Tuesday, 07 July 2009

• A Minor Blues, Chapter V

  
   

  CHAPTER V

  
  "The blues are in these woods, man. They live in the swamp water, they
  grew under the heel of oppression, flowered, seeded, it's a circle."  RL
  just smiled, went on pickin'. They were in RL's cadillac, sitting behind
  Leon's joint. The boys were loading the gear in the back, a lot more than Jack
  remembered being onstage. He knew he wasn't making sense, but Burnside
  seemed to understand, he played to Jack's rambling. They were writing a
  song. The sounds of the equipment being loaded was the rhythm, Coquetta
  was saying something, it became part of the composition. RL beamed at
  Jack, his face shone in the bright lights, brighter than the moon,
  bright as the sun, Coquetta sang to Jack, "Pancakes, honey..."

  "Jack! Pancakes gonna get cold! Get up, you dancin' fool!"

  It was Sherry, her voice hurt his head, almost as much as the sunlight
  streaming through the curtain she had pulled open. He raised up in the
  bed, a bad mistake. The room started spinning, the vise holding his head
  got tightened one more turn. He lay back down.

  "Here you go, fella, hair of the dog." Audie had walked in, and was
  offering Jack a glass of light-colored liquid. "A little Rebel Yell, but
  mostly water. Here, just sip it, son."

  In their boy's bed, with the two of them hovering over his damaged self,
  Jack felt like a fledgling not quite ready to fly. Maybe they were
  remembering tending to Marcus, their son's name, Jack recalled through
  the fog of war, when he had a fever. He sipped the elixir, pictured the
  water soaking into the membranes surrounding his brain, imagined the
  hangover easing already. Jack realized he needed a bathroom break,
  started to throw off the covers.

  "Hold on, Sherry don't need to be seein' your package. Word is, she's
  ready to run off with her new two-steppin beau as it is."

  Sherry slapped Audie on the arm. "Don't get your hopes up. I'm not
  going anywhere but the kitchen. Jack, do your business, get dressed, and
  come eat. Pancakes and Tupelo honey, bacon and coffee with your name on
  it are waitin' on you. She grabbed the glass from his hand on her way
  out. "And no more dog-hair. That ain't no cure, just get you drinkin'
  all day."

  "Fine, whatever, just stop all that damned yelling. Jeez, even my hair
  hurts."

  Breakfast was good, Sherry had kept it hot, and his hosts had waited
  until he was showered and dressed so they could all three eat together.
  Over coffee, He thanked Sherry for the fine meal, and for ironing the shirt
  and pants she had taken from his suitcase, and laid on the bed while he was
  in the shower. She brushed off the thanks he offered, then remarked, "That
  reminds me, your other clothes oughtta be ready to get out of the dryer by now."

  Jack sat up straight, uselessly feeling in his clean pants for the notes
  he had taken in the van after the show. RL only had a Caddy in Jack's
  dream, if not the bluesman's as well. His mood sunk, but Sherry read his
  mind.

  "Not to worry, I checked the pockets." She walked to the counter, picked
  up some scraps of paper. "I saved Wanda's number", Audie chuckled.
  "Coquetta gave you her number after all?" She looked at the last
  piece of paper, then at Jack. "And I do not remember you dancing with
  anyone named Tobias Plimsoll."
  -----------------------------------

  "Melissa, how are you? I'm fine, thanks. Yes, I am on my way to a
  nursing home in Cleveland, Mississippi. I left Euclidean this morning. I
  have a good lead. No, unfortunately, but his cellmate in Cummins lives
  there, one Tobias Plimsoll. I don't know about that, but there's always
  hope on that score. At the very least, I will have more background on
  Mr. Partlow. Georgia is my next destination, unless Mr. Plimsoll gives
  us a new lead. You too, Melissa. Good day."

  Jack had hoped Melissa would ask how he got the lead. He was dying to
  tell someone about his adventure on the chitlin' circuit. The night was
  still fresh in his mind, although the headache had abated significantly
  since breakfast. He had said goodbye to the Boulware's after Audie had
  told him the best route, making Jack repeat it twice. Sherry had hugged
  him tight. He settled for a handshake from Audie, who told him to come
  back anytime. It wasn't politeness, he meant it, and Jack was equally
  sincere when he promised to return.

  He pulled the Burnside CD out the player; it had started for a third
  time. He popped in the disc with What's My Name?, the closest thing
  Spoondog ever had to a hit. According to Billboard magazine's archives
  it had cracked the R & B top 200 for two weeks in 1950, peaking at #178.

