Juneteenth (43 page)

And didn’t I try to get away! I must have sat there for hours, numbed. Then when the realization struck me I got up and put him in the bed with a bottle and went to Beulah’s and ordered a pitcher of corn, broke in the door because she didn’t want me in there and all the others leaving when they saw who I was. And I drank it and couldn’t feel it so I left there. And walking down the railroad tracks, between the two shining rails not caring if a manifest struck me down or if I could get to Atlanta in one piece, stumbling between the gleaming rails like a man in a trance. Then finding myself at Jack’s place and beginning to shoot craps with those farmhands and winning all the money and having to break that one-eyed boy’s arm when he came at me with his blade after my winning with their own dice. Then stumbling out of there into another dive and then another, drinking and brawling, but always seeing that baby reaching out for me with his little hands that were growing stronger and stronger the farther I moved away from him. Till I could feel him snatching me back to the room as a dog leaping the length of his chain is snatched back to the stake driven in the ground.

That little ole baby, that li’l ole Bliss. So I had to go back and get him. Made up my mind. Slept all day and left the next night with him in a satchel. That was the beginning. Took him to Mobile where
we stayed in a shack on the river. And him getting sick there, almost dying and getting him a doctor and pulling him through with the help of God; still mixed up over why I was trying to save him but needing to bad enough to learn to pray. The Master must have really smiled then, but I was still trying to leap my chain. Running out of money in Dallas because the boys were afraid to play with me because they had heard about Robert and Mamma and then I show up with the baby and they didn’t know who would come looking for me and I wouldn’t explain a thing. Pride, that’s what it was, but I said that if they couldn’t take me back for my way with a horn then they didn’t need to know anything else about me. So I shined shoes and I swept the floors and cleaned the spittoons in that barbershop and paid for our room and his milk and my whiskey. Then Felix came and told me about Reverend McDuffie being in town and needing a musician for his tent meetings and I began playing my music for the Lord. That was Bliss then. He couldn’t remember any of that even if he hadn’t willed himself to forget us; now it was too far back. I lied that he was my dead sister’s child and the ladies were kind and looked after him while I played and we were always traveling and that made it easier for me. Then a year old and never from my side, me still mixed up in my emotions about him but always having him with me.… Had to leave Memphis on a freight train once and just managed to grab a bottle of milk to feed him and them right behind me for kidnapping, running over those cinders with him under my arm like a bear cutting out with a squealing pig. Lord, but I could really pick ’em up and put ’em down in those days, kicking up dust for a fare-thee-well and making that last boxcar just in time. Poor little fellow, he didn’t know what it was all about. Stripped the paper from the boxcar walls to make him a bed then setting there with the car bumping under me wondering why I hadn’t let them have him and be free.… But what could I have
told them, when any part of the truth meant trouble? Master, did you grin? So we went rolling through the land over the rhythm of those wheels clicking along the tracks and when he started to cry, me lullabying him “Make Me a Pallet on the Floor” till we were long gone to Waycross.

Then gradually beginning to find my way, finding the path in the fog, getting my feet on the earth and my head in the sky. Yes, my heathen freedom gone, I followed the only thing I really knew about, my music. Followed it, right into the pulpit at last. Had found a sanctuary where all babies could grow without too much questioning as to where they came from. After all, I testified to my sins before a crowd and sat down at the welcome table and learned to open up my heart—and I was heard.

They took us in and they loved him. That was Bliss then. All the love we gave him. Now no trust for me; none of us, even though we kept the faith through all those watchful and graveling years. We held steady, stood firm in face of everything; even after he ran away and we picked up his trail. I had been claimed by then and they loved him. Foolish to do but all those from the old evangelizing days felt the same need I felt to watch him travel and to hope for him and to learn. Yes, I guess we’ve been like a bunch of decrepit detectives trailing out of love. We didn’t even have to think about it or talk it over, we all just missed him and keep talking about him and seeking for him here and there. Lord, but we missed little Bliss. We missed his promise, I guess, and we were full of sorrow over his leaving us that way, just up and gone without a word. So we kept looking for him and telling all those who had heard him when he was traveling with me throughout the country to keep a lookout. Some thought he had been kidnapped and some that he was dead, and others that his people had come and taken him away—though they didn’t know who his people were and were too respectful to ask me about him.

