"That's Coleman Hawkins," whispered Gordie, nodding at the saxophonist. "He's been playing the sax for over thirty years. It's a tough instrument to play. He was the first jazz musician to really master it. Some people even call him the Father of the Saxophone, but in the last few years, there have been so many great sax players to come along, he's been overlooked." With an elaborate flourish, Hawkins finished the piece, rapidly fingering the keys to produce a warm, fluttering sound, then releasing the saxophone to hang free from a cord around his neck, letting it dangle like an outrageous piece of jewelry before tucking it under his right arm as if for safekeeping. The audience burst into applause. Some people stood as they clapped. Others cheered, but he barely acknowledged any of them, merely nodding and touching the brim of his hat, before picking up a copper-colored drink in a highball glass from a little table at the rear of the bandstand. He drank it down in one gulp and then took a few moments to consult with his musicians, as the audience, which had been silent during his playing, began to chatter freely.
"Can I get you fellows anything?" said a slender, coffee-colored waitress standing over us. She had large, beguiling eyes, her hair was cut in a pixie style, and she was wearing a black turtleneck blouse with a little red skirt and high-heel pumps. Her legs were long and shapely in fishnet stockings. In the darkness, I couldn't make out her features that well, but from what I could see, she looked awfully pretty, as pretty as any colored girl I'd seen since leaving home. She reminded me of Delores Winbush, who lived down the street from our house. Delores was the daughter of the principal of the colored high school and she was a couple of years older than I was. Every boy I knew wanted to go out with Delores, but nobody had the nerve to ask her for a date. We would see her in the hall at school or walking down the street and wave at her or smile with embarrassment if she noticed us, but the mere thought of having a conversation with her was paralyzing. She was tall and willowy, with skin the color of vanilla extract, and she was an excellent athlete. She loved to go to the municipal swimming pool, the colored pool which was always crowded with glistening brown bodies during the summer. In the neighborhood, it was rumored that on summer mornings, Delores would get up early and show up at the pool to swim when it opened at 7:00, and I sometimes imagined her in a pure white bathing suit, lowering herself into the turquoise pool, which was sure to be empty at that hour, to swim laps by herself, her lean brown limbs in constant motion, slicing the clear, shiny surface of the water with barely a splash, while high above her, seated in a tall ladder chair, a lifeguard, bronzed and naked to the waist, watched her.
"I'll have a Rheingold," said Gordie.
"Make it two," I said, with all the confidence I could muster. My eyes followed the waitress as she disappeared into the far shadows of the room. Although things had gone smoothly so far, I was still concerned about being underage in a nightclub. The musicians were getting ready to play another number. With glassy eyes, Coleman Hawkins put down his drink, placed the mouthpiece between his lips, and launched into a torrent of notes, rearing back and forth with his eyes squeezed shut as the music seemed to explode from inside of him. He was joined immediately by the other musicians, as though all of them had suddenly plunged together into a lake and were being kept afloat by the turbulent force of their rhythms. The audience was elated by the vigor of the music. Several people responded by shouting as though they were in church—"Get away, Hawk, get away!" "Talk to me, Bean! Go 'head now. Preach!"—and Hawk and his sidemen seemed propelled even faster by the shouts. Burns whispered to me that in addition to Hawk, Coleman Hawkins was also called Bean. The waitress brought our beers and poured each into a glass. Gordie and I pooled our money and paid her. We left her a generous tip, which she didn't even seem to notice, and then she moved away to another table and I lost sight of her. I had hoped to strike up a conversation with her, as I had with Lewis Michaux two days before, but the music was loud and she was busy. It didn't seem possible. She was really good-looking, but I thought she was probably older than I was.
