Jazz Moon (11 page)

“It might hurt . . .
back there
. I'm scared.”

Baby Back cooed in his ear. “Don't you worry. We'll keep everything aboveground tonight.”

 

Water avalanched out of the black sky. A monsoon. The room was black except for momentary slashes of lightning, silent except for the thunder.

“Where you from in Georgia?” Baby Back said.

“Town called Dogwood.”

“Been back since you came here?”

“Nothing and no one to go back to,” Ben said.

“Friends? Family?”

“They don't want me.”

Baby Back held him closer.

The wind snarled. November wind. The kind that chills you from the outside in, makes you grateful to be with a good man under a grandma-made quilt.

“What you gonna do about Mrs. Charles?”

“I can't think about it right now. Can we just have tonight to ourselves?”

Baby Back kissed Ben's temple. “I don't want just tonight.”

Outside this room was rain and cold and uncertainty and Angeline. Inside, an oasis. Ben never wanted to leave this room.

It rained all night and most of the next day. They spent all of it in bed. The rain didn't diminish to a drizzle until after eight o'clock at night. With the end of the storm and the impending arrival of Monday, their time in The Oasis ended.

“I gotta go home,” Ben said, “but I don't want to. Baby Back, I don't want to go.”

He was like an animal that's been delighting in the safeguard of hibernation and must now reenter the world. They dressed together, purposely slow, treasuring each remaining moment. Ben walked around the room, taking everything in, trying to preserve it all in his memory so he could replicate it at will on those lonely nights he wasn't with Baby Back.

“You're acting like you ain't never coming back here again,” Baby Back said. “You'll be back. Better be.”

The big trumpeter didn't want him to go, and that made the going easier.

They left the boardinghouse together, Baby Back with his trumpet because he had Teddy's that night. He walked Ben most of the way home.

“Come to the club Tuesday night,” Baby Back said.

“You gonna play something special? Just for me?”

“Yeah. And you bring me a new poem. No cheating.”

They wanted to hug, to kiss. But they made do with a very long handshake.

Ben continued on home. He took his time. Hands in his pockets. A smirk on his face. Effortless confidence in the slow stride of this victory lap. Images of the buffet flat, Baby Back's arms, and the blurry-edged Clam House bombarded him, tenderly. New friends accompanying him as he cruised like an explorer onto the coast of a brand-new world. But was this world really new? You learned in school that Columbus discovered America, but that was a lie. How can you discover a place that's already inhabited? This world may have been new to Ben, but others already lived here. Maybe secretly, or quietly, perhaps dangerously, but they were here. Now Ben was, too. Like any new resident, he had to find his way around, get directions, get lost, get familiar, learn the rules and the shortcuts and the protocols. And then would he be happy? He didn't know, was convinced happiness was more aspiration than destination, but was also convinced that the sublime turmoil of everything he was feeling at this moment was, perhaps, as close as he would ever get to achieving happiness, so he reveled in it, rolled it around in his mouth and ground it up like candy.

Night had fallen. Sunday was winding down. The merriment of Friday and Saturday had run its course as Harlem and the rest of New York girded themselves for Monday. No flotillas of taxis zooming from downtown. No reefer smell whirling in the air. Passersby looked tired and grim whereas on Friday and Saturday they would have glowed.

He was almost home. He had to fight to keep the newfound confidence in his stride, the victory in his lap. He didn't know what he would say to Angeline. Or what she would say to him.

He commanded the image of himself in Baby Back's arms, wrapped it around himself like a protective layer of skin as he turned onto his street, then climbed the stairs to his building.

He stepped into the apartment, cautiously, as if stealing uninvited into a stranger's home. The only light in the house came from a lamp in the bedroom. Angeline sat on the bed, her back to him. Ben approached, but stayed just shy of the Neutral Territory.

“So now you're staying out all night and all day,” Angeline said. “No regard for me? Like I don't matter? I was worried.”

He hadn't meant to worry her. He hadn't meant to hurt her. She didn't deserve it. He had fought
this thing
. Spat in its face. Run from it. But now, electrified by his night with Baby Back, he no longer wanted to run. He didn't despise
this thing
anymore.
This thing
was
him
.

The light wind twirling inside him last night was a hurricane now. It stormed through him, razing his old perceptions even as its rains bathed and fertilized him. Before last night he'd been drought-stricken. Now he was verdant. The rains soaked him through, weighing him down with peace. And peace mobilized him against his wife's hurt. Didn't make him impervious to it, but it desensitized him so that his own grand luck would not be tainted by her misfortune.

It
was
misfortune. God was cruel and untrustworthy. Ben knew that, had always known that. Angeline knew it, too. It was as victims of godly cruelty that they had initially found each other, loved each other, saved each other. Ben loved Angeline, yes, with every ounce of blood shooting through every vein in him. Just not in the way that she loved him. And that was something she'd always known, too. From their very beginning.

Before age fifteen, Ben had never ridden a train and never traveled more than twenty miles from Dogwood. When he arrived at the train station after leaving the Zachary plantation, he bought his ticket then walked out to the platform. He wasn't sure what to do or where to board, so when he saw folks—white folks—entering the huge, iron machine, he followed them. As he climbed the steps, the white uniformed man standing in the doorway pushed him to the ground.

“Go to the nigger car,” he said, as offhandedly as he had pushed.

Ben dusted himself off and started toward the back of the train.

“Not that way,” the uniformed man said. “The nigger car is at the front, right behind the locomotive.”

Dust hung in the air inside the “nigger car,” accompanied by an odor like burning trash. It grated his eyes, dried his throat. The car's seats were decayed with age. He took a seat by a window and waited for the journey to begin. Folks boarded. Folks poor like himself, but carrying themselves with dignity. They wore their best clothes—jackets and bowties for the men, Sunday hats for the women—as if headed someplace special. Excitement shimmered through the car. It made the dusty air quiver.

