El’s attention was drawn back to the music. The kid playing the string bass was engaged in a flirtatious back-and-forth with Charmina, who made her way toward the band, her fists bulging with bills. She climbed onstage, shaking her hips in perfect time to his thumping beat. The band began “Jesus on the Mainline.” To the roaring approval of the audience, Charmina playfully tucked her last fig leaf into the bassist’s shirt pocket. Then she and Percy returned to the pole to finish their dance.
The bass player was a healthy-looking red-haired kid. Studying his sweet young face and his permanent blush, El imagined that the boy’s cheeks had been pinched by a doting grandmother just before he took the stage. Poor messed-up Leroy had been around the same age as this youngster when he’d ruined the bar floor in 1949, and they were both good musicians. But Leroy, who had been as scary and strung out as the redhead was angelic, switched his addictions every season or so and could never have been accused of looking healthy. When Leroy was doing cocaine, he would rush the tempo so aggressively that they had to add an extra song to each set to fill the remaining time. On heroin, he stretched everything out so long that Bubba would turn gray from lack of oxygen as he tried to hold the ever-lengthening notes on his sax.
Leroy outlived Bubba, but not by much. The band was in Memphis recording their one album, the one that was supposed to make them all rich and famous, when Leroy announced that he was done. Done with dope. Done with alcohol. Done with loose women. Done with the band. He said that Bubba’s death had shown him the error of his ways. As he packed up his bass, Leroy told his bandmates that they were heathens in his path. Then he raised his middle finger to them and stomped off to seek God. They never saw him again.
El never learned if Leroy found God. But God found Leroy for sure. Just a week after leaving the band, Leroy was struck dead by a bolt of lightning while walking down a busy Memphis street. He had his wallet in his hand and was exactly halfway between a Christian bookstore and a massage parlor when the lightning got him. Whether he died a righteous man or a sinner depended on who was telling the story.
“It’s a sweet, sweet day to be alive, ain’t it, El?” someone said.
The mixture of rasp, sibilance, and singsong was unmistakable. One of the many remarkable things about Forrest Payne was that what you heard coming out of him didn’t match what you saw, not even a little bit. He had the off-center nose and hulking build of a boxer, though he’d never been in the ring. His hands were checkered with faded jailhouse tattoos. But when he spoke, he sounded like a twelve-year-old bully performing a mean-spirited imitation of a young girl with a lisp.
Forrest, like El, was a tall man. Both of them had once been six-three. Neither towered over the crowd the way they once had. But wasn’t everything smaller now that they were old men? The music, the people, the entire world. El was months shy of his eightieth birthday. And Forrest … El didn’t know for sure how old Forrest was, but he knew that Forrest was every bit as close to the grave as he was.
Forrest wore a canary-yellow tuxedo with a white silk shirt. Lacy ruffles poked out of the cuffs of his jacket sleeves. It was the uniform he had worn since he’d opened the Pink Slipper in 1949. El had been along when Forrest bought his first yellow tux at a shop in Evansville the night before the club opened. Five minutes after they’d walked into the store, a slick salesman had the two country boys convinced that the yellow tux was practically a necessity for any young business owner. “This suit announces, ‘I’m lively and classy, too,’” he’d said. And they’d been naïve enough to believe him.
By the time Forrest realized he’d been taken, he had grown to like the way he looked in yellow. Six decades later, he owned twenty garish yellow tuxedos. Few people had ever seen him wearing anything else.
Forrest placed a manicured hand on El’s shoulder. “It’s a sweet, sweet day to be alive,” he said again.
“I wasn’t expectin’ to see you around today,” El said. He watched a slightly drunk young couple crash into each other as they negotiated the crater in the floor. Then he asked, “Your wife here, too?”
“Bea won’t come in a place that sells liquor.” Boasting of his respectable bride’s virtue caused Forrest to puff out his chest and straighten his spine. “She might show up out in the parking lot and do a little protestin’ later. She’s determined to steer me over to the right path. God love her.”