"Well," said Gordie, "what do you think?" By then, like most of the people in the club, he was smoking a cigarette, and billows of smoke were circulating in the spotlights above the bandstand. The musicians were taking a break. The drummer, the piano player, and the bassist were sitting in the audience talking with patrons, but Coleman Hawkins had disappeared. I took a swallow of my beer. It was the first beer I had ever tasted, and I kept waiting for it to knock me for a loop, but it didn't seem to bother me. I reached for Gordie's package of cigarettes, which were lying on the table, and I took out a cigarette and held it between my fingers.
"This is fantastic," I said, "and Hawk is unbelievable! I've never heard anything like this." Gordie was smiling proudly, even a bit smugly.
"What did I tell you?" he said. "You'll never hear anything like it at Draper." With a knowing smile, he held up his beer glass and tipped it in my direction, and I picked up mine and tipped it toward him, and we both took another sip of our beers as though we had just pulled off a great caper. "You'd better figure out what you want to do with that thing," said Gordie, nodding toward the unlighted cigarette I was still holding between my fingers. I laughed and handed it to him to put it back in the pack.
Coleman Hawkins had now returned to the stage, hat firmly in place, with another drink in hand. He was thumbing through sheet music, with a brooding expression, like a banker examining ledgers. It occurred to me that because he was a man of great presence, everyone in the club was keeping their distance from him, whereas his musicians were seated at tables being lionized by the audience. He seemed sad, as he stood by himself on the bandstand with a drink and wearing that hat, in a roomful of adoring admirers. After a few moments, he looked out into the darkness of the club, searching for his musicians as if he needed company, and, once he had found them, he gave each of them a look that made it clear he was ready to start playing again. We were seated only a few feet from the bandstand, and, when they had all returned to the bandstand, I could hear him scold them gently, in a voice so deep it seemed to rumble up from the underworld. Then the sidemen took their positions, and with several quick stomps of his foot he set the beat for the next tune, and they all took off, soaring, with Hawk in the lead, upward like a rocket, right through the nightclub ceiling, passing the bright lights of the Jinxie's sign and the rooftops of nearby tenements, and on and on, into the infinite darkness. I didn't know the name of any of the tunes they played but it didn't matter I was riding with them, and I was willing to go as far as they would take me but after listening to Hawk for a while I began to recognize snatches of familiar tunes that he was weaving into what he was playing, "Jeepers Creepers" and "A Foggy Day," but mostly there were stretches, especially in the slow numbers, when all I could hear was what sounded to me like loneliness.
I had forgotten all about the time, and when I glanced at my watch I was horrified to discover that it was already 11:00 P.M. "Gordie," I said, "we're late." But he was still soaring with Hawk, and to bring him back to earth, I put my wristwatch right in front of his eyes.
"Holy shit!" said Gordie, looking at my watch. "We'd better get going."
"I know," I said, "but why can't we stay until the end of this set?"
"It's okay with me, but who knows how long it's going to be?" said Gordie. "It could go on for a half-hour or more."
I imagined my mother standing at Cousin Gwen's living-room window with her arms folded, looking up and down Edgecombe Avenue for any sign of me. And then I remembered I was on my own. "Look," I said, "let's stay for a little while longer. We can always say we got caught in traffic or something." Gordie didn't need a lot of persuading.
"Why not?" he said with a laugh. "And as long as we're at it, we might as well have another beer." He held up his empty glass and motioned to the waitress, and she came over.
"Another round, fellows?" she said. I looked up at her and she seemed amused, although her eyes were cast downward. "Sure," I said, with a grin. With the music f
rom Hawk's sax floating around us, she wiped the tabletop and picked up the empty glasses, but just before she turned to leave, she looked straight at me, holding me in her gaze, her wide eyes luminous through the smoke and the darkness, as though she had something private to tell me. I didn't know what to do. It was such a long look that it made me think we might really have something to say to each other after all. And then she turned on those long brown legs covered with the fishnet stockings and strode off through the crowd. When she left, I thought about what my mother would say about her. I could hear my mother's voice cutting through the music that filled Jinxie's like a buzz saw. "You say you met her in a nightclub? What was she working there for? And wearing that little skirt and those stockings? You can do a lot better than that, son."
