by David Fulmer
“He asked me to find out why that cop shot him down on Courtland Street. And I said I would.”
Her gaze narrowed in distaste. “Why? You ain’t got nothing better to do?”
Joe was tired of trying to explain it. “It’s his deathbed wish.” He produced a thin smile. “You know. I just don’t want a ghost walking around my bed at night.”
Pearl’s eyebrows hiked and she snickered. “Good lord, listen to you! You sound like some kind of damn Geechee nigger. Haints and all. That’s your reason?”
“At first I just did it to humor him and be done with it. I thought it would be nothing. Just some spat between the two of them. Well, it ain’t. I think there’s more to it.”
“How’s that?”
“For one thing, the same cop he said shot him was murdered last night.”
Pearl stared at him. “What cop?”
“His name was Logue,” Joe said. “He walked a beat downtown. He was a good-for-nothing drunk. Jesse says he was the one shot him Saturday night. Two nights later, Logue turned up dead in an alley down off Decatur Street with one bullet in his chest and one in his head.”
Pearl stirred, coming up with a fretful frown. “Now you’re talkin’ about a dead cop? You know you don’t want to be messing with that.”
“I didn’t kill him,” Joe said.
She turned her face away again and pulled the sheets a little tighter around her middle. She stayed quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was dreamy.
“You know, we could both just leave,” she said. “Get up, get on a train, and get out of here. We wouldn’t have to mess with none of this.” She turned back to look at him. “No, I guess not,” she said, and settled back against the headboard to tell him what had happened on Saturday night at the Payne mansion.
The way she described it, the young girl named Sally Frost came into the kitchen of the mansion and handed her a note. Sally explained that she was on her way to work and just a little ways down the sidewalk from the front gate, a man had stepped out of the shadows to hand her the slip of paper with instructions to turn it over to Pearl. He had given her a new quarter for her trouble.
“The note said, ‘Pearl, Go to the basement and unlock the door. Important.’ And it was signed with a J.”
“Like Joe.”
“Like Joe,” Pearl said. “I thought maybe you had found out from Sweet or somebody where I was working and came to see me.” Her black eyes danced. “Like maybe you couldn’t wait.”
“Except it wasn’t me.”
“I guess not.”
“Do you have it?”
“Have what?”
“The note.”
“No, I threw it away. Didn’t want to get caught with it.”
“All right, so what did you do?”
“I made sure no one was watching and went down and unlocked the door. Big ol’ heavy lock and a big ol’ heavy door. I opened it and called your name. But there was nobody there. I waited a minute. I knew they’d be looking for me, so I closed the door and went back up.”
“You didn’t lock it?”
“No, just in case it was you, and you needed to get in,” she said. “Then I went back upstairs. I asked Sally if she saw where the fellow who gave her the note went. She said he just walked away. I asked her what did he look like, and she said she didn’t really notice.”
“Or maybe she didn’t want to say.”
“Maybe. Anyway, what she said was he had a coat and hat on, so she couldn’t see him too good.” She shrugged. “I thought maybe it was you.”
He took a few moments to mull the scene she’d described. “Does this look like a setup to you?” he said.
“A setup?” Pearl gave him a curious glance. “Why?” she said. “You got enemies?”
“A few,” Joe said. “But none of them knew when I’d get into town.”
“Yeah, you’re late this time,” she said.
“I got held up in Louisville,” he explained.
Pearl studied her fingernails. “What was her name?”
Joe prudently ignored the question and made himself appear distracted. Pearl shifted her position, inclining a little way to lay her head on her folded arm.
“What’s the worse he could do to us?” she said absently.
Joe said, “Who, the Captain? For a start, he could bust through that door with a skeleton key, drag us out, and put us both in jail just for being here. They got a name for you and me being together. You know that. And it’s a crime.”
She raised her head. “Here I thought you was one of them Injuns,” she said lightly. “Now you’re tellin’ me you’re a white man?”
“I don’t know what I am,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter. If he needs to, he’ll find a charge and lock us up. You and me both.”
“He ain’t done it, though.”
“Because he needs us on the street. For now.”
“Then I guess what you need to do is get gone. I mean today. Go on back to Louisville or Mobile or wherever the hell you came from.”
“It sounds like you’re trying to get rid of me.”
“I’m trying to keep you out of trouble, is all. Ain’t that what you want?”
Joe shook his head. “It’s too late.”
She stared hard at him. “Yeah? Why’s that?”
He sat down on the end of the bed. “I came into town, minding my own damn business, and within forty-eight hours, I’m in the middle of two crimes.”
“So you had some bad luck.”
“That’s not it. What do you think the chances are they’re not connected? It’s like somebody wanted me here on purpose.”
Pearl’s gaze seemed to go past him. In a vague voice, she said, “Who would do that? And why?”
“I don’t know and I don’t know,” Joe said. He fretted for a moment, then with a sigh, settled on the end of the bed once more. “What I do know is that somebody’s out to fuck me, but good.”
