by Jared Shurin
On this night, some drunk guy was playing Armstrongs, but sadder than a map, depressing everyone. Sue’s doesn’t waste time with inferior entertainment. You could be high until you’re touching God’s toenails, nobody would care as long as you played well. But if you blew shit, your survival time was the five minutes it takes Benny to get from the door, through the crowd, to the stage. Open night is no excuse for bad jazz. So, shitty drunk guy was out and Yard was next. He went up there and put his lips to it. I can’t tell you what he played because I don’t remember, but I do know that the note was clear and high and piercing. Not a soul spoke. Not a soul could speak because whatever Yard played made everybody blow their wigs, man, bible.
I was unaware of any other person in that room. Yard himself disappeared and everything was that note, that sound, that fucking horn. I don’t know how long it lasted, but when he stopped he was staring down at the floor. There was silence and I know I was crying. Shit, everyone in Saucy Sue’s was crying: pimps, prostitutes, hustlers, every single one. It seemed it was silent for hours but it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two, then people started clapping and whooping. Yard calmly picked up his instrument and walked off the stage. No other blower would go up there because how do you follow that? Understand, I’m not talking about skill here. Yard could beat it out, but what I’m talking about here is magic.
One other thing, something curious: all the drinks in the house went bitter that night. When people got their emotions together, they found themselves thirsty, and they drank. And spat everything out. There was nothing worth drinking or listening to. The drug fiends even said there was no dragon to chase. All intoxicants would not intoxicate. It was the damnedest thing.
I tell you, that night? Any woman or man would have dropped their drawers for him, but Yard left.
Next night, he’s back, leaning against the wall, cool as ever. Better dressed, but his name stuck. He carried his horn everywhere.
Gossip blossomed like hopheads in a flophouse. Where did he live? Where was he from? Where did he train? He wasn’t some tender motherfucker on leave from Julliard. Choir boy from church, maybe? Many jazz guys got their chops blowing Amazing Grace. What kind of horn was that anyway? One of those English Bessons? A Higham? The fire of speculation burned and would continue to burn until the next open night. Shonda took a fancy to him and preened to get his attention. It worked. You should know that Al and Shonda used to be a thing, and now they’re... well, I don’t know, I can’t say not a thing, but they still have business.
Shonda did go on a date with Yard, but that was after Shed came along.
Shed wasn’t his name. We called him that for reasons you’ll understand in a minute. Never did catch what he called himself, and by the time we met him later, there was no need to call him anything but scary. Shed turns up during this godawful argument between Saucy’s and the supplier about that booze that went bad. This was unnecessary because, for one thing, the booze was fine until Yard blew. Secondly, it wasn’t just the liquor that went off. The water, the milk, the orange juice, anything you can chuck down your neck had been bitterified.
Unlike Yard, Shed was small. Not ugly, but plain. You never saw a person more uncomfortable in human skin. Shed moved like the Devil hisself was walking behind him, prodding him with a pitchfork: spurts of speed, then uncertain shuffling, then fast again, always looking surprised when he made a few steps. Speaking of skin, he was one of those brothers minted so dark, he seemed navy blue. He, at first, couldn’t be heard over the shouts. Then, when noticed, his language seemed so garbled that they thought him a foreigner, which, I suppose, he was. Nobody saw him come in.
“Negro, what do you want?” Sue said. “Speak slowly and in English, fool,”
You need to know that Sue herself was a formidable woman, not to be fucked with. Not just that she was big, nearly six feet tall and with the attitude of a drill-sergeant. She had backing, if you know what I mean. There were shadowy people who owned the bar lined up behind her, folks who don’t declare to the IRS, and who pounders and snatchers ignore because it’s impossible to convict. This was not unusual, and you need to remember the times for what they were. This was when luminaries like Cab Calloway and Dizzy Gillespie got into a knife fight back in 1941. What I’m saying is, nobody was to be fucked with back then, not even refined motherfuckers like Earl Hines. You didn’t start nothing, you didn’t mess with anybody. Nobody worth listening to, anyway.
