Going Down Fast (37 page)

The city of the clean, the fit, the socialized, the acceptable, the good. An end to vulgarity and chaos and spoilers and those who spat on the right way. The White City would fill America to the brim like a city set on a mountain, the New Jerusalem, the next Chicago. The city of his mind.

Rowley

Tuesday–Friday, December 30–January 2

Rowley sat in his nearly empty livingroom against the wall, eyes halfclosed playing against the 78 he had taped. Last Friday he had done his show on blues singers who had been based in Chicago on and off: Bukka White, Leroy Carr, Ida Cox, Lonnie Johnson, Big Joe Williams, Memphis Minnie and Little Son Joe, James Wiggins, Brownie McGhee, Peatie Wheatstraw, Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Blues Darby … In the taping he had hit another Black Jack, property of a collector from Madison. That by now familiar voice older, harsher, sang:

If all my sweet women were hangin' on that tree
,

Yeah all my women hangin' on that tree
,

Everyone would cry out loud, Jack baby, what you done to me
.

I was comin' down the street and I saw my daddy there
,

Yeah I saw my old daddy there
,

Shadow turnin' on the ground and his feet in the middle of the air
.

If I don't hang for what I done, get hung for who I am
,

Yeah, I'm Jack, I'm black that's who I am
,

I'm Black Jack, I'm keeping track, my life ain't worth a damn
.

He could hardly make out the guitar. A harmonica chirped now and then like a cricket. The voice was an insect from a dry year. He had been working on the song till he had a guitar part that fit, it snuggled in there under the voice and lifted. It was right. Then he started feeling bad. Here he was eating up the record and the man who made it was down in the bottom of Chicago getting nothing. He felt comfortable and very white. For months he'd been talking about the man, how he had to find him. He had leaned hard on the contacts in Welfare and got what little they had, including arrests for drunkenness and the curves that had not taken. Tomorrow he would work through the black flophouses, start on South State and see if anyone would listen. Carry his guitar. His face still looked messy. People would edge away from him in elevators. It was healing.

He put bulbs in the fixtures and hung shades. At the Salvation Army he bought a double bed and a table and straight chairs. Otherwise his two rooms were empty except for boxes and suitcases. Basic necessities. One was lacking.

Blues in my mealbarrel and there's blues on my shelf
,

And there's blues in my bed, 'cause I'm sleeping by myself
.

Nursing a hangover and bruises and thumps and great chagrin, he had come on his desire.

The phone rang. It was Shirley Williams who'd got his new number from the studio. She got to the point pretty quick:

“Do you know where Harlan is? I have to reach him. I thought, perhaps, you might've seen him, not for me but for the children …”

She was staying with her folks with the younger kids. The oldest boy was with an aunt. Harlan was gone.

He knew then that he was fooling himself with his guilt, going to do good to old down-and-out Jack. He needed him. The last touch, the last contact to his own adopted past. The roots of his own black identification. Go back and touch base. Find out what's still real. Are you there? Will you know me? Blue-black old man who made the music that's made me. Got to find you, talk to you. Last connection for my old sweet habit.

Late Wednesday afternoon, last day of the dying year, he found Jack Custis in the Paragon, 350 Fireproof Rooms for Men Only. The staircase reminded him of Anna's, going from landing to landing steep and straight up, but for four floors. The lobby was on the second floor with a small wan TV, some straight chairs and a big old spittoon. Every chair was occupied by old men. When he looked more closely they were not at all old, they just sat that way. Slow dull murmur of conversation. The white man in the teller's cage gave him directions.

After climbing two more flights he turned into an endless, windowless corridor with doors every few feet. Wee bulbs bleared the dark midway down from the black ceiling. Piss hung like fog between the defaced walls. The corridor felt like a passageway in the bowels of a ship. Numbered door after numbered door. Someone was vomiting. Finally 319. He knocked. His hand felt heavy. Jack Custis was about to turn flesh. He must be old. He knocked again. “Mr. Custis?” Somebody garbled a word or two inside, and he opened the door.

