No Matter How Much You Promise

by Edgardo Vega

  Despite her obvious well-being, Florence still wore a hurt look on her face. The look reminded him of the image of his sister, Melinda, tied to the post. He knew that Billy, too, had that look of defeat hewn into his eyes, as if he had also seen too much futility, too much horror, too much hopelessness. Butterworth was too old and doubted that he could do much about Billy. He had tried, God knows he had tried.

  As he was dozing off he heard the conductor announce that the subway train was arriving at the Ninety-sixth Street station. He got up wearily from his seat and reached for his cigarettes, then realized he was still on the train and tried to relax to counteract the pain in his chest, but all he could think about was watching Billie Holiday again, her voice low and throaty like a beautiful fog … “I cover the waterfront, in search of my love.” Thinking about her eased the pain in his chest, but stirred up memories of those days, and then his heart would break for sure.

  “I sure wish things could be different between us, Billie.”

  “They can’t, baby.”

  “Why not?”

  “They just can’t, Pop. You’re like my brother,” she’d said.

  “But I love you, Billie.”

  “And I love you too, honey. You’re family, baby.”

  And now she was gone and he was alone, just walking down a long road that went on forever.

  23. Banjo Blues

  He was not by nature a sentimental man, but the call made him remember his youth. Just a month short of his seventy-sixth birthday, Buck Sanderson was still quite active. While he didn’t think much about his past, getting a call from Billy’s girl, the Spanish girl, as his wife called her, had excited him.

  “Well, sure thing, darling,” he’d said. “Your family’s coming up for the cookout tomorrow and we can talk about it then. How’s that sound? Just be sure it doesn’t unsettle your daddy.”

  “Okay, Grandpa,” the girl had said. “Horty and I will be over tomorrow early to help Grandma Brigid. About noon,” she added, using Cookie’s other nickname to put her great-grandfather at ease. “Bye.”

  Buck stood by the phone, shaking his head, wishing they’d call that poor girl something other than Hortense. Of all the names Lurleen could’ve chosen, Hortense was the worst. That was his grandmother’s name and never had the Devil spawned a nastier old woman. She smoked a corncob pipe, ran a still, and shot her old man’s butt full of buckshot when she caught him with a gal from the next county. And her husband, poor Trent Bailey, sixty-seven years old and worn out, was just talking. It didn’t matter none. She was convinced he was up to no good and the minute he had a chance he’d be at that young thang like some ole hound. Hortense McLeish, or the Sheriff, as men called his grandma behind her back, otherwise referring to her as You Bet Miz Bailey Ma’am. His grandmother had once smacked him so hard that whenever he thought about it his head still rang and he saw stars. God, what a nasty woman. But Horty was nothing like that. She was sweet and funny; then again, she was a tough little critter.

  He stepped out on the porch, checked the sky for rainy weather as he always did, figuring as soon as storm clouds came, his wife would begin complaining about her rheumatism. He couldn’t stand listening to her, but it was worse when he had to look at her wrinkled, sad face and her gnarled and knotted fingers. He lit his pipe, holding it in his mouth in just the right way so that it didn’t dislodge his upper plate, puffed on it, smelled the sweet aroma of tobacco, and sat down in his rocker.

  At the age of twenty-five, Harley “Buck” Sanderson had liked thinking that sitting in the middle of a jam session down on Beale Street in Memphis, picking on his banjo while the rhythms and melodies of the different instruments were going every which way like strings of party paper falling from the ceiling, was closest in feeling to watching a woman’s face when the pleasure was coming on her.

  In the beginning there had been dozens of women in his life, both white and black, ladies and whores, young and mature. Eventually he’d come to New York and after a year of drifting from one lonely bed to another, he met his wife, Brigid, and settled down, which he was grateful for, because women left him weak and helpless to deny them their wishes. There were always complications in leaving one for another. His relationship with his wife had also changed, leading him to stray. He didn’t like to think about this secret part of his life, his daughter, Maud, being the only one who knew about his transgression, and this quite by accident.

