Nighthawk Blues (26 page)

“Hush, Roosevelt,” said Mattie. “You sure you don’t want nothing to eat?”

Hawk shook his head. “Just water.” He held the glass steady in his right hand, Jerry noticed, but his fingers closed around it only with some difficulty. Jerry glanced over at the children. Only Little Bo was still awake, and he was watching his father, not the television. “Well, you know it’s good to be just sitting around talking again,” he said to Lori. “It’s been too long, baby.”

“Well, it sure is in my mind, it’s just this bug here keeps me working all the time, and when I’m not working I’m recording, and when I’m not recording I just feel like I’ve got to get away from everything and everyone, from
him
mostly,” she said laughingly, indicating Jerry. “Man, you know when I went into this business, that’s just what I didn’t want it to become—a business. I thought I’d play when I wanted to and where I wanted to and only when I felt like I wanted to. But I found out that to do that you’ve really got to pay your dues, and by the time you finish paying, it may be that you don’t want what you set out to buy in the first place.”

“Ain’t it the truth, baby?”

“But that isn’t the way it is with you, Hawk—”

Hawk didn’t say anything, just nodded his head.

“Hey, it hasn’t been so bad, has it?” said Jerry, feeling a little guilty. He always agonized over Lori’s bookings, sometimes he felt as if he treated her
too
circumspectly, but then, he reflected, he wasn’t the one who had to go out there and deliver.

“Hush up, let the child eat,” said Mattie.

“You know, sometimes I feel like a whore. No, I really do. To go out there in front of all those people and have them expect something of me that I’m supposed to give every night, even when I don’t feel like giving. And then, you know, you have to fake it. Or you get stoned just to pretend it isn’t there. Do you know what I mean?” She turned imploringly to Hawk.

“Sure, honey, sure I know what you mean. But that’s why you got to always sing what’s in your heart. That way, you don’t have no problem choosing. You feel evil, you
sings
evil. You feel good, why that’s the way it come across. You can’t go making no distinctions between you and your music. You sing what’s in you, and it can’t be wrong, cause it’s in you for a purpose.”

“You really believe that, don’t you?”

“Leave that child alone, can’t you?”

“I better. It’s what’s carried me through my whole life.”

I
T STARTING ALREADY
. They treating me like I’m sick, like I’m a old man. Well, they ain’t far wrong. Just an old man, don’t bother no one, speak when spoken to, thinking his thoughts, that’s about it. Half them thoughts about things that happen fifty years ago when we was kids and old folks clucking and shaking their heads at us, preacher shouting from the pulpit, saying, Won’t they ever learn, Lord? Naw, they won’t never learn. How can you learn a little kid to act like a old man? Just like you can’t teach nothing to an old man neither. His body tell him he done for. His mind tell him, Slow down. But his spirit say, Shut up, fool, I gonna get it one more time. Young people can’t understand, they take one look at you and they
know
you past it. Just like I knowed 01’ Man Mose had his day and his day was past and gone. But he didn’t know that, how was his spirit just gonna lay down and die? Young fella ask me, I believe it was this very one, say, Don’t you have no regrets? Well, I think about that one. Regrets? I regret that I didn’t do better. And I regrets that my mama couldn’t see me when I sang for the queen. But ain’t you glad that you been discovered by all these nice young white peoples? Well, to tell you the truth, if they was going to discover me, I just wish they could’ve done it when I was younger and could put out more. I didn’t never get tired then, the ideas just come so fast they just all jumble up together. Not like now, when they come stumbling along, seem like they gonna trip up before they even gets to me. Shit, I ain’t grateful, if that’s what you mean, but it don’t matter anyhow. Act nice, don’t say nothing to nobody—shit, don’t none of it matter, a man’s just got to be treated with respect. They don’t know, they look like they about to bust out crying, but I surprise ’em all yet. I ain’t nothing if I ain’t Hawk. …

AFTER
the dishes were done they joined him on the screened-in porch, watching as he puffed on a barely lit cigar, the glow winking and dying out again in the deep country darkness. The house next door, a modified trailer up on blocks, showed no light, inside there was only the dull glow of the television set. There were no streetlights, and no car passed. Hawk drew reflectively on the foul-smelling cigar. “You got any more bookings for me?” he said at last.

Jerry shook his head. “Well, you know that was the last. Kurt’s talking about another European tour, and I’m sure we can pick up some other gigs as soon as you’re feeling better.”

