Jitterbug (21 page)

He nodded toward the pictures. “You really know all these people?”

“Customers. I got the biggest collection of race records west of Harlem, and Harlem ain’t got some of what I got. That’s Johnny Mercer up there in the corner. Steals most of his stuff from old blues tunes. He done bought the whole inventory in ’34. I had to shut down for eight months. They comes through town, they stops here. And they all comes through town.”

“How’d they find out about the place?”

“Word of mouth. Jack Teegarden come here in ’33, right after I opened, walked out a hour later with both arms full of King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. After that, you might of thought I was giving away muggles. Ain’t nobody buys music like musicians.”

“I don’t see Billie Holiday.”

“Lady Day, she stopped in once, but she looked like shit, wouldn’t let me take her picture. And she wasn’t looking for music.” He changed the subject—slyly, Dwight thought. “What you like? I just got in some Blind Lemon, ain’t even un-crated it yet.”

“Is your name Gidgy?”

“Depends on what yours is.”

“I’m Dwight Littlejohn.”

“That injun? You look like a Blackfoot.” A bitter little laugh bubbled up from the sunken chest beneath the pink shirt, ending in a smoker’s cough. He sucked in hemp and tapped a pile of ash into a Chock Full O’Nuts can perched atop a pile of sheet music on the desk.

“I’m Earl Littlejohn’s brother.”

“I guess you have to be. Two Littlejohns in one town ought to be related.”

“So you know Earl.”

“Is that what I said?”

“I’m not a cop,” Dwight said wearily. “I ain’t with the FBI or the army. I screw airplanes for a living and then I go home. My sister-in-law’s worried about her husband. She just wants him back.”

“She a pretty woman?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Everything. If she’s a pretty woman, he’ll come back. It don’t even matter if she’s a bitch. Man can turn off his ears, but he got to have something pretty to look at.”

“She ain’t a bitch.”

Gidgy went on smoking his cigarette until it was short enough to burn his fingers. Then he tapped it out in the coffee can and laid it carefully beside a row of equally short butts on the side not occupied by ashes. When he got up from the chair it was as if a relief sculpture had just separated itself from a frieze.

“I might need a hand,” he said, and opened a door in the back that Dwight had not noticed previously. It was mounted flush in the wall, painted the same drab ivory color, and had neither knob nor handle. Gidgy opened it by pushing it against a spring and letting it pop out, like a kitchen cabinet with a magnetic latch. Dwight negotiated the skimpy path between the stacks of records and papers and followed him through it.

Gidgy said, “I had to satisfy myself you wasn’t a spook. You and Earl don’t favor each other.”

He made no answer to that. He’d heard it all his life. When he was much younger, and vexed over something Earl had said or done, he had comforted himself with the belief that one of them was adopted.

The room, when Gidgy turned an old-fashioned switch to activate the funnel-shaded bulb that hung from the ceiling, turned out to be nearly as large as the rest of the shop, and much more tidy. Vertical rows of wooden crates and fiber-board cartons lined the walls, the wide planks of the floor were swept and bare of clutter. Some of the boxes bore a caduceus, snakes entwined on a winged staff, and the stenciled legend
MEDICAL SUPPLIES.
A plain wooden table served as a desk with a row of clipboards hung on pegs on the wall above it and a wooden chair drawn up to it. The only other furnishing was a folding canvas cot, where Earl Littlejohn lay snoring, fully clothed, with his back to the rest of the room and the dirty soles of his stockinged feet showing.

“He got a little cokey and decided to fly home,” Gidgy said. “I made him drink some laudanum to bring him down, but I guess it was too much with the liquor in him. He been out fourteen hours.”

“You gave him dope?”

“I never gave nobody nothing except my dear old mom. He took it for his cut.”

“Cut of what?”

Gidgy drew the chair away from the table and folded himself into it. Clearly the effort of moving from one room to another had drained him, or that was the impression he gave. Dwight had never seen a youngish man, not fat, who seemed so fond of sitting. He wondered if Gidgy had TB.

“You know all about me,” Gidgy said, “or enough, or you wouldn’t be here. Who told you?”

Dwight said nothing.

“Well, I can guess. Don’t sweat it, young blood; I likes Beatrice. It don’t make no never mind nohow. I’m the biggest employer in Paradise Valley after GM and Ford. I believe I got the edge on Chrysler in this neighborhood. If Earl screws airplanes as enthusiastically as he works for me, we’ll be in Berlin by Christmas.”

“He’s got a job. He don’t need you.”

