by P. F. Kluge
EM:
Yes.
FR:
Feelings. That’s what separated Eddie from Sally and from a thousand other guys. He had a knack of catching moods, crystallizing emotions, of … realizing life. Sometimes he’d start with the music, some basic rhythm or little riff. Sometimes a word or a phrase. And he’d bring the two together. That’s the exceptional thing. Oh, he’d carry us along with him sometimes, but usually he was way out in front, and when he’d found what he wanted, he’d come back to where we were slugging away, and he’d try to make us understand. He wasn’t always able to. It drove Sally up the wall, but there was nothing wrong with Sally. He was just like everybody else. Music was work for Sally. A trade. For Eddie it was a voyage. A trip, I guess you’d say. And that’s all I’m saying about Eddie right now.
EM:
Sure. Fine. Now the others.
FR:
Two newcomers. Kenny Hopkins and Wendell Newton. Hopkins was a blond California-lifeguard type. He wasn’t really, he was from Westfield, New Jersey, but that’s what he was like. I knew him least. But I always had the feeling that this was only an episode for him. Later, he’d pass on to something else. He played okay, but you always felt he was a short-timer. He used to talk about keeping his options open. That was his pet expression. His girls were “options”—but I think he went at everything that way. He was always lining something up. Not like Wendell.
EM:
The black piano player.
FR:
Eddie shortened it. We called him the Bruiser.
EM:
Tough dude?
FR:
Wendell?! Hell, no. He was a frail puny kid out of Newark, New Jersey.
EM:
And did anyone—
FR:
Wait a minute. Something about Wendell Newton. He never said much, always smiled, everything was fine. I thought—still think—he was the best of us all. Personally he was the best. And musically. Eddie had the magic, but when it came to pure music, Wendell ran deep. He played piano mostly, but he did some sax, like the intro to “Far-Away Woman,” and he was always experimenting. I even caught him playing a sad, sad flute. Eddie was Eddie. But Wendell was any number of people. If I’ve wondered about any of them, he’s the one. You don’t know if he ever did anything else in music?
EM:
No.
FR:
He never showed up anywhere?
EM:
Not by that name. And I think I would have heard. I try to keep in touch. No.
FR:
I’m sorry.
EM:
How did you shape up as musicians?
FR:
Well, I was the worst, hands down. You see, I’d never played.
EM:
Never played?
FR:
That’s right. When Eddie decided he wanted me with the Cruisers, I asked, what for? I can’t play. He said, “Give me twenty minutes, I’ll teach you. It’s easy. Like getting laid.” That was a joke, you see, because at that point I knew even less about women than guitars. So he added, “Or riding a bicycle.” And he taught me, so at least I could stand up there and not embarrass them. As for the others, Sal was an adequate guitarist, like Eddie, and played piano too, though Wendell handled that. Hopkins was okay. For the most part we were journeymen. All this came later, of course. That first night, I was only a spectator.
EM:
No one else was there?
FR:
Doc Robbins. I later learned he was the manager. He swept in and out. Flimflam man, barnstorming actor, snake-oil salesman. I’d never met anybody like him. That night, he was there just briefly. And there were a couple girls.
EM:
Whose girls?
FR:
I forget, if I ever knew. It doesn’t matter. …
Nothing mattered more! Why is it that the women of that one year are all so vivid? Is it because I was younger? Because I was a virgin, and everyone I saw might be my first? Maybe so. I was so alive, waiting for my life to begin! How many women did I have during that year as a Parkway Cruiser? Two dozen? And yet the most vivid of all was Eddie’s girl, Joann. She was there that first night.
The very thought of her disturbed me. I could tell myself it was a long time ago. But just then, when she walked out of the background of the scene I was describing to Elliot Mannheim, she took my breath away. It was like something suddenly stirred in my chest, breaking inward compartments, breaching walls, mixing together what the years had sorted out.
Joann and the other girl came over to the bar where I’d been sitting with the one book that I carried that summer, a Louis Untermeyer poetry anthology. I’m not sure I’d actually been reading it, but the idea of reading poetry in a bar before dawn mattered a lot to me. God! What a pompous little phony! And she knew it. She sniffed out the vulnerability, the virginity, and everything. She did nothing but smile a little at me, and we both knew she had my number.
EM:
So they took you on? A nonmusician? Why?
FR:
I’m still not sure. Oh, I know it was Eddie’s decision. Hopkins took it as a joke. Wendell was puzzled, though too polite to say anything. Sal beefed about how my coming on cut down on his piece of the pie. So it was Eddie. All I can tell you was how it happened. …
It started that first night, though the summer was nearly over before I got onstage. The rehearsal wasn’t going well. Even I could see it. There had been problems adding two new men to what had been a duo, and Sally wasn’t making it any easier. He threw off a lot of stubborn, literal-minded, exasperating questions. Sally didn’t like new ideas, not if the old ones still paid a living wage. Before long they were shouting at each other, and Eddie called for a break. He came over to the bar where the girls were sitting and I was supposedly reading poetry. And he talked about the problem they were having. It was such a small thing! …
FR:
There’s a minor song we did—“Down on My Knees.” Have you heard it?
