The Gorgon Festival (17 page)

Ward had no theory about his fatigue, only a vague hunch. But when he stepped from the bath to towel himself and caught himself whistling as he scrubbed, his hunch had advanced to a hypothesis. He swung into the kitchen, tore a paper towel from the roll, and sat at the table with his favorite pencil stub. Before starting to write the song, he scribbled out the master equation for molecular disintegration he planned to use as the theme of his lyrics and set it to one side.

He bent to write.

It was then Ward wrote the last and crowning lyrics of Jest Al’s career in words as pristine as if newly coined from the sweat, tears, and tumult of black fate. At the outset it was all there, hopelessness, frustration, rejection, rage, jingling in Negritic rhythms from his memories of Saturday nights in Watts. Yet into his words came also a wine-dark laughter.

He was writing the immortal “Flutter High, Butterfly.”

In the artlessness of genius, Ward knew not what he wrought. Essentially he was trying to construct an acoustics pattern matching a series of dissonant high notes to appropriate vocal sounds. Thus the simplicity and originality of his opening lines, so seldom sung but so essential to the
motif
of the entire poem:

Swinging through the alleys wild,

Jiving sounds of rhythmic glee,

On a fence I saw a child

And he, laughing, said to me,

“Daddy-O, make a song for me.”

The child symbolizes the primitive savage and thus, by extension, the oppressed proletariat of the world, whereas “Daddy-O,” as an exuberant cognomen, relates the child more closely to Rousseau’s version of the primitive as a noble savage and expresses the artist’s faith in the irrepressible good humor of the common man. As a symbol, the central figure, or Daddy-O himself, extends beyond Rousseau, back to the chthonian roots of myth, and is more appropriately represented, perhaps, as Prometheus bringing fire ( laughter ) to the world.

But the critical appraisals would come later.

Certainly, seated at the table, one eye closed, six inches away from the paper, Ward could not foresee that in a matter of a fortnight his words would be whanging out in Mandarin among the rice-wine bars of Canton and clicking in Swahili through the cantinas of Mozambique.

Flutter high, butterfly,

High, high into the sky.

That bright disk of sun afire you

Cannot reach but can aspire to.

He was not conscious that he was writing a masterpiece, but after Gollenberger and Stein’s opening night he knew the sounds had a functional effectiveness that no one could understand besides him and Doctor Sir Peter Waverly-Pritchard in Palo Alto.

Two nights later Ward sat with Freddie, front row center, weary from muscle fatigue. He had worked overtime waxing the ballroom floor for the opening.

At first, Gollenberger and Stein’s musical appeals to social consciousness were lost on an audience of boys and girls who came mostly from Beverly Hills and Bel Air. They found it hard to sympathize with children leaning out of windows for love while their psychiatrists were attempting to solve their own problems of alienation.

When Stein announced the finale as a new offering by Jest Al, the applause was a tribute Ward shared with Glamorgan, he knew, but the voices dropped around him. As he had planned, there was a complete silence when Stein announced that the Mop-Handle Poet wished to dedicate the number to Miss Frost. Had the woman far above them in the darkness stiffened in horror at his presumption or melted in delight at his homage? No matter. The crowd was silenced.

With Gollenberger handling the drums, Stein’s voice was too high-pitched to belt out the prologue. Instead, it whiplashed against a wall of audience indifference. When it grooved into the chorus, the listeners leaned forward and the wall came tumbling down.

In a devil’s mask with dry-gourd rattle, bare feet strumming a tom-tom beat, Mumbo Jumbo danced into the Daisy Chain in visions woven on pot-smoke gloom. Through the fetid smells of a jungle night, lean blacks stalked lithe black girls by their anklet clicks of leopards’ teeth. A leap and cry in the velvet dark was followed by the rattle of the Simba Swap in simulated cannibal rites as the drums cried “More” to the guitar’s “Stop.” After the whirr of a Springbok Spin, the music circled in a cakewalk strut till dawn broke over the Congo, silvering the black, wide river.

Up from the reeds margining the banks a butterfly fluttered toward the rising sun.

Shaken, the listeners sat for a moment in silence, then began to pound the floor with their heels, begging for an encore. Though Ward’s innercellular structure had been ripped by a sonic storm, his mind was rested. He had written a song about happy darkies as the missy had requested.

