She’d even worked out a schedule. El would come see James at their house on Sunday night. After a good sermon and a long, relaxing meal with their friends at Earl’s, James would be more likely to forgive her for interfering even though he’d told her not to. At least she hoped so.
Part of her had argued that she should stay out of this and let James sort out his feelings on his own. But now James hardly slept, and when he did, he talked out loud to his long-dead mother. During the day, her normally quiet James had gone nearly silent. And he had beaten a man. The voice in her head that advised backing off had been drowned out by the sound of Aunt Marjorie bellowing, “Do what’s right for right now, and clean up the mess later.”
When Odette had arrived at the green house, she’d tapped her knuckles against the front door. No one had answered. Knowing that El was getting around with the help of a prosthetic foot and a walker, she waited for a while before rapping on the door again. When she didn’t receive an answer to her third barrage of knocks, she left the front stoop to investigate.
She peeked into the living room window first. Through the glass, she saw a large, cheerful bouquet of pink and yellow roses that seemed out of place on the battered coffee table in the center of the room. She guessed that the flowers had come courtesy of Barbara Jean. When she didn’t spot El, she went to the next window. On tiptoe, she peered into an empty dining room. Then she walked around the house toward the backyard.
Odette saw El through the first of the two kitchen windows on the west side of the house. He sat, unnaturally still, at a small table across the room. His walker stood just behind his chair, and his guitar lay across his lap. Dead?
She moved to the next window for a better look and saw that El’s eyes were open. His face was turned toward the window through which she’d first seen him. Perhaps his eyes were following her. She wasn’t sure. She walked to the rear of the house and climbed two weathered wooden steps leading to the back door.
Through the glass of the door, she saw El, just a few feet away. She knocked, but it was only after she turned the knob and pushed the door open that he looked her way. She slowly walked toward him across the creaking floor while he gawked at her as if she were something other than human.
She pulled back an empty chair at the table, sat down, and introduced herself. “I’m Odette. I’m married to James. We need to talk.”
El adjusted his guitar in his lap, then lifted the whiskey bottle to his lips and took a swallow. “You were a leopard. Then you were my guitar.”
For the first time that day, but not the last, Odette wondered if she should call for paramedics. With all the time she’d spent at University Hospital dealing with her own health problems, she’d had her fill of the place. And just one day had passed since Clarice had summoned her to the emergency room after what had turned out to be just the latest chapter in the long history of trouble caused by Richmond’s genitalia. She was relieved when, focusing more clearly, El said, “Your coat. My guitar looks like your coat.”
Odette was wearing the leopard-print jacket Clarice had given her years earlier. She looked from her sleeve to the guitar propped against El’s belly. “I guess they do look alike.”
It was then that Odette took in the items arrayed on the table—the pills, the whiskey, the plastic bag. This selfish man was ready to check out and leave James with the same old questions and anger. The shred of sympathy she had felt toward El upon recognizing the physical similarities between him and James disappeared.
She said, “Your plans for this afternoon have just changed. You won’t be killing yourself today.”
El sputtered, “I wasn’t gonna do no such thing.”
Odette held up a hand to stop him. “I’m not gonna waste my time arguing with you about this. You don’t get to die yet. You’ve got unfinished business.”
El opened his clenched fist and let a handful of white pills fall onto the table. He stared down at them and said, “I got no business with you or anybody else anymore. If you could leave me alone, I’d appreciate it.”
“I know this is gonna sound cold, considering that you’re clearly in a bad way. My own mother says I’m a hard woman, and maybe she’s right. But the truth is, the only man I’m feeling sorry for right now is my husband. James is the one trying to make sense of everything you did to him and his mother. He’s the one who’d end up paying for you to get a decent burial. He’d do that, you know. James would suck down all his anger to see to it that you got a respectful send-off. He would do it because, no matter how good a husband and father and man James is, he never believes that he’s good enough. He’s got to prove it, over and over again. So, you see, I couldn’t feel sorry for you even if I wanted to. I’m too busy being pissed off about what you’ve taken from my husband and how you were prepared to leave this earth and take a little more.”
She placed her elbows on the table and scooted forward in her chair until she was close enough to smell the alcohol on his breath. “Nobody takes nothin’ from my James.”
El inched away from her.
“I was going to try to set up a meeting between you and James, but I’m thinking now that I’ll have to do something else,” Odette said.
The further she stepped into El and James’s conflict, the more she knew she shouldn’t. But it was too late now. The mess she’d have to clean up was growing, and she couldn’t stop adding to the pile.
She pushed one of the pills around on the tabletop with her index finger. Then she sat back in her chair. “You’re gonna have to come with me.”
“Look,” El said, “you’re wrong about me killing myself. I was just gettin’ some stuff organized here. If James wants to talk to me, that’ll be okay. We should just do it on another day.”
Odette’s hand sprang up again. “Two things. First, everything I know about you leads me to think that trusting your word isn’t the smartest move a person can make. Second, this isn’t about what James wants. It’s about what he needs, and I’m in charge of that right now. Let’s get your stuff together. You’ll stay with James and me, so I can keep an eye on you till you two come to some kind of reckoning.”
