Axeman's Jazz

by Tracy Daugherty

  “The maid of honor.”

  “It means a lot to Ariyeh.”

  “Me too.”

  Barbara hugs me. She’s got a chaw of dirt in her mouth. “How’s your piecework coming?”

  “Slow.”

  “Ain’t no hurry.”

  “I’ve got to return to Dallas for a while, but I’ll be back for Reggie’s wedding. Maybe then I’ll stop by and get some more pointers from you?“

  “Anytime.”

  Kwako is wearing overalls and loafers, a straw hat, sleek new shades. He looks like one of his objects: enthusiasm spot-welded to exhaustion, age nailed to a lingering, youthful zest. He barely follows our small talk. He gazes at the hands he has made, judging their perspective in relation to the buildings behind them. Prayer, peeling walls. Poverty and redemption. How do they fit? Through his eyes I begin to see the neighborhood as a sculptural challenge. It matters how we piece it all together.

  I take Ariyeh’s bag and tell them I’ll see them soon. Reggie nods. Barbara squeezes my hand. “You was made for this outlook, girl. Get your ass back quick.”

  “You think?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Thank you.” I reach to hug Kwako’s neck. “Thank you both.”

  The stairway at Some Other Time smells of asparagus and garlic. I pack a few fresh toiletries, change into a sleeveless yellow blouse. A baby wails down the hall. My quilt huddles in a corner.

  Outside, at the pay phone, I leave a message on Rufus’s answering machine saying I’d be delighted to work with him. I don’t know when I decided this. Maybe right away. Maybe just this minute. But it’s settled. That feels certain.

  I wait on the front steps. Sure enough, in about half an hour, the Beamer turns the corner. The windows slide down: a mosquito whine. Michael slouches in the passenger seat. The protégé, the new young gangsta. Already he’s got a practiced sneer and an arrogant sway in his shoulders. Lost or saved?

  “Say, cakes,” Rue says. He gets out of the car. “You been scarcer’n Lady Justice.”

  I stand.

  “None of Rue’s fillies just ups and disappears, know’m say’n?”

  “I didn’t have a beeper number for you. My uncle’s in the hospital.”

  “That so?”

  “You didn’t know? You mean something slipped by you?”

  He grins. “You a real little bitch, ain’t you?”

  You don’t know the half of it, Player. “He’s just out of ICU. I’m on my way back there now.”

  “Want a lift?”

  “I’ve got my car, thanks.”

  He approaches me, rubs my hips. “I missed you.”

  Michael’s leering: learning the moves, living out his rap tunes.

  “You’re a teacher now,” I say. “How’s it coming?”

  “Shit. It’s like these kids got minds of their own.”

  I laugh. I do like his hands on my body.

  “He ain’t so bad. Might have a chance to make it to thirty, thirty-five, he listens what I say.”

  “And his mama?”

  “Moving on up.”

  “Are you leaving her alone?”

  “I’m watching out for her boy. That’s what I promised you.”

  “Thank you.” I step away from him. “I’d better go now. My uncle’s expecting me.”

  “I be looking for you. Don’t go drifting away on me, Ann.” He slips a hand behind my neck, pulls me to him, and slides his tongue into my mouth. “Aight?”

  Michael cheers.

  “Bye,” is all I say. Thanks for the ride, Player. Good luck. You’ll need it.

  “Later, cakes, hm?” Something in his voice—a catch, a low plea—makes me think he knows the game is over. He squeezes my butt and returns to his car.

  On the sidewalk, young sparrows, the color of old dishwater, squabble over spiky weeds shooting up between cracks in the cement. I pull Rufus’s card from my purse and run my fingers over the embossed word Future.

  Bitter’s house feels crackly and dry. I pack a couple of paperbacks into my overnight case, then pull Mama’s quilt from the closet. The hospital provides plenty of blankets, but the quilt will make a cozier cover. Its patterns flow into one another like geologic layers. Slavery. The Underground Railroad. Executions.

  I touch Mama’s skill.

  Now Bitter’s been stitched together, too.

  From the bathroom, I snatch some toothpaste and a couple bars of soap (Bitter doesn’t like the hospital’s antiseptic brand). I pass the easy chair where Ariyeh and I used to snuggle into his lap. Tell us, tell us again! Say about the magic!

  The floor settles, creaking.

  I step outside and lock the house.

  Sunset is a fierce pencil line on the horizon. Beyond the cemetery, the front porch of an old home has collapsed a foot or two. Fireflies, as bright, I imagine, as the buttons of a Confederate soldier’s coat, glimmer in and out of honeysuckle vines.

  Rap from a passing Passat swamps a faint blues wafting from an open window. I hear, but don’t see, a basketball swishing a net. A silver jet streaks the sky, like the tip of a key scratching a new blue car.

  After folding Mama’s quilt into my trunk, I start to switch on the radio, then remember Elias. I don’t want to encounter a glib pundit editorializing about his death.

  Around the corner, three yellow bulldozers knock down several former slave quarters. A new sign—this doesn’t appear to be Rufus’s outfit; the competition is swift and fierce—says a four-story luxury condo is coming soon. Reserve Your Space Now!

  Rest in peace, y’all.

  In a weedy field, another ‘dozer bashes the roof of a brown and white Toyota. The operator, a young bearded man with no expression on his face, pulls the levers. Methodical, pointless. The shovel comes down. The car lurches. The windshield webs. Another blow scatters it. The front doors pop off like bread ejected from a toaster. The tires deflate. This is the energy that builds cities and also tears them down. I think of Troy and Dwayne. Reggie, Rufus, Rue. Cletus. Elias. Daddy. All who’ve fallen.

  The sun is gone now, leaving Houston in shadow. KFC sacks blow through empty lots. “Gris-gris,” I whisper, as if I actually had the power to save anything.

  “But! My uncle’s going to live!” I shout. “Resurrection! Hallelujah! Praised-be! Stop in the name of love …!” I like the sound of my voice. “He dom-diddly-doo-wop did it!” My uncle who’s not really my uncle: my tie to the most important life I never lived.

  How’s that for perspective?

  In my rearview, Freedmen’s Town looks tilled-under and dark, as though no one had ever set foot there. One by one, across the frog-buzzing bayou, windows start to glow downtown. Yellow, white, blue—coloring the heavy, magnolia-scented air. Oh what the hell, I think. I reach for my radio and find some evening jazz.

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