Axeman's Jazz

by Tracy Daugherty

  Reggie nods at the boys, and we step inside the office. It’s cool; a rusty blade fan hustles in the corner. The wooden floor creaks. A cricket by the door trills now and then, like a smoke alarm losing its juice. The room smells of egg rolls, doughnuts—fast food sacks clutter the trash can. Next to it, a box of CDs: DMX, Swizz Beatz, Method Man. Above a small desk, framed on the wall, a Frederick Douglass quote: “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity.” Next to it, pinned with a nail, Psalm 100:

  Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.

  A list of donors also appears on the wall: Lannan Foundation, Amoco Corporation, Cultural Arts Council of Houston, Wells Fargo Foundation, Philip Morris.

  “I know, I know,” Reggie says, watching my eyes. “I felt funny, at first, taking dead presidents from a tobacco company, but they were happy to give—”

  “Poor neighborhoods are a rich market for them,” I counter softly. “Blacks smoke more and suffer higher lung cancer rates—”

  “Shit, girl. You get these figures from the mayor’s office?”

  I realize I sound the way he did, lecturing Ariyeh. “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “So you frown on—”

  “It’s just that, working for the mayor, I see black and Hispanic officials bought off all the time. They’re usually the only Democratic leaders opposed to smoking bans, because of grants like yours—’goodwill’ gestures to neighborhoods like this.”

  “Say what you will, I needed five thousand dollars for a community Thanksgiving dinner last fall,” Reggie says. “It would have taken me months of paperwork, a bumper-car ride through the usual aids agencies, with no guarantees. Smoke-folks made the eagle fly right away, no questions asked.” He points out the window to another house, right behind the office. Wet blouses droop on a line. “That’s our Young Mothers Residential Program. We offer one-year residencies to single mothers and their kids. They get to live in this nice, refurbished place while they work and further their education. Our aim is to help them become self-sufficient and pull themselves out of poverty.”

  “That’s wonderful, Reggie.”

  “So. Does it really matter where the money comes from?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit, buzzing from our banter.

  “The biggest problem around here is teenage moms with no jobs, no husbands in the house—most of the neighborhood boys wind up in jail. We got a woman living here now, Natalie, former hooker, crack addicted—clean eighteen months. Two children, a little girl, three, and her boy Michael there.” He points out the window at the kids shooting baskets. “The blue shorts.”

  He steps outside, motioning me to follow, and knocks on Natalie’s door. A thin woman, dark and as sleek as Kwako’s metal sculptures, answers, blinking painfully in the sunlight. “How you doing?” Reggie asks.

  She scratches her ribs. The straps of her red cotton halter slide down her shoulders. “Fine.” A croak and a whisper. She clears her throat. “Studying my economics book. Sasha’s asleep.”

  Reggie introduces us just as a bright black BMW lurches to a stop in the street, blasting rap. “Skeezer! Say mama!” a young man yells from the car. “Got some Wild Cat here, or how ‘bout some Kibbles and Bits? I know you be wanting some, sugar. Your name on it, right chere. Take a look.”

  Natalie lifts a hand to her mouth.

  “Easy, now,” Reggie says to her. “Ignore them.”

  “Assholes. They come by here every day in some new G-ride. I worry about Michael.”

  As she says this, the young man waves to her boy. “Yo, Air Jordan! Special today, just for you, some mighty African Woodbine. Ax your mommy is it payday. A twinkie’ll do.”

  Michael looks like he’s going to hurl the basketball at the shouter’s face. “Get the hell out of here!” he screams. “Leave my mama alone, you sorry-ass—”

  “Michael!” Natalie calls.

  “Scotty got your mama bad, bitch-boy. Foe-one-one. Skeezer, best teach this little bitch-boy some manners. Might be he be a dead rag someday.”

  Reggie moves toward the street and stands with folded arms. The car pulls away, but not before the young man spots me and yells, “Miss Ann! Miss Thang! What up?”

  I try to get a better glimpse of his face.

  Reggie rubs Michael’s head. “Let me know if you see them again, okay?”

  “Bus a cap in that nickel-slick peckerwood—”

  “Michael, just let me know if you see them, all right?”

  “Sho.”

  Reggie tells Natalie not to worry, keep studying, she’ll be fine.

