by Maxine Clair
They decorated the tree and munched goodies and listened to Leon’s Christmas music.
Later in the evening, as they sat again on the sofa, he said, “I have something to show you,” and reached into his jacket pocket.
It was a letter. Folded. “It’s from Sylvia,” he said, shaking it out for her to read.
“Foots is in the hospital again,” he said.
“What for?”
“I don’t know—she didn’t say.”
October looked at the letter—large-scrawled sentences that broke the news and gave Leon a telephone number to call.
“She doesn’t say whose number that is, and nobody answers,” he said.
October put two and two together. Sylvia was Foots’s common-law wife or something like that. She would be at the hospital all the time, and not answering the telephone.
“Did you call early in the morning, or late at night?”
Leon hadn’t, and he hadn’t considered flying up to New York, either.
“You think I should just TWA out of here because Sylvia sent the news?”
October wouldn’t do shoulds and shouldn’ts with him, but she did point out that the old man had been family to Leon. Family was too important. He might want to find out if the trouble was operation big or toenail small.
“Doesn’t he have diabetes?” she asked Leon.
And Leon did see the merit in being sure it wasn’t serious.
“Foots wouldn’t want Sylvia sending letters,” he said. “I’m the last person he’d want to see.”
“Just call, then,” she told him. If Vergie fell sick, surely Gene would call. Wouldn’t he?
She added, “Unless you think it’s serious. I mean, you don’t think he might die or anything, do you?”
What did she want to say that for? He looked at her like she had been planning the old man’s death. Then he started rubbing his hands together and got up off the floor. Went to the window to look out at the cold street.
“One time I was up on the Avenue, hungry, mouth ashy, shoes rusty, trying to stretch a quarter. Foots told me, ‘Come on, son,’ he said, ‘you need to do something ’bout them shoes.’ I went with him and got up in his shoeshine chair at the back of Grimes’s place. And I let him do his thing.
“First he brushed my shoes off, getting rid of everything I’d picked up in the streets, you know. Then he took a little jar of soapy water and shook it up. Dipped into it with a toothbrush. He said stitching added class to the shoe, and that you had to keep it looking new. He worked up a lather along the stitched soles. Bleach would rot the thread, so he used soap and water, and rinsed with water and alcohol. Made them dry fast.
“He took his time, rubbed on a thin coat of tan wax, and told me that the leather was already what it was going to be. He said you’re not covering it up, you’re bringing out what is already there. And he smoked a cigarette and waited for it to set. And when he finished the cigarette, he went to zapping and slapping, flicking and snapping his rags and brushes. When he finished, and my shoes looked new, he told me that good leather would always shine. If you polish it right, the real thing shows through.”
Yes, good lesson, and October understood it.
“I think that’s why I always hung with him,” Leon said. “Stuff like that.”
She thought about her sister, and blinked back tears. She didn’t know if Leon wanted to hear her advice, but she needed it said.
“I think if I were you, I wouldn’t want to have him go without saying good-bye.”
Leon half turned, looking shocked, and she went to him, got him to come away from the cold window. They drank their hot toddies. Played music and danced. Made love on the sofa. She missed her family.
Two days after Christmas she was sewing in the basement when Leon called to say that he had reached Sylvia, and that Foots had had his other leg amputated the day before. Leon had tried to get a straight answer about whether or not Foots would be okay, and whether or not Foots had asked for him. He told October she’d have to know Sylvia to understand why he didn’t get an answer. But probably Foots hadn’t asked for him. Probably he was going to be all right.
It occurred to October to ask, “What’s his real name?”
And Leon said Foots Franklin was all he knew.
As the days passed, and Leon gave her dribbles and drabbles he got from Sylvia, October could tell he was worried. Every time they talked, Leon had something about Foots, like he was already writing the man’s eulogy.
He told her tender things: Foots’s arthritis and how sometimes, when Sylvia wasn’t around, Leon had had to fasten Foots’s shirt or tie his shoes. He talked about the times he had taken Foots with him on the road. The old man knew a lot about the jazz clubs in New York, knew owners and managers, jobs to be had. He knew which ones were cool and which ones were thin ice.
On the telephone one evening, he talked about how Foots had gotten him together with Gene “Jug” Ammons, the player who had made a hit out of “Red Top.” How Foots had introduced them—had “pulled Jug’s coat about me.” It turned out that Gene Ammons had played the blues with Foots once upon a recent time at a club called the Zanzibar, and it was the first time Leon had ever heard of Foots playing anything anywhere.
“I must have known Foots three, four years by then. Back then, I knew he was crippled and couldn’t play piano. He had never told me about the Zanzibar, though. So I just showed up there one night. Sure enough, he was the real thing.
“He’s wailing on his harmonica, and singing the blues all about rotting in the pen, being in the joint. Now that was news to me. He had a hundred songs about it. That was the first I ever heard about him being sent up, too.”
Sometimes her mind was like one of those combination locks. It would spin as far as it could go one way, then turn and stop at another place, spin and spin again until she heard the proverbial click. The name “Franklin” had been just an ordinary stop. So had the old piano-playing bluesman. The penitentiary thing got her serious.