  He was a big rawboned man with rugged good looks, his hair once blond turned white, although still thick and luxurious. But it was his eyes that set women’s hearts aflutter. Brilliant blue, they looked out at the world from deep-set sockets. In the large, liquid eyes there appeared a constant plea for help, whether a need was there or not. Born in the hills of central Tennessee into perennial poverty among God-fearing people whose only relief from fundamentalist determinism was music and the independence of the forlorn, he escaped his lot in life through sheer will, some luck, and his drive to be within women, finding in them not only solace but profound pleasure.

  At the age of seventeen he’d left his home in the hills to come west into the town of Claymore, where he had family, and work at the paper mill. A short time later he made the mistake of getting involved with a young woman by the name of Charlotte Randall, a schoolteacher. Her husband was a state senator who spent a good deal of his time in Nashville. After he had secured a job at the mill, Harley Sanderson rented a room from a widow who ran a rooming house. Each day, on his way home from the mill, he passed Charlotte Randall’s house, and he’d see her sitting there reading. Once in a while her husband was with her, but most of the time Charlotte was alone on the porch. As summer passed and the days grew shorter, she spent less and less time on the porch, and not seeing her tore at his heart.

  One day she was standing on the porch—he liked to believe waiting for him to come by. When she looked up, he tipped his cloth hat and said, “Evenin’, ma’am,” but softly, so that the only person who could’ve heard him was himself, but she nodded her head slightly and the insinuation of a smile crossed her lips. He didn’t see her again until a few weeks later, when Jimmy and Bobby Tyrell, who worked at the mill with him, said they were going to be playing some music over at Silas Cummings’s house and heard that he played and would he like to join them. He said it would be a pleasure, but he’d have to go by his room, get cleaned up, and pick up his banjo. They said they’d see him at Silas’s house, which was a quarter of a mile past the railroad tracks.

  He went back to the rooming house, took a bath, spruced himself up, and put on clean jeans, wool socks, and a checked flannel shirt against the chill of fall. He brushed his work boots and combed his blond hair, got the banjo out from under the bed, and made his way back down the street, cutting across the town square with the statue of Major General Winslow P. Claymore, who’d led a regiment of Tennessee volunteers against the Yankees near Vicksburg, Mississippi, toward the end of the war, chasing them deep into the state before being cut off, dying gallantly leading his men in one last charge.

  His heart beating desperately and hoping he’d see her, Harley Sanderson hurried up the street that led past Charlotte Randall’s house. He saw her sitting on the porch, staring at the dusk, her face beautiful in the light and shadow of the oncoming evening. He slowed down his pace and walked closer to the picket fence to get a better look at her. When he could see her clearly he again tipped his hat and greeted her. She smiled at him and came down from the porch to stand at the picket fence.

  “Good evening to you,” she said.

  She was a good ten years older than his seventeen but she looked no older than he did and her smile filled him with profound joy.

  “Evening, ma’am,” he replied, stopping in his tracks to admire her. She laughed nervously at his wonder, pleased and dangerously flattered.

  She was a tall young woman, with a strong body, pert breasts, and a long waist that descended voluptuously to ample hips, then tapered gently to full thighs and lon
g calves. If there was a flaw to her features, it was that her nose may have been too bony and possessed a small bump halfway down the bridge, but her eyes were large and china blue, deep set, the lashes long and black, so that they seemed to be somnolent and inviting, what he later learned were called “bedroom eyes.” Her lips were full and painted in ruby-red lipstick. Her hair was black and thick, tied severely in a French knot. The black hair, more like that of the native Chickasaw Indians, contrasted severely with her white skin, giving her porcelain-like complexion and cheekbones a high sheen. Charlotte was wearing a simple blue dress, a sweater, stockings, and low heels.

  “Are you on the way to a dance?”

  “No, ma’am. Just some fellas getting together to play a little music over at Silas Cummings’s house outside of town.”

  “My name’s Charlotte Randall,” she’d said, sticking out her hand over the fence. “I teach over at the school.”

