Clayton Byrd Goes Underground

by Rita Williams-Garcia

  Train Ear gave him a mean, squirrely smile.

  Cool, sharp, angry, defeated, Clayton turned on his heel. He walked away with his harp in his pocket, and his empty school bag on his back. He walked away from Beat Box, whom he liked. Away from Boom Box and Jelly Bones, who were okay. And away from Train Ear, who he hated.

  Let them go uptown. Let them take that old hat and throw it where the train’ll crush it and crush it good. He didn’t care—although he did. This was just what he told himself so he could keep walking in the direction of the downtown train.

  IN THE MIDST OF THE SWARM

  Clayton landed where he needed to be to carry out his plan. The downtown platform. He felt a draft of hot air from the tunnel, a gust left in the wake of the train he’d just missed. That explained why he was nearly the only person standing on the platform. The other, a homeless man, lay across the bench laughing and talking to himself.

  Clayton moved away.

  Being alone didn’t bother him. It was being seen as a lone kid that bothered him. He didn’t worry for long.

  A swarm of yellow and brown surrounded him, like the swarm of bees that had surrounded Pablo de Pablo in the bedtime book. Except these weren’t killer bees, but a swarm of school kids of all sizes and grades in brown and gold uniforms. The platform seemed to narrow. He got jostled and squished by pushing, darting kids with full book bags and unleashed energy. They were everywhere. Older kids in groups. Younger kids with their watchers. All on their way home.

  Clayton was in the midst of the swarm, although he wasn’t a part of them. Better to blend in than to stand out alone, he told himself.

  To his left he spied a cello case. Then violin cases slung on backs. And it occurred to him: They took band! Their school had band! Unlike his school, where they only had a songbook full of stupid happy songs.

  It took a few seconds, but he finally noticed that “they,” the kids with the instruments, were girls. He moved closer to where they stood. He didn’t know why and he certainly didn’t plan to talk to them. And yet another thing occurred to him. He’d never been around kids who actually played instruments—except for Beat Box, even though technically, Beat Box didn’t play a musical instrument. Beat Box was his own musical instrument.

  Clayton went a little closer and said, “Hey.”

  He didn’t mean to do that! It was too late to look away.

  The girl with the cello case looked over at him, waited, and said, “Hey.”

  The other girls laughed.

  Clayton pointed to the hard case on wheels with a head and a body, which looked like a little brother leaning into his taller sister. He liked the way she held on to the case, but didn’t struggle with it. Like the case, the instrument was a part of her. “You play that?” he asked.

  “No,” one of the violinists said. “She takes it for rides on the subway.”

  “Funny,” Clayton said.

  The violinists laughed.

  The cellist nodded to Clayton’s question.

  “Cool,” Clayton said. “Cool.”

  He felt a breeze blowing from behind. “Train,” he said to himself. Or so he thought.

  “What?” the cellist asked.

  He cleared his throat. “The train’s coming,” he said.

  The cellist waited. Like she wanted him to say something more.

  He wanted to ask her about her ax. If she plucked the strings or used a bow. Could she play by ear, like he did, or did she only read notes? But he didn’t feel like being laughed at by her friends.

  “All right,” he said. “Later, ma—” He stopped himself. “Bye.”

  Clayton pushed through some brown and gold sweaters to get away from the cellist and her friends. He hadn’t planned on talking to any girl.

  He had to meet up with the Bluesmen. Go on the road. Work on bending his notes. He had a plan.

  Finally, the train pulled into the station. Clayton felt his pocket for his blues harp, and then pushed his way onto the downtown train.

  IN SEARCH OF THE BLUESMEN

  When the downtown train reached West Fourth Street station, Clayton was the first to push his way through the doors. He ran up the first set of steps, and the next and the next until he was at the exit and onto the street. Only then did he stop long enough to breathe.

  Sixth Avenue in the Village! The heart of the Village. Every fifth person had a guitar slung over his back. The Blue Note was on one side of West Third Street and the Village Underground was on the other side.

  It was Friday, the day the Bluesmen would be in the park. This was his last chance to catch them. Maybe Cool Papa’s spirit would join them. Maybe he was now the blues in the air. That thought made Clayton hopeful.

