Viper's Dream, page 2
“Hey there, youngblood. I’m Pork Chop Bradley.”
“You’re Pork Chop Bradley?” Clyde said. “The bass player?”
“You’ve heard of me?”
“Yes, suh!”
“I’ve just been hired as the band leader here at Mr. O’s. You new in town?”
“Just arrived yesterday, suh.”
“Stop callin’ me ‘sir.’ I ain’t your daddy or a cop.”
“Yes, suh! I mean, okay, sorry, Mr. Pork Chop, I mean, Mr. Bradley.”
Pork Chop smiled. He seemed both kindly and bemused. “Where you from, Country?”
“Alabama.”
“I’m from Arkansas myself. But I been up here in the big city ten years. Playing in Harlem bands. Is that your dream, Country? To play in a Harlem band?”
“That’s my dream.”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. Sorry. I’m Clyde Morton.”
“All right, Clyde. Enough of the niceties. Get that horn out of its case. You know ‘Stardust’?”
“I sure do.”
“Play it.”
Clyde closed his eyes as he played. At first, he felt like he was wrestling with his horn, like it was a giant, slimy, man-sized fish. He was splashing around in the shallow water, trying to haul the beast to shore. Slowly, the flailing stopped. He had subdued the slippery thing. And so he felt in control of his horn. Finally. Yes, he knew Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust.” He knew the Louis Armstrong version, had heard it over and over again on his Uncle Wilton’s phonograph. He’d studied it. And standing there, in Mr. O’s nightclub, auditioning for Pork Chop, young Clyde Morton played as close to Satchmo as he knew he could ever get.
“Okay, okay, stop,” Pork Chop shouted over Clyde’s blowing. “Stop right there, son, stop! Stop!”
Clyde lowered the horn from his lips, baffled. “I was just in the middle of the song,” he said.
“No, you’re done. Clyde, I’m sorry, that was dreadful.”
“Huh? What?”
“Is this a practical joke? Did Mr. O send you here as a prank? Is that it?”
“Uh, no, Mr. Pork Chop. I’ve never met Mr. O.”
“Sweet mother of Jesus. You really were auditioning? That really is the way you play? That was the worst shit I ever heard in my life.”
“I-I did my best … I could try again …”
“No, son, there’s no point. I mean, I can hear it. Not only are you not a trumpet player, you’re not a musician at all. Who told you you were?”
“My Uncle Wilton,” Clyde said, his voice cracking. “Down in Alabama.”
“I hate to break it to you, son,” Pork Chop said softly.
“He’s gonna be so disappointed.”
“Don’t cry, son. You were just dreaming the wrong dream.”
“What am I gonna do now?”
Pork Chop gave Clyde a long look, kindly and bemused. “Do you know Mary Warner?” he asked.
“Mary Warner?” Clyde said, swallowing hard, choking back tears. “Who’s she?”
Pork Chop chuckled. “Let’s go up to the rooftop. I’ll introduce you.”
Naturally, Clyde had thought Pork Chop was talking about a chick. Some prostitute named Mary Warner. As they climbed the six flights of stairs, he wondered why she would be on the rooftop. But he didn’t give it much thought. He was still stunned by Pork Chop’s opinion of his talent—or the lack thereof. He knew Pork Chop was right. Clyde had been dreaming the wrong dream. He felt he might swoon when they stepped out onto the rooftop. He’d never been up so high in his life. The street noise below sounded somehow unreal. He heard pigeons flapping their wings, burbling. But he didn’t see any prostitute.
Pork Chop pulled out a cigarette that he’d clearly rolled himself. Clyde watched as Pork Chop lit the cigarette, drew on it with a hissing sound, held the smoke in his lungs, then exhaled slowly. Clyde smelled a sweet yet peppery aroma, unfamiliar but appealing. He suddenly realized: This was reefer. He’d heard of it, yes, but he had never seen or smelled it before. Pork Chop held the cigarette out to him.
“Meet Mary Warner, Clyde. Also known as marijuana. Is this your first time?”
“It is.”
“Take a drag, like you just saw me do.”
Clyde sucked hard on the joint: Ssssssssss …
Pork Chop said: “Welcome to the fraternity, Mr. Clyde Morton. You ain’t no musician, but now you’ll know what the jazzmen know. Mary Warner, she was there, in Storyville, New Orleans, when jazz was being born. All the original greats nursed at Mary Warner’s teat.”
