Jazz Moon (15 page)

“Don't turn away,” a gunman said, smiling, jubilant. “Open them eyes!” He cocked his rifle. “Now, goddamn it!”

Beating complete, they dragged him to a patch of sycamores and stripped him to the waist. What used to be Roland was now a wreckage. He was barely conscious as they tied his hands behind his back. He couldn't hold his head up, so they kindly did it for him as they fitted his neck with a hemp rope. They mounted him on a chair that Baby Back recognized as one from the shack. Someone kicked the chair. Roland's eyes bulged to life as he danced in the air. Seconds later, his body swung limp and lazy in the dank air.

But the mob wasn't done.

They sawed through the rope with a knife. Roland crashed to the ground. They slopped him with gasoline, lit a match. He gusted into flame in an instant.

The crackers congratulated each other—backslaps, handshakes—and dispersed, leaving behind a crackling mound of roasting human flesh. The seamy smoke slithered up to the sky. Vultures picked up the scent, began circling overhead.

 

Ben was usually the one who got held, but this time a trembling Baby Back sought shelter.

“What happened to Gracely?” Ben asked.

“His pa sent him away. Nobody ever saw him again. I gotta get to Paris, Ben.”

“Then go. I want you to. But come back.”

“And have to share you with that woman and her kid? Hell no.”

So Ben finished packing. More like stuffing everything into his suitcases as quickly as he could. The trunks they had bought for Paris remained in the middle of the room, a reminder of what might have been. It took three trips to get everything into the taxi. Baby Back didn't help. Ben didn't expect him to.

“Good-bye,” he said, typewriter in hand, about to begin his final trip down the stairs and out of Baby Back's life. “I'm sorry. I love you.”

Baby Back pressed something into Ben's free hand. A ticket for the boat to Paris. He put his lips hard against Ben's ear and whispered, “I love you, too. So come with me. This is our chance to be together in a place that wants us.”

Ben's desire to go with Baby Back was so severe, he had to shake himself. “What about Angeline?”

“What about
me?
”

A perfectly selfish, perfectly valid question.

“The boat leaves Sunday at three o'clock,” Baby Back said, his mouth still against Ben's ear. “Change your mind. It ain't too late.”

F
riday evening, two days before Baby Back would sail. Ben sat on the stoop in Mrs. Harrisburg's wicker chair. He couldn't bring himself to go inside. The night had cooled. A trace of humidity remained. It was late, but children played on the sidewalks or out in the street, compelling automobiles to caution their way forward. Some parents shouted at their kids to be careful while others, too busy with their conversations or not present at all, did nothing.

In a few years, Ben's son or daughter would play ball or hopscotch or jump rope and he would be the parent watching astutely. The world was full of good parents and not-good parents. He would be one of the good ones. He would nurture and dote. He would be grateful for his child, grateful even for the careless error that had brought it to existence. But not now. Not yet. Right now he wanted to flounder in the mud of self-pity. He wished he could be as selfish as Baby Back and leave the kid and Angeline in the lurch. But it wasn't in him.

But then, yes, it
was
. Hadn't he abandoned his ma and pa, forcing them to guess his fate? Before that, he had cut Willful out of his life.

It was darker now. All of the young kids had gone in. Only the older ones remained and they sat on their building's steps, trying to act grown—smoking, sneaking kisses with boyfriends or girlfriends. Ben's child would do that, too. He would have to chaperone his daughter and repel the boys with wandering hands; keep his son away from kids who offered him liquor or worse.

Ben rose from the wicker chair feeling as old and stiff as Mrs. Harrisburg. He went inside. The table was set with steaming platters of food.

“I fixed dinner,” Angeline said.

“I see that. I ate already.”

Her face withered. “All right.”

She ate alone, then seemed ready to talk or spend time together.

“I'm whipped,” Ben said. “I need sleep.”

“Sure.” He could barely hear her.

She retired to the bedroom and he to the sofa—a bitter fall from the spacious, grandma-quilted bed. And he had only his own arms to bundle around him.

