The Rock Child

by Win Blevins

  The piano player wasn’t colored, though—alabaster white, with long, slick red-blond hair to his shoulders, skinny as a shovel handle. He didn’t wear a tuxedo, but a vanilla-ice-cream suit with a pleated shirt and a wine-colored, velvet cravat tied up at his neck like a blossom. Made those tuxedoed tinhorns look like they were his stableboys. There was a brass-engraved sign on top of the piano, says GENTLEMAN DAN.

  I sat down at the nearest table and turned my chair toward the piano bench. He gave me half a hooded flicker with his eyes, put a flourish into the end of “Didn’t it Rain,” and without missing a beat eased into a slow tune. This one aimed at your chest instead of your feet, plucking at those heartstrings. Because of my sorrow around Sun Moon, this music came into me like rain into the parched desert. It was all heartache, too, but somehow it blew up my grieving big and eased it all at once, made it seem like it was right, the way of things. I’ve had call to play that tune many a time since—it’s called “Troubled in My Mind.”

  Toward the end of this piece one of the fancy-dressed girls, a dance-hall honey, came and gave him a cocked hip, foot-tapping, eye-rolling kind of look.

  The Gentleman didn’t pay her a bit of mind, for which I was grateful. Straight on he dived without a pause. His style this time was taking the tune apart and putting it together a new way. The right hand would say the melody up high kind of bright, and the left hand would echo it low and mournful—sounded like soloist and echoing chorus at church. The tune was the old reel “Uncle Joe.” Gentleman Dan opened it way up, made it twice as long, switched the tempo from quick to slow, and generally made a nice little song into a big show.

  I felt so much like applauding I did. Even gave out one hoot.

  Gentleman Dan turned nothing but his head and looked at me measuring-like. He had a long face made longer by a goatee so blond it was nearly white. In the middle were the eyes of a hawk.

  Suddenly he looked behind me. It was the dance-hall gal come back with one of the mixologists.

  “You’re getting deep again, Dan,” says the mixologist.

  “Thanks, Daisy,” says the Gentleman mockingly.

  “Well, it hurts business,” says Daisy.

  Gentleman Dan cast his eyes elaborately about the room. The few men in the place sat at the bar, their backs to us, or were engrossed in losing their money to the tinhorns. “I see so many prospects for dancing,” says he. His voice was Southern, in some how cultured, and almost too soft to hear.

  “Fancy Dan,” says the mixologist.

  “Deep Dan,” says Daisy.

  “That’s what makes it music,” says the Gentleman.

  I noticed now that Sir Richard and Sam had left. I guessed Sir Richard was negotiating for some way to keep Sam from writing about him.

  “When you don’t keep it simple and foot-tapping, I have to tell Delilah,” says the mixologist. It was said matter-of-fact, and even friendly-like.

  Gentleman Dan nodded like saying “I know,” and said, “I’m taking a break after this one.”

  He put his fingers back to the keyboard. That was the first time I noticed them. The rest of his body was thin and weak-looking, like one of those lungers as comes to the desert to get healthy. His fingers, though gentlemanlike, were big and powerful. When I watched them play, they went after the notes fierce, like talons diving for fish.

  This tune was a working song, a drivin’, totin’, haulin’ son of a gun. Gentleman Dan sang the words in a voice that seemed impossible after the way he spoke—raw, coarse, and savage. They told about a mining man working a double jack, and in other verses digging out that hole, mucking out that rock, loading up that ore. He brought it up to a grand finish. Made my body ache to hear it, and my heart break.

  Then he slid off the bench and without any never mind sat down next to me. The Gentleman’s coming was that way, like a big old predator bird of a sudden lighting on your limb.

  “Daniel,” he says, and stuck out his hand. Lots of men in Washo don’t tell their family names. Didn’t find out Daniel’s for a long while.

  I took his hand. “Asie Taylor.”

  “Care for music?” he says.

  I nodded yes.

  He waited. I felt like he was going to pounce. Instead he lit up a thin little cigarillo. “Do you know those pieces?”

  “All ’cept the last one,” says I.

