Oh, Play That Thing

by Roddy Doyle

  —I got the Greer Brothers Xylophone Orchestra coming in after you, he told Louis.

  —How many brothers? I said.

  —Two.

  —I’ll talk to them.

  He looked at me and he looked at the watch.

  —Okay, he said. —It’s not as late as I thought.

  —Fine.

  He was gone.

  There were no smiles; there was no triumph. The other lads didn’t really know what was going on; it was all me and Louis – it was Louis. Fred Robinson climbed back up the ladder, his trombone over his head like a spear. Singleton checked his bottles. The bald engineer was back behind the glass, and Wickemeyer was standing beside him, leaning into the window.

  He nodded.

  And Louis put the horn to his lip and blew the opening cadenza for the fourth, and fifth, sixth, seventh time, before he was happy with it. He blew, and it was all new again, the most difficult music anyone had ever played, easy and surprising all over again. And, as the other five men joined him, still playing, still inventing, he looked my way and winked.

  I was there, in that corner, in that studio. The most famous trumpet solo in jazz history was played by Louis Armstrong but it was brought to you by Henry Smart.

  I was Louis Armstrong’s white man.

  And that was it, for months. I stayed right beside Louis Armstrong. I stuck to him, and it began to make sense. I knew why I was there.

  I thought I did.

  We smiled at each other, across the small space between us in one of the hundreds of hotel rooms. This one was two blocks from the house that soon wouldn’t be his home. He stood at the open window; he let the wind come in and take the smoke. He leaned way out and pointed.

  —My right-handed wife down there, he said, over his shoulder.

  He changed hands.

  —And the left-handed wife up there.

  I hadn’t met either.

  —And soon, he said, as he shut the window. —I’m predicting here, understand? Soon the right-handed is going to be no-handed and the left-handed going to be the right-handed. Keepin’ up, Smoked?

  I was the smoked Irishman.

  —No, I said.

  He picked up the bottle from the table, beside his typewriter.

  —Lean over here, man, and bring that nice glass with you.

  I listened to my glass filling.

  —What you reckon we drinking? he said.

  —God knows, I said.

  —I doubt. This hooch didn’t come out the Lord’s bathtub. What we drink to this time, Smoked?

  —The works, I said.

  —Yeah, he said. —I like that.

  He hoisted his glass over his head. Big drops fell onto his shoulders and head, and onto the hotel carpet. He fell back into his chair and laughed.

  —And to you, O’Pops. We drink to you.

  We smashed our glasses together and we didn’t care about the mess.

  6

  I was the sharpest ofay in Chicago, the best dressed Irishman anywhere.

  —This not sissified business, Pops, he said in Scotty Piper’s changing room.

  —Shut up, Louis.

  —Long as you know, he said. —I’m buying but I ain’t your sugar daddy.

  —Shut up.

  —Fair ee-nuff. Long as you know.

  Mister Piper had laid out three suits, and I was taking all of them. Big suits a smaller man would have been lost in. And shirts, with collars, and without.

  —Nothing too colour, Louis instructed Mister Piper. —This here some serious white man.

  —Noticed, said Mister Piper.

  —Meeting serious white men, said Louis.

  He chose; I vetted.

  —I wouldn’t be caught dead in that.

  —That the idea. Pops. Not getting yourself caught dead. Take them away, sir. Man here wish to stay alive.

  Mister Piper went off with the shirts and came back with some more – milder, paler, plainer, but still too fuckin’ wild.

  —Look it, I said. —Between ourselves.

  I was speaking to Louis and Mister Piper.

  —I’m a good-looking man.

  They looked at each other. I held up one of the shirts, the red one.

  —If I walk into a room full of other people wearing this shirt, what d’you think will get noticed first? Me or the shirt?

  —I hear you, Pops, said Louis.

  —No offence now, I said. —But if I wear this thing, they won’t see a handsome man, looking after business. They’ll see a fuckin’ clown.

  Louis picked up the shirts and handed them to Piper.

  —Something dull, Mister Piper. Something won’t get noticed in a room full of white folks.

