The Last Hellfighter

by Flowers, Thomas S.

  Yes, sir, the city was changing.

  Among the vendors and rabble-rousers, there were those handing out fliers for concerts and music hall performances.

  Down Knox Street there was the Cotton Club.

  Not bad but not the best; the best was farther north near 5th Avenue, a music hall called the Clef Club. All in all, there were plenty of popular enough establishments where one could indulge on the latest jazz composition. Ben fancied the Clef Club the most.

  That's where James Reese Europe played.

  And Europe was the best damn jazz musician Ben had ever heard. If not that, he was certainly the most popular in Harlem. A maestro who danced a baton and spoke to the heart of nearly all-American Negros, or at least those in New York, those of Harlem, with a kind of elegance and spirit Ben himself felt like he personally lacked. He was even popular among the white folks, who Ben thought were mostly too uptight to really enjoy the soul of jazz.

  The trolley suddenly jounced, most likely from an imperfection on the track. Ben quickly grabbed on the backend to keep from falling off. They weren't going all that fast, but he'd run a chance of skidding a hole in his slacks or wearing an even larger hole in his shoes. Costs he couldn't really afford. Around him the streets swelled with pedestrians. Mostly all black men dressed in dark slacks dusted with a thin film of dirt. A sea of newsboy's hats and bowlers and straw boaters flowing amongst them. Bow ties and vests, and there was even one tall midnight looking man with a top hap that made his already considerable height all the more outlandish.

  Ben smiled, watching as the tall fellow ducked entering some tavern.

  Glancing up, he noticed the 139th Street sign and tactfully hopped off the trolley, smoothly landing in a trot and turned east, taking to the sidewalk at a gingerly stride. Katz's Deli was just a block down the road. He pulled out his Meynadier wind-up pocket watch, careful not to let it glimmer too brightly in the sun lest he attract unwanted attention. It had been his grandfather's, a veteran of the 31st New York regiment during the Civil War. And he had no intention of losing it to someone with greasy palms.

  He checked the time.

  Shoot!

  And started running.

  Chapter 6

  "Benjamin, why are you always late?" Mr. Kratz glared at Ben who stood on the stoop of the back door. He kept glancing back through the open port window separating the kitchen from the dining area as Sally placed another two orders. He tried to look fierce, but even Ben knew the old Jew was a softy. Still, this wasn't his first time running through the door ten minutes past the start of his shift.

  "Sorry, Mister Kratz." Ben sulked, trying not to put too much on. Mr. Kratz had his limits but the chances of getting fired felt slim. In the two years since he started working at the deli, Ben had only seen the old Jew fire one other fellow and that was because he caught him red handed stealing money from the tin box. And it was likely Mr. Kratz wouldn't fire Ben for the same reason why he had hired him in the first place. For whatever reason, he simply liked the boy. Or maybe he just felt sorry for him, knowing his mother and hearing of her passing away a few months back, leaving him with his father, the son of freed slaves turned dock laborers among New York's vast harbors.

  Mr. Kratz, a portly fiftyish looking man with receding hair and at least three chins, growled low, running his fingers through his thick black beard. His dark eyes narrowed on Ben. "What's your excuse this time? No. No. Let me guess...the Keller Hotel?"

  Ben nodded.

  Mr. Kratz frowned, more or less with concern now than annoyance. He seemed to be mulling over some thought. "Benjamin...a boy at your age shouldn't have to be working so hard. Are you going to school at all?"

  Ben shook his head. "Pa says the best schooling is working."

  The old Jew shook his head. Silent for another moment, ignoring Sally raking her nails across the divider window, glaring at him from the diner. And then he finally said, "Listen...maybe I can find you some more hours to work here, yes? Enough to cover what you were making over at the hotel."

  Ben beamed. "Oh, thank you Mister Kratz, that would be swell."

  The old Jew held up his hands. "But there'll be some conditions."

  "Okay, sure."

  "First, you need to be at work on time. No more excuses."

  "Of course, absolutely, Mister Kratz."

  "Second, and this is most important, I want you to give some serious thought to going back to school. You're too smart to end up working at the docks like your father and brother, or shining shoes. Do you understand, Benjamin? Education is the key that unlocks the golden door of freedom." He paused, watching Ben carefully. "Do you know who said that?"

  Ben shook his head. "No, sir. I don't."

  Mr. Kratz smiled wily. "George Washington Carver."

  * * *

  Throughout his shift, Ben did as Mr. Kratz requested. He gave some serious thought to continuing his education. The problem was, he didn't exactly disagree with his pa. Education wasn't just something you picked up in books. It also wasn't something you learned working your fingers to the bone.

  As Ben saw things, education was something you found out in the world. So maybe the real dilemma he faced wasn't finding some school that accepted Negros, or giving in to his pa and taking a job out on the docks, but getting out there, getting out beyond Harlem. Seeing the world. Traveling. Working, yes, but also absorbing as much as he could, of culture and people and the sights of the land.

