Jazz Moon (4 page)

Baby Back shook his head
no
.

“You mean to tell me a good-looking man like you ain't married?” She sounded a little desperate when she said, “Girlfriend?”

Baby Back's eyes stuck to Ben like printed words to a page. “No.”

They sat in silence, Ben sweating, Angeline clinging, Baby Back cool and confident. His eyes never left Ben even as he yelled out, “Hey, Fanny!”

A waitress sashayed to the table as everyone in Teddy's took inventory of her hourglass shape: big and pushed up on top, slim through the torso, copious hips. She placed one hand on Baby Back's shoulder, the other on her hip, beaming.

“Yeah, honey?” Fanny said. “What can I do you out of?”

“Bring these folks a round of whiskey. On me.”

Angeline piped in, her words rushing out. “We appreciate that. We really do, Mr. Johnston, but—”

Baby Back cut her off with a lordly wave of his hand. He nodded to Fanny, who left the table. Ben sensed Angeline's breathing quicken. The palms of her hands were so warm, the place on his arm where she gripped him was damp. Baby Back kept grinning and his eyes kept pawing him. Ben kept turning away, but couldn't resist turning back.

“How'd you get the name ‘Baby Back'?” he asked, just to fill the silence.

“When I was a little kid, about three or four, I wandered off. My whole family searched for me. Finally found me in a cotton field crying my eyes out 'cause I thought I was lost forever. When they carried me home, my ma hugged me and kept saying over and over, ‘I sho is glad I got my baby back.' Then she whipped my ass raw for running off. But ‘Baby Back' stuck.”

“What's your real name?”

Baby Back reached over, straightened the knot in Ben's tie. “I'll tell you when you know me better.”

He took a long time with the knot. Prodding it, tinkering with it, pressing it just so. Ben felt the warmth from his hands, smelled his sweat. A finger strayed onto his neck, scalding him.

“How old are you, Mr. Poet?”

“Twenty-one. You?”

“Thirty-one. How long y'all been married? Got any kids?”

“Six years next week.” Ben was whispering, didn't know why. “And no.”

Baby Back finished with the tie. He sat back in his chair. His gaze shifted to Angeline, then back to Ben. “Married six years. And no kids. Now, what kind of folks is married six years and ain't got no kids?”

Angeline shut her eyes, turned away.

“We can't have them,” Ben said.

Fanny reappeared with fresh teacups, placed them in front of Ben and Angeline, punched Baby Back playfully on the back, and sashayed away. Ben dove into his drink, grateful for the distraction from Baby Back's gaze. He drank half the whiskey in one gulp. “You like playing Teddy's?”

“It's all right. Ain't really where I want to be.”

“Where you really want to be?”

“Paris.”

“Paris, France?” Ben said.

“Sure as hell don't mean Paris, Mississippi.”

The men laughed. Angeline strangled Ben's arm so tight, it went limp. He wanted to unfasten her. He took another gulp of whiskey.

“When do you think you'll be leaving? For Paris?” Angeline said.

Baby Back laughed harder. “Looks like Mrs. Charles wants to get rid of me. She's hurting my feelings!”

Ben laughed, too. It billowed up and out before he could stop it. And once up and out, it multiplied. Soon they were laughing like silly schoolboys at a dirty joke. Angeline loosened her clutch on Ben's arm, enabling blood to flow again. She still held on to him, but her touch was a shadow of what it had been.

The schoolboys recovered.

“A lot going on for colored musicians in Paris,” Baby Back said. “I'm saving money to go, but I'm hoping I get discovered by a promoter who'll take me there first.”

Ben didn't know Baby Back at all, but the thought of his leaving devastated him. He finished off his whiskey and looked at Angeline's. She hadn't touched it. “You gonna drink this?” He didn't wait for a reply, but grabbed her teacup and threw back a long swallow. Then another. The whiskey galvanized him. He spoke and laughed and yelled out loud; invoked the coarse humor he normally spurned; shouted across the room when he spotted someone he thought he knew. He drank two more teacups that Baby Back ordered for him even as Angeline begged him not to.

