Lida Louise sang that, and turned the place upside down. Peggy started to cry so hard that when Rudford had asked her, "What's the matter?" and she had sobbed back, "I don't know," he suddenly assured her, himself transported, "I love you good, Peggy!" which made the child cry so uncontrollably he had to take her home.
Lida Louise sang nights at Black Charles's for about six months straight. Then, inevitably, Lewis Harold Meadows heard her and took her back to Memphis with him. She went without being perceptively thrilled over the Great Opportunity. She went without being visibly impressed by the sacred words, Beale Street. But she went. In Rudford's opinion, she went because she was looking for somebody, or because she wanted somebody to find her. It sounds very reasonable to me.
But as long as Agersburg could hold her, she was adored, deified, by the young people there. They knew, most of them, just how good she was, and those who didn't know pretended to. They brought their friends home for the weekend to have a look at her. The ones who wrote for their college papers sanctified her in glorious prose. Others grew smug or blase when foreigners turned dormitory conversation around to Violet Henry or Alice Mar Starbuck or Priscella Jordan, blues singers who were killing other foreigners in Harlem or New Orleans or Chicago. If you didn't have Lida Louise where you lived, you didn't have anybody.
In return for all this love and deification, Lida Louise was very, very good with the Agersburg kids. No matter what they asked her to sing, or how many times they asked her to sing it, she gave them what there was of her smile, said, "Nice tune," and gave.
One very interesting Saturday night a college boy in a Tuxedo--somebody said he was a visiting Yale man--came rather big-time-ily up to the piano and asked Lida Louise, "Do you know Slow Train to Jacksonville by any chance?"
Lida Louise looked at the boy quickly, then carefully, and answered, "Where you hear that song, boy?"
The boy who was supposed to be a visiting Yale man said, "A fella in New York played it for me."
Lida Louise asked him, "Colored man?"
The boy nodded impatiently.
Lida Louise asked, "His name Endicott Wilson? You know?"
The boy answered, "I don't know. Little guy. Had a mustache."
Lida Louise nodded. "He in New York now?" she asked.
The boy answered, "Well, I don't know if he's there now. I guess so...How 'bout singin' it if you know it?"
Lida Louise nodded and sat down at the piano herself. She played and sang Slow Train to Jacksonville.
According to those who heard it, it was a very good number, original at least in melody, about an unfortunate man with the wrong shade of lipstick on his collar. She sang it through once and, so far as Rudford or I know, never again. Nor has the number ever been recorded by anybody, to my knowledge.
Here we go into jazz history just a little bit. Lida Louise sang at Lewis Harold Meadow's famous Jazz Emporium, on Beale Street in Memphis, for not quite four months. (She started there in late May of 1927 and quit early in September of the same year.) But time, or the lack of it, like everything else, depends entirely upon who's using it. Lida Louise hadn't been singing on Beale Street more than two weeks before the customers started lining up outside Meadow's an hour before Lida Louise went on. Record companies got after her almost immediately. A month after she had hit Beale Street she had made eighteen sides, including Smile Town, Brown Gal Blues, Rainy Day Boy, Nobody Good Around and Seems Like Home.
Everybody who had anything to do with jazz--anything straight, that is--somehow got to hear her while she was there. Russel Hopton, John Raymond Jewel, Izzie Feld, Louis Armstrong, Much McNeill, Freddie Jenks, Jack Teagarden, Bernie and Mortie Gold, Goodman, Beiderbecke, Johnson, Earl Slagle--all the boys.
One Saturday night a big sedan from Chicago pulled up in front of Meadow's. Among those who piled out of it were Joe and Sonny Varioni. They didn't go back with the others, the next morning. They stayed at the Peabody for two nights, writing a song. Before they went back to Chicago they gave Lida Louise Soupy Peggy. It was about a sentimental little girl who falls in love with a boy standing at the blackboard in school. (You can't buy a copy of Lida Louise's record of Soupy Peggy today, for any price. The other side of it had a fault, and the record company only turned out very few copies.)
