Night Song

by John A. Williams

  For some time after they first met, there had been no involvement; they had seen each other casually here and there; sometimes Keel was alone or with a musician; Della was usually with Alice, a glistening, smiling, sleek brunette who liked jazz and musicians. The only thing Della and Alice had in common was their work at a social agency. Della understood soon enough that Alice wanted a companion for the shadow world she moved in after work—after the endless conferences with children and their estranged parents. Then Alice could discuss the things—at least with her—she dared not talk of to any of the other workers. After five o’clock, circulation among the afflicted minorities was frowned upon—even in an office where Negroes, whites, and Puerto Ricans worked together.

  For her own benefit Alice had urged the relationship with Keel. Alice herself preferred the more prominent musicians: Eagle, Yards, and others, and often discussed her evenings with them with a neurotic breathlessness. Even so, when Alice had spent herself and had turned to more acceptable companions who were white and not associated with jazz, she started to wonder why Della continued to see so much of Keel.

  Between Della and Keel there had been periods of deep passion and of love, but there had also been times when Della withdrew into herself, pondering why she felt no guilt about Keel. How was it she could look at him objectively, as a man, and not as a Negro enhanced by three hundred years of mythology? Their separations had been rather frequent but so had the reconciliations.

  The problems had not been Della’s alone. Her presence accelerated prejudice, Keel told her. It was bad enough without activating more, so how could he live a life with her? They both recognized the truth in this yet the year before, all truths measured and laid out like garments about to be sewn, they had decided that, regardless, they would have to try it.

  Now, in her apartment, Della poured out the cup of Assam tea that Keel liked and carried it to him in her living room. He thanked her quietly, sipped it, and placed the cup and saucer down. He leaned back in the chair, his favorite chair, he had said, because it allowed him to think, and began talking softly, looking past her to the giant rounded rooftop of the 69th Regiment Armory.

  CHAPTER 6

  The shop was empty except for Hillary and Crane. Sometimes the wind buffeted the door, and Hillary was glad he was inside where it was warm and not out in the street bent double against the cold, with red eyes and a running nose. It was too cold to be drunk, he told himself.

  Crane sat at a table just outside the Musicians’ Room, stirring sugar into the coffee Hillary had brought him. Hillary sat near the kitchen and again, as he had the night before, wondered what Della and Keel were doing. In his mind Hillary cursed Crane, who was too cheap to play records and hadn’t yet paid for his coffee, the most expensive on the menu, Mocha-Java.

  “You workin’ for Keel?” Crane asked. He looked up over his coffee.

  “Yeah.”

  “Musician?”

  Hillary had always thought that with musicians and their hangers-on the necessity to pigeonhole would be absent. “No,” he answered.

  Crane grunted, and lifting his cup to his lips sipped the coffee, then replaced the cup in its saucer. “Like to make some bread?”

  “What doing?” Hillary countered.

  “Come on over.” Crane beckoned Hillary to his table. Hillary had already come to dislike the man, but didn’t know why. “Sit down,” Crane said with a smile.

  “I write,” he said. “I’m a jazz critic.” He laughed modestly. Hillary waited. “All the news isn’t at Carnegie or the Open Door or the Vanguard. Do you know them?”

  Hillary nodded. He wasn’t sure. New clubs sprang up all the time.

  “There’s lots of news here, but I can’t get it; you know what I mean?” His eyes took on a wise look.

  “I don’t think so,” Hillary said. “Tell me.”

  “Right. I can’t get the news I’d like because I’m white, like you, y’dig? Right. Now you’re here—” Crane broke off. “You’re not a writer are you?”

  Hillary shook his head.

  Crane said, “Had me bugged for a second. Anyway you’re here where there’s lots of action. You know, cats running in and out, talking and so on. You pick up some valuable information for me, and I’ll straighten you. Better than Keel.” Crane sipped his coffee. He asked, “You a junkie?”

  “No.”

  “Hummm,” Crane mused. “Wino?”

  “No.”

  Crane leaned back. “What then?”

