The Spoon Asylum

by Caroline Misner

  “You all right?” he asked, his brow creasing with concern.

  “I’ve never felt better in my life,” Haven croaked.

  “Well then you best get up. It ain’t dignified to be down on the floor like that.” Wetherby eyed the yawning lid on the Victrola, the needle pressed dead against the record. He scanned the records scattered on the floor around Haven.

  “You been listening to some music?”

  Haven’s bones creaked painfully as he heaved himself to his knees. He sat back on his hunches and watched Wetherby scoop the records from the floor and slip them back into their paper envelopes.

  “You got good taste,” he said as he read the labels. “I ain’t heard some of these tunes in ages. Where’d they come from anyway?”

  “I bought them in town today.”

  Wetherby lifted the needle from the record on the Victrola. He froze and his eyes bulged when he read the title. His fingers quivered as he lifted the record closer to his face and reread the label, just to make certain he was not mistaken.

  “Lordy!” he gasped and collapsed into the nearest chair. His trumpet clattered onto the table and rolled in a semicircle around the cloth. “I’d never thought I’d see this again!”

  “It’s you.”

  “It’s me,” Wetherby admitted, shaking his head. “But that was a long time ago.”

  “What is that thing you do in the song?”

  “What thing?” Wetherby was so entranced with the record he didn’t bother to look at Haven as he spoke.

  “Those nonsense words you sing in the chorus,” Haven said. “What is that?”

  “That? That’s called scat.” Wetherby smiled as the memory filled his mind like clear water. “Lots of jazz musicians do it. That’s why jazz is never the same way twice.

  “Lordy, I remember the day we recorded this song like it was yesterday. Me and Judy and the boys go down to Chicago where there’s this fellow who says he can record us ‘cause he likes our sound so much after hearing us play in the clubs. So we goes downtown to this big building where there’s this little room with a window looking on to another room all filled with dials and wires and all kinds of gadgets. He tells us to set up our instruments and when he gives us the signal we play into this big horn in front of us. Well, we played our darnest. We must have played the same song about five or six times over again. Each time he tells me to move further and further back because my trumpet playing is so forceful it’s drowning out the other instruments. Finally, I’m playing with my back against the wall. He says I better get it right this time ‘cause it’s our last chance. Well, sir, I was so nervous knowing we couldn’t do it over again I dropped the paper with all the words to the song written on it. I want to bend down to pick it up but he’s waving at me through that window telling me to keep going. So I just started to scat, ‘cause I had forgotten the rest of the words in my nervousness. I’m kinda ashamed, looking back now. After all, what kind of man don’t remember all the words to a song he wrote?”

  Haven crawled over to Wetherby and kneeled before him.

  “Teach me jazz,” he begged.

  “Teach you jazz?” Wetherby chuckled and placed the record reverently on the table beside his trumpet. “Boy, I can teach you to play but I can’t teach you jazz any more than I can teach you to breathe or to dream or to love. Jazz is something that comes from in here.” He prodded Haven’s chest with the tip of a stubby finger. “Jazz is like a tiger. You feed him meat every day and that tiger gets lazy and tame. But if you starve him that tiger gets mean. He busts free and goes looking for blood. You’ve got to starve that tiger yourself. I can’t do it for you.”

  “Then teach me to play better.” Haven pointed to his trumpet. “I already know how to play the cornet. I played for two years in the school band back home. I’ll save every penny I get until I can buy one of my own. I promise.”

  A sigh escaped Wetherby’s nostrils and he tussled Haven’s hair.

  “You sure got the fire for it,” he admitted. “You remind me so much of myself when I was your age. Now get up off the floor and sit with me so I can look you in the eye.”

  Haven heaved himself into the chair opposite him and stared at Wetherby from across the table.

  “So will you do it?”

  “Sure I will,” Wetherby said. “You’re going to have it a lot easier than me. You already know the basics. When I was your age my pa never much approved of me playing. He wanted me to go find work. So I had to practice late at night in the outhouse where I hoped he couldn’t hear me. But he always knew what I’d been up to ‘cause my lips would be bleeding.”