Shed just smiled into her face and spoke slowly. In English.
“Please, have you seen my brother, thank you?”
“What?”
Shed said it slower and louder. “Please. Have you. Seen my. BROTHER. Thank you.”
“I don’t know you or your brother. How did you get in, anyway? We’re not open. Get the fuck out of here.”
The way I heard it, Shed just smiled at her and went to use the john, but never came back out. Hours later when tempers had cooled somewhat, Sue got curious about him, had one of the men check the bathroom. They found his raggedy clothes, a trail of blood, strips of skin, meat and other fluids leading from the door to one of the stalls. Al said it was like he had shed his skin, which is how come we called him Shed. It wasn’t till later that we figured he was looking for Yard. Over the next few days we didn’t see Shed, but knew he was all over the place because people kept talking about this guy asking questions and finding crumpled clothes and any combination of skin and flesh, no bones. It was the weirdest thing, but it was a stunt of some kind, right? Like in ‘53 when those dumbasses shaved and dyed a rhesus monkey green, then blowtorched the asphalt, calling it an alien landing.
Yard was hanging out with us a lot, at rehearsals, whenever we were kicking back, or sometimes at Dizzy’s house on Seventh Avenue in Harlem. He met Miles and Monk. Charlie Parker was usually too high to remember meeting him. One night Shonda finally convinces Yard to go yam with him at some fancy place. She was really insistent, and they left us. I noticed Al watching and I first thought he was jealous. I was worried he was going to attack Yard, but that’s not what happened.
He said we had to go too. I’m not too proud of this part, but Al and I used to run together. We weren’t making much money as musicians and we did take drugs. Pretty much everybody in the scene did back then. Al did some burglaries and I went along sometimes. Not trying to say he had to twist my arm, you understand. I wasn’t willing, but not exactly unwilling either.
Al took us to Yard’s place that night. Don’t ask me how he found out where the guy lived, but he must have followed him. He said he was working with Shonda and we’d have to split the take. No lock can resist Al, and when we got in he went about the business of finding valuables. I saw the horn case. I’d like to say there was some magnetic pull or that the thing called to me, or something that would absolve me. Fact is, I was just curious. The case was unremarkable and opened easily. The horn itself gleamed. I could not tell who made it, and there was no brand, serial number or trademark anywhere. That was itself strange. Brass wasn’t cheap, and all the good ones had serial numbers. Next thing I know, it’s in my hands, and then... well, it’s on my lips. I blew.
Later, Shonda told me at that very moment Yard looked up, alarmed, and stood to leave the restaurant without so much as a see-ya-later. Al said he dropped the cash he had scavenged and clasped his hands to his ears to shut the sound out. I didn’t know any of this at the time ’cos I heard nothing, even thought it was broken. It wasn’t. What happened is the room started to glow, orange, like a coal fire at first, then a hurricane of colour swirling around me, but detached from the origins. Blues, maroons, greens, swirling like ghosts. The walls, though still there, became immaterial, or invisible. Everything clear as one of those engineering drawings, leached of colour. I saw the night sky, and the clouds ignited with a yellow-red flame, and rolled back in all directions. The stars... most of them winked out in an instant, but dozens of them started falling to Earth. Then I heard a great wind blowing, and from far away
, a voice.
In the blackness of that sky-which-was-no-longer-a-sky I sensed something stirring, something meant to be in slumber, something malevolent and implacable.
“Stop,” said Yard, and I came to myself again.
Al was gone, and the building was on fire around me, hot wind howling past my ears, putting my heart in a ferment. Yard acted as if nothing was amiss. He took the horn, cleaned it, then placed it in the case. After he had sealed it, he turned to me, shook his head and offered a hand. I swear, with the building coming down around us, backdrafts and flashovers everywhere, nothing harmed us. He walked us calmly out of the building where Al was waiting with his hands wrapped up.
