Chisholm dropped the two boys off at Sugar Mecklin’s house. Big Boy didn’t turn on the siren today—the whistle, he always called it—or the revolving light on top of the car, though normally he did when he gave a child a ride home. Today he only drove them from the fish camp and stopped the car out by the iron fence in front of Sugar’s house and said, “I’m sorry y’all boys had to bear witness to that floater, I truly am sorry.” He waited until the two boys had left the car and slammed their doors good and were clear of the road and out of harm’s way and up under the catalpa trees, which were covered in locust husks, and past the iron hitching posts in the shape of black horses, and then Big Boy Chisholm drove away in his car, real slow, down Lake Front Road.
It was late in the afternoon now. Bessie Smith was on the phonograph, so that meant that Sugar Mecklin’s daddy was already drunk. Sugar Mecklin’s daddy called his Bessie Smith records his wrist-cutting music. It was Bessie Smith singing a long time ago when Gilbert Mecklin stuck the ice pick in his chest, my mama says I’m reckless Bessie Smith had sung that day, and he knew just what she meant too, he was reckless too. my daddy says I’m wild Bessie Smith sang. Nobody knew better than Gilbert Mecklin what it meant to be reckless and wild. Nobody in this world. I ain’t good looking she sang but I’m somebody’s angel child Bessie Smith had been singing that day before Sugar Mecklin was even born. In a way that was the good old days, Gilbert Mecklin remembered them fondly, that day long time ago when he had let the record play to its end and then jammed an ice pick straight into his breastbone.
Sugar Mecklin had heard all about it, and he couldn’t help wishing that Bessie Smith was not on the phonograph on this particular day. He wished instead that his daddy had waited until after Sugar had had time to come home and say, “Me and Sweet found a dead man. Can Sweet sleep over tonight?” before he started playing wrist-cutting music.
And, if the truth be knew—this was a phrase that Gilbert Mecklin used and drove Sugar’s mama straight out of her last and only mind, “if the truth be knew”—Gilbert Mecklin was just this minute saying to himself, he his ownself would have preferred not to be drunk this afternoon. If the truth be knew, Gilbert Mecklin was sitting there in his chair thinking, Now I wonder how this happened again, just when I didn’t want it to happen, how did it come to pass that I am sitting here unintentionally drunk on my ass with wrist-cutting music playing on the record player when I have great need to comfort two children who have lost so much and seen too much death in their little lives? The alcohol made Gilbert Mecklin groggy. He felt a little like he had been hit over the head and covered with a heavy blanket.
On the phonograph now there was a trombone. It started way down low, and it could have been the voice of a Texas longhorn cow at first, or an alligator in a swamp quartet singing bass, it was so low. Gilbert Mecklin listened to it. He had to. Nobody else knew how to listen to it. His wife sure hell didn’t know how to listen to music. She didn’t appreciate music. The trombone note was rising now, rising up and up. Listen to that clear note rise up from the muddy waters of the Delta!
Sugar Mecklin and Sweet Austin were standing in the doorway of Gilbert’s bedroom, trying to tell him about the body.
Gilbert already knew about the body. Big Boy Chisholm had called him from the fish camp, had told him Sweet Austin was coming to spend the night. He didn’t need to hear about the body.
Sugar said, “Hey, Daddy.”
Well, the thing was, after the trombone note got up in the air high enough, it started to blend in with another horn, a trumpet maybe, that took up the note and brought it up even higher, headed up to the moon, until another note got inside these two, a clarinet, so high it was a squeak, like the sound at the tail end of a long crying spell, and then, well, Gilbert Mecklin couldn’t very well say hey to Sugar right this very minute, because now Bessie Smith was right there in the room with him, talking to him about his whole life.
Dixie moonlight, Shawnee shore Bessie Smith said to Gilbert Mecklin. She seemed to be sitting right there on the bed beside his two boys. She had only one leg, she lost the other leg in Clarksdale, the night she was killed. Oh those sad brass horns, like a crying child. Bessie Smith said she was headed homebound just once more she said she was going to her Missy-Sippy Delta home. The trumpet was still there, but now it had a mute on it, and it was weeping real tears. Oh yes, it was a good thing Sugar Mecklin’s mama had thrown that ice pick up under the house all those years ago, this was a song that took a man back to better days.
Sugar said, “Me and Sweet Austin found a dead man, Daddy.”
Gilbert Mecklin said, “Hush, hush up, Sugar. Listen to this song.”
Gilbert had not meant to say this. The last thing in the world he meant to do was tell his boy to hush up. What he meant to say was that there was just so much death in the Delta, it was everywhere, he didn’t know how a child could stand all of it. He meant to tell Sweet Austin that he had known Sweet’s daddy—if Curtis Austin really was Sweet’s daddy, who knows about this kind of thing, who can ever really know for sure—he had known Curtis well and one time watched him play semi-pro ball for the Greenwood Dodgers, a farm team for Brooklyn, where he played second base and got three hits that night under the lights. He meant to say that Sweet Austin’s daddy was not an evil man, not completely, and was still alive, Gilbert knew this, and believed in his heart that he was doing the right thing by staying out of Sweet and his mama’s life.