  “‘John Henry,’” says he, and blew the smoke carefully away from me. “Miner’s special.”

  Lots of times when he talked, Daniel spoke in a sort of short talk, words normal enough, but some meanings only he understood fully. Then he’d nod in a distracted sort of way, agreeing with himself. Listening to these self-talks, I learned a lot of what he was thinking, but not close to all.

  “Where you from?” says I, making conversation.

  He looked at me like I’d broken wind.

  After a bit he says soft-like, “New Orleans.” He blew out a gout of smoke and let it sit. I was willing to bet he hailed from some rich plantation family. But then he wouldn’t be here, I told myself, not playing piano in a saloon.

  “You?”

  The question took me by surprise, made me remember I didn’t know where I came from. I blurted out, “Utah Territory.”

  His eyes seemed lighter for a moment. I’d noticed people looked at you funny if they thought you were a Mormon, like you’d plugged every woman in the Territory. When as a matter of plain fact I was a virgin on leaving Salt Lake, and had good prospects for becoming one again. What he said was, “I was there. They have no music in Utah.”

  I felt a little miffed. “Mormons sing,” I said, “particularly Welsh Mormons sing.”

  He regarded me. “You don’t look Mormon,” he said.

  “I’m not, not that they didn’t try. I’m half-Indian.” Half—does that make sense?

  He studied my half-dark face for a few beats. He blew smoke above our heads, and it hung like a dark cloud. Why don’t they ever ask what kind of Indian?

  “I didn’t mean offense,” he said.

  I lunged into it. “What was it you did to those tunes?” I probably sounded like I was about to bust.

  He smiled smallish, which I learned was as big as he went. Slowly he stubbed the cigarillo out in an ashtray. “Sit with me on the bench, and I’ll show you.”

  I did. He strikes up “Troubled in My Mind” again. He says, “Key of E. This is the way you might hear white folks back home play it back.” He runs it straight through, couple of verses. “Now listen to this,” he says. He repeats it, and that feeling is back. “Flatted thirds and sevenths, diminished fifth chords,” he says. “Syncopated rhythms.” I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.

  “Let’s try another.” He lit into “Bluetail Fly,” rolling and rollicking. “Harmonies just however they feel,” adding some notes in the left hand. How they felt was hip-slidin’, shoulder-slippin’, head-bobbin’ … Well, if words could say it, we wouldn’t have the music.

  I stared at him. Then I said something completely out of line. “I got a banjo,” I says. “Can I sit here and pick along? I can pick this.”

  He smiled with mouth and eyes at once, and that was surely the only time I saw that. “I’d be honored,” he says.

  Heckahoy, didn’t I catch that brass ring this time!

  “May I walk with you to get your instrument?” says he.

  “Aren’t you working?”

  He took my arm and led me toward the bar. To the mixologist he says, “I’m taking my supper break.”

  “Just as well,” says the barkeep.

  Sir Richard was back in the rooms. Said he’d promised Sam Clemens a real story in exchange for keeping his identity secret. “We’ll have to think of something,” he said.

  When Daniel and I left, he wanted to go listen to us make music. Which meant us leaving Sun Moon alone again.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and touched her head. It was hot but not real hot. I took her hand. She opened her eyes, but they were glazy. A
fter a little she withdrew the hand. “Go,” she said. “I don’t need company. When I feel good, I go with, hear you play.” She waved us away, kind of, and the wave was the tiniest gesture you’ll ever see.

  “I’m worried about her,” I said. “Can we get someone to sit with her?”

  Sir Richard nodded, and on the way out arranged with the clerk for a companion for her.

  I couldn’t do else than make music with Daniel.

  “Who is she?” says he in the street.

  I felt all flummoxed. “Just someone.”

  Daniel pulled up short in the street. “Devil of a way to start a friendship,” he says.

  Sir Richard pitched in with, “She’s my servingwoman.”

  “No,” says I right quick. I knew what friendship required. “We’ve agreed to pass her and me off as servants, but we ain’t.”

  “It’s delicate to explain,” Sir Richard says, “and perhaps dangerous.” At least he straightened out quick. “She is Asian. Not a prostitute. We are protecting her.”