  —Don’t think my colour scale run to that dull. Why don’t you bring him to a Hebe tailor, give him some nice white threads?

  —This the ofay with the difference, said Louis. —This the man that stand out.

  —But you heard the man, Mister Armstrong, said Piper. —He think he stand out already.

  —Fine, fine, fine, said Louis. —You the best tailor in Chicago. Why we here. How that sound?

  —Be right back, said Piper. —With some of the best dull shirts you ever seen.

  —We be waiting.

  The new fedora, as pearl grey and as perfect as the old one, was my idea. He’d picked up a velour thing but he put it back down when he saw the fedora kiss my head.

  —Nothing I can teach you about hats, Pops. That there get you noticed.

  (He was right.)

  —Lil, my old lady that was and, ’fact, still is, she taught me how to wear a hat, he told me.

  He wasn’t divorced yet but he kept well away from Lil. She was a tough bird. I knew that three seconds after she slapped me.

  —When I came up from down in Galilee, said Louis, —I used to sit the hat right on top. The country boy.

  He took my new hat and showed me.

  —But Lil showed me how to park it the Chicago way, like you walking into the wind.

  He took the hat off and studied it.

  —Our heads the same size, Pops, near ’bout. Maybe I get one that match.

  —That’d be sissified, Louis.

  —I hear you, Pops.

  She slapped me again. She had to jump to reach my head, but she did it and it stung. The silence around us was louder than the slap. A black woman had just hit a white man. It was a slap that had to be followed. We both knew that. But she didn’t give a fuck. She was tiny, lovely and mad.

  —Get out of my way, she said.

  I was in front of Louis’s dressing room door. Mister Armstrong wasn’t receiving visitors. That was what I’d told the little woman who’d decided to walk around me, just before she’d changed her mind and slapped me.

  —I am no visitor, she said. —I am Missis Louis Armstrong.

  That was big news. (This was a few days before he bought me the fedora.) I thought the woman in the dressing room with him was Missis Louis Armstrong. (It would be months before I caught up with him; he was running away from more than Lil.) And now she’d slapped me, twice across the face, and it didn’t matter who she was and who was in there with him, because we were out here and a black woman had just slapped a white man and something had to be done.

  I picked her up.

  —Say!

  Two of the club flunkies were filling the narrow corridor, rolling towards us. These were black, downstairs guys who would hammer her, one of their own, when they got her outside. They’d beat her to the street – it was what they’d have to do. I picked her up and turned, so my back was between them and her. She kicked and fought. I spoke quietly over my shoulder.

  —I’ll deal with this cunt, lads.

  It was the only thing that would stop them, the words that would let them know that she’d be getting what was coming. And they couldn’t take her off a white man.

  I was learning.

  I took her out to the alley. (For a city so young, it had a lot of alleys.)
I put her down and held her. The fight was out of her; she’d had time to think a bit.

  —Who is he with?

  I didn’t answer.

  —He’s still my husband, she said.

  She looked at the ground, and up again – she made herself – and she looked at me good and hard, and down again, but not before I’d seen the shame and hatred.

  —Henry Smart, I said.

  I held out my hand. She took it. I could feel them in my palm, the nut-hard fingertips of a piano player. And I recognised her. She’d been playing with Louis, the first time I heard him, when I met Dora. (I hadn’t seen Dora in months.) This was Lil Hardin. She’d played with Joe Oliver, I found out later, when Louis first came to Chicago. That was how they’d met. Lil Hardin Armstrong.

  She looked up.

  —Who are you? You’re new. Are you Louis’s manager?

  —No, I said. —I’m only a friend.

  Her face became a sneer before she’d the time to hide it.

  —I made that man what he is, she said. —Did he tell you that, you being his friend and all?

  —No, he didn’t.

  —The World’s Greatest Trumpet Player. I was calling him that before he knew the truth of it. And I made others call him that too. Before I believed it. He used to hide himself away behind Joe Oliver. Mister Second Fiddle. But then he met me. He’s with that Alpha, isn’t he?

  That was her name, the woman I’d thought was his wife.

  I said nothing.

  She looked lost now, and still smaller.

  —I know what happened, she said.

