The Jazz Palace (13 page)

T
he leather-goods shop was on his way home. Benny passed it dozens of times over the years, but had never so much as glanced in the window before. He'd never noticed the briefcases and wallets, the belts and purses dangling from mannequins' arms, all artfully displayed. Now something caught his eye. In the middle of a display of shoes and purses was a red leather suitcase with a shiny zipper that glistened in the sun.

He went inside. The store smelled of dead animals and what he imagined pigs smelled like, but he girded himself and asked the aging owner to see it. The man had other suitcases for sale, but Benny wanted the one in the window. The man shrugged and groaned as he pulled the suitcase out. He put it on the counter with great flourish, and Benny ran his hands along the warm leather. The man unzipped it. Inside it smelled fresh and new, ripe with possibilities.

It had a zipper compartment along the top, and he opened this, too. It was lined in red silk, the color of blood. Benny asked the old man how much, and the man told him seven dollars. Benny had been saving his tips over the years, and his life savings amounted to a little more than twelve dollars. He went home, got his savings, and bought a suitcase he hadn't known he needed until he saw it.

The day after Benny bought his red suitcase he ran into Moe on the street. As he saw Moe coming, he was struck by how much they looked alike. They were both dark, small boys, who were sometimes
mistaken for brothers with their black wavy hair and long arms. And they both liked music. Moe's mother still made him play the French horn, but Moe was teaching himself the slide trombone. “What's up, Benny?” Moe gave him a half punch in the arm.

Benny hadn't really planned to say anything, but the words slipped out. “Hey, Moe, I'm leaving town. I gotta get out of here.” Moe cocked his head, still smiling, taking this in. “You wanna hop a freight?”

Moe was used to Benny's talk of getting away, though usually no farther than the South Side. “You serious?”

“I'm serious.”

Moe didn't have to think about it for long. He had a father who used him as a punching bag and thought nothing of slugging his mother, too. He had lost interest in school. He was playing the trombone and wanted nothing more than to be on his own. Moe was happy to accommodate Benny by coming along. “Just say when,” Moe shouted as he veered off.

That evening Benny packed his red suitcase with a few shirts, a pair of trousers. When he was done, he ran his hands over the fine leather and shoved it under his bed where weeks would go by and it would gather dust. Then Benny practiced the piano until his father told him it was late and he should go to sleep. When he went into his room, his father stuck his head in and told Benny he had never played the Beethoven so well. It brought tears to his mother's eyes.

The floor of Lehrman's Caps was dusty with cuts of cloth, scraps, and thread. The room was a buzz of grinding machines. The Slovakian women muttered to one another with their heads down, shawls draped across their shoulders as a cold draft blew in from the lake. As Benny stopped in to pick up an order of caps, his father called him into his office. “I have something to say to you, Benny,” his father said. “I'm taking you off deliveries. It's time for you to learn the ropes.”

“But I want to stay on the streets.” Benny stood in his father's office amid an array of invoices and ashtrays, scraps of cloth, and crumpled-up designs that would never see the light of day. Just as he was contemplating getting away, his father was taking him off the streets.

Extending his arms, Leo replied, “This will all be yours one day.” On the bench the Slovakian women were hunched over their machines. Across the room on a long table the cutters who were mostly men worked on the heavy cloth. At the end of the day their fingers were raw and wrapped in gauze. They left spots of blood on the fabric that the women scrubbed clean. Benny was content spending his days delivering caps, wandering the perimeters of the South Side, at night slipping into the clubs. As long as he got his work done
and made it home before ten, his parents did not seem bothered by his comings and goings. But now his father was taking him off the street. He was taller than his father. More powerful in his limbs. Yet he still trembled before him. At one time he'd believed that the caps factory was his only prospect. Now he dreaded the thought of it. “I don't know…It's not what I want to do.”

“What do you mean…it's not what you want to do?”

“I mean I have other plans for myself.”

“Well, those can wait. You need to learn a business. And this one is as good as any other.”

His father put him to work with a scissors and cloth. “This is how I learned,” Leo said. “From the ground up. If you're going to work in the caps business, you've got to know how a cap gets made.”