  “Harley Sanderson. Folks call me Buck.”

  “You’re not from Claymore, are you?”

  “No, ma’am. The hills east near Lookout Mountain, but I got folks outside of town. I gotta work to help out my ma and my pa. We got younguns.” He didn’t want to tell her that his father had been caught making whiskey and was doing time. “There ain’t much to do up there, so I’m working at the paper mill.”

  “I understand.”

  “You ain’t from Claymore either, are you, ma’am?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Are you from Chattanooga?”

  “No, Dyerburg. Upriver from Memphis.”

  “No lie,” he said, excited by the news and stories he’d heard about the music played in Memphis by blacks. He wanted to ask questions but realized that it was getting dark. “I better go. Don’t wanna keep the boys waiting.”

  “Well, don’t stay a stranger, Buck.”

  “No, ma’am,” he said, turning and tipping his hat to her, hearing the music of her voice in his mind and her beauty making him crazy for her. It wasn’t anything like Louise up in the hills, kissing him and letting him feel her tittles. This was something different, and as he walked he realized that he was hard and his organ was pumping up and down on its own against his jeans. He walked faster, trying not to think of Charlotte Randall. Eventually, as he got closer to Silas Cummings’s house, the desire subsided and he was able to play. Everyone praised him for his mastery of the banjo.

  Silas Cummings’s daughters, Jean and Tillie, were good-looking girls, about fifteen and sixteen like his girl Louise Kincaid, and, like Louise, they kept grinning stupidly at him, their crooked teeth marring otherwise beautiful young faces. They’d whisper things to each other and then snicker into their hands and look his way as if they were talking about him. There were several other young girls there but none of them made the least impression on him.

  When he went home that night he went directly to the outhouse, unbuttoned his pants, urinated, then held his organ. Just thinking about Charlotte made him erect. He almost began to button his jeans, but instead grabbed his organ firmly and, blocking out the stink coming at him, pulled on it several times as he imagined lifting up Charlotte’s skirt and going inside of her as his brother Frazier had said he’d done to Becky Whitmore and Lynn Thurman. Frazier explained what he had to do, but he couldn’t imagine, and he thought about Louise’s titties all soft and imagined touching Charlotte’s body so that after the fourth time he’d pulled back on his dick the stuff was coming out of him, spurting and spurting and his hips driving forward so that he nearly passed out, almost moaning from the enormous pleasure, ending up banging his organ against the wood of the outhouse. The jolt sobered him up and he quickly tried putting it back in his pants but the damned thing wouldn’t go down so he jacked off again.

  He laughed now, thinking about Pop Butterworth telling him about this one woman and how all he had to do was take a look at her butt and his dick got “harder than Chinese algebra.” That’s exactly how it was back then. It was a torment and he was always hard as steel. Billy’s girl had said she’d talked to his old friend Butterworth, whom he hadn’t seen since Billy came for Christmas before going to Vietnam. That was in 1968, almost twenty years ago. It was good to have friends but this one was worth his weight in gold, and he was forever grateful that Pop had looked after Billy back then after the boy’s father had died and poor Maudy was on the verge of joining him. Butterworth had taken him to Mae Wilkerson’s and helped him study the music. He missed Pop. The jazz scene had died off, people stopped coming to jam, and time had passed the old players by, Butterworth included. He heard that he’d gone to work running elevators downtown. He guessed not being able to keep Billy from going to war ate at Pop as well. The boy was so close and Pop couldn’t convince him to stay and become Miles Davis’s pianist.

  It had been more than a half century, and just thinking about Charlotte made him want a woman. Why did he have to answer the kid about her father, anyway? He could’ve said he didn’t remember, but he prided himself on his memory, still retaining the ability to play all the songs he’d learned as a boy up in the hills, where his uncle Will taught him to play the banjo. But it still made him ashamed to have to call Ruby and sneak out at night, after his wife was asleep, walking down the hill to his old car and driving over to Mount Vernon to see her. Billy’s girl was a persistent little son of a gun. And pretty. God, she was a pretty little thing. What the heck was she, anyway? Billy’s daughter. That made her his great-granddaughter.