  Clayton knew the way to the park. He walked briskly up West Third Street, trying to ignore the hunger that had caught up to him. Hunger and soreness from running, climbing, wailing on his blues harp, and plain old not-eating.

  He reached into his bag for the pack of peanut butter crackers that Train Ear had crushed. He pried open the package carefully, afraid to drop a crumb. He was so hungry. He tilted his head back and shook out the smashed bits of peanut butter and orange crackers in his mouth until he emptied the pack.

  The crumbly, gummy bits of nothing only made him hungrier.

  He shook his bag for change but there were no coins. No bills. Train Ear had taken every penny. And Cool Papa’s hat.

  Clayton was now angry. Angry and hungry. It didn’t help that the smells of pizza, sausages, and hot dogs taunted him at every corner. His belly was scraping empty, so empty he could howl.

  Instead he said, “I want a slice of pizza, but I’ll take a candy bar.” He repeated those words as he walked up West Third Street. Repeated them until they became his blues riff and he could hear Wah-Wah Nita’s hot electric licks whine in between his lyrics.

  A voice reached out, as if to grab him. “Say, kid.” The voice had a long arm, its hand shaking a paper cup. “Kid. Say, kid.”

  Clayton didn’t stop. He didn’t look to see the face that came with the voice. Cool Papa said, Look sharp. Be cool, but Clayton put some jet in his step. Sharp and fast was better.

  He was nearing the park and walked straight and purposefully while college students going to and from classes ambled or hurried around him. The Bluesmen and the road were calling him like the sea had called Pablo de Pablo. Except, unlike the boy in the bedtime book, Clayton would not return.

  The archway was white and magnificent, even from the opposite side of the park. Big Washington Square Park. It didn’t seem so big before, when he was a part of the band. But alone, the park was big. While it wasn’t dark, it would soon be dark. He had to find the Bluesmen before the sun went down and people wondered why a boy was walking around in the Village in the dark.

  He entered the park. The last time he was there, Cool Papa was at his side, taking big strides like he owned the grand white arch that they’d pass through. A blues king, not a sickly old man, barely making it.

  The last time he was in the park with Cool Papa, he’d played When, Cool Papa, when? on his harp. Now all he could think was, Why, Cool Papa, why?

  Clayton walked past the dog run, the chess players, and the skateboarders along the walkway. He made his way to the fountain, the spot where Cool Papa usually played with the Bluesmen.

  The lanterns hadn’t turned on yet.

  Clayton didn’t see a crowd of blues lovers gathered at the fountain, or the Bluesmen. Instead, a piano sat in the spot where Cool Papa and the Bluesmen once played. A man whose face was covered by long hair, and a full and long beard, hunched over the keyboard, pounding away. The piano sounded watery, like it had been left out in the rain more than once. No matter what the man played, a drowning sound warbled out from the piano’s strings and hammers.

  Clayton waited for the piano player to finish. It was an old song that Clayton couldn’t name. But it was a long song. And the piano man had a few listeners, but not the crowd that came out to hear Cool Papa
and the Bluesmen.

  Finally, the bearded piano dude finished his melody with wobbly, dying chords. No trills. Only a handful of college students and dog walkers stepped up to his tip box and dropped in a few bills. Clayton felt a little bad about not having any love to drop in the box, but Train Ear had taken all of his money. He stepped up to the piano dude.

  “Hey, man. That was cool,” Clayton said, although it sounded weird to him. “Did the Bluesmen play yet?”

  He was hopeful that he’d get in on their first set.

  “The Bluesmen?” the man asked. Up close, his skin was tough and scaly.

  “The guys that play the blues with Cool Papa. The guys who’re usually here. Jack Rabbit Jones on keyboard. Big Mike on bass. Hector Santos on whatever he can hit. The Bluesmen.”

  The man looked up to the sky. “Those cats.”

  Clayton was glad the man knew the Bluesmen. “Yeah, man. Those cats,” Clayton said.

  “You missed them. I heard they won’t be back till spring, after the rains. When the sun’s here to stay for a while. Figure on late May.”

