Nighthawk Blues

by Peter Guralnick

  “Naw, that’s right, he ain’t there,” said the old man. “Wife took sick, the new one, that is, and she over there in the county hospital with her new baby. T.R. probably at the Sunset Cafe, leastaways that’s where I left him, couldn’t have been more than an hour ago.”

  They got directions to the Sunset Cafe, followed them this time without a hitch, and ended up at the same general store from which they had first started out. It was deserted now, grown almost dark in the gathering twilight. Only the jukebox and the light over the pool table brightly glowed. Sitting alone at the counter was the same squat heavy-set man who had plugged in the jukebox for them. “You young gentlemens looking for the Screamin’ Nighthawk?” he said without even a chuckle. “Well, you come to the right place.”

  THE KIDS came in for lunch, Elyse, Little Bo, and Rufus. The television still flickered soundlessly above the refrigerator. Mattie bustled around and shushed the kids. Jerry gratefully devoured the hot dogs she set before him. “We got over five thousand dollar in the bank,” said Mattie. “Imagine that.”

  Jerry looked around the ramshackle house and found it difficult to imagine. “What are you going to do with it?”

  Mattie put her hand to her mouth as if she were embarrassed, as if the thought had never occurred to her. “Well, it nice to have something to fall back on. You know, Roosevelt ain’t getting any younger, maybe he like to take it easy for a while. How he get along with that Teenochie anyway, no bull?”

  Jerry shrugged. “Okay, I guess. They had their differences.”

  “I imagine so.” Mattie giggled. “I imagine so. Roosevelt never could stand that man. He always act like he too big for his britches. Why, I remember one time he come riding up in his Cadillac—course it wasn’t really his, finance company seen to that soon enough—but he want Roosevelt to go out on the road with him, you know what he want him to do? Do the cooking, do the driving, just generally do for him like he was his chauffeur. Roosevelt, that practically raised him from a kid and even still got a bigger name than him to this day. But he just want to show Roosevelt he was doing good, know what I mean? I guess that’s just the way with some folk.”

  “I guess so,” said Jerry. “Hey, you must be in the fourth grade now,” he said to Little Bo. Bo looked up at him with the same hooded eyes as his father. “Don’t go to school no more,” he said with indifferent hostility.

  “Now don’t you go talking to Mr. Jerry like that. It ain’t his fault how they be doing you.”

  “Why? What are they doing to Scooter?” said Jerry, thinking of race, rednecks, riots.

  “They tell me Scooter too slow,” said Mattie. “They want us to enroll him at a special school cause they say he got a reading problem. If he go over there, he be riding the bus back and forth ten, fifteen miles every day. Roosevelt say he ain’t got no big problem, riding that bus give him more of a problem than anything he gonna get in school.”

  “Why? What’s the matter with riding the bus?”

  “What I want with school for anyway?”

  “School’s over in River View. Hawk don’t want him riding to where they won’t allow him to play.” Mattie shrugged. “He big enough to help with the chores now, Little Bo a big help around the house, ain’t you, sugar?”

  “Pretty soon I’m going to go out with my daddy,” said Little Bo. “He’s learning me to play guitar. I figure I practice up real good, and I can second him on guitar, just like Daddy Rabbit used to do.”

  Mattie pursed her lips in a nervous smile. “Now you quit that kind of talk,” she said, evidently pleased, embarrassed, a little bit angry, but she didn’t say why. Jerry glanced over at Dicey, and she hid behind her mother’s back. “I guess you’ve started school now, too,” he said to her. She didn’t say a word, but stole a look from behind her mother. Mattie yanked her by a pigtail. “Now you answer Mr. Jerry,” she said.

  Dicey peeked out from behind her mother. “Uh huh,” she said.

  “How do you like it?”

  “Oh, I likes it fine.”

  Everyone laughed. “How about you? Do you ride the bus every day?”

  Dicey nodded. “She waits at the end of the lane,” said Mat-tie. “Her brother waits with her. It just about kills me to see him standing out there waiting for that bus to come, then just waving his little sister goodbye. He just a baby—”

  “I am not!”