  There had to be a reason why he was here, Hillary thought. Why am I here, working for Keel, grateful because I’m not in the street? Days ago he had been able to let Keel and Eagle know without hesitation that he was close to being an alcoholic. Why then did he feel hesitation now? Why couldn’t he tell Crane: “I’m a lush.” Could it have been that it was because Crane was white and he, Hillary, sensed the man’s disdain at the fact that he worked for Keel? If this were true, then he was more like Crane, whom he hated now, than he wanted to be.

  “Hum?” Crane insisted. He leaned forward now. “Look, man. I’ve been on the scene for a long time. I’m older than I look and something tells me you don’t belong here, but here you are, waiting tables for a spade. You look like you know something. Hip. All I’m asking is what the hell are you? What happened?”

  Hillary had had moments, fleeting but real, when he had felt at peace here. This, Sadik’s, the crazy world of Keel and Della, Eagle and Candy, its utter bleakness, had made him realize that possibly here at the very end—he did not delude himself with his white man’s mind: it was the end—he could start back. What Crane was telling him now was that there was no end against which he might brace himself and start back. Rod Tolen had told him that, and the restless sadness of Keel and Della underlined it for him.

  Hillary did not know the precise second when he became angry.

  “I’m a lush,” he said. “I drink, and I drink, and I drink—” He paused, realizing that he hadn’t had a drink all day. “I admit it. That’s being real. But you? You pretend to be one of the boys, Crane. When I first came here I thought this was a place of beaten, talented people who found some small pleasure in playing and listening to music. I didn’t know they hated cats like you simply because they know you hate them, yet it doesn’t stop you from making money from them.”

  Crane gave Hillary a tight smile, threw a dollar on the table and got up. “You sound just like them,” he said. He pulled on his coat and started for the door—which opened to admit Eagle, his pajamas covered by his coat, thin slippers on his feet. Crane rushed forward with a smile. “My man, how you makin’ it?”

  Eagle’s smile was brilliant, his two-handed handclasp warm. “Crazy, crazy” he said, moving toward the kitchen with Crane still holding on.

  “How you feel?” Crane asked.

  “I feed good, why?” Eagle asked.

  The voices came to Hillary clearly.

  “Well—you got on pajamas, so naturally I thought you were sick.”

  “Naw. Just restin’ that’s all.”

  “Sure. You signed with Demetriades yet?”

  “Next week, maybe.”

  “Nice, man. Bread. How much is he going to lay on you?”

  Eagle laughed. “Ask him.”

  The voices went on. Hillary remained seated, wondering what Eagle was doing up. Was Crane trying to find out about the evening before? It occurred to Hillary that he was, but his inquisitiveness was easily blunted by Eagle. Hillary smiled. Bullshit, he thought. Crane bullshitting Eagle; Eagle bullshitting him, back and forth, back and forth. Hillary heaved a sigh when Crane left and Eagle came out with coffee and a sandwich and sat at the table with him. “That mother,” Eagle grunted. “Always suckin’ around.”

  “You should be in bed,” Hillary said.

  “Hell, I’m all right.” Eagle’s jaw clamped around the sandwich. “Where’s Keel and Della?” he asked with his mouth filled.

  “Gone.”

  “Gone, huh?” Eagle ch
ewed his food and when he had swallowed it said, “You like that Della, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. She’s nice.”

  “I mean you don’t like her like that.”

  Hillary said nothing.

  “Ah, well,” Eagle said. “She is nice. You hang around in music for a long time and you see a lot of things. You get so you wish you could see a mixed couple without either the broad or the cat being halfway sick about it.” Eagle bent to his sandwich again and washed it down with a loud slurp of coffee. “Like Keel and Della,” he said. “I see a broad and I figure there’s only one thing she wants. Matter of fact there’s only one thing she can do for me, and we make it. It’s funny, ’cause I dig I’m the noble, talented savage—I’m Richie Stokes the Eagle an’ there’s something wild and unchained about me. I hate ’em for it; all the time I’m making it, I’m hating them and I want to hurt them so they’ll never forget me. Never, never.”

  Hillary returned to Keel and Della. “Are they going to get married?”

  “Who?”

  “Keel,” Hillary said impatiently, “and Della?”

