“I heard the club section is okay!” Jaylah shouts. “Folks want to stay inside, party until sunup, when it’s safer. They said it’s worse over around Florence and Graham!”
The clubs begin around Sixtieth Street. He remembers a few of them from when he was a kid, his long-gone, ace-of-bass father having played most of the clubs back in the forties and fifties. He’s backtracking miles, but that ride later to Artesia will make up for a few lost hours. What’s the rush now that they’ve stolen my notebook? Fuck it, we’ll see what happens.
A Byrds song wafts from the radio: We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.
As they barrel past Ninety-first Street, two cop cars fly by in a glowing red blur of flashing lights and sirens. “Hoowee!” Jaylah yells. “Somethin’ to tell the grandkids!”
“You flipped, girl!” Sidney laughs. The Byrds song fades and a baritone man’s voice reverberates from the radio: Yeah, we’ll all meet again, baby—
“It’s him!” Jaylah squeals. “That crazy DJ. He’s all over town. Listen!” She cranks up the chrome volume knob. Sir Soul here with you, baby, all night long … stay cool in the fire … gonna burn a little ‘Pride and Joy’ now, by Mr. Marvin Gaye … and stay tuned, ’cause later on Sir Soul’s gonna have a special guest, till then, let’s burn, baby, burn …
A block east, Monk gazes out at the flames and churning columns of smoke peppering the darkness above the passing rooftops and storefronts. Street by street, alley by alley, fire trucks, squad cars, support vehicles are holding their positions down the ruined streets, gutted buildings, smoky black mounds of debris, and charred frames rising into the haze like monstrous wrens. Down Eighty-eighth Street as the Corvair whines past, Monk glimpses tanker trucks blasting foamy cannonades of water into still burning recesses. But this counterstrike is only a tentative probe east as far as Central Avenue: beyond, the city has vanished to islands of lights, flames, sirens, searchlights fanning into smoke and darkness.
“Wow! Better’n TV!” Jaylah slaps the steering wheel.
“I heard the National Guard’s coming!” Monk shouts back.
“Mmm!” Sidney exhales her cigarette. “Young men in uniform! They can guard me anytime!”
“Sidney!” Jaylah turns, laughs.
The Corvair brakes as they approach Firestone Boulevard. Police cars have barricaded Firestone to the east. A line of headlights ahead as the cars wait to pass through the intersection. Monk can see cops with flashlights waving and scanning over the cars. At the checkpoint, cars are bayoneted with crisscrossing flashlight beams: some cars are motioned to pass through the gauntlet of cops and cruisers, interior lights winking off as they accelerate up Central. Other cars are rerouted, flashlights and toted shotgun barrels direct vehicles left to the shoulder, a barricaded search point ringed with glowing flares. Monk’s guts churn: what if that asshole Trench is here?
As the Corvair sputters closer, a homemade sign rests against the trunk of one of the patrol cars: TURN ON INSIDE LIGHTS OR GET SHOT. A cop scans his flashlight over the convertible; Sidney smiles and waves at the young white officer. The cop motions them through and Jaylah revs the Corvair down the block.
Waves of exhaustion press Monk against the hot, sticky vinyl seats: time has been suspended here in the ghetto, there is only an endless chain of sleep, consciousness, dream or hallucination.
They’ve finally reached Fifty-ninth and Monk can see some of the distant neon signs of the clubs a few blocks ahead. “Here we are! Sin Street!” Jaylah shouts.
The Corvair idles at a red light. Monk can see the old clubs are still open. Through an open red door of the Freak Lip, two women’s voices blend and wail out into the night, some kind of blues ballad floating over tinkling piano and throbbing bass. Their voices are like angels, a soul aria that seems out of this world … He opens the door, he wants to go to them, see the faces that command this heartbreaking dulcet force. “Hey, where y’all goin’?” Jaylah turns but Monk can’t hear her, only the euphonious echo of the women’s voices. He falls back into the seat, somehow tangled up in restraining straps, these goddamn contraptions new cars have called seat belts. Sidney reaches behind and slams Monk’s door as the light turns green, Monk squirming in twisted loops of belt, lashed to the Corvair as it peels through the intersection. “Honey, you don’t want to go in there,” Jaylah laughs. “Them girls are so hot you’ll never leave.”
The Finale Club looms ahead and the car lurches to the curb. “Shit.” Monk looks around: they’re on East Fifty-seventh. The club’s doors are open, FOI guards ringing the sidewalk, a drum solo crashing through upstairs windows. “Meet you back at the car, Monk.” Jaylah grins, purses her lips. “Say, around three-ish?”
