The Jazz Palace (11 page)

As Napoleon Hill walked out into the city, a light snow fell. It was the first snow of the season, and it was early this year—a harbinger of things to come. He'd never gotten used to the Chicago cold, the harsh wintry winds that blew down from the Arctic and landed at his front door. He opened his mouth and caught flakes on his tongue as if he could win them over. He was humming his “Night Owl Blues,” the tune he was still trying to get right in his head. He liked going to Chimbrova's saloon. He didn't mind playing for white folks, though he knew the owners of the Rooster wouldn't like it.

Napoleon had his ambitions, and he was getting ready to move on. He just had to come up with a plan. He wanted to play some of the fancier places, like the Apex or the Rendez-Vous Café. Walking along, he tightened the wool scarf around his neck. The snow made him shiver. He needed a drink. Maybe two. He could use a little bourbon. Something to warm his insides. The cold was in his bones. It took hold of him like a woman who won't let you go. At times he couldn't shake them off either. He had to sneak away and hide. Underfoot the ground was slick. He watched his step as he went. He was a big man, and it was a long way down.

Coffee, crackling bacon, the scent of baking bread wafted his way. The sounds of eggs frying over and easy. Wrapping his coat around him, he tried to resist stopping at the diner as he passed.
Maddy would have breakfast waiting when he got home. But that white boy had unnerved him. The way he sat, staring straight ahead. He'd didn't come for a good time the way most boys did. He sat with his arms folded as if he'd come for his history lesson.

“Kinda early for breakfast,” the waitress said, taking a pencil from behind her ear. She was blond with a plump ass and skin white as snow. When she tilted her head, he saw the dark roots of her hair. Still he liked what he saw.

Napoleon shrugged, still humming his “Night Owl Blues.” “It's my time,” he said.

She looked at the horn case. “You must be a musician? Only musicians order eggs and grits at three a.m.”

“When does the rest of the world eat breakfast?” Napoleon asked. Napoleon liked white girls. He was drawn to the paleness of their skin. Maybe it was because of his high-yellow mother.

“Oh, around eight, when I get off work.”

“Then I'll have to come by around eight sometime.”

She gave him a nod, almost a wink, and went to clear a table. “Why don't you do that?” she said.

“I think maybe I will.” As she walked away, he tried to imagine that jaunty backside tucked under him. His thoughts shifted to Maddy. Though he often wished she was, Maddy wasn't this kind. She was a large woman, and he'd never been drawn to large ones. She had a birthmark on the side of her cheek that in a white woman would have been port-wine red, but in a black woman was a shade of evergreen. He'd never wanted her in the way a man should be to a woman. Nor she him, for that matter. Not as far as he could tell.

Maybe because he hadn't, he'd lived with her since he came north. She took care of him when he needed taking care of and he helped her in the ways a man can help a woman around the house, without having to be a real man.

I
t was one of those “meant-to-bes,” as Maddy liked to say. He thought that as well, ever since a few years ago when he'd climbed on the Panama Limited with his duffel, his horn, and a cold fish
sandwich. Senator Sam with whom he'd come to play had sent him his ticket, one way north. He settled in the colored section across the aisle from a large black woman with three children. It was a cool night for New Orleans, and Napoleon kept his coat on. He stared out at the station. A sliver of a moon shone overhead.

The engine started up. A long whistle, then a toot. He'd worked the rails and been on trains for years, but he always got the same thrill. The chug of the engine. The way the wheels started slow, then faster, building. The steady 4/4 time. As the train pulled out, he saw the windy streets, the flickering lights of New Orleans. The old crumbly buildings with the wrought-iron balconies, the arched porticoes. Soon they were passing the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, the kudzu-choked bayou, past the cotton fields and catfish ponds, the dirt-floor shacks and barefoot childhoods.

With his finger to his lips he'd kissed it all good-bye. He'd wake up in a place he'd never been. That was all right with him. He'd improvise as he went along the way he always had. He never knew what he was doing from one day to the next. He never did the same thing twice. Still as the train gathered speed, he thought maybe he was making a mistake. Leaving home. Not that he had much of a home to leave. But the woman who sat across from him made him miss something he'd never had.

It wasn't long before he sniffed what she had in her carpetbag. His mouth watered as she began to reach in and as if by magic pulled out a bucket of potato salad, buttery corn bread, still warm in a towel, a tub of three-bean salad, a thermos of chicory coffee, beignets, and enough fried chicken to get them to Canada and back. Napoleon held his fish sandwich in his hand. It felt cold and limp as he watched those children bite into the corn bread that brought steam to their faces.

He couldn't bear sitting there with those smells rising from the woman's tubs. He couldn't help himself. He glanced her way. She wore a thin, brown dress that was too tight. Her stomach bulged. The dark shawl she wrapped around her shoulders was frayed and her hair flecked with white, but he didn't think she was older than
thirty-five. She had thick arms and, as she opened the tub of chicken, he forced himself to look away. But she turned to him. “Can you blow more than your nose?” she said.

Startled, he nodded. “Yes, ma'am, I believe I can.”