  He was cleaning his twentieth table when this second problem hit home. If worldly experience is really what he wanted, how was Ben going to afford leaving Harlem? He was seventeen. He had no savings. He spent what he had when he made it. His pa and brother, though they seemed to spend every waking moment working at the docks, showed little profit from their labor. And he already knew what his father would say if he ever dared to ask for money. And James, his brother, was their father's parrot.

  With these thoughts stewing, Ben collected the last of the plates from the table that just left, wiped down the wood, and headed back into the kitchen to start washing the dishes. A tall stack of porcelain greeted him. Brown grease and red ketchup globs awaited him. Grumbling, he turned on the tap and filled the sink.

  Scraping the scrapes of food into a waste bin next to him, Ben started scrubbing plates and bowls and forks and spoons and cups, stacking them on his right to dry. Soap bubbles foamed to his elbows, yet his thoughts were still on his exodus. Though, at the moment, to him, it seemed a pointless exercise. There simply weren't a lot of options. He could always hop on the train and hobo his way west, certainly not south. But outside of Harlem, west or south, there was still a potential risk of life, limb, and the pursuit of happiness.

  He finished with the last dish and uncorked the basin sink. Ben watched as the water swirled, dried his hands, and told Mr. Kratz he was taking a short break.

  "Fine, but don't go too far. Our dinner rush will be starting soon," Mr. Kratz said. He stood at the cutting board, slicing thin cuts of roast beef. The rest of the kitchen staff were busy with baking bread and chopping produce.

  Ben nodded and headed out the back door. Outside, the late afternoon air retained most of the heat from the unusually hot spring day. He strolled near the edge of the diner, out of sight of the customers inside, and sat on a crate against the wall. Using the edge, he popped the top of his glass bottled Coca-Cola and downed half of the dark contents inside. Exhaling with a loud and satisfying burp, he glanced at the side of the building next door. Besides the stacked boxes and stray cats, the usual décor of the laundry mat, hung a white poster of a painted woman dressed in some sort of Star Spangled outfit. She was asleep on a wicker chair with the words: "Wake up, America! Civilization calls every man, woman, and child." And next to this poster hung another, a soldier defending some helpless woman from another more medieval looking fellow with the words, "Halt the Hun! Buy U.S. Government Bonds."

  Finishing his soda, Ben gazed at the posters.

  The white man
at the Keller Hotel hadn't been wrong. President Wilson was ramping up his war propaganda machine, which could only mean one thing. Direct American involvement. But like the white man had also said, Ben didn't have much to worry about, there were no black combat infantry regiments, none that he was aware of. Not that he minded. The idea of killing another man, even in self-defense, felt absolutely horrifying to him. Still...there was a kindling. A vibration deep down at his very core. He looked across at that wall, at the sleeping woman and the vanguard. There was a sense of patriotism in those images. A sense of urgency and duty. What if there was some way he could join? What if he could be a soldier in this man's army?

  Ben stared at the posters, ignoring the heat, ignoring the whining of the cats and the drone of the traffic on the main road and the stink of horse manure that carried heavy in the air.

  I'd get to leave Harlem.

  And I wouldn't be working no dock, either.

  I could see the world while doing something that really mattered.

  Doing my part.

  Standing, Ben tossed the empty glass bottle into a nearby trash bin. He shook his head, chuckling to himself, knowing his dreams were just pipe dreams. There were no black army regiments, none that he knew of. Being colored meant you weren't really American, at least not American enough to fight for the only country you've ever known.

  Reaching the back door to Kratz's Deli, Ben Harker turned and glanced back at those posters on the wall on the outside of the laundromat. He looked and wondered, what if...?

  Chapter 7

  He'd been too young to go see the first of the Clef Club performances, but he had been able to sneak out to see, or more factually standing on top of a trash can and craning his ear at the open window down the alley of the Carnegie Hall back in 1912. Ben had been twelve years old then, too young, his pa had said, to listen to that fox-trot nonsense.

  "And why do you want to get yourself mixed up with a place that mingles with white folk?" his pa had also protested over dinner one night a few years back. And he'd been right. James Reese Europe was known to do a bit of business with a rather popular vaudeville couple known as the Castles. White money as white can get.

  "But how else was a Negro musician to gain attention?" Ben had argued. "Besides, wasn't music the one thing that everyone can share? What did it matter that Europe played with whites?"

  His pa had simply snarled and spat, "Ain't no such place, boy."

  The argument was over and Ben never brought up music around him or his older brother again. Partly, he understood why his father distrusted white folk. Why he saw a clear distinct line between the two races. Pa's heritage was saturated in a century-long struggle for emancipation before there was even a word for it. His daddy's parents raised him with the whip in mind. Something Ben never had to personally deal with except for when his daddy used the switch on him for whatever trouble he'd caused. And the white folks he dealt with mostly just ignored him, and those who did speak to him spoke mostly out of ignorance, not hate. With James Reese Europe, according to Ben Harker, all that really mattered was that he played at all.

  That's all Ben wanted.

  He just wanted to listen.