Sweet Austin said, “Hey, Mr. Mecklin.”
Gilbert Mecklin said, “Hush up, Sweet Austin. Listen here, listen to this here song.”
The music played, and Bessie Smith sang on, and the Delta was bad, bad, she was saying, and it was magic, it hypnotized you, you couldn’t resist it even if you tried, and now it was calling her back. I hear those breezes a-whispering she complained I hear those breezes a-whispering come on back to me
Gilbert Mecklin wanted to tell these two boys, one of them his own boy, and the other one, well God knows, Sweet Austin, only God knows—so, Lord, anyway, he wanted to tell them that there are worse things in this world than bodies in the swamp, and worse things than having a daddy who died there, or who ra
n off and left you, or didn’t run off but just left you anyhow, there are worse things than being so lonely you could die. If you were real unlucky you could turn into one of those daddies who left.
Sugar Mecklin said, “Daddy, we saw the feet and legs.” Sugar and Sweet were sitting on the edge of Gilbert Mecklin’s bed, right next to Bessie Smith. Though Bessie Smith was black and a long time dead and had only one leg, the three of them looked enough alike to be wild and frightened sisters.
Sweet Austin said, “Lodged up in a drift. I was running trotlines, I didn’t know what to do.”
In a way it was a good thing that Gilbert Mecklin was so drunk right now, really it was, it wasn’t a completely bad thing to be so drunk if you looked at it in the right light. Drunk like this, he didn’t have to tell these two scared boys what it meant to have chickens in his back yard, Plymouth Rocks and Rhode Island Reds, the layers and bantams and the blue Andalusian rooster. He didn’t have to say that when he walked out there and scattered shelled and fragrant corn from an enameled dishpan, one slow handful at a time, he could forget his own father, who spent all his family’s pennies for shoes made of kangaroo leather and for Havana cigars and then beat him and his brother with fists and sticks and straps and then, worst of all, went blind for spite and had to be waited on hand and foot for the rest of his life.
And so Bessie Smith just kept on singing about the Delta. In fact she was singing about Arrow Catcher, Mississippi. She was singing about Roebuck Lake, right near where she died that rain-swole-up Delta summer in a crash on the highway and lost one of her legs, muddy water ’round my feet Bessie Smith was saying, and right now all of a sudden it wasn’t Gilbert Mecklin she was singing to, it was Sweet Austin, who didn’t know she didn’t have feet, only one foot, there on the edge of the bed, like it was the edge of a cliff and he might fall off.
Bessie Smith was telling him what he already knew. You are trapped here, Sweet Austin, we all are. It don’t help to have a daddy, you’re trapped anyway, daddies will always leave, always die, always be somebody you don’t know. Daddies ain’t your trouble, Sweet Austin. Your trouble is the geography. You better learn to like it. Bessie Smith said there was muddy water ’round my feet muddy water in the street She said just God’s own shelter down on the Delta
Sweet Austin knew about Sugar Mecklin’s daddy and the ice pick. He said, “Mr. Mecklin, how come you want to listen to wrist-cutting music?”
Bessie Smith said muddy water in my shoes
Gilbert Mecklin looked and saw that Bessie Smith was not really sitting on the bed beside the two boys. Well, that was good anyway.
Way back behind Bessie Smith was a slow piano. Just one chord, and then her strong sad voice and then another chord, like punctuation. Sweet Austin thought of Al the Boogie Woogie Piano Player, he thought of the Oldsmobile and his mama’s hair blowing in the Delta breeze. There was a one-note clarinet back there too, as slow as the piano, like an old, old, one-trick pony. Yikes! the clarinet said, like a sad swamp bird, and yes yes yes.
Sugar Mecklin’s mama came into the room now. She said, “Gilbert, don’t fill these boys’ heads with drunk-talk. They’re worth more than that.”
Sugar Mecklin loved his mama’s hairbrushes and bobby pins and facial creams, he loved her clean underwear in a drawer. He was glad she wasn’t a floozie like Sweet Austin’s mama, he was glad he didn’t have to come home at night and wonder if she was sharing a room with Al the Boogie Woogie Piano Player at the Arrow Hotel, he was glad she never slipped into bed beside him and slept drunk all night.
Bessie Smith said muddy water in my shoes, rocking in them lowdown blues The piano, the squeaky old-fashioned one-trick-pony clarinet, and now one low and rising note from the trombone, like a good memory. And just then Sugar Mecklin started to know something that he had not quite known before. He knew that he was not all alone in the world after all, as he had for so long believed.