“Watch out for them soul singers,” Sidney laughs, waving goodbye. The girls disappear in a line of customers trickling in under flashing neon. Monk, hands in pockets, heads down the sidewalk, trying not to dwell on forces that blow him back, circling, spinning, trapped in a loom of shadows and lights that only project linear progress, as he steps into the blinking lavender nimbus of Club Alabam, and the glow and music of Sin Street beyond.
21
On Sin Street tonight, the clubs are the only places in the city where you can still get booze, no curfew here, money buys anything. Monk passes Club Alabam, a few hookers testing the club’s Fruits of Islam bodyguards at the front door. On the corner, the DownBeat is jumping; a huge black man in a porkpie hat and gold vest stands toting a sawed-off shotgun at the upholstered doors.
Monk walks a block. Ivie’s Chicken Shack is jammed with people; men drink beer on curbs. There’s the old Dunbar Hotel, brownstone rising into the night, its olive canopy over the sidewalk, neon signs splashing rainbow lights.
Two doors down is the Congo Club. This is the joint—and some of the others down Sin Street—where his father played, Damon “Pocket” Monk. A thin, tall man with a big stand-up bass sticking out of the backseat of his DeSoto, always on the road to the next gig. Monk only knows him from a few sepia-tone photographs his mother kept in a dresser drawer. Mother once told him his father had his own name tattooed on his chest so that the image in every morning’s mirror would reflect his creed of the open road: nomad. In his lost notebook somewhere, Monk long ago scribbled an aphorism from some ancient scribe: The son can never know the father.
The sign blinks in yellow neon sizzling above Monk: TALL TAN TERRIFIC COPPER COLORED CHORUS GALS. Bamboo walls and fake palm trees line its facade; coconuts and Christmas lights loop over windows and the black padded doors. FOI bodyguards are stationed in the shadows of the jungle canopy. On each side of the upholstered doors, big wooden speakers blare jazz music. There’s a cymbal crash as the song ends, then that radio voice he’s come to recognize: All right, Sir Soul back here with you, baby. Now, as I promised, I got a special guest DJ tonight … Miss Compton Eve. Now a woman’s voice, slow, sultry: Good evening, this is Compton Eve … to all my brothers and sisters out there … tonight I want you to love … and burn … baby, burn … Monk feels electricity jolting down his spine: Good evening. He knows that voice too … vinyl records spilling on the sidewalk … the record jacket with the black-and-white photograph of Coltrane … Eve for Iva … Tokyo Rose. Brothers and sisters, they have oppressed you too long. Words change nothing, only action brings change. Let the fires consume all the symbols of their slavery and lies … let your children build from the ashes … burn, baby, burn … A gong booms sonorously as Coltrane blasts four piercing alto saxophone sonic notes, then his band lays down the rhythm as the sax blisters into a solo.
The black doors open, spilling Monk in blue light. Saxophone and piano and drums and bass thump and wail from inside. Monk cranes his head over a few Islam fezzes, trying to catch a glimpse of the old paternal haunt, then slips into the deep blue jazz interior.
Black men and women are drinking, laughing shoulder to shoulder, dark forms in clouds of cigarette smoke, beyond teak African masks frowning from walls and green jungle vines s
waying in the smoke. Monk finds an empty stool at the jungle bar, next to a fat black man in sweat-drenched cream pants and open lime silk shirt, black sunglasses reflecting Christmas lights. “Coca-Cola, please.” Monk’s already sweating. At the corner of the bar, a pretty black waitress in a grass skirt and khaki blouse smiles at him as she sets drinks on a tray.
“Ain’t you,” a fat black man’s deep baritone voice, “Monk’s kid?”
“Yeah. My dad used to play here, back in the fifties.” He pulls out a crumpled dollar bill.
“Tha’s reet, no sheet,” the big black man laughs like a great bellows. “Chu ‘Hurricane’ Reed.” He shakes Monk’s hand. There’s a silver number five reed strung on a chain around his thick sweaty neck. “Well, I’m glad I hungover my hangover on this here stool, ’cause look who I bumped into. White man’s money is funny here, lock it in yo’ pocket,” Chu pushing the dollar back into Monk’s palm.
“Americo Monk, pleased to meet you, Mr. Reed.”
