He found Sully in the rail yard, bummed some clothes and cash, hitched a ride to Charlotte. Travel up and work the mines for a while. Nobody to ask questions. He made a little on the side, good for a new suit and a haircut. Didn’t know how he would deal with the girl.
15
Osceola came to in a French army hospital, white-habited nuns bustling silently through the colored ward. He quickly learned from the GI beside him that one of the patients was Lieutenant Europe, recovering from a gas attack. The wounded officer, separated only by a surgical curtain, wandered in and out of delirium. “Come on boys, over the top! Steadfast, keep your proper distance. Minenwafer comin’—look out! Don’t start bombin’ with those hand grenades. Rat-tat-tat-tat. Machine guns! Holy spades! Alert! Gas! Put on your mask!” Despite having one arm in a sling and his leg in a full cast, Osceola was determined to see his idol again. When the room seemed quiet, he cajoled a young novitiate to help him into a vacant wheelchair and roll him toward the end of the ward where the officer lay. Osceola saw that the lieutenant’s eyes were heavily bandaged, and backed away.
“Who’s there?” The lieutenant’s head turned, his two gauzed eyes pinned squarely on Ossie.
“Private Osceola Turner, sir. You must don’t remember me, but . . .”
“Hoss-SEE-o-lah,” the voice perfectly recalled their first encounter. “Wait’ll I tell Mitch. Come forward, then.” Heartened by the reception, Ossie maneuvered his chair close to Europe’s bedside. “I’m from Orange Street, sir. Orange Street Asylum, same as Herbie Wright.”
“I wouldn’t take that as a recommendation, my boy.”
Ossie marveled at how calm the man was with the threat of not having his sight. Europe seemed to read his apprehension. “It’s only for a couple of weeks, I’m told . . . Orange Street, huh? You’re not by any chance a drummer too?”
“I play juss bout everything. Drums, clarinet, and trumpet. Piano in the main, though.”
“Could be a big band by yourself! You say you play all those instruments. Are you any good at one?”
“Oh, I can play, now. I can surely play!”
“Do you read?”
“Not so much in letters, sir, but music pretty good.”
“Then pull up a chair.”
“Already got one, wheels included.”
“Find a piece of paper, then. Gotta write this down. Music’s been rattlin’ round my head for days. Gotta get it out. Mademoiselles!” Europe bellowed in no particular direction, “Nous avons besoin du papier pour écrire!” A bevy of the angelic attendants appeared, shooshing him to no avail. “Le papier. Nous sommes pleines de la musique! Le Jass!” He growled the word, making the petite nuns flutter with laughter as they scurried to accommodate him. In search of this man, Osceola had entered the war and had nearly gotten himself blown to bits. And here he was in the cut already! Bracing the clipboard on his cast and holding the paper down with his sling, Osceola scratched out a few crude pages of musical bars and started scribbling notations as Europe blurted out ideas for a new song from his hospital bed. He called it “No Man’s Land.”
Europe talked in fragments, his mind rolling faster than his speech. “Drum roll like thunder, No Man’s Land starts creeping . . .” Ossie picked up instruments with his voice. With remarkable precision, he mimicked a drum roll for thunder with accents of cannon fire. A whining clarinet emerged from the back of his throat and broke into a pursed-lip trumpet call to arms. The intro slid effortlessly into Europe’s jaunty rag. The composition took shape as did the friendship, the memories of battle transformed to song.
“Alert! Gas! Put on your mask!
Adjust it correctly and hurry up fast,
Drop! There’s a rocket from the Boche barrage!
Down, hug the ground, close as you can, don’t stand,
Creep and crawl, follow me, that’s all,
What do you hear? Nothing near?
Don’t fear, all’s clear,
That’s the life of a stroll,
When you take a patrol,
Out on No Man’s Land,
Ain’t it grand? Out on No Man’s Land!”
“No Man’s Land. You bettuh believe that!” Osceola said when they had finished. “Wasn’t no place for nobody. When my body crashed, it shook my bones down to my teeth. But here it all come together. New rhythms—airplane whirs and train pistons and exploding missiles, machine gun clatter rat-tat-tat-tat—fast, shifting, and it all come together.”
