Ladies and Gentlemen...The Redeemers

by Michael Scott Miller

  Bert and Charlie’s relationship remained cool over the next several days. Charlie came and went, showing up at the hostel only to shower and change clothes. It quickly became apparent to each of the Redeemers that the camaraderie that existed before was fading without its catalyst.

  Further compounding the situation, Bert and Abe had a big flare-up after one of the Tuesday night performances, when Bert introduced ‘Blind Abe’ Jackson as the lead singer of the Redeemers. After the show, Bert entered the small dressing area that served as backstage to find Abe in a foul humor.

  “Don’t exploit me!” Abe shouted at him.

  “What are you talking about?” Bert asked in confusion.

  “That ‘Blind Abe’ Jackson stuff. Don’t you call me that!” Abe answered, his voice still at a roar.

  “C’mon, Abe. It has a cachet to it. Look at how many blind musicians refer to themselves that way: Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell–”

  But Abe was not deterred. “Look how many don’t: Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder. You’ve been exploiting me since we met back in San Francisco, and I’ve had as much as I’m going to take.”

  Bert had had enough of Abe’s consistently negative attitude, and was about to counter Abe’s vitriol with a diatribe of his own when he caught himself. He could tell that all eyes were fixed upon him without having to turn his head. Everyone was a little on edge. They had come to L.A. thinking that Bert had arranged more for them than he had, and it would be best now to smooth feathers. Also, Bert was mindful that he was in danger of losing Charlie. He couldn’t afford to lose Abe too.

  “Listen, my friend,” he said to Abe finally, resting a hand on his shoulder. “I had no idea you were sensitive about that. You have my promise. Those words will never pass my lips again.”

  The band’s mood over the next weeks continued to deteriorate markedly. Charlie and Doris had parted ways, but just as quickly, Charlie had found a new female companion in the group. He had been taken in by Eric and his friends, and virtually every night, Charlie ran off somewhere with them, often not returning until the early morning hours, and sometimes not until the next day.

  Bert knew that for Charlie, this was everything he never had before in his life. He had grown up a solitary kid. The musicians at Maggie’s had taken him in, but that was more paternal than anything else. After that, he had just drifted with his cousin Randy until Bert came along, providing his only friendship. But now here he was, the center of attention. Friendships were flowing, and Charlie’s self-esteem exploded as he was taken into Eric’s circle.

  He would be completely oblivious to the hurt he was inflicting on the Redeemers until it was too late.

  In the early days, when Charlie would appear at the hostel, Bert could almost feel the mood rise as most of the other Redeemers would gather around him excitedly, hoping to hear what he had been up to or to hear a funny story. But the visits repeatedly ended in disappointment as Charlie returned their overtures with nothing more than a quick hello and goodbye. As time went by, it became clear to all that the Redeemers had become Charlie’s second priority.

  This feeling was validated when Charlie started showing up late for practices. He was always quick with an excuse – his bus broke down, he got stuck in traffic, he lost his watch--but everyone knew the score. Charlie had found that the L.A. night scene suited him and he was enjoying it at the expense of the band’s mission.

  Bert tried hard to manage the band through this rough period. What made it particularly trying was that Bert himself was feeling the deepest cut from Charlie’s absences. Bert had latched onto Charlie like a life raft, pulling himself out of the solitary confinement he too had suffered for so many years. Bert had opened himself up, vulnerably developing strong feelings for another human being for the first time in many years. And now the opening had become a wound.

  The carefree feeling on the rooftop above L.A., which now seemed long ago, had been replaced with a sense of hopelessness and a loss of purpose. Time was weighing heavy on the Redeemers’ hands, and the introspection that the time provided was not good for them.

  * * *

  “What are we doing here?” Abe asked the others at one point when Bert was out somewhere. “I mean, let’s be real. We came all the way down here from San Francisco, for what? To play in a bar less than half as crowded as we had back at Berkeley? And do you think Bert was really some record industry hot shot? It sure doesn’t seem like it.”