“Now, when you was here last week,” Baby Back said, “we decided you'd recite one of your poems next time you came. Well?”

“It's late,” Angeline said in not even a voice, but a breath. “Ben. We need to go. Please.”

“It ain't that late, Mrs. Charles,” Baby Back bellowed. “Hell, it's Saturday night. You a square or something?” He barked out a volcanic laugh that made the table vibrate.

“My wife's a square!” Ben yelled through sputtering laughter. “Ain't that something? Angeline's a square!” He drank more whiskey.

Angeline rose from her seat and grabbed her purse.

“You leaving us, Mrs. Charles?” Baby Back said. “Good! That'll give me and Mr. Poet a chance to talk. All. By. Our. Selves.”

Baby Back's velvet baritone resounded. The devilish smile smeared his face. Ben drained his drink. Angeline hesitated, then threw her purse on the table and reseated herself.

“Ben don't recite his poems for strangers. And besides—”

Baby Back talked over her. “I want my poem!”

My poem.
Ben felt himself sink. A drop of sweat made a harrowing descent down his face. His knee burned. He felt a slight pressure as the burn swelled. Then a grazing as Baby Back pressed his knee with his own, scraping it up and down under the table. He gazed at Baby Back's full lips, his gorgeous brown eyes, the touch of scruff on his cheeks.

“Mr. Poet. Ben. Recite me a poem.”

Ben finished off his whiskey, then recited the best poem he had ever written.

His head whirled from alcohol and secondhand reefer smoke. Baby Back still pressed his knee. The heat had abated, but the seductive pressure remained. Angeline cupped her face in her hands. Her body quaked. She pushed her chair back from the table and ran out.

The club had gotten quieter and half as full, but it simmered. The hostess sat on the edge of the stage, talking to patrons at a table up front. Some waitresses clustered at the bar, joking with the bartender. Voices boomed as patrons laughed and gossiped and talked mess.

Ben leaned forward, head hanging. “What'd you think, Mr. Johnston? What'd you think of
your
poem?”

The pressure vanished from Ben's knee. It cooled instantly.

Baby Back rose. “I think . . . I think you better go after your woman. Before you and me get in trouble.”

He walked away, stepped back onto the stage, grabbed his horn, began to play. It was seamless, the way he fit right back in with the band. As if he'd never left that stage.

T
he liquor weighed him down. He had to fight to get up from the chair. As he left Teddy's, the band roared behind him and then dissipated as he gained more distance from the place. He stumbled home and found Evelyn Harrisburg on the stoop, facing the street, her hand gnarled around her walking stick.

“Your wife got in a while ago. She was crying. And you're drunk. Must be quite a story behind that.”

“I'm sure you'll make one, Mrs. Harrisburg.”

“Those country niggers are up there playing that devil's music again.”

“I'm sorry to hear that, ma'am.”

The apartment was dark and quiet and soothing after a night of shows and speakeasies. He approached the bedroom. A crevice of moonlight slipped through the window. Angeline had defected to one side of the bed, facing away from him. He undressed and got in. He sensed she was awake. He lay on his back so she could bundle up against his chest, pour her legs over his if she wanted. He wished she would cry, gift him with an excuse to comfort her, because he couldn't reach for her on his own. He neither touched her nor spooned himself into the curves of her tight, still body.

He couldn't believe
this thing
was back. He had fought it for so long, had spent these last years in Harlem fending off each and every temptation that vexed him morning, noon, and night. He thought he had subdued
this thing,
tamped it down into the littlest pocket so that it took up no more room than a speck. But it had slithered up again and rooted itself inside him.

The sounds of late-night Harlem wandered into the apartment: a barking dog; someone, probably homeless, ransacking a garbage can; a wino howling a popular song off-key; the
devil's music
upstairs. Ben couldn't sleep, but not because of the noise. A memory accosted him. A memory of the first time he had grappled with
this thing
.