Suddenly he was so very lonely and he tightened his arms around himself. He would have to be his own lover now. He had begun the drift into sleep when a brutal vision intruded: Baby Back with another man sealed against his chest; his Baby loving someone else underneath that grandma quilt. Ben turned onto his stomach, stuffed his face against the sofa cushion to muffle his sobs. Angeline heard them anyway.

“Benny?”

A moment later she had crossed the boundary of the Neutral Territory and her hands were on his back. Lightly. Comfortingly. But he didn't want her comfort. He turned over and slapped her hands away.

“Go away. Go back in the bedroom,” he said, making no effort to hide the cold threat in his voice. “Don't come out here again.”

 

Mr. Kittredge didn't show for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It occurred to Ben that he had checked out, but he refused to believe he'd leave without a good-bye. He sought out Reggie the bellhop who knew all the gossip and comings and goings at The Pavilion.

“He cut out, jack. This morning. Early. Hired a car to go to Penn Station. I'm telling you, my back ain't never ached so much. I had to bring down trunk after trunk after trunk from that suite. Why white people gotta have so much stuff?”

Ben upbraided himself for thinking a white man found him worthy enough to say good-bye to. But when his shift ended, his boss handed him a sealed package. Inside he found a small leather-bound book. The title
Les Poèmes d'Amour de Pierre de Ronsard
was printed in gold lettering on the black cover. The pages were thin, almost translucent, edged in gilt. Ben flipped through it. Each poem was in French with an English translation beside it. The package also contained an envelope. Inside that, a handwritten note.

Enclosed with the note was a card with a London address and five crisp ten-dollar bills.

He had composed the lines in his head the night before as he lay on the sofa in the dark, and now committed them to type. It was exactly noon. Baby Back's departure day. Ben was alert to each minute, each second that skulked by. The boat ticket lay on the desk, next to the typewriter. He hadn't been able to throw it away.

After work the previous night, he had defaulted to his old walking routine and found memories everywhere. He ended up under the streetlamp across from Teddy's. It wasn't the same, even from outside. Music filtered out from the speakeasy, but it didn't swing without Baby Back. It had been too early for a big crowd. Ben had pictured Fanny and the other waitresses roaming the place, bored. The hostess would be saving her saltiest jokes for later.

Baby Back would be home, preparing for his big day. Ben had considered going to see him, but what was the point? He had come home instead and lay on the sofa and composed his poem, mouthing the words as he chose them.

Angeline set a cup of coffee on the desk. He couldn't comprehend why she insisted on doing these wifely things.

“Can I read it?” she asked.

“No.”

“Oh, come on, Benny. I know it's good.”

She stood over him and began reading. He tore the paper out of the typewriter.

“I said no!”

She backed away, seated herself at the dining room table. “Is this the way it's gonna be? For the rest of our lives?” The question seemed directed at herself rather than him. “I thought the baby would make things different.”

His instinct was to go to her, beg forgiveness. But he stayed put. “It's gonna take a little time for me to get used to this.”

“How could I be so stupid?”

“Angeline, please—”

“I ain't pregnant.”

Years later, whenever Ben recalled this moment, he would try to isolate the feelings that assailed him. Then, taking his analysis further, he would try to determine, exactly, the very first thing that upended him in that suspended half second after Angeline's declaration. It took years of musing to pinpoint that one overriding feeling.

Hope.

“What?” he said, low, menacing. “What the hell did you say?”

“I. Ain't. Pregnant.” Her voice was as low and as menacing as his. And she dared look straight at him. “I said I was so you'd stay. But you don't want to be here. And that ain't about to change.”

He wanted to hit her. His hands shook with the desire and he crushed them into fists and locked them behind his back to calm them. She had destroyed his life. It was too late to be with Baby Back. He looked at his watch. 1:17.