It took a minute, but the effect of the herb gradually kicked in. Now Clyde understood the expression he had heard when folks talked about reefer: getting high. Standing on that rooftop in Harlem, watching the clouds drift by, he felt a dreamy elevation.
Pork Chop said: “Mary Warner is magic. I call it the elixir of creativity.”
Clyde took another hit. Ssssssss.
“Hey, Clyde,” Pork Chop said, with a laugh, “you gonna pass that stick back or what?”
Clyde laughed, too, handed Pork Chop back the joint.
When he had walked into Mr. O’s nightclub just a little while earlier, Clyde had thought he was meeting his destiny: to be a professional musician. Turned out he was no musician. But he was right about the destiny part.
Pork Chop said: “Vipers. That’s what we lovers of herb call ourselves. ’Cause of that hissing sound you make when you take a drag on a joint. I can tell you’re a natural born viper, Clyde Morton.”
Clyde was soothed by the sound of Pork Chop’s voice. There was a serenity about this fat bass player in his battered fedora with the front brim turned up. Pork Chop took another couple of hits on the joint, passed it back to the initiate.
Clyde took a hit. He stared out at the Harlem skyline, hearing Louis Armstrong’s sublime rendition of “Stardust” in his head, feeling newly awake, newly alive, tingly and alert. Yet cool, so cool, cool as could be.
“Tell me, Mr. Pork Chop Bradley: Where do you get a hold of this here Mary Warner?”
Pork Chop said: “From the owner of the nightclub. Mr. O himself. Also known as Abraham Orlinsky. I’ll introduce you to him someday if you like. I reckon you ain’t goin’ back to Alabama?”
Ssssssss.
“No, Pork Chop. I’m stayin’ right here.”
“Welcome to Harlem, Viper Clyde.”
* * *
“If you were given three wishes,” the baroness had asked, “to be instantly granted, what would they be?”
November 1961: the night of Clyde “the Viper” Morton’s third murder. Viper was stoned. He sat in the Cathouse, a notebook and pencil in front of him, contemplating Nica’s question. He knew that in a couple hours’ time, he might be dead or on his way to prison. His pal the cop, Red Carney, had given him three hours to get out of town, to get out of the country. But here he sat, in the Baroness de Koenigswarter’s sprawling living room, amid the cats—the jazzmen and the felines—contemplating his three most precious wishes.
“Don’t strain too hard, Viper,” Nica said. “Write the first three things that come to your mind.”
“I’m thinking, Nica,” Viper said, a slight edge in his voice. “I’m thinking.”
“Yes, of course, Viper,” Nica said, suddenly a little nervous. “No pressure at all. Take your time.”
The doorbell rang.
“Oh, a new arrival!” the baroness said, cutting a path through a writhing sea of cats, toward the front door.
The Viper was always a little suspicious of Nica. Ever since that night six years ago when Charlie Parker dropped dead in her suite at the Stanhope Hotel. They said it was a heart attack. Bird was thirty-four years old. But the coroner thought he was a man of sixty. That was how much damage he’d done to his body. Yeah, the great Charlie Parker technically died of a heart attack. But everybody knew it was heroin that killed him.
Now this is what you need to know about Clyde “the Viper” Morton. Yes, he was a dealer of marijuana. But he could not abide heroin. He had never used it, and he would never sell it. He forbade anyone who worked for him to sell it. Heroin was a poison. It was the opposite of herb. Marijuana aided the creation of jazz. Heroin was in the process of destroying jazz by killing off its greatest artists. The Viper didn’t know if the Baroness de Koenigswarter had enabled Bird’s heroin abuse. But he did know that junk killed Bird, and Bird died in Nica’s hotel suite. The Viper had never seen anyone shooting up at the Cathouse. And no one would dare do it in his presence. Everybody knew the Viper was the man to see for marijuana. And everybody knew how he felt about heroin. They knew that if you wanted to deal that shit in the Viper’s sphere … he would kill you.
“Clyde. Hey, Clyde.”
The Viper looked up and saw Pork Chop Bradley standing above him. He must have been the new arrival at the Cathouse. Pork Chop, his friend of twenty-five years. He was still fat, still wore his fedora with the front brim flipped up. But he was an old man now, and he stared down at the Viper with an infinite sorrow in his eyes. He knew what the Viper had done tonight. Knew the person he had killed.