His fourteenth birthday arrived on a summer morning in June without fanfare. Ben knew he wouldn't receive presents, but he expected, hoped for, some sort of acknowledgment: an extra treat at breakfast; a kiss from his ma or a handshake from his pa; a
happy birthday, son
from both or either of them.

At breakfast he sat on the wooden bench on his side of the table while his pa demolished grits and coffee and his ma added yeast to some dough at the stove. His eyes bounded from one parent to the other, waiting. The wait became vain hope. His appetite dwindled. He picked at his food.

Her bread yeasted, his ma turned from the stove, wiped her hands on the front of her dress, and noticed her sullen son. “Boy, what you doin'? We ain't got time for you to be dawdlin'. Hurry up and eat and get out there and feed them animals! Go on now. What you waitin' for? They ain't gone feed themselves.”

“Yes'm.”

He finished his grits, now cold, and left to begin his chores.

While watering the mule, his parents announced they were leaving for errands. His ma assigned him a catalog of work: “Chop the firewood. Clear the weeds out the cabbage patch. Spread fresh hay in the barn.”

His pa didn't say anything. He rarely did now.

His ma's list grew. “Kill a chicken for supper and skin it, too. The fat one. Pick some blackberries so I can make that pie I promised the Reverend Ledger's wife. Make sure they ripe.”

“Yes'm.”

His ma shouldered her way up the dirt path with long strides, a big cloth bag hanging in the crook of her arm. His pa followed.

They hadn't remembered his birthday. Or hadn't cared enough to acknowledge it. That hurt. Losing four children—two in childbirth, one in infancy, and another after an illness at eleven years old—had made his ma and pa vacant inside. Their bodies still functioned, but their hearts had evaporated. It seemed all of their love had been buried with their four dear babies. So what that one had survived? Why waste affection on him when there were so many ways he could be taken from them? Sickness. Farm accident. White folks.

Anything could happen in Dogwood, Georgia. Ensconced in the central part of the state, the white folks claimed the town was named for the fragrant, leafy dogwood trees that flourished in the region. But colored folks grumbled that it was really named in honor of the hounds that hunted down their fugitive ancestors back in slavery days.

Ben watched his ma and pa. As soon as they rounded a bend and were out of sight, he dashed into the chicken coop, lifted up a squawking, protesting hen—the fat one his ma had instructed him to butcher—and removed a book hidden under a loose board beneath her.
Lyrics of Lowly Life
by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

It had been a gift from the teacher, Miss Percy, a pretty, young colored woman all the boys were sweet on. She traveled through Georgia, teaching a month here, a semester there. One day Miss Percy read them Dunbar. The verses put some of his classmates to sleep, but captivated Ben, who shyly asked the teacher if she had an extra copy to loan him. She didn't, but gave him her own prized volume at the end of the semester and told him to use it well and often. She must have used it well and often herself because the cover was worn and the corners of many a page had been turned down as bookmarks. Penciled notes were scrawled throughout. Proud Ben ran home to show his folks.

“What you need poetry for? That's for white folks,” his ma said. She was boiling laundry in a giant pot, stirring it with a wooden pole. She chewed tobacco while she worked.

“But Paul Laurence Dunbar's colored, Ma. And these poems is pretty.”

She spat a straight line of tobacco out of the corner of her mouth. It pierced the dirt like an arrow. “Pretty? You don't need pretty. You need to learn how to plough that field. Will that book teach you that? Give it back to that high-falutin' teacher. Or throw it away. I don't want to see it. I catch you reading it, I'ma whip you good.”

“Yes'm.”

She hadn't allowed him to attend school after that semester ended.

Now, with his ma and pa off the farm for a few hours, Ben had a minute window of time. He grabbed the Dunbar book and sallied through the groves of dogwood trees to Sugarfish Pond. If he budgeted his time wisely, he could swim, enjoy a few poems, and get back before his parents did. His ma would yell about his incomplete work, but he had to do something to celebrate his birthday.