“Americo?” He grins, sips beer. “That’s beautiful. Call me Uncle Chu, please. He slides a bill toward the bartender: red paper, the number one above the words One Skrill printed in blurred black ink, two illegible signatures under an oval-framed silhouette of a man crowned with a huge Afro. Chu catches Monk’s quizzical look. “Nigger Tender, Soul Specie, Ghetto Gold, legal tender wherever the lender o’ presenter is black, brown, o’ renowned. Got denominations for a new black nation. Brother Bucks, Watts Wads bearin’ the glims of the founding hims: Booker Ts, John Browns, Lincoln’s on the ten bill, got Carver—we call him Peanuts—Thurgood, you can really swing if you got X and King … all part of the movement … out there ev’ry night,” Chu hooks a thumb toward the front door, “fightin’ for the right, that uprising before the sun rising, fire ’n’ pain to get on the soul train to a future black domain, to indehipendence.” Chu sips his beer. “I hope it takes this time, cuz after the fires comes the liars.”
“The riots?”
“I’ve peeped all this shit before. You wasn’t even a gleam in yo’ daddy’s bloodshot eye. Before I hooked up with ol’ Monk. Back in ’43, I was livin’ in Detroit durin’ the war, a young man, ’bout yo’ age now. All this killin’ and burnin’ out there? Same gory story in Detroit, only ’round twenty years ago or so, seems folks forgot or like to pretend they forget.”
“What happened?”
“Déjà voodoo. There was this project the government built, Negro housing they named the Sojourner Truth projects.” Chu laughs. “It was supposed to be for black people but whites thought the neighborhood should stay soul-free. So one hot summer day fistfights turned into street brawls turned into burning city blocks, just like out there. Rumors spread like fevers … white men throwin’ black mothers and babies into the river … white mobs with guns drivin’ in from the hills … black gangs stalkin’ white women in the ’hoods … lootin’ and burnin’ for days until FDR called in federal troops. Sound familiar?”
“Shit, I never knew.”
“I know.” Chu grins. “Like I says, folks like to pretend to forget. But, dig, Americo? That ain’t even the evil of it out there. The evil comes later, the liars after the fires. Back in ’43, the cops, the white people, newspapers, the city leaders and their so-called investigations. They discovered the shockin’ truth, the riots was instigated by uppity, unemployed Negroes … and black and them Mexican zoot-suit gangs … now, you dig ol’ Chu, same thing gonna happen in yo’ time. Fires, then liars.”
“But that’s bullshit.” Monk glowers across the bar, thinking of his notebook.
Reed shakes his big head, grinning. “Time will tell. You sound just like yo’ daddy. Look like him too. Yo’ pa was cool drool, a fucker of a plucker. I conked with Monk back in nine an’ fifty, real nifty. He was a gone bass ace, you prob’ly a chip off the ol’ wick wherever he dipped.”
“I don’t remember him.”
Chu’s big face winces with pain. “Well, I’m on my break, so fade ’n’ I’ll have another brew ’n’ tell you true.” He’s nodding to the bartender, who slides a cold mug of beer across the bar top. “Yeah, I remember pickin’ up Monk—yo’ daddy—a few times at his house. You was a little boy, frowning behind that little beat-up Wurlitzer piano.”
“I was eight. Dad made me take lessons.”
“I know. It’s a foundation, he’d say, you can build to any instrument from piano.”
“More like an off-key hell than a foundation.” Monk laughs. “I don’t know how my mom put up with it. Dad hired this white woman to teach me, a German lady, Mrs. Von Walpurgis or something like that. Man, she hated teaching me those scales as much as I hated doing them.”
Chu sips beer. “I remember one gig yo’ daddy was mad as hell, said you wrote stories and drawings all over the sheet music.” Monk smiles, nods his head. “You still writin’?”
“I was,” he says bitterly, “in a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Well, tha’s good.”
“Dad wanted me to be a musician. I think Mom was relieved it didn’t take.”
“Life on the road ain’t for married men. Now, old Chu’s single and likes to mingle. Yo’ old man and me, see our generation, well, there wasn’t a whole lot a options for us … but if you could play an instrument, that was a golden ticket out of the ghetto. Sure beats bein’ a Pullman porter, or if you was real lucky, working at the post office.”