“The world is changing, Osceola. Somehow what has captured it is the music—our music. It changes up, improvises, shines, groans and growls—it speaks to the soul—because it comes from there.” The lieutenant’s body shook violently as if another spell or frenzy were about to descend upon him, but it was a rapture. “Take away from a man everything that he knows, his family, his name, his land, his language”—Europe drew up his arms as if shackled—“his freedom—what is he to do? — He sings. He dances. He play duh bones. He wails . . . It’s our path, our way out, Osceola. It is the door and the key. Ain’t it grand?”
Even with his eyes bandaged, Jim Europe conveyed an intense awareness, hunger, and confidence. He was the Cat. “What do you do when you face the Devil, Ossie? I say, burn him up with your music. Give ’em hell! . . . Even hell presents an opportunity, Osceola. This war has shown prejudice can be wiped out—through music! We must prepare.”
Ossie nodded, silently contemplating his mentor’s words and passion. Coming back to himself, the band leader shifted to casual talk. “You got a girl?”
“Sort of. Don’t know if she know it, though. Been knowin’ her all my life . . . You? I mean, if you don’t mind askin’.”
“Got two,” the elder man laughed, “not a situation I would recommend.”
“I got one feel like two. She have big dreams. Work our way north in a medicine show, she say. Face-makin’ her specialty, but she could do ’most anything. She actually dance with a broom, a mop, and pail an make you thank she got three partners. Pretendin’ she got a partner, it the funniest! Her body do thangs you never ’spect . . . I don’t know what to tell you bout Lizzie. She different is all.”
“I think you’re in love, my boy.”
“Git out. I been knowin’ Lizzie May ever since I been knowin’.”
“Such is the love by which you will judge all others, my young friend.”
“Song come to me while I was out there, too,” he blushed and smiled, “bout the way she walk.”
“Put clothes on yo back n food in yo mouf,” Dora mumbled and folded her arms across her chest. She looked at her daughter with complete disgust. “Disgraceful! Knocked up by some gutter trash in the navy!”
“He’s in the army!”
“Don’t talk back to me, gal! I could kill yuh!”
“Now we got to find you a husband,” Mah Bette chimed in.
“I ain’t marryin’ nobody.”
“You lowlife lil heiffuh! You’ll do as I say!”
“Go on and hit me. Go on. Hit me—I dare yuh!”
Eudora’s fist froze midair above her head. “Git out mah house.”
“I got no problem leavin’ your house. This ain’t never been mah house. Was always yoah house, yoah dream, yoah world! This ain’t nevuh been mah house. You ain’t nevuh loved me!” Lizzie turned her back. “You want me to pay for it? Here!” She slapped a silver dollar on the table. “That’s my rent for this life!”
“Get out! Just get out of my sight!”
Lizzie ran down the steps and disappeared in a whir.
Dora froze like a stone, a woman of salt. “Put clothes on yo back n food in yo mouf,” she mumbled and folded her arms across her chest. When she realized her daughter wasn’t coming back, Dora fell on her knees and mauled the floor with clawed fingers till they bled.
The 369th was midway through its victory tour throughout the French countryside, accompanying the French high command, expecting to hit Paris. From province to province, the euphoria of the war’s ending
brought everyone into the streets. Villagers emerged from the rubble of their townships with wine and flowers and cheers. Old women lifted their skirts, and veterans stood, their eyes glazed with tears. The wheels of two buckboards locked together, a mortal combat of sound—the band men playin’ they soul, they memories, they heart, they song, they history, divine! People just got possessed! Children marched and conducted the air with stray sticks as batons. Women pressed warm kisses onto their lips. When the band broke into their final jazz number, the whole village danced. Currents of music moved through the crowd with the voltage of lightning, the syncopated thunder of feet learning to stomp down the past and dust up a sawdust floor with this new American sound, Le Jazz. The war had come to an end. It was now the music that blew them away.
Osceola experienced this pandemonium from afar. As the newest member of the band, he was assigned to shine shoes, press shirts, polish the instruments, and arrange the chairs on the bandstand. Traveling in their exclusive three-car train, emptying ashtrays, he was still carrying their hats. The men talked around him, a cascade of rotating solos, each one cuttin’ the last.
“Twenty-four hours’ leave, that’s all we got. The prescribed YMCA for the colored troops is one hundred miles away,” Sissle went on, the perpetual complainer. “And check it out, there were three welcome women for three thousand colored guys. And those broads wasn’t given up nuthin!”