When he broke through the trees and onto the bank of the pond, he saw that another boy had beaten him there: Willful Hutchison, son of the “Widow” Hutchison, and brother of those five raggedy Hutchison girls.

Eighteen years old and the handsomest colored boy in Dogwood.

Silly, chattering girls went silent when he walked by. In church, women—unmarried and married alike—peeked over prayer books and murmured, “Have mercy.” Christened “William” and nicknamed “Willie,” he was so hardheaded and disobedient, folks took to calling him
Willful
. Hardly anybody even remembered his given name.

Willful was knee-deep in the pond, facing the opposite direction, naked. Ben was presented with his muscled back; his full, round buttocks; his skin the color of dark, varnished wood. His weight was shifted onto one leg, causing one of his buttocks to lift into the air while the other sloped provocatively. Willful stood idly. Serene as sculpture. He was beautiful. Ben tried, but could not take his eyes away. In his fourteen years, he had often been mesmerized by the beauty of a poem or a sunrise. Years later, exquisite jazz would send him. But right now, it was Willful Hutchison holding him spellbound.

“Jesus,” Ben said. It escaped his mouth like an agitated bird from a cage.

Willful heard it. He turned around, surprised but by no means scared, and saw Ben. He neither sprang for his pile of clothes that lay in a heap near a sapling, nor attempted to hide his nakedness. He appraised Ben with the same curiosity with which Ben appraised him.

And now that Willful faced him, Ben saw the rest of his body: the chest with its two mounds of muscle; the stomach with a thin line of fuzz extending down the middle before culminating in a thicket of hair; the penis that dangled between his legs.

“Jesus.”

Why couldn't he look away? Ben feared every second he took in Willful's body plunged him further into a realm he would neither understand, nor escape.

They didn't move. Ben was confused, riveted, but Willful exuded supreme calm, as if it was perfectly natural to stand naked in a pond with a dumbstruck boy staring at him. He radiated a monster confidence that bewitched Ben and made him understand why the women in church muttered, “Have mercy,” between hymns and sometimes during them.

Willful shifted in the water. The movement broke the spell. Ben looked around, desperate to regain his bearings. Like waking from a rattling dream and needing assurance that you're in the same place in which you went to sleep. But Ben sensed he wasn't in the same place. And when his eyes rambled back and found Willful touching himself, that sense received a jolt. Willful's eyes zeroed in on Ben. The spell transfixed him again.

“Jesus.” No agitated bird this time, but a plea for help. Because he couldn't stop looking. He had heard other boys boast about touching themselves while looking at dirty pictures. And now the handsomest boy in town touched himself while looking at Ben. The thought puffed up his pride one moment, shamed him the next.
Why can't I stop looking?

Willful inhaled and exhaled, his chest fully expanding then fully deflating. His face, so placid before, now contorted. He clamped his eyes shut. His entire body heaved.

Ben felt something sticky in his pants. Moisture stained the front of his pants, rapidly expanded into a near-perfect sphere. He looked at Willful again. The handsomest boy in Dogwood had turned his big, muscled back on him, leaving Ben with the same picture he had encountered when he arrived.

He panicked, then raced through the woods. Once home, he assaulted his chores. By the time his ma and pa returned, the blackberries had been picked, the barn smelled of fresh hay, and the fat hen was a skinned corpse.

That night, as Ben lay on his pallet waiting for sleep that barely came, Willful Hutchison planted himself inside him. And Ben kept whispering, “Jesus.”

 

Angeline still faced away, crying softly now. He knew she commandeered every ounce of strength to cry just softly.

“You promised.” Her words were breathy, almost inaudible. “You promised me you wouldn't go back to that. You promised you'd never go back to being that way.”

“I've kept my promise,” Ben said. “Ever since we've been married. I swear. I've kept it. So far.”