The Collected Novels of Charles Wright

by Charles Wright

  Little Jimmie and I swanked our way toward the Avenue. I saw people shield their eyes from The Wig.

  “It’s another world when the sun is shining,” I remarked, but Little Jimmie made no answer.

  Little Jimmie was in another world, very serious. Elegant: a twelve-foot cashmere striped old school scarf boaed his neck. Pigskin-gloved hands clutched a clear plastic attaché case bulging with ancient rock ’n’ roll music he’d acquired at the Parke-Bernet galleries.

  “What we gonna do first?” he asked solemnly.

  “I don’t know. Let’s hope The Duke has some good stuff. Let’s hope it inspires us. How’s the lips?”

  “I can’t hang’m any lower, Les.”

  “At least you could try. This is very important, you know.”

  “No, I can’t,” Little Jimmie insisted. “Hollywood couldn’t do anything with my patrician lips. The makeup man, and he was an artist to his fingertips, finally gave up.”

  “But we’re rock ‘n’ roll singers,” I tried to explain. “We’ve got to dum-dee-dum. You know, American kids are flipping over anything that has a jungle sound. It’s their coming-of-age ritual.”

  Little Jimmie stopped suddenly. “Didn’t have nothing like that when I was growing up. Didn’t have nothing but misery and floggings.”

  “I know,” I said, tugging gently at his arm. We were approaching the stark splendor of Central Park North, where green leaves were in embryo, and I wanted to get Little Jimmie to The Duke’s.

  “Kids got it too good now,” he complained. “TV, bubble gum, plenty to eat. Nothing bad ever happens to them except they die from an overdose of heroin or else they go to jail for shooting a cop or a cop shoots them to an early grave. Yeah. Kids got it too good now.”

  “But their new way of life is our gravy. If they didn’t dig rock ’n’ roll and weren’t so goddam queer we wouldn’t be on our way to fame and fortune.”

  “That’s right,” Little Jimmie finally agreed. “Where’s The Duke’s pad?”

  “See that manse on the left-hand side of the street?” I asked proudly. “The manse with the orange-tasseled canopy?”

  “You mean the one that looks like that leaning tower in Italy?”

  “That’s it. Ain’t that manse saying something? Something right out of House and Garden?”

  “Oh, it’s a mother-grabber. But I had thirty-five Caddies and I hear The Duke’s only got one coupe de ville Caddy and that’s almost a year old. I used to trade my Caddies in every four months.”

  Little Jimmie slowed, deep in past memories.

  “Sure,” I said, and tugging his arm, I led him gently across the street.

  The Duke’s soot-caked five-and-a-half-story limestone mansion did lean slightly out over the sidewalk, but, as he once remarked, that was part of its charm. It was a real conversation piece. Who else in Manhattan could boast that half of the fifth floor had fallen into the street by itself? The Duke didn’t even have to call the demolition crew, though the Sanitation Department complained like hell when they had to clean up the bodies of three small children, all victims of rickets disease. A joyous Welfare Department sent The Duke a twenty-five-year-old quart of Scotch and officially axed the children from their list. The poor mother, The Duke had told me with tears in his eyes, was twenty-three and very frail and had seven other illegitimate children on welfare, including two sets of twins.

  “It’s a beauty,” Little Jimmy exclaimed as we bounced up the gold-veined marble steps. “But in my Hollywood heyday I had a twenty-car garage. Miss Mary Pickford and Mr. Douglas Fairbanks, Senior, ruled Hollywood in the twenties and I ruled Hollywood after the Second World War. That is, until those devils sent me into exile . . .”

  Little Jimmie shed one great tear, his trembling hand grasped the railing of the stoop.

  “Now, don’t go into that again,” I said softly. “You’ll get upset and be back in Kings County. Everything’s cool. You’re gonna reap fame and fortune in another field.”

  “But I was a star,” Little Jimmie protested. “A movie star is the greatest thing in the world. A movie star lives forever.”

  I nodded and pressed the buzzer. The Wig would live forever, I thought. A monument to progress in the name of my dead parents.

  Presently, the double-barred iron door swung open and we went into the bare white entrance hall.