“Feeling better? I’m feeling better already,” Hawk boomed almost convincingly.

There was a light knock at the screen door. A skinny-looking old man in a puffed-up cap poked his head in. “Hey there,” said Hawk with a gracious little wave, as the man hesitated in the doorway. “Get the door shut before the whole woods is in here with us. Thought you was dead a long time ago.”

“Can’t. Can’t kill me,” said the old bald-headed man, sweeping off his cap as he slithered past, nodding deferentially to Jerry. “How you being, anyhow? I heared Doc Bontemps, Will LeBow’s boy, was out to see you this afternoon.”

“Just getting old, is all. His daddy be proud of him now. All that nigger want is for his boy to get educated, but for hisself he ain’t learned a damned thing.”

The two old men cackled. “I hear you lost Lottie.” Cap nodded. “Still living back out in the woods in that old cabin all by yourself?”

“Me and Blue. Blue getting old, too. Can’t see good no more. You remember when Blue could outrun any hound in the county, man he used to lead the rabbit he just so joyous to get out, run circles around them little bunnies like he was just frolicking. Now he just like the rest of us, don’t see nothing, don’t hear nothing, and he smell bad most all the time.”

“He miss Lottie.”

“Yeah, he miss Lottie. I declare that’s a fact. Sometimes I think he miss her more than I do, get to sniffing around wondering when she gonna come back, and I tell him, Too bad, old fellow, ain’t never gonna happen in this world. She was a good old girl. Got carried off by the lard. Doctor told her she eat too much of the fatty stuff, gonna choke off her blood supply, and that’s what it did. One night she wake in the early-morning hours, she didn’t hardly make a sound, just put her hand to her throat like as if she was choking. Couldn’t say nothing.” He shook his head. “Heart stopped.”

“You still moonshining?”

“Doing better than ever,” Cap said proudly. “Some fool done complained to the county, sheriff come up and he bust up my old still. I give him a few bottles, and he don’t say nothing, just take a ax to that old broken-down thing we give up on fifteen years ago, said, There, I guess we got ’em, don’t we, Cap? I say, Yas-suh, captain, you sho did, you jes’ put ol’ Cap right out of business. He always treated me fair, that boy. Some folks say they don’t like him, but I say you always know where you stand with him.”

“That’s right. Not like some of these young fellers. Ain’t nothing worse than a jealous nigger, I don’t care what you say. I’d rather have a white man’s prejudice any day of the week.”

“Young nig-groes always fixing to stir up trouble. Now they want to bus the kids to school, take ’em across the highway, plunk ’em in with all these damned peckerwoods, stir up I don’t know what all kind of mess—”

“Surely they’re not just trying to stir up trouble,” said Jerry, sorry he had said anything almost before the words were out of his mouth.

Cap’s eyes flashed on him. “Ain’t nothing else
but
trouble,” he said. “White folks against niggers. Niggers against niggers,” he muttered mysteriously.

“That’s right,” said Hawk.

“But in the end it’ll be better, won’t it?” said Lori.

“Ain’t none of us gonna be around for the end. Less’n they hurry it.”

“But your children—”

“My children be better off if they just leave us damn well alone.”

Lori didn’t say anything more, and Jerry kept his mouth shut.

“You hear who’s come back homer1” the old man said to Hawk.

“Who?”

“Little Mose.”

“Little Mose!” Hawk rumbled. “He dead.”

“Naw, not him. His
boy,
that didn’t never know his daddy. He getting along about thirty-two, thirty now. His mama took him up to Chicago when he was just a kid, said when he come back he gonna be big-time. He go by the name of Edwards, he taken his mother’s name.” Hawk nodded. “You know, they say sometimes it skips. His daddy was a worthless fool, couldn’t play for nothing neither, about the only way he put peoples in mind of 01’ Man Mose was the way he drunk himself to death, just like his daddy, only quicker. But they say this boy got records out, he come back in a brand-new 88, with a long coat, fox-fur collar, and his hair all nappy like he was some kind of overgrown pickaninny. He playing down at the Sunset tonight, at least that’s what they say.”

“Hunh,” said Hawk indifferently.

“You been down there yet? Cats been asking about you. Wondering when you coming back from Europe or California or wherever you all been.”

“Ain’t been nowhere, ain’t gonna play no more of these gigs that don’t pay no money, ain’t that right? That boy there gonna see to that.”