  “Is that how you got that dent in mouth?”

  “I suppose so.” Wetherby absently ran a finger under his moustache. “My pa caught me once. Mama must have cooked up some bad fish or something for supper that night ‘cause he come running to the outhouse just as I was taking a break to clean my horn. He opens the door with his pants down around his knees. I suppose he was in quite a hurry. Well, he scared me bad and I guess I scared him too. He lets out this yelp and lets loose right there in front of me. So there I am, screaming my head off at being caught, and there he is hollering at me with shit running down both his legs. Boy, I got a whooping that night!”

  “He beat you?” Haven would kill his father dead before he allowed him to do such a thing.

  “Twice,” Wetherby replied. “Once for practicing the horn behind his back then again for making him shit his drawers.”

  “He sounds like an ogre.”

  “Now don’t you be so quick to judge.” Wetherby’s expression darkened. “Things was tough for poor coloured folks like us. Mama had to take in rich folk’s laundry just so we could eat. Things don’t seem to change that much, though. Here’s my boy Jude at twenty-two cooking meals for rich white girls when he should be out playing the clubs.”

  “He can always leave.”

  “He can’t.” Wetherby shook his head. “He said himself he ain’t going nowhere without me.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “I left home,” Wetherby replied. “There was no point in me staying, not when I couldn’t do the thing I loved the most, which was play the horn. I took my horn, put it in a paper sack and headed for Chicago. Things was hard at first. I started out by playing for nickels on the street corner. Then I goes circulating the clubs with my horn in that same paper bag before I finally got my first real gig. That’s where I met my wife, Judy’s poor old mother, bless her soul. She was from Detroit and wanted to go back home. She got the consumption when Judy was about your age and she wanted to be buried near family, so just before she died, we pack up and move on to Detroit. We ain’t looked back since.”

  “I’m sorry about your wife.” Haven squeezed Wetherby’s arm.

  “We all are,” Wetherby replied softly.

  “My mother’s dead too,” Haven said, “She died of the flu when I was little more than I baby. I hardly remember her.”

  “Now ain’t that a shame.”

  “My father wouldn’t tell me anything about her, the bastard.” Haven stiffened his jaw. “He wouldn’t even keep a picture of her in our flat. I know nothing about her. He said the memory of her was just too painful for him. I’ll never forgive him for that.”

  “He may be right,” Wetherby said. “I know what it’s like to lose a woman you love, several times over. It can be real lonely for a man without a good woman by his side. So don’t be so quick to judge.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause I know what it’s like to be judged by someone who don’t got all his facts right,” Wetherby replied, “and it can be pretty tough on a man.”

  Haven ran his fingertips across the side of Wetherby’s trumpet; he left a row of foggy smudges along the brass.

  “So will you teach me to play jazz?” he asked, eager to change the subject.

  “Your first lesson’s already begun.” Wetherby rose. “Now stand up and put that horn to your lips. Let me see you
r form.”

  Haven stood and raised the trumpet to his mouth, amazed at its weight. It was so much more ponderous than the little cornet he learned to play at school. When Wetherby played he made it look as though the instrument was a natural extension of his fingers. In Haven’s hands it felt awkward and cumbersome. He pressed his lips to the mouthpiece and pulled in a breath. The mouthpiece felt foreign and awkward against his lips.

  “Not so tight,” Wetherby warned. “Remember to keep it light. And for heaven’s sake, boy, keep your head up.”

  Haven raised his chin as Wetherby admired his form. Nodding approvingly, he positioned Haven’s fingers over the keys.

  “This here is a C. You know about the scales already, right?”

  Haven nodded; the horn bobbed in his hands.

  “Good.” Wetherby stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Now take in a nice deep breath and blow. Let’s hear your sound.”