“That oughta keep her busy,” El said. He brought his hand to the breast pocket of his jacket before remembering that he had given up cigarettes after a bout with pneumonia a few years ago. Besides, by law, there was no smoking in the Pink Slipper now. Clean air and blues men drinking water in public. What had the world come to?
“Gonna have a honeymoon?”
“Oh, we’ll take a trip sometime soon. But I’m not about to miss my man El.”
The band launched into an up-tempo anthem, and the crowd responded by clapping along with the drumbeat. El swung and flexed his aching foot in time with the music. “They’re good,” Forrest said. “But y’all had the hunger.”
“We had the hunger, all right.” El chuckled and tossed back the rest of his drink. “We were damn near starvin’. Remember that time Lily passed out in the second show, nothin’ in her stomach?”
“Yeah.” Forrest hummed along with a few lines of the tune the band was roaring through. Then he said, “Speakin’ of Lily, a customer from the old days came through last week and told me he’d run into her in Chicago.”
“Don’t know anything about that,” El grunted. He regretted having mentioned her name. Being here was bad enough.
Forrest pointed at El’s empty glass, and the bartender rushed over with a refill. “James was at the wedding,” Forrest said. “Did you see him?”
El waved his whiskey beneath his nose like smelling salts. Setting his drink on the bar, he used his index finger to push an ice cube to the bottom of his glass. He brought his finger to his mouth and let a drop of whiskey, far better liquor than he could afford these days, roll across his tongue. “No, I didn’t see him.”
“I’m not tryin’ to meddle in your business, but you might wanna go talk to James. Your son is a good man, and I bet he’d be glad to see you.”
Careful not to put weight on his aching leg, El turned on his barstool until he was facing the band. “I’ll take that under consideration,” he mumbled.
Understanding that it was time to change the topic of their conversation, Forrest said, “So you gonna sing my song tonight?”
“I figured you’d probably had enough of it.”
“I’ll never get sick of that song. I want you to play it every night you’re here. And record it. We got the latest equipment.”
“Whatever you want. It’s your club.”
After months of searching, Forrest had tracked El down in Missouri. The job El had been working, a week at a hole-in-the-wall in St. Louis, didn’t pay much. But it was the best gig he’d landed since Hurricane Katrina had run him out of New Orleans and put him on the road for the first time in years.
El’d had two nights left in St. Louis when he’d gotten the phone call. The manager of the club, standing just offstage, had waved him over between sets. “Some guy’s on the phone for you. He’s been calling all day.”
The manager, who was used to cops on the hunt for his employees, leaned toward El. He whispered, “Listen, if something bad is about to go down, don’t let it happen here. Okay, man?”
There was a time when hearing from a club manager that he’d received a mysterious phone call would have sent El running out the back entrance, into the alley. But those days were gone. Anybody he’d owed money to had either died or long since given up trying to get it back. Old age, lack of energy, and a sometimey prostate meant that there had been no serious woman trouble in his life for years. Any lawmen looking for him had given him up for dead decades ago.
The caller hadn’t been a lawman, a bill collector, or an angry husband. When El picked up the receiver in the manager’s offic
e, he heard a melodic, hissing voice that he recognized immediately. Forrest Payne said, “Hey, El. I need you to come to Plainview and play for my wedding.”
El hadn’t been back to Indiana since the 1970s. He had been born there and raised there. But he never owned up to that anymore. If asked, he claimed New Orleans as his home. Now here was Forrest Payne, the man who had given him his first paying job, more than sixty years ago, asking him to return to the scene of so many early triumphs—and crimes.
Forrest said, “I’ve had five marriages, and only the first two were worth a damn. I’ve been trying to figure out what went wrong with the last three before I do it again. And you know what the difference was?”
El heard the snick-snick of a cigarette lighter and listened as Forrest sucked in two scratchy inhalations. When he understood that Forrest was waiting for a response, El said, “I don’t know. What was the difference?”
