Handling Sin

by Malone, Michael

  A suntanned man in a blue blazer stopped at Raleigh’s table, and whispered to him, “Pardon me, the maître d’ said you were associated with this group? What did they say their name was?”

  “…Ah, they’re not actually a, ah, formally, a group. They’re just backing up Miss Rogers tonight. Billie Rogers.”

  So keep on looking for a bluebird…and listening for his song. “I see.…She has a very exciting voice.”

  Raleigh nodded.

  The man looked at the stage awhile, then bent back down.

  “Excuse me. Who’s the saxophonist?” Raleigh looked at the man’s manicured fingernails and gold watch bracelet. Then he smiled. “Ah, you recognized him? Yes, that’s Toutant Kingstree.”

  “Pardon? Kingstree? Where does he usually play? He’s not local, is he? I’m fairly familiar with New Orleans jazz.”

  “Well, just lately he’s been touring through the Southeast, but, ah, he was away quite a long time. Paris, Stockholm, Berlin. You know.”

  “I see. Do you represent him?”

  “No.”

  “Thank you. Sorry to interrupt.”

  “Shhh,” said Gates, as Raleigh tried to theorize about this encounter. “Quiet. Weep’s going for the gold.”

  With his dyed curled hair and open red shirt, the former convict looked, as he pulled his bass fiddle closer to Mingo Sheffield at the piano, like an aging Puerto Rican street musician. As soon as Kingstree ended an introductory slow, high, bird call of notes, Mingo struck a chord with his right hand, and with his left, held two fingers up toward Berg, then one, then four, then two again. Simon Berg leaned his cheek against the fiddle’s neck, and—as he told Gates Hayes later that night when they walked along the wharf to their freighter, past the towering crates of rubber and sugar and coffee and rice—he played “direct from heaven.”

  Believe me. I’m always chasing rainbows. Waiting to find a little bluebird in vain. Raleigh moved quickly through the applause to the edge of the dais when he saw his father beckon. “You okay, Daddy?”

  “Just fine.” Earley wiped his forehead with his arm. “How about Billie, hunh? And look at her. Oh my. ‘A young hart upon the mountains of spices,’ isn’t she though?”

  Raleigh smiled at the girl. Yes, she had the strange beauty still so startling in her grandfather. She swept the hair off the back of her neck and shook it, cooling herself, the sheen of her raised slender arms like the color of almonds. “How do you feel?” he asked her.

  “I love it!” she said.

  “Hi, Raleigh!” Mingo shouted from the piano bench. “What do we sound like out there?”

  “Like a million dollars.”

  “Sheffield, listen up.” The saxophonist turned to the piano. “She decided to skip ‘Body and Soul,’ go to ‘Blackbird.’ You wanna come in on the vocal, like we tried? Second verse. Take it a third down.”

  Raleigh said, “Just a second, Daddy. I’ve got your old trumpet, you want it?”

  “No, but tell you what you could do. Downstairs in the office where we changed? Look in my cassock, there’s a little bottle of pills. You want to bring them up for me? And some water? Oops, here he goes. Toutant doesn’t mess around. I’m just hanging on to his coattails, catching a great ride!”

  Could make me be true…could make me feel blue, And even be glad…just to be sad… It took Raleigh a while to find someone to show him where the office was, then let him into it. Finally he found the cassock thrown over a chair beneath Mingo’s green sports jacket. The pills must have fallen out of the pocket because he eventually felt the bottle on the floor under the desk.

  While Raleigh worked his way back toward the dais, Mingo’s voice soared happily toward him, in harmony with Billie’s.

  Make my bed and light the light. I’ll arrive late tonight Blackbird, bye bye. Raleigh placed the pills and water glass on the piano top. He noticed that Simon Berg’s bass fiddle was leaning against his chair, but that the old criminal was no longer on the stage. Turning quickly, he looked back at their table. It was empty. At Gates’s place, the yellow trumpet stood on its end, a long-stem red rose stuck in its mouthpiece.

  If I had Aladdin’s lamp for only a day, I’d make a wish and here’s what I’d say… At the end of the second set, Raleigh asked his father to sit the next one out. “You did it, Daddy. Now, just call it a night. It’s after midnight.”

  “It is? Well then, you know what today is?” Earley sat on the dais floor, propped against the back of the piano, hugging his arms to his chest.

  “April first,” said Raleigh, whose watch told him so.

