A rowboat cleaved the lake and headed toward the shore. Haven stopped playing and lowered his trumpet. The rowboat neared and he recognized the figure pulling on the oars that sloshed the water and sent waves of ripples across the surface. An outboard motor sat unused on the stern. Marcus stepped from the boat and hauled it toward the shore before tethering its line to the dock.
“That was beautiful.”
Startled, Haven turned toward Charlotte’s voice. He hadn’t heard her approach. She had developed the habit of joining him and Jude on the porch late at night to listen to them practice and join in the occasional sing-along.
“Thanks,” he said. “Wetherby taught me.”
“Is he all right?” Charlotte hooked her fingertips against the screen and leaned forward. “There’s a rumour going around that you and Jude had a big fight over him today.”
“I don’t know,” Haven sighed. “Jude won’t talk to me. All I did was introduce Wetherby to my grandmother and he went berserk. I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
Marcus shuffled toward the lodge, his long coat billowing behind him. He pulled his cap from his head as he approached; his hair had grown in enough that it covered his scalp. Like Charlotte, he had become a frequent visitor to the impromptu late night fetes, bringing his harmonica along to join in. Charlotte stepped back as he neared and bashfully kicked the dirt at her feet with her bare toes.
“Why Jude went nuts on me when he found his pa dancing with Granny Bess,” Haven replied.
Marcus tossed his head back and laughed.
“You introduced Wetherby to that old bird?” he chuckled. “She probably cut him down a notch or two.”
“Actually they were getting along pretty good,” Haven explained.
“Really?” Marcus laughed harder. “Now that would have been a sight to see.”
The screen door rattled on its hinges, banging against the wall and making everyone leap on their toes. Jude’s hard eyes fixed on each of them in turn; a smouldering butt dangled from the corner of his mouth.
“You go on and laugh,” he barked at Marcus. “I don’t blame these two. They don’t know no better. But you, brother, you know the real truth. It ain’t your business to be laughing.”
“They don’t know?” Marcus stopped laughing.
Jude hung his head and plucked the cigarette from his mouth, snorting smoke through his nostrils like a tired bull.
“What don’t we know?” Charlotte asked.
Jude averted his eyes and turned away, slowly shaking his head.
“The real reason they had to leave Detroit,” Marcus said.
“You shut your mouth,” Jude warned.
“What is the real reason?” Haven asked.
“Ain’t your business.”
“I’d like to know,” Charlotte said.
Jude sighed and leaned his forehead into the doorframe and tried to blot out the memory by shutting his eyes. Haven and Charlotte looked to Marcus, but he only shook his head tiredly.
“I suppose I owe you an explanation,” Jude said to Haven and slumped in the wicker chair beside him. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees as he cupped his face in his hands. Misery radiated from him like heat from the campfire. Haven was overcome with an urge to embrace him but held back. Haven knew that if he touched Jude, he would physically lash out at him and he didn’t want to brawl with Jude tonight, not in front of Marcus and Charlotte.
“It’s all right,” Charlotte said. She gingerly stepped up to Jude and rested her hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it away.
“Roll me another, brother,” he said to Marcus. “So I can tell them. I suppose they ought to know.”
Marcus nodded and settled on the porch step. Jude began to speak before the first cigarette was passed to him.
CHAPTER 10
No one could blow a trumpet like my father, Wetherby Moss. Back then it was near unheard of for a coloured band to play to a white crowd. Even in the speakeasies our band was greeted with gasps and stares whenever we climbed aboard that stage. But once Pa put that horn to his lips and his cheeks puffed out like a pair of sun-burnt oranges, the snickers and catcalls turned to hoots and cheers. Ladies swayed, not from the hooch but from the music, until their gentlemen companions grabbed them by the hands and everyone danced like the devil was at their heels.
