Rhode Island Red

by Charlotte Carter

  “If you will not recite your poetry tonight,” he told me, “I insist that you play something for me.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  I dragged my sax out and stood in the center of the room, naked, inspired by all that was in my heart. I chose Ellington’s Daydream, making believe I was Johnny Hodges.

  There was one more glassful left in the bottle. I poured it out and we shared it while we listened to the sides Parker had recorded with a mixed chorus. Henry bathed and shampooed me to the innocuous strains of Old Folks.

  Inge Carlson. That was her name. Charlie Conlin. That was his. Both murdered. Two white people, two strangers, had flashed in and flashed out of my life and maybe changed it forever. The road to forgetting them and the way they died seemed to stretch out ahead of me like some terrible highway. I might be old before I forgot. But I had Henry to thank for starting me on that path.

  I figured I’d sleep till next summer. But after Henry was gone, my eyes popped right open again—mind racing, fear and weariness tapping on my bones. I gave up and got out of bed. I went into the kitchen and poured myself a slug of the Martel Cordon Supreme I’d brought back from France two years ago and had jealously guarded since then.

  Why me? That age old question.

  Why did Sig have to die in my kitchen?

  Why did my good intentioned gift of that money to pretty, sightless Inge have to end up in her murder? And her poor dog! Who would do that?

  There were some awfully bad people about. And I felt like one of them.

  I had another drink.

  I reached for the pad of white notepaper that I kept on the counter, near the telephone. I wanted to write something for Inge. For a few moments, absolutely nothing came. And then one of Rimbaud’s lines started to intrude:

  During my bitter hours I conjure up sapphire hailstones.

  This surely was a bitter hour. It was hard to put words to what I was feeling, and so I just drew lines, lines and circles and triangles intersecting. There was nothing in me. All I could write down were those strange words that the Dominican kid had heard, or thought he heard. The words the killer had shouted … or sung.

  A road.

  Eyes lined red.

  Red lined eyes.

  What had Leman Sweet called it? A stupidass truckers’ lullaby. Blues for rednecks.

  I copied the phrases over and over: Road. Eyes. Lined. Red.

  I wrote them on the page horizontally, vertically.

  Road. Eyes. Lined. Red.

  Road

  Eyes

  Lined

  Red

  ROADEYESLINEDRED

  I found myself giggling suddenly. If you said it really fast it sounded like—like “Rhode Island Red”. A rooster? A hen?

  I’d heard of Baltimore Oriole—that was by Hoagy Carmichael, I thought, or maybe it was Johnny Mercer. There was a mockingbird on a hill. There was a yellow bird in a banana tree. A rooster who crowed at the break of dawn. A snowbird, a bluebird, a yardbird, a flamingo. But, as far as I knew, nobody had ever written about a Rhode Island Red.

  Rhode Island Red. That’s what the bastard said to Inge before he took her life? No, that was crazy. Or I was.

  I stoppered the cut glass brandy bottle.

  On another sheet of paper I drew a crude, outsized chicken, its mouth gaping open, eyes bugged. The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, as Billie Holiday had described the body of a lynching victim. I stared at the terrible drawing as I finished my last drink.

  I had to do something about all the havoc I’d caused. I had to. Ernestine was popping up everywhere in the kitchen—accusing me, chastising me. And she was right. But I wanted to shout back at her that if she hadn’t bugged me to get Sig’s money to his lady, Inge might still be alive.

  A plan came to me. I would start with that mean old Negro, Wild Bill. I was going to go to him again and talk to him about Inge. Yes, if I woke up tomorrow, and looked at these insane scribblings and could remember what had happened today, that was what I was going to do.

  I took a final look at the slips of white paper strewn over the kitchen table. I would crack up soon if I didn’t stop this nonsense.

  The weariness overtook me then, and the need to sleep. I staggered back to my bed.

  CHAPTER 8

  Criss-cross

  I didn’t get out of bed till 10 A.M. I felt like I weighed three hundred pounds. Plus, I was good and hung.

