Axeman's Jazz

by Tracy Daugherty

  I knew what she was trying to tell me. “Mama, don’t you wish you had darker skin?”

  “I most certainly do not.”

  “Why?”

  “Honey, you can spend your life wishing you were someone you’re not, and it won’t do you a lick of good. Look at Ariyeh. Don’t you think she wishes she were as thin as you are?”

  “I guess.”

  “But she’s beautiful, too. With her own style, right?”

  “But—”

  “Sweetie, you don’t know how lucky you are. One day you’ll recognize the advantages in looking like you do.”

  Her face sagged. She’d been up at dawn, as she was every day, making hotcakes for Bitter, Ariyeh, and me. Was my daddy ever there? Cass? I don’t remember them. Lunch and supper, she was at the stove again. Her straightened hair straggled into her eyes. She was thin as well—probably too thin, I think now.

  Another evening (just after we’d moved and had returned to Houston for a visit), she was walking home from the store carrying two big bags of food. Fresh vegetables had moistened one of the bags; when she reached the yard, a neighbor dog, a little schnauzer, bounded over to her, startling her. She swung away from him and the bag ripped. She fell to her knees in the dead grass, sobbing—from exhaustion, I realize now. I approached her quietly from where I’d been playing. She didn’t ask me to help her. She tried to smile through her tears. “Hello, honey,” was all she said. I felt scared, seeing her vulnerable, unhappy. I picked up a cabbage, a carton of eggs (only two had cracked), a spaghetti package. “You’re a sweet girl,” she said. “That quality’s going to get you anything you want in life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you won’t have to live in a ratty old neighborhood like this when you grow up.”

  “I like it here. More than Dallas,” I admitted.

  “You’ll do better than this, believe me.” She tucked a banana bunch under her arm.

  “Ariyeh and me—”

  “Ariyeh and I.”

  “—we’re going to live in a tent with our husbands and children and be famous.”

  “For what?”

  “Just for having our pictures on magazines.”

  She frowned at me, balanced a jam jar on her hip. “When’s the last time you saw someone who looked like Ariyeh on a magazine cover?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s right. Remember that.”

  I didn’t know what she meant, and I don’t know now where her self-hatred started, or how. The fall from the garden. Shame at her own naked self, leading to her long rest, too soon, under a headstone just like one of these.

  And my own shame? Recalling the girl today who needed a tampon, I remember sitting in my Dallas bedroom, cramping, trying to read the Modess box while Aretha sang on the radio, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.…” I longed for Ariyeh then. Was the same thing happening to her? This messy flow … it wasn’t just another fault of mine, was it, a flaw in the package, like my off-kilter skin?

  I rise, brush leaves and dirt from my pants, and pick a sunflower for the supper table.

  Bitter sucks a beer while I sauté onions and garlic in a crusted old pan, maybe the pan Mama used at this very same stove. Robins chortle in the trees, and I miss my parrots; dogs bark, children shout. The garlic quashes the old-bathrobe smell floating through the house. Bitter’s put jazz on the phonograph, slow, sad piano, something I don’t recognize. Sunset, filtered through bumps and flaws in the kitchen’s thick window, is a pink-purple patch on the dirty yellow wall.

  “So. You give Ariyeh a heart attack, showing up out the blue?”

  I smile, drain the vegetable oil, add soy sauce and a teaspoon of sesame oil to the pan. “She’s looking good. Tough job, though.”

  “‘Bout all she can do with them kids is keep them off the streets a while—which they’re gonna end up there, anyways. Some of them pretty smart, I guess. But they ain’t going nowhere—less’n their mamas just up and move them out.”

  I let that pass. “Still, you must be proud of her.”

  “I am.” He picks at the label on his bottle. “That Northern mayor of yours. He put any money in the colored schools? You know, we hear y’all enlightened up North.”

  “I hate to tell you, Uncle, but Dallas isn’t far from here. In spirit, as well as space.”

  He laughs. “Tell you the truth, sad as it made me, I didn’t blame Helen for sneaking you out of here. Look what she done for you. You a educated girl. Self-possess. Good job. Nice car. Hell, she done the right thing. Shoulda takened Ariyeh with her.”

