Nighthawk Blues (9 page)

It was in St. Louis, too, that Hawk had surfaced for the last time before his rediscovery. He was living in a boardinghouse with Wheatstraw (who claimed to be Peetie Wheatstraw, the devil’s son-in-law’s son, but who was, as Hawk frequently reminded everyone, only an off cousin by marriage twice removed) and the legendary Blind Teddy Darby. They had gone into a local studio and cut an acetate and sent it around to all the record companies whose battered cards still resided in Hawk’s wallet, all of whom had turned it down as old-fashioned stuff. And the acetate grew scratchier and scratchier until it was barely audible on the prized dubs which circulated among collectors at twenty-five dollars and up. The studio was still doing custom recording in 1962 when Jerry, just starting out in television in Springfield, Illinois, first got interested in the mystery of the Screamin’ Nighthawk, and it was through their fragmentary records that he had gotten the address of the boardinghouse. There he had found someone who remembered three drunken disreputable old men who played guitars and mouth harp and claimed to be recording artists, it must have been five or six years before. And there the trail went dead. Jerry hunted in bars, he checked with Welfare, he searched through old telephone books. Not a trace.

Hawk never got into St. Louis proper. He stopped in East St. Louis, bleak, desolate, a desert of urban renewal, pulled over about six feet from the curb, shut off the ignition, and sat there staring at the excavation site behind a broken link fence while the car gave up with a shudder. Then he eased out of the passenger side, carefully removed his guitar in its battered old carrying case, locked up the car, and started off down the street. Jerry pulled up behind, crunching over what seemed like an ocean of broken glass, eyed the neighborhood kids, themselves giving Hawk the once-over, with wariness, then locked up himself and at a discreet distance, feeling like Dashiell Hammett perceived, started after Hawk.

Hawk’s progress was not rapid. For one thing he was weighted down with the encumbrance of the guitar. For another, even with the walking stick he had fashioned for himself, he was still uncertain in his gait, listing heavily to one side. He pulled the broad brim of his hat down over his brow. Some of the kids yelled at him and ran at him mockingly, heading straight for him and then veering off at the last minute, but Hawk never paid them any mind, just waved at them indifferently with his stick, dismissed them with a look. As they got to half-blocks of run-down little bars and corner groceries, he would stop and stare at the barred windows of every pawnshop they passed, scrutinizing it carefully as if he were attempting to memorize the contents. Then at last at a sign that said “Uncle Ned’s” with the familiar three balls he stopped, studied the window with the same intense concentration, and went in.

Jerry watched him through the clouded window, approaching the counter, drumming his fingers on its surface while he waited for the proprietor to materialize, at last slamming his hand down on a tarnished nickel-plated bell, the veins in his neck clearly standing out. When the man shuffled slowly out of some back room, Hawk reached inside his vest and without so much as a glace retrieved a pawn ticket that looked as if it must have resided there for at least fifteen years. The pawnbroker, a red-eyed old man with fringes of white hair and spectacles that kept slipping down on his nose, regarded the pawn ticket without surprise, said something, waited for Hawk’s response, and then went shuffling back to the farthest corner of the store, where he unfolded a rickety little stepladder, climbed up on it, and took something down from the topmost shelf. He handed it to Hawk. Hawk nodded solemnly and peeled off a few bills from his wad. Then Hawk blotted the man from his field of vision, focused solely on the object itself, and at last slipped it on his wrist. When he came out of the pawnshop, he was admiring the watch, turning his hand this way and that to appreciate the effect from one angle or another.

He made a number of stops after that. Everywhere he went he had something to say, and people seemed to know him. At the arcade he stopped and had his picture taken in the booth where you get three shots for half a dollar. He didn’t bother to draw the curtains, and Jerry watched as he arranged himself on the stool, unpacking his guitar from its case, holding it up with the neck above his shoulder, staring grimly into the camera as if he could stare down eternity. It was like the hundred other “publicity shots” Jerry had seen over the years. Though Hawk got older, he never seemed to change in the pictures, his grim visage always challenged the viewer uncompromisingly. It wasn’t necessary, Jerry tried to explain to him, even if they needed more publicity stills there were always plenty of photographs available form the concerts, and Jerry could always arrange to shoot more. Hawk never seemed to listen, he pressed his won snapshots on well-wishers and press, as if they validated somehow that he was who he said he was despite Jerry’s aesthetic remonstrations.