“You, man. You’re the difference. You played for those first two weddings and brought me good luck. I need that luck again.”
“You don’t need any luck from me,” El said. “No rich man needs to borrow luck from somebody as broke as me. You got all the luck, gettin’ married at your age. Seriously, I’m damn near eighty. You must be what, ninety?”
Forrest said, “Don’t worry about how old I am. I’m older than twenty-one and younger than dirt. All you need to know is that I want you here bad enough that I hunted you down.”
“I appreciate the offer.” El turned his back to the club manager, who sat across the room at his desk, pretending not to listen in on El’s phone conversation. Speaking more quietly, he said, “I had trouble in Plainview. I’m not lookin’ to start it up again.”
“I’m the only person above ground here who remembers you or the troubles you had, and I need you next weekend. And listen, I know you’re the best, so I’m prepared to treat you that way. I’ll pay you what that dump is paying for a week, if you’ll sing one song at my wedding. You know which one I want. On top of that, I’m offering a week of shows here at the club, two weeks if you got the time. I’ve got a good young band to back you up. Listen, work the two weeks and I’ll pay you for three.”
A two-week gig was tempting, especially for three weeks’ pay. But hell, he’d once crossed his heart and promised he wouldn’t return to Plainview. And he’d been proud that he’d kept that one promise. There had been some good things in his life in Plainview, four to be exact. And the only one he still had was his guitar. He’d destroyed the other three, with youthful selfishness, cruelty, and violence. The thought of a day in that town made El feel as if a hand were squeezing his throat.
“Look,” he said, “I appreciate the thought, but Plainview ain’t the place for me. Besides, what would I do in a titty bar for two weeks?”
“First, old friend, that is the saddest question I have ever heard a grown man ask,” Forrest said in a mock-sympathetic whine. “Second, the Slipper’s gone respectable. It’s a music club now, like the old days. Hell, the mayor’s in the front row listening to the band as we speak. And his wife’s there with him.” Forrest released a hoarse cackle so loud that El had an impulse to pull the phone away from his ear.
“I’m offering you good money. Come to town and bring me some luck,” Forrest said. Then he quoted a dollar figure that made all the bad times El had experienced in Plainview seem slightly less awful. El’s more positive feelings about Indiana lasted until he had accepted Forrest’s offer and hung up the phone. After that, fear rushed in. He was certain he’d just made a dreadful mistake.
* * *
THE SNAKE DANCER took her final bows. She exited the stage with the wicker basket that had once held Percy and was now overflowing with cash. The emcee told the audience to prepare themselves for some great old-time blues. El took his guitar from the case that was stretched across the two barstools next to him. It was the same leopard-spotted instrument he’d played since 1949. Folks might forget El’s name, but they always remembered Ruthie, his gold, black, and white beauty, his guitar.
El hobbled to his place in front of the band. He thanked the audience, acknowledged the young men behind him, and sat on his stool.
This set would be a long one, alternating between his solo numbers and some tunes with the band. Throughout the first two songs, El struggled to forget where he was, to block out images of Lily and his former life. All the other old folks he knew lived in terror that their memories would fail them, but El felt cursed with total recall.
During the third song in the set, he finally slid into that sweet place. The guitar became a part of him, the music pouring directly out of his body. He began to improvise more extravagantly, stretching the key and leading the bass player on a chase that the young man had difficulty keeping up with. The kids on the stage were excited by the challenge, though. They soon let go of their nerves.
Near the end of the set, El hit his stride. Tonight would be special for the youngsters and for him, too. Then his numb foot came alive again, the pain sharper than it had ever been. His leg was on fire from his knee to the arch of his foot. He was singing when the pain interrupted. He was at the peak of a phrase, floating a high note over the bass line with Ruthie and with his voice. Discomfort forced him to take a quick inhalation of breath and let loose a sharp gasp. El kept going. A few seconds later, he was back in sync with the music. But the throbbing continued.