"Not bad," said Gordie, when the waitress had disappeared. He was looking at me with a mischievous smile. "I know," I said. "She's cute."
"She certainly is," said Gordie. Hawk was winding down the last number of the set, leaving a trail of softly diminishing notes punctuated by takes from the piano player. At the end of the tune, everyone in the club was on their feet clapping and cheering, including Gordie and me, until Hawk and the others had left the stage. I was afraid to look at my watch. "I think we better get the check," said Gordie, waving the waitress over to our table, and we watched as she worked her way toward us through the crowd.
"May we have the check, please?" said Gordie when she arrived. She quickly added up the bill and handed it to him, and looked straight at me again. I was nervous. I could feel her eyes on me but I didn't know what to say.
Eventually, I mumbled, "How much do I owe you, Gordie?" as he reached for his wallet, took out a twenty-dollar bill, and handed it to the waitress.
"Don't worry about it, Rob," he said. "We'll settle up later." She took the twenty and started to give him the change, but Gordie said, "That's okay. Keep it," and we quickly headed for the door. I didn't bother to look back.
Outside the club, it had gotten chilly. Burns and I were having a short discussion on the sidewalk about how we were each going to get home when a tall, light-skinned Negro in a dark suit and tie and a black raincoat approached me. "Say, young brother, can I have a word with you?" said the man. He took me by the elbow and firmly steered me away from Gordie, as though he wanted to speak to me in private. He had reddish, close-cropped hair and a sober expression, and he was wearing those severe eyeglasses that schoolteachers wear, the ones with dark plastic frames and metal under the lenses. I had a feeling that I had seen him somewhere before, but I couldn't place him. Something in his manner was imperious, and it made me cautious, although I went along with him. "Look here, young brother, you know you're too young to be in an establishment like that," he began, once we were out of earshot of Gordie. "You got to be eighteen years old to be hanging out in a nightclub, and I know you ain't no eighteen yet. Am I right?" His voice had a soothing, streetwise pitch, a door-to-door salesman's voice, and he gave me a quick, disarming smile, as though he already knew the answer to his question.
"No, sir," I responded.
"Well, let me make a proposition to you. Why don't you meet me at the mosque down on Lenox Avenue tomorrow morning. We're holding some classes on the problems of the so-called Negro in relation to the white man, and what's the best way to deal with him. You look like an intelligent young brother. You'd probably like these classes. We got classes on self-defense, African history, Arabic, and the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. What do you say?"
"I'd like to," I said, trying to sound as sincere as I could, "but I have to go back to school tomorrow."
"What school is that?" he said, raising his eyebrows.
"Draper," I said. He seemed puzzled.
"Draper what?" he said.
"Draper School. It's a boarding school in Connecticut."
"Well, look," he said. "If you give me your name and address, I'll see that you get a copy of the paper every week. Won't cost you a dime."
I didn't know what to say. I wasn't sure what paper he was talking about. "What paper is that, sir?" I said. He gave me a stern look.
"The voice of the messenger, of course. Muhammad Speaks."
"I'll have to think about it, sir," I said. "Do you have an address where I can write for it?"
"Hey, Rob!" called Gordie, "we better get a move on or we're really going to be in trouble," and he walked out to the street to hail a cab.
"He's right," I said to the man wearing the black raincoat and the schoolteacher eyeglasses. "My folks were expecting me half an hour ago. You'll have to excuse me." And as I moved away from him, I heard a loud voice coming from a group of men standing around a dark sedan parked down the street. It was a voice I was sure I knew from somewhere.
