Clayton Byrd Goes Underground

  The magician’s already sagging, ruddy face reddened even more. He was a sorry-looking guy. However, sorry didn’t stop him from shouting “MOVE IT, FELLAS! MOVE IT!” at Train Ear and the boys. “I’m working here. I’m working.”

  Train Ear shouted back, “THIS IS OUR TRAIN!” and the boys, except for Clayton, joined him:

  “WE RUN THIS TRAIN—

  WE ROCK THIS TRAIN—

  YOU BETTER SIT DOWN—

  OR GET BEAT DOWN!”

  Train Ear moved toward the magician. “You beat it or get beat down. You heard me.”

  Clayton didn’t want any part of getting or giving a beatdown. He hoped the Beats’ words were all rhythm. Just talk that sounded good. But now Train Ear was face-to-face with the magician.

  “You’re ruining my trick!” Spit flew out of the magician’s mouth as he spoke. “I had it all set up.” More spit.

  “Pops, did you spit on me? Did you just spit on me?” Train Ear wiped his face and pushed the magician back a step. The boys, except for Clayton, laughed. The riders who were looking on mostly shook their heads, but did and said nothing.

  Clayton waited for the magician to do something. With his cape. Or the wand. Maybe throw the hat like a kung fu weapon. But the hat was too sad. Still, Clayton waited. As did most of the train riders.

  The train pulled into the station.

  Ding-dong-ding. “Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”

  The people were leaving. Those who had watched the magician’s show before it came to a stop in mid-trick. The magician picked up a black case that he’d left on the floor and chased down departing train riders with his floppy top hat.

  Train Ear forgot about the magician. His head snapped left. He waved his hand in an urgent circular motion. “BEATS!” And just like that, everyone ran.

  Clayton didn’t know what was happening or what to do. He turned and saw the policeman who entered the car, and then saw Train Ear and Cool Papa’s hat taking off. Without thinking, he ran in the direction of his grandfather’s hat.

  SIX RINGS

  We don’t need you. We’re just fine.

  This is what Ms. Byrd told herself when the phone rang.

  Albert Miller called the employee lounge either during lunch or during dinnertime on double-shift nights. Six rings followed by no ringing for thirty seconds. Then another six rings. It became a running joke among her coworkers. “How many rings before she gets up to answer?” One particular coworker didn’t find the pleading rings amusing. Eventually, she marched over to the telephone, picked it up, spoke to the caller, and then held out the receiver to Ms. Byrd. “It’s for you.”

  As always, Ms. Byrd stopped eating, wiped her mouth with her napkin, glared at her coworker, and took the telephone.

  “Yes, Albert.”

  Each week Ms. Byrd and Mr. Miller had the same conversation. He either had tickets to the planetarium, the train show, or the game at the stadium. He could swing by and pick them both up—she and Clayton. She, who, unbeknownst to Clayton, loved watching a baseball game at the stadium, was always welcome to join them. They could eat hot dogs, do the seventh-inning wave. See themselves on the Jumbotron. This miraculous season, their team had made it to the postseason. “You can’t miss that,” Mr. Miller said hopefully.

  Ms. Byrd always had a good reason why they couldn’t go. This time, it was that she had just got Clayton back on track with his schoolwork. An outing of fun would send the wrong message.

  She was so pleased with herself for being firm, when her best childhood memories were the few times her father was home from being out to sea or on the road. She sat between her mother and father at the baseball stadium and she munched on Cracker Jack and watched the game. When the organ played baseball songs, Papa, Mama, and Little Miss Byrd sang along.

  While Mr. Miller talked, she smiled. She remembered years ago how she had treated herself to a game at the stadium, and that she had ticket number six in the center section over home plate, row B, next to seat seven. His seat. Albert Miller’s.

  She caught herself smiling. So did the coworker who had handed her the phone. Ms. Byrd stopped smiling.

  “No, Albert. This weekend isn’t good. I finally have Clayton focused. . . . No,” she repeated. “A fun outing would ruin the schedule.”

  And he said, like he always said, “You both need me. I wish you would let me be a bigger part of his life. You need help with him.”

  She tried to keep her voice polite. Firm and low was the best she could do. “We’re fine, Albert. I have everything under control. Clayton’s fine. Just fine.”