I got us the gig in a joint called Adam’s Apple the summer of 1929. From the outside it wasn’t much to look at. During the day it warehoused machine parts by the Detroit River. But down below was where the fun started. When a patron knocked at the door, he was frisked by either Maurice or Lenny, depending on whose turn it was that night. Ladies were only frisked if they were especially attractive; then the goons got a good feel. Once satisfied, the goons led them to the bar in the basement on a rickety staircase so old and splintered it’s a wonder no one ever fell through.
Hugh Adams, the owner, agreed to give us the gig if I bussed tables between sets. The pay was shameful: two bits per player per hour plus meals and drinks. It wasn’t until later that we realized the meals consisted mostly of greasy chicken bones with a little bit of meat stuck to them and the drinks were whatever leftover hooch we could pilfer from the half empty glasses I collected.
“I ain’t no busboy,” I grumbled that first night I tied the white apron around my skinny waist.
I played drums for the band. Sass Morrison played clarinet and his brother Child Morrison blew the best trombone I have ever heard; with Pa on trumpet and me on the skins we were the Morrison-Moss Quartet because we couldn’t think of anything more clever to call ourselves. Pa was the star of the show, improvising solos on that horn of his until I just gave up and leaned on my sticks. I haven’t heard anything like it since, and if you haven’t heard Wetherby play, you haven’t heard jazz.
The crowd went wild for us. By the end of the first set they were whistling and shouting for more. We would have given it to them too, but I had tables to bus and Pa needed a rest. His health wasn’t as good as it was before Ma died. It sure made it hard for him to play some nights.
He couldn’t take the heat in the bar; sweat poured off him like water sluicing over stones in a brook. There were some nights I swear I felt drops of rain plop down on me from the ceiling. The smell of bootleg beer and sweat filled every crevice of the joint. Cigarette smoke hovered over the heads of the audience, so thick some nights I couldn’t even see their faces.
Wetherby met Miss Charlene on a Wednesday night in June. After I tied on my apron I led him from the stage and set him on an empty stool at the end of the bar where no one would bother him.
“Here you go, Pa,” I said and signalled the bartender to bring him a glass of water. “You just sit here and rest awhile while I get these tables cleared.”
“I’m fine, son.” Pa smiled at me and mopped face with the handkerchief Ma had sewn for him before she died.
Child and Sass had already left for the kitchen to get their booty of half-filled glasses. Wetherby gulped back his water, but was reluctant to ask the bartender for another. He’d been giving us that look out of the corner of his eye all night, even when Pa set upon his solo. It was the look that reminded us of our place, and we had better not forget it.
Miss Charlene was sitting alone at a table in front of the stage. Wetherby noticed her right away. She certainly stood out in the crowd, dressed as she was in a short feathered gown of pink with little sequins that glittered in the light of the candle on the table. Blonde curls bobbed from under the brim of her cloche hat with a big pink flower on the side. She was the only person in the room who was crying.
Wetherby knew a black man like himself had to be very careful when approaching an unescorted white lady, but something in his heart compelled him to go. He ambled to her table as she dabbed her eyes with the corner of a soaked handkerchief the same shade of pink as her dress. She sniffed and looked up at him. Powder dusted a bruise on her left temple.
“Th
ere, there,” Wetherby cooed, “a pretty lady like you shouldn’t be crying.” He waved his arm toward the crowd. “Not when there’s a party going on.”
“I’m all right,” Miss Charlene replied just as her face bunched up into another sob.
“My dear, you don’t look all right,” Wetherby said. “What could be so wrong as to make you so sad?”
Miss Charlene opened the small pink clutch purse in her lap with little sequins along the side
“I don’t have another hanky,” she whimpered.
“Here, Miss, take mine.” Wetherby pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket, clean and freshly pressed with the initials WM puckering one corner.
“Thank you.” Miss Charlene pressed it to her eyes and it came away smudged with blue and black.
“Now what is it I can do to make you smile?” Wetherby asked. When he smiled, his teeth shone like rhinestones.