  Taking a pee, I sat looking at the crazy bird I had drawn last night. Drinking super strong coffee, I read the words Rhode Island Red over and over.

  It didn’t make sense. But on the other hand, it didn’t make no sense. So the decision was sealed. I was going to look up my man Wild Bill.

  Henry called while I was dressing. I said no to his lunch invitation and told him I’d probably be tied up all afternoon looking for the cantankerous Wild Bill.

  “You should not, you know. Your heart is so generous,” he said, “but perhaps you too do not know when to stop.” Henry was worried about me.

  “I’m cool, Henry. Nothing to it. You just be a good little sex god and I’ll tell you how to order the tape of a radio interview with you-know-who’s first wife.”

  “You mean Rebecca Parker is still alive?”

  “That’s right, Henry O’Rooney.”

  “Be careful, Nan.”

  So lightning struck twice. My best beau was only a block away from the spot where I’d first found him, just south and west of Penn Station. I hung back while he tried to blow some Art Farmer changes on Funny Valentine, but he was nowhere near it. He was sweating a little in his tan suit and robin red vest. If I had to guess, I’d say Wild Bill needed a drink. After a while, he gave up and pulled a mouth harp out of his pants pocket. Playing that didn’t seem to tax him so much. He did some standard blues riffs. Not bad, but Muddy Waters he wasn’t.

  The quarters clinked into his case as the noon crowd shuffled along. I looked down at Wild Bill’s feet and saw that he was wearing red patent leather shoes—a Salvation Army loss leader, no doubt—and for a minute my heart softened toward him.

  “Aw, shit … If it ain’t old Salt Peanuts again.”

  He was talking to me, of course.

  “How’s it going, Mr. Bill?” I folded a dollar and dropped it in his case.

  He made a faintly lewd sound back in his throat.

  “Let me ask you something,” I said. “You read the papers much?”

  He startled me then, raising the harmonica to his lips and blasting me back with a tuneless fanfare.

  “Inge is dead. She was murdered the other day,” I shouted viciously.

  He didn’t respond at all, not at first. Then he lifted up his nappy head and sang scratchily, directly into my face, “Flat Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy.”

  Wild Bill was a hard guy to love. I had tried my best to have a little sympathy for him. Who knew why he was so bloody to me—maybe I looked like his ex-wife or something. “Do you remember the other day, when I asked you—”

  “I remember you the mailman,” he interrupted, “but you ain’t brought no news I want to hear.”

  That deriding laugh of his drove me crazy. I knew I wouldn’t be able to take a great deal more from him, so I asked simply, “What do you know about Rhode Island Red?”

  No comeback. No nothing. Without saying another word, Wild Bill gathered his stuff and turned on his heel.

  “Hey!” I called out when he stepped into the Eighth Avenue traffic.

  That old guy really picked up his feet then. I ran to the uptown corner, trying to catch the light before it changed, trying to cut him off before he could head into the train station.

  I couldn’t. I caught sight of his stained suit jacket just as he disappeared into the tunnel leading to the IRT. By the time I’d fought my way through the milling knot of commuters and homeless and pickpockets and cops, Wild Bill was gone. I knew finding him a third time was not going to be the basic falling off a log that encounters one and two h
ad been.

  I knew something else: The word combination I’d come up with—Rhode Island Red—couldn’t be very far off the money. And it was obviously something more than a tune that never made it out of Tin Pan Alley.

  Roots do tell, don’t they? Middle class is middle class. I was stumped, a little frightened, and really depressed. And so I went shopping. At Macy’s.

  I bought a good black wool sweater on the fourth floor and some divine Parma ham in The Cellar. I had walked home, made lunch, put on coffee, even listened to all my messages before it occurred to me what today was. I ran to the radio and locked in KCR. I had utterly forgotten Thelonious Monk’s birthday. Come October 10, I usually do everything short of baking a three layer cake to celebrate that man’s birth. But it had slipped my mind this time. Damn. WKCR each year holds a twenty-four hour marathon during which they play Monk exclusively. That, along with the April 7 Lady Day salute, is the signal reason I’ve been sending in my yearly twenty buck donation to the station since I was old enough to vote.