  Ethan thought that for once, Abe was right. But he held his tongue. But even Dave and Aaron, who were normally supportive, couldn’t help but add similar sentiments.

  “I hear you,” Dave said. “I mean, Bert’s sure created this band out of nothing, but sometimes I still wonder about him. He’s been a little mysterious down here, and that has me concerned. Not that my home back in San Francisco is any palace, but it sure looks good compared to this place.”

  Aaron added, “I wasn’t making a lot of bucks washing dishes, but it’s getting to the point where I could use some cash soon. I know it’s not Bert’s fault, but the money from the gigs here doesn’t add up to much once we back out expenses and split it seven ways.”

  Dave, who probably had more invested in the dream than anyone, continued, “I miss my family. I know it’s only been a couple of weeks and I need to be patient, but I sure wish there was something tangible that I could tell them about. Something to show that we’re making real progress. Right now, it sure looks like we could be here awhile.”

  Ethan and Gene observed the discussion silently, Ethan still keeping his interaction with the band members to a minimum. He didn’t know if Gene had concerns, but the dissent was near unanimous. Charlie no longer mattered, he thought. Ethan could see that Charlie had moved from the nucleus of the band to its periphery. The relationship was now like a marriage of convenience. Functional, but not fun.

  That night, Ethan was unable to sleep in the uncomfortable cot and wandered outside for some fresh air. Abe was there, sitting on a curbstone facing the road across the parking lot, his back toward the hostel. Ethan approached him.

  “What brings you out here, Ethan?” Abe asked without moving.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “I can always feel the icy chill in the air when you’re around,” Abe answered contemptuously.

  “Yeah. Well, I was thinking about the conversation you guys were having earlier today and that didn’t make it any easier to sleep in this fleabag place, four hundred miles from home. I’m not used to this kind of living. I mean, this place makes the dorms at Berkeley seem like five-star hotels. I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing here too.”

  This was already the longest conversation the two had had with one another. Ethan took a seat on the curbstone one empty parking space over from Abe.

  “Not used to this. My, my,” responded Abe. “Try living like this all the time.”

  “Not me. That’s why I’m in school, to do something with my life.”

  “Is that it? Is that why you’re so hostile to me? You think that I’m just some lazy bum who’s done nothing for himself?”

  “Look, Abe. It’s not that. We come from different walks of life. My parents raised me to work hard, to strive for things, to overcome life’s obstacles. I feel badly about your sight, but I don’t want to be like you – someone who’s just given up, who looks for handouts, who’s just carried along by society.”

  “I think your parents forgot to tell you about empathy, about compassion for your fellow man,” replied Abe.

  “No, that’s not it,” Ethan responded quickly. “I have compassion where it’s deserved. I just think for the most part, people control their own destinies. It’s their decisions and choices and their fortitude and their inner drive that determines how life plays out. It’s not about luck. Everyone has a chance.”

  “Well, let me lay something on you, college boy,” returned Abe, agitated. “I was never given a chance. Tell me how your life would have turned
out if you were raised in the projects in a tiny apartment with your mother working day and night to support you. And then imagine if you were eight years old and you got an illness that took away your sight.”

  Abe detected Ethan’s slight gasp. He continued.

  “That’s right. I was once able to see. Imagine, one week you’re out there playing with your friends and the next week, you’re in San Francisco General Hospital. When you return, you can no longer play the way you used to play and slowly, your friends don’t come by so often.

  “Then imagine that when you’re thirteen, your mother is taken ill and ends up in the very same hospital and you’re put in a foster home.”

  “And your mother --?” Ethan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Abe responded. “I didn’t want to live in a foster home, so I took off and started living out on the streets. I thought I was pretty tough for awhile, but things got pretty hard. I strayed, keeping clear of my old neighborhood. I was a young kid, bitter at the world for taking my sight and then taking me away from my mother.