“You already have.” Miss Charlene returned his smile, though hers was weak and forced. Another tear dribbled from the corner of her eye.
“Would a little music cheer you up?” Wetherby asked.
“It always does,” Miss Charlene replied. “I go on in fifteen minutes, right after the band. I hope I can get myself together by then.”
“You must be the new girl singer Adams has hired,” Wetherby said.
“Not exactly hired.” Miss Charlene pushed the opposite chair with the toe of her high heeled shoe. “Have a seat.”
Wetherby removed his hat and pressed it to his heart.
“I appreciate the offer,” he replied, “but I don’t think it would be exactly proper.”
“To hell with that!” Miss Charlene snapped and fished a cigarette from her purse.
Wetherby glanced around the room. No one was paying them any mind. People clustered in small groups, laughing and drinking, or sat at tables slurping their gin while I threaded between them and gathered their smudged glasses. The bartender was busy pouring drinks from an unlabeled green bottle.
“Ted! Get me a light!” Miss Charlene called, “and something to wet my whistle.”
The look in the bartender’s eyes removed any doubt of Wetherby’s next move. He bowed politely as Ted placed a glass of clear gin beside the candle on Charlene’s table.
“Much obliged for the hospitality, Miss Charlene,” he said, “but I best be getting ready for our next set.”
Wetherby played that trumpet like the gates of heaven were swinging open just for him. In no time at all we had the whole drunken congregation out of their seats and stomping their feet. Even Ted bobbed his head in time to my drums. When we dove into “Better Than That”, Pa broke away into another one of his solos. By then Miss Charlene was laughing and clapping along with the rest of them. The gin must have been getting to her. The sequins in her hat flashed like stars on a hot summer night when she cupped her fingers over her lips and blew a kiss clear across the stage. We all knew it was intended for Wetherby. His eyes rolled in their sockets like oiled marbles as he tried not to smile around his mouthpiece.
By the time we stepped from the stage, the applause roared around us like a hurricane and threatened to lift that old warehouse clean off its foundation.
“Here’s your hanky back.” Miss Charlene pressed Pa’s wrinkled handkerchief into his palm. “You look like you need it more than me.”
“Much obliged, Miss Charlene.”
Mr. Adams leapt on stage and tried to hush the crowd with a wave of his hands. They would have none of that.
“Bring back the fat nigger!” one inebriated patron hollered from the end of the bar.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Adams called, “the band will be taking a brief respite while the drummer busses your tables and refreshes your drinks.”
I seethed at his mention of me as a busboy. I am a professional. Jazz burns through my veins the way cheap hooch burns down the throats of those rich white folks who come to hear us play. Incensed, I flung a glass to the floor under the guise of innocently dropping it.
“In the meantime,” Adams continued, “allow me to introduce Miss Charlene Chambers who will entertain you with her silken voice, accompanied by Mr. Scotti Ross on the piano.”
Groans of disappointment echoed throughout the stuffy room. People turned their backs to the stage and their attentions back to the bar. Cigarettes were lit and glasses filled. Wetherby extended his hand to help Miss Charlene to the stage. Venom seeped from Mr. Adams’ little piggy eyes.
Barely a ripple of applause greeted her when she took her place by the piano where Scotti sat. He was a skinny little man, barely five foot tall, with pale red hair and even paler skin so splotched with freckles he appeared all one colour. We could have used him in our band; after all, no jazz band is complete without a pianist, but he staunchly refused, claiming he would rather hack off all his fingers than accompany a coloured band. It didn’t matter anyway. Pa’s trumpet would have blown him off the stage.
Charlene waited for the crowd to settle. When it appeared they wouldn’t, she signalled Scotti and lapsed into a fairly passable rendition of “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. Mr. Adams leaned against the bar, his arms crossed over his chest, and eyed her like he was watching a circus poodle jump through hoops.