Later, he told me he tried to lift me, to get me out of the building, but I was hot. He said he got burned from touching me. Al is full of shit at the best of times, and he probably touched a banister, but so much crazy stuff was going on that I was willing to believe him.
About that time, Shed came doddering down the middle of the road. He left a trail of blood and shredded skin.
Yard’s shoulders slumped when he saw Shed.
“Brother,” he said.
“This… sound is not for listen on Earth, brother. Not for listen. You know this.” Shed’s words were still mangled, but we understood him. He turned to me. “Why this one’s face glowed, please?”
“He blew the trumpet,” said Yard. “It will be fine. It was for a short time only.”
“Who are you people?” asked Al, a quaver in his voice that I ain’t never heard out of him before right then.
Shed smirked.
Yard said, “We are two of the seven motherfuckers whose job it is to fuck this reality up when the time comes.”
“But not time yet, and my brother, he knows it,” said Shed.
“I wanted to play, that’s all. No harm done.” Yard seemed petulant, like the younger of the two.
Skin dropped off Shed, and the more he lost his covering, the clearer his speech became. “Yeah, I’m gonna disagree with that. I heard you all the way from home and I was sent to bring you and the trumpet back. You’re not even supposed to have it.” He came to me and touched my face. “You’ll be all right. Get some sleep. And stop stealing shit.”
With that, the flesh of his face slid off, revealing the bone underneath. His jaw fell along with the muscle, leaving his tongue lolling like a prick. He looked at Yard. “I can never do these human bodies as well as you do. Take off the vessel. Let’s go home.”
Al and I disagreed on what happened next, but I’m telling the story, so I’ll give you my version. They fell into their clothes and shrivelled up. Yard, Shed and the horn, gone. We kicked their clothes into the fire, even though Yard had some fine threads. By the time the cops and the actual Feds turned up we were long gone.
That’s almost the end of the story. This shit happened in 1944, maybe ’45. You don’t have to believe me. Shonda spent a lot of time searching for who or what they might be, got entangled with some tinfoil-wearing motherfuckers for a while. She said she had to know, like it was some itch in her brain that she had to scratch or something. I don’t know about that. I do know that I have not been sick a day since I touched that horn, and I am now ninety-five. I still have all my own teeth and I’ve outlived two wives. I kicked the cocaine, made some minor waves in bebop and what came after. Al is still alive, and he was older than me to start with. I’d say we look about forty. Shonda is still alive. She and Al are still on again, off again, or makeups-to-breakups as I think the kids say these days. Nobody who was in Saucy Sue’s the night Yard played died young. That trumpet did something to us all.
When I sleep, and I don’t sleep much, but when I do, I dream of that thing out there beyond the sky, that thing stirring, waiting to wreak havoc. In some versions a taloned, scaled arm reaches out of the abyss and hands me a horn. I wake up screaming. Then I have to go outside and look at the stars and the moon or even just the clouds, night air on my face.
Then I am fine.
Dark Shells
Aliya Whiteley
There’s a feeling amongst the villagers that I should stop talking to the river.
Rivers and voices have much in common. They rise and fall, swell with energy, diminish to a trickle. They travel. They never stay still, even when they seem caught in an endless repeating. Mum repeated herself often, near her end, but every time the words were new to her. I realised, after, that they had been new to me, too, bringing fresh emotion every time although for different reasons.
And so on we travel through our lives, like water riding the land.
Water is water, she used to say, back when her eyes were light and I was a young girl. I used to complain about having to take a bath after her. Well, now I know that each piece of water is a drop. A drop of liquid, or a lurch in the stomach. Jolting awake from falling far in a bad dream.
“Could you talk a little more about life during the war, instead?” says the young man with a tape recorder.
“1940s?” I ask.
“Yes, around that time. It’s 1988 now,” he adds.
“I’m aware of what year it is, thank you.”
He has the good grace to look ashamed.