After the tumult died and Freddie had complimented him on their new hit, Ward said, “I reckon Miss Frost will have us waxing again tomorrow. This heel-pounding has ruined my floor.”

“Man, this is no time to talk about waxing floors… You talk tired. Want me to drive you home?”

“No. You got to go to work. I’ll make it.”

Motorcycling home, Ward was revived by the night air. He knew, now, what had caused his torpor, and he knew, too, if Miss Frost didn’t take him off the floor tomorrow and into the penthouse with her, he would have to resign. There was only enough solution for one more revival of his SA
⁽²⁾
factor. If she didn’t take him tomorrow, she wouldn’t want him after another barrage of Gollenberger and Stein’s high notes.

And the Daisy Chain was the only place where Diana could find him.

At the apartment Ward brought his electrodes and solution in from the garage, but he was too tired to take a bath. Slipping into his pajama bottoms, he went into the living room to watch television, and he had hardly settled into his chair when a knock came at the door.

He went to open the door, turning on the entrance light.

Outside the screen stood two white men, crew-cut, wearing blue suits. An animal wariness about them reminded him of Joe Cabroni, which was explained when the man nearest the door held up a billfold opened to his identification and said, “We’re from the FBI and we’d like to speak to Freddie the Hustler.”

Despite his weariness, Ward inwardly alerted. Their information was dated; Freddie was now the High Wheeler. As the information registered on his consciousness, Ward noticed that the second man was studying his head with the same objectivity Ward had observed in the Barber and Hattie.

His best offense was no offense at all, Ward decided as he fumbled at the latch, smiling. “Why, I’ve seen you gentlemen on TV. Y’all come right in. Freddie will be home, directly. I’m just visiting.”

Returning his billfold to his coat pocket but keeping his hand inside his coat, the first man brushed past Ward, moving quickly into the living room, saying, “Front room clear, Culpepper.”

The second man entered more leisurely, saying, “This is mighty obliging of you, Uncle.”

He audibly inhaled as he entered, and Ward assumed he was sniffing for marijuana. Ward, too, inhaled, and caught the unmistakable under odor of delta mud. The second agent, Culpepper, was from Mississippi. Culpepper’s origins put an entirely new interpretation on his sniffing and explained the study he had made of Ward’s face.

“Mind if we look over the apartment, Uncle?” He spoke with Old South courtliness as the first agent was already down the hall, leaping past the darkened bedroom door and reaching in to switch on the light.

“Y’all go right ahead, sir,” Ward answered.

Ward walked slowly back to his chair, knowing now that fate had singled him out to put on the greatest Plantation Shuffle in the history of put-ons.

Culpepper was a Negro expert for the FBI.

Mentally Ward followed the agents through the apartment. They would find no documents to question because there were no papers in the house and no garage key. Again it occurred to Ward that Freddie’s foresight was no spin-off from his sidewalk cunning. Unless Freddie had researched methods for hiding felons, this operation had been masterminded by an expert in concealment, probably someone in the nature of a financier who pretended to subsist on a widow’s mite.

But Ward had dirtied the immaculate plan by leaving his electrodes in the bathroom. All that could save him, now, was his own guile.

He was thinking hard.

Interservice rivalry was two-edged. Cabroni could have concealed the part that electrodes played in the rejuvenation process in hope of scoring a coup, himself, ahead of the FBI, LAPD and ONI. Ward had decided to bluff on that assumption when the Northerner came into the living room holding the electrodes.

“What are these for?”

“Them’s my de-magnetizers, sir.”

“How do they work?”

Culpepper had entered and was listening.

“You plug them in and hold one in one hand and one in the other, facing east. Chiropractor tells me that magnetism stuff comes from the north. Electricity coming from the south churns up your blood. They help tired blood, and I had tired blood since I been born.”

“Sickle cell anemia, Cabot,” Culpepper explained. “Lots of them have it.”

As Cabot returned the electrodes to the bathroom, Culpepper brought the three-way lamp closer to the chair, turning it higher, and pulled a picture of Freddie from his pocket.

“Is this Freddie?”

“Yes, sir. That’s old Freddie. He wanted by the FBI?”

“Only for questioning, Uncle, about this man.”