A man lay on the cot as if he had fallen from a height, tall, black, wizened. His face was an oilcured olive that had shriveled into minute creases and puffy folds. The cot was narrow and tilted toward the wall stained with old puke. A grimy sheet and a dirty scrap of blanket covered him, lying in his shabby clothes. There was nothing else in the cubicle. In the ditch between the cot and wall Rowley squatted. No instrument visible. Must have pawned it long ago. He had brought his guitar, carried it partly as a peace sign, as a calling card, partly because he hoped to persuade Jack Custis to play. He stood it in the corner.

“I've been looking for you a long time,” he began, “ever since I ran into one of your records in a secondhandstore.” He talked about his program and his search. This broken old man sprawled on the cot could be anyone, could be another Jack Custis down and out.

But the bloodshot eyes opened and a lopsided grin pulled on the deep wrinkles around the mouth. “No shi! All 'is dime.” He was nearly toothless. His words came out in a rasping lisp from the broken sump of mouth. Maybe a stained chip or two far back. Rowley felt sick. But false teeth could be bought for a toothless singer. He had trouble understanding and moved closer to the head of the cot.

“Sick,” Jack said urgently, and a spidery gray hand came skittering out of the covers and felt for his chest, his throat. “Sick for days. Since Tuesday.” His voice tore up in clots. “You like my old records, uh? How come, a white kid like you?”

He knelt beside the grisly cot in a position of infant prayer and told Jack why he'd tried to find him. The sound of a hack cough from the bottom of tubercular rotten lungs came through the chicken wire from the next cubicle or the next after that.

Jack made a face. “Yeah, raise hell all day, all nigh'. Can' get no rest. Bedbugs, roaches. You lay in your cage and they eat you live. Skinny old men in this place and fat cooties.”

He bent close to hear. Some he couldn't guess out of the toothless mumble. Reek of acid vomit. Jack seemed eager to talk. “Moochers, jackrollers always hangin' aroun'. I pay by the week when I can, else they roll you and you out on the street. Got to keep walkin and scroungin around the Salvation Army or Union Station. Summer I don' mind, but winner is so bad. I can' take it like I used to. Just walk and walk. I go to places for work. Manpower places. They charge so much and half the time let you off right away. You stand around the state office all day.”

Somewhere two thin voices yelled at each other.

“I get so mad, fed up. I just can' sit without a drink. I start thinkin and I get jumpy …” The corrugated metal wall behind him popped against his shoulders as Jack rose on his elbow to vomit.

He leaped up and moved out of range. Just brownish curd. He looked again. “You been sick three days? You know … it looks like you're bringing up blood.”

Jack shook his head wearily and lay back on the stained pillow.

“When was the last time you ate?”

Jack shrugged, his eyes closing. He talked less and his words became harder to catch. Rowley began to get scared, feeling the man was fading out. “Maybe some food would help. And we should get a doctor to look at you.”

Jack opened his eyes slightly. “You going?”

“I'll be back. I want to call a doctor.”

Toothlessly Jack laughed. “Kid, you funny.”

The man in the cage did not get excited. “The bleeding ulcers or one of them things old alkies get. They're drunk every day and trying to scrounge money for a bottle. He's not on General Public or they'd send a doctor. You won't find one to come down here.”

“I think he's really sick. No joke.”

“Listen, all winter the girl finds them in the morning, and the cops come and haul them away. There's always more where they come from. And I'll tell you, a third of the men down here, they don't drink at all, and they get just as sick.”

He went along to the first lunchroom he saw and used the payphone. He couldn't find doctors in the neighborhood, so he started with the Loop. Most doctors had closed up shop for the holiday. He tried doctors south, but those he got hold of backed out when he mentioned the address. He tried calling the city. Most offices were closed. When he did get connected with someone, they speedily assured him Jack was none of their department's business. Jack was nobody's client. He had a pretty good idea what would happen if he called the police.

Afraid Jack would think he had disappeared he got some greasy soup in a paper cup, coffee and a limp sandwich and carried them back. Jack lay eyes closed while his hand moved uneasily on his chest. “Feel like jelly,” he mumbled. “Old runny jelly. Wouldn't be bad but I feel so cold.”