  The announcer reeled off all the great stuff I’d missed just in the previous half hour alone. I was plenty pissed, but I took consolation in the thought that I had the next ten hours or so to lose myself—and some of my troubles—in the music.

  Then the phone rang.

  Against my better judgment, I answered it. It was Earl, the barkeep at the Emporium, the joint where Aubrey worked. He said she was working the early shift today and needed me to stop by late in the afternoon.

  I knew what it was about.

  Aubrey was a great deal more solvent than I ever hoped to be. She was a great deal more enterprising too, but I never knew the exact character of her enterprises. A few years ago she had entrusted me with a large envelope containing savings pass books issued by three or four different banks. At various times during the year she summoned me and the books, did God knows what kind of business and a few days later returned the envelope to me. It’s Aubrey’s mystery and Aubrey’s business. I’ve never pried, I only oblige her. Not being much of a Monk fan—Luther Vandross was more her taste—she had no idea how big a favor she was asking of me on this particular day.

  I dug up the envelope and set it on the kitchen table alongside the rooster drawing.

  They were playing a set of Monk’s thinking cap pieces. But my brain somehow wasn’t turning over. What the hell did Rhode Island Red mean? And why had Wild Bill run away from me as if he’d seen Satan on my shoulder?

  On second thought, though, why shouldn’t he be frightened? It appeared that Inge’s murderer had shouted those words before he killed her.

  With great reluctance, I turned the radio off. Then I thought better of it and turned it on again, so that the sounds would continue to fill my house even if I wasn’t at home.

  I also took the ghoulish sketch and scotch-taped it to the refrigerator door. I stepped back and pointed threateningly at it. “Stay right there, asshole.”

  I stood across the street from the Emporium, just staring at the entrance. I really disliked going in there, even in the middle of the day. I didn’t want to see the horny businessmen and the grinding girls or smell the stale beer and despair.

  But I made myself cross over. Then, just before I reached the door, I heard a cheerful “Nan!” ring out. I turned. Who was calling my name?

  “Nan! Nan!”

  It wasn’t Aubrey’s voice.

  A young white woman standing at the curb beside a van was waving to me, smiling. She was wearing an Antioch sweatshirt and jeans and in the crook of her arm was a big, healthy looking rubber plant. Obviously she knew me, but I couldn’t place her. It occurred to me then that she might be someone I’d gone to school with.

  She called my name once again and made a broad gesture toward the plant, pointing at it and then nodding in my direction, as though it were meant for me. She hefted it once or twice and I thought she might drop it any moment.

  I walked over to her, staring hard at her wide, friendly face, trying my best to remember her. She thrust the plant into my arms then, laughing.

  I laughed too. “You mean this is mine?”

  “No,” she said, “but this is.”

  She was holding a small gun in the palm of one hand and she paused for a few seconds to let me look at it, as though she were a saleslady showing off a brooch. Then she curled her finger around the trigger and pressed the gun against the bottom of my jaw.

  “Get in.”

  I have never been mugged. I never so much as received a spanking from my parents. And now I had the sudden image of my skull splintering. Tissue and bone and blood flying every which way. The phrase at close range came back to me from all the thousands of times I’d heard or read it. Then my mind went as numb as my legs and feet felt. The van door swung open and Lady Antioch pushed me in.

  As the door closed behind us I stumbled over what looked like a violin case. I was scared, but not so scared that the street musician connection wasn’t immediately apparent.

  The woman and I sat with our backs against one wall of the van. There was a man in the front seat. Middle-aged. Black raincoat. Short beard. Pitiless blue eyes, which he turned on me.

  “We have some questions to ask you,” he said wearily, as if that were an onerous thing.

  The woman kept the barrel of the gun half an inch from my chin. We were both breathing heavily, sharing the same fear, I suspect—that she would have to use that gun.

  “What questions?” I managed to shake out of my throat.