“Mira, you guys son increíbles! Always talkin’ like the only language inna inna inna world is inglés. Cabrones!
“Aw, shut up, Romero.”
“Nada. We are in France. The country that taught the world to kiss! How we gonna miss it? Por favor, I got no use for YMCA less I need a room or la piscina.”
“Trumpet, trombone, traps, sax, clarinet, fiddle, and bass.” Europe entered and broke up the banter, handing out new sheet music. He had written out Ossie’s tune for him, broken it into parts. Europe placed the freshly crafted sheet music by the fellows who could read while the others gathered around. “Say, Herbie, gimme a beat.”
To the rhythm of the maestro’s hands, the drummer started tappin’ on the metal pipes of the heater and countering it on the table rim. Mitch tried the first lines of the melody, his voice mimicking a brassy trombone, spitting growls and elongating notes into wails and bird trills and even a New York taxi horn. The leads played it straight, others just joined in, picking up what they could and adding. Once they caught the central thread, the whole band began to improvise a cappella. When the groove was solid, Europe impatiently waved his fingers at Ossie, who sheepishly relinquished a battered notebook page of lyrics. Noble Sissle’s clear tenor completed the ensemble as the train sped down the tracks.
“Miss Lizzie Mae had her a way,
Of walkin down the street,
That would make the sidewalk sizzle beneath her feet.
Yes, Lizzie Mae had her a way,
Of walkin down the street,
That could make a hungry fellah forget to eat . . .”
The band perfectly captured Lizzie’s way of dancing. Sassy, brash, and defiant, they sang! And the tune? Wild with the freedom of mastery, it swang!
As the jam broke up in laughter, Europe took Osceola aside. “What do you think?”
“Writin’ all that stuff in, I don’t know. It’s hard.”
“That’s a dilemma only gets better with practice. See, I cleaned it up some, but it’s a smart tune. You’ve got an ear.” The lieutenant’s enlarged eyes seemed more intense, stuffed in their sockets. “You have some new sections to tap, here.” He pointed to a bar on the page and quickly exited.
Jim Europe stood straddling the two train cars as Mitch joined him, sheltering a cigarette with his own damaged hand. “You all right, chief?”
“The rush of air relieves the breathing, effects of the gas, they say. That kid has a good mind, Mitch, only needs training. Just the way he constructs the parts, I can tell he hears orchestration.”
“Takin’ in another stray?”
“Got to. We gotta pull in every able-bodied musician we can find. We could lock down the whole of modern sound, Mitch. Foundation. Best in the world . . . at somethin’. You think I’m crazy? I might be, you know. When you are, everybody knows it but you.”
“Naw, you ain’t crazy, chief. You just colored. Kinda the same thing when it comes down to it.”
Back inside the car, Herbie grumbled as he shuffled cards. “No-talent muthuhfuckuh. Cain’t sing, cain’t dance, clumsy as a drunk rooster.”
Noble razzed him, “Jimmy was crazy enough to take you in. When you started, you was so green, Herbie, you was sproutin’ leaves. Herbie couldn’t buy him a job.”
Fat Ivan turned to Ossie, “Listen at Sissle talkin’ ’bout leaves. Yeah, what about it, Sissle? Slingin’ a rope of flowers round yo’ neck, tryin’ to look Havaiian, big six-foot nigguh from Oakland.” The men laughed easily as Ossie moved among them.
“They are called leis,” Sissle countered, “your ‘rope of flowers.’ I might as well be Hawaiian. That pickaninny dialect of yourn is just as much a foreign language as French. A whole panoply of invented malapropisms. You should preserve ’em on account yo’ granchilluns.”
Herbie rose up from his seat. His temper was as quick to flare as his stick to hit the drumskin. Ossie’s voice eased out, a perfect solo entrance, “Come on, now. No need fuh alla that. I don’t think you should talk that way about other colored people, Sergeant Sissle.” The men looked up in silent surprise. “Excuse me, suh, fuh speakin’ but . . . but most colored folk ain’t had the same opportunities as you. You’s fortunate to hab come from someplace . . . what showed a man a different sense of hisself. Most of us felluhs just seein’ it for the fust tam.”
While Noble simply stared at the lad, Herbie smiled, his two front teeth crowned in gold. “Siddown, kid, I’ll teach you some can.”