"Don't waste no more time with him, Minister Malcolm. He ain't black. He just a so-called Negro, wantin' to be a white boy." I wasn't sure just what it meant to be a "so-called Negro," but the accusation that I wanted "to be a white boy" stung as soon as I heard it. I had never had my racial identity challenged before, and immediately, I wanted to confront the person who was responsible. I looked down the street toward the group to try to identify the speaker, but from that distance, the men were indistinguishable, all thick-necked, young colored men in dark suits, white shirts, and dark clip-on bowties, heads shaved just like Tyrone's. Tyrone! Of course. It had to be Tyrone. Although I couldn't make him out in the darkness I noticed one member of the group lurking behind the others in the shadowy street, hunched over like a running back waiting for the play to begin. I wanted to tell Burns what Tyrone had said, so I walked over to him. He was still standing in the street futilely trying to flag down a cab. "Gordie," I said. "I think your chauffeur Tyrone is over there with those men on the sidewalk."
"Where?" said Gordie, looking around quickly. "Maybe he can give us a lift."
"Over there, near that sedan," I said, pointing to the group of five or six men around the car. Although they were dressed up, they stood grim-faced under the streetlights, looking as though they were spoiling for trouble. "He just shouted something that he must have wanted me to hear. He must not like me."
"What did he say?" said Gordie.
"He said I wanted to be a white boy," I said.
Gordie looked surprised. "Tyrone said that?" he said. "Are you sure it was Tyrone?"
"It sure sounded like him," I said.
"Come on," said Gordie. "Let's see if we can find him." We walked over to the group around the sedan. A couple of them, who were leaning against the car, stood up with the others when they saw us approach. A few were wearing dark glasses, and they all had their arms folded across their chests, forming a small phalanx that took up most of the sidewalk. A couple of the men were dark-skinned, others were brown or lighter, each one dressed like a beefy funeral director, standing motionless, expressionless, on the sidewalk. "Do any of you know Tyrone Gaskins?" said Gordie when we reached the group. "He works for my family and I'd like to speak with him for a minute." There was no response. Gordie began to inspect them, walking along the front of the phalanx like a foreign dignitary as they stood at attention, but Tyrone wasn't there.
"I don't see him," said Gordie, turning to me. "You must have heard somebody else."
"I'm sure it was Tyrone," I said. "I don't know where he could have gone." Suddenly Minister Malcolm rushed over, the tails of his black raincoat flapping behind him. "What's going on here? What are you doing with my men?" He sounded indignant.
"We're looking for Tyrone Gaskins," said Gordie. "He works for my family, and my friend here, Mr. Garrett, thought he saw him a moment ago standing over here with your men."
Malcolm smiled. "The only Tyrone we have is Tyrone 27X. I don't know nothin' about no Gaskins. Maybe that's his slave name," he said. "We don't recognize the names that were given to us by our slave owners."
"Well, where is he, sir?" said Gordie. "I'd like to have a word with him."
"He's in the car," said Minister Malcolm, still smiling, as
though he had been harboring a secret, nodding at the darkened sedan whose windows were rolled up tight. Indeed, as I peered through the windows, I could see a burly figure in the darkness sitting motionless behind the steering wheel. "That's my driver," said Minister Malcolm, proudly. "He drives for a white family downtown during the day and he drives for me at night."
"Well, can I talk to him?" said Gordie, moving suddenly toward the car to open the passenger door. In a flash, Minister Malcolm's smile disappeared, replaced by an angry frown.
"Don't you touch that door, white boy!" he shouted. He was infuriated, although managing to control himself, but his hazel eyes nit were hard as agate. "Don't you dare put your hands on that car without my permission," he said, spitting out his words. For the first time, I saw a glimpse of the rage I had observed in the photograph of Minister Malcolm on the front page of the newspaper, and I knew this was a man who was capable of exploding when provoked.
Gordie froze and then stiffly backed away from the car, his face ashen. The minister's men were still standing in formation with their hands behind their backs, nodding at each other with knowing smiles and murmurs of approval. A little audience of bystanders was beginning to form a semicircle around us to watch what was going on, while, standing next to the sedan, Minister Malcolm smoldered, his hazel eyes blazing behind his schoolteacher glasses.
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