He managed to get through another twelve bars. Then he signaled the band to take a round of solos. The college boys rose to the occasion, and by the end of the tune, El felt slightly better. He blocked the sensation of nails pounding increasingly deeper into his foot by singing and playing louder. By the time he got to the last song, each of the kids in the band believed that this gig was the best experience of his life, and the audience was in a frenzy.
El finished the set with the song Forrest had requested, “The Happy Heartache Blues.” By the final verse, more than a few listeners, including El’s old friend, were in tears. The audience stood in ovation.
Unfortunately, when El tried to stand, everything around him shifted, as if the entire room were plunging through the hole that Leroy had built into the floor. He was falling, twisting, toppling sideways to avoid landing on Ruthie. Had there been an earthquake? First that damn hurricane, now an earthquake. I am one cursed son of a bitch. But even as he thought this, the recognition came to him that no one else had moved and that the quake was entirely within him.
The audience’s applause ended in a communal gasp. And the sound of one old man hitting the floor.
The band members reached El first. The redheaded bass player was pre-med and began checking for injuries. El argued that he was fine. The boy insisted that El not try to get up. The emcee came to the stage. He took the microphone and calmed the crowd, saying, “Everything’s under control, folks. We’ll have the show going in just a minute.” He launched into some tired jokes. More people gathered around El.
Forrest Payne, his yellow tuxedo glaringly bright beneath the stage lights, appeared beside El just as he was sitting up. Charmina dropped to her knees to El’s right and began to pray.
“I’m all right,” El said. “Just help me up.”
Charmina and the musicians began to lift him. They managed to bring him to his feet, but one step was all it took to prove that he couldn’t put the slightest bit of weight on his leg. And he was cold, wet with perspiration, and beginning to shiver.
“Don’t worry,” Forrest said. “There’s an ambulance on the way.”
El was about to argue that he just needed a little help getting back to his barstool and his therapeutic whiskey when the sensation of being weighed down forced him toward the floor again. Once more, Charmina knelt beside him. When El realized he was laden with the bulky python, which had slid from Charmina’s shoulders to his as she’d helped lift him, he understood the reason for his feeling of overwhelming heaviness. Briefly, he felt relieved. Then the snake gave El’s chest a squeeze.
“Percy real
ly likes you,” Charmina said.
El sat, bathed in the dazzle of Forrest’s tux and the glow of the stage lights, as the python wrapped him up from waist to neck. Outside, the sirens grew louder.
What a fool he’d been to come back to Plainview. Leaving this place and staying away had been the only smart things he’d ever done. Now he would be punished for breaking his vow never to return. And, as if all the bad memories weren’t enough, it turned out that his foster mother had been right all those years ago. The Day of Judgment was upon him, and it had come with a big snake.
CHAPTER 3
The same moment El Walker hit the floor at the Pink Slipper Gentlemen’s Club in Plainview, a performer who had recently begun calling herself “Audrey Crawford” sat down at a piano onstage at the Simon Theater in Chicago. Even before the welcoming applause had faded, she wished she had chosen different attire for this venue. Her gown was silver lamé—vintage, more than fifty years old. Its long, clinging sleeves had looked great in her mirror at home and just as good in the dressing room here at the theater. But the damn thing was hot. Sweat ran along Audrey’s hairline beneath the blond wig she wished she could rip from her head. No, she’d been taught as a youngster that horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies glow. She wasn’t sweating; she was glowing her ass off. As soon as she returned home, she would take a pair of scissors to those silver sleeves, if not to prepare the dress for the next time she wore it, then at least to exact revenge on it.
The gown and wig did make her look glamorous in an old-movie-star way—from a distance, at least. She knew how to move elegantly onstage and, hot or not, the silver dress was flattering. Both her look and her name—a combination of Audrey Hepburn and Joan Crawford—were perfect fits for the Simon Theater, a former neighborhood movie house that had been renovated in the style of a 1950s supper club.
The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues Page 3