  “Ariyeh’s done just fine.” I slice a catfish fillet into checkerboard squares, then lay the squares in the marinade. I boil water for frozen peas, start the rice.

  Groaning, Uncle Bitter rises from his chair, walks to a scarred oak hutch. From a shelf he plucks an object, then comes and puts an arm around my shoulder. He shows me a red card, old, softened now almost to the texture of paper. Its corners have crumbled away. Faded, typed letters say, “Nigger—stay away from the polls.” “Nineteen forty-eight,” Bitter says. “Our second year here in Freedmen’s Town. One morning a prop plane come buzzing over our streets, dropping these cards by the thousands. Bloody snow. You best believe I didn’t vote that election. None of us did. We knew what it took to keep a roof over our heads, in peace. So Henry Wallace had to do without us.” He taps the card on his fingernails. “Things improve some over the years, little by little, but by the time you and Ariyeh born, we still didn’t have no library in this area, other than Buck Jackson, the barber’s, paperback collection, which he lent out to folks from the back of his shop. What I mean is, yeah. Ariyeh done well, all right. She a hard-working gal, smart as a whip. But it’s all been in spite of. You know what I’m say’n? What you got, when your mama move you north, Ariyeh got in spite of.”

  “I know,” I say. I pour vegetable oil into a fresh pan, slide the fish in, and cook it over high heat. “But I lost something, too, Uncle Bitter. You and Ariyeh. After a certain point, yes, it was my choice—okay, I admit that—but by that time I’d been taught I was someone else, not the little girl who’d started to grow up here. It was hard to keep thinking independently. I didn’t know how to act around black people anymore—not that I ever learned how to act around whites. Can you grab us a couple of forks? We’re ready here.”

  We settle at the table and I light a candle. “I lost whatever chance I might have had to find my daddy while I could.”

  Bitter nods. He says, “This sure is nice, Seam. I ain’t et this fancy since Maevey died,” and we eat our meal quietly, awkward at first, then relaxed. He chews in a rapture. As we’re finishing up, I ask him about his childhood in the French Quarter. “Is that where you first learned to appreciate good food—and gris-gris?”

  “Sure enough.” He swipes a napkin across his lips. “We lived in a little oyster-shell alley back of St. Ann Street, where the ol’ hoodoo queen Marie Laveau used to live. My mama said she ‘membered rich white folks pulling up in their carriages middle of the night, asking Marie for love potions.” He leans back and picks his teeth with a finger. “First job I ever had was hanging outside the produce warehouses down by the river, stealing spoilt ‘taters and onions. The shippers threw them away, see. I’d cut off the spoilt parts and sell them to restaurants for a nickel apiece or to the old ladies in the neighborhood, who always had ‘em some incense burning on an altar. I learnt a lotta spells making my rounds.” He laughs. “Back then, I thought the height of success was to be a street crier. I ‘member the watermelon man coming ‘round early in the morning, shouting,

  I got water with the melon, red to the rind!

  If you don’t believe it, just pull down your blind!

  I sells to the rich.

  I sells to the po’.

  I’mone sells to that lady

  standing in the do’!

  “When I’s a little older, I graduated to selling coal off a wagon. We’d go to Storyville—all the red-li
ght ladies slinking ‘round the doorways, freezing they asses, wearing them teddies, you know. Needed coal for they cribs, burn it down to ash. Lots of them practiced the hoodoo, too. And we’d sell to the gin joints. The Funky Butt Club, where Buddy Bolden played. And I ‘member hearing Satchmo for the first time when he’s just a pup—lots of good hot air. You know Satchmo?”

  “Sure. Axeman’s Jazz?”

  He grins. “We called him Dippermouth them days, he had such a wide ol’ smile.”

  “So you really believe in those spells?”

  He looks confused or offended. Or both. “‘Course I do, Seam. I seen ‘em work. There used to be a ghost on St. Ann Street. I swear. I seen her—hollow eyes, snowy hair. She’d hang out on the steps of the old opera house and, at night, disappear into a rooming place over to St. Ann and Royal. One of the ladies I sold ‘taters to told me this particular haint was a woman who’d kilt herself after finding her man with a lover. She rose from the grave one night, snuck into the lovers’ room, and turned on the gas, phyxiating ‘em both. The lady who told me this, I went with her one afternoon, right into the haunted room. She had her some goofer dust and sprinkled it all over the place. None of us ever saw that ol’ ghost again.”