  “Take care,” I offer lamely. She stares at me, then Reggie, then cuts back to me with what appears to be a nasty little sneer of suspicion.

  Back in the office, Reggie says the young man in the car is a “smalltime asshole, Rue Morgue’s his street name, thinks he’s a world-class bad-ass.” He tells me Wild Cat is coke mixed with methcathinone. Kibbles and Bits, crack rocks.

  “And African Woodbine?”

  “Pot. Cheap as hell these days. Kids half Michael’s age are selling and using the shit. See what we’re up against?”

  “You’re very brave.”

  He laughs. “I’m just trying to keep a few of us alive. What you just saw—it’s why I can’t stand Ariyeh’s old man. She and I fight about it all the time. He’s living in the past, dig, no idea what’s happening in our community today, the pressures the kids are under. He bought this notion, long ago, that if a black man just shuffles sweetly, mumbling, ‘Yessir’ and ‘Nosir,’ he’ll do all right. And those fucking spells of his, as if he could just magic away all the trouble on the streets …”

  “He did what he had to, in his time, to stay alive. At least he never wound up in prison.”

  “And you. You got your own magic, eh?” He touches my arm. “High yella. Lets you pass through walls.”

  I ignore this. “It was good to meet you, Reggie. I hope to see you again before I leave.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” he says. “I didn’t piss you off just now, did I?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not leaving mad?”

  “Not at all.” I smile, to reassure us both.

  “Friends, then?”

  “Friends.”

  “Okay. Good. I’m glad. Ariyeh’s really happy you’re back.”

  “I missed her, too.”

  “I hope you find your daddy.”

  Probably ran off with some Skeezer. “Thank you. I appreciate the tour.”

  “Bring your best game!” Michael taunts his pal beneath the basket. “Come on, G, show me something! Bring it on!” Tires squeal in the distance; I hurry back to the silence and safety of my car. Reggie joins the boys: a grinning, lanky charmer. Is that how my daddy struck my mama? An irresistible force? Burnished and glowing? Did she feel like a whore, maybe taking him from some other woman? My chest tightens as Reggie spins, laughing, graceful, and I think of Ariyeh. I slip on my shades, turn the key.

  As if to affirm Reggie’s judgment of him, Bitter is wearing a poultice on his neck: six strips of raw bacon sprinkled with cayenne pepper wrapped in a lemon-drizzled towel. He’s sitting on his porch when I arrive, sipping tea, staring at the boneyard. I’ve brought us some KFC for dinner. I sit on the top step, dizzied by the late-season honeysuckle scent in the air. A choir practices in the church down the street. Coming home, Lord, coming home. “What happened?” I ask.

  “‘Nother chest-squeeze. I’s cleaning out the mud-dauber shack—Grady, one of my buddies, got sick in there this afternoon—and it feel like the fist of some ghost reach r
ight into me, past my ribs, and crush my poor ol’ heart. Had to sit a spell, catch my breath. So I got me this poultice, open up my arteries some.”

  “You need to see a doctor, Uncle Bitter.”

  He shoos away my words. I feel flesh-heavy, sniffing chicken, smelling rolls. Paint is peeling off the front door, the potch sags. It occurs to me to ask, “Do you have medical insurance?”

  “I don’t need no doctor. Hush now.”

  I can’t afford to get stuck with his bills. The thought shames me; immediately, I assure myself: Of course I’ll do what I can. And so will Ariyeh. Still, this doesn’t kill my panic. We sit and listen to cicadas thrum and throb.

  Bitter rubs his chest. “I been thinking all day bout Elias, the news you brung me. Hard to credit. I didn’t know the man too good, but he seemed harmless enough to me. Guess you never know. Sorry it didn’t work out for you.”

  “I was thinking of driving to Huntsville. See if I can visit him in prison.”

  “Got to get your name on a list. The waiting takes a month or so, I hear. When he scheduled to die?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Bitter shrugs. “Sorry, Seam. Tell me. What brung you here now? Was it your mama dying?”

  “Yes, in part. Going through her stuff Cletus’s letter to Sarah Morgan.”

  “Stubborn woman, your mama. Never even told me she was sick.”

  I almost say, Who’s stubborn now? Instead I ask, “When’s the last time you heard from her?”