“Where was Foots Franklin from?” she asked Leon. “Because my father’s name was Franklin Brown, and he went to the pen, too. He was supposed to have died there.”
Leon wasn’t sure, but he thought “somewhere down south. To hear him tell it, he’d been everywhere, but I never did know where he was born.”
“Was he ever in Cleveland?”
“I don’t know. He never said. He talked a lot about Chicago and Detroit.”
“Where was he in jail? Leavenworth?”
“Joliet. He told me that. And he didn’t have any kids.”
“Did he tell you that, too?”
“No, but Sylvia told me once that Foots thought me and Dee were his children. In all the time I’ve known him, he’s never said anything about any family, and nobody ever came around.”
Leon told her, “Foots had one ace, Slick Moses—from the joint, too. Old guy. Slick had a son who was a doctor over in Brooklyn, and when Foots got out of the joint, the son got them a place to stay. I think that’s how Foots got to the city.”
He told her that anything was possible, but that he didn’t think Foots could be her daddy. They didn’t look anything alike. October tried to call up the old man she had run into on the one night Leon had been at the Blue Room, but she remembered nothing. Leon told her he was sure Foots would want to claim her if he knew there was a chance.
Suddenly October got all hot and jittery about trying to come up with the right questions about this man, trying to get at what Leon didn’t know he knew. That night after they hung up, she dialed Leon right back.
“Why did he go to jail in the first place?—that’s the question.”
Leon wasn’t sure about that either. “I didn’t care what he’d done. Like I said, anything is possible, but I can’t see Foots killing a woman and fo
rgetting about his children. Not Foots.”
But Leon had never actually asked, and Foots had never said. Leon did say, though, that once when they were talking, he had said something to Foots about paying the price by doing the time, and Foots had told him that there were some things you could never pay for. Leon said that that had stuck with him, that maybe Foots had done something big.
How many years had Foots been in the pen? Leon thought he had been there during the war. Slick Moses and Foots used to talk about making boots at Joliet for the troops. And it was then that Leon put it together for himself.
“Damn,” he said. “I bet that’s where he got that name.” He said he would ask Sylvia. October had got him going.
It wasn’t New Year’s yet when Leon called her, first thing one morning. It had started to snow and she had been daydreaming about being snowed in together with him.
“It’s me,” he said.
She said hi and what’s up.
“Nothing much,” he said. But from the sound of his voice she knew something had happened to the old man.
“You don’t sound so good,” she said. “What happened?”
“Foots is dying. Gangrene. They couldn’t stop it.”
“Don’t tell me on the phone,” she said. “Come over here. Please.” She wanted to hold him. She wanted him to hold her. Too many questions swam around in her head.
“I think I have to go,” he said. She could hear the regret.
“Okay,” she said. “I guess you should fly. Now. Today if you can. How much longer does he have?”
“They’re saying a few days, maybe.”
“Who’s with him?”
“Sylvia stays there day and night. All the guys from the barbershop come, but Foots can’t see. He’s pretty near blind now. She says I’d better come if I’m coming.”
October needed time.
“You have to hear this,” Leon said. “I told Sylvia about you—you know, about him maybe being your daddy and all. And I asked her if Foots’s name could have been Franklin Brown. She was sure it was him. But to tell you the truth, I don’t know what to believe. Sylvia said she always suspected he had kids. She thinks I ought to bring you with me.”
“Wait,” October said. “I don’t know that I want to go running off to New York based on what Sylvia is saying.”
“Let me give you another reason to come,” Leon said. And she listened, let him come to her. “I’m asking for me. I’m saying I don’t want to do this by myself. Will you come?”
chapter 25
For one brief second when Vergie heard October’s voice say, “Hi, Vergie, it’s me,” on the phone, it felt like the sun popping out after years of rain. But then Vergie’s mind came to attention and started scouting for clouds again.
“How are you?” from October got a “Fine, and you?” from her, and if she hadn’t been so surprised she would have asked October right away, “What do you want?” But she waited.
“How’s everybody?” probably meaning David.
“Everybody’s fine. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year,” Vergie said. “Did you get my card?”
October said she’d gotten it, and told her that she didn’t send any out this year. Vergie didn’t want her to explain. Cast die, and all that.
“I don’t know how to put this,” October said, “but I think I’ve found Franklin Brown. He’s dying in a hospital in New York. I thought you ought to know.”
It sounded like a joke. A trick. An excuse to call.
“Franklin Brown.”
“Yes.”
“Our Franklin Brown? Poppa?”
“Poppa,” October said. “I think it’s him, and he’s in a hospital in New York. Dying, they say. I’m going up there.”
“Who is they?”
Vergie listened to October go into this long story about her new man and some old man who was like a father to him, and finding out he’d been in the pen and all. How many Franklin Browns were there, and how many of them had been to jail? A whole lot, Vergie bet. Their Franklin Brown was dead and gone. It wasn’t possible, but this was October.
“What do you want me to do?” Vergie asked her.
