Jazz Moon (7 page)

“Yes'm.”

He went back to the corn and paid no attention to the women, until he heard Willful's name.

“That sorry Hutchison boy,” Mrs. Ledger said, “is up to no good. Again. He takes what little money the family got and gambles it away or spends it on whores and corn liquor. Just like his no-good pa. Now Miz Hutchison and those girls almost starvin'.”

“Boy,” Ben's ma called, “take a basket of eggs over to the Hutchison place.” She turned back to her guest. “Them hens been workin' overtime. We got extra. If that fool woman rations 'em right, they'll have food for a few mornings at least.” Back to Ben: “Give the eggs to Miz Hutchison or one of the girls,
not
Willful.”

“Oh, Miz Hutchison and the girls ain't home,” Mrs. Ledger said. “They at the church.”

“Doin' what,” Ben's ma said. “Prayin' for food?”

“It's their turn to clean it.”

“They need to be workin' them fields.”

Mrs. Ledger put her fork down, firmly. “Sister Charles, starvin' or not, the Lord's work still got to be done.”

The locket jangled in one pocket and the Keats poems filled the other as Ben sprinted up the road, anxious for the look on Willful's face when he arrived. He laughed out loud at their unexpected luck. They might not have time for reading. Didn't matter. As long as they could kiss for a while. He hoped the church was plenty dirty and that the Hutchison women took their time.

He headed straight to the barn, swung through the door, and saw Trina Ledger, on her back in the hay, Willful on top of her, his backside pumping up and down, his thrusts accompanied by a slapping sound while Trina moaned.

That morning's breakfast sludged up Ben's throat. A bitter ooze. He felt faint.

The muscles in Willful's back constricted as he worked that bitch, the preacher's daughter who was supposed to marry another preacher and whose mother had stuffed her face on his ma's pie as she boasted about her young lady of a daughter.

They didn't realize anybody had come in. Willful kept pumping. Sweat cascaded off him. His dark skin glistened. Rage displaced Ben's urge to faint. He remembered he still held the basket of eggs. He pounced onto the hay and began pelting Trina at close range.

“Bitch! You bitch! You whore!”

Willful pulled out clumsily and yanked Ben away from Trina who now sat up, screaming, as egg yolk and shells slimed her hair, face, and bare chest.

“Know-nothin'! Calm down!” Willful said.

He locked Ben's arms behind him. But Ben's rage detonated. He wrenched free and bashed Willful in the stomach. Willful toppled and floundered in the hay, naked and sweaty, as Ben kicked him and kicked him and kicked him until Willful crunched in on himself like a fetus.

“Stop! Stop it!” Trina screamed.

Willful tried to hoist himself up from the hay, one hand pushing against the ground, the other cradling his stomach.

“Whore!” Ben screamed, so shrill he felt the scratch in his throat.

He started toward her. She shrieked and scrambled to her feet.

“Ben. No,” Willful said, still grappling on the ground, the flesh where Ben had kicked him already starting to bruise.

“Get away from me!” Trina yelled. “Willful! Do somethin'!” She shot desperate glances around the barn, whether for her clothes or for some weapon to fend him off, Ben didn't know.

He was about to leap at her when the barn door busted open. There stood Mrs. Hutchison, her daughters peeking around her. She stepped inside, looked from her naked son to the preacher's naked daughter to Ben, the only clothed member of the trio.

She moved immediately to Trina. “Let's get you into your clothes. Where's your dress, chile?”

She located Trina's dress, helped her into it, and called to her eldest daughter. “Nella! Take Trina to the pump, get her cleaned up. Then take her in the house.”

Nella and her sisters faltered in the doorway, too scared to inject themselves into the sordid scene.

“Come on, gal!” Mrs. Hutchison snapped. “Don't be standin' there gawkin'. Believe me, we ain't got all day!”

Nella still hesitated. Mrs. Hutchison's hands were small, but she slammed them together in a single deafening clap and roared, “Move!”

Nella tripped into the barn. She glanced at her brother, then lowered her head and took the sobbing Trina by the hand. The other girls followed as she led her out. Willful had wriggled into a squat, still flailing from the impact of Ben's shoes in his gut. His ma ignored him and approached Ben, keeping at arm's length. She spoke with caution. As if trying to appease a vicious animal.

“We gone get Trina cleaned up. Then we gone get her home safe. She gone be all right. Ben. You always been a good boy. Your family been generous to us. I know it ain't right to ask another favor. But I'ma ask anyhow: Don't say nothin' about this. Please. I'm beggin' you. For my family's sake, please don't say nothin' about what happened here.”

Willful had made it to a standing position. He masked his privates with his hands. His head hung down. The handsomest boy in Dogwood had been man enough to fuck the preacher's daughter in the barn, but couldn't look Ben in the eye. Ben ran out, rampaged up the dirt road, so addled he didn't know if he ran toward his house or away from it. He just kept running until he heard “Know-nothin'!” He stopped, turned. Willful hobbled up the path, half dressed. Shoes untied. Shirt mostly unbuttoned. Pants trailing down because his suspenders weren't done up. He was gasping.