  CHASING THE BEATS

  Clayton stepped onto the subway platform, a fast- and slow-moving jigsaw puzzle with live pieces entering, exiting, milling, and turning. He made out the Beats running up ahead. He tried to catch them, but the people around him moved like zombies. Both the platform and the throng of people seemed to go on without end. He lost sight of Cool Papa’s hat, but he spotted Beat Box, about three hundred feet away, waving to him frantically.

  Clayton jumped high to be seen, and waved back, then dashed in Beat Box’s direction. A woman pushed her stroller in the very spot where Clayton’s foot landed and Clayton bumped into it. Little arms inside the stroller flew up.

  “Sorry!” Clayton said.

  “Boy, you better watch where you’re going!” The woman stood eye to eye with Clayton, but he could see she was no one to mess with. “You kids better stop playing around.”

  “Sorry!” he repeated, but he kept running.

  How could he watch where he was going if he didn’t know where he was going? He was just running. Chasing the Beats.

  “Come on! Come on!”

  Clayton saw Beat Box up ahead. And then, he didn’t. Beat Box had somehow disappeared into darkness.

  Clayton looked to see who was behind him. Far off at the other end of the platform, he saw the navy blue of an officer’s uniform. He wondered if the officer had seen Beat Box disappear. Or if the officer could see him.

  He couldn’t lose his hat. It was the last thing left of Cool Papa.

  Without thinking, Clayton ran to the very end of the platform, pushed past the red sign that said PROHIBITED: DO NOT ENTER, and trotted down concrete steps until he found himself in the gray-black of the tunnel, at track level.

  Clayton was now farther underground than he had ever been. With the aid of a few bald lightbulbs that hung a ways down, he made out figures running. Beat Box and the others, he thought. So he stayed close to the wall, and ran down the dusty, foot-wide walkway that jutted out merely inches from the outer rail.

  Once, from a seat on a slow-moving train, Clayton had seen subway workers standing on the walkway carrying lanterns while repairing the tracks. But now he was on the slim walkway, inches from trains soon to come hurtling down the tracks.

  He ran faster.

  He tried to keep his ears open for sounds. Maybe a police officer behind him, or an oncoming local train. And then what? He didn’t know. Maybe he’d have to flatten his back against the tunnel’s wall.

  Keep running, he told himself. Catch the Beats. Catch the Beats. Get Cool Papa’s hat back. Find the Bluesmen. Go on the road.

  Clayton had never run so much and so hard in his life. He found himself huffing, his lungs thinning and burning within him, his chest hurting. But his legs kept going. His nearly empty book bag was light, but his arms and legs grew heavy. Clayton wasn’t much of a runner but the thought of a train or a cop on his tail turned him into a sprinter.

  His inner ears felt numb. He couldn’t hear any sounds up ahead. But he heard a clink. A metal-on-metal clink. His blues harp! It had slipped out of his pocket, flown a few feet ahead, and disappeared into the dark.

  “Man!” Clayton’s heart flopped inside his chest. Flopped and fell. Where did the harp go? He had to get it. Where was it? WHERE?

  He felt his brain pinging up, down, left, right, inside his skull. He covered his head and ears and circled around and arou
nd in a small spot, but he was only making himself dizzy.

  Then Clayton stopped. Stopped circling. Stopped panting. Stopped his thoughts from racing, his brain from pinging. He stood along the edge of the walkway, looking out into the dark. When he calmed down, he heard the metal-on-metal clink in his head.

  The train rail! But where?

  He took a few steps. The sound of the harp hitting metal had been more near than far. He kneeled. There! The gleam in the dark! Not on the rail or out on the tracks, like the clinking suggested, but down along the outer edge where the rectangular wooden train track ends were spaced like flat brown teeth. All wasn’t lost. He could reach it. Just kneel. Reach. Swipe.

  But as he knelt, he felt a stirring through his hands, knees, and belly. Sound. Vibration. The rumble of the oncoming train. Still, he couldn’t see the glow of light that signaled the arriving train, or see headlights of the actual train. He didn’t have Train Ear’s gift. A gift that would buy him time. He couldn’t tell if the train was an express, coming from the center track, or a local train, which would roar inches away from him. But he could feel a breeze and hear the rumble, which meant the train was near. Time was running out. The train was coming. Clayton could only imagine his harp smashed up on the train tracks.