B
enny became a cutter on the floor. As his father berated a slow worker and shouted at his bookkeeper, Benny cut denim patterns out of cloth. He followed the loosely drawn shapes. He snipped until his fingers cracked and bled; hard calluses formed where he gripped the scissors. He watched the women, sewing designs into caps, their fingers red and gnarled. At work Benny rubbed his hands with lanolin the women kept in a big jar. At the end of the day Hannah soaked them in warm water with peroxide, then massaged them with linseed oil.

On his breaks he took out the small notebook Mr. Marcopolis had given to him and, as he sat off to the side eating a sandwich, scribbled down the music that was inside his head. He ignored Marta and the other women who teased him. His hands were stiff and covered in sores after he had worked on the floor for two weeks. As he held a pen, his fingers ached. One evening on arriving home, he took the red suitcase out from under his bed. He dusted it off and packed two more clean pressed shirts, an extra pair of pants, clean socks, and his only silk tie. He packed his postcards from the
Eastland
. He'd heard he could sell these for a nickel or even a dime. He wanted to be ready when it was time to leave.

Then he went into the sewing room and looked at the photo of
Harold's beaming face. He took the picture and put it in his suitcase as well.

T
hat night Benny was back, knocking on the tavern door. “Well, look who's here,” Honey Boy said. “If it isn't the Professor,” which was what piano players were called down in New Orleans. “Come on in,” he said, with a little bow. “I thought you'd flown the coop.”

“I did,” Benny said. “I went away for a little while. I had a gig down south.”

“Oh, a gig.” Honey Boy chuckled as if he knew better, then offered Benny a platter of food. “C'mon, kid, eat with me.” Benny stared at what was put before him, afraid it was pork. “What's the matter? You don't like frog legs and rattlesnake tongues? Make you popular with the ladies.” In truth it was red beans and rice with gravy stew, and Benny was surprised at how good it was, how it filled his belly. When they were done, Honey Boy ordered Benny to sit down. “Let's see what you've learned.” At first Benny was nervous, but he'd been practicing some of the New Orleans–style pieces Honey Boy had taught him. He thought he could lead in with that, then improve on the rhythm and the harmonies. He dropped his head and picked up the beat. He took a few pieces he'd heard and blended them into one. He held his chords in the right hand while he let the melody rip.

When he paused, Honey Boy stood beside him, mouth open but saying nothing. He made a motion for Benny to scoot over while he played a long complicated number he called his “Funky Butt Boogie.” He let Benny sit back down again and rough it out as well. Benny held to the tune, then added some harmonies of his own. And he played it back. When Benny looked up, Honey Boy wasn't smiling anymore. “You're making progress, kid.” He laughed an uncomfortable laugh. “Looks like I'm going to be taking lessons from you one day.” The caramel-colored man went to the jar of poppy seeds and grabbed a handful. “Here, have a mouthful of these.” The tiny black seeds settled between his teeth. Honey Boy flexed a biceps. “Be glad it ain't those frog legs or rattlesnake tongue.”

T
he next day after work Benny hurried home. If he was lucky, his mother would be out shopping and his brothers not back from school. He could practice for an hour or so. He ran up the stairs two at a time, slipped his key into the door, and was enveloped in a soothing calm—the quiet of unoccupied rooms, the steamy aroma of chicken in a pot. He was alone.

Benny sat on the bench, his head down, trying to recall what Honey Boy had done. He played straight chords as he roughed out the melody. He began with what he remembered, then began to digress and his fingers roamed. He noodled with the rhythm, hesitating, and then he let it go. He forgot that he was in his parents' living room with its brown sofa and his father's beige chair in the middle of the day. He forgot that it was a cloudy day and he hadn't seen the sun. Everything came to him bright, in colors. Flashes of blue and orange. If someone interrupted, he wouldn't know his own name or where he lived. All the songs became one as his fingers traveled wherever they wanted.

Benny wasn't aware of the darkness that filled the room. He didn't hear his mother's feet on the landing or her key as she slipped it into the door. For an instant he froze, then switched to a Bach partite that he hadn't played in years. Hannah stood in the dim light of the entranceway, her hat pinned to her head. Slowly she put her grocery bags down on the dining room table. “Play what you were playing again.” He played a few bars of the Bach. “No, not that,” his mother said, shaking her head. “Play what you were playing while I was standing outside on the street.”

Benny looked at her, and then arched his fingers over the keys. He tapped out four beats with his left foot, and played whatever came into his head. His fingers jumped all over the keys. When he was done, his mother said. “Who taught you that?”