So we started looking and asking questions, all the chauffeurs and Pullman porters and waiters, anybody who traveled in their work—till finally we picked up his trail again and I knew that it wouldn’t do any good to go to him and say, Come home, we miss you, Bliss; and we need you. Oh no, he was on another track by then and it was up to him to miss us in his heart and need us. So we just watched and waited.

Someone was always near him to watch him; maids and butlers, dining-car waiters, cooks—anybody who traveled, anybody who could keep him in our sights. Even a few of the younger ones were recruited; a few every year or so given hints that he was one of us, telling them just enough so that they could feel the mystery and start to watching him and reporting back. And all of it building up our amazement. Even when what he did left our hopes pretty weak. I guess we hoped for the Prodigal’s return. But in a country like this, where prodigal boys have so much that they can do and get that they can never waste it all which makes it easier for them to forget where home is and that made our hoping and waiting a true test of our faith or at least our love. There he lies, worth about three million dollars, I understand, and ran away with five saved dollars and a leatherbound Bible. Lord, I could laugh at the “laugh-cry” of it and I could cry sure enough right now. I was pretty bad when that child started shooting, pretty hysterical. But Lord forgive me for violating my manliness, because it was little Bliss I saw going down. Instead of this one lying here I saw a little boy with the white Bible as in a waking vision. I’m getting old, but how is a man who’s had to do with children but only had one child suppose to act when he sees such as we were witness to? Yes, and who’ll be a witness for my grief, my awful burden? Who, when nobody knows the full story? Still the old-timers were with me and they prayed that he’d find his way back home! Bliss. All the old ones and some of the young and
some of the old ones committed so long ago, many forgot just why, but still. We came when we sensed the circle was closing in upon him. Poor Bliss, he had wrapped up his heart in steel, stainless steel, and I guess he’d put his memory down there in Fort Knox with all that gold. He wouldn’t see us and he only had to remember us as we were and as he was to know that we didn’t come here to rebuke him, his own heart would do enough of that, considering the line he’s been taking against our people all these years. Still, that too is the way of man, so he couldn’t trust even me, even though I told him way back when he seemed bent on leaving us that I would live a long time and that I would arrive in his presence when he was in sore need. And I tried. We arrived and he didn’t trust me enough to see me. So why’d we come, why’d we hold on so hard to hope? What about this, Master? Is this one more test of faith put to us in our old days, or just our own foolishness, just some knotted strings of slavery-time weakness still clinging to us?

Well, that is what the baby boy became and there’s no denying. Poor fellow, poor Bliss lost. He’s lying there twitching and groaning and I can only talk and sit and wait. We’re with you, Bliss. We arrived just as we said we would, way back there when you put us down. I don’t know, Hickman, maybe the real one, the true Bliss got lost and this is somebody else. Because during all that time we could never ask if he really were the true son even though we knew in our hearts he ought to be. Maybe we’ve been following the wrong man all this time. Naw, Hickman, you’re tired,
this
was Bliss. There’s no doubt about that. It’s him and there lies the nation on its groaning bed. Those Georgia politicians knew it twenty years or so ago, when they tried to make me admit our ties. Sure, and I lied and denied so he could climb higher into the hills of power hoping that he’d find security and in his security and power he’d find his memory and with memory use his power for the good of everyone. Oh
yes, he’s the one, Hickman, you won’t get out of it that easy. You can’t stop now by calling it all foolishness. Those politicians didn’t threaten you for being foolish, they were playing for keeps. That’s why they threatened to run you out of town. Well, I had been run out of better towns by then, sometimes with little Bliss with me, and always my sanctuary was the Word. Anyway there was nothing to lose as there’s nothing to lose now and the sheer amazement of God’s way is a wonder and well worth it. Let me laugh, I see the links in the chain. Bliss had to bribe and deny and deny and bribe somebody to get in the position he’s in. They know it and I know it, only they don’t know all I know. Just like I know that I had nothing to lose when they threatened me and that they probably made a deal back there, because Bliss did turn into this, there. Rest, boy. Lord, I wish I could reach him. That doctor ought to be coming in to look at him pretty soon. Janey. After all those long years, Janey writing me that something was brewing:

