Nighthawk Blues (12 page)

For the fourteen months that he was at home he found himself increasingly drifting into the past, a past which had never interested him in the slightest when he was growing up and all eyes were forward-away from grandparents’ embarrassing accents, away from burdensome differences, toward an assimilated, progressive,
American
future which lay just over the horizon. Now he revisited the scenes of his youth, the schoolyard where a Catholic friend in second grade had said, “Are you Jewish?” and he responded, “Are you kidding?” Back to the temple from which he had escaped at fifteen with never a backward glance. He talked to the rabbi who had conducted his confirmation class but who didn’t seem to understand what he was driving at now. He started reading Isaac Bashevis Singer. He pumped his father for stories about ancestors, about the old country, about his father’s growing up. “What do you want to know all that stuff for?” his father would say impatiently. “Haven’t you got enough problems of your own?”

It was a strange time. Jerry went to work, came home, closed the door of his room, turned on occasionally, and listened to his records-once an eclectic collection that could encompass Miles Davis, Pete Seeger, and Miriam Makeba, now blues exclusively-which more and more took up every available inch of floor-space. In the increasingly exotic sounds-so painful to his parents’ ears and sensibilities that they left the television at high volume even when they weren’t in the room-he caught a whiff of an acrid reality that strangely corresponded to his own. In the rarefied world of the collector he found a companionship, a sense of belonging, if only at a distance, that allowed him to share secret passions, secret obsessions, a secret language, that encouraged an exchange of views, an animated debate, an
engagement
that excluded the casual outsider. He became something of an expert, started writing for
Broadside
and a British blues magazine, interviewed Mississippi John Hurt, and began to suspect that it was his own hovering presence (perhaps now
he
was the unassimilated embarrassment) that caused his father to retire and led his parents to cut all ties, unload the pharmacy, sell the house, and move to Florida.

Jerry felt totally bereft, now his childhood was really gone. All he had were his books and records-even his papers, his first published stories, the bylines his mother had so carefully saved were carted off with baseball cards and other boyhood mementoes. He moved into a rooming house in Cambridge, then, when that became too small, into a modest apartment. He still reported to work for a while; he marched in civil-rights marches, signed petitions occasionally, became known a little bit around the folk clubs and to the longhaired girls, and brooded over whether his fantasy could ever become reality. This was his fantasy: he sought to create his own life, give up his assigned identity and forge another. Setting off to rediscover some old blues singer on impulse alone was just the first step toward freedom. But now he was afraid that this, too, was going to be another dead end. …

By the end of the third day they weren’t speaking to each other except to criticize a wrong turn taken or question Thayer’s driving habits. They had stopped off in Commerce, Tunica, Austin, Senatobia, Bobo, Alligator, and Mound Bayou, following the same pattern in each little town, going to the post office, then to the general store if the two were not the same, finally to the police station, carefully explaining that they were looking for a man who used to be a singer with the idea of recording him again, attempting as scrupulously as they could to show a neutral goodwill neither hostile to the Negro they were looking for nor inimical to the white men they were asking. Originally the idea was that they would take turns as spokesman, but Jerry was soon elected representative and, dragging his feet all the while, trudged reluctantly in and out of stores, in and out of official buildings, sure that everyone was laughing at him or worse.

They found nothing. Not a single trace. No one who would admit to so much as having heard of the Screamin’ Nighthawk, let alone any knowledge of his present whereabouts. It was as if the earth had swallowed him whole, but that couldn’t be, Jerry thought, because his songs were still being sung, better-known bluesmen like Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf, who had moved to Chicago years ago, insisted that the Screamin’ Nighthawk was still around, members of their bands had seen him only three or four years ago-in Mobile, Decatur, Jackson, St. Louis. Sometimes Jerry got the feeling it was perversity. More often with the few blacks he spoke to it seemed to be fear. A couple of times they would stop out in the country to ask a farmer walking behind his mule or a wizened old lady rocking inexorably on a falling-down porch. The response was inevitably suspicious, closed-off, deliberately opaque. Once Jerry thought he had found something as he idly conversed with some colored mechanics on their lunch break at Romeo’s Garage. “Oh sure,” they started to respond, then caught the disapproving glance of the white foreman, presumably Romeo. Jerry suggested to the others that they wait until work let out and talk to the mechanics then, but they decided it would be a waste of time, and for all Jerry knew those impassive black faces, with their impenetrable looks and impenetrable language, were only putting him on, perhaps recognized the name, very likely had nothing more to say. It was all very strange, Jerry thought, but hardly surprising. Who knew what happened to anyone in this country after they faded from the limelight:?

