Sometimes a Great Notion

  "But you may be right," he said, finishing up along with the last few bars of Lee's Giuffre record; "I probably haven't kept up with what's been going on. But I know one thing: that old blues and boogie and bop had some man to it.")

  And Hank said, "That manure they're playin' there hasn't got any more balls than it does beat. I like somethin' with a little more balls on it."

  And I said, "Such a prejudice must limit you terribly."

  And he said, "Are we gonna be like that?"

  And I said, "I should think you would want to at least exclude such things as the female sex from such a sweeping statement."

  And he said, "I should think this outfit snuggling her little tail up against me here would make a qualification like that pretty damned unnecessary, but, if you are goin' to be hard-nosed about it . . ."

  But I waved it off (see: still trying to be fair, a Good Guy) and said, "Sorry, Hank, sorry." Then, my friend--to show you how grave my affliction was, how deeply rooted the cancer--I went so far as to attempt to repair the rent my tongue had sliced in our tender new fellowship. I said I had been only jesting and that, Sure brother, I understand what you were talking about that music was meant for. I told him that there were, in fact, two recognized schools of Jazz, Black Jazz and White Jazz, and that what he was referring to as Masculine was no doubt the Black Jazz school. I noted that I had played only Brubeck, Giuffre and Tjader. But, here, listen to some of this for Black Jazz: catch hold of this!

  (Lee riffled through the albums in his case, found the one he was searching for, and removed it carefully, almost reverently. "You act like it's about to blow up," Hank commented. "It very well might . . . listen.")

  And I put on what? Of course. John Coltrane. "Africa Brass." I recall no malice aforethought in this choice, but who can say? Does one ever play Coltrane for the uninitiated without subconsciously hoping for the worst? Anyway, if such was my wish my subconscious must have been greatly pleased, for, after a few minutes of that tenor sax ripping away at the privates, Hank reacted according to schedule. "What kind of crap is that?" (Anger, frustration, great gritting of teeth; all the classic responses.) "What kind of godawful manure pile is that?"

  "That? What are you asking? This is Jazz as black as it comes, black balls dragging the ground . . ."

  "Yeah, but . . . wait a minute--"

  "Isn't it so? Listen to it; is that precision la dee da?"

  "I don't know if--"

  "But listen; isn't it so?"

  "That it has balls? I suppose . . . yes, but I'm not talk--"

  ("So you may be forced, brother, to find a different prerequisite to found your prejudice on."

  "But forchrissakes listen to that manure. Eee-onk: onk-eeek. I mean maybe he's got balls but it sounds like somebody's stompin' up and down on 'em!"

  "Exactly! Exactly! Hundreds of years of stomping; ever since the slave traders. That's the story he tells! Not what would be nice . . . but the way it IS! The terrible, deadly way it really IS when you know you're surrounded by black skin. And we are all surrounded by that skin, and he's trying to show us some beauty in this condition. If you're incensed it's because he's being honest about our condition, because he's honestly describing the black and ball-stomping way it is, instead of being content to whine about it like those Uncle Toms before him."

  "Bug, Joe Williams, Fats Waller, Gaillard, that bunch . . . they none of them never whined. They maybe griped but they did it with some joy. They never whined. By god if they did. And they never come on about, about . . . blackness and ball-stomping, neither--trying to make it beautiful, for shitsakes--because it ain't beautiful. It's ugly as sin!")

  Brother Hank then clamped shut his jaw and remained silent throughout the rest of the side, as I peeped at his stone-smiled obstinance through the fingers of my shading hand. Let me see, Peters! Was it then, during the tense listening, that I renovated my views of vengeance? Let me see? No. No, ah no. I still had not . . . Oh. It was--no . . . yes;--admit! admit!--it was, it was then, right after Coltrane, when Viv asked what to her must have been a perfectly innocent question, just a small-talk question to ease the strain. Yes; directly after . . . "Where did you get the record, Lee?" was the best the girl could do. Just a question to ease the strain. Perfectly innocent on her part. For if it had not been so innocent could I have answered with such little thought to what I was saying? "My mother gave it to me, Viv. My mother always--"