  Haven blew into the mouthpiece. The trumpet vibrated in his hands; it had been so long since he played, the note that hissed from the horn startled him. That’s it? All that air for a little squeak that could barely be heard. He lowered the trumpet and stared as though there was something wrong with it. It was so unlike playing the harmonica where every little puff of breath sent music flowing from between his fingers.

  “That’s right.” Wetherby nodded. “Remember to get your breath built up. You smoke?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Quit. You can’t play the horn if you don’t got the air. And I ain’t going to tell you again, you got to keep your head up. Who was your music teacher at school?”

  “Mr. McSweeney.”

  “Well, that man was a damn fool,” Wetherby said, “He knowed nothing about playing the horn. Now let’s try it again and this time I want you to show me everything you got.”

  Haven was late picking up Miss Nokomis and the girls from the church picnic that afternoon. Miss Nokomis stood tapping her foot impatiently on the curb, her campers congregated around her like a mother hen with her brood of chicks. As punishment for his tardiness, Haven was forbidden to drive the bus for a full week.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE SCENT OF FRESH BAKED gingerbread whirled from the opened kitchen window as Haven climbed the porch steps and rapped his knuckles against the doorframe. Gertie Follows lived in a small clapboard house just outside Davisville. Jude had dropped him off on his way to the post office to collect the mail and run various other errands for Miss Nokomis. Haven was wont to accompany him. He had heard from Bess that her friend Gertie was selling some of her late husband’s belongings and had caught the rumour that he had been quite a musician in his salad days.

  Gertie answered his knock before he had a chance to lower his arm. She was so unlike Bess it startled Haven that they could be friends. Gertie’s long grey tresses were secured in a tight bun on the crown of her head. Her plump cheeks were burnished a natural shade of rose slightly deeper than her ruddy complexion. Her smile was wide and genuine; it lifted the little nub below her mouth that passed as a chin.

  “Well, you must be Bess’s grandson,” she said and stepped back so Haven could enter. “Please, come in! I’ve heard so much about you!”

  “I’m Haven Cattrell,” he replied, hesitating at the door with his cap clutched in his hands.

  “I know,” Gertie said. “Bess and Eleanor can’t tell me enough good things about you. Don’t be shy. Come in; let me fix you a cup of tea.”

  She grasped Haven’s elbow and pulled him into the house, allowing the door to swing shut behind him.

  “I can’t stay long,” Haven said. “I’ve just stopped by to see if you were interested in selling me your old trumpet.”

  “Of course, of course.” Gertie ushered him into a small parlour cluttered with crates in various stages of packing. “You must excuse this mess, but I was just organizing some of Gary’s old things. It’s amazing how much junk a man collects over a lifetime. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Please, have a seat.” Gertie guided him to an overstuffed couch garnished with so many cushions he found it difficult to find a spot to sit. A flowered china teapot sat on the coffee table with steam rising from the spout. “Tea?”

  “Thank you.”

  Gertie poured the hot amber liquid into a matching teacup and handed it to Haven. She straightened and gazed around the room, tapping her cheek thoughtfully. Her fingers were pudgy and embellished with rings so tight the flesh bulged around the golden bands.

  “Now let me see, where did I put that trumpet?” she mused softly to herself. “I think it may still be in the attic. Please excuse me while I go get it. I’ll be right back.”

  She bounded up the stairs, her prominent behind wiggling beneath her tight flowered dress. Haven sat balancing the teacup on his knee and gazed around the room. It was decorated much more tastefully than Bess’s parlour. The furniture was newer, the trinkets that adorned the shelves less garish. The area rugs were clean but faded and well worn in several places. A bouquet of dead roses, their edges brown and wrinkled, drooped from a vase on the piano. It was the room of a woman in mourning, preparing to embrace her widowhood.

  Gertie returned, a black leather case swinging from her hand. She smiled at Haven as he tapped a few keys on the badly out-of-tune piano. A few scabby petals dropped at the vibration.

  “Do you play?” she asked.