Pearl’s gaze came back as if she was breaking out of a daydream. Her mouth curved with a sweet sadness as she raised her hand and said, “Well, that would be me, Joe.”
Joe, watching her face, saw a familiar light in her eyes, along with a heat that infused her dark flesh. As always, it made everything else go away. With the time it took his heart to beat, there was no dying crapshooter, no missing jewels, no cops or brothers on his trail. There was no somber reminder that the law said they didn’t belong together. It was just the two of them in that dingy room on a late December afternoon, with the weak winter light coming in through the dirty window.
Carefully, Joe unlaced and kicked away his shoes, then crawled up the bed, pulling the sheet down as he made his way toward her.
When they were finished, she lay with her eyes closed, smiling sleepily, at peace as he gazed out the window. The late afternoon sun was painting the sides of the buildings that face south and west in shades of red. Soon it would sink below the rooftops, and the streetlamps would come on.
He could almost imagine them hiding away in that room, lost in the shadows for hours or days or weeks. Lazing in the bed with her was so serene that Joe wondered why he kept on leaving Atlanta—and her. It was true that this was his habit to escape after he got his way with a woman. The chase enthralled him, but once he had nabbed his prey he was ready to move on. Sometimes seeing their tears or hearing their pleas or threats stung him. Stung him but didn’t stop him. Except when it came to Pearl. It got harder to leave her each time.
He turned to look at her and found that she had dozed off, her breath low and her chest rising and falling gently. He mused on running away the way she had described it. What she didn’t mention was how far they would have to run to get away from everything that would haunt them.
It didn’t matter, because he wasn’t going anywhere. There would be no dreamy interlude for the two of them. What seemed a pathetic little bit of violence on an Atlanta street and the snatching of a rich woman’s trinkets had melded and blossomed
into something larger and darker that wasn’t going to just blow away on a wisp of winter wind.
He was musing on this when he heard footsteps and then a soft knock on the door. Startled, he sat up and swung his legs off the bed. At the squeak of the springs, Pearl opened her eyes. He put a finger to his lips, then pulled on his trousers and his undershirt.
Pearl looked around, as if searching for a place to hide. Now, he thought, she gets it.
Joe went to the door. “Who’s there?” he said.
“Mr. Rose? Got a message for you.”
He let out a breath of relief and opened the door a crack to see the desk clerk standing there. “Colored boy came by and said they want you on Schoen Alley.”
“All right,” Joe said.
“I had it since a couple hours now,” the clerk said. “I didn’t know you was up here or I would have brought it before.” He was trying to peer past Joe and into the room. “Didn’t see you come in, is what.”
Joe, blocking his view, didn’t bother to explain, instead going into his pocket for a quarter, which he tossed in the air. The clerk caught it, winked a thank-you, and sauntered away.
Joe closed the door and locked it again. The message likely meant that Little Jesse was getting near the end, if he wasn’t there already. So he might well have carried any secrets he was holding to his grave.
He looked over at Pearl and saw her gazing back at him. “I need to go,” he said.
She kept her troubled eyes on him for a long time. Then she said, “I don’t want you to.”
He saw her down the back stairs and out into falling evening. She had asked if she could wait in the room until he got back, but it was too dicey. The Hampton was a white hotel, just like the Atlanta across the street and the Oliver a few doors down. The colored establishments were located in another part of town; and though it was true that both white and Negro sporting women used rooms in all three, the law said Pearl could go to jail if she was caught doing anything but changing sheets at any of them. Or Sweet might decide to come looking for her, with his first stop the sign that read HAMPTON HOTEL.
They didn’t speak at all as they walked through the evening fog down Houston and then one block over to wait for the Auburn Avenue streetcar. When it drew near, Pearl turned to Joe as if she wanted to say something.
He said, “What’s wrong?”
She began, “It’s just . . .”
“What?”
Before she could say it, the car rolled up, and with a small, sad smile, she stepped on.
Joe stood on the corner watching the lights fade away, then started walking south in the direction of Decatur Street.
Willie had passed the afternoon hours sitting in the corner chair, reworking the lyrics a line at a time as Jesse slipped in and out of consciousness, digging what seemed a deeper hole each time he went down.
The giddy excitement of recording in the room at the Dixie had faded. It had all gone so fast. They came to collect him, rushed him into the room, turned on the machine, and rushed him back out. Tomorrow, they would pack up and leave for New York, and then who knew what would happen to the records once they got home.
There was nothing he could do, and yet he was feeling blue down to his soul. He knew that had more to do with being there at Jesse’s bedside as he slipped away. It was melancholy business.
With an absent ear, he’d caught the creaking of the back door, the shuffling of shoe leather, the low voices lapping like water as visitors arrived and stepped inside. He understood. The word had gone out; they knew what was coming and were gathering around.