A man his pa's age sat next to him. No bowtie, and threads frayed from the seams of his old jacket, but it was buttoned up and his white shirt had been pressed.

“Hello, young man,” he said.

“Good day to you, sir.”

“Where you headed?”

“North.”

The man chuckled. “We's all headed north. Where you hopin' to end up?”

“New York City. You?”

“Washington. Got family there.”

Ben nodded, then looked out the window.

“Well,” the man said. “Good luck to you, son.”

The train pulled out of the station and away from everything Ben had ever known.

The train's motion twisted up his stomach. Steam and cinders from the locomotive whooshed into the car and accumulated. It was smoke, not dust, that clung to the air. The passengers coughed and wiped their irritated eyes, but none complained.

“Yes, sir, it's a smoker,” his seatmate said. “Us coloreds have it all to ourselves. Been ridin' 'em all my life. What you gone do? Demand to sit in a white car? Ha!”

Hours passed. Georgia sped past Ben's window as the train plummeted into the night. People gave up coughing for sleep as a crescent moon lit their way north. Ben awoke in the middle of the night. His seatmate's snoring and the chug of the engine stopped him from returning to sleep.

And there was another noise.

A child was crying. He heard its whimper and quick intakes of breath as it sobbed. The volume of the crying came in waves, getting loud, and then subsiding, only to get loud again. A few passengers shushed, but the crying persisted. Annoyed, Ben sat up and scanned the car to locate the source.

He found it. But it wasn't a child. Sitting by a window on the opposite side of the car was a girl—a young woman—alone, her face in her hands, her body shaking as she wept. She seemed his age.

He walked over. “Hey. Hey.” She didn't reply. He crouched next to her. “Why you cryin'?”

She removed her face from her hands, revealing large eyes milky-red from the tears.

“What is it?” Ben asked, keeping his voice low. “You all right?”

“No.”

Her felt hat sat lopsided on her head and her wrinkled dress looked as if she'd pulled it from a crumpled pile. A small carpetbag hid under her seat.

“Anything I can do?” Ben asked.

“Ain't nothin' nobody can do.”

She seemed so lost, so helpless. An unprotected thing. Impulsively, Ben sat next to her. “I'm Ben. What's your name?”

“Angeline.”

“Where you from?”

“Spurgeon County.”

“Good to know you, Angeline.”

Her crying lessened as he talked. He admitted he had run away from home, told her about Dogwood and the Zachary plantation.

“But why you runnin' away?” she asked. “Your folks beat you?”

“No.”

“Gotta be runnin' away for
some
reason. I'll tell you why
I'm
runnin' and you do the same. All right?”

Ben was wary. Confession posed risks. But before he could answer, she inhaled deeply, as if steeling herself.

“I'm . . .” She placed a hand on her stomach, firmly. She looked at him, then tumbled into his arms. “I
had
to run. I ain't never been so ashamed in my life.”

Her tears came again. A fed-up passenger shouted, “Shut up that damn cryin'! Don't you know folks is tryin' to sleep?”

Angeline stood up, hands on her hips, and screamed, “Why don't you come over here and make me!”

The fed-up passenger didn't.

She returned to her seat and to his arms. “Please don't hold my . . . situation . . . against me.”

“You made a mistake. A bad one. I did, too.”

“What'd you do?”

I can trust you
.
You're as alone as I am
. “Come here. Sit up. I need to look you in the eye.”

He confessed. The afternoons in the dogwood groves. The night at the house with the red door.

“Why'd you do it?” she asked, without judgment.

“I thought I loved him.”

“You must've been mighty lonely. If you'd had someone to talk to and be with, you wouldn't have done those things. If you'd had brothers and sisters . . . or a pretty girl . . . you wouldn't have needed him.”

She placed her head against his shoulder, yawned, and went to sleep.

The train raced northward. Moonlight and starlight stole into the car, combining with the smoke to make a silvery vapor. While Angeline slept, Ben stayed awake, calculating:

Both were outcasts.

Both had something to be ashamed of.

Both were young and all alone and headed to a strange place that may or may not be a promised land.

But Angeline hadn't said where she was going. She had hopped on the train with no plan. She hadn't said what she would do about her
situation
. Ben prayed she wouldn't follow Trina Ledger's path.

He had just met her but, as she snoozed on his shoulder, he decided to do what Trina's fiancé would have done had he been given the opportunity: take responsibility for Angeline and her child, if she would let him, if she would have him. And right then, right there, on that Jim Crow train car with its smoke and cinders and poor colored folks on a northern pilgrimage in search of milk and honey, he resolved to bury his unnatural feelings. He would bury this . . .
thing
. He and Angeline had both sinned. But they could redeem each other.

The next day, he asked her to marry him.

“You ain't gone be doin' nothin' with no more boys, is you?” she asked.

“No. Never again.”

“Promise.”

He looked in her eyes. He didn't flinch. “I promise you. I promise myself.”

They agreed to marry once they reached New York. They were both fifteen years old and had known each other for one day.

Attachment grew quickly. Ben, attentive and protective, ensured Angeline always ate even if he sometimes went without due to the dwindling stash of money. And Angeline proudly introduced herself to the passengers as
Mrs. Benjamin Charles,
even though they were only engaged.

Ben was happy. Willful began to disappear.
This thing
began to disappear. Angeline had freed him. He wanted to give her some proof of his gratitude, so he opened his satchel and produced the only valuable thing he owned.

“Here,” he said as he placed Willful's locket around her neck. “For you.”

“Oh, Benny. I ain't never owned nothin' this pretty. I'll wear it every day.”