  “It is? April Fool’s? Well, I’ll be damned. Now, There’s a Jesus joke for you. What I meant was, it’s Good Friday. Now, that’s funny, Raleigh. Old Jesus is hanging there, they’re jabbing swords in Him and shoving vinegar at Him, and He flops over dead, then He winks open one eye, see, and says, ‘April Fool’s.’ ”

  “Ha ha,” said Raleigh. “If you went around in your church saying things like that, it’s no wonder they fired you. You know, a lot of people don’t find the Crucifixion a comic matter.”

  “Well, the joke’s on them.” Holding onto Raleigh’s arm, the old man pulled himself up.

  I’d say to the stars, stop where you are. Light up my lover’s way. When Raleigh’s aunt returned to her seat, she folded her hands tightly together on top of her purse, and stared at them without speaking. The strong jaw was as firm as ever, but her nose sharpened as she sought silently to slow her breathing. Raleigh leaned forward, looking into her lowered eyes, and then, suddenly, instantaneously, leaping over words, he felt what she was feeling. Down the back of his neck he felt it, and he twisted around in his chair, saying, “Where is he?” But he saw him at once, before she could have answered. Standing apart from the press of people near the door, in one hand a small old tan suitcase, in the other the black clarinet case, Jubal Rogers leaned against the far wall, listening. His rumpled suit was the same silvered black as his hair, and his thin black tie shimmered against the white shirt. Rogers’s head was turned toward the music, his chin lifted, his arms motionless, as if he’d forgotten they carried luggage. On the dais, Billie stood between Toutant and Earley, the two horns and her voice talking to each other, following and leading one another down through the melody into the song.

  Cried last night, and the night before, Gonna cry tonight, and then I’ll cry no more. “Don’t you want me to ask him to join us, Aunt Vicky? He’s just standing there.”

  “No.”

  “When did you know he was coming?”

  “When I saw him.”

  “Well, Daddy and Billie have no idea he’s here. Did you ever tell them that Toutant had called him in Charleston for you?”

  “No.”

  “All right. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry.” Raleigh picked up the trumpet. “I’m going back up there and just sit with Daddy for a while, all right?”

  “Yes…Just excuse me, Raleigh, I’m…”

  “It’s okay. Don’t worry.” He brushed his hand quickly over hers.

  They sparkle, they bubble,

  They’re gonna getcha in a whole lot of trouble. Hands were waving at several tables in response to Allen Thornhill’s call for requests for the last set. On the dais, Raleigh saw Jubal Rogers suddenly push forward from the wall and start toward them.

  “Hey, man!” Toutant called to him. “You made it! Get up here, we’re rolling!”

  “Yeah.” Rogers’s impenetrable gold-flecked eyes stayed on Billie. “You’re Billie Rogers,” he said. “Well, my name is Jubal Rogers.”

  The girl nodded solemnly back. “I know. I saw you over there listening. I could tell it was you.” Suddenly she smiled. “Hi.”

  Raleigh was sitting beside his father. He felt the small body tense, then let go, the breath leaving like a low soft wind.

  Billie said, “We figured you weren’t coming. We waited in the square all day.”

  “I couldn’t make it then.” Jubal’s head now tilted down towa
rd Earley. “I’m too old to play hide and seek.” He pulled a worn thick wrinkled bank envelope from inside his jacket. As soon as Raleigh saw it, he knew the $4,500 was inside. “This belongs to you,” Rogers said, and dropped the envelope on the floor in front of Earley’s chair.

  Earley nodded, staring up at the still eyes. “Okay.” Then he said, “I’m real glad to see you. God, you look just the same.”

  “Yeah. I am just the same.”

  Earley nodded again. “Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.”

  “This doesn’t have a thing to do with you, Earley.”

  “I know.”

  “And it doesn’t change a thing.”

  “Thanks for coming, Jubal.”

  “Hi, Mr. Rogers, my name’s Mingo Sheffield. I’ve heard so much about you, and boy, this is just great. You don’t know what this means to Billie! Well, that’s stupid. Of course you do, or you wouldn’t be here, would you? Did you have a good trip?”

  Allen Thornhill played a roll on his drums, and Toutant swung the saxophone forward, saying, “Y’all gonna talk, or y’all gonna play? Let’s go. ‘Honeysuckle Rose.’ Same way we did it before, Mingo, laid back. That’s okay, Earley, listen, sit it out. Catch your breath. Jubal, we could use you, if you feel up to it. All right. F’s the key, just follow me.” The tall man grinned. “Anyhow, try to.”

