My Year of Meats (43 page)

“Dear John,” she wrote. “I am writing to tell you that I am fine. I have left you and I am never coming back.” She took a sip of her tea. She had changed her mind about telling him. She had to write, otherwise it would never end.

Not that John would ever write a song about her, but it was an example of how not saying something made it hang around in the air, like a refrain that just keeps coming back at you, again and again. Akiko had plenty of very good reasons for leaving, and she wanted him to know each one. Only then could she be done with him, once and for all.

On Beale Street, a greasy rain smeared the neon as it fell, then scooped up its light in asphalt puddles. Beale Street. The name is full of blues and magic, conjuring up a time and place, gritty with lost authenticity, that embarrasses the sham of here and now. Now Disney is the model for magic, and conjuring has turned America’s more colorful streetfronts, like Beale and Bourbon and Broadway, into self-referential shadows of their former, bad-ass selves. On warm sunny days, sporting emblazoned T-shirts, the tourists are sheepish as they graze Beale Street in search of the real thing, but in the night, this night, the few seekers who were out and bent against the rain bled seamlessly into the sax-filled air.

It was Sloan’s sax. I could hear the thread of it blocks away, so I slowed, then stood there on the corner, wavering. The notes fractured the night, absolute in their dissonance, irreconcilable. I thought about turning around, returning to the ducky comfort of the Peabody, but instead I walked on, stomping through puddles like a Japanese monster, to give me courage. At the doorway I fingered Ma’s nickel, pushed in.

Sloan commanded the stage and the place was rapt. He was deep into the middle of a long, slow riff. Rope thin, his rangy body curled around his instrument, then magnificently unfurled as he rode its crescendo. No one could let loose like Rankin. I stood at the back, watching him through a thick blue haze, across a pebbly expanse of backs and heads that I knew I would have to cross to get to him, and it suddenly was very clear to me: I wanted that proximity again. I wanted that muscled mouth against my mouth, and the sure pads of those fingertips stroking my bones. So when the last set was over and Sloan wiped the sweat off his forehead and turned his back to the crowd, I stomped over all of them to get to him first. But when I got close, I stopped.

There were girls. Already there. Shadowy girls, tall like me, better dressed, like the ones we met in SoHo boutiques or the garden cafés in L.A., whose talent was simply to belong, no matter where they found themselves. One, in particular, belonged to Sloan. Gamine, tainted with the pallor of youth, she made an art out of gawky. I stood there and watched as she suffered a kiss to her cheek, then languidly she turned and draped her slim arms around his neck, pushed back his sweaty cowlick, and blew on his forehead. He closed his eyes, tilted his head, moved it slowly from side to side to direct her breath across it.

So maybe I didn’t believe it. Maybe I didn’t believe that she was real, or that he was, or maybe it was Ma’s nickel, but when he opened his eyes again, I was standing behind her, more or less over her shoulder, directly in his line of vision. I didn’t have a plan or anything. I mean, there I was, sodden, gaunt, deflated. No competition..If I’d been talking to the girl, that’s what I’d have said, and given her arm a reassuring pat or two. All I really wanted to do was watch them. And understand. And then get the fuck out. But as soon as he saw me, he released her, walked right through her.

I put out my hand. The waif was watching us with bruised eyes. “Sloan Rankin?” I said in a voice meant to carry. “Pleased to meet you. Jane Little, Tennessee Commissioner of Jazz. It’s a pleasure to welcome you and your band of outstanding musicians—”

He grabbed my outstretched hand by the wrist, twisted it up behind my back, turning me, then moving his body in behind mine. “Walk,” he ordered roughly in my ear. I struggled, but he lifted my pinned arm up between my shoulder blades, and it hurt. He marched me across the emptying room, through the door, and out into the rain. Then he released me against the side of the building. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked.

I stood there, rubbing my elbow. I didn’t really have an answer prepared. I shrugged. “Here on a job. Heard you were in town.”

“Bullshit.” “Yeah.”

We stood there, facing each other. It was raining harder now, and the big, fat drops were running down my face, and his too, as he loomed over me.

“Just say it.” His voice was tight and his teeth were clenched and I could see the muscle in his jaw working.

“What?” I lifted my shoulders, cocked my elbows, raised my palms to the weeping sky. “What do you want me to say?” Trying hard for insouciance.

“You’re sorry. Just say you’re sorry.”

“Sloan, it’s too late for apologies—”

“Fuck you!” He slammed his fist into the brick wall next to my head. “Fuck apologies. I don’t want apologies. I just want to hear it. I want to hear
once
that you are sorry, like you really mean it. No fucking excuses. No explanations. Just once, that you are as sorry as I am ...” He was crying, I think. I was too. I sank back against the wet brick and covered my face with my hands, then slid down the wall, like a body shot through the heart.

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “You don’t know how sorry—”

And then suddenly he was all around me, gathering me up and crushing me against the wet brick, kissing the rain. And I realized I’d never been gathered up before, never been so broken apart or so recovered, and it was shocking, but before I could think about it, we were walking really fast through streets that flowed like a river, to arrive, dripping, at the stolid Peabody. Up the brass elevator, across the densely carpeted hall, to the door where I fumbled for the key (remembering the last time I stood at a door at the Peabody, fumbling for a key), but before I could think about it, the door swung open and Sloan backed me through, across the room, and onto the big, redeeming bed.

It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t like we made love and it was this enormous flood that washed away all our sins and insufficiencies, although from time to time that was how it felt. Rather, we had to negotiate a way through layers of nakedness and conjunction, stopping and starting, asking questions, filling in gaps and testing the waters. But we did it. Dove, then rose again to reach a plateau where we could rest, breathing deep and easy. Until another accusation surfaced. A doubt insisted on address. And so we would start again, and so we continued, off and on, all night, until morning.