  “Years ago. We was dead to her.”

  “She was dead to herself. I mean”—do I really want to say this? do I believe it?—“she wasn’t happy in that white man’s house. I don’t think so, anyway. It was just a path out for her, a way to find physical comfort and to secure a life of advantage for me, which I didn’t really want. Or I did and didn’t.” My throat’s parched and I reach for Uncle’s tea. I remember an afternoon, about a year ago, dropping by for tea with Mama and finding her in tears. I asked her, “What’s the matter?” but she only shook her head. I wonder, now, if she felt the cancer’s first grip that day. She looked as weary as she did those early mornings in Houston, cooking for us all. We sat in her living room, on her white couch, in white sunlight, sinking our feet into a plush beige carpet. Even the air smelled vanilla. I wanted to laugh, but my mama was weeping. Finally she said, “Have you had a good life, Telisha? Have I given you a good life?” “Of course, Mama.” I held her hands; they were cold. An ice cream truck passed in the street, tinkling, through a speaker on its roof, “Pop Goes the Weasel.” “I just wanted you to be happy,” Mama said. “That’s all.” “I’m happy, Mama. Really.”

  But that day I’d been in tears myself. The night before, my coworker Dwayne had asked me out. He was a research aide; we’d been friendly and flirty in the office in the three months he’d been there. He was arrogant and handsome, off-putting and charming all at once. Even his idle stares looked smart-ass and fierce. One day we were poring over maps, gathering data on inner-city neighborhoods. “Ever notice the word ghetto has disappeared from our language?” he asked me. “When’s the last time you saw that word in the paper? Nowadays it’s ‘inner-city’ this, ‘inner-city’ that. Ghetto’s too racially charged, so we got to bury it.” We talked a while longer, and I don’t know why—maybe because he was so passionate, like cocky, ninth-grade Troy—I admitted to him my messy family stew. He looked at me differently, then, as though I were a genie just risen from a run-of-the-mill bottle. A week later he asked me to dinner and drinks.

  The evening began pleasantly, with Mexican food at a new place on Greenville—“Yuppie Row,” Dwayne called the avenue, pointing out the chic new cars in front of glittering restaurants. “I’ll bet, at some of these places, you could hear the best watered-down blues in Dallas.”

  “If you don’t like it, why are we here?”

  “Oh, I like it. Who said I’m not a yuppie?”

  I laughed. I liked it, too. I hadn’t worn a dress in months, and I felt good in my blue pullover.

  “The real blues is in Deep Ellum—what’s left of it, undeveloped. Ever been there?”

  “Nope.”

  “I think you need to see it.” He dropped his voice: an exaggerated Darth Vader. “Get in touch with your dark side.”

  I laughed again but uncomfortably this time. Later, on our third round of drinks at our second bar of the night, he pushed the dark side. “See, I’ve got you figured this way,” he slurred. He’d been drinking martinis. “For you—as for everyone else, really—white is linked to goodness and purity. Black with the nasty.” He pushed his dreads out of his face.

  “The nasty?”

  “Anything nasty.” He reached over and rubbed my belly. “But you got it inside you, girl.” I scooched back on my stool, away from his hand. What had I done to make him think he could touch me this way? My skin tingled.

  I wouldn’t let him take me to Deep Ellum so late. “All right, then. A compromise,” he said. “Let me show you a spot I know. It’s a white joint, but the music’s real.”

  We wound up at the Strictly Tabu Room on Lemmon Avenue, a smoky little bar stuffed with yuppies, but Dwayne was right about the music. An old Negro—Negro seemed the proper word for him; he’d stepped out of another era, with a long barber shirt, gray cotton pants with cuffs, and white-spatted shoes—played the vibes, all by himself in a corner. Gentle Lionel Hampton riffs, melodies folding into one another, water over pebbles. I ordered a chardonnay and relaxed into his loose improvisations.

  Dwayne wouldn’t let it go. The dark side. The nasty. Like a chant, one of Bitter’s old spells. It had a hypnotic effect on me. Sex had been missing from my life for a couple of years. Uneasy in my own skin, I avoided touch. For a long time I’d known this about myself. Some of my sorority sisters in college had even called me “lezzie” (after I’d told them I wasn’t like them and begun to withdraw) because I didn’t go on many dates, because I looked “like a boy.” Dwayne nibbled my ear. “Please stop,” I said. “My place,” he said. “No,” I said, shivering. “I’d like you to take me home now.”