No, it wasn't too late. The boat didn't leave until three o'clock. He flew up from the desk so fast, the chair fell over and hit the floor with a
boom
. He got a suitcase, dumped clothes in, then sprinted all over the house, collecting books, papers, toiletries, more clothes. He could barely close the thing with everything wadded up and crammed in and his hands shaking. He put his typewriter in its case and set it next to the luggage and then stripped out of his clothes and jumped into a traveling suit and he didn't button the shirt all the way and didn't tie the tie and he plunked his hat on his head and he knew he looked like hell and he didn't care because the only thing that mattered was getting to that pier by three o'clock.

He swiped up the boat ticket from the desk, stuffed it in his jacket's inside pocket. Angeline hadn't moved. They looked at each other now. She was crying.

“Good-bye, Benny. You don't want to hear this. But I love you.” No, he didn't want to hear that. Because he didn't want to soften toward her.

“Take care of yourself,” she said. “Please. Good luck.”

She was sobbing the first time he ever saw her and she was sobbing the last time he'd see her. He said nothing as he opened the door and took up the heavy luggage and left, not bothering to close the door behind him.

ambition

H
e couldn't believe it. He tapped his foot, impatient, and checked his watch. 2:20. Forty minutes until the ship sailed and he'd been stalled in a subway train somewhere beneath Seventh Avenue for the last twenty. Stalled and perspiring, although he didn't know if the sweat came from the heat or his anxiety. He was the only one fanning himself. The only one tapping his foot in manic, percussive rhythm. Two white women sat across from him. One read
Show Boat,
the other knitted. Each paused her activity, watched his foot, and frowned. He stopped tapping.

Without that distraction, Angeline's revelation barged to the front of his thoughts. He hated her. But he suspended his hatred, momentarily, to savor the knowledge that he was so worthwhile that she had lied to keep him; that
two
people loved him and had fought for the right to have him. But that gust of self-worth dithered in the face of his current dilemma. He checked his watch again: just thirty-five minutes till that boat carried Baby Back across the Atlantic and out of his life.

A train conductor strode through the car, very official in his spotless uniform, shoulders thrown back, chin elevated, as if he worked for the military instead of Interborough Rapid Transit.

“Excuse me? Sir?” Ben said. “Can you tell me why the delay?”

“Something's going on at Fourteenth Street. Where are you headed?”

“Fourteenth Street.”

“Twenty-third's next,” the conductor said. “If this train ever gets moving again, that is. You should get off there.” He looked at Ben's luggage. “Especially if you're in a hurry. We might stall again before we make it to Fourteenth.”

And the boat might leave before they moved again at all.

Ben tapped his foot again and didn't stop when the reader and the knitter frowned their objections. He thought about what he would do if he missed the boat. Go back to Angeline's and get the rest of his things. Rent a room somewhere, maybe Baby Back's old room. Keep working at The Pavilion. Get a side job. Save until he had enough for a ticket to Paris. Pray Baby Back didn't meet another man in the meantime.

That last thought made him wince just as the train rumbled back to life and bolted forward. It rolled into the Twenty-third Street station at two thirty. Ben had to decide quick: take his chances and stay on this train until Fourteenth, or get off now.

Passengers exited. The doors were about to close. The knitter's hands had gotten tangled in yarn and she hurried to gather her handbag and knitting paraphernalia. She ran off the train just as the doors were about to close. In a moment of decision that felt dangerously like a whim, Ben followed.

He got up to the street and froze.
What now?

The boat sailed in less than half an hour. He'd never make it on foot, even if he ran, so when he spotted a cab idling at a light, he sprinted toward it, opened the rear door, shoved his stuff inside, and got in, all in what felt like one swift, elongated move.

“Pier Fifty-seven,” he told the driver. “It's at—”

“I know where it's at,” the driver said, sounding mildly offended, as if Ben had tried to teach the teacher. “What time's your boat leave?”

“Three o'clock.”

The driver looked at his watch. “You didn't give yourself much time, did you?”

“Just get me there, OK?”

“Hey, pal, I'm a driver, not a magician.”

“Then drive!”