“Hello, Pork Chop.”
“Lord have mercy, Clyde. I just came from Yolanda’s apartment.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“There was a lot of blood, Clyde. A lot of blood.”
Viper said nothing.
Pork Chop said: “How do you feel, man?”
“How do you think I feel?”
“Like you wanna die.”
The Viper reignited his joint, took a long hit, exhaled slowly. “I can’t die. Not yet.” He handed the joint to his friend. “The devil’s scared of me. He don’t want to meet me face to face. But he knows I’m comin’.”
CHAPTER
2
CLYDE MORTON HAD NO MEMORY of his daddy. Chester Morton had already been drafted and shipped off to France when Clyde was born in 1917. He didn’t lay eyes on baby Clyde till he came home from the so-called war to save democracy. Chester, his wife, and two sons lived in Spooner, Georgia. Chester was a blacksmith. Folks said nobody could shoe a horse like Chester Morton. Before he was drafted, his customers were all black. But after he came home, word spread that Chester was the best damn blacksmith, white or black, in the whole damn county. By the summer of 1919, white customers had started coming his way. That was when Chester Morton’s troubles began. One fine morning he received a visit from the chairman of the county’s blacksmiths guild.
“You ain’t a member of the guild, is you, boy?”
“No, sir,” Chester replied. “Guild’s all white. Ain’t no colored blacksmiths allowed.”
“Well, that’s exactly my point, boy. You can’t be serving white customers if you ain’t a member of the guild. And since you can’t be a member of the guild, you can’t be serving white customers.”
“The white folks come to me, mister. They just wants good horseshoes. I can’t be turnin’ business away. That don’t make no sense.”
“Don’t talk back to me, nigger! Don’t think cuz you been to France you ain’t still a nigger. You turn those customers away. Or there will be hell to pay!”
The white customers continued to come. Chester Morton continued to shoe their horses. And to take their money. One night, when he was working late at his forge, a mob showed up. They came on horseback. They bore torches and rope, guns and axes and knives. But they were not masked. They felt no need to hide their faces. Clyde would hear years later that his father died hard, cursing his killers till they cut out his tongue.
While the lynching was still happening, a black neighbor showed up at Viola Morton’s home with a horse and wagon. He loaded Viola and her two sons and whatever possessions she could quickly gather, and they rode off into the night. By dawn, they had crossed the state line from Georgia into Alabama, and they headed toward Meachum, where Viola’s people lived. Clyde Morton was two years old.
* * *
Clyde’s brother, Thaddeus, was known to be a good boy. Thoughtful, mature, responsible. Thad and Clyde were home alone one afternoon while their mama was at work cleaning white folks’ houses. Clyde was twelve years old at the time, Thaddeus sixteen. Clyde’s brother went to the closet and pulled out a hard black case. He opened it. Clyde felt dazzled by the sight of the shiny brass. He felt as if he were gazing at some holy relic, a talisman.
“Looka here, Clyde. This belonged to Daddy. He brought it home from the war.”
“Daddy played the trumpet?”
“I don’t think so. He must have found this somewhere in France. Brought it home as a sort of trophy. That night we had to flee Georgia, Mama only had time to pack a few things in the wagon. But she made sure to bring Daddy’s trumpet.”
“Do you wanna learn to play it?” Clyde asked.
“Nope,” Thaddeus said. “Do you?”
“I reckon I’d like to try.”
Clyde went to see his Uncle Wilton. He was old. Real old. So old he had been born a slave. Called himself a blues man. He had no wife, no children, no steady job. Made his money playing guitar at juke joints all around the county. His home was little more than a shack. His prize possessions were his guitar, his phonograph, and his collection of blues and jazz records. Or “race records,” as they were called back then. Black people’s music. Clyde showed Uncle Wilton his Daddy’s trumpet.
“You wanna learn how to play, Clyde?”
“Yes, Uncle Wilton.”
“Well, the best way to learn to play is to listen. And the best trumpet player in the world is Louis Armstrong.”
Uncle Wilton, with a ceremonial air, put a record on the turntable, gingerly dropped the needle.