In Cleveland they managed to stumble across the man who had engineered Hawk’s last official sessions in Jackson almost fifteen years before. He was a tall stringy-looking country boy with a prominent Adam’s apple who had played on some early rockabilly sides and to their surprise vividly remembered Hawk. “Sure do. Didn’t leave no forwarding address. He jes’ wanted his money on the table, you know, like all them people. I remember he had quite a roll, of course it might have been built up some, all ones on a cardboard backing, I’ve seen that once or twice in my time. Bunch of cards, too, letters, old newspaper clippings, I remember he had a gang of ’em. Course I knowed him some before that anyways. My brother-in-law was Uncle Charley-you maya heard of him, his real name was Charley Stewart, and he sold tires for a living, but he was pretty well known as a radio personality in these parts-he used to have him on his radio show oncet in a while, I can remember one time we went out in the country to a place he was playing. Way out in the woods-man, you oughta seen it, you oughta seen them niggers jump. Half of them not wearing any shoes, I ain’t seen nothing like it since I was a kid, and that old Nighthawk, he just kept trailing away on his guitar, he could play all night and all day, like to wore me out. That’s about all I know, boys. Course you could check with Miz Gaynor.”

Their hearts leaped, and they eagerly took down whatever information the engineer could proffer on Miz Gaynor, who lived over near Greenville now and had owned the Jackson label with her husband, a dentist, until a fire burned down their home and made a widow of her. “Undependable,” she started out un-promisingly. “There was quite a few times when my husband, Dr. Gaynor, had to go down to the city jail and talk Mr. Rogers into letting Nighthawk out. And, of course, often I had to send my husband or my son-that’s Fred-over to one of them rough nigger joints, I wouldn’t dare go in there myself, to get him and sober him up so we could do a session. But he could sing, I’ll say that for him. He was the best of the lot. The people really liked him. And I suppose he was a nice enough old fellow, minded his own business, never gave me any backtalk that I can recall, never had much to say for himself at all as a matter of fact. Sure sorry I couldn’t help you boys any more,” she said not very convincingly. Jerry didn’t think she was sorry at all.

But they kept on down Highway 61 with nothing else to go on, all because once, in a song that Hawk had recorded several times in the ’30s, he had declared, “Highway 61 rolls right by my door/ Next time you see me I be heading down that old dusty road.”

They were five days into their pilgrimage and just about ready to turn back. They had argued about matrix numbers, the ethnic purity of the blues and the ruinous effects of amplification upon the folk tradition, the centrality of Robert Johnson’s role (assimilator or creative genius?), and the true identity of King Solomon Hill. Thayer had stopped speaking to Hard some time the previous day when Hartl had said, “My God, if you don’t shut up about the sociology of the South, I think we’re all going to suffocate from the shit.” Thayer, who was lying down in the back seat for a rest, demanded that Jerry stop the car.

“You heard what he said. I’ve taken about as much of his shit as I’m going to. I don’t have to take that kind of shit from anyone.” He kept poking Jerry’s shoulder with increasing force, until Jerry thought he would have to stop the car or run off the road.

“Ah, Christ,” said Hard. “I’m just sick of hearing all this liberal bullshit about white oppression and how it affected the poor bush nigger in his primitive state. God, what drivel!”

“There, you heard it!” Thayer said, grabbing Jerry by the shoulder and practically jerking his head around. “It’s out, you heard it, I knew it all along. Racist, colonialist rhetoric, you can’t deny it. I won’t go another foot with this white-
colonialist.”

“Ah, why don’t you grow up, Ralph? You act like you never got fucked before.”

“I think,” said Jerry, taking a deep breath, “we ought to all remember why we’re here. I mean, we have committed a certain amount of time and energy and money to finding an artist who has made a significant impact on the lives of all of us. I think that impact is large enough to allow us to forget our petty differences—”

So they stopped talking to each other, and, if they had anything to say, communicated it through Jerry.