  Flowers droop and sigh, when you wander by… Billie Rogers twisted the mike stand closer and raised her arms to the applause. “Thank you. Wow. Thank you very much. And thank you, Thomas Fats Waller.” A man in the back of the room whistled. “Hey! Right!…You people sure have made this a lot of fun. Listen, I want to, you know, introduce somebody now, and see if we can’t get him to play something with us.” She walked to the edge of the dais, and put her hand through the arm of the crumpled black suit. “This is my grandfather, Mr. Jubal Rogers from Charleston.” Smiling, people clapped, as she drew the man forward up onto the stage.

  Fastening on the old ebony mouthpiece, Rogers said, “Okay, girl…what can you sing?”

  “What can you play?”

  His chin jerked up. “Anything that’s got music.”

  Billie nodded. “Well, I can sing anything that’s got words.” Toutant Kingstree laughed.

  “That so?” said Rogers, testing his reed.

  “…Yeah. It is.”

  “Okay…You know ‘Mother’s Son-in- Law’?”

  “Sure.”

  “Kingstree and I’ll do the first sixteen. I’m going to take it fast. You be ready.”

  She raised an eyebrow, then smiled. “Ready and waiting,” she said.

  You don’t have to have a hanker…to be a broker or a banker. No-sir-re, just simply be…my mother’s son-in-law. Allen Thornhill was standing behind his drums, applauding too, so that Raleigh couldn’t hear at first what his father was saying. “Sorry, Daddy? Help you what?” He bent over the chair, putting his ear beside the man’s tightened lips. All color had faded from the lips and the cheeks, so that the eyes looked even bluer.

  Earley’s voice was a thin cool whisper. “Help me out.” “You want to leave? Want me to get a doctor? Let’s go.” Earley shook his head. “No, I want you to do me a favor. Will

  you?”

  Raleigh’s pulse jumped in his neck. “Of course. What is it?” “We were planning on doing one of my favorites at the end.

  Howsoever.” Earley shifted in the metal chair, and smiled. “It appears I don’t have the heart for it.”

  “Daddy, don’t joke around.”

  “Stand in for me. Time to bring on the bench, right? Oh, sure

  you can! ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.’ Just the melody line,

  that’s all. Nothing to worry about. Jubal and Toutant will cover

  you…like a rainbow.”

  “I’m sorry, but—”

  “Quit saying no, Raleigh. I know you know the tune. Remember

  the first time we did it?”

  Raleigh didn’t think he remembered, but then he saw himself

  standing in the makeshift circus ring with his father, the two trumpets side by side.

  Earley pushed his fist against his breastbone. “It was the reunion

  Hackney hit that homer right up into the park lights. Remember

  that?”

  I can be lonely out in a crowd. I can be humble. I can be proud. Earley asked Raleigh to lend him back his jacket because he was cold. But he wouldn’t go down to the office to lie down, and he wouldn’t go back to the table where Victoria still sat, her hands folded on her purse. “It’s because that damn chair’s freezing. That’s all. I’m just going to sit on the floor here and lean on your friend’s piano. I like the way the music feels.”

  “Daddy, you aren’t making any sense.”

  “Well, haven’t you been telling me that for years?” He handed his son the old trumpet, then leaned his head around the corner of the piano. “Hey, Toutant, man, you think this is what Heaven sounds like?”

  “Depends on who they got up there now,” laughed the saxophonist.

  “Listen, y’all, this has all been a little much for an old man. Mind if I send in a substitute? He’s got a sweet style, I’ve heard him play.” Earley patted Raleigh’s knee. “I swear, Specs, it’s the last crazy thing I’ll ever ask you to do.”

  Raleigh rubbed the trumpet against his leg. “Honestly, it’s not that I won’t. I just couldn’t…I’m, I’m…not like you people. I can’t play by ear. I have to have things written down.”

  “Got a piece of paper?”

  “Oh Daddy.” Raleigh felt down into the breast pocket of the jacket now wrapped around his father, and found the small account book. “Here. Dammit, I don’t believe I’m doing this.”

  Maybe Tuesday will be my good news day… Propped against the back of the upright piano, his small legs hugged to his chest. Earley Hayes reached his hand up to put it around Raleigh’s over the trumpet. The hand was cold. The blue eyes closed, and, smiling, he said, “Play me on out, son.”

  Raleigh knelt down close to him. “Don’t say that. You aren’t going anywhere.”

  The chest rose and fell. Then a blue eye blinked open. “By fuck, I hope I am.”

  And Raleigh swallowed a taste like vinegar, and said something he never would have expected to say. “…Let me know. I’ll be listening.”