“What you saw—it ain't mean nothin',” he said.

“The way y'all was moanin' and groanin', looked like it
did
mean somethin'.”

“Please tell me nothin's changed with us. Tell me everything's all right.”

Ben kept seeing Trina Ledger's open legs, Willful between them as he rode her.

“Why?” Ben asked. “Why? Why'd you do this?”

Willful's face blanked. Its features dissolved and then worked to reassemble themselves. “I . . . I ain't know you was comin' over.”

He said it with the innocence of a little child seasoned at eluding punishment by exerting charm, looking up at you in that adorable way that he hopes will wilt your anger.

Ben retrieved the Keats book from his pocket and smashed it into Willful's face. He heard a crunch, saw blood on Willful's nose and forehead. He hurled the book onto the grass and took off as Willful howled after him like a tortured dog.

 

He closed the Keats.

He looked around. Pigfoot Mary's bustled with mostly former Southerners, Ben guessed; folks who, like him and Angeline, didn't give a damn about the South except for the food.

“Everyone down there can go to hell,” Angeline once said, “long as they leave the pigs' feet and cornbread.”

It was their favorite restaurant. They had heard that Pigfoot Mary got rich off her cooking, then went into real estate and got richer. The story went that if a tenant was late with the rent, she'd send a note saying,
Send it, and send it damn quick
. They used to laugh every time they heard it. Sometimes Angeline would retell the story to cheer Ben up, or he'd use it to amuse her.

He wondered how she was doing, then almost laughed aloud at the outlandish thought that he didn't know how his own wife was doing.

He threw money on the table and left, then lingered on the sidewalk. He watched Harlemites cram into restaurants that scattered the sweet and tart aromas of barbecue out into the street and pack into clubs with pining horns and plinking piano keys. Some gathered on the sidewalk outside the clubs, smoking and ostensibly gossiping or catching up, but really trying to catch the remnants of jazz coming from inside.

What to do? Catch a reading at the library? Kill some hours walking up to Sugar Hill and back? Or go home and pray that Angeline was already asleep and the bedroom door shut? He opted for Sugar Hill, but saw a familiar face coming toward him.

“Hey. Baby Back,” he said when the trumpeter was a couple of feet away.

Baby Back didn't stop, respond, or look.

“It's me. Ben. Ben Charles. Mr. Poet. How you doing?”

Baby Back brushed on by. Ben trailed him.

“Hey. Hey! Baby Back. Mr. Johnston? I know you ain't ignoring me when I'm talking to you.
Trying
to talk to you.”

Baby Back neither sped up nor slowed down as Ben tagged after him like an unwanted puppy too dumb to accept that it's being left behind. “I'm talking to you! Damn it, turn around and talk to me!”

But Baby Back continued apace.

“You think because you're a big-time musician on his way to Paris one day, you can ignore me? Well, you ain't that big. If you're so big, why you working in a basement dive? Huh? Why ain't you at one of the
good
clubs? You ain't no King Oliver, that's why. And never will be. You ain't nothing! You hear me, Mr. Baby Back Johnston? You ain't nothing, so fuck you!”

Baby Back kept going as though Ben's shouting was nothing but normal Harlem street noise. He rounded a corner, disappeared. The puppy didn't pursue. Ben propped himself against a building. When he was calm, he saw he'd attracted a small crowd that kept its distance, staring at him. Like he was crazy.

H
is work ethic betrayed him. He couldn't concentrate. He bungled orders, grabbed the wrong food from the kitchen, delivered it to the wrong tables. Even Mr. Kittredge scolded him. “No, no, no, Benjamin. I ordered grapefruit, not toast,” he said one morning, his English accent crisper than usual, as David-Nicholas kept his head and eyes down. “This is the third time this week you've botched my order!”

Other patrons complained, too. His boss berated him. He needed a drink.

Licks from a certain trumpet seeped through Teddy's closed door, almost luring Ben out from under the streetlamp across the street. But he pinched his coat snug against the frigid November air, found another bar, and drank double whiskeys until he could pretend he'd blotted out Willful, Baby Back,
this thing
. Alcohol became his refuge. Every night he drank for hours, spent too much, tipped the bartenders more than they deserved, then wobbled home, always bracing to encounter Evelyn Harrisburg. More than once had her door been open an inch. It always clinked closed as he ventured toward it.

His poor service at work yielded less in tips. Less in tips and sizeable spending on liquor spawned money problems. Money problems inflated the tension at home.

“You can't pay your share of the rent this month,” Angeline said. “
I
gotta make up the difference. I shouldn't have to bear the brunt of running this house. It ain't fair.”

“What the hell you complaining about? You're making plenty of money.”

Angeline's pocketbook ballooned from double shifts at the beauty shop, doing hair on her own in people's homes, and her door-to-door cosmetics sales.

“I shouldn't be paying everything,” she said.

“Then don't. Just . . . don't.”

