“To a hot, explosive core“And, from this nucleus of restriction“Comes all manner of fissions, violent and slow“Breaking loose in brief expression“Of the tortures underneath“Crying for deliverance in the unbreakable code of jazz.”He smiled. “Unbreakable till now,” he said.“Rip bop doesn’t do it“Jump and mop-mop only cloud the issue“They’re like jellied coatings over true response“Only the authentic jazz can break the pinions of repression“Liberate the heart-deep mournings“Unbind the passions, give freedom to the longing essence“You understand?” he asked.“I understand,” I said, knowing why I came.Inside his room, he flipped the light on, shut the doorWalked across the room and slid away a cloth that covered his machine“Come here,” he saidI suspicioned him of hyping me but goodHis jazz machine was just a jungleful of scraggy tubes and wheelsAnd scumpteen wires boogity-boogityLike a black snake brawlI double-o’ed the heap“That’s really in there, man,” I saidAnd couldn’t help but smile a cutting smileRight off he grabbed a platter, stuck it down“Heebie-Jeebies; Armstrong“First, I’ll play the record by itself,” he saidAny other time I bust my conk on Satchmo’s scattingBut I had the crawling heavies in meAnd I couldn’t even loosen up a grinI stood there feeling nowhereWhile Daddy-O was tromping down the English tongueRip-bip-dee-doo-dee-doot-doo!The Satch recited in his Model T baritoneThen white man threw a switchIn one hot second all the crazy scat was nixedInstead, all pounding in my headThere came a sound like bottled blowtops scuffling up a jamboreeLike twenty tongue-tied hipsters in the next apartmentHaving them a ballSomething frosted up my spineI felt the shakes do get-off chorus in my gutAnd even though I knew that Mister Pink was smiling at meI couldn’t look him backMy heart was set to knock a doorway through my chestBefore he cut his jazz machine“You see?” he asked.I couldn’t talk. He had the up on me“Electrically, I’ve caught the secret heart of jazz“Oh, I could play you many records“That would illustrate the many moods“Which generate this complicated tongue“But I would like for you to play in my machine“Record a minute’s worth of solo“Then we’ll play the record through the other speaker“And we’ll hear exactly what you’re feeling“Stripped of every sonic superficial. Right?”I had to knowI couldn’t leave that place no more than flySo, while white man set his record-maker up,I unsacked my trumpet, limbered up my lipAll the time the heebies rising in my crawLike ice cubes pilingThen I blew it out againThe weightThe dragging miseryThe bringdown blues that hung inside meLike twenty irons on a stringAnd the string stuck to my guts with twenty hooksThat kept on slicing me awayI played for Rone, my brotherRone who could have died a hundred different times and waysRone who died, instead, down in the Murder BeltWhere he was bornRone who thought he didn’t have to take that same old stuffRone who forgot and rumbled back as if he was a manAnd not a spadeRone who died without a single wordUnderneath the boots of Mississippi peckerwoodsWho hated him for thinking he was humanAnd kicked his brains out for itThat’s what I played forI blew it hard and rightAnd when I finished and it all came rushing back to meLike screaming in a black-walled pitI felt a coat of evil on my backWith every scream a button that held the dark coat closerTill I couldn’t get the airThat’s when I crashed my horn on his machineThat’s when I knocked it on the floorAnd craunched it down and kicked it to a thousand pieces“You fool!” That’s what he called me“You damned black fool!”All the time until I leftI didn’t know it thenI thought that I was kicking back for every kickThat took away my only brotherBut now it’s done and I can get off all the wordsI should have given Mister PinkListen, white man; listen to me goodBuddy ghee, it wasn’t youI didn’t have no hate for youEven though it was your kind that put my brotherIn his final placeI’ll knock it to you why I broke your jazz machineI broke it cause I had toCause it did just what you said it didAnd, if I let it stand,It would have robbed us of the only thing we haveThat’s ours aloneThe thing no boot can kick awayOr rope can chokeYou cruel us and you kill usBut, listen white man,These are only needles in our skinBut if I’d let you keep on working your machineYou’d know all our secretsAnd you’d steal the last of usAnd we’d blow away and never be againTake everything you want, ManYou will because you haveBut don’t come scuffling for our souls.
Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson, and Charles Beaumont—who follows here —form a sort of magic triangle of masters of the macabre moderns. All three live, currently, in the Los Angeles area: two are movie scriptwriters, the third, the son of a well-known actor. When the classic Leiber witch novel. Conjure Wife, was filmed in Britain a few years ago (under the even more classic Merritt title. Burn, Witch, Burn!) Matheson was one of the scenarists. Beaumont and Matheson have both worked on the recent gaggle of neo-Poe movies, Leiber and Beaumont ore, separately, authors of two of the finest and most fearfully “rear fantasies of modern city life I have ever read (“The Vanishing American” and “Smoke Ghost”).
Each of the three has written across the whole range of science fantasy, and well out of it; in fiction, essay, and dramatic farm; from vignette to book length. (Notable navels: Matheson’s I Am Legend; Beaumont’s The Intruder) Leiber’s The Wanderer.) All three were included in the first issue of Gamma, a new magazine of imaginative fiction, edited by William Nolan (author of “One of Those Days,” in the 8th Annual).
* * * *
MOURNING SONG
Charles Beaumont
He had a raven on his shoulder and two empty holes where his eyes used to be, if he ever had eyes, and he carried a guitar. I saw him first when the snow was walking over the hills, turning them to white velvet. I felt good, I felt young, and, in the dead of winter, the spring wind was in my blood. It was a long time ago.
I remember I was out back helping my daddy chop up firewood. He had the ax up in the air, about to bring it down on the piece of soft bark I was holding on the block, when he stopped, with the ax in the air, and looked off in the direction of Hunter’s Hill. I let go of the bark and looked off that way, too. And that’s when I saw Solomon for the first time. But it wasn’t the way he looked that scared me, he was too far away to see anything except that it was somebody walking in the snow. It was the way my daddy looked. My daddy was a good big man, as big as any I ever met or saw, and I hadn’t ever seen him look afraid, but he looked afraid now. He put the ax down and stood there, not moving or saying anything, only standing there breathing out little puffs of cold and looking afraid.