The show went on for two or three minutes. She finally went right up to the window and stood on her tiptoes to reach the shade. It took her a few moments to grab the string and pull it down. When Soupspoon saw her face she was smiling, and then she was gone.
“That stuff sure is sweet,” Alfred Metsgar said. “I’d die wit’out my dancin’ girl. I’d die.”
Soupspoon got it on the tape recorder.
“You remember me, Alfred?”
The old man was still looking at the shade. He turned toward Soupspoon and squinted. After a long time he shook his head, no.
“Atwater Wise. They used to call me Soupspoon. I played twelve-string with Hollis McGee and Triphammer Jones.”
Alfred smiled and nodded but his eyes didn’t know Soupspoon.
“You remember, Alfred. We did a whole circuit around California in ’57. You know.”
Alfred looked back toward the window but the show was over.
“Don’t you remember, man? You the one told me about Quickdraw Marrs. You know — how he got killed at the Black Sparrow in East St. Louis?”
Alfred turned toward Soupspoon. “Who told you ’bout that? Who told you?”
“You did, Alfred.”
“Who you said you was again?”
“Soupspoon. Soupspoon Wise. Guitar player. We played at the Sour Bowl in Pasadena — with Holly Gomez.”
“Holly,” Alfred said with a smile. “Cook some damn good red beans and rice.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Soupspoon said hopefully. “You remember Holly?”
“That gal could cook.”
“An’ you remember Quickdraw Marrs?”
“Who you said?” The curtain came down over Alfred’s eyes again.
“Quickdraw Marrs. You told me back in ’57, ’58, that you was playin’ with Quickdraw when he died back in East St. Louis, back in ’36.”
“Drummer boy?”
“Guitar,” Soupspoon said.
“Uh. Um. Oh yeah. Yeah. That was somebody else.” Alfred held up his hands and smiled. Then he looked out of the window again. “Shade’s down,” he whispered.
“Don’t you remember?” Soupspoon asked.
Alfred shifted in his chair and a wave of urine odor rose in the room.
“No sir,” Alfred said. “You want some coffee, mister? You could make that lazy girl go’n get us some coffee.”
“You told me at the Sour Bowl that you saw the man shot Quickdraw. You told me that you knew who did it. You told me that you was there.”
“Maybe I was,” Alfred said clearly. “I coulda been. But you know I ain’t never killed nobody. An’ if I don’t get me some coffee in the day then I gets headaches. But that girl won’t let me have it. She say that it ain’t good for me, but that’s some shit. I’m the one say what’s good for me an’ what ain’t. Thas only right, ain’t it, mistah?”
“You don’t remember anything, Alfred? Nuthin’ but Holly?”
“Will you talk to her for me?”
“Talk to who?”
“Mozelle. She wanna take all’a my money. She plottin’ ’gainst me wit’ Mike.” Alfred nodded his head to back up his claim.
“She all right, Alfred,” Soupspoon said. “She sure enough keep this room clean.”
“She wanna p’ison me.”
“No.”
“But that’s okay.” Metsgar bounced in his hard chair. “I gots her number. I ain’t dead yet.”
“How did Quickdraw die?”
“Who are you, man?” Alfred asked, angry. “What you be comin’ in here for — messin’ wit’ me?”
“I’m yo’ old friend, Alfie. Soupspoon. We used t’play together. I wanted t’tell the story about that night if I could get you to remember. I wanted t’tell some stories ’bout the blues ’fore they all gone. You. Me...”
“You could read?” Alfred asked.
“’Li’l bit.”
“I wanted t’go to school. But a black man couldn’t be nuthin’ where I come up. All you could do was to clean up after the white man, an’ you know you had better brang your own broom.
“They didn’t have nuthin’ for ya. So... if somebody did somethin’, an’ maybe it wasn’t right, what could you expect? We ain’t had nuthin’. An’ if somebody wound up dead it wasn’t nuthin’ lost. He knowed that he had it comin’ an’ he were grateful not to be burdened with the when an’ wherefore.”
Alfred Metsgar sat back in his chair exhausted by all those words. Every breath stopped at the end of the exhale that might have been his last.
Soupspoon was tired too.
“So you don’t remember nuthin’. Right, Alfie?” Soupspoon asked.
“I played the music but I didn’t kill nobody. You cain’t pin that one on me.”
“I’m not sayin’ that you did it, Alfred.”
“People die all the time, man. All the time. You cain’t s’pect me t’keep up wit’ all’a that.”
“Alfie, I know you didn’t do it. All I wanna know is the name’a the man that did. I want to say about us and what we did. I don’t want them to forget. But I ain’t blamin’ you.”
“But I did do it,” Alfred said.
“What?”
“It was me — my fault.”
“You shot Quickdraw Marrs?”
“I played the music.”
“But did you shoot’im?”
Alfred Metsgar raised his yellow and brown and green skull face to regard his younger friend. “What difference it make if it were me or that other man pult the trigger? What difference if Quickdraw turned the bullet on his own heart?”
Soupspoon turned off his tape recorder and locked it away. When he stood, Alfred looked up at him with fear or maybe awe that people could still stand on their own.
Soupspoon held out a hand which Alfred took into both of his. Alfred was grinning. He didn’t shake so much as he felt the hand, moving it back and forth.
That embrace lasted for three minutes.
In the hall Mozelle stopped Soupspoon.
“What he say about me?”
“He said that you wanted his money.”
“That old fool don’t have no money. All he get is a check from the Social Security. We spend that on keepin’ him alive. You from them?”
“Who?”
“Social Security.”
“No. I’m just a old friend. I wanted to talk about the old days.”
“Alfred don’t remember nuthin’. He just sit in there. He wouldn’t even go to the bathroom without me helpin’ him.”
“Yeah, uh-huh.” Soupspoon wanted to get out from there. The whole apartment smelled of urine.
“Do me a favor, will ya?” he asked Mozelle.
“What’s that?”
“Touch him ev’ry once in a while.”
“Say what?”
“Put your hand on his forehead like you feelin’ for fever. Then tell’im that he’s cool as a cucumber. That’s all he need now. Believe me, I know.”
Pig Ears Mackie, Big Time Joe Harker, Blues Belle, Nessie Montgomery. They were all dead or disappeared. Soupspoon went through his address book and all of his memories. Few were to be found. Of those few, none had anything to say worth turning on his recorder for.
Seventeen
“Kiki, could you come into the office a moment?” Sheldon Meyers asked.
She could have said, “Later, Sheldon, I got to get the change list down to production or they won’t make the run tonight,” just to make him wait. But she didn’t because there was sweat on his upper lip. Sheldon’s lips only perspired when there was something seriously wrong.
“Have you ever seen this?” he asked, handing her a blue policy folder.
She wished that she was sitting down when she saw the names Atwater and Tanya Wise next to INSURED. There was all the information she’d keyed in two months before. And under that was a list of payments made for radiation treatments, doctor’s visits, and medicine. The total was $186,042.28.