Cap looked at Jerry suspiciously. Jerry inwardly shrugged; it was just one more thinly veiled insult to ignore. “Well, I better be going now,” said the old man apologetically. “I just stop by to say hello.”

“Hunh,” said Hawk again. “Just don’t you never say goodbye.”

They tried to stop him when he said he was going down to the cafe, just to look around. “Look, why don’t you just wait a few days?” Jerry said, thinking of his grandfather, who had died in a snowstorm when no one had been able to talk him out of leaving the house for Symphony.

“It’s late,” said Lori. “Let me go down to the cafe and talk to Little Mose, see if he’ll be around for a few days, he’ll probably want to come back here and see you—”

“Aww, Hawk,” remonstrated Mattie. “You heard what that doctor boy said. Don’t you think he know what he talking about? He say you should be in bed. It ain’t right, Roosevelt,” she said, putting a restraining hand on his shoulder.

He sat there staring straight ahead, seemingly too weak to shake her off. At last she took her hand from him with a helpless shrug, and Hawk struggled to his feet. “Don’t you think I know nothing?” he rumbled.

Mattie was practically in tears.

“Why not wait a few days?” Lori said. “Take it easy, rest up, get your strength back?”

But Hawk shook his head and reached for his big broad-brimmed hat. “Ain’t nobody going with me?” he said.

Down at the Sunset the evening was already well under way. The dancers were energetically working out, while the band (guitar, bass, drums, sax, and keyboards, with another guitar propped up on the crowded stand) was playing something that sounded like “Cool Jerk.” The Sunset had prospered since Jerry first came to Yola. It had added on a whole new wing in imitation knotty pine for entertainment, the parking lot (which had scarcely existed ten years ago) was paved and boasted a wooden sign announcing “Entertainment Tonite” with “Moses Edward” scrawled out on a piece of cardboard tacked up underneath. The Budweiser clock on the wall now illuminated a small stage and dance floor with a younger, better-dressed class of clientele. Even the old wing with jukebox, bar, and potbellied stove seemed somehow transformed by the tinsel decorations left over from someone’s birthday celebration perhaps, and Jerry was not sure he recognized anyone from the days when he thought Hawk had a proprietary interest in the place.

Hawk nodded to one or two older couples, Cap came over to their table to say that he was just leaving, Mattie and Lori excused themselves, and Jerry struggled to get his bearings. On stage the band ran through an assortment of ten-year-old soul instrumentals (“Soul Serenade,” “Soul Twist,” “Green Onions,” “The Stumble”) and up-to-the-minute funk. They were dressed in matching outfits with short jackets of sequined blue and occasionally glanced at the scuffed music stands monogrammed SB but more often scanned the crowd for diversions. A waitress came over for their order, and Jerry paid for it, getting a Coke for Scooter, while Hawk was still fumbling in his pocket.

“Which one of them’s Little Mose?” said Hawk angrily in a voice that cut through all the noise and clatter.

“I don’t think he’s on yet,” said Jerry at precisely the moment that the bass player took the mike, while the band vamped in the background, and announced:

“And now, direct from Chicago, the man you’ve all been waiting to hear, he’ll Cry a Tear For You, Won’t Let Go Till It’s Gone, he’ll Love You Hard and still leave you Screaming for More. The man who don’t want no Spiders in His Stew, you don’t look out he’ll Follow You to the Ends of Time, he’s an Easy Lover, don’t never Leave No Trace. So let’s put your hands together, ladies and gentlemen, and give a nice home-town welcome to the Master of the Stratocaster, the Crown Prince of Gen-u-ine Funk, the Senor from South America—what’s that? Oh, you’ll have to excuse me, I thought Mississippi
was
South America. Let’s have a warm welcome for one of the few good things that come out of Yola, Mississippi—and he come a long way, baby, Moses Edwards, Little Mose and the Bros.”

The crowd laughed and applauded good-naturedly as a small dapper man with a close-cropped Afro and tight-fitting blue jumpsuit bounded up to the stage and without so much as a moment’s pause stamped his feet, let out a little scream, and launched into a fast-paced, no-holds-barred version of “Try a Little Tenderness.” By the middle of the song Little Mose’s face was bathed in sweat, he loosened one button, then another of his snug suit until his chest was bare and glistening, then he unscrewed the mike from its stand, tiptoeing forward in little steps to the edge of the stage, striding back and forth like a proud bantam.