I made him get up. It was Sunday, and I made him get out of bed and shower and get dressed, and it was a good thing that he always wore a suit and tie onstage, because by eight o’clock he looked presentable. We grabbed coffees, stumbled into my rented car and I drove across the border into Mississippi, and an hour later, at a little before nine, we were parked in the dirt lot of the Harmony Baptist Church, watching Mr. Purcell and Miss Helen and the kids unload from their car and greet their neighbors. When Miss Helen looked up and caught my eye and recognized me, I saw her confusion, so I walked over to her and stretched out my hand.

She held it, and shook it, but said nothing.

“I came back to say I’m sorry.”

It took her a while, but finally she spoke.

“You said you’d come back,” she said, nodding, “and you did.” She patted my hand.

“I don’t know how to explain what happened,” I told her. “I didn’t agree—”

She pulled me toward church, tucking my hand under her arm. “You come back to the house afterwards.” She caught sight of Sloan. “Is that your friend? Bring him too.” She stopped, and we waited for Sloan to catch up, and I introduced them.

“You didn’t tell me we were going to church,” Sloan whispered as Miss Helen turned to greet a friend on the front steps.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t know....”

“Takagi, I don’t do church....”

“Neither do I. Usually.”

We climbed the steps. At the top the buxom usher in the white nurse’s uniform greeted us and we followed her through the doors and into Harmony.

“I get it,” Sloan continued, whispering as we walked down the aisle. “This is a trick, and when we get to the altar there’ll be a guy with a shotgun....”

I glared at him. “Don’t flatter yourself.” Miss Helen was still holding my arm, and pointing out people I’d met on the previous visit, who waved and called out to us.

“Takagi, we’ll get married, that’s fine. A nice civil ceremony... but just not in a church, please!”

And just at that moment, the Yamaha organ launched a triumphant chord, and the Harmony Five burst into a rousing rendition of “It Remains to Be Seen What He Can Do for Me.”

“Relax, Sloan,” I said, patting his hand as we took our seats next to Miss Helen. “Just sit back and enjoy the music.”

Hah!

As a fellow documentarian, I can say this with authority: Shōnagon’s covering her ass. It’s false modesty, so don’t believe a word of it. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The rest of my story is a matter of history. Sloan and I parted in Memphis knowing that we would try once again to forge our respective uncertainties into something that resembled a family and a future. We talked a little about adopting kids. I called Grace Beaudroux, and she promised to take the family to hear him play in New Orleans at the end of his tour, then I flew back to New York to find a job.

When I walked into the apartment that night, I knew something had happened. It was just after eleven, and the phone was ringing, and somebody had shoved dozens of little pieces of paper underneath my door. I waded through them to answer the phone, but when I got there, I noticed the message light flashing on the answering machine and, looking closer, saw that I had twenty-seven messages, and the twenty-eighth was being recorded as I stood there listening.

“This is Ivan Singer calling from the CBS news desk again. Please give us a call....”

I waited until the machine had reset, then rewound it and hit Play. One after the other, every-major television news program and talk show in the country had left an urgent message requesting that I get in touch immediately. There were messages in Japanese as well, from the networks there, and also from several European stations. “Mrs. Dunn gave us your number,” each first-time caller prefaced his request, and then: “We want to talk with you about the footage.”

Finally, there was a message from Bunny.

“Howdy there, Jane. I’m real sorry about all this. I’ve been trying to call you all morning, but I can’t get through ’cause your line is always busy, so you probably already know what’s happening. But I just wanted to tell you that the documentary tape you made was put together real good, and thanks for blocking out me and Rosie’s faces like that. Guess it sort of bothered me after all, even though I said it was okay.... Anyway, I gave a few people your number. Hope it’s okay with you.”

I disengaged my call-waiting feature and phoned her immediately. I got her answering machine.

“Bunny, pick up, it’s me, Jane. Bunny, are you there? It’s Jane. Jane Takagi-Little. Bunny... ?”

“Hey there, Jane.”

“Figured you were screening your calls....”

“You said it! Ain’t this something!”

“Bunny, what the hell is going on?”

“Yeah, well ...” Bunny sighed. “It was the documentary tape that you sent? Of Gale and the slaughterhouse and me and Rosie?”

“I figured. What happened?”

“Well, what happened was, a couple of weeks after y’all left, I took Rosie to Texas, to a big hospital there, and sure enough, it was just like you said, some kinda hormone poisoning, and they speculated it was from the feedlot. I couldn’t bring her back here, so I left her with her grandma in Texas for a spell and came back to make things right with John. I told him, not everything, but a little about what was wrong, and he didn’t believe me, you know? I mean, it all sounds pretty crazy, right? So just then, your tape came in the mail, and I watched it.... I showed it to him—” And right there, Bunny giggled and couldn’t go on.

“Bunny, what happened?”

“He went ballistic!” she shrieked. “I shouldn’t laugh. But I was so relieved, you know? Like finally he understood. He made me drive him down to the feedlot and get Gale, and then he showed him the tape too. And I’ll never forget Gale’s face, all twisted up and pink when them pictures of Rosie’s chest and down below came on.... I mean, that boy was sorry! He was sobbing, ‘I never knew, Daddy, you gotta believe me I never knew....’ ”

“He did know. I told him.”

“That’s what I said. So John made him get on the phone and call the guy at the local USDA office? And he made Gale ’fess up to everything, the whole thing.”

“Whole thing?”

“Yeah, well, it seems like he’s been using that DES stuff and injecting the cattle with it. Getting it from somewhere, I don’t know. Him and a lot of other guys around here ...”

“But I still don’t understand. How’d this get to the press, then? And how’d they find out about the footage?”