  “Man, man, man, oh man.” That was as close to prayer as he could offer.

  He looked behind him, in the direction of the local track. The glow in the dark drew brighter. The harp was right there. Right there. He leaned and reached down.

  His life didn’t pass before him, but his day did. The day he was supposed to have. Getting on the school bus. Singing “This Land Is Your Land.” Tapping on the lizard’s cage. Getting his math homework checked off. Gym. Eating cafeteria tacos. Reading The Four Corners of the World. One hundred men pulling his eyelids down, his head sinking onto his desk. His mother’s utter disappointment.

  And the day he did have: Emptying his book bag. Tricking Omar. Spending the last money his grandfather gave him. Stealing the blues harp. Smashing the glass saltshaker angel. Sneaking down into the tunnel. Chasing the Beats.

  His hand found the faint silver gleam in the dark; he snatched it up, and then he rolled back against the tunnel wall.

  Ten seconds later, the local train flew by him.

  Clayton heard steps coming toward him. They were light steps.

  “Yo, Clay Bird. Come on! Come on!”

  It was Beat Box.

  Clayton got up. He was dusty and dirty. He stuffed his blues harp deep into his pocket.

  He ran toward Beat Box’s voice and finally saw him.

  “What were you doing down there?” Beat Box asked.

  “Dropped my harp,” Clayton said.

  Beat Box shook his head. “Thought we lost you. Come on.”

  Clayton followed.

  “That was dumb,” Beat Box said. “Don’t you know about the third rail? Fry you up.”

  “That’s my ax, man,” Clayton said. “Had to get it.”

  “Dumb,” Beat Box said. “Dead dumb.”

  They walked until the tunnel wall opened to a narrow archway. They stepped inside, Beat Box first. He pointed to a ladder of iron bars that ran up a narrow concrete hole. Clayton looked up. On the other end was a half-moon of light with faces crowding the opening.

  “Come on,” Beat Box said.

  “I can’t climb,” Clayton said.

  Beat Box shrugged. “All right. Hope you like rats.”

  Clayton watched Beat Box’s hands grab the bars as his legs climbed. Beat Box had a steady climbing rhythm and was moving away from him.

  He was already grabbing and climbing the grungy, rusty metal rungs. He was grabbing and telling himself, It’s not so high. It’s not so high.

  He imagined his body moving like the lizard. His shoulders shifting left and right, left and right, while his hind legs pushed his body upward. He grunted and pulled himself up in what he told himself was “lizard rhythm.” The lid to the manhole was now completely removed, making the half-moon above him a round disk of blue afternoon sky.

  Beat Box climbed out of the hole.

  When Clayton’s hands ran out of rungs, he was at the top. Hands reached down and pulled him out of the hole. He covered his eyes for a few seconds. The light from outside was too bright after having been in the tunnel.

  He lay on concrete. It took a while before he could sit up.

  His breath hadn’t caught up and he panted from the climbing. Still, Clayton was glad to see the outside. Glad to be sitting on sidewalk concrete and not on the ledge in the tunnel. Even with his pants ripped at the knee, and his hands scratched up, smelling like sour metal.

  Train Ear pushed the manhole cover over the hole and started to walk away. Cool Papa’s porkpie hat sat on his head. At least Train Ear had held on to Cool Papa’s hat.

  Still, he hated Train Ear.

  WHAT HE TOLD HIMSELF

  The Beats laughed and jumped around like the wolf pack Clayton imagined when he’d first seen them so many train stations ago. His lungs still sore, Clayton got up off the sidewalk and trotted after them. He didn’t laugh with them, but to anyone looking on, he was in their pack.

  The boys crisscrossed between streets and avenues until they found another train station with trains running in all directions.

  Train Ear and Jelly Bones hopped over turnstiles like gymnasts vaulting a pommel horse. Beat Box and Boom Box ducked under the turnstile bars. Clayton took his MetroCard from his pants pocket, swiped it, and then walked through. He had two more fares left on his card.

  He followed his grandfather’s hat and the Beat Boys down the steps to the main platform.

  “Which way?” Jelly Bones asked Train Ear. “Midtown, where suits have money?”

  “And cops,” Train Ear said. “Blue on every corner.”

