by David Fulmer
Willie hesitated for a few seconds. “I’m messin’ with this next here little bit . . .”
When he began to spend and lose his money,
he began to be blue and all alone
Boys, his heart had almost turned to stone
“Yeah,” Jesse croaked. “That’s right. Go ahead on.”
“That’s all I got,” Willie said. When Jesse grimaced sourly, he said, “You want it done right, don’t you?”
“I want it done now, son!”
“Why, you goin’ somewhere?” Willie shot back.
Little Jesse started to say something, then coughed before he could get it out. Joe knew how much he loved the dozens. Any other time, he’d snap back with something sharp, and it would just go from there until he and Willie would be dogging each other down, laughing like a couple of schoolboys, along with everyone else in the room.
Hey, Willie, I know you blind, boy. So you couldn’t see that damn woman you was with last night was so ugly . . . she was so ugly that the ugly stick done run away!
Little Jesse, frail and tottering, his flesh sagging from his bones and his face drawn, couldn’t summon any of that now.
Willie went back to fingering the strings and murmuring bits of lyric. Joe took his mind off Jesse for a few minutes to listen, captivated by the way Willie worked, drawing pieces together, trying it this way and that, until he found something that sounded just right. Given enough time, the blind man would build a song from spare parts.
Joe eavesdropped until the repetition got to him. He returned his attention to the man on the bed. Jesse had sunk down onto the pillows and closed his eyes.
“Jesse?” He kept his voice low, just above a whisper.
“Hmm?” Little Jesse sounded like he was answering from far away.
“I asked around a little bit about what happened to you.”
“Asked who?”
“Actually, I asked the Captain.”
Jesse’s eyes opened again. “What the fuck?”
“I got pulled in about a burglary. After he was done with me, I asked about you.”
Jesse swallowed, looking scared. “What the hell’d you do that for?” he hissed. “You say about Logue?”
“No, I wasn’t about to do that.”
Jesse stared, then relaxed again. “Well, that’s good.” He took a moment’s pause. “So he say anything about me?”
“What do you think?” Joe said. “He didn’t know a damn thing about it.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all. Nobody else is talking, either.”
“Somebody will.” Jesse nodded shallowly. “You just need to keep on it.”
Joe shifted in his chair. “You need to tell me about Saturday.”
“’Bout what, now?”
“Saturday.”
“I done told you already.” Jesse raised his head a little and his hand waved toward the bedside table. Again, Joe picked up the glass of water and held it to his lips. Jesse drank gratefully and settled back. “That cop walked up and shot me down.”
Joe said, “I mean before that. During the day. And on Friday. Anything that wasn’t usual business?”
Jesse’s jaw tightened in a spasm that came and went. “I didn’t do nothin’ to that damned copper,” he insisted stubbornly. “Not then, not ever. Didn’t hardly even fuckin’ know him.”
“So he shot you for target practice?”
“Maybe so,” Jesse grunted. “Maybe that’s just what he did. Wouldn’t be the first time somethin’ like that happened.”
“Could he have been doing a job for somebody else?”
Jesse didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and Joe couldn’t tell if he was catching a breath or hedging. Then he said, “Why? Who else you think wants me dead?”
Joe had to smile at that. “I don’t know. You got any enemies? You cross anyone lately?”
Jesse’s eyes burned with an odd light and his brow creased as if he was struggling with a thought. He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it and gave a slight shake of his head. Joe got an odd sense that he was lying, or at least holding back, and was about to push him some more when Willie spoke up.
“Jesse, what was the name of that Alabama woman you was so sweet on a while back? You remember?” The blind man couldn’t see the annoyed look Joe gave him.
“Al’bama?” Jesse was quiet for a moment, thinking. “Oh . . . that was . . . the Cherokee gal. Lorena.” His gaze wandered dreamily. “I always wondered what happened with her.” His gaze moved to the window. “I cared for that woman, I sure did,” he said. “But she just woke up one morning, packed her bag, and left out. Up and gone out the door. And I never saw her no more after that.” He looked over at Willie. “Why you want to know ’bout her? You thinking of lookin’ her up?” His smile was weary.