  “He ought be gitting his education, too. I gonna see if I can get Roosevelt to go down there and talk to them people. And if he don’t, I’m gonna do it myself. It just ain’t right, the way they doing him. I know, cause I ain’t never had the chance myself. And I know he ain’t dumb. I just like to see every one of my children amount to something. I think Roosevelt even agree, if he could just get hisself to admit that the white man got anything worth having sides money. Well, you know Roosevelt. He too proud to ask for a drink of water if he parched, let alone ask something of a white man. Meaning no disrespect.” She smiled sweetly at Jerry, and Jerry no longer even felt uncomfortable. He enjoyed talking to Mattie, to this woman who had barely spoken a word in his presence for the first three years that he had known her, cowering under the gaze of her husband, the influence of her father, speechless with—what? Fear? Perhaps—or maybe it was just a natural discretion which allowed her to take things in for her own education.

  Hawk awoke a little after one. They heard the familiar sounds of his rising, clearing his throat and sighing heavily, sitting up, the bed creaking, then hauling himself off wearily to the bathroom, where he ran the water for a few minutes and when he emerged he looked much better than he had before. Much of the color had returned to his face, and he looked more solid, more robust somehow, as if lying down in his own bed was just the restorative he had needed all along. Jerry was glad; it seemed as if they had made the right decision after all.

  Hawk nodded curtly to his manager, waved at the kids, and demanded of Mattie in his deep booming voice, “How about some food?” Mattie bustled about and set a steaming plate in front of him, some indistinguishable stew which Hawk regarded for a moment with apparent distaste, then launched into with gusto.

  “So you satisfied?” he said to Jerry between mouthfuls. “You figure you done your job yet? Babysit an old man all the way from Naptown. You left me in that hospital, them doctors woulda killed me by now.”

  Jerry nodded. There wasn’t much to say.

  “Can’t get no rest in no hospital anyways. All them doctors poking and prodding you, and them good-looking nurses waking you up in the middle of the night, mmm hmmm. Don’t make no sense. Don’t know how they expect nobody to get well, when all you need is a little rest, something to put in your stomach.”

  Mattie lifted her eyes up cautiously. “You been sick again, Roosevelt?”

  Hawk glared at her indignantly. “Wasn’t nothing at all. Something I ate probably. How you been, Bo Scooter?” He took the boy’s hand roughly.

  “I been practicing, Daddy. I can make the F chord just like you showed me. You want me to do it now?”

  “Naw. I listen to you later.”

  “What you bothering your daddy for when he’s eating?” Scooter looked over at his mother, but Hawk concentrated on his food, shoveling it in like a steam engine, slow and steady.

  “Hey, what you think of this boy?” Hawk said suddenly to Jerry. “Playing the blues like a natural man. What do you say we dress him up, call him Little Bo, the Midget from Memphis—just like Buddy Doyle. Then we tell everybody he really ninety-two years old. Then he be the biggest thing going.” Hawk laughed harshly. “What do you think?”

  “Mr. Jerry telling me the trip went good.”

  Hawk shot Jerry a funny look and patted his breast pocket. “Went very good. Very good. Got over nine hundred for you to add to your account. And a little left over just to have some fun besides. That damn Teenochie, though. Everywhere we go he try to stick his face in front of the camera, tell all these damn lies, seem like the only thing he know how to do is fuck up. Well,
he fuck up one too many times now. He had his chance, but he made a ass out of himself. So I think from now on I go back to being the Lone Nighthawk, the Screamin’ Nighthawk Solo, which is how I should have did all along if it hadn’t been for my manager here always looking for things to be equal, which is all right, but that ain’t the way it worked out, cause that damn fool always demanding the spotlight, which ain’t equal nor right at all.”

  “What about Wheatstraw?” said Mattie. “You always was partial to Wheatstraw’s harmonica playing.”

  Hawk looked away, and Jerry thought he actually saw remorse on the old man’s face. “Wheatstraw dead.”

  “Dead! What happen to him?”

  “Damn fool went sailing through the air like a big black crow, landed in a cornfield, head struck a rock, must have, cause when they got him to the hospital wasn’t nothing to do but cover him up.”

  “It was an accident,” Jerry said. “That’s why Hawk was in the hospital. Teenochie just got some minor bruises.”

  Mattie didn’t say anything at first. “Who was doing the driving?” she said finally in a trembling voice.