Then outside of Yola they had their first real glimmer of hope. They had already completed their rounds, tried the post office with no luck, had it politely suggested to them by the police chief that they were wasting their time and his, when Hard, spotting a Coke machine, bright red and spanking new, in front of a rundown cafe and general store, suddenly developed an uncontrollable thirst and asked Jerry to have Thayer stop. On the porch there was an old man in a straw hat and earwarmers, rocking away. Inside the store around a potbellied stove was a group of black men, grown suddenly silent as Jerry and Thayer stretched their legs, checking out the store and examining the beat-up jukebox that sat in a corner. James Brown, Otis Redding, O.V. Wright, James Can—Jerry saw Thayer’s face wrinkle with disgust. But there in the middle of all these up-to-the-minute homogeneous offerings of a mechanized age was a handwritten card (B-4) announcing a selection of “So Glad,” of which only a half-dozen copies (all of the others 78s) had ever surfaced, so far as any collector knew. Jerry could scarcely contain his excitement. He glanced at Thayer to see if he, too, had noticed, but Thayer had walked away sniffing the air, clearly oblivious. With trembling fingers he dug in his fingers for change, found a dime, pushed down the buttons, checking three times to make sure he had the right number, and waited in breathless anticipation. Nothing happened. He touched the jukebox gingerly, wanting to shake it until it burst into song, but then he noticed it wasn’t plugged in. Its cord trailed off and dangled uselessly on the floor with no visible outlet or way for it to be connected.

Without saying anything to Thayer, Jerry sidled over to the counter and waited for what seemed like an interminable period until one of the old men separated himself from the rest, came around behind the counter, and said in a loud, unmodulated voice, “Something I can do for you?” Jerry explained, and the man offered him his dime back, but that was not, Jerry insisted, what he was looking for. He wanted to hear the song. Somewhat resentfully, all the while muttering to himself, the man strode across the room, retrieved an extension cord, marched back, plugged the old machine in.

The first notes were inaudible because the tubes were still warming up, but then Jerry heard it, and Thayer whirled around, hearing it too, the unmistakable sound of Nighthawk’s ringing guitar, the big bass voice booming out, “So glad I be back home, see my mother’s face one more time.”

They were as flabbergasted as he. Even Hard showed signs of animation and enthusiasm. They played the record again and then the other side, which none of them had even heard except on a faint tenth-generation dub. Then the questions began. Did anyone know the artist? Had anyone actually seen the Screamin’ Nighthawk perform? Why no, didn’t believe they had. Where had the record come from? The man behind the counter, round and unwrinkled in a dirty white apron, scratched his head. A man brought ’em by. What man? Well, shucks, he didn’t know, the records all came from Jackson, he supposed, he didn’t know how long they’d had that one, didn’t really remember hearing it before. Did the name Theodore Roosevelt Jefferson mean anything to any of them? Well, no, they didn’t believe it did. Of course they knew
Franklin
Roosevelt. He was a great man. The blank impassive black faces, calm, imperturbable, just a little bit pained at not being able to provide better answers for these nice gentlemens, slightly puzzled and embarrassed at all this fuss. Thayer and Hard grew increasingly impatient until at last they started tugging on Jerry’s sleeve. “Let’s get out of here,” Hard insisted. “This is just a waste of time.” But Jerry persisted. He had gotten so far as to clarify that the last name was Jefferson.

“Oh, Jefferson, Jefferson,” the man who had plugged in the jukebox boomed. “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first placer1 Yessir, there’s lots of Jeffersons. There’s Purvis Jefferson and Clovis Jefferson, which is the Jefferson that passed, lived over by Browns Point—used to play a little harmonica, the people would call him Boot sometimes cause his feets was so big and he used to wear them big old clodhopper boots, you know them cut-off old square-toes, you know what I mean—” Jerry nodded bleakly. Hard regarded the man with undisguised contempt.

“Well, this Jefferson,” Jerry explained, “plays the guitar. And we hope he’s alive. He used to make records, and they called him the Screamin’ Nighthawk. If you looked at the label, I’ll bet the composer’s credits would read T.R. Jefferson.”