  “Gone?” Clayton asked. He started to count backward in his head. Had it been two weeks? “You’re sure?”

  “How d’you think I got this spot? Been waiting for a while.”

  Clayton just stood there. Stood there while the piano man began another wobbly tune. He stood there. Not thinking. Not breathing. Just aching. Aching in his gut where he’d been mule-kicked by everything gone wrong.

  The piano melody sounded bad. Really bad.

  Clayton took in a breath from deep down. Deep down where a good blues bend would start from. He drew in his air, blew it out, and let it go.

  The plan was no plan.

  The Bluesmen were gone.

  Cool Papa’s spirit wasn’t in the air. Cool Papa was gone. Gone for good.

  There was nowhere to go but home.

  GOING DOWN

  Clayton walked the short walk to the West Fourth Street station and trotted down to the turnstiles. He swiped the last fare on his card and pushed himself through. He sang to himself,

  “I’m going down

  Down, down, down

  I’m going down”

  as he went down the station steps, the steps to the platform, to the middle mezzanine, and to the uptown express, where he couldn’t get any lower. He’d heard the words a hundred times. Played the song even more. But those were just the notes he heard and played. What he felt was that he’d hit bottom.

  It was a double-shift night. His mother wouldn’t be home by the time he made it back to his neighborhood. But he wasn’t in the clear. She’d probably already called Omar’s mother. She probably knew by now that he hadn’t gone to Omar’s house like he was supposed to. He also hadn’t thought about the school letter proclaiming his absence that would reach his mailbox the next morning. Those letters arrived awfully fast! Nor had he thought about the angel saltshaker smashed to pieces on the floor where he’d left it. Maybe he could slip into the house. Clean it up. Say it was an accident. Then go to Omar’s house and wait for his mother, as if the plan and the day never happened.

  But he slid his hand into his pocket and felt his blues harp. His silver blues harp. Once he’d snatched it from the dresser drawer of silky underthings, he could never put it back. Once he’d smashed his mother’s saltshaker angel into a million pieces, there was no putting it back together, or lying about what happened.

  Every direction his brain pinged led to dead ends. He’d have to face his mother. Tell her everything. Or almost everything.

  A warm wisp of tunnel air blew in his face and then passed by him. He saw a glow growing against the white wall tiles. The train was pulling into the station.

  People pushed their way out of the open doors, and Clayton stepped inside the train. A car full of work people with tired, flat faces took up nearly all of the seats and standing space. No one wanted the empty seat next to the huge mound of a homeless man in dirty clothes. The snoring man’s mouth gaped sloppily like some huge beast’s. Dirty clothes and newspapers covered his body. His feet were wrapped in plastic bags.

  At least, Clayton thought, the homeless man didn’t smell bad. At all. He didn’t want to stand, so he sat in the empty seat, and sat as far away as he could. He couldn’t smell anything, but put his hands over his nose, just in case.

  The train chugged along from station to station. Still no empty seat to change to.

  He felt uneasy next to the homeless man, and hoped really hard as the train pulled into the next stop. He waited to see if anyone would get off and if he could run to take the seat. As Clayton’s luck went, more people boarded the train than departed. Just as the conductor said, “Stand clear of the closing doors, please—”

  “BEATS ON! BEATS ON!”

  He saw them push their way inside the train car. The standing people shrank away from the pushing boys, giving them a space to work.

  “EVERY RIDER, CLAP YOUR HANDS! EVERY RIDER, CLAP YOUR HANDS!”

  Hat.

  Clayton Byrd was already out of his seat, striding toward the hat.

  “Well, look who’s back!” Jelly Bones said.

  “Yo! Clay Bird!” Beat Box shouted.

  “Clay Bird!” Boom Box said. “Get down with us.”

  Clayton told Train Ear, “I want my hat.”

  “Give him the hat,” Beat Box said. “It’s his, man.”

  “Yeah, man,” Boom Box said. “Give it to him.”

  Jelly Bones said, “Give him the hat, man. Let’s make some coins.”