Dear Brother Alonzo, a young man I know about is come hereabouts from far away and after a long time. You will know who I mean. So I think you ought to know that he’s stirring up old ashes and turning over old stones and he is taking down true names and asking questions. I know you will want to know about this because I am too old now to put him off for much longer. I mean he’s pressing me too hard. I have dreaded it but it had to come. I always knowed it would. Brother Alonzo I’m not strong like I used to be and I have trouble keeping quiet. I betrayed him once a long time past and now I think my time is closing down. So I hope everything is all right with you and I know you will do what you can. May the good Lord be with you and all our old friends. May he rest you and keep you and them in faith. Tell them that I’m still praying on my bended knees. Tell them I’m remembering them all in my prayers. Your sister in Christ, Janey Mason …

I had to think about that one. I remember Janey from way back there in my heathen days, before Bliss came. Riding out of the bottoms
during the springtime flood on a dripping horse with five little children rowed behind her and holding on to her nightgown and to each other while she swam that horse out of the swift water and her bare heels against his belly barrel till he came on up to higher ground. Talking comfort to those children with weeds in her hair. Saved all of ’em too. Walnut Grove. That was a woman. Oh yes. She roused me then too, up there looking, standing on the bank of mud and silt. Oh yes, in that wet nightgown she roused me. It wasn’t long before Bliss either, though I didn’t know it. I was on the verge of change—oh how odd of God to choose—yet playing Cotch and Georgia-skin or Tonk every night I wasn’t gigging or playing dances in that hall overlooking the railroad tracks, blowing out my strength and passion against those east- and west-bound trains.

No little Bliss then, but a lot of easy living in that frontier town. This I could tell him, since he wandered there years later. A lot of half-Indian Negroes, those “Natives,” they called them, and a bunch of hustlers and good-time gals. What times; what hard, young wasteful living. Used to put a number-two washtub full of corn on the table and drink your fill for a dime a dipperful. And there was Ferguson’s barbecued ribs with that good hot sauce, yes; and Pulhams. “Gimme a breast of Guinea hen,” I’d say, “and make the hot sauce sizzling.” All that old foolishness. Ha! Me a strapping young horn-blowing fool with an appetite like a bear and trying to blow all life through the bell of a brass trombone. Belly-rubbing, dancing and a-stomping off the numbers and everybody trying to give the music a drive like those express trains. Shaking the bandstand with my big feet, and the boys romping by midnight and jelly-jelly-jelly in the crowd until the whole house rocked. I should tell him about those times; maybe it was the self-denial that turned him away. Maybe he should have known all the wildness we had to bring to heel. Surely the Lord makes an allowance for all that,
when you’re in the heat of youth. He gave it to me, didn’t He, and it was the new country which He gave us, the Indian Nation and the Territory then, and everything wide open and hopeful. You have to scream once maybe so you can know what it means to forbear screaming. That Chock beer, how I exulted in that; rich and fruity mellow. A communion there, back there in that life. Its own communion and fellowship. That Texas white boy who was always hanging around till he was like one of us, he knew it.
Tex, why you always out here hanging around with us all the time? You could be President, you know
.

Yeah, but what’s the White House got that’s better than what’s right here?

Maybe Bliss could tell him. Old Tex. Heard he struck oil in his daddy’s cotton patch but I hope he’s still a witness for the good times we had. Forget the name of that State Negro with the Indian face … a schoolteacher, tall man, always smoking Granger Rough Cut in his pipe and talking politics and the Constitution? From Tennessee, walked all the way from Gallatin leading a whole party of relatives and friends and no preacher either. That scar on my skull to this day from going to the polls with ax handles and pistols, some whites and Indians with us, and battling for the right. Long back, now Oklahoma’s just a song, but they don’t sing about that. Naw, and why not, since that’s what they want to forget. Run up a skyscraper and forget about the foundation, just hope there’s oil waiting to get into the water pipes. Yeah, but we got it all in the music. They listen but hear not; they feel its call, but they act not. Drink of the Waters of Life, He said. And I drank until He sent the child and I realized that I had to change. Then I drank again of the true water. I had to change so the sound of life, the life I felt in me and in the others could become words and it’s still too complicated for definition. But like the Lord Himself, I loved those sinners and I’ll not deny even one. They had the juice of deep life in them, and I learned
to praise it to the transcending heat. Who knows? His ways are strange ways, Hickman. Maybe it was all His plan, and you had to be what you were then in order to lead His flock. It took all of that to come to this and little Bliss was the father to the man and the man was also me….