Crowded Lives, page 9
“Come to get you. Mr. Gaston sent him.”
McCulla squinted quizzically at Rainey. “I do something wrong last night? He fixing to fire me?”
Rainey shrugged. “Ah don’t know nothin”cept he want you over dere.”
McCulla began muttering an obscenity-laced soliloquy on the inequities of poor memory and early rising. The kid mixed a shot of whiskey in a cup of coffee and took it to him. “Hot,” he warned.
“I’m not blind or stupid,” McCulla said. “I can see the steam.” He tried to take a sip and burned his lips. “Son of a bitch!”
“Ain’t blind and ain’t stupid,” old Rainey muttered. “Wonder what the problem be, den.”
The kid ignored the old black man’s comment. He had learned long ago, when he was eight or nine, that if he defended against every slur cast at his father, he’d spend a good part of his life fighting. Sitting on the floor, he opened his shoeshine box and uncapped the new tin of brown polish to mix a little water with it for easier spreading. It would, he knew, take Lew twenty minutes to start independent functioning. Then the kid could get back out on the streets of the Vieux Carre and start making some money.
Mr. Gaston’s office, upstairs over Tradition Hall, made no concession at all to current times. The desk lamp had a shield of antique green glass, there was a spindle instead of an OUT box, there were a fountain pen and inkwell, and on the wall there was a 1935 calendar, which matched identically the 1985 calendar, but which Gaston liked better because it featured a photograph of Dolores Del Rio.
The dapper club owner, who in his time had been everything from a bootlegger to a bookmaker, placed the tips of his manicured fingers together and studied Lew McCulla, with unblinking eyes. McCulla was one of the best pure Dixieland clarinetists Gaston had ever heard—and Gaston had heard them all. He had heard Louis Cottrell, Jr. play the “Bogalusa Strut” with the Young Tuxedoes back in the 1930s, heard Jimmy Hartwell play with Bix’s Wolverines, when they did “Jazz Me Blues” in Richmond, Indiana, in 1924, and heard the legendary Jimmy Noone, the greatest communicative clarinetist in history, at the Apex Club in Chicago where Earl Hines was a young piano player. Hell, he had even heard Sidney Celestine once for a few minutes. Lew McCulla was as good as any of them—or would have been if he ever stayed sober two days running. McCulla, as far as Gaston knew, was the last of the Albert System clarinetists, still using the old-time, differently constructed and fingered instrument that so faithfully captured the pure New Orleans sound. Why, Gaston wondered, did the Great Dixieland Bandleader in the Sky send him such an outstanding talent, and then attach so many strings to him? It was bad enough that McCulla had a kid that the truant officers were always after because he refused to go to school, and bad enough that the only time McCulla didn’t have a bottle to his lips was when the clarinet mouthpiece was there, but now Gaston found himself faced with still another problem.
“Two guys,” he told McCulla in the same neutral tone he used for every occasion from ardor to death threats, “big, ugly guys. Down from Kansas City. They say you owe Calder Lingle some money. And that you skipped out. Calder sent them down here to cripple you.”
McCulla sighed a deep, weary sigh and leaned forward, elbows on knees. Gaston could see perspiration emerge on the surface of his forehead.
“How much do you owe him?”
“Eight.”
“I’ll let you have it and take it back a hundred a week for two months, no interest.”
McCulla was already shaking his head. “Not eight hundred. Eight grand”
Gaston and old Rainey, who was waiting by the door, exchanged incredulous looks. Eight thousand? “I don’t believe it,” Gaston said.
“Believe it,” McCulla urged.
“How in the hell—”
“Don’t ask. The horses. Cards. A woman named Lila Mae. The booze.” He glanced from Gaston to Rainey and back, helpless and embarrassed. “Life just got away from me. I couldn’t get a handle on anything.”
Now it was Gaston’s turn to sigh wearily. “Well, I can’t stake you to eight grand—money’s too tight right now. But I can let you have enough for you and the kid to split. If you want to head down Galveston way, I have a friend who owns a small jazz club there.”
But again Lew McCulla was shaking his head. “I can’t leave New Orleans right now. The woodwinds committee from the Jazz Hall of Fame will be in town tonight to listen to me play. I’m one of the three finalists this year. I’ve got a chance to be voted into the Hall of Fame.”