Chu extracts a canary-colored joint from his shirt pocket and a chrome Zippo lighter. “When we played together, Monk talked about you many times. He was torn. He felt bad, knew he wasn’t doin’ the right thing as a father, but he was proud to be a good provider, making sure you and yo’ mother had money. Some cats I know blow all their wad on libations and sensations.” Hurricane lights up the joint. “Back when we was playin’ together in the fifties, you had to look hip, zoot, all reet. Monk spent half his paycheck at the barber’s and cleaners, but man, his drapes were shaped, put the dares to the squares.” Chu exhales a cloud of cloying reefer smoke over Monk’s head. “A few years back, one gig Monk showed up after sleepin’ in his swing suit, then for a while after that, all these folks would show up at the clubs with these copy-cat threads all wrinkled and frazzled on purpose, ’cause they Einsteined Monk must be settin’ a new style profile with his dweezled front, when all he’d done was cop some doss after passin’ out in his drapes.” Chu laughs.
Monk nods as a vivid memory flashes through his mind: his father picking him up from Grape Street Elementary School, mothers and annoyed-looking fathers in dirty work clothes and all the other kids staring up mouths agape at the handsome, rail-thin black man in his sharp black-and-white silk suit, polished indigo Florsheims, pomade, conked hair, the thin mustache that looked too perfect to be real.
“Those early days, ’50 or ’51, us and the band, we’d play anywhere. Monk always made sure we had money. Shit, we’d play the Elks Hall down Central, or the Masonic Temple on Fifty-fourth. White folks’ skiffles on the other side of town, where the white ho-dads had a two-bits-a-head invite to hear some race music.” Chu grins. “The ho-dads grooved to the found sound and dug us Negroes with Happy Feet that like to groove all dim long.” Chu speaks in this pinched nasal, accent-free white man’s voice: “See Arnold, how happy they are. Why yes, Bob, so poor and not a care in the world.” Hurricane laughs, returns to his thick baritone. “Sheeeet, regular Negrotarians … the hos never copped that all we wanted was their cabbage to keep another month off the agate.” The unctuous white man’s voice: “Why, Bob, don’t you find their jive language just marvelous?”
Monk almost spits Coke, he’s laughing so hard.
“We even played for the Mexicans at their parties in Boyle Heights, Pico Rivera.” Chu drinks beer. “Every damn time those Mexicans would start drinkin’ tequila and there’d be a fight and we’d run to the car with my horn and his ax, then we’d have to run back, dodging flying beer bottles and brawlers, to help Tritone Cootie lug his drum kit piece by damn piece to the car. Have a brew o
n ol’ Uncle Chu?”
“Okay, Mr. Reed. Just one.”
Chu signals the bartender and a frosty beer mug slides before Monk. “Yeah, yo’ daddy and me, we played all the clubs on Sin Street. The Alabam down the street, Memo’s, Honey Murphy’s, the Plantation Club. Monk was—is one ace of bass, yes sir, wherever he is, Chicago, New York … you ever hear from him?” Monk shakes his head. “Not even a postcard?”
“Nope.” Monk sips beer.
“Tha’s a shame.” Chu sucks a deep drag from the reefer. “Yeah, we played with the best, Bumps Myers, Joe Comfort, Pee Wee Crayton … that was the twilight of bop. There used to be four times the clubs then as now, all the way from Washington clear down to Manchester. The Congo’s the last of the sweet spots. The combo deck is good, the boogfloor is fungshun, craps tables in the back are still rollin’ the bones and the usual African Dominoes action, upstairs might still even be a bordello or two, so I’m told.” Chu slips down his sunglasses and winks a bloodshot eye. “Yeah, used to be Charlie Parker, now it’s goddamn Chief Parker, messin’ with folks in front of the clubs, searchin’ brothers for drugs, any excuse to close down the clubs. You know what really made the cops crazy?” Monk shakes his head. “All the ofay college girls flocking like fine white birds into the clubs … that drove those cracker cops nuts. All these luscious girls chasin’ after us jazzmen like yo’ dapper dad and yo’s truly, the man with the big horn.” Hurricane grins. “Syncopation and fornication. Now, yo’ daddy wasn’t a bad man, he was just a man, and like I said, a wife and the road life don’t groove. Women were everywhere, black and white. Hell, they still are. Those days the band, all the Negro bands had these groups of young fade chicks followin’ us around, we called ’em our bopsicles, these groupie girls. You dig, Chu’s an old cherry picker from way back, but Monk was quiet.” Chu shakes his jowly head. “Jazz hounds, picture snatchers, autograph scratchers. Studyettes from every college of knowledge. Diggin’ Negro blues, tryin’ to be cool, or researchin’ in Negro Heaven, scratchin’ terminal term papers like ‘Dionysian Ethno-eroticism in Race Music.’” Monk laughs. “It’s hard to say no to the rabbit habit. So we dug the tails of these nightingales.”
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