Nobody knew for certain why Lida Louise quit Meadow's and left Memphis. Rudford and a few others reasonably suspected that her quitting had something--or everything to do--with the corner-of-Beale-Street incident.
Around noon on the day she quit Meadow's, Lida Louise was seen talking in the street with a rather short well-dressed colored man. Whoever he was, she suddenly hit him full in the face with her handbag. Then she ran into Meadow's, whizzed past a crew of waiters and orchestra boys, and slammed her dressing-room door behind her. An hour later she was packed and ready to go.
She went back to Agersburg. She didn't go back with a new, flossy wardrobe, and she and her mother didn't move into a bigger and better apartment. She just went back.
On the afternoon of her return she wrote a note to Rudford and Peggy. Probably on Black Charles's say-so--like everybody else in Agersburg, he was terrified of Rudford's father--she sent the note around to Peggy's house. It reads:
Dear Kittys
I am back and got some real nice new songs for you so you come around quick and see me.
Yours sincerely,
(Miss) Lida Louise Jones
The same September that Lida Louise returned to Agersburg, Rudford was sent away to boarding school. Before he left, Black Charles, Lida Louise, Lida Louise's mother and Peggy gave him a farewell picnic.
Rudford called for Peggy around eleven on a Saturday morning. They were picked up in Black Charles's bashed-in old car and driven out to a place called Tuckett's Creek.
Black Charles, with a fascinating knife, cut the strings on all the wonderful-looking boxes. Peggy was a specialist on cold spareribs. Rudford was more of a fried-chicken man. Lida Louise was one of those people who take two bites out of a drumstick, then light a cigarette.
The children ate until the ants got all over everything, then Black Charles, keeping out a last spare rib for Peggy and a last wing for Rudford, neatly retied all the boxes.
Mrs. Jones stretched out on the grass and went to sleep. Black Charles and Lida Louise began to play casino. Peggy had with her some sun-pictures of people like Richard Barthelmess and Richard Dix and Reginald Denny. She propped them up against a tree in the bright light and watched possessively over them.
Rudford lay on his back in the grass and watched great cotton clouds slip through the sky. Peculiarly, he shut his eyes when the sun was momentarily clouded out; opened them when the sun returned scarlet against his eyelids. The trouble was, the world might end while his eyes were shut.
It did. His world, in any case.
He suddenly heard a brief, terrible woman's scream behind him. Jerking his head around, he saw Lida Louise writhing in the grass. She was holding her flat, small stomach. Black Charles was trying awkwardly to turn her toward him, to get her somehow out of the frightening, queer position her body assumed in its apparent agony. His face was gray.
Rudford and Peggy both reached the terrible spot at the same time.
"What she et? What she done et?" Mrs. Jones demanded hysterically of her brother.
"Nothin'! She done et hardly nothin'," Black Charles answered, miserable. He was still trying to do something constructive with Lida Louise's twisting body.
Something came to Rudford's head, something out of his father's First Aid for Americans. Nervously he dropped to his knees and pressed Lida Louise's abdomen with two fingers. Lida Louise responded with a curling scream.
"It's her appendix. She's busted her appendix. Or it's gonna bust," Rudford wildly informed Black Charles. "We gotta get her to a hospital."
Understanding, at least in part, Black Charles nodded. "You take her foots," he directed his sister.
Mrs. Jones, however, dropped her end of the burden on th
e way to the car. Rudford and Peggy each grabbed a leg and with their help Black Charles hoisted the moaning girl into the front seat. Rudford and Peggy also climbed in the front. Peggy held Lida Louise's head. Mrs. Jones was obliged to sit alone in the back. She was making far more anguishing sounds than those coming from her daughter.
"Take her to Samaritan. On Benton Street," Rudford told Black Charles.
Black Charles's hands were shaking so violently he couldn't get the car going. Rudford pushed his hand through the spokes of the driver's wheel and turned on the ignition. The car started up.
"That there Samaritan's a private hospital," Black Charles said, grinding his gears.
