Nighthawk Blues (3 page)

“You know, we had to put Mr. Jefferson in restraints. He insisted that he had to leave the hospital, that he had to make an engagement—”

“He did,” said Jerry helplessly. “He had a concert at Notre Dame tonight.”

“Ah, well, perhaps if you could speak to him—”

Jerry nodded, not so much in agreement as out of exhaustion. This man didn’t understand, he couldn’t understand, how could anyone understand if they didn’t know Hawk? You could talk for a minute, or you could talk for an hour, you could talk until you were blue in the face and think you were making progress, but Hawk would never do anything other than precisely what he intended all along. He was the most self-centered man Jerry had ever met, and by that Jerry didn’t mean the most selfish or least generous. He could show real warmth and generosity of spirit on occasion. But he was the most self-oriented, self-righteous, self-assured son of a bitch that Jerry ever hoped to encounter. He was the Screamin’ Nighthawk, and that, Jerry thought, might turn out to be his eternal misfortune. He was a man who had built a self-conception around a legend, and it was the legend that he felt obliged to live up to, holding himself erect even if he was doubled over inside, referring to himself so often in song and speech as a marauding bird of prey that it almost seemed as if he had come to believe it, expending every last ounce of energy so long as he had a public of even one to impress with his vitality. From the day he had made those great early records for a furniture company that manufactured phonograph records in Graf ton, Wisconsin, from the moment his caricatured face had appeared in Paramount advertisements with the legend “You think you’ve heard the blues? Well, you haven’t heard anything yet, until you’ve heard this Mississippi native moan, cry, shout and, yes, scream the blues,” he was hooked, stuck forever on his own publicity notices. And even as his voice had thickened over the years and that eerie high-pitched edge had modulated into a thick-toned growl, even though today’s seamed and weatherworn face bore little resemblance to that of the bright-eyed young man who had physically had to be held back to keep him from rushing time in those early days, though the guitar he now carried was a patched facsimile of the new Gibson he held in the picture, he was still the Screamin’ Night-hawk and he still roared out the words of the song with conviction.

I’m the screamin nighthawk, baby,

And I hunts both night and day

When I gets my claws in you, baby,

You gonna scream and holler hooray
…

“The Screaming Nighthawk is in your town,” the tattered poster read. “He will entertain you and sing the blues. When this Hawk screams and plays his golden guitar, the whole town is going to run for cover. Come and see the Screaming Nighthawk on _______________ at _________________.” That was his calling card, and that was his life. …

There was a television set on low, a beeper sounded, Jerry looked straight down the long stinking corridor into the crowded ward where one man lay with his foot up in the air, another groaned. “I think I’ll go in and see him now.”

Hawk was furious. His thick beetling brows knit in concentration. His squat heavy body was wrapped in hospital swaddling clothes. The long scar on his cheek burned with indignation. His eyes were yellow with fury. “I want to get out of here, boss,” he croaked. “I told these sorry-ass mother fuckers, I got to get out of here.”

Jerry didn’t know what to say. The room was filled with sick old men. Helpless men. Sad old rummies with tears running down their cheeks. Dying men. In their midst Hawk didn’t look all that different, unless you studied the anger in his eyes, the veins popping out on either side of his forehead. It would make a good picture, Jerry thought. If he’d just thought to bring his camera—maybe he’d pick one up, send it out on the wires, get some free play—oh shit, what was the matter with him?

“So how you doing? Boy, you really gave me a scare,” Jerry said, looking for conversational cheer. Hawk didn’t say anything, just glared. “They treating you all right? Oh man, what happened to Teenochie?”

“They treating me like a piece of dogshit,” Hawk said at
last.

“You know, I talked to the doctor. He says you’re going to be out of here in no time, seemed like a nice guy, wanted”—Jerry didn’t know why he had to say this—“me to send him one of your records.”

Nothing.

“I said I would.”

Hawk didn’t even lift an eyebrow. “They tied me down.”

“Well, they were worried about you.”

