by Seth Pevey
Oh when the sun,
Refused to shine…
Mama had a beautiful singing voice. So deep and strong and lovely. She sang to Louis and me. I was getting sleepy. I was getting cold. And then—
Oh when the moon,
Turns red with blood…
“I worked for the railroad at the time, which kept me out overnight sometimes. She drank a bottle and went and got in the bathtub. She brought you two boys with her and…”
When I read this part, it makes me feel like I’m forcing Daddy to live it all over again. Even though he’s dead. I know that. Every time I read him tell it, it feels like I’m doing him wrong. Anyway, I don’t need him to tell it. All I needed was to just let myself remember.
I remember looking up at the bright overhead light on the bathroom ceiling, going all fuzzy. I remember her singing getting weaker.
Oh when the trumpet
Sounds its call
I keep reading the letter, no matter how hard it may be.
“Afterwards I thought…maybe your vocal works had been damaged. Because you didn’t talk for so long. But it wasn’t damage to your voice, was it? We never talked about it. I didn’t know how to, and you got so quiet. So quiet you were afterwards, for years and years, which made me think maybe you had buried the horrible thing, that you kept Louis alive deep in your heart and that talking about it would only make it worse.”
The razor in Mama’s hand. The marsala paint chips on her fingernails. She hung her hand over the lip of the bathtub and let the little piece of metal drop onto the tile. Things were red. The vanishing point in the drain, with the swirls of our lives going round and round. I remember.
“She did herself first. But maybe her heart wasn’t fully in it. I don’t know why, but she didn’t make deep enough cuts. That’s why she lived, and why you lived. But Louis. He was only one year old at the time and…Louis is gone now.”
A tear rolls down my cheek, just like it does every time.
“With her daddy as chief of police, and her uncle a judge, she was able to get the whole business covered up somehow. But I took you and I left, as soon as I could. Then I made up a story about her running off from a truck stop. I told it so many times I started to believe it myself. Maybe you did too.”
That’s okay, Daddy. You did the right thing. You did the—
There’s a knock at the door of my dressing room, and it pops me right out of these memories. I quickly put the letter away in its special place, set my Coke on the table and go to open it.
There, on the other side, are my three best friends in the world. That’s right. I have friends now. They are standing there and waiting for me, all with smiling faces full of joy and happiness, smiles that I gave them.
I work in the cause of happiness. I smile back, put the dark memories away again for another day, for next time.
“Good show, my boy,” says Mr. de Valencia.
“Great job, kid,” Mr. Melancon says.
Felix high-fives me and says, “Alright, man, you really knocked them dead.”
“Thanks.”
“So, you must be exhausted, Andre. Are you ready to go back to New Orleans now?” Mr. de Valencia asks.
“There’s just one stop I want to make first,” I reply.
When Louis Armstrong died, he had already lived for seven decades. What a lucky man he turned out to be, the little waif from back of town, living in this grand city. His face, the one that used to hang low with dirty coins from the street corner, was on stamps and the cover of Life. His eyes, that used to stare out from the waif’s home and cry, had seen the world a dozen times. His gravelly voice that used to talk to a coal mule was sent out into space.
But mainly, he got to have his time. In that way, he was luckier than my little brother by a whole lot. He was also luckier than my daddy, by about double. He also got to die in his bed, asleep and next to his wife, in a world that he thought was wonderful and that thought the same about him.
I come to the little gate in Flushing, which is a little further out from New York. I can see trees and grass again, and that makes me glad. I was beginning to think that New York didn’t have any of those things, and I could see why he would have chosen this place.
Mr. de Valencia nods at me. “We will wait here for you, Andre. Take your time.” Mr. Melancon has his hat in his hands and Felix is sitting on a park bench doing the crossword puzzle of the Sunday Times, or trying anyway. He keeps asking us for the answers. But of course, we don’t know.
I walk down a little pathway alone, getting deeper into the place. It is full summer now, but it isn’t so hot as home gets this time of year. The air is drier and thinner, and it feels like fall could be right around the corner.
I still think about his voice flying out into space, forever and ever. The sound of his trumpet never finds the vanishing point. It lives on and just keeps on going. But not his body. It has a vanishing point, just like all bodies do, and that is right here in Flushing.
“Hi, Louis,” I say.
The stone is plain black, and the word “Satchmo” is etched into the thing. Next to him is Lucille, his final and longest wife. He is lying there under my feet. The real man. Not just some statue or picture or video.
On top of his tombstone there is a little horn made of stone, and people have left all sorts of gifts. There are Mardi Gras beads of all colors and shapes, draped over half the thing. There are coins stacked in little piles here and there, and I’m surprised that no one has taken them. People have also stacked stones and someone has even left a little wooden carving of a trumpet.
“You aren’t my brother,” I say. “Of course, I know that.”
I feel awkward for a second and squat down to be closer to him, my voice falling to a whisper. There are a few other folks in the graveyard and I want to be sure they don’t hear.
“And I know…you aren’t my daddy, either. In fact, we never met or knew each other at all. But I’ve read and thought about you so much, I guess I do kind of know you, in a way. It took me a long time, Louis, to realize what I was doing. I just couldn’t think about some things. Some things were just too awful. And when I couldn’t think about those things, when I couldn’t or wouldn’t remember…I’d think about you instead.”
He doesn’t answer, of course. He’s been dead for fifty years.
“You never will know who I am or what I will be one day, but I still wanted to thank you for everything you’ve ever done for me. I loved my dead brother Louis and my dead daddy, but I also love you.”
I heard a rustle in the branches just over my head. There’s a bluebird there, cocking his head at me and looking down. He tweets a little song at me before flying away.
“Now that I’ve told you that, Louis, I’ll be going back to New Orleans.”
He still doesn’t say anything, but I know a smile when I feel it.
I take a silver-dollar coin out of my pocket and I put it on top of the stone.
Then I go home.
THE END
Afterword
Only you can solve Herbert and Melancon’s next big mystery.
You’ve finished “Uptown Blues,” and I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I put a lot of hours into making it the best reader experience possible, and I hope that came across in the words. As a small-time indie writer, those hours spent have to be budgeted out of a real life in which I spend forty plus hours a week running three businesses.
The point is (you probably guessed it), this is the part where I ask you for a review!
You see, as an indie writer, I am made or broken by exposure. If I get exposure, in the form of reviews, word of mouth, Goodreads lists, Twitter posts - or whatever else has lots of avid readers looking and talking - it means I’m able to succeed.
That publishing success, in turn, means I’m able to whittle away a few more hours from my business demands in order to write more words for you. Which means book number six will be here all the sooner. Which is what I desperately want.
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br /> I hope that is what you want, too.
So please, let the world know if you enjoy my work. The more you do that, the faster Felix and Melancon can get to the bottom of their next crazy, deadly, intriguing, New Orleans-y adventure!
They are both counting on you, dear reader. And so am I!
Please leave a review – Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter – whatever! You can also sign up for my mailing list at my blog: https://sethpevey.com/, for future updates, giveaways, and possibly even advanced beta-reader status!
Help Herbert and Melancon keep letting the good times roll, and I’ll see you in book number six!