“I thought you said you could sing,” he scowled when she stepped off the stage to sporadic applause. A few patrons were settling their tabs while their dates gathered their purses and adjusted their hats.
“Please don’t be mad at me, babycakes,” Charlene pouted, “I can sing! They just don’t want to listen.”
Mr. Adams grabbed my arm so hard I almost dropped the tray I was carrying.
“Get your boys back up there!” he hissed, “before the whole place clears out!”
“But we still got another ten minutes for our break,” I said.
Child and Sass were already back on stage and lifting their instruments. Pa lumbered from his barstool where he sat sipping his water. His eyes had never left that stage while Miss Charlene was on it.
“There, there, Miss Charlene,” he said as he passed her, “I think you sing real pretty.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wetherby.” When Miss Charlene smiled she not only lit up the room, she lit up his heart.
“I don’t give a damn what this coon thinks,” Adams growled. “Just so long as he keeps them in here and keeps them drinking.”
I sat behind the drums and lifted my sticks. Miss Charlene stroked her hands up and down Adams’ arms, fluttering her eyelashes and pouting like a Kewpie doll, all the while begging him not to be angry with her. She stood on her toes and planted a kiss on his mouth. He scowled and shoved her hard enough to send her reeling into the bar. He jabbed his finger toward her table and she obediently sat.
Scotti scurried from the stage like a hare escaping a trap and we rolled into “Yes Sir, That’s my Baby” with Pa’s extra dash of spice thrown in. Several people changed their minds about leaving and took their seats again, deciding it would be worth it to stay for another drink or two.
We played that whole night without another break. Thankfully, it was a Wednesday and the place cleared out early, the patrons having jobs and responsibilities to tend to in the morning. When only a few drunkards were lolling at the bar, we decided to call it a night. Miss Charlene spent the evening at her table, sipping drinks and flinching each time Adams walked by.
Pa was so exhausted he sank to the stage on his way down the steps and just sat there, his beefy legs dangling over the edge.
“Are you all right?” Miss Charlene asked.
“Fine,” Pa wheezed and mopped his brow with the handkerchief they had shared. “I’m just not as young as I used to be.”
He tugged at his tie until it hung like a noose around his neck.
“I wish I could have given you a break,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’m not very good.”
“Don’t say that, Miss Charlene,” Wetherby said. “You sing fine. You just need to put a little more zing in your act.”
&n
bsp; “Is that all?” Miss Charlene laughed and swigged from the glass in her hand.
“I could teach you,” Wetherby offered. “It ain’t that hard.”
“I’d like that. Thank you.” Miss Charlene said. “Come by the club an hour early tomorrow. I’ll be waiting in Hugh’s office. I’ll see if I can talk him into letting me go on first.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
Miss Charlene rose and gathered her wrap and that little glittery purse.
“I don’t know a lot about show biz,” she said as she turned to leave, “but I know not to follow a better act.”
True to his word, Pa had us load up Sass’s old pickup truck with our equipment and drive out to the Adam’s Apple an hour early the next day so he could show Miss Charlene what real jazz is all about. Scotti refused to participate, no matter how hard Charlene flirted with him. He glared at us with loathing seeping from those pale blue eyes, aghast that a pretty white girl would debase herself by performing with a coloured band — and in public! Adams scowled at us through the little window in the door of his office. Charlene and Pa somehow managed to convince him that their performance would bring in a full house by the end of the week.
Miss Charlene’s confidence fed upon itself like a steam engine gathering speed. Each night the crowds grew thicker until there was barely room to stand. The plaudits grew more raucous; a few catcalls and hisses still issued from some of the patrons, but they were quickly silenced whenever Charlene lapsed into “Body and Soul”, sashaying her hips like they had come loose from her waist. I had never seen anything like it and neither did anyone else. She must have been the only white girl singer with a coloured backup band in all of Detroit, if not the world.
The Spoon Asylum Page 12