"What's the difference? Hurry up. Hurry up, Charles," Rudford said, and he told the older man when to shift into second and when to shift into third. Charles knew enough, though, to make good, unlawful time.
Peggy stroked Lida Louise's forehead. Rudford watched the road. Mrs. Jones, in the back, whimpering unceasingly. Lida Louise lay across the children's laps with her eyes shut, moaning intermittently. The car finally reached Samaritan Hospital, about a mile and a half away.
"Go in the front way," Rudford prompted.
Black Charles looked at him. "The front way, boy?" he said.
"The front way, the front way," Rudford said, and excitedly punched the older man on the knee.
Black Charles obediently semi-circled the gravel driveway and pulled up in front of the great white entrance.
Rudford jumped out of the car without opening the door, and rushed into the hospital.
At the reception desk a nurse sat with earphones on her head.
"Lida Louise is outside, and she's dying," Rudford said to her. "She's gotta have her appendix out right away."
"Shhh," said the nurse, listening to her earphones.
"Please. She's dying, I tellya."
"Shhh," said the nurse, listening to her earphones.
Rudford pulled them off her head. "Please," he said. "You've gotta get a guy to help us get her in and everything. She's dying."
"The singer?" said the nurse.
"Yes! Lida Louise!" said the boy, almost happy and making it strong.
"I'm sorry, but the rules of the hospital do not permit Negro patients. I'm very sorry."
Rudford stood for a moment with his mouth open.
"Will you please let go of my phones?" the nurse said quietly. A woman who controlled herself under all circumstances.
Rudford let go of her phones, turned, and ran out of the building.
He climbed back into the car, ordering, "Go to Jefferson. Spruce and Fenton."
Black Charles said nothing. He started up the motor--he had turned it off--and jerked the car to a fast start.
"What's the matter with Samaritan? That's a good hospital," Peggy said, stroking Lida Louise's forehead.
"No, it isn't," Rudford said, looking straight ahead, warding off any possible side glance from Black Charles.
The car turned into Fenton Street and pulled up in front of Jefferson Memorial Hospital. Rudford jumped out again, followed this time by Peggy.
There was the same kind of reception desk inside, but there was a man instead of a nurse sitting at it--an attendant in a white duck suit. He was reading a newspaper.
"Please. Hurry. We got a lady outside in the car that's dying. Her appendix is busted or something. Hurry, willya?"
The attendant jumped to his feet, his newspaper falling on the floor. He followed right on Rudford's heels.
Rudford opened the front door of the car, and stood away. The attendant looked in at Lida Louise, pale and in agony, lying across the front seat with her head on Black Charles's head.
"Oh. Well, I'm not a doctor myself. Wait just a second."
"Help us carry her in!" Rudford yelled.
"Just be a minute," the attendant said. "I'll call the resident surgeon." He walked off, entering the hospital with one hand in his pocket--for poise.
Rudford and Peggy let go of the awkward carry-hold they already had on Lida Louise. Rudford leading, they both ran after the attendant. They reached him just as he got to his switchboard. Two nurses were standing around, and a woman with a boy who was wearing a mastoid dressing.
"Listen. I know you. You don't wanna take her. Isn't that right?"
"Wait just a min-ute, now. I'm callin' up the resident surgeon...Let go of my coat, please. This is a hospital, sonny."
"Don't call him up," Rudford said through his teeth. "Don't call up anybody. We're gonna take her to a good hospital. In Memphis." Half-blinded, Rudford swung crazily around. "C'mon, Peggy."
But Peggy stood some ground, for a moment. Shaking violently, she addressed everybody in the reception lobby: "Damn you! Damn you all!"
Then she ran after Rudford.
The car started up again. But it never reached Memphis. Nor even halfway to Memphis.
It was like this: Lida Louise's head was on Rudford's lap. So long as the car kept moving, her eyes were shut.
Then abruptly, for the first time, Black Charles stopped for a red light. While the car was motionless, Lida Louise opened her eyes and looked at Rudford. "Endicott?" she said.
The boy looked down at her and answered, almost at the top of his voice, "I'm right here, Honey!"