“Ain’t nobody needs Gidgy. Everybody just wants what he got, same as in ’31. Ain’t nothing changed, except maybe the lapels!” He drew another hand-rolled cigarette and a book of matches from his shirt pocket and lit up.

“Will you help me get him down to my car?”

“I done already helped him into that there cot. He heavier than he looks. I ain’t lifted that much since Prohibition.”

Dwight found his brother’s saddle shoes and put them on him. He rolled him over onto his back and slapped his cheeks. Earl’s head rolled from side to side but his eyes didn’t open.

“I could give him a whiff,” Gidgy said. “Put him on his feet like a wooden injun. Call it a advance.”

“I heard you was in the black market. What you doing pushing dope?”

“Wars don’t last forever.”

Finally Earl groaned. His eyelids twitched. Dwight pried one open and looked at the pupil, but he didn’t know what he was looking for. “Earl, you there?”

“Beatrice?” He sounded like a wound-down record.

“It’s Dwight. Not Beatrice.”

“Give us a kiss.”

“Man, I hopes he still thinks you’re Beatrice,” Gidgy said.

Dwight slapped his brother.

“C’mon, sugar,” Earl whined. “What makes your ole heart so hard?”

Talking to him all the time, saying things he couldn’t remember later, Dwight got his brother’s feet on the floor and his arm across his shoulders and lifted him. Earl made a noise. Dwight thought he was saying something and paused to listen. He was humming “Don’t Be That Way.” Gidgy started singing along. He had a surprisingly pleasant baritone, good as an Ink Spot. Dwight half dragged, half carried Earl to the door, which had a handle on this side. When he had it open he leaned against the frame with his brother draped across his back, catching his breath. Finally he gathered himself and his burden and lurched on through. He craned his neck to look back at Gidgy, who had assumed his earlier position, legs crossed, one arm hung over the back of his chair, the cigarette smoldering in the corner of his mouth.

“Thanks, I guess,” Dwight said. “For not letting him try to fly.”

Gidgy lifted a listless hand. “Abyssinia.”

H
E LIKED RAIN.

When it fell gently, as it was falling now, hardly more than a mist and invisible when you weren’t actually out in it, it softened the edges of the granite and soot-stained buildings and made the streets shine like the Bakelite floors Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had danced on before he stopped going to anything but war movies. The brimstone smell that came when the first drops struck the heated concrete and asphalt had gone, replaced by a sweet, tarry odor, like licorice. When he was three he had climbed into the cupboard where licorice drops were kept and managed to devour half the contents of the bag before he was discovered, beaten, and locked naked in the narrow closet under the stairs, where he’d been bitten all over by spiders; but he’d succeeded in hiding five pieces of licorice in his fist, and by doling them out to himself had passed the hours in fear and darkness bearably.

He’d found a black military-style oilskin poncho at Sam’s Cut-Rate Men’s Clothing, and with it over his uniform and the cellophane cap shield in place he was contented to stand waiting for the streetcar on Woodward, protecting the leather briefcase beneath the poncho. The bench was too wet to sit on, and in any case he preferred to stand when in uniform. He had never seen a picture or a statue of a soldier sitting except on a horse.

He had let one car go by. There had been no one else waiting there when it stopped to let out a single passenger, and half the seats were empty. Aside from the poor hunting, he disapproved sharply of so much electricity being expended on so small a load. Too many people were still driving themselves, and every gallon of gasoline wasted on a frivolous trip involving only one or two travelers in a private vehicle meant another American dead at the front. Just the thought of it made him reach inside the briefcase and grip the handle of the bayonet until his fingers lost all feeling.

Five minutes before the next car was due, a small group began to gather near the bench: a horse-faced young nurse in a cape with a scarf tied under her chin to protect her starched cap, a pair of middle-aged men in Ford coveralls carrying black metal lunch pails, and a couple in their seventies, the man wearing a rumpled brown suit and a corduroy cap and leaning on a bamboo cane, the woman wearing a man’s trenchcoat, out-of-fashion cloche hat, and black galoshes with a broken buckle that tinkled when she walked, and holding a black umbrella open over both their heads. He decided to get aboard with this group.

