The Spyglass Tree

by Albert Murray

  And Don’t think I don’t appreciate that either, she said, and then she said, Look, I hate to be fussing at you like you ain’t already got troubles enough, Will Spradley, but goddamn man, there are white folks and there are white folks and you been around long enough to know what kind of white folks Dud Philpot is. Dud Philpot come from some of them old backwoods rosin-chewing razorback peckerwoods. Any fool ought to be able to see that, Will Spradley, she said, and then she said what she also said about knowing that class of white people once person-to-person. Because, if your folks and their folks have been knowing each other for a while, that made all the difference in the world and you turned each other favors and country folks to country folks regardless of being on different sides of the color line when you came into town.

  But if you were just another one of us trying to transact business with one of them that you don’t know, they can excuse themselves for anything they do against you. From cheating to lynching. Because all they have to remember is that in spite of the fact that their white skin is supposed to put them above you, even the slaves back on the old plantations were better off than their so-called free but often raggedy-assed and half-starved and mostly despised foreparents.

  You’re right, Miss Boss Lady, Will Spradley said. Cain’t nobody dispute that because here he comes jumping me like that after all them weeks and months I been meeting them time payments. You sure right because I feel like a fool for being surprised and now just look at all this trouble I might be causing all of us. That’s how come I’m trying to find Gile. Because it’s all my fault and I know it now and maybe it’s too late.

  I was listening and trying to put the situation together as well as I could and as fast as I could, and at first the problem was that I thought that Will Spradley was somebody who worked at the club or maybe at the Pit and then I had thought maybe Will Spradley was in such a hurry to see Giles Cunningham because he needed to borrow money to pay off an overdue debt to Dud Philpot, whoever Dud Philpot was, and then I realized that I had already become that much a part of something about which I didn’t yet really know anything at all.

  I sure do hope Gile hurry up and get here because I got to see him and tell him, Will Spradley said, because I don’t want him thinking I’m like that because I know what people always subject to say and it ain’t fair because it ain’t true because I might be poor and sometimes I might have to take low and pick up what I can but I ain’t no white man’s nigger. I don’t care what nobody say. I ain’t never done nothing against my own.

  He know Gile, Will Spradley went on talking as much to himself as to me and the Boss Lady. He got to know Gile. Everybody know Gile Cunningham, and everybody know Gile Cunningham ain’t never about to be giving in to no Dud Philpot, so then here he come buck-jumping at somebody like I’m the one when all I’m doing is standing around out there waiting for him so I can straighten up with him and get on about my business.

  Then the three of us were just sitting there, waiting as if for the next weather report as you did when you were down on the Gulf Coast during hurricane season, and that was when Hortense Hightower asked him if he felt well enough to fill me in on what the situation had added up from. She said I was her young friend from the campus, and he said, Sure because I’m the onliest one that can tell it to you just exactly the way I got myself all tangled up in all this mess like this. Sure, because maybe you the kind of college boy that can see my point, like I’m counting on Gile doing. Because he the one I’m counting on. Sure, because most of these other folks ain’t no better than white folks.

  But he didn’t begin at the beginning. He began at the point where he was coming along the railroad spur and was stopped by Giles Cunningham in a car being driven by Wiley Peyton, and as he went on talking and dabbing his nose and mouth with the face towel that he kept dipping into the basin of water on the stool in front of him, he recounted everything, not only word for word but sometimes also thought for thought and almost breath for breath. So much so that it was not only as if you were an eye and ear witness but also the actual participant himself.

  Maybe it was because I just couldn’t stop thinking about the music I had come to play on the phonograph that evening. Maybe so, maybe no. But as closely as I was following every detail of the story Will Spradley was retelling, not only for my benefit but also for his own, as soon as he started telling about it in his own way and at his own pace, it was also as if you were listening to an almost exact verbal parallel to one of the Ellington records that was near the very top of my list for that night. It was called “In a Jam,” but not because it was a song with lyrics about being in trouble. So far as I know, there never were any lyrics. The chances are that it was so named because it was an instrumental composition derived from the interplay of voices in a jam session.