  I pour him another beer. He sits quietly now. Whether or not his tales are even remotely true, he has a past he can call on, I think. Maybe that’s what Cletus Hayes means to me. Whatever the reality of his relations with Sarah Morgan, whatever his connection to me, I can make him my personal ghost, a badge here in a community haunted by tragic luck. I squeeze Bitter’s hand.

  After rinsing the dishes we sit in the yard near the mud-dauber shack, splitting another beer. Stars spackle the sky. “If you’re thinking of staying awhile, maybe it’s time you move inside,” he says. So. My probation’s over. “Shack’s good for a night or two, but it ain’t no long-term deal.”

  “I was considering a motel—”

  “Hush. I got a big, fat couch in there.”

  It’s not all that big, but I thank him anyway.

  “If you black, stay back; if you brown, stick around; if you white, you right,” Bitter says. “That’s a saying we used to have here, kind of a joke on how the honkies saw us. Your mama knew it. O’niest explanation she ever give me for why she move.” He massages his chest, just below his collarbone. “I think she thought she was gonna save you. And maybe she did, who knows?”

  “Well—”

  “It took bravery for her to change her whole life, Seam.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And maybe you ain’t lost all that much, after all. You here now, right? Something I didn’t ‘member this morning, come to me later. There’s a fella knew your daddy real well, name of Elias Woods. Used to hang out at Etta’s ‘fore he move south of town. I got his address ‘cause I done some carpentry work for him once upon a time. Don’t have no phone, I know of, but you might want to go see him. Might be he could tell you more’n I can ‘bout your pa.”

  “Wonderful. What’s his story?”

  “Cain’t rightly say. Ain’t seen him in years.”

  I rub my eyes. “While I’m down this way, I’d also like to see the field where Cletus Hayes was hanged. Seems like it’s part of my story, somehow. Something I ought to witness.”

  “Pretty grim vacation. You know where it is?”

  “I’ve got a vague idea—though for years the army tried to hide it. A few intrepid historians have managed to pinpoint it, generally.”

  “Well now, you start using them fancy words, it’s time for me to go inside and get that couch ready for you.”

  I nearly tell him Enough of the “uncle” routine; you understand my “fancy” words perfectly well, but I’d only upset him, and I’m not sure it’s just a routine, after all. Maybe I’m wrong about that. Not everyone wears a mask.

  He sprinkles out our beer dregs. Frogs chirp in the bayou a few miles away. Crickets treak. He bends down, pressing his chest, then picks something loose from the lawn: a mistletoe sprig, dropped from a tree. He dangles it over my head, leans close, pecks my cheek. “Glad you here, Seam.”

  I take his hand. Lord, he’s frail. It occurs to me I’ve returned to Houston too late—when the most tangible link to my past may be about to collapse. “Me too, Uncle Bitter. Thanks.”

  5

  LOCUST TREES throb with cicadas. The city’s old grid pattern gives way to the new: the faded remnants of east-west streets poke through grass and weeds, petering out where fresh roads, following the latest commercial lures, tug the city in whole new directions. Driving south through Houston, on my way to find Elias Woods, I’m reminded why I was drawn to city planning, a job that combined my love of history with memories of my first bruised neighborhood.

  My first boss used to quote Le Corbusier to me: “Architecture or revolution. Revolution can be avoided,” meaning if we build better buildings, we’ll shape happier lives. An unfeasible ideal but, as the boss used to say, worth fighting for.

  “When’s the last time you saw a decent porch?” a planner once asked me. “Your grandma’s house, right? Homebuilders nowadays, they don’t know a porch from their own patooties.” His unfeasible goal was to save Dallas by heralding the second coming of the porch. “I don’t know how we’ll do it,” he said, “but I’ll bet we can lock in some porch incentives in the land development code.” He sent me out to measure distances between sidewalks and front doors, to count porches or note their absence, to see whether space existed for chairs or a swing … he wanted me to research blackberries; he remembered a blackberry vine around his own grandmother’s porch and was convinced the plant could humanize our neighborhoods. The first field guide I turned to said “BLACKBERRY: any of various erect-growing perennial brambles that bear black or sometimes whitish fruits.” Black or sometimes whitish: unlocking that phrase, it seemed to me, was the key to humanizing our cities, but I couldn’t explain this to my planner.