The first blast of “West End Blues”—the first fifteen seconds of Satchmo’s squealing horn—was like a crazy call to arms, an antic reveille, alarming and sublime.
From that day on, Clyde started teaching himself to play, with Satchmo as his model and Uncle Wilton as his guide. Over the next seven years, he worked harder practicing the trumpet than he did studying his school assignments. Mama and Thaddeus warned him about Uncle Wilton.
“Don’t waste your time on foolishness with that good-for-nothin’ old bum,” Thad told Clyde. “Be like me. Get your diploma. Get a decent job. Don’t be a disappointment to Mama.”
Thaddeus sought respectability. When he was twenty-one, he left Meachum to become a Pullman porter. They were those black men in caps and uniforms who worked on trains all across America. They hauled white folks’ luggage, shined their shoes, ironed their clothes, made the beds in the sleeping cars, acted as waiters and cooks. There were black folks who considered Pullman porters important men, role models. To Clyde, they were nothing more than servants. After Thad left to become a traveling butler, Clyde graduated from high school and got a job at the cotton mill. But he still dreamed of being a trumpet player. And his musical mentor encouraged him.
“I hear you play that horn of yours,” Uncle Wilton said, “and I know you got the gift. Look at me. I coulda made it. I coulda been a big-time blues man. For me, the dream was Memphis. Maybe Chicago. But I could never find a way to get out of Alabama. Don’t let that happen to you, Clyde. You could be the next Louis Armstrong. But you gotta get yourself to New York City. Harlem. That’s where jazz be happenin’, Clyde. You gotta get the hell out of Meachum, Alabama. You ain’t but nineteen years old. Get out. Now. Go play your horn in New York.”
“You really think I’m that good, Uncle Wilton?”
“I know it. You could be the next Louis Armstrong. I just know it.”
“But I got a good job at the cotton mill.”
“Quit it.”
“I’m engaged to be married, Uncle Wilton. You met my girl, Bertha.”
“Leave her.”
“But Uncle Wilton …”
“Get out! Now!”
Clyde gathered all the money he’d saved up all his life and bought a one-way ticket for New York the next day. He bolted from the station, from the Colored Waiting Room, suitcase in one hand, his daddy’s trumpet in the other, and Bertha hanging all over him, screaming hysterically, then falling to her knees, crawling after him, wailing as the train pulled away from the platform, the screech of the steel wheels and the piercing whistle drowning her out:
“I’ll kill myself! I’ll kill our—”
* * *
I am speaking now of 1936, Clyde Morton’s first full day in Harlem. He’d already auditioned for Pork Chop Bradley and been told he had no talent. Then the burly bass player consoled Clyde by taking him up to the rooftop and introducing him to Mary Warner. After a while they climbed down the stairs, and together they walked the streets of Harlem, high on Mexican locoweed. Clyde’s senses felt sharpened. Everything seemed more vivid. He was enchanted by the vibrancy of his people, the varied richness of skin tones. Afro-Americans were often called “colored people” back then, and Clyde felt newly attuned to the beauty of the mix he saw in Harlem, from ebony to mahogany to creamy coffee. He walked with a lightsome spring in his step. Street names floated by: Amsterdam Avenue, 125th Street, St. Nicholas Avenue. He felt keyed in to the soundscape of the different paths Pork Chop led him down: children’s peals of laughter, folks greeting each other, joking and jiving, arguing and gossiping on their front stoops, mothers hanging over the rails of iron fire escapes, calling down to their kids playing stickball in the alley. And every few blocks, it seemed, someone was standing on a corner, on a stepladder or a barrel, sermonizing or speechifying: black Christians calling on folks to repent, black Communists calling for a worldwide workers’ revolution, black separatists calling for a return to Africa. Clyde took it all in, feeling at once exhilarated and serene. He didn’t know where exactly Pork Chop was taking him, but thanks to the Mexican locoweed, he didn’t care.
It began to dawn on Clyde that not everyone in Harlem was black. As Pork Chop led him past a huge department store called Braunstein’s, Clyde could see through the picture windows that, while all of the clients were black, all of the salespeople were white. He glimpsed the Chinese laundries and restaurants, the Italian bakeries, the Greek diners, the little grocery and big liquor stores with all black customers and all white shopkeepers. Yes, Harlem seemed to belong to us, Clyde thought, but who actually owned it?