  Eagle shrugged. “I don’t know. Keel’s tore up about something.” He smiled wisely. “Why?”

  It was Hillary’s turn to shrug.

  “Forget it,” Eagle advised. “There ain’t nobody like Keel and Della knows that, black or white. Sure wish that cat would straighten out, though. He deserves better than this. Rigor mortis for you. Forget it.”

  Eagle lit a cigarette and stared moodily into the empty Musicians’ Room. His face was dull with a sadness which startled Hillary, but he didn’t interrupt the silence. “I guess I was damned near gone last night,” Eagle said at last. “Any night will do. I’m tired. I’m tired of things in this land: kids tryin’ to go to school, shysters all over you, phonies ass-hole deep—” He heaved in his chair but still did not turn away from the room. “I’m so tired of so many things, but goddamn if I’ll quit.”

  There was another silence.

  “That room used to see some great cats coming and going: Rob Jenkins, remember him?”

  Hillary nodded. He didn’t know who Rob Jenkins had been, but it didn’t matter. To have said no would have broken the rhythm of Eagle’s monologue. But Eagle was continuing. “Gone and flipped his wig,” Eagle said. “Just boom!” He drew deeply on his cigarette. “I was sittin’ right here the first night Wesley came in with his hair all down on his ears like a faggot. Boom! He gone too.” The legend of Wesley Totter was known to everyone; it had seeped down, and now Hillary wondered briefly at the keen interest in Wesley’s imitating a homosexual when he wasn’t one.

  Eagle said, “Eula? We partied for three days in Paris and went to Berlin where them Heinies treated her like the queen she was. They found her four days later, stoned. An overdose. Shit, they come and they go and they live while they’re here, if they can.” He rose suddenly and walked slowly to the door. He stopped and turned. “Thanks, Prof.” Then he went out.

  Hillary hoped he was returning to bed.

  But ten minutes later, while he was trying to decide whether to close or stay open, Eagle came back, dressed. Hillary stared at the bedraggled, imitation camel’s hair jacket with the hood on it. He had seen many men wearing them, and all of them, he now recalled, had looked as though they might be musicians. Eagle’s influence was deep.

  “Come on, walk out with me,” Eagle said. The request sounded like a command.

  Hillary pondered. They would probably have a drink or two. He didn’t want to get drunk; it was too cold outside. “Where we going?”

  “Just walking.”

  “I ought to stay and keep the shop,” Hillary said.

  “It’ll keep.” Eagle turned back to the door and waited.

  “All right,” Hillary said. He put on his coat and they walked into the street.

  “Cold, huh?” Eagle shouted above the wind.

  “Damned right,” Hillary answered, wishing he had stayed in. The crosstown bus droned by, filled with the Polish scrubwomen who had finished their night’s work in the midtown offices. Two derelicts huddled back to back in one of the little shop doorways on the north side of the Carl Fischer Building. Hillary shivered. Here at the corner of Astor Place, Lafayette Street, Park Avenue South, and 8th Street, the wind tore against windows, and clutching loose papers from the street raced along with them. During the day, this area was filled with garment workers and with New York University and Cooper Union students; also with government workers, small merchants, and union people from District 65 whose offices were across the street. Eagle laughed softly as Hillary lingered for a moment in front of the Astor Wine and Spirits Shop where bottles upon bottles of wines and liquors were neatly stacked. At Broadway they turned south where one could set two lines of ragged buildings running downtown until they met at the Woolworth Building and vanished out of sight. Beneath them the BMT subway rattled its way uptown. Now they were crouching against the wind which swept across Washington Square.

  “Goddamn!” Eagle said, pulling the hood tighter around his head.

  Hillary didn’t bother to answer.

  “Cold, Jimsey, cold,” Eagle said, and he ducked his head and bulled against the wind. Hillary fell in behind him and used Eagle’s body as a windbreaker.

  “Slick mother,” Eagle shouted once, and Hillary laughed to himself.

  They moved away from the park, empty now except for a cop who moved across one of the walks under the lights, big and fat under his long blue coat and his woolen earmuffs beneath his cap. They plunged over West 4th Street, past the tourist traps which were now closed, to the Bohemia.