Lida Louise smiled, closed her eyes, and died.
A story never ends. The narrator is usually provided with a nice, artistic spot for his voice to stop, but that's about all.
Rudford and Peggy attended Lida Louise's funeral. The following morning Rudford went away to boarding school. He didn't see Peggy again for fifteen years. During his first year at boarding school, his father moved to San Francisco, re-married and stayed there. Rudford never returned to Agersburg.
He saw Peggy again early summer of 1942. He had just finished a year of internship in New York. He was waiting to be called into the Army.
One afternoon he was sitting in the Palm Room of the Biltmore Hotel, waiting for his date to show up. Somewhere behind him a girl was very audibly giving away the plot to a Taylor Caldwell novel. The girl's voice was Southern, but not swampy and not blue-grass and not even particularly drawly. It sounded to Rudford very much like a Tennessee voice. He turned to look. The girl was Peggy. He didn't even have to take a second look.
He sat for a minute wondering what he would say to her; that is, if he were to get up and go over to her table--a distance of fifteen years. While he was thinking, Peggy spotted him. No planner, she jumped up and went over to his table. "Rudford?"
"Yes..." He stood up.
Without embarrassment, Peggy gave him a warm, if glancing kiss.
They sat down for a minute at Rudford's table and told each other how incredible it was that they had recognized each other, and how fine they both looked. Then Rudford followed her back to her table. Her husband was sitting there.
Her husband's name was Richard something, and he was a Navy flier. He was eight feet tall, and he had some theater tickets or flying goggles or a lance in one of his hands. Had Rudford brought a gun along, he would have shot Richard dead on the spot.
They all sat down at an undersized table and Peggy asked ecstatically, "Rudford, do you remember that house on Miss Packer's Street?"
"I certainly do."
"Well, who do you think's living in it now? Iva Hubbel and her husband."
"Who?" said Rudford.
"Iva Hubbel! You remember her. She was in our class. No chin? Always snitched on everybody?"
"I think I do," Rudford said. "Fifteen years though," he added pointedly.
Peggy turned her husband and lengthily brought him up to date on the house on Miss Packer's Street. He listened with an iron smile.
"Rudford," Peggy said suddenly. "What about Lida Louise?"
"How do you mean, Peggy?"
"I don't know. I think about her all the time." She didn't turn to her husband with an explanation. "Do you too?" she asked Rudford.
He nodded. "Sometimes, anyway."
"I pla
yed her records all the time when I was in college. Then some crazy drunk stepped on my Soupy Peggy. I cried all night. I met a boy, later, that was in Jack Teagarden's band, and he had one, but he wouldn't sell it to me or anything. I didn't even get to hear it again."
"I have one."
"Honey," Peggy's husband interrupted softly, "I don't wanna interrupt, but you know how Eddie gets. I told him we'd be there and all."
Peggy nodded. "Do you have it with you?" she asked. "In New York?"
"Well, yes, it's at my aunt's apartment. Would you like to hear it?"
"When?" Peggy demanded.
"Well, whenever you--"
"Sweetie. Excuse me. Look. It's three thirty now. I mean--"
"Rudford," Peggy said, "we have to run. Look. Could you call me tomorrow? We're staying here at the hotel. Could you? Please," Peggy implored, slipping into the jacket her husband was crowding around her shoulders.
Rudford left Peggy with a promise to phone her in the morning.
He never phoned her, though, or saw her again.
In the first place, he almost never played the record for anybody in 1942. It was terribly scratchy now. It didn't even sound like Lida Louise anymore.
22. Hapworth 16, 1924
SOME comment in advance, as plain and bare as I can make it: My name, first, is Buddy Glass, and for a good many years of my life,--very possibly, all forty-six--I have felt myself installed, elaborately wired, and, occasionally, plugged in, for the purpose of shedding some light on the short, reticulate life and times of my late, eldest brother, Seymour Glass, who died, committed suicide, opted to discontinue living, when he was thirty-one.
22 Out-of-print J. D. Salinger Stories Page 28