  “Listen up,” said Toutant Kingstree. “Y’all ready?” His foot began its slow steady tap. Raleigh Hayes, his tie precisely knotted, his cuff links glittering, pushed on his glasses, and checked again the piece of paper carefully stuck to the top of Berg’s fiddle. He watched Kingstree’s shoe, then his own began to move with it. “And one. And two. And…”

  I can’t give you anything but love, baby. That’s the only thing I’ve plenty of, baby. Raleigh, staring hard at the shaky block-printed letters—G, F#, E, G—could still see in the corner of his eye Kingstree turn around and nod at him, then step back beside Billie and Jubal Rogers. Mingo swiveled on his stool and raised one fat pink thumb, the other hand bouncing over the keys. Down at the edge of the upright piano, Raleigh could see the shoulder of his father’s red shirt, and his bare thin white arm, and his small hand clasped around the neck of the golden horn.

  Dream awhile, scheme awhile, you’re sure to find Happiness, and I guess… Above the music, Raleigh heard the sharp sound the trumpet made falling over. He turned his head and saw the horn’s gold fluted bell rock once back and forth on the hollow floor. Then the gold blurred, glistening brighter, and Raleigh couldn’t blink his eyes clear enough to read the piece of paper.

  And it was strange to him, a man who had rested his life on his reason, that while he couldn’t see the notes at all, he nevertheless kept on playing, because he could hear them.

  Chapter 34

  Showing Our Hero’s Return Home “RALEIGH, I GUESS WE HAVE TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE. He died happy, and that’s more than a lot of people do. I mean, just think how he would have felt if you hadn’t gotten there, and Gates, a
nd everybody having such a nice dinner together, and the band being such a big hit, and all. Gosh, I wish my daddy had died like that, instead of all by himself in the bathroom after he’d just finished yelling at us for leaving too many lights on. Uh oh, are we moving? It’s not supposed to sound like that, is it, Raleigh? Is it? Is it supposed to shake like that? Raleigh, Raleigh!” Mingo Sheffield’s eyes were squeezed shut and his fat hands gripped the orange armrests of his seat, as the jet roared up over rice fields now sown by planes, and sugar plantations now cultivated by machines, up into the black sky of stars, over the sparkle of New Orleans.

  It was a first-class seat, because two stewardesses had finally agreed that it was simply physically impossible to mash, wad, or otherwise compress Mingo into a coach seat, and that leaving him on top of the armrests was bound to be against safety regulations. On this night-owl flight to Atlanta and then Raleigh-Durham, the “Business Club” section was in any case nearly empty; Victoria Hayes could have sat comfortably in the front of the plane with the two Thermopyleans, but she preferred to stay back in coach by herself. Like her nephew, it was her long habit to think alone.

  Raleigh was taking his father’s body home. He had not slept in the more than twenty-four hours that had passed since the ambulance screamed down the alley to The Cave, since doctors pronounced Earley Hayes dead on arrival at the hospital. “Massive coronary thrombosis. Doubt he ever knew what hit him,” the doctors pronounced, but Raleigh knew better than that. Then came more than twenty-four of those busy hours with which the world kindly anesthetizes grief and numbs shock, by paperwork and phone calls and the placebo of hundreds of preposterous necessary details. This was the busy world where Raleigh felt at home and gratefully he hurled himself at its frustrations, knocking over the inert pillars of bureaucracies with ruthless demands for a speedy death certificate, autopsy, embalmment, flight arrangements. Loss had not stunned him into the bewildered passivity on which funeral industries thrive. Instead he’d grown cunning and aggressive and stubborn. He’d demanded forms, argued costs, jumped lines, grabbed telephones, insisted on priorities, and cut his way with lies through the yards of tape that shroud modern death. He told a doctor named Farbstein that he had to hurry the burial because his father was Jewish. He told a mortician named O’Bannion that his “uncle’s” body had to reach North Carolina Saturday because a Catholic archbishop was flying there to say the funeral mass. As for burying his “uncle” in an old cassock with a trumpet in his hands, he said the vestment had been worn at the priest’s first mass, and the horn had been played at the Vatican. He told the chauffeur driving the hired hearse that he’d give him a twenty-dollar tip if he made it to the airport by threeA.M., and he told the highway patrolman who pulled them over for speeding that he was fighting to get his father’s body on a plane in time for a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. Only on three occasions, from Thursday night (or rather one A.M. Good Friday morning), when, running to the piano, he’d pressed his fingers to his father’s neck, until four in the morning on Saturday, when a forklift raised the casket into the belly of the plane, had Raleigh faltered. Once was in the first of his many long-distance calls to Aura; then, her sudden terrible sobs unloosed his own, until finally Victoria had to pry the receiver from the clenched hand holding it against his chest.