  Daniel nodded. I could see something in his hawk eyes about it, something big. He never said another word all the way back to the Heritage. I figured he was just fretting over how we got connected with an Asian woman, other than the one connection society accepted. Yes, accepted is the word. Turned out later I figured wrong.

  The Heritage was slam-bang full of people now, after supper, and pandemonium reigned. We had to shove our way to the piano. While I was tuning, Sir Richard showed up with whiskys, three of ’em. Daniel flicked his eyes at Sir Richard in a way that said, “No, and hell no.” I started to reach for one, uncertain-like, and Daniel says, “May I introduce you to a drink? If you don’t especially care for strong spirits.” He came back in a jiffy with what he called a sherbet, in this case blueberry juice poured over crushed ice. (Yes, Virginia, even far from water, was big on crushed ice.)

  “Best drink I ever tasted,” says I.

  “It’s a Turkish treat. Any fruit juice over crushed ice.”

  Meanwhile Sir Richard settled at a nearby table with a brilliant grin and whisky enough for a party. I began to wonder what kind of holiday Washo was going to be for him.

  Daniel led the way with an oldie that would raise folks’ spirits up, “The Gospel Train,” now known as “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In.” This was a saloon, after all, and his job was to create good cheer. I was worried about being able to keep up my end, never having heard about those altered notes he’d mentioned. He came at it straight on, though, no flatting or diminishing, and I was able to join in strong. He loved big contrasts, high and loud echoed low and soft—WHEN THE SAINTS (when the saints) GO MARCHIN’ IN (marchin’ in). I hit the louds hard and laid all the way off the echoes. We grinned at each other like clowns (except Daniel never stretched those lips into a grin in his life). It sounded good.

  Right off a bunch of folks jumped up and got to dancing.

  For the next couple hours without a break we took a tour of country dance music, reels, gigs, schottisches, waltzes—you name it, we played it, and they danced it. All played straight, so as to lift those knees and inspire those feet. All the while we were getting acquainted, Daniel and I, learning each other’s little ways, supporting the other fellow, then borrowing his style for a minute and tossing it back. That’s how musicians do.

  Though Daniel never looked at anything but the piano and me, I surveyed the room: gamblers, drinkers, and dancers. Felt funny sometimes to be helping people feel like doing such a bunch of rotten stuff (well, Brother Brigham called it rotten). In particular we were mating dancers together, and that was commerce, dance-hall girls and customers—the business of pushing ’em to drink or pullin’ ’em into a crib, depending on the girl. I thought of Sun Moon and got a peculiar feeling about that.

  We were making it sing out, though, and folks were hopping up and down and having a good time.

  Finally we took a break to make chin talk with Sir Richard. Daniel lit up—I hardly recall ever seeing him eat or drink a thing. I ordered a sherbet of kiwi fruit, sherbets now being my favored treat.

  “Native-accented music, I gather,” starts Sir Richard.

  “What do you mean, Sir?” inquires Daniel. I could whiff burned gunpowder already.

  “Simply music of the people’s sort with an American flavor.” Well as I liked Sir Richard, I’ve never denied he was a snob.

  “I thought perhaps native was a reference to people of color,” says Daniel soft as you please. When these gentlemen go after each other, they do it with tiny, shiny blades.

  “That as well,” said Sir Richard. “What is the origin of the music?”

  “Much of what we’ve been playing originated with the Negroes,” Daniel said politely. “The white folks, at least Louisianans, took some of the songs as their own. We primmed them up in the process, straightened out the rhythms, and made the harmonies more conventional. To my ear that made them more regular and less interesting. I hope we’ll return to a kind of Creole music, the white folks’ versions given back some of their black spice. That’s what I prefer to play.”

  “Creole?” said Sir Richard inquiringly. His voice sounded poised to jot it down in his notebook.

  Daniel’s eyes could look dangerous with hardly a change. “Really it means born of Old World parents in the New World,” he said evenly. “People use it to mean mixed-blood.”

  “Black and white,” said Sir Richard.

  Daniel nodded.

  “Red and white.”