  And yet, of its very nature as a piece of music, “In a Jam” was also about being in a tight spot. A jam session, after all, is a musical battle royal, and as such it is always a matter of performing not only with hair-trigger inventiveness and ingenuity but also with free-flowing gracefulness which is to say elegance, not only under the pressure of the demands of the music itself but also in the presence of and in competition with your peers and betters.

  All of which also added up to making the jam session a matter of antagonistic cooperation that enriched the overall rendition even as it required each instrumentalist to perform at the very highest level of his ability. Such, as every jazz initiate knows, is also precisely how the jam session also serves to expose the fact that there are times when the personal best of some musicians is none too good. Not that such is the basic function of the jam session by any means. Originally it was simply a matter of participating in a jamboree in celebration of something. Nor did anybody understand all of that more than did Duke Ellington even back then the plaintive emphasis of whose score makes it all too obvious that in this instance he was more interested in the structure of the jam session as such than with what he was later to call the velocity of celebration.

  In any case, it was as if Will Spradley’s plaintive voice, which already sounded so much like Tricky Sam Nanton’s plunger-muted trombone to begin with, was also by turns all of the hoarse ensemble shouts plus the sometimes tearful piano comps and fills of Duke Ellington himself as well as each solo instrument including the alto of Johnny Hodges, the clarinet of Barney Bigard, and so on through the call and response dialogue to the somewhat bugle/trumpet tattoo sound of Rex Stuart’s cornet out-chorus solo that you heard every time he made any mention of Giles Cunningham.

  When he came to the point where he made his getaway through the back door of Dudley Philpot’s store, he stopped and just sat sighing and grunting and shaking his head and dabbing the cold towels to his nose and mouth again, and Hortense Hightower said, Man, goddamn. Man, look like you coulda done something to keep that bony butt son-of-a-bitch from kicking your ass like this. I swear to God, Will Spradley, I swear to God.

  But all he would say then was, I just want Gile to hurry up and come on over here so I can tell him and explain my part to him because he the one all this is about and I don’t care what these old other folks think because they going to say what they going to say about me anyhow. They don’t want to know the truth. They just want to talk about somebody. But Gile is a businessman and he knows business is business and that’s the way he is and that’s what I like about him.

  Well, just take it easy, she said. He’ll be here in a little while. Just as soon as he can, she said. But goddamn, she said to me then, can you believe all this stuff you just been hearing, Schoolboy? Myself, I know damn well it sure the hell is happening, but I’m still having a hard time believing it.

  XXII

  You could tell that Will Spradley didn’t really believe that it was really happening either. Even as he sat sighing and moaning and nursing his lacerations and closed eye, you could see that he was still expecting to wake up and find that all of the pain and breathless urgency was only a part of a very bad drea
m brought on by his worries about his money problems which, given just half a chance, he could explain his way out of for the time being.

  But when Giles Cunningham finally made it there and filled us in on his part, you knew that he was not having any problem at all in believing in the consequences of what he had become caught up in several hours ago when Dud Philpot had come charging into the office out at the Pit, because all during the time he was talking to the three of us, he didn’t miss a step or even pause in the preparations that he was making for his next move.

  That was when I found out what he had been doing while I was helping Hortense Hightower give first aid to Will Spradley. She had called him as soon as Will Spradley had showed up, saying what he was saying, and he had clued in Speck Jenkins at the Pit, Wiley Peyton at the Dolomite, and Flea Mosley out at the Plum, and then he had headed over to Gin Mill Crossing to the poker game in Yancey William’s club room, because that was where he could find most of the help he was counting on, and when he pulled into the yard and saw the other cars he knew that most of the friends he was looking for were there already.

  Big Bald Eagle Bob Webster opened the door and reached out to slap-snatch palms and stood grinning his ever-so-playful but ever-so-steady, bald-eagle-eyed, scar-cheeked grin at him with the others acknowledging his arrival without really looking up from the tobacco-cozy, corn whiskey cozy pomade-plus-aftershave, cozy hum-and-buzz at the green-felt-cushioned poker-round table.