“I just need a woman in this here song.” Willie strummed two chords. “And she needs to be some kind of heartbreaker.”
“Well, she was that, all right,” Little Jesse said with a sigh. “She done broke my heart, but good.” He turned his head and treated Joe to a piercing look. “They’ll do that, won’t they?”
“What’s that, Jesse?”
Jesse’s eyes glinted almost accusingly. “You know what I’m talking about. You ought to. They’ll break your damn heart, for sure.”
Joe frowned irritably. He didn’t need Little Jesse falling into a glum spiral over a lost love. So he sat forward and said, “We were—”
“I know, I know.” Now Jesse sounded petulant. “There ain’t nothin’ more I can tell you about it, Joe. Wish I could, but I can’t.”
Joe didn’t fail to notice the difference between I can’t tell you and I don’t know. He also saw the stubborn set of Jesse’s chin, and changed tack. “Who else have you had trouble with lately?”
Jesse shook his head and produced another pained smile. His breathing got shallow. “Only people mad at me was . . . the usual dumb niggers who lost all their money and . . . then say I cheated ’em. Them, and a . . . a few womens here and there. That’s all. I ain’t had no problem with no police . . . not for a good long time.”
Joe thought for a moment. “What about Robert Clark?”
“What about him?”
“You know where I can find him?”
Little Jesse’s brow knit. “Why?”
“He was there. He might have seen or heard something.”
“Don’t think so. It was all done when he come up. Anyway, Robert’s a goddamn fool.”
Joe sat back, vexed by the false echoes in Little Jesse’s tone. It could have been anything, though; the man was dying and knew it. He might even be feeling some late remorse for those he had wronged. Or maybe it was simply a lifelong habit of evasion, what a rounder did to survive the streets. Anything that came out of Little Jesse Williams’s mouth was suspect. What he couldn’t figure was why Jesse would beg for his help, then hold out on him. Especially now.
It didn’t appear that he would get an answer this afternoon. Jesse had sunk down into his pillow, his face turning another shade grayer. Some moments of silence went by with Joe listening to Jesse’s short breathing.
Then Willie spoke up, breaking the still silence. “Okay, y’all, listen here . . .”
He began playing the minor-key dirge. The two girls came in from the kitchen and the two rounders stood in the doorway to listen. The blind man sang the first lines.
Little Jesse was a gambler, night and day
Well, he used crooked cards and dice
A sinful guy, good-hearted, but had no soul
Heart was hard and cold like ice
Jesse was a wild reckless gambler, he won a gang of change
Many gambler’s heart he let in pain
When he began to spend and lose his money,
he began to be blue and all alone
But boys, his heart had even turned to stone
Willie hesitated, then spoke the rest of it.
What broke Jesse’s he
art, why he was blue and all alone
Sweet Lorena packed up and gone . . .
At that, Jesse opened his eyes again and smiled, his face softening with a sweet sadness. “You gonna make me famous, Willie?”
“I don’t know, Jesse,” Willie said.
Jesse brooded, then went about summoning the energy to push himself up a few inches. “I wanna tell y’all something,” he said, his voice taking on a bit of timbre. As he looked around, a sly gleam appeared in his eyes, a hint of the Little Jesse they all knew.
“If I got to go . . . y’all need to know how . . . how I want it to be when my time comes.” His mouth stretched in a thin smile. “I want every goddamn . . . gambler in Atlanta come out. Every one of them motherfuckin’ fools say I been . . . takin’ they money all these years. All of my womens, too. I means the ones on the street, and . . . whichever ones you can find out of the Hampton . . . and the Atlanta.” He paused, gasped, and coughed. When he recovered, his lips made a wicked arc. “See if y’all can get Judge Harris, too. He done sent me up about thirteen, fourteen times. He and the solicitor. They wasn’t unkind.” His grin and eyes darkened. “I want a police escort for my wagon. Hell, I give ’em enough business.”