She grabbed the plastic bag on the table and shoveled the pain pills into it with a swipe of her hand. “I promise you can still kill yourself later, if you’ve got to. I won’t stop you.”
El said, “You’re Marjorie’s kin. That’s for damn sure.”
Odette said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Thinking out loud, she said, “James is out fishing. I can get you settled in while he’s gone. We’ll figure out later what to do with you when we go to Chicago.”
“Chicago?”
“Clarice is playing a concert there, and James and I are going. That’s still a week and change away. We’ll figure that out when the time comes. For now, let’s get you packed up.”
She prepared herself for more arguing. Then, just as she was wondering if she had enough of Aunt Marjorie in her to drag an eighty-year-old man out to her car against his will, El became cooperative. He began the lengthy, awkward process of rising from his chair. After carefully placing his guitar in the case that leaned against his walker, he said, “I’m about ready. All I’ve got is what’s here and a couple things in the bedroom up front.”
* * *
AS ODETTE AND El drove across town, he pressed his nose against the passenger-side window and watched the early summer greenery of Plainview pass by. For the first time since coming back to Indiana, he felt that there was a reason for his return. From the moment he had seen Raja bounding onto the back steps and then bursting into the room, things had changed. Sixty years ago, El had walked into a pawnshop on his way to quitting music forever. Instead, he’d found his leopard-spotted guitar. Now his father had sent Raja to him in the guise of James’s big woman, and the leopard herself had said that El had unfinished business.
Thank you, Daddy.
He would follow this new incarnation of Raja. He would make things as right as he
could with James. He would accompany the leopard to Chicago and rescue Lily, as he should have done all those years ago.
CHAPTER 24
El went to jail for the first time in 1953, after he’d been an addict for nearly a year. His band had just left the stage after their first set at a tavern in Louisville when the police raided the place for liquor law violations. In the process, the cops happened upon a thriving heroin sales operation. Back then, customers purchased the drug in capsules that were wrapped in aluminum foil. When the police burst in, squares of foil were tossed from pockets and purses throughout the tavern until the floor was covered with what looked like a shimmering silver carpet. When El was searched, it was discovered that he had neglected to get rid of an empty capsule he had tucked into his shirt pocket. The other band members had been more thorough than El, so he was arrested while they were all released.
There hadn’t been enough heroin on him to make a possession charge stick. But the district attorney’s office kept him locked up as long as they could, hoping to sweat him until he gave up his dealer. His one-night Kentucky gig turned into three months away from home.
The police had been sure that Bubba, the band’s sax player, was the dealer. Bubba fit the cops’ image of a pusher. He was black. He wore flashy clothes and carried himself with the smoothness of an outlaw. Between his attitude and his size, he was the kind of man who could stroll through a crowd of tough characters with cash bursting from his pockets without the slightest fear that anyone would dare to touch him. But Bubba was far too busy juggling his dangerous women to handle the demands of a drug business.
El’s foster brother Harold had been dealing to the band and all of the other users at the Pink Slipper since he was a high school junior. Unlike Bubba, Harold didn’t look the part. Long-limbed and hulking, Harold was already losing his hair at twenty. His round, pink face always shone with perspiration, and he had a country way about him that he could crank up to a higher volume when it suited him. Good ol’ boy Harold could run right past a phalanx of police with a pile of white powder in his cupped palms and the cops would suspect only that he was a harried farmer rushing home to bake bread. The police interviewed everyone in the band after raiding the Louisville joint, but they never once asked about Harold during those interrogations or during El’s weeks behind bars. They were interested in Bubba and didn’t want to hear about anyone else.
Even if the cops had been willing to suspect someone other than Bubba, El wouldn’t have given up Harold. They weren’t as close friends as they’d been when they were kids. But they were brothers. El couldn’t snitch.
Also, Harold had become the band’s manager in early ’52. Drug dealer and band manager were one combined position in lots of bands back then. It made things easier. Only Lily and Bubba abstained, so most of the band’s money was going to drugs anyway. This way, they skipped the middleman. Harold had turned out to be a pretty good manager. He had a head for numbers, and he was more ambitious than any of the musicians in the group. After taking the reins, he booked the band in blues clubs throughout the middle third of the country.
It was Harold who set up the gig that turned Marcus Henry into El Walker. They had gone to Chicago to play at a little South Side place called the Blues Pot. The club paid their performers next to nothing, but the word on the street was that record company executives regularly showed up there. The rumor about the record execs turned out to be entirely untrue, though El and the other band members didn’t know that at the time. For three nights, El, Lily, and the rest of the musicians gave the club’s audience their very best.
The Blues Pot was one of the nicer places on the circuit. The outside walls were sky blue. A huge guitar-shaped white sign with a robust 1930s-style, blues-shouting woman painted on it hung above the front door. Inside, there was a beautiful oak bar and a minuscule but well-lit stage. The seating area was small but comfortable. Unfortunately, the Blues Pot sat just yards away from Chicago’s famed elevated train tracks. Every time the “L” passed, it created such a racket that nothing else could be heard until the train was gone.