The light changed. They turned from Twenty-third Street onto Seventh Avenue and headed south in the direction of Greenwich Village. Traffic was sparse and moved quickly, but time ticked by. To ease his panic, Ben kept his eyes off his watch and on his surroundings. This part of Seventh Avenue was all cheap hotels and luncheonettes and apartments. Advertising thrived on billboards and signs.

“Hey, pal,” the driver said. “What happens if you miss your boat? Will you get fired? Or they'll just put you on another one?”

“Fired? What?”

“You work on the boat, right? In the kitchen or cleaning rooms or something?”

He wore a newsboy cap on his bald head. A network of grooves lined the back of his neck. He spoke with the accent and working-class gruffness of someone from the Bronx or Jersey.

They were passing Twentieth Street. Ben peeked at his watch: 2:37.

“I'm going to France as a
passenger,
” he said.

“I didn't know darkies did that.”

“
Negroes
do. Guess you ain't kept up with current events.”

“Guess not.”

Nineteenth Street.

Eighteenth Street.

At Seventeenth they stopped at a red light. It took so long to change, Ben feared it was broken. They hit another red light at Sixteenth and when it turned green, they remained stuck because an old man hadn't made it across the street in time. Ben tried to resist his watch, but couldn't: two forty-five.

The old man crossed and the taxi drove on. They turned west onto Fifteenth. By the time they got to Fifteenth and Ninth Avenue, they had landed in the Meatpacking District. The pier wasn't much farther. But at Tenth Avenue, they hit a tantrum of traffic. Cars and trucks and pedestrians and horse-drawn wagons swarmed the avenue, kicking up a flurry of dust. Gasoline fumes, horse manure, and the stink from the slaughterhouses soured the air.

“Hey, pal,” the driver said. “Looks like you're one
Negro
who ain't going to France this time around.”

Ten minutes till three.

In yet another second split-second decision, Ben grabbed his wallet, threw money into the front seat, gathered his stuff, hopped out of the taxi, and plunged into the traffic, spiraling his way around the maelstrom of barely advancing vehicles. He crossed Tenth Avenue, made it to Eleventh, and raced toward the pier. He considered ditching his suitcase to boost his speed.

It was really a series of piers, each serving a different cruise line. Ben ran until he saw the terminal building at Pier 57 that housed the French Line. A sea of cars packed the area in front. He ran inside.

“The boat to Paris—please tell me it ain't left!”

Customs officers stood nearby. One approached. “Not yet. But you're cutting it awfully close. Ticket and passport, please.”

Ben produced both.

The officer confirmed he was on the passenger list. Another inspected his luggage. His ticket was verified, his passport stamped. The first officer told him he'd escort him to the ship.

“Ain't necessary,” Ben said. “Just tell me where it is.”

“Trust me, son: You'll never get through the crowd by yourself.”

He was right. With the officer in front shouting, “Make way! One more passenger! Make way!” Ben muscled through the morass of well-wishers, all shouting and waving up to their loved ones who waved back and blew kisses from the deck of the ship. The rabble hemmed him in on all sides as a blizzard of streamers and confetti swirled in the air.

“Make way! Make way, please! One last passenger!”

They bullied their way through the crowd and approached the ship, a gargantuan thing floating on the water, light and carefree as a leaf. The hull was solid black. BONAPARTE was etched onto the hull in white letters that slanted to the right. Three red and black funnels rose up from the ship's top, gushing steam.

They got to the ship just as the gangplank was lifting up and away from the dock. The officer blew a whistle and waved his arms.

“Lower the plank! One more passenger!”

It lowered.

Ben started up the gangplank, giddy, spent, woozy, galvanized. The confetti and the streamers continued swirling. The crowd below shouted joyfully, as if they were the ones embarking on this trip.

Someone was in the entryway at the top of the gangplank. Just standing there, as if waiting. A man. Ben got closer, saw the man was colored. And tall. And broad-shouldered.

Ben reached the top.

“Well,” Baby Back said.

“Well.”

They looked at each other as if neither believed the other stood before him. Ben could barely see the tears in Baby Back's eyes because of the tears gathering in his own.