  Brandishing a genuine poison bow and arrow, The Duke emerged from behind a sackcloth curtain. Exactly five-feet-five, a dark version of Maximilian of Mexico, he carefully wrapped the bow and arrow in several back issues of The National Review. He wore bright Turkish trousers and a Hong Kong patchwork smoking jacket.

  “Adds a little color to my life,” he joked. “I was afraid you boys wouldn’t show.”

  “What made you think that?” I asked. “After all, we got big deals brewing.”

  “Well,” The Duke began, “you know how it is. People are discovering that marijuana is bad for the teeth.”

  “I’ve heard,” Little Jimmie said sadly.

  “However,” I said, putting mountain air and clear running springs into my voice, “what pot does for the intellect and the soul! And you get high, too. Getting high is gonna see me through this world.”

  “I know,” The Duke said, displaying a garland of black teeth stumps. “Marijuana is habit-forming, like hatred. It’s being reclassified as a major drug by the government . . .” The Duke paused and rubbed his soft hands together. “What will it be today, boys?”

  “I guess you heard,” I said blushing.

  “Oh. You mean . . . The Wig. It’s great, man.”

  “Just a little experiment. Taking a public poll, you might say. And then I’ll get down to the heart of the matter.”

  Little Jimmie grunted. “He looks like a goddam Christmas tree. Blinding everybody on the street. There was a terrific traffic jam at one hundred and twenty-fifth. Six people injured, but they was all white.”

  “Didn’t I say I was going to shake up this town?” I laughed.

  “Well,” The Duke nodded in agreement, “I don’t see how you can fail.”

  “I never needed a wig,” Little Jimmie boasted. “But I was a movie star of the first rank. The late Louis B. Mayer said, ‘Little Jimmie, you and I keep the lion roaring here at MGM.’ And I said, ‘That’s a fact, Louis.’”

  “I remember,” The Duke said quickly. “Nobody could touch you with a ten-foot pole until you lost your place as America’s favorite dark Mickey Rooney.”

  “I never lost my place in the American moviegoer’s heart,” Little Jimmie cried. He flung the plastic attaché case to the floor angrily. “It was those secret devils that double-crossed me . . .”

  “What secret agents?” I scoffed, forgetting that he was touched in the head.

  “How should I know?” Little Jimmie pleaded. “All I know is I’d jest been made an honorary member of the Arm Forces. This was wartime, mind you, but General Motors okayed a custom-built job for me. I was essential to the war effort. I made the people on the home front forget fear and tragedy.”

  Lies, insanity—I didn’t care. “Peace on the home front? What the hell are you talking about? There was tragedy. My father learned to read and write and then died. My mother died grieving over him. That’s how things were then. And I suppose you showed your teeth when the white folks said, ‘Two more niggers gone.’ I remember in the picture called The Educated Man there was a line that made the whole country laugh. ‘No sur. Me caint weed nor wight to save muh name . . .’”

  Little Jimmie came over and tried to console me. “That was just part of the script, Les.”

  “Then why did you always sign your name with a rubber stamp and put an X beside it?”

  “That was a gimmick. I had a good public relations working for me.”

  “But do you really know how to read and write?” I asked, breaking away from his grasp.

  “I know how to read the Gallup Poll, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter. I placed first in Photo Digest
Magazine’s popularity contest five years in a row. And then . . .”

  Little Jimmie slumped against the wall and moaned, head hung low, large, ashy hands grasping at something that wasn’t there.

  The Duke sighed. I felt a quick pain, felt sweat splash down my armpits. I thought of The Wig and my own dazzling future, but that brought little comfort now.

  Finally I forced myself to say loud and clear: “Yeah. Just about the time you were gonna get an Academy Award they kicked your ass out of Hollywood.”

  Little Jimmie raised his head slowly and looked over at me. “You didn’t have to say it like that, Les.”

  “What else could I say? It’s the truth. It wasn’t my fault the white goat had horns.”

  The Duke broke in sweetly: “I’ve got some good stuff for you colored rock ’n’ roll singers. Colored rock ’n’ roll singers. That’s a laugh. Sure you boys ain’t trying to go white on me? Anyway, you’re in my corner. I’ve got quality stuff. A five- or ten-dollar bag?”

  “We’ll have a couple of joints and turn on and see what happens. Okay, Little Jimmie?”