“I heard you once on one of those riverboat cruises. You're good,” she said. “You are very good.” She told him her husband had just passed on (which was a lie because she'd never married the father of her children nor was he dead, but she'd never bother to correct it), and they were moving north to live near her sister. Then she put the bucket of chicken and three-bean salad and corn bread on the seat beside her. “Help yourself,” she said. He moved across the aisle, cradling the bucket of chicken in his lap. The chicken was still hot. Salty grease slipped down his throat.

He reached for another piece, then another. Maddy saw right away that you couldn't share with him. He had to have it all. After he finished off his third piece of corn bread, Maddy said, “I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to pay for this meal.”

Napoleon looked at her, stunned. He had enough money to get him to Chicago, but not much more. “I'm not sure I can now, ma'am, but…”

“You can pay me by blowing something on that trumpet of yours.”

Napoleon's face lit up. He rubbed up his lips to warm them, then took down his horn. Clearing the mouthpiece, he blew his spit valve a few times on the floor. He ran up and down the scales, then entertained the whole car by playing “Bayou Blues,” then “Wild Bird” and a few songs of his own. When he put his trumpet down, it was close to midnight, and the passengers were starting to drift off to sleep. Already the children were huddled inside their coats.

He played one last tune, a lullaby his grandmother used to sing that he riffed on. Then he put his horn down and curled up against Maddy Winslow's warm side. He hadn't meant to spend the night there, but found he couldn't go back to his seat either. It was soft against her fleshy arm, and he fell fast asleep. It grew colder in the night, and the coldness entered his bones. When his head slumped
on Maddy Winslow's shoulder, she tried to push him away. But he weighed twice what she did, so she let him sleep and wrapped some of her shawl around him.

He slept with only the sense of the train and its trajectory north. He was aware of softness, an oily smell, flesh, and hair. It was the longest he'd ever stayed beside a woman at one time. He woke groggy, amazed. Outside everything was flat, stretching as far as he could see. A whiteness burned his eyes. He had never seen snow before and now he saw miles of it. Putting his fingers to the window, he shook with the cold. His breath made a circle on the pane.

Maddy poured him some of her chicory coffee, which was still warm, and Napoleon drank that and munched on a beignet. At noon the conductor called out “Cairo, Illinois” in his throaty, singsongy voice. They were in the “Egypt” part of the state, and Maddy gave him a shove. “Get up,” she said. “Go to the club car. You're in the North now.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're across the Ohio. Go order a sandwich. Sit next to a white man. Do whatever you want.”

Napoleon looked at her, surprised. “You mean I can go anywhere?”

“Anywhere you like.” Maddy nodded. But Napoleon had no money for a sandwich and he didn't want to leave her. He'd tasted her chicken and stared into the greenish-black birthmark on her face. He stayed at her side, like an animal in the warmth of its den, until dusk when the conductor called out, “Last stop, Chicago.”

As he stepped off the train, the icy wind from the lake stung him. He'd been many things in his life, but he'd never been cold like this. His hands went numb as he helped Maddy Winslow and her children get off the train. Maddy's sister was on the platform, waiting for her. She leaped on them with hugs and had winter coats which she threw over the children. No one was there to meet him. He thought Senator Sam or one of the boys might show, but when no one did, he figured he'd find a rooming house for a night or two. As they walked off, Napoleon stood shivering on the platform, icy shards stinging his skin, his horn case dangling from his hand. The platform was
freezing and deserted. When Maddy paused and looked back at him, Napoleon just stared. “Well,” she said, “are you coming or not?”

A
s Napoleon made his way up the stairs, he heard the rattle of dishes, water running in the sink. Maddy was getting up. She rose by five every day to get the kids off to school, then on to the hotel where she worked as a maid. She also got up at five to give Napoleon the bed.

It was the bargain they'd struck when he'd followed her to her sister's place and later to this cottage. The first few nights she'd given him the couch. But when she noticed him getting home after four, Maddy had said, “You know, I'm crawling out of bed at about when you drag yourself in.” So it began. He slipped into the sheets as she slipped out. Once in a blue moon he slept with her, but not as man and woman exactly. For years they'd danced around each other, being cozy, wrestling, almost becoming lovers before settling into the comfort they knew now.

The Cuddle Inn was what Napoleon liked to call the room he inhabited with Maddy. It was more like mother and son, and it suited them both. When the chill got into his bones and he couldn't shake it, she let him huddle against her flesh. When he had too much to drink and couldn't lose the bad thoughts that swirled in his head, she'd hold him until it passed. But most nights, just before dawn, she was up, making sandwiches, straightening the children's rooms, waiting so she could leave for the hotel when he came home.

For years now they'd lived in a cottage along the railroad tracks—one of those cottages blacks had been taking over since they began moving north. It wasn't the best place, but it wasn't the worst either. They'd gotten used to the rumble of the trains and the smoke. And Maddy was happy to have a man living in the house, especially when she left for work if the kids were home. They were like a family, not a real family, but a makeshift one. As much family as Napoleon had known in a very long time.

Inside the yellowed walls of their cottage Maddy stood at the stove. A cold wind seeped in, making her shiver. She was still in
her robe, heating up biscuits and gravy, when Napoleon walked in. She had a pot of rice and red beans warming. “Morning, Miss Rice and Red Beans,” he said, the way he did every morning as he staggered in.