  “Nearly a year later, I finally had the courage to go back to the neighborhood to try to find out what had happened. When I got to our old home, I found someone else living there. I checked at the hospital and they said that my mother had been released to the care of someone. I guess it was probably some distant relative or something, ’cause I don’t remember us having much family.

  “Anyway, I never could find this person, and I never saw my mother again.” He paused and turned his head in Ethan’s direction. “Nice story, huh?”

  Ethan sat there, quietly somber for a few moments. He then said to Abe, sympathy in his voice for the first time, “So your mother was pretty great, huh?”

  “Yeah, she was great all right. I always wondered though if she ever came through it and came looking for me. There’s never been any closure.”

  “What’s your fondest memory of her?” asked Ethan, trying to turn the conversation a little more upbeat.

  “It’s funny,” said Abe. “My clearest memory of her is that she used to sing this little song to me when she tucked me into bed at night. She had a beautiful voice. I guess maybe that’s where my voice came from. Of course, I couldn’t hold a candle to her. But she used to sing to me. Even up to the end when I was too old to be sung to and tucked in, she still did it, and I never objected.”

  “Sounds nice,” offered Ethan.

  “Yeah, it was,” said Abe, lost in thought. “But that’s ancient history.”

  The two men sat in silence for a while. After several minutes, Abe rose off the curbstone. “I guess I’d best be getting back to sleep. You coming?”

  “I’ll be in soon,” answered Ethan. “I’m going to hang out here a bit longer. Good night, Abe.”

  Abe paused at the door, then called back over his shoulder, “Good night, Ethan.”

  Chapter 13 – The Crossroads

  Bert knew that the band members were feeling anxious about Los Angeles. But if he took the band’s emotions and multiplied them fivefold, that might describe how he was feeling. He had uprooted the musicians and created upheaval in their lives. Most of them hadn’t given up much, but what little they had back in San Francisco still provided a tenuous security that was preferable to the complete uncertainty here. At one point he asked Gene directly, “Do you think I jumped the gun bringing us to L.A.? Do you think we should be somewhere else?”

  “Maybe,” Gene had conceded. “There’s dissension in the ranks for sure. We’re going to need some positive reinforcement fast or these guys are gonna be wanting to get back home.”

  Not only that, we’re going to run out of money soon, Bert thought to himself.

  On a Thursday morning after one of the Redeemers’ shows, Bert headed over to The Crossroads to speak with Pete Wilson. The club’s manager had been pleasant enough in his dealings with Bert, but it was clear to Bert that he was a strictly-business kind of guy. He would talk to Bert just long enough to make whatever arrangements were necessary with the band, and then he would turn his attention to other matters, be it taking a phone call from a liquor distributor, checking the night’s receipts, or going over policies with the head bartender.

  The chairs were still upside down on tables when Bert arrived, but he was let in by a bartender who was in the process of setting up. Pete was in the back, he told Bert.

  Bert found the short, stocky manager hunched over a desk writing checks. Bert cleared his throat, and Pete looked up.

  “Bert, good to see you. Nice show last night,” he said, standing up and extending his hand. “What brings you here?”

  Looking him confidently in the eye, Bert said, “I wanted to talk to you about our time slot. While we really enjoy playing here, and I appreciate your taking us on, I don’t see us realistically getting any exposure playing Tuesday and Wednesday nights. The Redeemers and I know we can pack them in for you if we just had the chance for people to hear us play. Do you guys draw a happy hour crowd those days? Maybe we could start earlier?”

  Pete studied Bert for a moment. “Hmm, maybe. I’m not sure how well that would go over. But I know how you feel. You came all the way down here from San Francisco, and you could probably do this well back up there. I’d rather not lose you guys, to tell you the truth. You’re reliable and well behaved. I can’t say that about all my acts.” He laughed. “Plus, you guys are good. I mean, really good.”