He left, went to a bar, and shambled home drunk. Next morning, he overslept and Angeline had to shake him awake. He arrived at work late and his boss suspended him for two weeks.

Ben left, shuffling up Twenty-ninth Street, and saw Mr. Kittredge approaching. He wanted to run to him. Until he saw David-Nicholas. They walked so close to each other, they may as well have held hands. David-Nicholas carried a suitcase.

“Why, Benjamin,” Kittredge said, frowning, “it's rather early for your shift to have ended.”

“I was suspended, sir.” He shocked himself with his directness, his non-embarrassment. His eyes went to David-Nicholas's suitcase.

“Ah, yes,” Kittredge said. “David-Nicholas is bringing some things to store in my suite. He has so little space in his rooms and I have so much in mine. Nicky, go on. I'm going to talk to Benjamin a moment.” He touched the small of the young man's back.

“Certainly, Geoffrey,” David-Nicholas said. He nodded to Ben as he left.

Mr. Kittredge produced his billfold. A rich scent floated off the leather. He handed Ben a ten-dollar bill. “Don't bother saying you can't accept it because you can and you will.”

Ben's sense of good manners demanded that he refuse, but he was too tired. “That's too kind of you. Thank you, sir.”

“I do hope you can resolve what's troubling you. Whatever it may be.” He touched Ben's chin. His hand stayed a shade longer than it should have. “Dear, dear boy.”

As he walked away, Ben wished that Mr. Kittredge would touch the small of his back.

 

“Suspended?” Angeline said. “What's happened to you?” More accusation than question.

“As if you don't know.”

Her hands flew to her ears to shield them. “I don't want to hear about that. You still going to church?”

Hoping church could buffer against
this thing
, he had attended a few services at Abyssinian Baptist where he swayed to the gospel music, but couldn't stop leering at the black, brown, and beige men bedecked in their Sunday best.

“No. Not no more,” he said.

“Why not? It would help. I know it would. We'll go together.”

“You ain't never been no churchgoer, Angeline.”

“I'll start. I'll do it for you.”

He moped on the sofa, his face in his hands. Angeline played with the keys on the typewriter. Delicately, the way you would a newborn baby's toes.

“Remember when we moved in to this place?” she said, as if baiting him to join her in a memory. He saw her tinkering with the typewriter keys and knew exactly which memory. He stayed silent, but reprised the scene in his head.

They had been living in the Bowery in a tenement flat that they shared with three other families. The bathroom was in the hall. The whole floor used it. It stank so bad, they got good at going in, doing their business, and getting out fast. Ben used to play a game with himself: He'd take a big breath before going in, then try to finish before his lungs burst.

They worked hard, saved every penny, and rented this new place on 128th. They owned no furniture when they moved in, not even a bed, and Mrs. Harrisburg sneered that their presence in the building was disgraceful. She gossiped that they were ignorant Southern trash. It was six months before the women in the building would even say “Good morning” to Angeline.

Their first day in the apartment, a small crate sat up against the wall in the living room. He assumed it had been left by mistake, but then saw Angeline laughing into her hand. He fiddled with it, opened it, and found a typewriter. The white circular keys were rimmed with metal. The black letters had faded a bit, but stood out in bold, formal strokes. The typewriter's black casing bore a few scratches, but had been buffed to a shine.

“You got this . . . you bought this? For me?” he said. “How?”

“Smart saving,” she said. “And a couple of odd jobs. Stash away a penny here, a nickel there: Takes a while, but it adds up. Got it secondhand, so it wasn't too much. You like it?”

“Hell, yeah, I like it. Thank you, Angel.”

“Now you can take all them poems you been writing longhand and type 'em up.”

“Well, not right away,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Gotta learn how to type first!”

He led her into their new bedless bedroom, spread a blanket on the floor, and had no trouble doing his duty.

The memory decayed. Ben removed his face from his hands. Angeline stood before him with a look of pity.
For me? For herself?
She touched him and he hopped up from the sofa, fled to his desk, quickly typed out a poem that had vexed him all day.

Angeline loitered in the Neutral Territory: the doorway between the bedroom and living room. “Ben. This ain't right. What's happening with us—with
you
—it ain't right.”

She spoke like she couldn't go on like this. More fearful to Ben, she spoke like she
wouldn't
. If she left him, he was lost. She was the only thing standing between him and
this thing
.

“You gonna leave me, Angel? You gonna divorce me?”

She said nothing for a long time. When she did at last, it was with the resignation of someone who had dissected all of her options and found them all lacking.

“Ruby's youngest sister got divorced. Said it was the worst mistake of her life. She thought it'd set her free. Please. People avoid her. Women at church won't talk to her. Nobody trusts a divorced woman. She wants to get married again, but no man wants some other man's used goods, especially if she can't . . . if she can't bear children.”

She turned to enter the bedroom, then stopped. She spoke with her back to Ben. “If you decide to go back to church, I'll go with you.”

She stepped into the bedroom. She left the door open.