  “Uptown, then,” Boom Box said.

  Clayton said, “We could go to Washington Square Park. They play the blues down there.”

  “We don’t play the blues,” Train Ear said. “What’s that? Old-time music?”

  “Blues is all right,” Clayton said. “Everybody’s got the blues.”

  “Sounds like crying-time music,” Jelly Bones said. “We’re not crybabies. We’re Beat Boys.”

  Train Ear said to Beat Box, “Make some noise!”

  Beat Box made crying sounds to a record-scratching beat.

  Clayton said, “All right,” like their teasing was nothing. Still, he knew he was a bluesman and that he had to get back to his plan. He said, “Look. I gotta go. I gotta find the Bluesmen.”

  “The Bluesmen?” Train Ear said. “Forget the Bluesmen. Stay with us.”

  “We could mix some tunes,” Beat Box said. “Me on beatbox. You on harmonica.”

  “Blues harp.”

  “Angels play harps, man.” Jelly Bones said “man” the way Clayton said it, which was how Cool Papa said it. But Jelly Bones didn’t know that. Only Clayton knew. Like he knew it was time to follow his plan and find the Bluesmen.

  “You see how we’re making money,” Train Ear said. “Why you want to mess that up? Forget the blues.”

  No. Clayton didn’t say it out loud, but “No” popped into his head. He might not have a gutbucket cry or a round-the-corner-and-back-again bend, but he couldn’t let go of the blues any more than he could let go of Cool Papa.

  “All right,” Train Ear said. “Go. We got dollars. We can buy batteries—”

  “And a slice!” Boom Box cut in. “One to a man. Extra cheese.”

  “We don’t need Clay Bird and his harp,” Train Ear said.

  “Fly, Clay Bird,” Jelly Bones said.

  Then they all went, “Caw! Caw! Caw!” But as soon as Clayton caught Beat Box’s eye, Beat Box stopped cawing.

  “You should be down with us,” Beat Box said.

  “My hat,” Clayton said to Train Ear. He held out his hand.

  “My hat,” Train Ear said back.

  “Quit playing, man,” Clayton said. “Give me my
hat back. I gotta get downtown.”

  Train Ear smiled his mean, hard smile. “If you can take it from me, you can have it.”

  Clayton didn’t have a running start like he did when he snatched the hat from the girl in his backyard who stole Cool Papa’s treasures. Instead, he jumped up and reached. But Train Ear stepped back swiftly and Clayton came away with nothing.

  “Give me my hat.”

  “Yeah, man,” Beat Box said. “Give him the old hat.”

  Train Ear cocked his head sharp. That was his “no.”

  Beat Box said, “Clay Bird was down with us. We made more tips with him. At least give him the hat.”

  “If he was with us, he’d be with us. Instead of looking for the blues.”

  “Yeah, Clay Bird. Play with us,” Jelly Bones said.

  “Play us some pizza money.”

  Beat Box didn’t say anything. Boom Box slugged his twin. Beat Box slugged him back. Train Ear glared at Beat Box. Beat Box looked down.

  Clayton Byrd said, “Gimme the hat. Let me go.”

  Train Ear smiled.

  Clayton knew better than to beg for his hat. He’d seen how it went at school when one kid took another kid’s stuff. Look sharp. Be cool. Cool like when he had wanted that solo with the Bluesmen but felt it slipping away from him. It wasn’t easy, wanting something badly and playing it off like it didn’t matter. But that was all he could do. He was no match against the wiry, taller, hard-faced teen.

  Train Ear removed Cool Papa Byrd’s hat from his head. He eyed it, ran his finger around the brim, then looked at Clayton. He stepped to the edge of the platform, held his arm out to the track. Twirling the hat on one finger.

  Clayton’s heart leapt and sank. But his feet remained still.

  His hat.

  Cool Papa Byrd’s hat. The last piece of Cool Papa Byrd.

  If he tried to snatch the hat, Train Ear would throw it out onto the express track. Out into the filthy, rusty, rat-ridden tracks with live rails made to “fry him up” if he tried to go after it. If a train came along, the train wind would sail the hat off Train Ear’s finger. Either way, Cool Papa’s porkpie hat would fly out to the train tracks, where Clayton would have no hope of getting it back.