When the streetcar came, he arranged himself at the front of the line without appearing to fight for the position, which for a man in uniform would have appeared rude and drawn too much attention. He boarded first, dropped his token into the box, and took the first available seat on the aisle, next to an elderly man reading a Hebrew newspaper. This gave him a view of the rest of the newcomers as they paid. The nurse, practical woman, had her nickel ready and didn’t have to open her purse. One of the Ford workers rummaged through the pockets of his coveralls, muttering. His companion came up with a dime and paid for them both. The old man with the cane climbed up, gathering both feet on each step before attempting the next and leaning heavily on the support bar, then turned around to offer a hand to the old woman, who was stout. He stood with his back to the aisle while she hooked her umbrella on her arm and groped inside a bulky handbag until she found two tokens. She had what looked like a thick bundle of ration stamps inside the bag; the old man’s body partially blocked the view. They tottered down the aisle single file and found space for both of them to sit halfway back.

The rain picked up after a couple of blocks. Pedestrians unprepared for a downpour dashed across the street shielding themselves with newspapers and flat handbags, a
Detroit Times
delivery boy stepped inside the doorway at Woolworth’s to protect the papers in his canvas sack. A horse hitched to a milk wagon drawn up in front of an apartment building shook its mane and settled in for a miserable wait. The nurse got off and ran into a Cunningham’s, more passengers boarded, opening and closing umbrellas and shaking themselves like dogs. The downpour became a deluge. He smirked at the sight of a fat man in short sleeves struggling to raise the canvas top of a sapphire blue Packard. The fat man was soaked to his undershirt, which meant his upholstery was thoroughly saturated. Served him right for not taking public transportation.

Hudson’s Department Store hove into view, and as if by an arrangement between Joseph Lowthian Hudson and God the rain stopped. The sun came out, glittering off millions of droplets stuck like diamonds to the plate-glass display windows at ground level and the rows of panes in the multiple stories towering over Salian’s jewelry store, the only holdout on the block. The brass-framed revolving doors whirled, propelling shoppers and passersby who had stepped inside for shelter out onto the sidewalk. Every turn sucked at least one new customer into the store. The sight filled him with equal measures of pride and revulsion: pride at the invincibility of a nation whose citizens continued to consume toasters, Palm Beach suits, and poodles in bright ribbons while most of Europe was in darkness, revulsion at this fresh proof of the thousands of Americans who considered news of the war their private entertainment at the end of the day’s glut. In less than three weeks the annual J.L. Hudson’s Independence Day Parade would trundle down Woodward, the world’s largest flag would unfurl its acre of stars and stripes across the front of the huge building, and the hundred maimed and murdered men for each of its forty-eight stars would not mean as much to those Americans as the day off work.

“Are you all right, son? You look flushed.”

He turned and stared at the old man in the seat next to his. The Hebrew newspaper was folded in his lap. His heavy Yiddish accent reminded him of the dry cleaner who had removed the ink stain from his uniform. He still felt bad about that. The man had not been a hoarder. But he had caught the young man in a lie, and that made him a hazard. Sometimes the innocent were also the enemy.

He smiled his tentative smile. “I just got out of the V.A. Hospital. I guess I shouldn’t have gone out in the rain yet.”

“Were you wounded in combat?”

“Yes.” He changed the subject. “Do you have family in Europe?”

“My brother and sister-in-law and their children are in a detention camp in Poland. They haven’t written in months.”

“It’s hard to get letters through.”

“You boys are doing a fine job,” the old man said.

The motorman clanged the bell and stopped the car. The aisle clotted with passengers waiting to get off. The man with the bamboo cane levered himself up and gave his arm to his wife. They had to be married. There was a sameness to the cast of their features that said they’d spent most of the century in each other’s company.

He got in line behind them, close enough to smell the stout woman’s scent. It reminded him of decaying flowers.

He followed them through one of the revolving doors into Hudson’s.

Here there was no war. Although its outward trappings were celebrated like the features of a popular song or movie—men’s Kuppenheimer tropical suits, shallow-gorged and pinched at the waist like an officer’s uniform, women’s rayon pajamas printed all over with bombers in flight, gold-and-enamel pins fashioned after military medals, and the occasional submarine-shaped perfume bottle—the store was an island of peacetime commerce in the middle of a sea in turmoil. The ground floor, which took up the entire city block without walls or partitions, presented a bazaar: lacquered salesgirls behind glass display cases filled with sports shirts and lipsticks, platform-soled floor demonstrators waiting in ambush with atomizers, customers trying on elbow-length evening gloves and hauling around fat children by the hand, as fast as they could waddle. He compared their apple cheeks with the sunken visages of refugee children he’d seen in newsreels, dirty and twitching, their eyes without focus, the faces of little old men and women. Sometimes he felt as if he’d been there, holding them on his lap and giving them chocolate bars from his ration kit.