  “I was,” said Hawk. “Who you think? You know I wouldn’t trust Teenochie, and Wheatstraw too simple to drive a automobile.”

  “Did you have another one of them blackouts?”

  Hawk didn’t say anything, just stabbed at his food angrily. Jerry was surprised. “Have you been having trouble before this?” he said.

  Hawk just glared at Mattie. “I tole him he should have gone to see a doctor. But he too stubborn-minded, he say it nothing, his grandmother have spells like that, they just pass.”

  Jerry glanced sideways at Hawk, and he was surprised to see how angry Hawk was becoming. The big wen on his forehead was standing out, and his face was all twisted up with indignation. He seemed to be trying to say something, but surprisingly nothing came out. Then his head lolled to one side and he started to choke, and he regarded them helplessly, balefully, as Jerry realized he was having another seizure.

  “I can’t—” he managed to get out. “I don’t—don’t know what it is—” He spoke in a voice that sounded like his own but with a tone of wonder, a kind of puzzlement that had never entered the vocabulary of the Screamin’ Nighthawk before.

  The children stared in helpless fear, and Mattie gave a little cry and rushed to Hawk’s side.

  “Got—to—lie down. I be better when—”

  Somehow Mattie and Jerry managed to support the bulky body between them and get Hawk into the bedroom. There he sprawled on the bed, his face drained of all color, his left hand trembling. Mattie started to cry. Jerry loosened Hawk’s belt and said, “You better call a doctor.”

  “Ain’t nobody on the street got their telephone yet,” said Mattie. “I better send Scooter to Clark’s up on the high road.”

  Jerry nodded. He felt as if he was going to cry. He didn’t know what to do for Hawk, and though Hawk paid no attention to him, he just kept talking, just to make some noise in the suddenly still house. “It’s gonna be all right. I’m sure it’s just a little seizure. We gotta get you up and about for that European tour. Hey, listen, you’re still a young man.” There wasn’t a flicker of response, and finally he gave up. Mattie came back into the room, and they just sat there and waited. …

  IT HURT. My head hurt so bad. Damn fools won’t leave me alone. Just leave me sleep. Be better then. Puts me in mind of when we was hopping freights, out in the Western states, somewhere out along Utah, some such, I don’t know. Sugar Boy and me. Just playing our guitars, swing from town to town. And the women—they act like they never seen a guitar player before. Oooh, Mr. Guitar Player, let me see them hands, look like you don’t never work. My, but you got them nice long tapery fingers. They treated us royally in Provo. We on the radio in Salt Lake. Funny. I didn’t never know there was such a thing as colored cowboys, course we didn’t see none of them. Just the serving folk. Folk who worked for the white man, doing one damn thing or another, always glad to see us, always patting they hands together and reaching down into their pockets like we was preachers, always looking to have a good time, don’t nobody think a thing about tomorrow. Well, they was, right, tomorrow don’t mean nothing anyhow if you stuck with today.