“Nobody. I just picked it up.”

“And how did you pick it up?”

Benny shrugged. There was nothing he could say. “I listened for a long time.”

Folding her arms, a stance Benny rarely saw, she spoke firmly. “And where was that?”

Benny put his head down. He'd never been very successful at lying to his mother. “When I made my deliveries. Sometimes I heard music there.”

She pursed her lips. “Well, don't let your father hear you playing that Negro music around here.”

“It's called jass, Ma.”

“I don't care what it's called. I don't want to hear it again.” Then she carried her groceries into the kitchen, where he heard her putting them away.

W
hen Benny knocked on the tavern door, Honey Boy told him it was time to become a man. “You can't play jass and still be a kid,” he said. Honey Boy explained that there were a few things he had to do to be a great musician. He had to drink a pint of whiskey, smoke some gunge, and be with a woman. Benny didn't know what gunge was, and Honey Boy and the girls laughed. “The ofay doesn't know what gunge is,” Honey Boy said. “It's gauge, muta, muggles, rouch, grefa, grass, weed. I'm going to give you the best gold leaf, no salt and pepper for you.” Honey Boy took the weed out of his pocket and began rolling a joint for Benny. Honey Boy said the whiskey first, then the weed. Velvet would oblige with the third.

“I'm not sure about this.” Benny was suddenly afraid.

“Well, then, you better get out of here and don't ever come back. We don't want any woosy ofays around here.”

“All right,” he said. Honey Boy set up a glass of the amber liquid, which Benny took back in one slug. A burning shot down his throat. Honey Boy set up one more and Benny drank that back, too. Then he lit the cigarette, took a puff, held it in his lungs, and handed it over to Benny. He took a drag, coughed, then thought his lungs were on fire. Heat rushed through his veins. His head ached, but after a while he couldn't feel it. Benny wanted to play. He staggered over in his stupor, settled down at the keys.

“Oh,” Honey Boy said, “wish your daddy could see you now.”

“Well, he can't.” Benny's fingers fiddled with some chords. “My father's dead.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't know…” Honey Boy looked as if he suddenly felt sorry for the boy. Benny wondered why he'd said what he had. Of course his father wasn't dead. He was alive and well and working at Lehrman's Caps, but to Benny at that moment his father felt dead.
I wish he were
, Benny muttered under his breath.

“My father is dead,” Benny said again. When he said it this time, he knew it was so. His father was dead—at least to him. The room he was in seemed far away. Nothing was quite where it should be. His hand reached for tabletops and missed them. Walls didn't seem to be at the end of the floor. The keys on the piano swirled; black mixing with white. A hand tugged at his arm, leading him away. In the background a bluesy number played. Benny had heard it before and tried to give it a name, but he couldn't. Honey Boy gave a flash of his diamond stud. His face looked fat and contorted as if it were dropping off his jaw. Money changed hands; Velvet led him upstairs into a room he'd never seen before.

Everything was soft in there. The rug, the bedspread he sat down on. It was as if he were floating on a cloud. Or he was a baby again, swaddled in a crib. He wanted to sleep in this room. He thought if he could just sleep, he'd wake up and everything would be clear. He was aware of sounds—a car rattling past in the street, the blues coming from down below. The room was dark, though it was day. Then he made out the velvet curtains, the red velvet spread. Everything in the room was red velvet. So that must be why they called her by that name.

Velvet moved her fingers across his buttons, helping him off with his things. He was ready to sleep on that soft spread in this cool, dark room where everything came at him red. Sleep for a little while. Not too long, just until the things stopped moving. Until the room stood still. But he didn't like it when he closed his eyes. The room spun, and a swirl came from inside of him. When he was naked as a baby, Velvet helped him lay back gently on the bed. Her hands rubbed his back, massaged his buttocks, his thighs, turned him over, and rubbed his chest. Her skin was soft and smooth as fresh cream. And
when he reached down, when he put his finger between her legs, that was velvet, too.

H
annah didn't know what to make of her son as he staggered up the steps, said he was sick, and went to bed. She brought him a bowl and tried to ladle chicken soup into his mouth, but the fat coated his mouth and he spit it into the bowl. He vomited into the bucket she placed by his bed until she thought he'd spew his guts out. “He's drunk,” Leo said.