  Then he looked as if a light bulb had just appeared over his head. “Bert, this is your lucky day. We’ve got this band, Credible Threat, playing here tomorrow night at eleven. They’re pretty hot locally. We had decided to go without a warm-up act for them, but we had been on the fence about it. Do you guys want to play from nine to say, ten-thirty or so?”

  “Would we?” asked Bert rhetorically. “Hell, yes! Thanks for the opportunity. We’ll bring the house down.”

  “You don’t need to do that. Just keep the crowd entertained until Credible Threat goes on. Also, you need to know that I can’t guarantee anything beyond that. We’ll have to see how it goes. I can’t always go by my taste. It’s a fickle world out there.”

  “I understand, but you don’t need to worry. We always make the most of our opportunities. We’re the Redeemers.”

  Bert thanked him and left the club with a rediscovered bounce in his step.

  True to his prediction, the Redeemers wowed them at The Crossroads that Friday night. When the band started to play, the audience was already larger than its peak earlier in the week, and the crowd swelled to near capacity by the time the band left the stage at the appointed 10:30. The crowd loved the mix of originals and cover songs, and for the first time in the club’s history, as Bert would later learn, the crowd spontaneously called an opening act back out for an encore. Responding to chants of “We want the Redeemers!” the band came back out and played a drawn-out, bass-guitar-overloaded, totally raucous version of Otis Blackwell’s “Paralyzed.”

  Minutes after the encore, Pete Wilson offered Bert the same time slot for the next several Fridays.

  The band members rode the adrenalin from the Friday night performance for several days, but it wasn’t long before they started to feel like fish out of water again in Los Angeles. The reality was that performing twice per week (they had dropped Tuesday night) left a surplus of time on their hands in a city that was intimidatingly huge and where they had no financial means to avail themselves of any activity beyond playing music. Dave and Ethan continued to write songs, the band continued to practice, and Aaron had gotten himself some work cleaning up at The Crossroads, but all in all, they were a long way from home and a little stir crazy.

  Friday nights took them away from these feelings and elevated them to new heights. They played off the energy from the crowd, which flocked to see them as word rapidly spread of the band. And as long as the Redeemers were on stage, it was easy to block out the dissention. When Charlie was on stage with his saxophone in his hand, for that brief hour or two it was as if nothing h
ad changed.

  * * *

  As the Redeemers came off the stage following their second Friday night performance at The Crossroads, Charlie was on his way to the bar to get a few beers for his buddies when he was intercepted by a man in his late twenties or early thirties, looking slightly out of place in his khakis and polo shirt.

  “That was an outstanding set you guys just played,” he said.

  “Thanks very much,” replied Charlie, grinning appreciatively and continuing to the bar.

  The man walked with him. “You know, you look really familiar to me.”

  Charlie paused with his elbow leaning on the bar and gave the man a second and longer look.

  “Have you spent any time in Las Vegas?” the man asked.

  “Who? Uh, me?” Charlie replied instinctively. “No, you must have me confused with someone else.” Charlie’s pulse quickened with the fear that his past had caught up with him after all these years.

  The man looked dubious. “Really? I’d swear you used to play the Gin Joint while I tended bar there.” The man slapped the wooden bar top excitedly. “Your name is Charlie, right?”

  Charlie hesitated.

  “Mark Tomlinson,” the man said, thrusting out his hand.

  The lightbulb went on for Charlie. “Oh my god, Mark! I remember you! Sorry I didn’t recognize you right away.”

  “It’s the hairline, I think. People say I’ve aged a lot in the last few years,” he laughed.

  “I didn’t realize tending bar was that stressful.”

  The Crossroads’ bartender appeared and Charlie ordered the beers, including one for Mark. Eric came over and Charlie handed him three of the beers. “I’ll be there in a couple minutes,” Charlie told him. Eric nodded, took the beers, and headed off to his entourage.

  “Oh, I’m not doing that anymore,” Mark answered, when Charlie’s attention had returned. “I’m now the director of entertainment at the Emerald City Hotel & Casino. How long have you guys been playing together?”