  “No, not the piano,” Haven replied and set the teacup on the table. “Just the trumpet. And according to Wetherby, not very good.”

  “Well, I have just the thing for you.”

  Gertie placed the case on the couch and flicked the clasp open. She reverently raised the trumpet from its red velvet interior as though she was lifting a newborn from his mother’s arms. She turned the trumpet over and showed Haven the engraving below the valves where the initials G.M.F. 1917 were crudely scratched into the brass.

  “Gary took this into battle with him during the Great War. He was always afraid of losing it somewhere,” she explained, running her fingers across the letters. “So one night while he was alone in a foxhole he found a sharp stone and carved his initials into it. He figured if he did lose it, whoever found it would return it to him. Thank God he made it home from the war without a scratch, which is more than can be said about his old trumpet.”

  Haven took the trumpet and turned it over so he wouldn’t have to look at the letters. It felt heavier than Wetherby’s trumpet. A scarlet silk tassel dangled from the middle key; a few dents had been punched into the horn. He dipped into his pocket where the mouthpiece from his old school cornet had been rattling around for weeks. It was scratched and its lustre had dulled, but it was still serviceable. He removed the mouthpiece from the trumpet and replaced it with his own. It was a perfect fit.

  He lifted the trumpet to his mouth and blew the first bar of “When the Saints Go Marching In” that Wetherby had taught him.

  “Will you take five dollars for it?” he asked.

  “That sounds fair,” Gertie agreed. She stepped back and admired Haven, her round head cocked to one side. “You look so much like him when you smile like that. Let me show you something.”

  She turned and bent over one of the crates. Pungent moth balls rolled across neatly folded clothes like loose pearls. She pulled out an olive green military jacket and held it up by the epaulets.

  “This was Gary’s uniform during the war,” she explained. “Goodness, he looked so handsome marching down the street with his company, playing that old trumpet. I was so afraid I would never see him again.”

  Gertie pressed the jacket against Haven’s chest.

  “It looks about your size,” she said. “Would you like it? I can give it to you cheap if haven’t much money.”

  Small worms wriggled beneath Haven’s skin; the hair on the back of his neck pricked into attention. He stepped away from the jacket.

  “No thank you,” he said. “I just need the trumpet.”

&
nbsp; “Well at least take the hat.” Gertie snatched the matching cap from its nest of moth balls. Haven flinched as she placed it on his head. “There, that’s better.”

  “I really appreciate this.” Haven pulled the cap from his head and handed it back to Gertie. “But I’m not really the military type. I just need the trumpet.”

  “I see.”

  Gertie turned and placed the cap and uniform back in the crate, carefully tucking the sleeves behind the jacket. She lowered her eyes and Haven detected a tiny tear slip down her lashes.

  “I really have to go,” Haven said. “Jude will be waiting for me at Langston’s to load supplies on the bus.”

  He dug into his pocket and fished out a handful of dingy bills. He pressed them into Gertie’s palm, amazed at how smooth and cool her hand felt in his own, like polished leather. Gertie smiled and squeezed his fingers until her rings crushed the soft pads of his palm.

  “I’m glad you’re getting his trumpet,” she said. “Gary would have wanted it to go to someone who knows how to play it.”

  “I’m not very good yet,” Haven replied. “But I’ll practice every day.”

  He tucked the trumpet into its case and snapped the lid over it. The scent of gingerbread lingered longer in the air when he passed the kitchen. He pulled on the doorknob to the front door, a white ceramic bulb with small blue blossoms painted across the top. Pausing, he considered another option.

  “You know, Mrs. Follows,” he said, turning to face her again, “I’d really prefer to have a new trumpet than an old one like this. How about I just rent this from you for that five dollars and when I’ve got the money to buy a new one, I’ll bring it back.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” Gertie shook her head. “I want you to keep it. I can’t play the darn thing. It’s best it stays with someone who knows how to use it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Gertie hooked her hands behind her back and stepped away.

  “Keep it,” she said. “Learn to play it. I’d love to hear you someday.”