  An odd song, it starts with the band already playing a fast jumping
  blues riff, almost, but not quite the same as Rocket '88. Spoondog is
  introduced by an anonymous announcer, and yet another chorus is played
  before he asks the crowd, What's my name? 'Spoondog', some in the crowd
  respond. "What?", he yells. 'Spoondog', more joining in now, and louder.
  Then Spoondog asks, "Is this a party? Yeah, comes the rejoinder. "Why am I
  here? He asks, 'To party!'. Why are you here? 'To part-eee'.
  "(unintelligible)you wanna party?" The crowd's response is muted, maybe
  due to the lead guitarist (Spoondog?) ripping out a distorted solo that
  ends when Spoondog screams his real name, and adds 'I wanna go home, an'
  I got no home." For four rocking minutes, long for a single back then,
  it goes on, and ends with a scream and a roar from the crowd, the band
  still playing the same riff, but something is different, the band is
  quieter, the bass drops out completely after the scream, leaving the
  drums and rhythm guitar to play out the fade.

  "Strange", Jack mutters. But compelling all the same. There's more
  passion in Partlow's voice on this record than in all his other songs
  combined. In Jack's considered opinion, Spoondog should have done
  more live recording.

  He entered the town of Shaw, and turned north on Highway 61. The highway
  was the exit route for blacks leaving the south to go to Chicago seeking
  work and to escape the brutal segregation practiced in the South back then.
  In honor of the road, Jack had burned every song he could find that
  mentioned Highway 61 on a disc, which disc he put in the rental car's player
  now. The first cut, featuring Mississippi Fred McDowell's Highway 61 Blues,
  began playing. 'Lord that 61 Highway, it's the longest road I know.." Jack
  sang along as he drove north. He was yelling along with Johnny Winter on his
  version of  Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited when he passed the Cleveland
  city limits sign. 'Welfare department wouldn't give him no clothes...".

  Audie had recommended that he eat lunch at the Airport Grocery, and the
  food was surprisingly excellent. After finishing a plate of ribs and sweet
  potato fries, he found the Willows, a nursing home for indigent and
  Medic-Aid patients near the Municipal Airport, just off Hwy 8.

  He had called ahead, and was greeted by the lead nurse, a tall, spare,
  no-nonsense kind of woman, named Register. Jack doubted that she needed
  a first name, didn't look like the type to have friends close enough to
  use it with her. She took his card, insisted on seeing two I.D.'s (with
  picture), then grudgingly allowed him to follow her down the hall.  It
  was a crooked path, with the lunch carts and cleaning carts seemingly
  abandoned in the hall. An alert bell was ringing in one of the rooms. No
  one paid it any mind. Patients that were ambulatory or semi-so wandered
  in and out of rooms as the nurse led Jack to the last doorway, next to
  the emergency exit. Jack heard gospel music playing on the radio in the
  room.

  "Mr. Plimsoll! your visitor is here!", Nurse Register shouted over the
  Winan family. And she motioned Jack through the door. "You have thirty
  minutes, Toby needs his sleep.", And left Jack so she could continue
  ignoring the bell.

  Toby was not alone; In the bed closest to the door lay an old white man.
  His eyes followed Jack past the curtain divider to the bed that was
  cranked up so the occupant could drink from a plastic bottle of water.

  "Mr. Plimsoll, I'm .."

  "Jack Moonlight. R.L. called me this morning. Said you had some
  questions about Spoondog Partlow." The old man smiled,"Don't we all,
  son, don't we all." He put out his hand for Jack to shake, which he
  did. Toby was staring over Jack's shoulder, and he turned to see who was
  there. Nothing. He turned back. The old man's eyes were on him, but
  unfocused. Jack realized that he was talking to a blind man.

  "Yes. I am without the use of my eyes, Mr. Moonlight. May I call you
  Jack?"

  Of course. May I call you ...?"
  "Tobias, I dislike Toby, and that damned nurse knows it. The name is
  Tobias, if you please."
  "No problem, Tobias."
  "Do my eyes bother you, Jack?" I can put on these glasses, but they pain
  my ears after a few moments."

  The sunglasses were on the tray in front of Tobias. Cheap, Jack could
  see the sharp edges on the frames, where the mold had leaked molten
  plastic during the injection process. Jack took his sunglasses out of
  his shirt pocket. "Here, Tobias, try these on. He fitted them over the
  old man's ears, let Tobias slide the nosepiece around til they felt
  comfortable.
  "I guess my wandering eyes were getting to you."
  "A little", Jack admitted. And you keep those, Tobias. I wanted to bring
  you something for seeing me on such short notice, but I had no idea what
  you might need."