“Nothing much changes over the years here, anyway.” I gesture with my hand around the large, shabby lounge of the home for the elderly where the council saw fit to put me. The other residents are watching television, or nodding to themselves. I’m certain I don’t belong here. “I just worked the land, along with my parents. Essential labour. I don’t even remember it much.”
“Really?” He sounds disappointed.
“This is Lincolnshire, not London.”
“There are a lot of airfields around here. Did you see any planes?”
He’s quite a pleasant young man, really, and I like a bit of company. I pretend to think, and then say, “Oh yes! There was that time when the sky was filled with those big bombers. The noise of them, it was so loud, I covered my ears with my hands. I remember now.”
Next thing I’ll be claiming I was up in the sky with them. Still, it does the trick, and he goes away satisfied, promising to return. I could tell him about the flooding next time. Five of my relatives have drowned, in the past. What a miserable way to go.
The river used to burst its banks. That’s clear in my mind. The rain, spattering, and then the swelling, the speed of the flow, and the houses along its banks put out sandbags on their doorsteps. Ruskington is a large village, based entirely around the River Slea. It flows right through the centre, past the church, past the grocers, then the butchers, the bakery, that fish and chip shop that’s too greasy for my tastes, the carpet shop Bill and I own – no, wait, that’s closed down, and the little cafe, that’s gone too. The village is in a bad state. So many shops are dark shells, now. Their grey, cobwebbed windows watch me; I can feel them at my back when I sit on the bench and feed the ducks.
But the bench is very cold today. I have an audience, as usual. A few villagers are gathered, staring at me with disapproval. How did I get here? I have no memory of leaving the house. Yet here I am, and soon the bread is gone and the ducks desert me, and it’s obvious I’m talking to the river because a woman is coming out of her shop and saying, “Here again? Come on in the warm and I’ll get you a tea while I phone the home.”
“Hold on while I finish up,” I tell her, and I speak my private thoughts in one long breath, murmuring, because the river hears me well enough at any volume. “All right, lovely, two sugars please, dear.” I could walk home, but why bother when I could get tea and a lift? Besides, whenever I walk home across the fields my shoes get muddy and there’s somebody else living in my house.
Tea is not what it used to be. Thick, brown tea: what happened to that? I used to start and end the day on it – tea as punctuation, my full stop to break up this long sentence that rolls on without pause, without meaning. I could drain a cup of such tea, but in the absence of that I sip the pleasant young man says, “Do you mind if we try something dif
ferent?”
“Where did you come from?” I say. I was by the river. At least here, sitting in my comfortable chair, nobody is glowering at me.
He turns on his tape recorder; I watch how he does it, two fingers on the red button and the black button at the same time.
“What would you like to hear about this time?”
“Tell me a memory of feeling happy. In the village. A joyous occasion.”
“Did you know,” I say, relieved to find some facts still come to me, “that Ruskington is mentioned in the Domesday Book? It was called Rischintone which means farmstead where rushes grow. The people then were short and they died young. They were an ugly bunch, too. My family were amongst the first here. We go all the way back.”
“Well, I’m surprised you can remember that far,” he says, and his cheeky grin is a shock. It moves me, I’m like a rusty old waterwheel trying to turn; it’s the flirtation, of course, that’s what it is. Dad used to say a smile can work wonders and he was right. He was not a clever man, but he said good things to me. I wish he could still talk.
“Dad’s farmworkers had a party after each harvest,” I say. To be smiled at, to be held in someone’s warm eyes. “There was dancing. I’d had my hair cut short, had seen it in a magazine. And there was a new dressmaker in the village, moved here from down south, and she’d make these miniskirts if you had the money. I got her to make me a red one, and I thought I was very daring. But to get across the fields I had to put on wellies. Wellies, and a miniskirt! Music was pouring across the fields, the sound of the Twist bouncing over the empty troughs of dirt that had held the sugar beet. I had my other shoes in a bag; I couldn’t wait to get there. The mud sucked at my boots the whole way.”