  With such very little thought that I did not realize I had made the blunder in his presence until he said Sure, until he said Sure, sure as gods green apples I mighta known. Sure I mighta known because it is just exactly the sorta dismal manure she'd go for, isn't it? Sure, listen there--it is just the sorta manure Mother would--

  Lee stops writing, abruptly jerking his face up from the page. He holds his pen and sits for endless minutes with the little nub of a cigarette cold between his lips, listening to the snaredrum sound of a pine bough brushing in the breeze across his window screen. The sound reaches him eerily, through twisting channels. At first it holds no meaning and he thinks of it as a sound only, issuing from no source. Then he catches sight of the dark movement of the branch and fixes the sound; relieved that it is only a branch, he lights the cigarette again and bends back to his paper . . .

  But I'd best be on with it before it gets too late and too sleepy and too high. I'd like to do the complete scene for you because I know you would appreciate the nuances, the vicious undertones, the pastels of hostility, but I'm--whup, wheep, whoop--getting too far out to give these subtleties the attention they deserve.

  So, anyway. All right. There I am with Hank hassling me about my Mother. My mellow benevolence is shattered. The cold bitter light of reason is beginning to peep through. The truce is obviously over. Time to think again of the battle. I devise a plan to capture my intended weapon and immediately set about my campaign. . . .

  "Well, Hank," I remark, sneeringly, "there are quite a number of people well versed in music who might disagree with your evaluation of current Jazz artists. So couldn't it be possible that you are being a bit, shall we say bull-headed? narrow-minded?"

  The victim blinks, surprised by Little Brother's testy tone. Could Little Brother be spoiling for a fat lip maybe? "Yeah . . ." he says slowly, "I suppose." I cut him off, going blithefully on. . . .

  "On the other hand narrow-minded may be a dishonest label. It may imply a specific not present. Anyway, that's not the point. We were talking about balls, were we not? Balls standing--for the sake of argument--for manliness, strength, intestinal fortitude, etc. Well, brother, do you think that just because a man has enough brains to play more than bam bam bam bam--along with three blues chords and a half-dozen notes--do you think this makes it impossible for him to also have balls? Or does the presence of one eliminate the possibility of the other?"

  "Hold on." The victim sniffs, he squints. "Now wait." Perhaps like an animal he can sense the presence of a trap. But what he cannot sense is that the trap is set in reverse, to catch the trapper.

  "Look at it this way," I continue, and begin offering newer, nastier arguments, "or what about this," I press on, "and will you at least consider this," I demand, parlaying one cutting point after another as I begin to put on the pressure. Not openly provoking hostility, not so Viv will recognize it, you see, but skillfully, shrewdly, with innuendoes and references to bygone events meaningful only to Hank and Myself. So that when I start dangling the bait he is ready.

  "What do you mean Champion Jack Dupree is somebody's uncle Tom hushpuppy?" he demands, reacting to an incidental statement. "What do you mean about Elvis, too? while I'm at it. I know what's said about him but screw 'em I say. When Elvis started he had something, he had--"

  "Tonsilitis? Rickets?"

  "--he had more'n that asshole there playing hopscotch or whatever. Let me get that offa there. Christ, you've played ten sides, let me get a word in edgewise."

  "Don't! Get your fingers off that record. I'll take it off."

&n
bsp; "Okay, okay, take it off."

  And so forth and so on with fists doubled and eyes red and I've got him. "Let me play it over Hank, then maybe you'll . . ."

  "You put that goddam thing on again I'll so help me Christ--" "Prints! You've got all sorts of crud on it!" "Shit, I barely--" "I don't like anyone to touch my records!" "Well by god now . . . if you don't like it--" Shouting, standing up. Watch: Brother Hank is finally showing through. Just like Les Gibbons showed through what was truly inside. It's brother Hank skinned out of his tinfoil wrapper. Watch, Viv, look how he shouts at poor Lee when we argue. Look how he pulls rank of muscle. "--what you can do about it!"

  See how unjust, Viv? Yet see how Lee tries to be fair though Hank grows angrier. Like a grade-school bully shouting Okay! It comes right down to it maybe I don't have a right! Watch: He is bigger tougher watch him Viv, because, bub, and if you don't like it know do about it!