  "These'll do, young man. They feel mighty fine. These and an answer to
  the question of why you are looking for my old friend."

  So Jack explained in a few sentences about his client, and her Father's
  friendship with Spoondog.
  "That would be Frank Hatton. Spoon spoke of him a lot, and he was right.
  Frank was a good fellow."

  "You knew Frank?" Jack had not expected this.

  "I met Frank, if that's what you mean. I knew Spoon. I was already in my
  second year at Cummins when Spoon was throwed into our block." He
  paused, collected his thoughts. "You know how Spoon came to be in
  Cummins, I guess." Jack confessed that he knew only of the conviction
  for burglary.

  "Then let me fill you in, insofar as I what I know. Spoon told me he and
  Geddie had come to Arkansas looking for a job, a bare-knuckle match,
  anything to make some cash...."
  -----------------------------

  June 12, 1941

  "You done whut I tol' ya, tha'd be a twenty in yo' han', not a ten!"
  Spoonbill was drunk, again. His words were slurred close to
  incomprehension.
  "We split the pot, dammit, Spoon! Shit! The guy was bigger 'n' me,
  stronger 'n' me. And still it was a draw.", Delano said proudly.

  "An' yo face lools like a sausage, Roosevelt." Spoonbill was looking for
  an argument when he called Delano that. He knew Delano hated that nickname
  worse than Spoondog, even though he liked the President, thought he could
  make things better for the black man, maybe after the war everyone knew was
  coming.

  "I tol' you", Spoonbill continued, "When you fightin' someone you can't
  win fair against, get up close, say somethin' bad about his Mama. He
  gon' blink, thas' when you hit him with all you got. Don't say somethin'
  'bout his Mama, then not hit him, 'cause then you in worse trouble."

  "Man, you been sayin' that since Frank and I were sparrin'."

  "An' I'll keep sayin' it, cause it's true. It's ..true." Spoonbill got a
  pained look, suddenly doubled over, and threw up. Again, there was blood
  mixed in with the hootch and bile.

  Delano grabbed the bag with the bottle from Spoonbill's hand. That's it
  partner. No more drinkin' the profits. Not only are you drinkin' us out
  of a room, you're gon' kill yourself."

  Spoonbill made a wild grab for the bottle, missed and fell down. He got
  to his knees, vomited a thin stream of blood. Both men, for Delano was
  at least 21 now, watched the excreta run down the sidewalk, back the way they
  had come from the Dunbar neighborhood. It was a black section of town,
  and the cops didn't give a damn how many blacks there killed each other.

  Spoonbill staggered back to his feet, fixed his yellow eyes on Delano.
  "Roosevelt Spoondog De-lano Sambo pickaninny..." He forgot what the
  point of his rant was, besides getting his only friend's nuts in a
  twist.

  Delano kept the bottle out of Spoonbill's reach. Just then a spotlight illuminated
  both of them. The two men shielded their eyes.

  "Let me see your faces, boys!" It was, of course a Little Rock
  policeman, sitting in a paddy wagon neither man had seen pull up. "Give
  me one good reason not to add you to my collection of niggers in the back."

  "We are just headed for the bus station, sir.", Delano spoke up. "Leavin'
  town, not comin' back."

  The policeman put his light on Delano. "You, come here." Delano walked
  up close to the side window. "Gimme that bottle. Delano did so. the
  officer smelled it, passed it to the driver. One drunk in the caged
  interior suggested they pass it around, and there was some laughter.

  "You aren't drunk, are you boy?" But your, who is he, your dad? He's
  three sheets in the wind. Is that blood he's spitting up?"

  "Sir, he raised me, but we ain't kin. And that is blood. He's awful
  sick. I just wanna take him home"

  Delano was close enough to make out the tag on the policeman's chest.
  Tarver. "Officer Tarver, he can't take another stint in jail, I got bus
  money for both of us. Won it in a fight tonight."

  Tarver looked at Delano's face. "That's winning? Look, I feel generous
  tonight. Anyways the back is filled up. But you are in the wrong
  neighborhood. Go back down the hill, go ten blocks east, and come up
  Main street to the bus station."

  "But that's three miles out of our way, the station's only.."
  Tarver's sap hit Delano on the shoulder. He felt the pain down to his
  wrist, up to his ear. Behind Tarver, the driver snorted.

  "We can discuss this all night, you want to?"
  "No sir," Delano winced when Tarver drew back to repeat the blow.
  "Around the way it is. Nice night for walking."