Hawk bought Spam and powdered milk at a small market while Jerry gazed longingly at the food from outside. He stopped to look at clothing in the window of Greenbaum’s, where a somber black suit got prominent display. The sings on the privately owned store windows read Schwarts, Lipinsky, Garfinkel; the medical building was made up of Levys and Goldbergs. They were, of course, Jerry recognized uncomfortably, in Jewtown, the Jewtown that existed in every big city and gave rise to every predictable stereotype that Hawk parroted and every schwartze joke that Jerry had ever heard. No, no, it wasn’t like that, Jerry tried fruitlessly to explain, but Hawk insisted he knew how it was, he didn’t hold it against anyone, if anything he would have acted the same way himself. As he sang in his song, “Gonna tell you, baby, like the Dago told the Jew/ If you don’t want me it’s a cinch I don’t want you.”

The market was almost all boarded up or torn down, a sorry remant of former glories. The colorful marketplace, which had witnessed so many closely negotiated transactions of barter or trade, where music was once played all day long and amplifier cords once hung down from second-story windows (a brisk trade was done in renting electric outlets), was almost all gone now. All that was left were the pawnshops, a few radio and TV repair shops, a lone poultry man, the arcade, and stores Going Out of Business, with Slashed Price Sales, Everything Must Go!—the usual adornments of any city’s streets. It didn’t bear much resemblance to the stories Hawk had told him of when Memphis and Chicago and East St. Louis were all bustling, hustling centers, alive with activity and music and the exchange of ideas, when genius walked the streets. Hawk kept his head down, though, he didn’t even seem to notice the current scene, he was looking for something else. At last he found it. Slumped up against the brick wall of a dilapidated professional building sat a small black man with a bandanna around his head, his back stiff against the bricks, his legs extended out in front of him in loose-fitting brown trousers cut off and billowing like pantaloons at the knee, which was where each leg abrupdy ended. There was a tin cup at his side, which he rattled from time to time, and a harmonica in his mouth. Hawk, who had worked his way up to a ponderous trot, slowed down. A broad smile creased his face. The stump-legged harp player never noticed his approach but just kept playing his song, a thin reedy version of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The few pedestrians passed by without even glancing at him, and the coins in his cup made a pitifully lonely sound.

“Say, man, I thought you was dead,” Hawk boomed out as he made his lumbering approach. “How come you move this time?”

The little man looked up and broke off abruptly, grinning a sly gap-toothed little grin. “Hey, man. Hey, Hawk. How you making it?” His voice was as thin as his harmonica playing, but he struggled up on his crutches, balancing himself precariously as he gripped Hawk’s hand. “Man, people telled me the Screamin’ Nighthawk was dead, but I didn’t believe ’em. I knowed that was just a line of jive. Say, how you been? How’s my gal?” Hawk shook his head. “She dead ten years now. When you move, boy? I thought you paid rent on that corner.”

“Oh, you know, man, you seed what’s been happening. They just about teared it all down by now. You know how it is, man. They find themselves a new politician. And the politician puts in new polices. And the polices say, You ain’t got no permit, boy. Well, I told ’em about the arrangement I always had. And they said, Hey, nigger, tell that to Mr. Mayor. And they say, No—No Legs Kenny gotta go. … Do you know, I even showed ’em the reward I got from the city, great Godamighty it must be thirty-six years ago—it say, No Legs Kenny, you a fine man, and we give you permission to sing on the streetcorner for the rest of your natural days. You know what them motherfuckers did? They teared it up. They give me eight hundred dollars then, man, for that train that runned over my legs, would have been a thousand, but the lawyer had to get his share. It didn’t mean nothing to ’em. They took that letter, looked at it backwards and forwards, and they didn’t think nothing of it. Well, of course, that was a long time ago. You was making records then. Little Kid joined the church. I guess that’s just the way of it. World moves on, they still jumping, it’s just that they pep it up a little. But hey, man, it don’t make no difference. Long as I got my Sweet Lucy. How you been making it? You don’t look so good, look kind of peak-ed, where you was always black as the sun. That’s how I knowed it couldn’t last—even when that woman had you going to church regular as any Christian. You just too black bad, you black as any devil. But right now you looks like you be thinking about saving your soul.”

“Oh, I be all right, man, soon as I get my health back. Damned old doctors trying to rob me of my health, make me feel like a
old
man. Hey, you still living around the corner in that old rooming house where we used to stay?”