  Train Ear took the hat off his head. He said, “All right,” in all vowels, no consonants. “It’s yours, my man. After you play. Word.” He put Cool Papa’s hat back on his head.

  The Beat Boys believed Train Ear. They did their shuffle and clap to make a space for Clayton to join them. Clayton didn’t believe Train Ear. Still, he shuffled. Right foot. Left foot. No hop. He took his blues harp out of his pocket. Wiped it, slicked it up in his mouth, and joined them in between the beat. He blew deep, hard, but never took his eyes off Train Ear. He didn’t care how he’d do it, but he wasn’t getting off the train without his hat.

  A pair of cops got on at the next stop.

  “BEATS OUT!” Train Ear shouted.

  The boys turned and ran to the other end of the train, bumping into riders everywhere.

  “Sorry,” Clayton said. “Sorry.” But he had his eye on his grandfather’s hat, and pushed and ran to keep up with it.

  The homeless man stood up like a grizzly on hind legs. His newspapers fell away. A gold police shield hung around his neck.

  The Beat Boys and Clayton Byrd were pinned at both ends.

  WITHOUT A WARNING

  They gave their names to Writing Cop. Beat Box and Boom Box’s real names rhymed. Jelly Bones’s real name didn’t fit him. Clayton didn’t hear Train Ear’s real name. He didn’t care.

  Train Ear didn’t look so big standing next to the cop. “Aw, man,” he pleaded, his hard mouth all teeth.

  Clayton hadn’t seen Train Ear smile like that. An all-out grin, trying to make his face look innocent.

  “Let us off with a warning.”

  The cop kept writing in his thick pad.

  Jelly Bones said, “We were just dancing. Making the people happy.”

  “More like kicking the people in the face,” Young Square Cop said; he was short and square, built like one of those guys who blocked tackles in college football. “We call it reckless endangerment, soliciting, and disturbing the peace.”

  “Aw, come on, officer. Please.” He smiled real hard.

  Writing Cop shook his head. “No more warnings for you guys. How many warnings before you get it?” He poked Train Ear in the chest with his pen.

  The poke was hard. Train Ear shrank when his skinny chest caved in.

  Writing Cop told him, “These are kids. You’re”—he glanced at his writing pad—“an adult by law.”

  Clayton spoke up. “Then can I go? This is my
first warning.”

  The Beat Boys laughed at Clayton’s innocence. Train Ear swore.

  “Shut it,” Grizzly Bear said. He moved closer to Writing Cop. He pointed to Clayton. “This one might be coming from school. He didn’t get on with them.”

  Clayton didn’t say yes or no, although he was glad he had sat next to the cop when he got on the train. He kept his mouth shut, but he looked hopeful. He just wanted to get back on the train, beat his mother home, eat, and wash up, in that order. His stomach ached from hunger.

  The others caught his hopeful look, and Boom Box said, “That’s cold, Clay Bird. You know you’re down with us.”

  “Told you,” Train Ear said. “Told you, but no one listens.”

  Beat Box looked at Clayton, and then he looked down.

  Writing Cop said, “I see a book bag, but I don’t see any books.” He shook his head no to Grizzly Bear. “He gets a pickup along with his compadres.”

  Clayton did as he was told and raised his hands above his head. The last time he’d done that was in gym for jumping jacks. Grizzly Bear patted Clayton down. Arms, underarms, torso, backside, down his legs from top to bottom, inside and outside. Then the jacket pocket. Clayton’s hand went for his pocket, but Grizzly Bear said, “You don’t want to do that, kid.”

  Clayton was already breathing hard and fast. The prospect of having his blues harp taken was more than he could bear. His legs weakened, but somehow he remained on his two feet. He looked up at the big cop. His eyes said, Please.

  The cop took out the silver blues harp, looked at it, looked at Clayton, then dropped it into a larger plastic bag. He took the book bag next, opened it, shook it, pulled it inside out, and dropped it inside the bag as well.

  “Sorry, kid.”

  “Look at the baby bird. Baby bird’s gonna cry,” Jelly Bones said, laughing.

  “You,” Grizzly Bear said to Jelly Bones. He didn’t have to finish his thought.