“I don’t think you quite understand,” Gaston said slowly. “There’s a committee of two down here from Kansas City that wants to vote you into an intensive-care unit. You’ve got to leave New Orleans.”
“I can’t.” McCulla wet his lips. “You remember my wife, Mr. Gaston? Her name was Edie.”
Gaston nodded. Edie had been the daughter of a tenor-sax player with the Fudge Ripples, one of the first integrated Dixieland bands. Like McCulla himself, she had grown up in the Vieux Carre—the sounds of Dixieland had been her bedtime lullaby. At sixteen she got pregnant by Lew McCulla, who was then twenty, and her father threatened to kill them. They ran off to one of those Southern states where the age of consent is twelve, got married, and gravitated up the muddy Mississippi to Memphis, where Lew found clarinet work on Beale Street. Their baby came—a boy—and Edie began a campaign of sending her daddy pictures of him every month. After two years, the old man forgave them and they moved back to New Orleans. For the next four years they lived an idyllic life. Then Edie started having headaches. She thought it was eye strain and got reading glasses. The headaches continued. She took aspirin. Then aspirin and codeine. Then Demerol. Finally she checked into a hospital. By that time the brain tumor causing the headaches was inoperable.
After Edie’s death, Lew McCulla left New Orleans and wandered around the South, playing here, playing there, never staying in one place very long, beginning to drink a lot. He played in beer bars and roadhouses and dance clubs in places with names like Hattiesburg, Tuscaloosa, and Waycross, always dragging the kid along with him, letting him grow up in diners, pool halls, bus depots. Sometimes the kid got in a full month of school somewhere before they moved on, sometimes not. He learned to read a little, spell a little, make change, and lie a lot. Along the line his eyes turned hard and he became a survivor. He watched his father play clarinet so often that he knew every finger movement of every Dixieland standard that Lew McCulla played, yet he would never touch the instrument. He told his father he didn’t like music. It was actually the musician’s life, the way his father lived it, that he didn’t like.
Most people who were associated with Dixieland in the Vieux Carre knew the story of Lew McCulla and his kid, and remembered Edie McCulla. A roundy, smiling, effervescent girl, she had liked everyone and everyone had liked her. Gaston remembered her well.
“What’s she got to do with you not being able to leave New Orleans?” he asked McCulla.
Lew wet his lips. “I’m not sure you’ll understand this, but see, Edie was very proud of my playing. She thought the music I made with my clarinet was the most beautiful sound in the world. She wanted the kid to be a musician someday, too. I used to tell her what if he don’t want to? What if he wants to be something else? But she always said, ‘Just make him proud of you, Lew. Do that and he’ll want to be just like you.’”
Gaston began to understand. “You think making the Jazz Hall of Fame will do it?”
McCulla shrugged. “It’s worth a try. Nothing else has ever worked.” He looked down at the floor. “I’m not much of an example any other way.”
Gaston was silent for a moment. Then he asked, “When were you nominated?”
“Three months ago. Even with all the problems up in K. C., I still managed to work steady. I played with Rick Ellsworth’s band at the Blue River club. That’s where the woodwinds nominating committee caught me. They had a list of twelve guys who’d been in the business for at least ten years, which is a requirement. During the last few months, they’ve narrowed the list down to three.”
“Who are you up against?”
“Grover Washington, Jr., and Zoot Sims.”
“That’s heavy competition.”
A hint of a smile came to Lew McCulla’s lip. It was a smile that said he knew how good he was. “If you don’t think I’ve got a chance,” he told Gaston, “I’ll go ahead and split.”
“Don’t get cute with me, McCulla,” the older man said. “You know you’re good enough to win, and you know I know it. Question is, can you stay out of the hospital long enough to win?”
“I got to try, Mr. Gaston,” Lew said, all pretense gone now. “For Edie, I got to try.”
Gaston and old Rainey exchanged looks again. They had known each other for thirty years and their minds usually reached the same conclusions, though frequently for different reasons. Right now they were thinking: trouble. Gaston was blaming one thing: musicians. Old Rainey another: white folks. But both knew they would help Lew McCulla however they could. He was part of the Quarter, and so were they. That meant something.