“Tied me up like some damned baboon didn’t even know enough to scratch his own ass. They taken all my clothes. They won’t give me my guitar, bother me with all their damnfool questions, they keeping me here against my will, ain’t that against the law even for niggers?”

Jerry scrutinized him surreptitiously. With his right hand he gestured forcefully; his left lay down at his side. Was it imagination, or was the expression on his face slightly lopsided with the left side frozen in a lifeless grin? It would be a helluva way for it to come to an end, in a fleabitten urban hospital—

“You know, Lori wanted to fly up to be with you, she’s down in New Orleans now with Coot.”

“Yeah, Coot.” Hawk chuckled.

“I told her to wait a few days.”

Hawk’s face softened. “Yeah. It be better in a few days. How she doing anyway? Her and old Coot?” Hawk slapped the white sheet with his right hand. “Oh man, I known Coot since he was a little kid and we passed through New Orleans with Silas Green. He better be taking good care of that gal.”

Hawk had always had a soft spot in his heart for Lori, Jerry didn’t really know why. It was as if he had reserved some special space for her which he would grant to no other individual or musician. Jerry remembered the reporter from
Newsweek
who had badgered Hawk for a quote on the Rolling Stones after they had recorded one of his songs and made a big show of presenting the first royalty check, even though truthfully there was no way of proving that Hawk had written the song. “They’re nice boys,” Hawk said diplomatically, thinking no doubt of $10,000 in the bank and maybe more to come. “But are they blues musicians?” the
Newsweek
reporter persisted. “I mean, have they suffered enough, have they paid their dues, can a white person ever really sing the blues?” Hawk glowered at him and said nothing. The reporter was a bright kid, had long tangled red hair, and had indulged Jerry in an hour of reminiscence for a one-sentence quote to lead the article. “I mean, I know that Muddy says that whites can play the blues, but they can’t ever sing the blues—” Hawk passed a big paw over his close-cropped head. “That’s dogshit,” he said. “You listen to Lori Peebles if you want to hear a white girl got soul.” “But what about the Rolling Stones?” the reporter implored. “There ain’t no way,” said Hawk, “they could cause a nigger whore to even wiggle her ass.” Thus ending the discussion, ending the interview, ending the checks, and eliminating the possibility of any tour with the Rolling Stones. “I don’t know what it is,” Hawk said whenever he was asked to explain it. “That girl must got memory pain. Cause she singing about experiences she could only have had in another life. Can’t nobody tell me that that girl ain’t singing from the heart.” To which Jerry, though he had doubts about reincarnation, was forced to agree.

The other inmates of the room glanced over from time to time but were scared off by Hawk’s unblinking gaze. His eyes, Jerry thought, burned yellow. He wondered if Hawk was going to die. “Naw, I ain’t gonna die, motherfucker,” Hawk said in strange good humor. “You know, Crow Jane think she too beautiful to die, but I’m just too mean. You see that motherfucker, Teenochie, you tell him he just better make sure to deliver me the money that he stole. Cause if he counting on I’m gonna kick, he better start running now, I don’t get that money. You know, I give him his chance back in ’29. He fucked up then, and he’s fucking up now. Probably gambling my money away in a game right now. I told you he wasn’t nobody to be trusted all along, I knowed it then and I knowed it now.” And with that Hawk fell off to sleep.

J
ERRY
checked into a hotel near the hospital and right away started making calls. When his ear started to ache from the phone, he flicked on the
TV
and watched a few minutes of a situation comedy about the ’50s that wasn’t anything like the way he remembered it. Then wearily he got up and went looking for the desk clerk to see if he could get any kind of a line on Teenochie.

The clerk, an old white-haired man who was watching the same program on his own TV, a little portable, didn’t seem to understand what he was talking about at first. “Oh yes,” he said with weary enthusiasm, “we have some wonderful nightspots in Indianapolis.” He started running down a list of glittery-sounding clubs and show bars. Jerry shook his head. “I’m looking for a colored place, a little bar maybe, where they have a piano, feature old-fashioned music.”