  “I don’t care. New gig shaping up and you guys trying to put me down.” He smiled painfully.

  “Go ahead, baby. Plough through the rye,” I said, following The Duke into the next room.

  It was an L-shaped room with what had once been a dumbwaiter converted into a drug bar. When The Duke moved in, he had discovered a dead, half Seal Point, half Abyssinian cat whose sky-blue eyes now floated in a Mason jar of alcohol. Functioning as a free-form shelf, a colonial pine packing case sagged under the weight of Chinese canisters (the pattern designs were the bonus of instant Australian tinned beef). A large, Danish cut-glass bowl was a rich sea of marijuana, finely chopped, heavily seeded, and blended for taste and its dried-leaf color.

  “Everything’s in marvelous taste,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Little Jimmie agreed.

  “Thank you,” The Duke smiled, and let us on into his private sitting room, a mild gray room, bare except for the seven-foot charred cross opposite a modern sofa. The Duke did not want people to miss the significance of the cross. Posters of the Nazi epoch, the Spanish Civil War, four-color spreads of winters at Miami Beach, and one discreet calling card from a family in Newport surrounded the cross.

  “Gentlemen,” The Duke said graciously, “I am at your service.”

  Little Jimmie flopped down on the sofa. He seemed not to notice the cross.

  I sat down on a hassock made from a four-gallon tin of Muddy Blue detergent, a souvenir of The Duke’s handyman-porter days.

  The Duke was a fine host. Calmly, he offered Little Jimmie a brimming Malacca pipe of pot.

  I already had my hand out for the fat rolled joint. I lit up, inhaled deeply, and thought: Happy days. Little Jimmie and I will be rock ’n’ roll sensations. Plus, I have The Wig; plus, there is still potency in the Little Jimmie Wishbone name. Plus, pot.

  Feeling the pot and my bravado load, I went to the drug bar and flipped another joint into my golden lips and then looked over at Little Jimmie.

  “Another pipe, man?”

  Holding the pot in his head, riffling sheet music, Little Jimmie nodded gravely and I refilled his pipe.

  Dry-heaving, The Duke clamped his hands over his mouth and turned toward the wall.

  Two minutes later, he swung back around, breathing hard. “Fill my sax, Les. We’ll make a session.”

  The Duke, a frustrated musician, always smoked pot out of a baby saxophone. A cute gimmick, like those coffeehouse musicians before Lily Law ended that scene. Smoke drifting out of the saxophone, a motif of cool music.

  I filled the sax and joined The Duke, who now sat Indian fashion on the floor.

  Three (pot-smoking) Wise Men, we silently savored the joy of marijuana, unmoved by the 10 A.M. foghorns signaling the first quarterly hour of radioactive dust.

  The Duke elbowed me. “Are you feeling it?” he grinned.

  “I am getting together,” I replied. The image of The Deb floated into my mind. Boiling with inspiration, I added: “We could start off with a rock ’n’ roll love song.

  You upset me like the subway at night

  Do, do, do uh a do . . . do

  We’ll hold hands in the first car

  You and I and Oh . . .

  Do, do, do, uh a do the policeman.

  Do, do, do, uh a do, do

  “What’s the rest of it?” Little Jimmie asked.

  “That’s all. We jest keep repeating. Then let the sax and piano pick it up and, baby, we have at least two minutes. A record. A hit on our hands. By the time we make our first personal appearance on a TV show, we’ll think of something freakish. You’ve gotta have something freakish about your personality or else the kids won’t dig you. We gotta provide fantasy for their wet dreams.”

  The Duke exhaled and cleared his throat. “I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. We’re moving into a very brotherly racial era. And what’s bringing the colored and white people together is real soul music. You know that, Les.”

  “Funky,” Little Jimmie Wishbone shouted. “After the pot and whiskey, everything is jest like yesterday. And there’s no real music. When I was a movie star . . .”

  “But listen,” The Duke interrupted. He knifed up from the floor. The sax rested easily under his arm. You could almost feel the gravel gritting in his throat as he said: “Folks, these are the blues. From way down home. In the southland of Brooklyn. They tell a story of sweat falling from people sitting on stoops on hot summer nights. Too hot for them in bed. They ain’t got no money. Got nothing but the pain of fighting a lost cause. So what can they do? They sing, yes, they sing the blues . . .”