  He reached into his shirt for his ballpoint and on the notebook where he kept track of things that he had to do he subtracted 1929 from 1988. Fifty-nine years. He had to stop thinking about all that nonsense with women or else he’d have to go see Ruby tonight. Maybe it would all pass. It took longer and longer each time and the visits to her were less frequent, but Ruby was so good to him that the pleasure lingered for weeks.

  Buck Sanderson still loved his wife, but she did nothing for him and had never been too interested in the whole matter of lovemaking, submitting to him willingly enough, but always uninvolved. The most beautiful body of any woman he had been with, but totally lacking in passion. “Brigid, what do you think about when we’re doing it?” “Nothing, Buck,” she’d answered. “Something must cross your mind.” “I dunno. Mebbe a shopping list, or sometimes I say a Hail Mary, thinking about my poor old mother, dead all these years in Ireland.” It was understandable that the girl wanted to know so much about her father. But it was one question after the other and whatever he said she was back to why Billy didn’t want to play anymore. She explained that she didn’t want to ask him questions because it upset him. And did he think that he would play again if she encouraged him?

  Thinking about Billy made Buck Sanderson recall taking the boy down to Tennessee after he’d come back from Vietnam. Being back down there made him recall Charlotte Randall all over again. When he’d come down from the hills to work at the paper mill in Claymore, the president was Hoover, and when he took Billy down home in ’73 there was this peckerhead Nixon sitting in the White House. You could tell he was an old-fashioned liar and would sink the country. And his bright, sad boy, the joy of his life, more than a grandson to him since he’d had to raise him after his father’s death, but more so because here was the musician he himself would have enjoyed becoming, the boy whose long fingers were able to coax ineffable beauty from a piano no matter how simple the tune, and now he just sat looking out at the world through a curtain of nightmares, his right hand mangled and a piano making him shudder as he went by it, so that eventually Buck had the piano removed from the house after Billy came back from the war and was living with them.

  It was a good piano, too, and had been played by Kenny Lyons, Pete Johnson, Sandy Gold, Iggy Marginat, and a few others on those Saturday afternoons when he was still working for the subway system and eventually was the steward of his shop, the union just starting out and the Irish lighting up the city behind the Transit Workers Union. Joe English had gotten him the job at the
207th Street yards as a car repairman after they’d met at a dance he was playing for the Ancient Order of Hibernians and where he’d also met Brigid in 1931. Joe English, Joe Morrison, George Meany, Mike Quill, Billy Burke, Tommy O’Shea, Patrick McHugh, and Serafino Machado, who he guessed was Spanish, and who got arrested with Mike Quill and the rest in 1934 for fighting the injustice against transit workers. All of them tough and smart. But it was Joe English who had helped him the most. He was from South Carolina, and Joe had liked him instantly, taking comfort, he always thought, in his own southern accent. The dreams of playing music continued, but after the children started coming and he had to feed and clothe them, he knew it was over. It was then that he took to inviting his old friends to come out and play, and they’d come up for a cookout in the backyard. The Saturday afternoon and evening music parties during the warm months, from May to September, became a tradition, and people would talk about going up to Yonkers and getting some fresh air up at Buck Sanderson’s. They’d jam late into the night and nobody had a care because the Depression was over, and FDR was going to lead them to happy days again. Eventually the Second World War came and everything was somber again and there were blackouts; but as soon as the war was almost over, the jam sessions began again because, hell, all the kids were coming home.

  24. Going to School

  Of all the fellows who had tickled the ivory on that piano nobody, but nobody, made that instrument sing the way Billy did. Once Pop Butterworth began taking him up to the Bronx to study with Mae Wilkerson after his daddy’s death, the boy had blossomed. He’d sit at the piano for hours, doing scales, playing things he’d learned and experimenting with chords so that sometimes Pop just stood admiring him as Billy curled himself over the keyboard, extracting one more ounce of feeling from the notes.