“Nothing,” October said. “I just thought you’d want to know.” October got quiet. Vergie didn’t know what to say. She was still wondering what kind of man October had gotten mixed up with this time.
“I mean, you knew more than I ever did about him,” October said. “You remembered more. If it is him, he would remember us, and you could ... I don’t know ... ask him things.”
Vergie thought about boogie-woogie. Mr. Bailey across the alley. This was October, and October believed it was Franklin Brown. Even if it was possible, why would Vergie want to go watch him die?
“Why would you want to see him?” Vergie asked her.
“Because ...” October said, like she was trying to say the right thing. “He was our father. I guess that’s why. I mean, I never knew him really, but you did....”
Vergie’s thoughts tumbled. Why was it that Auntie had never said where or when?
October sounded like she had just found the real reason. “I feel like I owe it to myself, Vergie, to go see if it’s really him. And if it is, I’ll find out where he’s been all this time, and why he never looked for us, I guess.”
“You wanted him to look for us?” October could be such a child sometimes.
“I don’t know,” October said. “I just need to know, and I called to tell you that they think he’s only got a few days. I’m leaving this afternoon with Leon. If you decide to come, Leon could get you a room where we’re staying.”
Vergie thought October ought to go, that maybe it would cure her. When October told her to write down the number for a Sylvia woman in New York, something told her to get a pencil and jot it down. Who knows—maybe later she would want to call to find out what happened.
They hung up. Vergie didn’t even know that she was upset until she felt herself calming down. Probably the shock of hearing from October out of the blue. She couldn’t drop everything and go anywhere. It was the holidays. She wouldn’t dream of going anywhere without Gene, and what would they do with David? Franklin Brown had died in Leavenworth years ago. October could be so gullible. If he wasn’t already dead, why would she want to go watch him die? Would he remember the piano? What did he think ever happened to them?
She sat by the telephone. Who could she call? Gene was still upstairs getting ready for work. David was still asleep. What if it was Franklin Brown? Mrs. Hopp was too old to handle David. None of them had ever been to New York. It was the holidays.
Hallelujah. They talked to each other. My life, with all its wonders and terrors, was long since over. Wonders and terrors were still unfolding for my daughters. I held for them—oh, I held for them.
chapter 26
October’s first time on an airplane didn’t work out so well. Nobody told her not to eat much, and she was sick the whole time, couldn’t wait to get off, and made Leon promise he would find some other way for them to get back to Kansas City.
Seeing what she saw on the trip from the airport to Holly House, though, made it worthwhile—a glimpse of the gush and noise and grand-ness that was Harlem. Everything. Everywhere. A corner of her brain sprang old Garvey parades and Father Divine blessings on her. Thirty years earlier, she would have seen the dirty-rich driving down from the very Sugar Hill that Leon pointed to. And VanDerZee would have been setting up his tripod to catch ladies in drape dresses with fur trim going into Madame C.J.’s. Men in chesterfields would have posed with one foot on the runningboard of the Duesenberg that business—with or against the law—had bought them.
From the taxi she heard slow noises. Soft blurs. Saw Chee-Chee’s Bar and Grill. People inside, sitting along a counter, dumb backs in a row, hunched eating. Lin’s Han
d Laundry—a whiff of clean smell; fried-apple smell from Estelle’s Kitchen. “The Flamingos at the Apollo” stamped on busy-print posters tacked to every flat place.
And fire escapes, iron vines of black and rust on the faces of brick buildings. The buildings too—sand, cream, umber, baroque and federal, austere and elegant, flat-topped and crowned.
And then the people. Couples. Singles. Swarming to and from lives. Going and coming like before-and-after advertisements at the beauty parlor. Like multitudes pushing their way to some great event. Yet these people were here every day, going home from work, and to work, and to and from a thousand other places. In their clothes they seemed to be giving every point of view from sporty-0 to grace, wearing bomber jackets, capes, stingy brims and wing tips, French cuffs with work socks, police blues and old-style Garveyite caps, wide hoop skirts and spike heels, low-risers and tight gabardine. They all had style.
No wonder Leon had been so driven to come here.
Over one block from the famous part of Edgecombe and a short ride to Harlem Hospital, Holly House looked like a stump of a hotel compared to the high-rises all around it. Inside, Leon got them a room on the second floor.
Vergie had called October back that same morning to ask where they would stay if they came. She told October that she had asked Gene, and that he’d said it was up to her. If she wanted him to, he would drive to New York right then, pushing her to go. October had had to call Leon to get the name of the hotel. And when she had called Vergie back, and said that she and Leon would be going on Pan Am, and that it seemed worth it to get there soon, Vergie had gone back to saying that she shouldn’t bother. But one more time, Vergie had called again, with a softer voice saying that she couldn’t believe she was going to drop everything and spend that kind of money to come watch an old man die. Said they would be there sometime tomorrow. “I don’t know why,” she had said. Like the old Vergie.
October and Leon had been in the room no more than a few minutes when the telephone rang. Leon answered it. “It’s for you,” he said. October’s heart fell into her stomach. She knew that it would be Vergie, and that she was probably not coming.