EM:
Sure.
FR:
Well, there’s this phrase that Eddie sings: “Come on, baby … baby, come on!!” Now Sally wanted him to sing it like it was prose, with no break and no emphasis on the repetition. “Come on, baby, baby come on.” “Nice and steady, like it’s a damn hula!” Eddie said. Sally pictured dance tunes, and nobody should lose the beat, miss a step. Eddie wanted the pause and he wanted to hit the repetition hard, so that what was first heard as an invitation returned as a … scream. Are you with me?
EM:
What happened?
FR:
He told the girls what was happening. He spoke real low. Things were tense. Then he asked me what did I think. Should he sing it straight through, like Sally wanted? Or should he pause? You know what I said? It’s embarrassing now. I said, “I like the caesura.”
EM:
Caesura?
FR:
He didn’t know what it was either. He got this incredulous expression on his face, and he started laughing. …
“What did you say?”
“Caesura. It’s a—”
“No, wait a minute.” He put one hand on my shoulder and motioned Sally over with the other. “Hey, you big dumb guinea.”
Sally stalked over, looking as if he’d already lost the argument. It was always that way. When they were both shouting angrily, there was a chance Sal would prevail. But when Eddie came out with that amazed, boyish, tickled-to-death laugh, it was over.
“Who’s he?” Sally asked.
“I’m the porter. I work—”
“An expert,” Eddie interrupted, pointing at the poetry anthology on the bar. “College professor. Now what did you say about ‘come on, baby … baby, come on’?”
“I said I liked the caesura.”
“See, Sally. My way. With the Caesarean.”
“What’s a—”
“Tell him. What’s your name?”
“Frank.”
&nbs
p; “Tell him, Frankie.”
“It’s a phrase used in poetry criticism. A caesura. It’s a timely pause, a kind of strategic silence. It’s not dictated by meter or beat, but by the meaning of what you’re trying to get across.”
“That’s just exactly right,” Eddie said, sounding as if he were prepared to correct me if I slipped. “Now show this man one of those things. Give him a for-instance.”
“Well … there’s Milton.” I thumbed desperately through the paperback.
“Yeah, Milton’ll do fine,” Eddie approved. “Take your time, Frankie.”
At last, I found it.
“This is from the opening of Paradise Lost. I’ll read it without the caesura, then I’ll read it with. I think you’ll hear the difference. Here goes. ‘Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree, sing heavenly muse.’”
It came out prosaic, singsongy. Sally never had a chance.
“Sounds like shit,” Eddie said. “Now let’s hear it the other way.”
“‘Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree … sing heavenly muse!’”
“Now that has got a little class!” Eddie said. “Sally, am I right?”
Poor Sal shrugged and walked back to the bandstand. Eddie followed, but he turned to me before he left the bar.
“Good. You can stay.”
FR:
… that’s how it started. Eddie got in the habit of dropping by the bar and talking. When they performed, he’d stop in the storeroom between sets. We talked.
EM:
But that made you a member?
FR:
I was the Wordman. Don’t you see? It’s the only thing that my life now has in common with my life then. Words. Eddie started using me as a critic, a sounding board, a tryout. By the end of summer, he decided he wanted me to come along, and that was all right with me. So I became a Cruiser. There you have it.
No, he didn’t have it. And neither did I … quite yet. As I spoke to Mannheim I sensed vast gaps opening up in the story I was telling. So many things I was leaving out, things hardly remembered, things I couldn’t say: how I watched the Cruisers from behind the bar, the way they joked and played, the things they cared about, and the things that concerned them not at all. I came from a good family that lived orderly lives, that planned and saved, piling day on day, as if building a wall around a property they’d barely taken time to contemplate, saving their enjoyment for when the work was done. And here were the Cruisers, throwing themselves into each day as if it were the first and last. They blew me away, every one of them. There wasn’t one I didn’t envy, wouldn’t have traded places with. For how long? Maybe not forever. But for a while! For now! For as long as I could feel the way that they felt, every day.
Joann noticed me first, I’m sure. She’d catch me staring at the stage while the Cruisers played, or singing crazy little bathroom falsettos while I restocked the coolers in the morning, doo-wops and sh-bops that nobody was supposed to hear. I think it amused her to see me change, see me drawn into Eddie’s world.
Dancing was part of it. My repertory began and ended with the box step. I was only a few years away from dances where all the boys threw one of their shoes in the center of the gymnasium and the girls got to dance with the guy whose shoe they picked off the floor. I figured I was awkward, and thinking made me so. I compensated, though. It suited me just fine, leaning against Vince’s bar, making devastating comments about the action on the dance floor. It was a perfect perch for the chicken-hearted. I got to be pretty funny. At that time, the Cruisers were doing mostly covers of other people’s songs. And I tossed off on-the-spot parodies, especially when Joann was there to hear them. I even adopted the old Steve Allen routine of reading lyrics deadpan, as if they were serious verse. All things considered, it served me right, one Friday night when I was being very droll that Joann simply yanked me out from behind the bar and forced me onto the floor. We danced. And to my great amazement, nobody laughed at me or even noticed I was there. Was I good? Hardly. But I was no worse than all the rest. I was part of the crowd, and that felt good.