Ossie’s body relaxed with self-assurance. “Coon can? You cain’t teach me no coon can, Herbie Wright. I do b’lieve teachuh gon to school on that.” The whole railcar laughed as tensions eased. Ossie whipped a crate around, straddling his legs over the sides.
“Why you do your legs like that?” Romero queried.
“So I kin git away clean after I done cleaned out all yoah money! Some coons can. Some coons can’t. I’m the coon that drug the can. Give it up!” Ossie deftly shuffled the cards. “I was taught by the King of Coon Can. Went by the name of Win. Luckiest man alive till he met me. Cut.” The game began. He was finally admitted, finally a member of the band.
“Jimmy say he got dates lined up already—Chicago, Boston. First stop, New York!” Romero smiled. “Spanish Harlem!”
“Shoot, I’m stayin’ in Paris.” Fat Ivan rubbed his gut and studied his hand. “Sid Pate already opened up a club. In Mo Mart. Northern part of the city, just like Harlem, they say. Working class in the day. Magic at night. Corsicans, Polish gangsters runnin’ round wid deposed Russian royalty. Top of the hill, Sacre Coeur. Bottom of it, all the hashish, opium, cocaine, reefuh, black coffee, champagne, and pussy you can get!”
“Sound like my kinda place!”
“Hey, hey, hey, Herbie, I heard a guy took up drums, didn’t even play, man,” Sissle teased, “making moneeeee! Even you could get a gig.”
“Bettuh quit ridin’ me, Sissle.”
“I’m not going back. Em-mmm, not me,” said Ivan. “They givin’ me a hard time, but I’m not going back. Got a date wid my destiny, mes amis.”
“How bout you, youngblood? Headin’ home?”
“Oh yeah,” Osceola smiled. “I got me somebody to see.”
“Wasted half the mushrooms, too old. Oh, got string beans.” Mah Bette pulled out the last clove of garlic. “Red pepper still half good, some good-smellin’ onion, what lef’, herb from the garden, spice from the forest, and a tech of Maum Bette’s elderberry wine n let simmuh while the rice cook.” Mah Bette was slower now, but from what others would discard, she still knew how to wring the last bit of nourishment and delight.
Everyone was celebrating. “The war, the war is over!” She didn’t know exactly who was coming to dinner, but she knew it was someone. With soldiers coming home every day, she sensed an opportunity to heal the rift between Dora and her younger daughter, who was now near ready to bear her own child.
Bette had struck a good bargain with the Hendersons, Rosa and Val. For a portion for themselves, they would slaughter the fattening hog. The whole family took part. Val hung the scalded animal up by the legs, and his sons all scraped the bristles. He then cut the still-steaming carcass open from head to tail and let the intestines fall into a deep wooden tub, so Mah Bette could instruct the girls on cleaning them. Val butchered the carcass with maximum efficiency. Bacon, ribs, steaks, chops, pigtail, feet, brain, testicles into mountain oysters, the head gristle for hogshead cheese. Mah Bette collected the backbones and tossed them in the rice. The tail, ears, and nose, Rosa boiled and ground into sausage. The feet, Mah Bette thought, she would pickle for New Year’s.
They worked way into the night, the rag wicks of the flambeaus glowing softly, the fireflies syncopating. Mah Bette stirred a three-legged iron pot cooked over the fireplace. While hoecakes cackled, biscuits baked into the flames. She sprinkled white sand on the floor and began sweeping. Muh great-grand fixed up this old place pretty nice. She worked way into the night, as Lizzie sat in the corner watching her. In the back of her throat, she hummed softly to herself. The melody drifted over the air and floated on the night breeze.
When Mitch and Ossie arrived in Charleston, members of the Brown Society had their whole itinerary planned: a picnic at Goose Creek, a reception at Jehu Jones, followed by a parade at the Battery. Though it was only May, activities were planned all the way to the Fourth of July. Colored of every hue were feeling different about themselves and quite different about Osceola Turner. Formerly viewed as wharf-rat trash, he was now the toast of the town. “A hero has returned!” All he wanted to do was to see Lizzie. He had a brand-new dress from Paris for her, one like Irene Castle wore. She wasn’t at the train station, wasn’t at the gathering, wasn’t down by the barbershop or even in front of the Bijoux.