  The paddy wagon started to pull away from the curb. "And don't stop
  walking until you get on the bus. We're gonna dump this load, and come
  back, looking for two coons ain't done what they were told."

  Spoonbill had gotten up. "You shoulda pasted him for that. You like
  bein' called nigger better than Spoondog, Roosevelt?"

  "Man, you are pressing me." Delano was working his shoulder, keeping it
  loose. There was gonna be a bruise, a contusion maybe. By daylight, it
  would be sore as hell. And the word did bother him, more than he was
  gonna let on to his friend.

  Delano wasn't sure when the dynamic had changed, and he became
  responsible for the older man.

  In a letter to Frank, who was in medical school at Tulane, he had
  postulated that the switch was complete about two years after Frank's
  dad had found out about the boxing and and their mixed-race
  friendship. Doc Hatton had subsequently sent Frank to a private school
  in Oxford. Frank sent Delano letters General Delivery to the post office
  in Kosciusko, because his dad was friends with the postmaster in Euclidean.
  They managed to keep in touch this way in the intervening years.

  The two started back down the hill, Spoonbill mad about the rousting,
  pissed about losing the hootch, and ranting loudly about the detour.
  "It gon' change one day. The black man gon' get his, you wait and see."
  If FDR had his way, we'd get ours now. He's got to deal with too many
  crackers and peckerwoods to get things done like they should."

  Delano just wished his partner would shut up. Still, the talk took his
  mind off the pain some. His head was hurting from the beating he had
  taken from the half-breed. Not that his opponent was going to be breathing
  through his nose anytime soon, either.

  They had gone two blocks downhill, and Spoonbill had headed west,
  despite Delano's protests. Maybe they could hurry, and get to Main Street
  before Tarver came by again. But Spoonbill stopped to rest against a
  live oak growing in a wide and deep front yard.

  "Dammit, old man! C'mon!" Delano grabbed Spoonbill by the collar and
  belt, and tried to pull him down the street. But the vet, who risked his
  life for this thankless country, who had seen how it was to be treated
  like a man, had other ideas.

  "I ain't goin' pup!" I'm tired, too tired." He looked at Delano, just
  go, get on the bus, leave me enough for my own ticket. "

  Delano saw Spoonbill's eyes had cleared, he saw sadness replace anger.
  "All right, screw it. Spoon. I ain't gonna stay here an' attract
  attention to us. But you gotta get to a charity hospital. Hide in them
  bushes, I'll get an ambulance for you, some kinda ride, ok? Stay outta
  sight."

  "Yeah, boy. you go on. Spoonbill gon' wait right here."

  Delano looked one more time at his mentor, wishing he had quit drinking
  when he made him and Frank stop. He turned, and started running. He
  could make Main Street, find a black man with a car or truck, be back
  here in a half hour.

  Spoonbill gagged and dry-heaved, felt something inside him shift.
  He wasn't gonna hide. No sir, he wasn't gonna die hiding, or in no Charity
  Hospital. He was a soldier, he killed men straight on, men who was
  trying to kill him back. He pushed himself away from the tree, got his
  bearings, headed for the front door of the house nearest him.

  "Hey! Cracker! I ain't hidin'! I'm right here, I'm coming in, get me a
  bed ready, you white son a bitch!", William Geddie, American soldier,
  said with a laugh. He was almost to the door, his knife somehow out of
  his pocket and open in his hand. The door opened....

  Three blocks away Delano heard the gunshot, the sound booming from
  somewhere behind him. As fast as he had been running for help, he was
  even faster getting back. The sky was getting lighter, and Delano could
  see that Spoonbill wasn't by the oak tree anymore. He must be in those
  bushes, that can't be him half on the porch over there, half on the
  sidewalk. Maybe he fell. Maybe the man with the shotgun had pushed
  him...

  "Don't come any closer, I'll shoot you too!"

  Delano slowed up, not because he heard the man, who was fumbling with
  the shotgun. He just did not want to see that it was Spoonbill with the
  big hole in his belly. But it was. He heard the man repeat his warning.
  Delano knelt down, saw Spoonbill smile up at him, heard him take
  his last breath.

  The homeowner dropped the shells, bent to pick them up, saw the
  younger negro cradle the dead man's head in his lap. The boy began to
  shake, he started to sob, then moan in between broken breaths. The
  shooter began to cry, his wife appeared behind the screen door. She saw
  the paddy wagon pull onto the lawn. She saw the doors open, the
  uniformed men step out, start walking towards the porch, slapping their
  nightsticks in the palms of their hands.

   

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