He overheard whispers from the other room. They weren’t talking about how long Little Jesse could last anymore, only when he would go and what would happen then. There were some sobs from the women, too; and a couple times Jesse came out of his stupor to croak, “I told y’all, stop that!”
Once he whispered wearily, “You tell them, Willie,” and Willie called out, “Folks, y’all don’t be standing ’round cryin’ like that.”
Jesse smiled with a hint of the old wickedness, and the thought crossed Willie’s mind that if he had his way, everyone would be doing the Charleston right there in the room.
He chuckled softly at the image. Without opening his eyes, Jesse said, “What’s funny?” It sounded like he didn’t care much anymore.
The only time he showed any signs of life was late in the afternoon when he came up long enough to add to his last request. His eyes lit up the way they used to when he won a stack of money at dice or laid his eyes on a good-looking woman, and he began spewing more demands that were hysterical and heartbreaking all at the same time.
“I want all them crook motherfuckers off the street!” When he tried to yell, his voice cracked. “I said every one of those no-good goddamn rounders better show up. Y’hear me? They sho’ enough was easy to find when I had somethin’ they wanted. I done took their money and their women, and they goin’ to want to be here when it come my time to go!”
There were snickers from the men in the bedroom doorway, and laughs erupted from the kitchen, where all the drinking was going on.
When Willie explained that the word had gone out to a good number of the downtown women, Jesse got loud again. “Get all them whores in here, goddamnit! There’s some up at the Hampton, a few more out of the Dixie, and I want ’em all. You hear what I say, Willie?”
“I hear you, Jesse.”
“’Cause I think maybe I got to die today.”
“You lasted this long,” Willie said.
Jesse’s face scrunched into a perturbed look, as if Willie was feebleminded, and got back to the business at hand.
“Lookie here, now,” he muttered, sounding like he had a mouthful of gravel. “You think I don’t know what the hell’s going on? It’s my damn body.” His wide gaze found Willie and behind the unutterable sadness was a wild joy, as if this was all a joke. The blind man could hear it echoing in his voice when he said, “You make sure you finish the song. And you sing it over my grave. You promise me that.”
Willie said, “I promise, Jesse.”
“And don’t make it so damn sad, either.”
“I’ll do it right,” Willie said.
Jesse sagged into the mattress, gasping and sweating. “Can you play me what you got?”
Willie said, “All right,” though he never liked singing a song until he was done with it. This was different, and he knew where he was going, anyway, building it around the chord pattern of minor to fifth and back, over and over. There were only a few lines he wasn’t sure of. That didn’t seem to matter now.
He sang what he had. Once he reached the line Police walked up and shot my friend Jesse down . . . he hesitated for a second, completing the next phrase in his head. Then, in a somber tone, he said:
Boys, I got to die today
Jesse laughed breathlessly. Willie sang,
He had a gang of crapshooters and gamblers at his bedside
Here are the words he had to say:
I guess you ought to know exactly how I want to go . . .
“Hey, Jesse . . .”
Willie stopped. Jesse cocked his head. “Joe.”
Standing in the doorway, Joe said, “How you doing?”
“I’m still here, ain’t I?”
Joe looked over at Willie, who shook his head. Joe turned back to Jesse, bending down closer and smelling something that made his eyes water.
“It’s time for us to talk,” he said, putting an edge on the words.
“I know,” Jesse grunted. “I got some things to tell you. Only not now. I got to hear my song first. After that.”
Joe started to argue, only to catch a hard eye from the man on the bed. Jesse shifted his gaze and said, “Go on ahead, Willie.”
Willie said, “Maybe you ought to talk to Joe now. I’ll play it later.”
“Ain’t no later,” Jesse said. Though weak, his voice had an edge of strain. “Joe ain’t goin’ nowhere. So go on ahead.”
&n
bsp; Joe sat back and Willie started playing again, picking up from where he left off, turning the dirge into a jaunty, bouncing vamp with a thumping bass string.
Eight crapshooters for pallbearers
Let ’em be veiled down in black
I want nine men going to the graveyard, buddy
And eight men comin’ back
Joe felt Jesse’s eyes on him and tried to read the faraway smile. If there was a message, he didn’t get it. Men and women were now crowding the doorway to listen.
I want a gang of gamblers gathered round my coffin side
A crooked card printed on my hearse
Don’t say them crapshooters are liable to grieve over me
My life’s been a doggone curse
Some of the rounders snickered and a couple of the whores called out affirmations, like they were in church.
Send poker players to the graveyard
Dig my grave with the ace of spades
I want twelve policemen in my funeral march
The Captain playin’ blackjack and leadin’ the parade
The tempo increased just a bit and Willie sang,
He wanted twenty-two women out of the Hampton Hotel
Twenty-six off of South Bell
Twenty-nine women out of north Atlanta
Know that Jesse didn’t pass out so swell
Now there were little hoots of laughter from the men and chuckles from the women.
Now his head was achin’, heart was thumpin’
Little Jesse went down, bouncin’ and jumpin’