  And, see Viv, what can Lee do? What chance has he against this beast gnashing teeth before him this barroom brawler with commando training from Korea this bully Viv? What? Not a chance in the world and the poor boy knows it. He knows Viv, look, that any answer to Hank's challenge would be disastrous. Oh Viv, how awful it must be, do you see? for the boy to have to suffer the coward's shame, the craven's humiliation. He knows he is being a coward WATCH but he can't help it. Oh look, Viv, he knows! He knows! He's afraid to fight and he knows! How much more painful, do you see? how pitiful! How very terrible, (but you, comrade, you see, don't you, how very clever) as he bows his head in surrender suffers the degradation of mumbling an apology while knowing he is in the right!

  But, oh Viv, right doesn't make might.

  Hank stalks outside, victorious, adamant (trapped) Lee stands ashamed beaten (cunning) Viv watches (nibbling) at the miserable vanquished wretch, twice miserable for he was vanquished without a battle. Coward! Weakling! Loser! (fox . . .)

  "I'm sorry, Lee. Hank . . . gets going like that sometimes when he drinks. I should have taken him up to bed earlier. But he seemed in such a good mood."

  "No, Viv. He was right. He was perfectly right in everything he said."

  "Oh he was not!"

  "Yes. He was right and proved it. Not about the music. That's not important. But about . . . what he said."

  "Oh Lee, he doesn't really think that."

  "Thinks it or not, it's true." Look Viv, look at Lee needing so much. See how he is so small in the world. "It's true."

  "It's not, Lee. Believe me. You aren't . . . oh, if someone could convince you--"

  "Tomorrow."

  "What."

  "On our date tomorrow. If it is on again?"

  "There never was any date. I just--"

  "I thought so . . ."

  "Now don't act like that, please Lee. . . ."

  "How should I act? First you say--"

  "All right. Tomorrow." See his face Viv? "If you think you need to . . ." See how much he needs? "I just wish I knew more, understood way you two . . ." There's a lot you don't know about him, Viv. That makes him even smaller. You don't know all his shame, you don't even begin to know. His shame is strangling him.

  No, nobody's that ashamed.

  Yes! you don't know. You just see the surface shame. Right now there is a second layer ashamed of the first, ashamed of being so weak as to use the shame, ashamed of his need to use the shame. And all his anger comes of it, his cleverness spawned of it, his hate . . . ah, his hate . . . like years ago? hating? as he looked through that hole? he looked, you know, so many times more than his hate needed . . . He came the first time and he looked and it was hate and he came the second time and it was shame for though hate made him big enough to watch what he had to watch the first time seeing the second time could not add more to hate for there was no more to be hated or seen than the first time and less to see the third time and less each time but hate no longer needed it. By the third time Shame needed it. Weakness needed it. Perversion needed it. And hate was stretched to cover everything. So see? All like that. Need Shame Weakness all boiling under that lid I am smothering of that lid hate and see I must must I must--"

  The flow of ink ceases in midword but Lee writes on to the edge of the page before he notices the pen has stopped. Then shuts his eyes and begins to laugh, beside himself with amusement. He laughs for a long time and when his lungs are empty the echoes of his laughing rattle woodenly back from the pineboard walls. He fills his lung and laughs again, and again, until the laughter finally subsides into exhausted, hoarse wheezes.

  He opens his eyes and looks about his bed vacantly until his eyes fall on the third cigarette. He takes it up gingerly between thumb and forefinger and places it between his lips with great care, as though the slightest jar might shatter it. After some difficulty he finds the matches. He lights the cigarette and draws slowly in. The walls of the room draw inward with the smoke. He holds the breath as long as he can, then lets it out with a low whistling sound and the room expands once more. He draws another. As he smokes he works to get the pen functioning once more. He pounds it against the paper, he tries running the point over the palm of his hand. Finally he remembers a trick Mona taught him and holds the point briefly in a match flame. This time it marks when he traces it across his palm.