“You looking for a girl, mister?” said the old man, his glance flickering back to the youthful images on TV. “Now I don’t know about that sort of thing—”

Jerry didn’t have much better luck explaining himself to the taxi driver, who was black. He was looking for the black part of town, the old Naptown, he tried. Taxi driver nodded. He wasn’t looking for a girl, he was looking for a place, maybe it was somebody’s house, the kind of a place that had a jukebox, an old piano, maybe featured live entertainment two or three times a week, not soul music, not disco, blues music. The driver just looked inscrutable. He nodded his head and pointed the cab in a certain direction and drove for what seemed like hours, as Jerry got his first extended glimpse of Indianapolis. They drove and drove as neighborhoods deteriorated, vacant lots and boarded-up buildings replaced crumbling row houses and factory sites, white faces disappeared, and Jerry had the impression more and more that they were making their way into a trackless jungle from which the very idea of retreat was foreclosed. Finally the cab came to a halt. The meter read $14.80, and Jerry gave the driver a twenty-dollar bill. “Don’t know if this is what you want, mister,” said the cab driver. “These last couple of blocks, they got quite a few of the old joints. Used to be a whole lot of music in Naptown. Music, women, seem like the music bring out the women, sometimes they was so many you could shake a stick at ’em, but it ain’t like that now. Don’t know if you going to find what you looking for here.” Jerry nodded, tried to keep his teeth from chattering. He had, he reminded himself, been in lots of jungles. He thanked the driver and watched forlornly as the cab sped off.

The first bar that he tried he didn’t even get in the door. It was called Duke’s, and there was a woman with an ill-fitting black wig behind a scarred Plexiglass partition who shook her head ominously as Jerry edged down the stairs. Not a word was spoken, but Jerry didn’t hear any music either, so he just turned around and went back up the stairs. He didn’t fare much better with the second or third joint either. There was just the noisy crush of people, laughing, chattering, slapping hands, having a good time. Then he heard it. From down the street, across a litde alley, he heard the unmistakable sound of a piano, of
the
piano—the walking bass and right-hand triplets, the eerie dissonance and unsynchronized rhythms, the sense of stepping back into another time which had first struck him the very day he had discovered Hawk. Above the door in hand-painted letters it said “Johnny Twist’s Hurricane Lounge.” There was a rope across the entrance held loosely at one end by a big man whose one good eye gleamed sadly in the dim light. The cover charge was a quarter, and Jerry reached into his pocket to pay it. Without a word the man let the rope trail on the floor, and Jerry stepped carefully over it.

Inside it looked like a bombed-out site from some forgotten era in Indianapolis’ undocumented history. Once his eyes became accustomed to the murky light Jerry could make out the dangerous bulge of the walls, the precarious slope of a floor which had to be negotiated carefully to begin with due to the crater-sized holes with which it was pitted, and the upturned wooden crates which substituted precariously for tables. The stale smell of sweat and urine filled the room. Over to the left was a bar and to the right a small bandstand of misshapen boards raised a foot or so off the floor. There, sitting dignified at the battered upright in a silk vest, red suspenders, and his habitual derby hat, was Teenochie.

As he looked around, Jerry became aware that every eye in the room was on him. This didn’t surprise him, as he himself could hardly understand what wayward impulse had brought him here. As he stood uncertainly, unsure of what to do next, a small man with a dapper mustache and a wicked glint in his eye came up behind him and touched his elbow. Jerry jumped at his touch. The man just smiled. “Allow me,” he said with a flourish, “to show you to your seat.”

“Oh no,” said Jerry, flushed and acutely aware of the perilousness of his situation. “I didn’t, I mean—”

“No, no, please—” The man’s wide white muttonchop sideburns gleamed in the darkness.

Teenochie sang, “How long, baby, how long, must I keep my watch in pawn?” The piano rolled out its swelling, out-of-tune melody, supple bodies shivered and swayed in place, there was the constant sound of boisterous good times as men and women shouted over and in response to the music.