 

They attacked each other before the door to their cabin was even shut good and fell into a ferocious round of fucking. Ben tasted a glimmer of blood on his lip where Baby Back got carried away. As the
Bonaparte
sailed out of New York Harbor, Ben couldn't tell if the topsy-turvy motion was the seesawing of the waves or the in-and-out, rolling-and-rocking of him and Baby Back as they tumbled and flopped over each other with the clumsy poise of playful kittens.

He couldn't believe his luck. The turmoil of the last weeks was like a chronic pain that had suddenly vanished. A miracle? It didn't matter. He had been a dying man who found out he was going to live; a pauper who now possessed gold. It was as if he had tricked the clock, sneaked a few weeks back in time to that happy period before their lives were upended by a lie. They were back to the way they should be, as if they had never been uprooted.

The kittens bit and growled and scratched. Insatiable. Better than it had ever been. Was that possible? To pick up where they left off and be better than before? Baby Back had waited for him. He had left Harlem without him, yes, but then parked himself at the top of that gangplank, praying for an off chance to pan out. The sight of him had made Ben think the notion of their separation was just that: a notion, and nothing more, case closed.

The kittens growled their last, then fell against each other, beat. Baby Back was the first to speak.

“I didn't know you memorized it,” Ben said.

“I didn't either. It suddenly came back to me. Like you did. And it's gonna stay with me. Like you are.”

So it
was
possible to pick up where they left off, reverse time and circumstances, redeemed, stronger, the slate licked clean and glistening like honey. Ben felt invincible, his life with Baby Back assured. Only one bit of unfinished business: forgiveness. A formality, but necessary.

Mr. Poet, please, please forgive me
.

Forgiveness was like charity: You could dispense it, or not. And, as with charity, the one dispensing held the power. Ben wallowed in Baby Back's arms and in the power he wielded over the big, handsome trumpet player who so often took the lead, took control, made Ben subservient. Ben's power to forgive (or not) was an equalizer: It raised him to Baby Back's level.

The request was imminent. Ben would grant it. But he'd make Baby Back suffer first. Just a little. Payback for his offensive rejection of compromise; for gambling on an off chance at the top of a gangplank when they should have ascended it, side by side. When Baby Back begged his forgiveness, Ben would climb onto a high horse and gently educate his stubborn lover on the merits of compromise and selflessness; use his status as charitable forgiver as a mechanism to change the man.

But that could wait. Exhausted Ben began descending into well-deserved sleep.

“Mr. Poet, I want you to know something: I forgive you.”

The descent halted. “Come again?”

“Everything's all right now, Ben. I forgive you.”

He sounded like a king granting an imperial pardon. Ben wormed his way out from under him.

“You forgive me?
You
forgive
me?
It should be the other way around.”

“The other way around? You got Angeline pregnant—”

“But she ain't really pregnant,” Ben said.

“The point is you were unfaithful. For that, I forgive you. Why the hell you think that
you
should be the one forgiving
me?
”

“Because you were gonna leave me. You
did
leave me. You wouldn't compromise. Baby Back, when you love someone, you compromise.”

“When you love someone, you don't fuck somebody else.”

They swatted accusations back and forth.

“You didn't think about nothing but yourself. You didn't think about
us
.”

“Well, you didn't
think
.”

And they defended themselves.

“I came up with a solution I thought would work for both of us.”

“I was trying to make the best of a fucked-up situation.”

They stopped. Stumped, they said nothing. They couldn't, wouldn't look at each other. Ben had thought the slate had been licked clean. Now he just felt licked.

Minutes passed. The interlude allowed him to get his first good look at the cabin. LeRoi Jasper had arranged their accommodations in first class; said if Negroes were coming to Paris on his dime, they were traveling in style even if it cost a fortune. This room certainly did. Chest of drawers and desk made of rosewood. Damask on the walls. Silk linens on the bed. A private bath with a marble floor and sink, and a tub of lustrous porcelain supported by four silver claw feet.