There was his mama, who always seemed sane in comparison with his daddy who was not sane at all. She was out of her mind with old grief, old loss, her own tyrannical father, her fat brother who could not get out of his bed for fear of lightning. She hated music, she secretly broke and threw away Gilbert’s favorite records, one at a time while he was drunk, especially “Summertime,” which seemed to Mrs. Mecklin an affront to everything decent—those first three high-squealing notes of self-pity and false sentiment—and which Sugar found in a million ragged pieces of plastic out by the chicken-yard fence. She dreamed of trains crossing frozen landscapes, she made up stories of escape, using models in the Sears, Roebuck catalog for characters to represent herself and her fictional friends, she pretended she grew up as a serving girl in Canada and that for spare pennies she made beaded bags, huddled over her georgette-stretched beading frame, her fingers feeding beads and thread to her crochet needle like lightning.
And there beside him was Sweet Austin, who looked enough like himself to be his sister, and who looked enough like Gilbert Mecklin to be his, his, well, God only knows what. The world was not what Sugar Mecklin wanted it to be, but he was not alone, he would never be alone.
Bessie Smith said I don’t care, it’s muddy there, but it’s still my home
Sweet Austin said, “What was so bad, Mr. Mecklin, was, like, I seen them bare legs poking up out of the water and I thought it was my daddy. I knowed it wont, but I thought it was.”
Bessie Smith was wailing now, weeping in song I don’t care, I don’t care, it’s still my home The muted trumpet was back and it was crying like a baby.
Gilbert said, “Naw, Sweetness, it wont your daddy.” The alcohol was beginning to wear off a little. Gilbert Mecklin felt a little less bushwhacked than before. Maybe he better have one more drink, just so he don’t get sick. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t.
Mrs. Mecklin sat down on the bed beside Sweet Austin and put her arms around his neck, and Sweet Austin leaned into her shoulder and started to cry. Sweet Austin was a big boy, a little taller than Sugar and maybe a little broader shouldered. When did that happen, Sugar wondered, when did he start to outgrow me? Sugar Mecklin felt funny sitting there and looking at this young man holding his mama and his mama holding him tighter than he himself had ever been held. They rocked back and forth to Sweet Austin’s crying and to the sad old bluesy sentimental music.
Bessie Smith said got my toes turned Dixie way
Mrs. Mecklin said, “You just cry now, Sweetness, you just go right on and cry.”
Bessie Smith said ’round the Delta let me lay
Sweet Austin was really going at it now. He was boo-hooing flat out. Boo hoo, boo hoo, boo-fucking-hoo, man. He was getting snot in Mrs. Mecklin’s hair. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter to anybody, not even Sugar.
Mrs. Mecklin said, “Your mama loves you to death, Sweet Austin. And so does your daddy.”
Gilbert Mecklin was wondering if he might risk getting up just this minute and easing into the kitchen for another nip of that Old Crow, just to settle his stomach.
Sweet Austin and Mrs. Mecklin were rocking and reeling now, slow, slow. Mrs. Mecklin was whispering like a mama. She said, “And me and Gilbert love you too, Sweetness. We love you like you was our own boy.”
Yessir, no doubt about it, Gilbert Mecklin could certainly use another drink.
So that’s what he did. He stood up and steadied himself beside his chair and then eased on out towards the kitchen, just so he didn’t mess around and get sick from having an empty stomach. Maybe a beer would settle him down some. The carbonation, the food value. Maybe a shot of Old Crow would taste good with it.
Sweet Austin cried. Mrs. Mecklin sang him a soft baby lullaby. Sugar Mecklin believed he was a part of a family, and this filled him with love.
The world was not the way Sugar Mecklin wanted it to be, but he had to admit, this particular day had turned out even better than he had expected when he woke up to the sound of mice and Elvis Presley and the voice of a barebreasted woman singing into a black mirror.
PART II
Cabbage Opera
THERE WAS a man named McNeer who lived in my hometown of Arrow Catcher, Mississippi. I saw him only infrequently, though I knew his wife and two children. Mr. McNeer worked all night in a Rose Oil service station in a town ten miles away, and so he was rarely visible around the house. The four of them lived near the school, at the end of a cotton field in a pre-fab shack with peeling yellow paint. Mrs. McNeer operated a little store on the same property. The store had a gas pump and a few groceries, and she made pimento-cheese sandwiches to sell to school children at lunchtime.
The McNeers had a son a year younger than myself, John Wesley—named after the founder of Methodism—and a daughter several years older. Her name was Dixie Dawn. Their conspicuous names seemed a part of their tragedy. John Wesley looked like his mother, which is to say he looked like a gorilla, with almost no forehead. The daughter was overweight and wore heavy makeup and had a pathetically angelic look about her. Although she was only thirteen she had large breasts. She sang in the Methodist church choir and said she wanted to sing soprano at the Met when she graduated from high school.
I was embarrassed by the family’s appearance. In a way I hated them for it, and yet I felt a certain sorrow as well and wished they had better things. Often I wondered how a person lives his life as part of such a family. I grieved for Dixie Dawn, and though she sang better than anyone I had ever known, I knew that she would get no closer to the Metropolitan Opera than a gas pump and a plate of cheese sandwiches at the end of a cotton row.