Everyone laughed. Jesse took a moment, then forged on, sucking breath between each few words. “I mean it, now. I want y’all . . . good and drunk. Y’hear? And no goddamn . . . weepin’ and moanin’ over poor Jesse. You can get me a . . . a preacher. Got to have music. ’Cept no women out of no amen corner . . . singin’ about glory. Everybody be dancin’, too.” He faded a little more. “You play your guitar, Willie . . . and sing that song. You sing it over my grave.”
Willie said, “I hear you, Jesse.”
“I want all of that!” Jesse said, raising his voice one more time. “Every one of them people! Ya’ll make sure!” His eyes slid toward Joe. “And one more thing. The Captain oughta be there. See if he got anything to say about me then.”
“I wouldn’t count on him,” Joe said dryly. “I don’t think he’s much for Negro funerals.”
“Well, he oughta . . . be at this one,” he gasped. The effort was too much, and he seemed to fold inward, as if his bones had betrayed him. “Damn, I’m tired.” He cast one dark eye on Joe. “I ain’t dead yet, am I? Sure feels like it.”
“Not yet, Jesse,” Joe said. “You still got a ways to go.”
Jesse closed the eye. Some seconds passed and he fell into an exhausted slumber. Willie went back to strumming his guitar.
When he began to spend and lose his money,
he began to be blue and all alone
But boys, his heart had even turned to stone
What broke Jesse’s heart, why he was blue and all alone
Sweet Lorena had packed up and gone . . .
He stopped and cocked his head, as if listening to something beyond the walls of the room and his face toward Jesse, as if he could see him.
Po-lice walked up and shot my friend Jesse down . . .
Boys, I got to die today.
Willie stopped playing, his face now somber. The show was over and the four who had come to the doorway went back to the kitchen and the bottle.
Willie said, “You hear what he asked for, Joe. We need to get it for him.”
Joe laughed softly. “That’ll be some job.”
“Don’t matter,” Willie said. “We at least need to let everybody know. And I mean right away. So they can come see him before he goes and be ’round when he die. Just like he said.” He stopped and his voice fell off. “He ain’t got much time. Tomorrow, the next day. Maybe. And he’ll be gone.”
Joe stared at the blind man. “That’s not what the doctor said.”
“I don’t care what the damn doctor say,” Willie whispered urgently. “Death’s already been creeping this room.”
Joe didn’t doubt him at all. “All right, Willie,” he said.
The blind man turned his head in the direction of the bed once more. “Poor Jesse,” he said. “Whatever he did, never should have come to this.” He mused darkly for a few seconds, then started up the moody pattern again.
Joe said, “You know what you’re going to call it?”
“What, the song?” Willie’s mouth dipped into a melancholy smile. “Yeah, I do. I believe I’ll call it ‘The Dying Crapshooter’s Blues.’”
Joe stayed until the early evening, when Martha came in to tend to Jesse through the night. She went into the bedroom to find him sleeping peacefully, and set to washing the glasses from the day’s drinking.
Willie had spent the hours working on Jesse’s song until the bells struck seven, and he put on his coat, hoisted his guitar, and left out for a job he had playing at the 81 Theatre.
Joe went to use the bathroom. When he came out, he stepped into the kitchen and whispered in the ear of one of the rounders. The fellow promised to come through with some morphine to help Little Jesse through the rest of the night.
Joe slipped back into the bedroom to get his coat and saw that Martha had turned the lights way down low and had a candle burning atop the dresser. Jesse was on his back, as still as stone, as though he was already laid out and waiting for the hearse to arrive.
Joe descended the steps into the alley. He was in a mind to go back to his room and lock the door. Instead, he made his grudging way out onto Decatur Street to cover the blocks between Butler and Hill streets.