  “Why is a nice colored girl like yourself hanging around with gangsters?”

  I could only guess how stupid I must have looked at that moment, scared to death, confounded, yet half convinced that someone was playing a practical joke on me.

  “What gangsters?”

  “Henry Valokus.”

  Oh, okay. So it was a joke.

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “He’s a made member of one of the New England crime families.”

  Having a gun pointed at my larynx had been shock enough for one afternoon, thank you. But now I’d been given this new bit of information, casually spoken by a pale-eyed killer in a raincoat. His words had the absolute ring of veracity and so I quickly set about trying to refute them.

  My knees were knocking but I had to speak up. “The worst thing Henry’s ever done is put a cassette back in the wrong case.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you, Nanette. You want to hang with wise guys, hang with wise guys. What I care about is you shooting off your mouth about Rhode Island Red. You are not going to shoot off your mouth anymore.”

  For a second there—just a second—I forgot I was being held captive. I leaned forward eagerly. “You know what it is?” I asked the interrogator. “I was only trying to find out what it means.”

  At his nod, the young woman beside me pushed the gun into my neck. My head slammed hard against metal.

  “Okay, Nanette. I’m through talking,” the grand inquisitor pronounced. “I hope you’re through talking too. Because if you mention Rhode Island Red again, your big mouth won’t be the only hole you’ve got in your head. Understand?”

  I said nothing for a minute, hypnotized by those eyes.

  “Do you understand me?”

  I thought I’d better not force him to ask again. I nodded my understanding, the gun like dry ice on the side of my face.

  The van door scraped open then. And they threw my ass out on the street like a bundle of newspapers. I landed on all fours, lathered in sweat, shaking.

  I brushed myself off a little and stumbled into the Emporium. I was told by the manager, as if I were the biggest fool who ever lived, that Aubrey “doesn’t work days.” The bartender on duty was not named Earl and nothing I said could convince him otherwise. Furthermore, he wouldn’t have called me on a bet, he said.

  You’ve been all kinds of set-up, I thought. Better have a bourbon. The fellas who had come in for a midday fix of flaccid titties and domestic beer were casting stra
nge looks at me. Fuck em.

  All right. So two crazies had put a gun against my head and warned me about Rhode Island Red. And it had to have been Wild Bill who told them about me.

  I ordered another Jack D.

  All right. So I was not wrong about the words the killer had shouted in Inge’s apartment.

  I drank another.

  All right. Henry was in the mafia.

  Preposterous.

  Did I drink that next one, or was it drinking me?

  Two girls with bad permanents were writhing in unison. The weirdest sister act you can imagine. The men pressed closer to the stage. I needed to get out of there.

  Out on Sixth Avenue, I placed one foot in front of the other. That was about the limit of my capability for the moment. I was going to walk to Henry’s house, sobering up on the way. I’d straighten this shit out. Henry and I were lovers. We were friends. The only secrets involved belonged to Charlie Parker. And I was supposed to reveal those to him.

  The doorman waved me in with a tip of his cap.

  When Henry didn’t respond to my knocks, I used my key.

  The living room was empty, abandoned. Everything was gone—the Bird museum, the books, the stereo set-up. Same story in the bedroom; no clothing, no papers, no personal items—all gone. Some mischievous little fairies had blown through the apartment and left nothing but a few dust mice and the odd issue of Stereo Review.

  I walked into the kitchen and drank water from the tap. Drank and drank and drank. And then bathed my face a little.

  I stood for a long time in the center of the living room, looking from corner to corner, not an idea in hell what to do.

  Where was he? Oh, Jesus, where was Henry? Kidnapped? On the lam? Dead?

  I might have lost it altogether then, might have fainted dead away, or started shrieking or pounding my head against the wall. Except I had suddenly become aware of a queer odor in the room. I knew what it was and yet I didn’t know.

  Oh, yes, I did know. Something was burning!

  In a furor I ran to all the closets and began ripping them open. Nothing was alight inside them. But in a minute I was able to trace the source of the smell.