  He finishes the cigarette and bends to the notebook again, but he has forgotten what he was writing and can pick up no thread from the last few lines. He shrugs, and sits smiling. He sits motionless until a sound, at once far away and quite near, is heard above the brushing of the pine bough on his window. It is like the strumming of a great bass. And the brushes . . . He begins rocking to the beat. After a few more minutes the pen moves across the paper swiftly:

  drums drums drums are death drums voo drums doo drums kha-a-a-a leading a rattling dance of skeletons through steamy green saxophones, through the screeching jungle. Gruesome, stark--he's right--godawful. And he is right, it is the very sort of manure Mother would buy. He is right and cursed right and damn him for it damn him to everlasting hell!

  drums drums sucking drums ooze of mud, parched and moaning stones in sun, something swoops to scream at you with a brass beak honed like razor kha-a-a . . . and that's Coltrane, and that's Truth . . . and that's true that that was mother and this is me and Hank's right and damn him for it damn him damn him damn . . .

  dum . . . dum . . . dum dum EEkha-a-a-a there is blackness in his playing, blackness slashed apart with red. There is bleak and senseless pain. Warped and torn and gha-a-gasping lovely and yes also also ugly, grotesque, but then he makes it beautiful by convincing us it's true. Gawking mad and horrible, black apart with red, but that's the real face of it. And beauty must be made from what is really must be must be made

  He pauses again when Hank stops whacking the big cable on the levee. He looks absently about him, clucking his tongue to remember something. Then Hank starts striking the cable again, more slowly. Lee's head begins to rock to and fro over the page, to a music swirling, broken and disjointed from the night . . .

  Black crows. Black crows. Over the cornfield. So what they play. So What is the name I know the piece I got it now. Listen to them. Grim missionaries of So What! Three chocolate-coated vacuums calling So What!

  All a drag man, all a hassle man, all too much not enough something else nothing at all So What!

  All three ask it together, then each at a time, then all together again. SO WHAT? SO SO SO WHAT so so so what? All together, then the trumpet, then the tenor, then the alto, then all together again SOOOOOO what?

  All three vacuums, transparent lips to the glass brass bells of three brass horns, sucking in at the three brass bells, fingering reverse indrawn music of despair, playing pictures on the desert SO what? tossed hot chance of skeleton dice over dunes sifting rust . . . burnt land, burnt sky, burnt black moon . . . burnt cities wind scattering hot memo papers no one to read them SOOO what? in houses sundered with big look and WHOOO what? . . . burn if don't shame empty up lay empty hot give stay SO loose what? look where is go is
empty go so empty hot so frozen what and who

  The pen reaches the bottom of the page, but he doesn't open the notebook for more paper. He sits, staring at a little hourglass-shaped patch of light cast onto his wall through a crack in his lampshade, very still, only his finger moving as he taps out slow rhythms on the paper. He sits until his eyes begin to water, then he gathers up the scattered pages of his writing and tears them into stamp-sized pieces, working on each with bemused interest until he has a lapful of confetti. He throws the torn paper from his window into the October breeze and returns to bed. He falls asleep watching the little fragment of light vibrate across his wall, thinking how much more efficient it would be filling an hourglass with photons instead of those unruly grains of sand.

  Up river from the Stamper house and south, back into the sudden thrust of mountains, up the deep granite canyon of the South Fork of the Wakonda Auga, I know a place where you can sometimes sing along with yourself if you take the notion. You stand on a wooded slope overlooking the crooked little deep-green river far below, and sing into a lofty amphitheater of naked rock scooped from the steep mountain across the way: "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream . . ."--and just as you start on your merrily-merrilies, the echo comes in, "Row, row, row . . ." right on cue. So you sing with the echo. But you must be careful in choosing your key or your tempo; there is no changing of the pitch if you start too high, no slowing down of the tempo if you start too fast . . . because an echo is an inflexible and pitiless taskmaster: you sing the echo's way because it is damned sure not going to sing yours. And even after you leave this mossy acoustical phenomenon to go on with your hiking or fishing, you cannot help feeling, for a long time after, that any jig you whistle, hymn you hum, or song you sing is somehow immutably tuned to an echo yet unheard, or relentlessly echoing a tune long forgotten--