He touched Jack's clenched hand. Cold as the pavement. He took off his coat and tucked it around. Jack felt cold all up his arms and legs. Insisting, he propped Jack up to taste the soup. A few minutes later Jack vomited that up with the brownish curds and blood that looked fresh. “The bastards won't come. But I'll get somebody. I'm going to call again.”

“Put your guitar down under the bed, boy, fore you go down.” The spidery hand moved on the wide sunken chest. He had been a big man, as Rowley had imagined. “Sure as shit they come in and lift it. I can't get up to lock the door. Put it under me, or you come back and find your box gone.”

Rowley obeyed. Something scuttled from his hand. “I'll get you out of this hole. I'll get a doctor if I have to drag him. You'll get teeth and you'll record—record what you want to.”

Deep in his chest Jack laughed. He winced then and as Rowley left, rolled to the edge of the bed to vomit new bright blood. Cursing, Rowley ran down the mountainside of rickety steps. On the sidewalk people moved out of his way. In the bleared mirror over the hashhouse counter, he saw his face red with anger, bruises inflamed, eyes glaring, hair on end. He got back on the phone. What he finally settled for was an ambulance from the county hospital.

When he told him, Jack twitched with fear. “Don' want to go there. Uhuh. Uhuh.” He moaned, his hand seeking on himself.

To pass the time Rowley pulled out the guitar and squatted against the partition. “Hey, you remember this?

I'm gonna lay down when I'm tired, when I'm feelin' good I'll stand
,

Gonna ride when I get restless, and I ain't gonna be your man
,

No, I ain't gonna be your mealticket, I ain't gonna be your man …
”

“That's mine but you don't do it right.” Jack rolled his head to and fro. Rowley did not know if he should go on and waited till Jack motioned for the guitar.

Now you want to cry, now you want to crawl

But baby, you been foolin' me, and I don't need you at all
.

You been foolin', oooh, you been foolin' me!

Jack fumbled at the strings. “Pearldiving ruins the hands. Get a cut and it never heals. Get it off of me, boy, too heavy. I can't catch my breath.”

Rowley took the guitar and Jack lay back with his eyes shut. Time oozed by. He wanted to go down and call again. He played blues and Jack nodded weakly and the bugs skittered up the corrugated walls and through the chicken wire came the sound of men retching and coughing and snoring and quarreling. A couple of men stopped their slow shuffle to the head to push open the door, listen a bit, and stare. Then they shut the door again and went on their way.

“Tell me the words to that song, ‘Noplace left to go.'”

Jack shook his head. “Jelly. Everything inside feel like it going squish.” For a long time he did not open his eyes.

Then he began to laugh and he laughed until blood choked him. “Sure as shit, here I am going down and some honky squat here ready to take my last words. Roll round a recorder and hand me guitar to blow. My, my. Things about coming my way. Success come to Jack, my, my, reprieve on death row with the old chair all lit up.” He was choking and laughing and halfway sitting up with his eyes shining out of his head, the cords in his neck standing straight out.

“The songs touched me. Isn't that real? I started looking for you, and you weren't easy to find. Okay, I was doing ninety other things, too, and maybe—”

“They don't touch me. It isn't useful. The police been beating on me too long, they whipped me down to the ground. Don't nothing matter worth a damn but I'm cold. One thing be good for me. To see this supposed to be great city a hole in the ground. Then I get out of bed and dance all over it. White folks always been trying to use me and I seen they never make it. You come up to use me now and you too late. I so full of poison maybe what I do is drag my big old carcass down to Lake Michigan and pollute up the city water supply, so all them nice folks have a little sip of Black Jack and keel right over. Maybe I do that.”

He choked again, brown blood on his mouth, and slid back. His eyes closed and he did not open them again.

By the time the ambulance came, he knew it was useless. He went along to help sign Jack in. That took forever. Then he ate in the hospital cafeteria and sat around the waiting room riffling raggedy
Life
's. He called Lucille and she came down an hour later with two of her big boys and her tight-lipped, stiffbacked husband. A young doctor told them brusquely at eleven that Jack Custis' esophagus was hemorrhaging: common among alcoholics.