  When I woke up they wanted to cut off the one leg, said, You won’t never miss it oncet you get your government issue. Sugar Boy gone, must have rolled right under the wheels. Guitar gone, too. A big old flat-top Gibson, man that thing could make a racket. And I could squall like a panther back in them days, on a clear night you could hear me in five counties. At least that’s what they say. Them damn doctors. I can’t help but be drowsy from time to time, every time one of them start talking to me I fall off again. I think I’m dreaming till I hear one of them yapping, he saying something about taking off my leg. I thought I told you, damn, I ain’t gonna be no damn cripple. I ain’t gonna drag no stump around behind me like Peg Leg Sam, shit I ain’t gonna do no begging. Now Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Jefferson—Mr. Jefferson, shit. I’m a man of travel, I’m a man what goes where he wants, when I feels like it I just picks up and moves. You motherfuckers ain’t gonna cut off my damn leg. You come near my leg, I’m gonna slit your throat, and if you don’t believe me one dark night when you don’t be thinking about it I’m gonna creep up from behind and cut it just as clean as you ever cut an arm or a leg. Well, that git ’em, ain’t none of ’em gonna do nothing then, and the leg get better, too, it take a while, but after a time it just about as good as new. Don’t look so good, still don’t look so good, all scarred and ugly, but it carry me, it carry me to this day. What they gonna do now? You can’t cut off a head now, can you? And it’s my head that hurt, damn, man, I can’t even remember when it don’t hurt. She-it, I just wish they quit their yammering. They act like somebody about to die. I seen worse’n this before. Anyway what difference it make if I do die? Mattie got some money in the bank. Kids all got some schooling, even Scooter got more than his daddy ever had. If I am his daddy. What a pretty young woman like Mattie want with a old ugly man like me? Don’t make no sense hardly. Same as when I took Mattie, the first Mattie, away from Ol’ Man Mose. She didn’t have no business being with him no more than this Mattie does being with me. 01’ Man Mose, Chicken Neck, Stavin’ Chain, Tricky Sam from Birmingham—all them funny old dudes, gone, all gone. They tell us we lived through a depression, but it wasn’t no different. Wasn’t nobody no more depressed than usual, less’n it was a few white folk, who was used to more. For us it was just the same. Hunt, fish, go out and trap, we eat when we hungry, we work when we get it, we ball on Saturday night and go to church, little old country church—this was when we were kids-all of us, every Sunday. Mama used to dress us up so nice, then Mattie make me go later on, she always so concerned about being respectable. Respectable! Them thieving old preachers, lying about heaven, and shouting about hell, every one of them make sure he get a piece of the pie. I wonder, do they really believe all that bullshit they putting down? People sitting there on them hard-ass seats, saying, Yes, Lawd, ain’t it the truth, preacher talking mighty hot today—and singing them old songs that supposed to raise up their souls, man they don’t do a damn thing except take their mind off conditions as they is. It just ain’t for me. Religion ain’t nothing but a skin game, far as I can see. Like them old songs got it, you may be rich, you may be poor, but when your time comes round, you got to move. …

  THAYER was the first to leave. When Hawk refused to go with them, rather than spend another moment with Hartl, whom he had taken to referring to as the Grand Wizard of the Greenwich Village Klan, and respecting, he said, “the man’s personal privacy,” he flew out of Jackson that afternoon. “That’s the trouble with academics,” said Hartl, even as they were saying goodbye. “No perspective and no sense of humor—he still thinks that nigger is the Noble Savage incarnate.”

  At first Hawk wanted $10,000, or some equally ridiculous sum of money, even to talk. Jerry and Hartl found a little hotel in Vicksburg about thirty
miles away and drove in every day to see if Hawk had changed his mind about posterity, or if they could persuade him to reconsider.

  “What I want to leave this for?” Hawk said, sitting at the counter of the Sunset Cafe, sipping whiskey through a straw from a paper bag. Jerry looked around at the uncrowded room, the men quietly talking and eating and drinking, occasional laughter punctuating their subdued dialogue, and he couldn’t understand what Hawk was talking about—back then. He had argued passionately for the advantages of fame, travel, expanding horizons, money. “What good all that gonna do me?” Hawk said, naively, he thought. “I still gotta come back here.”

  Once while Hartl was out hunting old 78s, Hawk drove around town with Jerry, looking for a bootlegger named Booger Jake who he said owed him money. As he drove by the movie house, the white clapboard town hall, the police chief’s wisteria-covered home, he called off the name of each person they passed, colored and white, with a different kind of wave for each. “That’s Miz Broom,” he said of a gnarled little black woman all bent over with packages. “You see her every day walking up and down the street. Ain’t nothing in none of them packages, but she likes to act like she just got off a big shopping spree. She always crazy, but she the only one who could read when I was a kid, so she the colored schoolteacher. Didn’t do so good if you take me for a mark. Course we only went between planting-cotton time and picking-cotton time, and my daddy put me to work, that was my stepdaddy, when I was nine years old, so she didn’t have much of a chance with me. That Mr. Gene setting there in the cruiser. You better slow down, boy. Mr. Gene don’t like colored mixing with white. His daddy sheriff, too, and his daddy before him. I knowed Mr. Gene’s daddy pretty good, because him and my mama was good friends. He ever pull you over you tell him I was fixing up your car for you, we was just going to get some parts. Course this Mr. Gene ain’t the meanest man I ever seen. I guess that would be Sheriff Mooney over in Yazoo County. You stay clear of him, though, he’ll stay clear of you. Hey, slow down, slow down, that’s Old Man Gulcher. Hey, Gulcher, what is it?”