“Maybe,” Gaston said, “we can let the Hall of Fame committee hear you and still get you out of town. Where’s the committee staying?”
“The Royal Orleans. They’re coming to Tradition Hall at eight for the first set.”
“The two guys from Kansas City will be here for the first set, too. We’ve got to fix it so you won’t be here.” Gaston reached for an old-fashioned black telephone, lifted the receiver, and jiggled the hook. “Get me Virgil’s on Basin Street,” he told his switchboard operator. A moment later he said, “Virgil, this is Gaston. You’ve got Peanuts Kenner playing clarinet with your bunch over there, right? Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Send Peanuts over here to play tonight and let my clarinetist Lew McCulla sit in with your guys. We’re trying to keep McCulla away from some outsiders who’re after him.”
The word “outsiders” always worked magic in the Quarter: Virgil agreed at once. When Gaston hung up, he said to old Rainey, “Get over to the Royal Orleans and tell the Hall of Fame committee McCulla will be at Virgil’s on Basin Street instead of here.”
As soon as Rainey left, Gaston took two hundred dollars out of his pocket and handed it to McCulla. “Soon’s those committee people hear you, take the kid and split for Galveston. My friend’s place is the Lone Star Club, on the Strand. I’ll call him.”
“Thanks, Mr. Gaston,” McCulla said, sheepish and ashamed, “I owe you.”
Watching McCulla leave, Gaston thought, sure, sure—you and a hundred other ragtimers. One thing Gaston had learned over the years was that Dixieland musicians never paid their debts. As a group, they were probably the most irresponsible people who ever walked upright. Absolutely worthless. Their only redeeming value, as far as Gaston was concerned, was that they played the sweetest music this side of heaven.
The two apes from Kansas City came back to Gaston’s office at five past eight, just after Tradition Hall’s first set had begun. One ape watched, while one talked.
“Like I tol’ you earlier, Mr. Gaston, we represent Mr. Calder Lingle of Kansas City. Mr. Lingle sent us after this licorice stick player named McCulla that welshed on a bundle of dough. We come down here to learn him a lesson. He’s supposed to be playing at your joint, but he ain’t here. We need to find him. Mr. Lingle tol’ us you’d cooperate.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Gaston said. He picked up a small brass servant’s bell and shook it several times. The two apes exchanged dubious glances. Presently a woman of about forty with a Rubenesque figure, wearing a 1920s shimmy dress, came in. Gaston asked about McCulla.
“He’s sick,” the woman replied, as rehearsed. “From the booze most likely. We got a replacement from the union hall.”
“Get me his address,” Gaston instructed. The woman left and returned a moment later with McCulla’s address on Decatur. It was the actual address—with Calder Lingle involved, Gaston had to make his cooperation look legitimate. “You can probably catch him at home,” he said handing over the address. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.” The head ape thanked him. As they were leaving, Gaston said to the woman, loudly enough for them to hear, “Tell the union hall we’ll need a permanent replacement clarinetist as soon as possible.”
At Virgil’s on Basin Street, the first set of the evening began with “Dipper-mouth Blues,” and without pause went into “Panama” and “Sweet Lorraine.” The Hall of Fame committee had not arrived. Virgil, the club owner, and old Rainey, who had been sent by Gaston to fill him in on the story, stood off to the side of the bandstand watching the front door.
“You sure they got the message that McCulla would be playing here instead of over at Tradition?” Virgil asked. Old Rainey nodded emphatically.
“I deliver dat message myself. Dey be along.” He turned and started to shuffle away.
“Where are you going?”
“Over to where he live,” Rainey said bobbing his chin at McCulla. “Mr. Gaston, he be sending dem thugs over dere. He want me to make sure de boy ain’t around.”
“Boy? Oh, McCulla’s kid.”
“Dat’s right,” Rainey replied. He shuffled around behind the bandstand and out the back door.