  After his shift with Mr. Kratz, he told the old Jew he was thinking over what he had said, and that he would continue to think about it some more through the night. Now he stood in front of 134 West 53rd Street staring up the tall narrow steps of a large brown building that housed a few other establishments, restaurants he believed. The Clef Club in Benjamin Harker's opinion was not like the Cotton Club or the other music establishments within the vicinity of what folks in Harlem called Satan's Circle. This wasn't some billboarded tavern or whorehouse. No one gambled here or got too rowdy. The Clef Club was elegance. And though his pa would likely dispute it, there was no racial divide here either. Sure, Vanderbilt money, and Gould money, and Wanamaker and Stotesbury and McLean money, white money, poured into this building, seating was intergraded. And everyone in Harlem knew why those white folks paid and didn't care about the color of the skin of the person standing or seated next to them, in the Clef Club they came to hear genuine jazz, because just like in the Russian symphonies, all the sufferings and emotions of an oppressed people, those musicians release into a soulful harmony, and such a thing could only be played by the all Negro Clef Club Symphony Orchestra.

  "Well, you going in or not?"

  Ben turned to the goofy grin of his childhood pal, Dwight, but everyone called him by his last name, Renfield, smiling at him as if he'd said some clever joke. He was dressed in his usual patched brown trousers and tan vest, a stained white button down underneath. A bowler hat leaned on the side of his head. His skin was so light, most mistook him for a white man.

  "Hey, Renfield," Ben said, looking back up the steps. On the street, a pair of Model-Ts drove by, headlights flooding over them, kicking up dust and disposed paper on the sidewalk. Glancing down, he stooped and picked up a flyer, more propaganda from the Public Relations Committee. This one of an old man with a top hat, colored all Star Spangled. His hair was white and he had a very serious grandfatherly appearance. Folks called him Uncle Sam, and written on the poster he asked for every able-bodied man to enlist.

  Renfield glanced at the flyer. "They're really ramping it up, huh? Maybe we ought to join. Do our part, you know."

  Ben kept his eyes on the flyer. He shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. I don't think they have any combat regiments that take black soldiers. More likely we'd end up mopping floors and hauling cargo."

  Starting up the stairs, Renfield turned and said, "We'll see, huh?" He had a sly look on his face. "They might just take us Negros into combat."

  Ben frowned at him, letting the flyer drift away from his hands. "What do you know?"

  Renfield waned innocence. "Who, me?"

  "Yes, you."

  "I don't know a thing, Mr. Harker." Renfield bowed low taking off his bowler hat as did.

  "Who am I kidding," Ben said. "You wouldn't know a rifle from a broom."

  Renfield rolled his eyes. "Come on, let's get inside."

  Through the double-doors they walked down a hallway and came into a wide-open space that was the Clef Club Hall. Ragtime filled the air consisting of banjos, mandolins, violins, clarinets, cornets, traps, and drums, all keeping a fast-paced syncopated tempo. Tables and chairs were clustered together in several areas giving some empty space near the center for dancers. The hallway was carpeted in red velvet but the hall itself had smooth wooden floors. Several patrons were fox-trotting to the loud swinging rhythm.

  "Looks like a full house," Ben said, glancing around, searching for an empty seat.

  Renfield gestured with his chin to the side. "There's a table."

  Ben nodded and followed his friend. Taking a seat, they saw a dark woman with dark eyes and smooth skin. Her hair was long and auburn and she wore an olive-colored flower print dress with a white apron tied around her. The pair of them couldn't help but stare.

  She smiled, shyly. "Can I get you boys anything?"

  Renfield put on the charm. "All I need is you, my love." He angled his head, smiling with those pearly whites of his.

  The waitress giggled, more out of politeness, Ben assumed.

  "Who's catering?" Ben asked, curious why the Clef Club was serving food and drinks. He looked around, most of the tables were filled with plates of what looked like roast and salads and bread and tall champagne glasses.

  The waitress glanced around as well and turned quickly back to her patrons. "The Clef Club is hosting a celebration, haven't you heard?" She looked at Ben, amazed, as if she thought everyone ought to know.

  Ben looked over at Renfield who was smiling wider now, his usual jokester expression. And then he looked back at the waitress. "No, I suppose I'm the only one who doesn't know."

  Smirking slightly, as if not knowing was somehow rude, the waitress said, "Mr. Europe and most of the Clef Club members enlisted in the infantry. Champagne?" she asked.

  "Sure,"
Ben said and as the waitress started off for their drinks, he gazed over the dance floor, his eyes wandering to the raised stage and the musicians, the banjos, mandolin, violin, clarinet, cornet, trap, and drum players were all dressed in the same dark olive nearly brown uniform with darker boots and tan covered shin leggings. Standing near the players, James Reese Europe, an average height dark-skinned man with glasses, dressed in the same uniform only his with golden bars sewn into the sleeve.

  "Looks like they made him a lieutenant," said Renfield, as if Jim, or any black man, joining the army was of no importance.