The band was performing the first song of the set when the “L” came by. Lily surrendered and stopped singing as the metallic roar grew. But because they had been near the climax of the song, El refused to be outdone by the clatter of the train. He battled on, increasing the volume of his voice until the thundering train was only the second-loudest sound in the room.
At the end of the set, the club owner came to the stage and slapped El on the back. “You outsang the ‘L,’ son. That’s a first here.”
Calling Marcus Henry “‘L’ Train” became an inside joke among the band members. It was eventually shortened to “El.” The surname Walker came a few years later, courtesy of another band manager who thought El’s guitar-playing style was similar to T-Bone Walker’s. T-Bone was still riding high with “Call It Stormy Monday,” and El’s manager thought they could create some confusion and make a few bucks off it. No one mistook El for the more famous Walker, but—unlike Marcus Henry—no arrest warrants had been issued for El Walker. So he hung on to the name.
When El was finally set free from the Louisville jail, his first stop back in Indiana was the Pink Slipper. He walked into the club in the late afternoon and found the place occupied by a few of the usual early drinkers and daytime hustlers. As El had expected, Harold was there, doing business at a booth in a back corner. El stopped at the bar and put a shot of whiskey on his tab. Then he headed over to see his foster brother.
El sat down across from Harold in the booth and said, “Hey.”
“Hey,” Harold replied, not looking up as he scribbled into a black book. “I didn’t know you were out.”
“Just got back in town. I haven’t even been home yet.”
Harold continued writing. “We’ll see you onstage later, right? It hasn’t been easy on the band since you got locked up. Forrest’ll want to let his regulars know you’re back.”
“I’ll be here. I’m just gonna go home and clean up first.”
Harold muttered, “Good. See you tonight.”
El was hot-tempered in those days, and few people infuriated him more than his foster brother. He slapped his palm down on the tabletop and shouted, “Three months, you asshole! I could’ve walked out of there on day one if I had given ’em your name, but I sat in that damn jail and kept my mouth shut. I expected to see some kind of gratitude!”
El waited for Harold to yell back at him. The two of them had hollered at each other for years at the foster home and battled over assorted business matters at countless band rehearsals. Harold lifted his gaze from his black book for the first time since El had sat down with him. He carefully rested his gold fountain pen on the table between them and reached into the breast pocket of his jacket. “Here’s some gratitude,” he said, tossing two small foil packets across the table toward El. “Thanks for your help.” He turned his attention to his ledger.
El thought of a thousand things to say. He could remind his brother that he had been the one who’d founded the band, and that his music was what kept it going. He could say that people were whispering behind Harold’s back that too many years living with his crazy mother had messed up his brain and that Harold was getting more like her every day. But somehow the act of tucking the heroin into his pants pocket drained the fight out of him. El stood and left the club.
The two heroin packets whispered to him all the way from the Pink Slipper to the front door of his home. The drug’s call grew in volume like an oncoming train. But when El stepped inside the house, the demanding voice of heroin was temporarily blocked out by the sound of his son’s voice shouting out, “Daddy!”
Little James launched himself at his father, and El lifted his child into an embrace. El buried his face in the four-year-old’s hair and inhaled as his son squeezed him with all of the strength in his small body.
Ruthie was less welcoming. She stopped several feet away from El and stood watching as he continued hug
ging James. El stepped forward and attempted to kiss her, but Ruthie turned her lips from him, offering only her cheek. “Your son missed you,” she said.
Immediately angry and defensive, El said, “It wasn’t easy on me either, you know. I wasn’t in Louisville on some kinda vacation. James’ll forget all about this. I’m the one who’ll remember sittin’ in that jail and missin’ my boy and thinkin’ my wife was missin’ me.”
A junkie will always offer an excuse or an accusation instead of an apology, El would later understand. And true to form, that night he gave Ruthie an addict’s response. Fully committed to his vision of himself as the victim, he used her failure to offer him sympathy to reinforce his belief that he had been wronged. El’s righteous anger was made even worse because, with James against his chest, he couldn’t say what he wanted to say. Or at least he couldn’t say it as loudly as he wanted to.
He cupped a palm over James’s ear and pressed his son to his heart, so James couldn’t hear his words. He hissed, “This is no kinda way for a loving wife to welcome her husband home, not after what I been through.”
“Nothing has changed since the last time I saw you. Nothing will change until you’re done with that stuff for good.”
There it was. They had spent the week before his ill-fated trip to Louisville arguing about the addiction that she felt was ruining their lives, an addiction that he insisted did not exist. Now they were at it again.
“Well, you’ll be happy to know I’m clean. Three long months in a jail cell will do that for you.”
Ruthie eyed her husband with a twisted mouth and a raised eyebrow. “You’ve been clean before.”
“It’s true this time. Maybe it would’ve been true before if you hadn’t been on my back about it every damn day.”
Ruthie reached out and took James from El. She set her son on his feet beside her and said, “It’s time for his dinner.” As she left the room with James at her side, she called over her shoulder, “Welcome home.”
The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues Page 18