McCulla’s kid was at the scarred old table in the little apartment on Decatur, eating pork and beans from an open can and saltine crackers from a box, drinking Dr. Pepper, and counting his money. He had, all in change, four dollars and twenty cents, representing seven shines that afternoon, plus tips. As he ate, he neatly stacked the money on the table—nickels, dimes, quarters and halves. In a little dime-store spiral notebook he used a pencil stub to enter $3.20 after a column of figures that covered half the pages in the book. Carefully adding that entry to the last figure, he wrote a new total: $612.60. Then he put the book and all but one dollar in change into a LeMoyne Coffee can on a shelf under the hotplate. The can already contained nearly ten dollars that he had put in it since the week began. Every Friday he took the money to the Louisiana Bank on Canal Street and deposited it in a savings account. He had been saving for almost a year. In another nine months, he hoped to have one thousand dollars saved. Then he was going to put Lew in the Chelsea Hills Sanitarium and have him cured of the booze.
With the coffee can back on the shelf, the kid returned to the table and finished his solitary supper. From an open window of the apartment he could hear Dixieland music begin playing as the first set started at the Ursuline Club around the corner. The opening number was “Sweet Sue.” The kid had watched Lew play that number a hundred times over the years. Closing his eyes, he pictured a clarinet with fingers moving exactly as they should to produce each note perfectly.
As the kid ate, the unseen band moved into “Davenport Blues,” which Hoagy Carmichael had written in tribute to Bix Beiderbecke, and then into “Lonesome Road,” which opened with a long, lugubrious clarinet solo. Lonesome Road, the kid knew, had been his mother’s favorite song. The kid’s grandfather, before he died, had told him that. He had told the kid many stories about Edie, mostly of her as a little girl growing up in the Vieux Carre. The old man’s stories had made the Quarter sound like some wonderland filled with happy music being played by and for special people. The kid knew differently. The Quarter was a dark, shadowy place where you had to scratch for every dime you made, and where there was always someone lurking about looking to take it from you. When the kid had his thousand dollars saved, and got Lew cured of the booze, he hoped they could leave New Orleans and never return.
Finishing his supper, the kid tossed his pork-and-beans and Dr. Pepper cans into a sack under the sink, rinsed off his spoon, and carefully closed the waxed paper to keep the crackers from going stale. Slinging his shine box, he left the apartment and went downstairs, trying to decide where to work that night. Most of the nighttime tourists head for Bourbon, which was closed to vehicular traffic at night and became a kind of tourist mall, but the tough black kids had decided that Bourbon was theirs—white shoeshine boys caught there had their shine boxes smashed and their money taken. The kid decided to try Bienville Street, where the whores hung out. Lots of times a john would let you give him a shine while he was looking over the parade of flesh.
As the kid was passing through the garden, he saw a figure in the grayness of the areaway leading to the street. Instinctively, he reached into his back pocket where he carried a switchblade.
“It’s me, boy,” old Rainey said. “Lea’ that blade be.”
“What do you want?” McCulla’s kid asked.
“I brang a message from yo’ daddy. He say tell you he ain’t at Tradition tonight—he settin’ in at Virgil’s on Basin Street instead.”
“Okay,” the kid said. It wasn’t unusual—Dixieland musicians often traded chairs for an evening. It was a break from the routine of playing in the same house night after night.
“Whar’ you going to now?” Rainey asked.
“Iberville Street,” the kid lied. He didn’t like anyone knowing where he was.
“I’se going to Toulouse,” Rainey said. “I walk wid you dat far.”
“Suit yourself,” the kid said.
They went off down the street together.
The two apes from Kansas City passed the old black man and the boy on their way to the address Gaston had given them. They went through the garden, found the right apartment, and shouldered the door open without even knocking. The building manager heard the noise and came to investigate.
“We’re looking for Lew McCulla,” the ape that talked said. “We’re cops.”
“Jeez, did you have to break the lock?” the manager complained. “Are you sure you’re cops?”
“Positive.” The ape reached into his pocket and the manager thought he was going to produce a badge. Instead, he handed the manager a fifty.
“Have the lock fixed and keep the change. Can you tell us where McCulla is? He called in sick at work.”
“Jeez, I don’t know,” the manager said with a frown. “He left at his usual time, carrying his clarinet case like always. You sure he ain’t at Tradition Hall?”