  Hell yeah, it’s him all right, Bald Eagle Bob Webster, whom some called Eag and others called Bar-E, said. Grady MacPherson, who was holding the deck, said, Yeah, come on in here, man, goddamn; and Eugene Glover said, Hey, goddamn right, come on in here. Hey, where you been, man? And Felton Carmichael said, Hey that’s all right about where the hell he been. Just bring your old late self on into this old chicken-butt house now, cousin.

  He had stepped inside but he still stood where he was and waited with his hand up. The others, some sitting around the table as players, others hovering around, some only as onlookers and others waiting a turn—or the right moment—were Solomon Gatewood, Logan Scott, Eddie Rhodes, Curtis Howard, and Wendell Franklin, who said, Man, pull off your coat and money belt, and Logan Scott said, Hey, we been waiting for you, man.

  So come on in here with all that money, man, Curtis Howard said, and Grady MacPherson said, All that long money, man, and Solomon Gatewood said, Come on in here with all of my money, man, and somebody else said, Man, come on in here with all of all of our money, and nobody noticed that he was standing with his hand up because they were all so busy signifying at him and laughing among themselves without interrupting the deal going down at the same time that nobody had turned to look at him as yet.

  Old money himself in person, Logan Scott said back over his shoulder, still watching the table, Come on money, and Wendell Franklin said, No, man, you talking about Mister Money. Come on Mister Money. And Curtis Howard said, Hey, wait y’all. What’s this cat doing coming over here at all? With all the money he already got, this ain’t nothing but some little old nickel-and-dime stuff to him. And Eddie Rhodes said, Man, that just goes to show you about money people. Now me and you just trying to pick up a little extra change because it will come in handy, but Old Giles Cunningham just like to be around money, even if it ain’t nothing but a little chickenshit chicken feed like this. And somebody else said, No, man, Old Giles Cunningham like to have money around him, and Eddie Rhodes said, Hey, yeah man, that’s a good one—right around his waist.

  They were all laughing, and you couldn’t help laughing at yourself with them, and you knew that they knew as well as you did that all of you always came together whenever you could, mainly because you always had such a good time just being together. Not that at least a little playful wagering was not almost always a part of it. Indeed, even when they were all emotionally aligned on the same side of some contest. They were likely to make side bets on specific aspects of the performance, such as point spread, extra points, home runs, extra base hits, strikeouts, or knockouts, round-by-round point tallies and so on. But obviously such petty wagering was always far more a matter of ceremonial risk-taking and sportsmanship than of making a killing. Clearly the main reason that they used to make such a big deal of getting together to listen to the radio broadcasts of the important prizefights and the World Series and the Rose Bowl Game back in those pretelevision times was that it was the next best thing to sitting together at ringside or in the grandstand.

  So what say, Giles, Logan Scott said, come on in the house, and Wendell Franklin said, Man, ain’t you got that money belt off yet, and that was when they all finally turned to look at him and saw his hand up even as he laughed along with them, and that was when he said, Hey wait a minute, y’all. I trying to say something. Bald Eagle Bob Webster said, Hey Ho(ld) y’all. Hold on, hold on, hold on. He stood fanning his hands across each other in front of him and then he cocked his ear and said, Hey, what is it Giles? What’s the matter, man?”

  Hey, I’m sorry I’m late, y’all, he said, but looks like somebody got another kind of little game that just might be shaping up out there tonight. It might be just a threat, he said, but you never know, and that was when he told them about what had happened between him and Dudley Philpot out at the Pit that afternoon and about what Hortense Hightower had told him on the telephone about Will Spradley.

  So now I guess it’s supposed to be my turn if I’m still here after he told me to unass the area, he said, and Eugene Glover said, Giles, you mean to tell me that Dud Philpot told you that? Not Dud Philpot, Giles. Man, you can’t mean some weasly clodhopper like Dud Philpot think he can come up with some old tired-ass peckerwood shit like that. Man, come on. And Bald Eagle Bob Webster said, Just tell us what the fuck you need, Giles, and you got it, man, you know that.