From then on, it was just a matter of time. Eddie started taking an interest in me. He got in the habit of hanging around the back room, which he called his office or his studio. First he called me “kid,” and then “kid four-eyes,” from the glasses I needed for reading. That lasted till the afternoon he named me—crowned me—“Wordman.”
I came in from my morning swim and found him waiting for me there, sitting on my couch. I was surprised to see him. Nobody else was there yet, not even Vince.
“How come,” Eddie asked, “I never notice how this place smells at night?”
“What smell?” I asked, switching on my hot plate to boil water for coffee.
“Beer, man,” he said, gesturing at the cases of empties stacked against the wall. “Don’t you smell it? Warm, stale beer. The dregs. Last night’s beer, and the night before’s.”
“Oh yeah.” I shrugged. “I guess I like it. Beer is summer to me … and …”
“What else?” Eddie asked. I thought he might be laughing at me, the way Sally and the others laughed when I got a little too thoughtful.
“I don’t know. It’s masculine and it’s organic. It’s the memory of good times. And a way of measuring them. I just look up from my bed, and I know how well we did the night before.”
“Holee shit!” Eddie said, laughing softly.
“Okay, okay, I know what Sally would say.” Sally had a way of pretending he was playing a violin and asking sarcastically, “Could we put this to music?”
“That’s why I’m here, kid,” Eddie said. “And for Christ’s sake, don’t tell Sally.”
“What do you want, Eddie?”
“Words,” he said. “For songs.”
“Lyrics?”
“Yeah. I want songs for the Cruisers. Our own stuff.”
“Eddie, I’m no songwriter. That’s a profession. People spend years—”
“What am I gonna do?” he asked impatiently. “Call up the union and tell them to send somebody over? Like it’s some busted plumbing? You’re here now. Whatever we got right now, you’re part of. So write. Instead of those smart-ass takeoffs I been hearin’ about.”
“But what do you want? I need something to go on.”
“I want songs that nobody else is singing,” Eddie said, getting up. To him, asking me for songs was a casual errand, like ordering a pizza to go. “Something a little distinctive, you know? That people are gonna remember? Like your damn beer bottles. Jesus, I got to get out of here.”
Those were my instructions. Except that I’ll always remember the look he gave me as he turned in the doorway on his way out. The way his eyes enlisted me. And his smile goaded us all.
“And, Wordman? Don’t tell Sally. He’ll think I’m aimin’ to put us on the ‘Voice of Firestone.’”
I realized that it was up to me to end the interview with Mannheim. He’d sit forever, changing tapes. Everything I had, he wanted. But there was too much that I wasn’t ready to give. I thought I’d said enough. And besides, I told him, it was getting late.
That upset him. We’d barely begun, he said. There was so much more to talk about.
Like what? I asked.
Everything.
What about what I’d already told him? Was that nothing?
Oh, that was fine, but there was so much more. He seemed almost angry, as if I’d been cheating him. He wanted to know about the development of each song, how the words and music came together. And everything that happened after the summer: the tour, clubs, concerts, the sessions down at Lakehurst, and the accident that ended everything.
That settled it. …
“Mannheim, there’s no way on earth I can go through that accident story tonight.”
“I’m not sure you realize the importance of the information you have,” he answered firmly. The nervous petitioner had been replaced by a young man who knew exactly what he wanted.
And who hadn’t gotten it yet.
“Maybe I do know the importance,” I countered. “Maybe it’s so important to me that I can’t go through it all tonight. I want to think about it. Eddie’s dead and you’re alivè, but he was my friend. … I just met you.”
He backed off immediately. “Hey, I’m sorry. I was out of line. I was so excited at finding you. I wanted to get it all.”
“You got plenty.”
“And good stuff. I’m grateful. But look … there is more. Do you think I could call you again?”
“Again? Did you call this time?”
“I mean … well, next time I’ll call and we’ll set it up … at your convenience.”
“Call the school. The office. Don’t call my home.”
I drove him to the bus stop, with five minutes to spare before the last bus back to New York. If I hadn’t ended the taping, I’d have been stuck with him for the night. Maybe he hadn’t thought about that, or maybe he didn’t care. It’s hard to be sure about someone like Mannheim.
“I hope you find the others,” I said, as we drove through town.
“I’ve got some leads. I’ll let you know when I get back to you, how I made out.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“Any messages? If I get lucky.”
“No. Just tell them Wordman says hello.”
“Anything else?”
“Tell—if you find Wendell—tell him that life is turning out to be longer than expected.”
“What’s it mean?”
“He’ll understand.”
When we reached the bus stop, Mannheim grabbed his bag and opened the door.
“Thanks again,” he said, “and I’m sorry if I got pushy.”
“Forget it,” I said. I offered him my hand. He took it, shifting into the thumb-grasping handshake some of my students used.