  Eagle smiled at Hillary as they stepped out of the cold.

  “Whew,” Hillary said.

  Eagle signaled to the bartender. “Wait here,” he said, when the drinks had come and he had paid for them; and he entered the sitting area where a small crowd watched a combo on stage.

  The music was not exceptional. The group was young and its members aped the older musicians rather than creating something of their own. Still, there was some rhythm and Hillary moved his head and his feet. The drink did not go to his head. It warmed him. The drummer was going off into an intricate solo—a direct steal from Max Roach, though he missed the nuances which were the basis of Max’s creations. There was some polite applause after the solo. Eagle bustled back in and ordered another round. He glanced at his watch.

  “How you feel?” Hillary asked.

  “All right, Jimsey. You? Still cold?”

  “Naw,” Hillary said. With the second drink he was beginning to loosen. He felt something brushing his thigh and he looked down. Eagle had a bill folded in his hand, and was brushing it back and forth. Hillary looked up questioningly. Eagle smiled enigmatically.

  “Take it,” he said.

  “Well—I—”

  Eagle, tired of brushing, jammed the bill in Hillary’s coat pocket and looked at his watch again. Hillary removed the bill and looked at it. A hundred dollars.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Don’t you need it?”

  Hillary extended the bill toward Eagle. “Man, I can’t take your bread. Not this much.”

  Eagle laughed. “Tell you what you do. Keep it. Get yourself cleaned. Pressed. Make you feel better.” He turned and clapped his hands loudly together, barking, “Hey, hey, hey,” to the music. He turned back to Hillary. “They stink, don’t they?” He laughed at his own question, and bending in two clapped his hands once as if to underline his remark. Hillary watched him and decided that he would not drink any more, not even if Eagle insisted.

  Eagle saw the sober look in his eyes and said with a careless nod, “Live, man.”

  Hillary was about to reply when he saw, at the window, the long face of a man, eyes searching the bar inside. Eagle caught Hillary’s eye and said, “Wait here.” He went out. The music in the back stopped and the musicians drifted to the bar.

  “Eagle was here,” the bartender said.

  “Junkie,” on
e of the young musicians sneered.

  “You should be on junk,” someone passing by said.

  “He’s had it,” another musician said. “Richie Stokes has had his day. Oh, he can wail when he’s right, but he ain’t consistent no more. That’s what counts.”

  “He’s an artist,” Hillary heard himself saying, “not a jack-in-the-box who can play anytime he’s supposed to.”

  “Discipline,” a haughty, slender man said, “is an integral component of artistry.”

  “That’s why you stink,” Hillary said. “Too damned much discipline and little else.”

  He saw that the musician had to swing and he wondered that he had placed both himself and the young man in this position. The musician could not have talked off Hillary’s insult—in this world you acted. Amid a chorus of voices, Hillary slipped away from the punch and saw out of the corner of his eye that the bartender was racing from behind his counter toward them. Hillary stepped up and hooked his left into the mouth of the musician, then moved, on to his left, remembering the summers and the endless hours of boxing with Borden in a field of new grass. Hillary feinted with his right, and the musician, still stung from the hook, jerked away. Hillary stepped in with the left again and this drove his opponent back toward the right where Hillary caught him flush on the jaw. The musician fell backwards into the arms of his companions who hastily put him aside and came at Hillary.

  “Hah, hah, hah.” Hillary heard Eagle laugh behind him. “Damn, he put skates on your ass in nothing flat,” Eagle chortled. His face was a big smile and his eyes were bright. The musicians halted when they saw Eagle and stood looking down at their friend. The bartender retreated to his seat and the tumult died.

  Eagle stretched expansively. “I feel like blowing,” he said. “Lemme take your ax, man,” he said to the altoist. The young man nodded. Eagle walked again into the back, past the tables to the stand. A murmur rose in the small crowd. “Blow, Eagle,” someone said. Eagle waved. Hillary had moved inside now where he stood with his back to the wall, exulting over his newly won battle. He had not been in a fight since boyhood, and it excited him, not so much the fight itself as the feeling of having had something to fight for. It make him feel good. He watched Eagle with a smile.