  She would have talked to anyone.

  —He heard the boys calling him Henpeck. That was what they called him. Because I was doing those things for him and he was letting me do them and they didn’t believe that Little Louie was the greatest trumpet player in the world, or in the city, even though they heard the evidence every night. He was just Joe Oliver’s boy and they liked him that way. Couldn’t even dress himself, like he needed to. I told him to lose some of his weight. Little Louie! I got him the right food. I made Lou-is Armstrong out of him and now he wants to forget it. He’s with that Alpha Smith. Isn’t he?

  —Yes, I said.

  —If I sat on the bed, he told me later, —after it was made up, why, Lil would go into fits. Weren’t ever no home, Pops. Fine and all as it was. And poor Clarence.

  —Who’s Clarence?

  —My adopted son, he said proudly, and smiled. —Pretty hard keeping up?

  —Yeah.

  —Yes sir, Clarence my boy since I was a boy. Been calling me Papa since he was a little shaver in dresses. They call him feebleminded. ’Count of a accident; fell off a porch. My porch, down home in New Orleans.

  He swept his hand across his trouser legs, brushed them.

  —Porch was one storey high from the ground. Landed directly on his head. Doctors said the fall set him back four years behind the average. Called it feeble-minded. He ain’t slow. Pops, not with me. But he different. He nervous. Made my blood boil to hear Lil holler at him.

  We were in a taxi, going somewhere that was making him nervous.

  —And her mother, Pops, my my. Won’t call her a mama. She nobody’s mama. But she a mother, Lil and that lady have some bad tempers.

  He slapped his hands on his legs.

  —And then I met Alpha.

  He looked at me.

  —I ever tell you about Daisy? The very first Missis Armstrong?

  He laughed.

  —Another time, Pops. But, hey, I weren’t the only one tomcatting in and out of that marriage. Lil had herself a sweet man.

  —She said she made you, I told him.

  —That fair, he said. —She put my name up in lights, first one to. And she showed me how to carry a hat. I ain’t denying nothing. But listen here, Pops. On whose big mouth be the chops that blow the horn?

  —Fair enough.

  —Fair ee-nuff. I have my horn to keep me warm.

  The taxi stopped outside the hotel.

  —Stick to me, O’Pops.

  The voice was always a growl; it took hard reading. But I was learning. There was serious business ahead. He was nervous, staying in charge.

  He paid, and my new boots creaked as we climbed out of the cab.

  —Know why we travelling by cab these days? said Louis.

  —Why?

  —Had to sell my nice automobile to pay for those big ol’ squeaky boots you have to have.

  He wasn’t joking. He was broke. His last folding dollar was driving away in the taxi.

  I followed him to the hotel steps. He lifted his coat at the shoulders and let it settle again. And he shifted his hat a quarter-inch.

  —How’m I looking, Smoked? he said.

  —Sharp.

  —Sharp as a Norwegian, he said. —Forty-dollar velour hat, marimba grey overcoat, shoes that can’t lose. But still a nigger. Stick to me.

  Up the steps, to a revolving door. I could see the guys, placed at perfect random on the street, on the steps, at the twirling door, inside. I very carefully didn’t look at them. Behind papers, watching the world, yawning, playing with toothpicks, leaning against cars, in good suits with pockets reinforced for gun-weight – a few of them at first, but they were everywhere, dozens of them and dozens more I hadn’t seen and wouldn’t. Not one of them looked away or pretended to be busy. These guys weren’t undercover; they were the Outfit and not interested in hiding. This was the city where a squad car was yours for the hailing, if you knew who was who, a Cadillac with a bell on it. These boys were sharper than the New York boys, slicker. Pink Carmine wasn’t among them – I didn’t see him – but I wondered what I was doing, strolling squeakily into the middle of this gang. I’d gone thousands of miles and five years to avoid men like these ones, and here I was, following Louis. Into the Lexington Hotel.

  He hit the revolving glass and we sailed in; I packed myself beside him. I kept my hat on.

  —Mister Capone is in the building, said Louis. —He bring some of his friends.

  —Jesus, I said. —What’s he like?