Culpepper flipped the picture and on the back was the Ethan Allen portrait of Ward. “Ever see him?”

“Yes, sir. I saw him around here, or somebody who looks a lot like him.”

As Ward studied the photograph, he knew Culpepper was studying him under the bright light.

“Does he pick up his mail here?”

So the post office had been the source of their information. They had traced Ester’s royalty checks back to the publisher or record company and gotten the address from there.

“Can’t say he does, sir. He shaves sometimes. Maybe takes a bath.”

“Does he have a blue streak down his back?”

“I don’t recollect looking.”

Cabot had returned, and Culpepper explained. “They can pass for white with their clothes on, but the blue streak down their spine is a dead giveaway.”

Culpepper took the photographs and replaced the floor lamp, saying, “You’ve been a help, Uncle. Now, we’ll just sit here and watch television with you until Freddie gets back.”

After they were seated on the divan Ward knew he was still undergoing an in-depth analysis by the Southerner, even though he had passed the physical.

“What kind of shows do you like best, Uncle?”

“I reckon I like them war pictures best, sir.”… With you whities killing each other.

“How about cowboys and Indians?”

“Can’t rightly say I likes them, sir.”… That’s too close to home, Mr. FBI.

“What about those sexy modern movies, Uncle?”… With all those white girls getting toosed into the hay?

“Whooeee!”

“Where do you hail from, Uncle?”

It was a loaded question designed to lead to regional allusions about the South, and Ward, nodding sleepily, diverted Culpepper with a decoy in a rambling answer.

“Compton, sir. Got freewayed out when they put in that new freeway between the Harbor and the Santa Ana. Can’t find a new place. With ten cents family assistance and twenty-cent rent, man sleeps he can’t eat, eats he can’t sleep.”

Culpepper let him ramble on about the happy problems of happy people until Cabot interjected, “Have you been questioned by the Los Angeles police?”

“No, sir. Nobody talk to me but you gentlemen.”

Ward could hear the divan springs creak as the agent relaxed in relief.

But Culpepper was back, tugging, with Ward anticipating the direction of his pull.

“How are you related to Freddie, Uncle?”

“Now, lemme think… My mama’s youngest sister, that’s Aunt Delphi, she married Uncle Henry. He’s a good Christian when he’s sober. His sister, my Aunt Emaline by marriage…”

In the time-honored manner of the South, Ward traced the relationship through a labyrinth as Culpepper listened respectfully, but the Northerner, Cabot, grew impatient with Southern amenities.

“We’ve been here half an hour and you said he’d be back directly. When is ‘directly’?”

“Bout two o’clock in the morning. Sometimes three, when there’s a big turnout after the last show.”

“They have a careless sense of time,” Culpepper explained.

“I don’t have,” Cabot snapped. He was through with Culpepper’s explanations.

“Are you telling me Freddie’s at work?” He asked Ward.

“Yes, sir. He runs the parking lot at the Kitten Club.”

“I know where it is,” Cabot said. “We can be there in twenty minutes. Let’s go.”

Culpepper arose, asking, “Do you have a telephone, Uncle?”

“Yes, sir. Right there in the hall.”

“Don’t use it,” he said, and his voice was harsh and authoritative, the voice of the Man. “If Freddie’s gone when we get there, we’ll know you called him and that’s aiding and abetting. Then we’ll be back, and you won’t have any rent problem for a long time.”

“Yes, sir.”

As they went out the door, Ward heard Culpepper explain to Cabot, “He’s an old-time darky. He’ll do as he’s told.”

But Ward was already getting up to turn off the TV set when he heard the squeal of rubber going north; he dashed into the bathroom to turn on the water and rig his electrodes. While the water was running, he stepped into the hall and called Freddie.

A strangely composed Freddie listened as Ward explained what had happened. When he answered, his voice was reassuring.

“They can’t do anything to me if I don’t know where you are, and I won’t know by the time they get here… Listen, in ten minutes, call 696-9000. Don’t call sooner, for I’ll have the line tied up. You’ll get instructions from there. Good luck, old buddy. And remember to leave a check for my half of our bank account.”

Ten minutes were all Ward needed for the rejuvenation bath using his last ounce of sugar phosphate and adding the tanning and enzymes for a combined operation that left him young and blacker. The tanning seemed to speed up the rejuvenation.