  “Yes, mestizo,” said Daniel.

  “Black and red and white.”

  Daniel gave a little smile. “That too. In Louisiana we call such a person a redbone.”

  “Black and red?”

  Daniel nodded once more. “Washinango,” he murmured.

  “So you Americans have many words for the mixtures of black blood and white.”

  I kept thinking one of them was going to slap down a glove and demand satisfaction at dawn.

  “In the South,” said Daniel with a soft edge, “in order of percentage of white blood, the words are mulatto, which is half, quadroon, octoroon, and griffe, a sixteenth. Full-bloods are called blacks, Africans, Africo-Americans, or, fancifully, blackamoors. Also negroes, as they say it in the North, nigras as we say in the South when pretending civility, and when being honest, niggers.” His voice was coming up hard now. “Then there are the gradations of color, black, brown, olive, meriny, and high yaller.” His pale face was broken out red, like measles spots. “Let us not forget the condescending terms—darky, Crow, Cuffee, Sambo, blueskin, Senegambian, and tarbrushed folk, or the offensive ones such as coon, smoke, snowball, kink, boogie, and Zulu.” His wagon was rolling downhill fast now. “Tell me, I pray you, why we pick out black women with such names as negress and nigger wench, or designate their children affectionately as dinkey, pickaninny, and tar pot.”

  Seemed a miracle he didn’t bust.

  Sir Richard didn’t interfere, protest, help, or do anything else. He just watched with an expression of high curiosity.

  After a few breaths Daniel began to fold his wings and look a little less warlike.

  “I have been much in Africa,” said Sir Richard in an easy tone, “Arab Africa. I have seen the slave trade up close, and I abhor it. It debases white and black alike. I know not which is more repugnant, to be slave or master.”

  The color began to drain from Daniel’s face, which meant he was back toward normal.

  “I gather that you are similarly inclined.”

  Daniel nodded. He took a moment to get out one of those cigarillos and made a ceremony of lighting it. “Back home they call me a nigger lover.”

  Sir Richard nodded and regarded Daniel. He was using that power he had to hold people’s eyes, command their full attention.

  “Is that why you are not fighting the war?”

  Daniel shook his head no. “The war has other causes than race,” he said. I thought I saw an approving light in Sir Richard’s eyes. “I do
regret having run to a town like this, full of racialists. Virginia City,” he said wryly.

  I noticed his complaint wasn’t “Secessionists,” and I know Sir Richard did, too.

  “Why did you,” Sir Richard hesitated, “run at all?”

  Daniel looked at him plenty put out. Guess it wasn’t a question a gentleman would ask. But Sir Richard often said he wasn’t a gentleman, he was a writer, and so never let manners curb his curiosity.

  To both our surprise, Daniel began to tell it. “To keep from killing.” Then he went on short and direct. “I fell in love with a woman of color. Very little color. We proposed to be married. She’s now dead, by my foolishness, and my child dead within her.”

  His glare dared us to ask more.

  To my amazement, Sir Richard did. “How did she die?”

  Daniel’s eyes turned cold and dark—I hope I never see a tunnel that cold and dark. Yet he began to speak. “I took her dancing in a place, a place for whites only. I should have known better. A fool challenged us. I acted belligerent. Knives appeared. Just when I thought we were going to set to, and I had every intention of killing him, he used the knife instead on … her. She died in my arms.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Sir Richard.

  “Me too,” says I.

  Sir Richard murmured, “Race in America …”

  “Our destiny and our doom,” said Daniel.

  “Dan!” The word was yelled so loud and sharp it sounded like a shot. We all jumped. It came from the bar, the mixologist. He jerked his head toward the piano. We all sat there a minute, calming our nerves back down. “Perhaps a more pleasant conversation later,” said Daniel, and rose to go to the piano.

  Quick before we started in, Daniel took the banjo and real soft showed me how to flatten those certain notes and squeeze that certain chord. Then we made music, Daniel’s new kind now. I fell in with his tricks quick enough, though I couldn’t always make them sing handsome as he could. Hitting those off-the-beat rhythms hard made it really happen, I found out. That was fun.