  “Shit,” Little Jimmie said.

  “Let’s have another joint,” I said, “and get this show on the road.”

  “Yeah. We gotta see the man,” Little Jimmie put in.

  “The man?” The Duke asked, frowning.

  “Yes,” I said. “The A and R man at Paradise Records.”

  Seven

  AFTER CLANSMEN GOOD-BYES, we were mellow. I wanna tell you: every muscle and vein in our bodies relaxed. “We moved out onto the Avenue like crack athletes, briefly spotlighted by the fickle March sun. The Avenue was deserted and quiet except for the long-drawn-out cries of a hungry child. A rare cry. Normally, the Avenue’s children were well fed, healthy, and happy.

  “Terrible. Ain’t it?” I said, looking up and down the Avenue.

  A wave of old-star glory had washed over Little Jimmie. “It’ll all be over soon. Remember when I was a star? Butter and biscuits and Smithfield ham every day. I was one of the big wheels in the machine. It’ll be like the old days after we cut our first side.”

  “We can’t miss,” I said. “We’ve got too much going for us.”

  In an extravagant mood, I hailed a taxi, a sinister yellow taxi, festooned with leather straps and Bessemer steel rods. What looked like black blood caked the rear fender. The driver was a small pale man with an open face.

  “Good morning,” he said in a quavery voice. “I am at your service.”

  “Paradise,” I snarled, easing into the taxi.

  “That’s Broadway and Fifty-second street,” Little Jimmie said.

  “The musical capital of the world. We’re part of the action.”

  “You’re very fortunate,” the pale taxi driver said.

  Little Jimmie and I exchanged blasé-celebrity glances and laughed.

  “Did I say something wrong?” the driver asked.

  “Wrong,” Little Jimmie exclaimed. “Listen to this turd.”

  Sweat showed on the driver’s face. “Yes, sir. That’s what I am. A turd. But you people are the greatest. You have so much soul. And how you can sing and dance. You must be the happiest people on the face of the earth.”

  “Cut the lip,” I said. “Get this show on the road.”

  The perspiring driver swallowed hard and replied softly, “Yes, sir.”

  The sinister
taxi started off smoothly enough and went down Fifth Avenue, leaving the upper Avenue’s strong odor of decay. The denuded trees of Central Park formed a bleak bower, and, on the opposite side, glass fronts of apartment buildings gleamed. It was as if the architects had all worked from a single design.

  Now the taxi was at 82nd and Fifth. Little Jimmie dozed. I watched the park side where gouty, snobbish mongrel dogs howled discontentedly. Infected infants sat in Rolls-Royce baby carriages guarded by gaunt nursemaids. Good Humor men equipped with transistor laughing machines hawked extrasensory and paranoiac ice-cream bars. The unemployed formed a sad sea in front of the apartment buildings: they jostled, spat, bit and hit each other in the stomach, their voices a medley of frustrated cries, while merry apartment wives peered from plate-glass windows, hiding smiles behind Fascisti silk fans.

  The pot was surely working, I thought hazily.

  I closed my eyes and saw my Deb behind her own plate-glass window, spoon-feeding Lester Jefferson II—Little Les, while twenty floors below, I polished the Mercedes with Mr. Clean. It could happen: rebirth in this land, or was such a birth only an exit from the womb, not a door to the future?

  Life is one pot dream after another, I thought, and yawning, I turned to Little Jimmie. “We’re on our way,” I said.

  “It’s in the bag.”

  Suddenly the driver’s chattering teeth caught our ears.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Little Jimmie asked.

  “Guess he’s got thin blood.”

  “He’s a skinny little son of a bitch.”

  “It’s a wonder the wind doesn’t blow his ass away.”

  Little Jimmie chuckled, and leaned back in the seat like a king.

  “I ain’t cold,” the pleasant-faced driver cried. “I’m scared to death. I know you gonna take my leather straps and chains and beat me up. I know you gonna make black-and-blue marks all over me and take my money. Ain’t that right? Ain’t that right?”

  Sighing, Little Jimmie said, “Is he trying to get in on the act?”

  “No, man. He’s a masochist. Dig?”

  “Come on,” the driver shouted. “Beat me and get it over with. I can’t stand the waiting.”