As he moved from storefront to doorway to facade to theater, he encountered a selection of characters he knew at least slightly, most of them Negroes, a half-dozen whites, and one or two in between. He stopped, spoke a few words with each, asking that the news be spread that Little Jesse wanted everybody to start gathering around. He also took the opportunity to ask if anyone had heard any talk about what had happened to put Jesse on his deathbed and to inquire into the whereabouts of Robert Clark.
He got the reaction he expected: sincere nods of pity over little Jesse’s plight, smiles of expectation of the wake, then narrowed eyes on stony faces, heads shaking side to side, and glances averted, as if something interesting had occurred across the street once the subject of the shooting came up. No one knew anything about that or about where Robert Clark might be found.
Joe walked on, snickering over the way some of the rounders’ faces had lit up with greed over Jesse’s demise. One of them would have to pick up his action once he was gone.
It took him a half hour to arrive at the corner where Bell Street turned into Hill. From there on, the blocks were colonized by little shacks, clapboard hovels, a rooming house or two, vacant storefronts, the odd corner grocers. Mondays were generally slow, and Joe came upon only two crap games in progress. He passed the word at the first and was greeted by silence and much shifting of dark eyes. He got the same treatment at the second and was walking back toward town when he heard a voice call his name.
He stopped and turned around to see a small-time crook who went by the moniker Mouse hurrying along in his wake. Mouse caught up, stole a rodent’s furtive glance around, then said, “Robert Clark.”
“What about him?” Joe said.
“He come by the game Sa’day night,” Mouse said. “I mean Sunday mornin’.”
“What game was that?”
“That one down Raspberry Alley. Used to be Harper’s Barbershop, but it shut down. In there.”
Joe feigned disinterest. “So he came by.”
“We had a bottle and he had him some drinks,” Mouse said.
“And?” Joe’s voice was impatient.
“And he start talkin’ about how he seen Little Jesse get shot,” Mouse said quickly, and stole another sneaky glance over his shoulder. “He say he heard this here cop talkin’ befo’ it happened, too.”
“Yeah? Did he happen to mention what the cop said?”
Mouse smiled. His teeth were brown and rotting. “Whatchu think that be worth?”
Joe went into his pocket and held up an eagle quarter.
Mouse snatched the coin. “Robert say t
hat cop tell Jesse he done crossed the wrong man. Like that. That’s what Robert say.”
“That’s all?”
Mouse cocked his head knowingly. “Soon as it come out his damn mouth, I could tell he wished he didn’t say it. He looked scared, and he just run on out of there. I ain’t seen him since.”
“Does he have a job?”
“Sometimes he do and sometimes he don’t,” the black man said craftily. “I don’t know that he got anything right now.”
“You know where he stays?”
“I don’t,” Mouse said. “But I sure will tell you if I find out, Mr. Joe. You know I will.” With that, he scrabbled away.
It was late when Joe got back downtown. The streets were cold with swirling winds, his feet were tired from the walking, and he was ready to end his day.
Before he did that, he decided to make one more stop at a speakeasy in Kenny’s Alley called Big Bill’s. The joint was frequented by all sorts of low-rent criminals and marked a sort of gateway to the scarlet trade on Central Avenue, which was just out the back door. The man who ran it was one of those rare southern-bred men who not only abided Negroes but enjoyed their company, as long as they had some class to them. So it was always possible that Joe could pick up information he couldn’t find anywhere else. Maybe some helpful soul would sit down next to him and explain in detail why a cop named Logue had shot Little Jesse Williams on Saturday, and he could then lay the whole mess aside.
He wished it could be that easy, because it was starting to turn into a tangle, with Jesse’s evasions, Robert Clark’s shifty behavior, and the complete lack of any other talk from the street, which was strange. Behind it all was the question of why Logue would want to shoot Little Jesse, a no-account rounder who really didn’t bother anyone much. It didn’t make sense.