  —Nice little cute fat boy, said Louis. —Just like me.

  No one stopped us; no one stepped into our path. It was a hotel, even if there was a guy dressed in spats and a tommy gun leaning his back against the piano, a white grand that could have housed three South Side families.

  —These guys are all Italian, right? I said.

  —Relax, O’Pops. You’re long way from home. Fair ee-nuff?

  —Fair enough.

  —Cha cha.

  The lobby was huge, deep and high, cut by marble stairs that swung away to left and right. A bellhop stopped when he saw the face under Louis’s hat.

  —Hiyah, Lou-ee.

  Louis beamed, and whispered at the hop’s back.

  —Mis-ter Armstrong is well.

  He stood his ground for a minute. As I got to know him I noticed that he always did this when he entered a public place, where he was likely to be the only black man: he stood. It was a challenge, a yell – and no one knew.

  —The chappie on the stairs, he said. —One-Lung Aiello.

  —Why One-Lung? I asked.

  —He got two, far as I know. He took one from another nice man. Brought it on a platter – like in the Bible – to Mister Capone’s little brother, Francis.

  —Why?

  —No answer ever explain it. Though Francis was dead by the time Mister One-Lung brought him the plate. I love Chicago, Smoked. It’s complicated. I like that. The nice man at the piano. Don’t look, but see him?

  —Yeah.

  —Polack Joe.

  —But he’s not Polish.

  —Right, said Louis. —And he don’t even know his name is Polack Joe.

  —How come?

  —Something to do with his wife.

  —Who isn’t Polish either.

  —Right the second time.

  —But the lad who fucked her behind his back was.

  —Wrong, Pop
s. Hungarian.

  —So how come Polack Joe?

  —Sound better than Hungarian Joe. Easier to say behind your hand. Didn’t bring my atlas today, but Poland beside Hungary, I guess. Close enough. Like Polack Joe’s wife and her nice Hungarian friend. And Polack Joe is a angry man. He knows Missis Joe has been some place, he just don’t know where. Thinks his name is Big Joe. I’m ready.

  —Lead the way.

  —No, Pops, said Louis. —This time you do. Earn the boots.

  Not one guest had come or gone, checked in or signed out, while we’d chatted in the lobby. The bellhop hadn’t hopped. The place was awash with silent hoods.

  —Where to? I said.

  —Yonder. He’ll be sitting down and he’ll be eating peanuts. Walk straight up to his face. Like you know him and don’t like him a whole lot of much. After you, Smoked.

  We took a route to the right, through some of the quiet lads – I looked at them but not for long, enough to let them know that I was fine, no one to annoy or interest them – a confident man, not too confident, handsome, at ease on the rug, packing nothing, going somewhere but in no mad hurry – into the darkness of the Geronimo Room.

  A crack from my left boot brought a hand up to a sagging pocket, but it was fine. The hand went back down; the eyes moved away from mine. I walked in, through the double doors, and straight up to the only man in the place sitting down.

  And Louis passed me.

  —Mister Glaser, he said, as he sat into the leather chair at the other side of the low marble table.

  This was Joe Glaser. Manager of the Sunset Café, at 35th and Calumet, where the name of Louis Armstrong had been well and truly made; this was the man who first billed Louis as the World’s Greatest Trumpet Player – Lil’s words, Glaser’s lights – before the world beyond jazz had started listening. Glaser was young but didn’t look it. The smile he gave Louis was a fixed thing; it gave him the freedom to glare. His hair was pulled back by more oil than I’d seen on a head before. There were stories doing the rounds: the man was a rapist, a baby fucker, the daddy of kids he wouldn’t own up to. He was in on the rackets, and well in with Capone. The Sunset was a black and tan; the music was black but the clientele was black and white – six hundred on a good night, and they’d all been good since Glaser had taken over. I’d been to the Sunset but I hadn’t seen Glaser. He scared me. There was something about him, something about the way he watched Louis and the world to his right and left, the eyes that glared and hid: the stories about him were true, and there were more things in his past and present that would never become stories. He was dangerous, and the floor around him was covered in peanut shells. They were right under my boots.