  I loved doing research at night: passing houses in the dark, seeing the lighted windows, the warm shadows of those inside. The city seemed cozy, then, safe.

  One night, I drove through a tired neighborhood across the Trinity River from downtown Dallas. One of the older areas. Skyscrapers blazed like free-standing chandeliers. The air was hot. Frogs chrr-ed. The river smelled both fetid and sweet, like apples gone bad. I was counting porches—quite a few over here, though most were ancient and saggy—when something moved on a parked car in the street. I glanced over: a mud-brown owl the size of an open accordion. It swiveled its head to watch me. Eyes yellow as fall leaves. Ruffled air, a soft chop: another owl landed nearby. Then another appeared, settling on a bent, unreadable sign. All around me, feathered beats grew thick as walls; the night became a house of wings. A Goya dream. I felt exhilarated, frightened. The birds called to one another, a chorus so mournful, I thought a sob had escaped the sky. The birds blinked at me as I inched the car down the street. Their calm, after my initial shock at their presence, relaxed me. I didn’t feel judged. Or even quite real. A piercing detachment suffused their gazes, as though they saw past surfaces. I felt stripped of my body and skin—no bothersome hair, no menstrual spotting to worry about—reduced (in their eyes) to pure, natural movement. I couldn’t sustain it, but for a moment I felt more at home in the world than I ever had: a current of light or heat. A pickup turned the corner, loose headlights swaying like dance-floor strobes. The owls scattered.

  Now I pass rickety porches, reminders of that night. A smell of coffee on the breeze, from a nearby processing plant. Rust. Car exhaust.

  Reinerman Street is on my way, so I turn and park by the yellow house. Corn leaves rustle in the old lady’s vegetable patch. Teenagers circle Brock’s Combo Burger in dirty, dented cars, yelling at one another, flirting. Bitter’s hoo-raw hasn’t changed the neighborhood’s looks for me or given me a clearer glimpse of history, but as with the owls, I feel an uneasy shifting in the air, as though the present weren’t quite real. It’s the same sensation that overcame me when, o
n return visits here, Mama told me, “You don’t belong here anymore. This is not your place now.” I could almost feel my identity slip, like a cheap, tossed-off mask—but what was beneath it, I hadn’t a clue. The teenagers’ voices grow murky, a rush of underwater bubbles. Sweat soaks the back of my shirt. I picture Cletus’s face and feel myself melting into him, a thrilling freedom, a scary drift. Eyes closed, I know myself to be walking, walking … my body heavier, more massive in the upper arms and thighs, burdened, tight … the day’s a scorcher so I remove my cap. My buddies do the same. A streetcar clatters behind us, but we prefer to stroll rather than sit in the back of a car, enduring a white conductor’s contemptuous stare. It’s the morning of Thursday, August 23, twelve hours before the riot for which we’ll eventually hang. For now, on R&R, we’re carefree and happy. Unarmed.

  Charlie—Corporal Baltimore, a provost guard and model soldier—suggests we head up San Felipe to get a cool soda. We notice two mounted policemen down the block; I know one of them, a mammoth named Rufus Daniels. The colored housekeepers here refer to him as “Dan’l Boone, a nigger-baiter, one of the meanest cops around.” I tell Charlie and Ben, my other companion, we should stay to one side of the street and keep our heads down. The officers see us. They turn their stallions to keep us in view, straighten in their saddles. We pass an alley, and my stomach clenches. A pair of colored teens is kneeling in the dirt, throwing dice. Canned goods, the community calls its boys. Don’t matter what they do—even if they doing nothing—they just canned goods for the cops. Lately, the police have mounted an intense campaign against crap-shooting, citywide, increasing neighborhood tension. I quicken my stride, so if Daniel Boone stops to inspect us, we’ll be past the alley and he won’t see the boys. But the boys look up, hear the hoofbeats, and hightail it out of there. Charlie, Ben, and I fall back, startled, as the kids run foolishly up the street, in plain sight. The stallions crackle past us, knocking us over; a tail whips my face, a breath-stealing sting.