  They were all waiting then and he said, Well, Eag, I could use some of y’all over at the Pit with Speck and some others over at the Dolomite with Wiley, and I got a couple of other things I got to see to by myself, and Yancey Williams said, Well, you just go on, Giles. You just leave that to me and Eag. We’ll divide them up. You get to Speck, Eag, and I’ll get to Wiley. And look, Giles, if a gang of them happen to jump you out there somewhere, all you got to do is make it on back over here. Hell, you know goddamn well ain’t none of them going to try to follow you over in here.

  Man, Bob Webster said, you couldn’t pay none of some somitches to come over in here even before they got taught that lesson. I’m quite sure they’ll never forget when they let some fool talk them into going up on the campus that time.

  Everybody there remembered what had happened (and had not happened!) back some fifteen years earlier when the Ku Klux Klan was on the rise again for a while, following the World War in France. Some could tell you about it from first-hand experience and others had heard about it from somebody who had been either personally involved in one way or another or were around at the time. But the account of it that I have always been most familiar with is the one that Deke Whatley used to recount in the barbershop when he used to get going again on one of his first-chair sermons on the folly of political action without organization.

  Anybody think I’m just talking about some kind of old church membership politics already missed my point, he always used to say. I ain’t talking about nothing where you got to go to meeting and they collect dues for some sanctimonious hustler in a Cadillac to rake in. Hey, remember that time when a bunch of them Old Ku Kluxers put on all of them sheets and shit and come talking about they going to bring a motorcade through the campus to show niggers that white folk mean for them to stay in their place? Well, gentlemen, the whole goddamn crew of them goddamn drunk-ass rednecks were all the way onto the grounds before it finally hit their dumb-ass asses that they hadn’t seen a soul, not because everybody was either up there hiding under the bed or peeping out from behind the curtains, but because there were all of them combat-seasoned AEF veterans in the student body at that time and they and the ROTC cadets
were all deployed in them hedges and behind them knolls and on top of them buildings, all them goddamn sharp-shooters and bayonet fighters and ain’t no telling what else, gentlemen. Sheeet, them goddamn crackers got on the hell on through here in a hurry, then, and went on out somewhere and found themselves a hill and burned a chickenshit cross and went on back home and went to bed. Now that’s what I’m talking about when I’m talking about organization. Them white folks said, Oh shit, these niggers up here organized! Let’s get the hell out of here. And now that brings me to another point. Did you ever notice whenever some white folks go somewhere to pull some old shit like that and you let them get away with it, you going to see it all over the papers, and here comes all them old reporters from up north, can’t wait to feel sorry for us and ain’t going to do a damn thing to help out. But when some of us turn the goddamn tables on them somitches, all them newspapers act like ain’t nothing at all happened in the first goddamn place. That’s some more stuff I been studying for years and you know what I found out? I think them somitches know what they doing. Gentlemen, if they had put anything in the papers about how these folks had them people scared shitless because they were organized and just watching and waiting like that, it’s subject to drive white folks crazier than the Brownsville raid, and ain’t nobody fired one single round of nothing.

  I also remember him saying what he always used to say about Gin Mill Crossing when he used to get going about how the main thing in that connection was to let them know that you ain’t going to take no shit lying down! And y’all know good and damn well I ain’t talking about getting up somewhere woofing at somebody. You know me better than that. I’m talking about just letting them get the goddamn message that it’s going to cost them something because you willing to put your ass on the goddamn line. Otherwise, here they come with some old foolishness like it’s their birthright to make niggers jump. But now you take them people over in Gin Mill Crossing. Old bad-assed Cat Rogers himself don’t go messing around over in there without first off giving somebody some advance notice, and he’s the high sheriff and a tough somitch by any standard. Even if Cat want to get somebody that everybody already knows broke the law and got to go to jail, Cat always going to call Yank Williams or Big Eag, and they’ll either say come on in or we’ll send him out or he ain’t here, and that’s good enough for Cat Rogers. That’s what I’m talking about when I’m talking about Gin Mill Crossing gentlemen.