  In the car, in front of my apartment, he dropped all pretense. He wouldn’t let me loose. “The dark part of you wants it,” he panted, pulling my dress up over my knees. I would have laughed at him if I hadn’t been so frightened—and unsure, thinking, Maybe it’s true, maybe the old neighborhood got into my blood, a bayou fever, those crickety nights I’d sneak out of bed—a bad, bad girl—and tickle myself down below, sitting in the culvert, dreaming of the shut-in boy. Maybe none of Mama’s efforts made a difference. I hadn’t bettered myself at all. Despite a shiny surface and years of education, I was still at bottom a dark, nasty child. A bubbling, boggy slough.

  I smelled the olives Dwayne had swallowed with his drinks, smelled his aftershave, heavy and musky like a thick banana grove, and nearly passed out. “I’ve never had a white black woman,” he wheezed against my ear.

  That day in Mama’s house, cushioning her sobs against my chest, I cried too, for the ache in my body, for the insult Dwayne had left in me, festering, for the bad girl I could never escape. “It’s all right,” I whispered to us both. Mama held me tight. “It’s going to be all right.”

  Now Bitter chews the ice from his glass. “If she weren’t happy, she on’y had herself to blame,” he says, and for an instant I think he means me. He readjusts the poultice on his neck. “I ‘member, right before she took you away up north, she got broody, keeping to herself. I’d ask her what’s wrong, she’d pull inside herself. Used to drive down to Galveston, leaving you with me, just to stare at the ocean and them big of Victorian houses near the seawall. Said she liked to imagine living in them mansions, with they gardens and the gingerbread trim ‘round the windows.” He rubs his chest some more. “Way I see it, she grew up in Hell, in the fires of Texas City, and spent her whole life running from it. Sea weren’t big enough to douse the flames.” He holds out his hand and I take it. “I wished she’d let me help her some. I wi
shed I coulda seen her ‘fore she passed.”

  “I’m sorry, Uncle Bitter.”

  He sniffles. “Well, my own mama used to tell me, ‘Don’t never put your hand on a young tree just bearing fruit or the fruit’ll fall off When your mama come to us she was a young tree. Maybe we handled her wrong.”

  “You saved her life.”

  “Oughta sprinkled hummingbird heart on her head. Fine powder, right ‘fore she left. That woulda kept her with us. Powerful gris-gris.”

  I squeeze his fingers. “Uncle, I’m worried about you. I don’t think gris-gris is enough to stop these chest pains. Something’s wrong. You need to see to it.”

  “Tomorrow I get me some nutmeg. Tie it ‘round my neck.”

  As though the talk of spells had summoned them out of the late-evening light, two green and purple hummingbirds flare in and around Bitter’s rose bushes. They tip their beaks at us, almost in greeting, then vanish is if through a rip in the air. Coming home, Lord, coming home. “I’ll go heat up this chicken,” I say.

  “Forgive me, Seam.”

  “What for, Uncle?”

  “For not taking better care your mama.”

  I kiss the top of his head. “You said it yourself. She wouldn’t let us near.”

  In the church, someone shouts, “Praise Jesus!”

  Bitter holds my hand to his shoulder. We watch the sun set behind the twisted apple trees just beyond the graveyard.

  7

  ARIYEH USUALLY sleeps late on Saturdays, her one day off (she’s active in church on Sundays), but today she’s agreed to come with me to the hanging field where Cletus Hayes died. She believes my interest in the place is morbid—I suppose it is—and has no desire to see it. But the time we’ll have in the car will let us catch up with each other. I pull into her driveway at eight. She lives in Montrose, an old but slowly gentrifying area of town, just two miles from her daddy’s home. “Generic house, generic furniture,” she says, laughing, showing me around. “That’s what it means to join the middle class, isn’t it—you become just like everyone else?” She’s packed turkey sandwiches and some barbecued potato chips for us. On the road, she helps navigate me through a puzzle of cloverleafs, and soon we’re on open highway, heading west toward San Antonio. I feel us both relax.