“Naw, I done moved. They tore that down, Hawk. You remember the Palace? They tore that down, too. And Estelle, which passed, they tore down her old joint. Man, they gonna tear down this whole city, I think, just to get rid of them rats. But they don’t know nothing about it—rats just go underground, they be here long after you and I is passed.”

Hawk nodded sagely and leaned up against the wall. “Well, what do you say, you feel like playing something?” He began undoing the snaps of his guitar case, in clear violation of two of his most often repeated and cardinal rules: no play without pay and don’t ever, on penalty of losing your professional standing, unless it was the only thing between you and starvation, beat on your box on the street. Kenny slid down on the wall, his useless stumps protruding out in front of him. He looked puzzled as he glanced over for confirmation from Hawk. “Aw, it don’t make no matter,” Hawk said in a different tone. “We old men now, ain’t got but a little time, no sense fooling ourselves.” He strummed his guitar with a resonant sweep and without further preamble launched into “Shake ’Em On Down.” The battered old guitar probably hadn’t been tuned in a week, and Hawk’s fingers were still clumsy and uncertain on the frets. Kenny’s thin, astringent harp was not in the right key in any case, but somehow they sounded commanding enough to cause passersby to turn and look and the Muslim who was hawking
Muhammad Speaks
to the little traffic that was passing by to pause for a moment in his droning patter.

Went to see the gypsy

To get my hambone done

Gypsy say, Man,

You sure need some

Well, must I holler

Or must 1 shake ’em on down

I’m so tired of hollerin

I believe I’ll shake ’em on down.

Hawk’s voice carried through the almost deserted street. He rocked back and forth on his heels, and when the song was over he launched immediately into another, one of an endless number of variations on his theme song, “The Screamin’ Nighthawk Blues.”

You take a look at my woman

Make you want to scream

You see my woman

She makes you want to scream

She the meanest woman, man, 1 most ever seen.

She put strychnine in my coffee, iodine in my tea

Put strychine in my coffee, she pour iodine in my tea

Well, I better watch out

She put some of that poison on me.

I’m a screamin nighthawk,! believe I better make a change

I tell all of you wimmins, I believe I better make a change

Tired of cooking on this gas stove, gonna find me a brand new range.

When they finished, they laughed and slapped hands. “Man, we really got it, didn’t we?” said Hawk. Kenny just showed a silly gap-toothed grin. “Now you be sure you don’t move from this spot, hear?” Hawk boomed out, as he packed up his guitar again in its case. “I don’t want to have no trouble finding you next time. You tell that to your mayor.” With that Hawk trudged off in the direction from which he had come, and Kenny went back to rattling his cup and playing “St. Louis Blues” in the mumbling apologetic style that he had been employing when Hawk first appeared. Jerry sidled up to the harmonica player, trying to look casual, and placed a ten-dollar bill in his cup. Underneath he saw a twenty, all crumpled up and carefully unfolded, as if it had been in someone’s billfold for a long time.

He caught up with Hawk just outside of Greenbaum’s, the clothing store where Hawk had hesitated earlier. There in the window was the same black suit, with the same price tag. $39-95, slashed from $119. Jerry shook off a wino who was lying in the doorway as he watched Hawk pause for a moment, devour the suit once more with his eyes, then apparently make up his mind and push his way through the door. Through the window he could watch Hawk and a gaunt white man with a tape measure wrapped around his shoulders. They regarded the suit, spoke, gesticulated, turned away from each other, resumed negotiations. Hawk slammed down a fist emphatically on the counter. The man climbed spryly into the window and tugged at the material. Hawk shook his head and must have said something rude, because the man climbed out again and stood, arms akimbo, as if he had been mortally insulted. Jerry was just about to step in—whatever happened he didn’t want to see Hawk end up in jail over a matter of a few pennies—when Hawk turned on his heel and marched angrily out of the store. The man trailed him, talking all the while, finally caught up with him and touched him timidly on the shoulder. “Ain’t nobody gonna jew me around like that, Mr. Greenbaum,” Hawk boomed out for all the street to hear. Jerry winced. Greenbaum didn’t seem bothered, though. He kept talking. He made conciliatory gestures. Hawk slowed down, though he still looked angry. Then Greenbaum must have hit on the very formulation that Hawk had had in mind all along, because Hawk stopped in his tracks, a broad smile crossed his face, and he allowed Greenbaum to lead him back into the store. When he came out, he had a neat package carefully wrapped, and the black suit was gone from the window.