The Busting Out of an Ordinary Man (15 page)

Lubertha glared across the room at Chico Daddy, a red, black and green knit stuffed down onto his braided curls. Chico Daddy, the one dude in the group who never said very much. Maybe he's right, she thought, and sat down without saying another word.

The room was suddenly alive with crosscurrents, Abdul on top of the main one.

He eased into his thing suavely, confident that a certain number would dig him as a man, rather than any woman, and that a certain number would dig him because he was there, alive, in the flesh, and their so-called leader wasn't. “Sister speaks well, yeahhh, sister speaks well, but we have to consider a lot of other things besides what she says. We have to keep in mind the nature of the beast we dealin' with. Number one he's the same devil with thirty-two fangs that he was when he first slithered out from under that rock whenever that was.”

“Right on, brother! right on!”

“Git down!” and some other admiring, exclamatory remarks backed up Abdul's opening.

Lubertha smiled sadly, becoming aware that it had all been planned. It was obvious that Abdul had been picked for the confrontation and probably the leadership. But why?

“I know,” he went on, sounding more like a new line Black Baptist preacher all the time, “I know that what the sister says is true. Yeah! The Club has done a lot! But what I'm sayin' is that we should be doin' more! more! more of everything!

“If it takes blowin' away a few of the pigs, then those who got chicken hearts should stand back with the women 'n children!” He glared pointedly at Ojenkasi. Ojenkasi, confident of his manhood, shook his head and smirked disdainfully.

The group followed the scene, bursting with unh-huhs and right-ons! and other comments designed to let the speaker know that he was being given their attention.

“I'm not gon' bite my tongue to say it, I think we've been slippin' toward a too soft, too sweet thang for too long. An organization like ours has to remain tough 'n hard, bitter to the roots!”

“That's what's wrong with a lotta brothers like you, Abdul!” Ojenkasi cut in, unable to be cool any longer. “You dudes have such a helluva vested interest in the bitter section of things that you can't even get ready for anything sweet.”

“You say that to say what?” Abdul asked, sarcasm melting over each word.

“Take it for what it's worth. I know, you know and damned near everybody with any sense knows that the shit here ain't near 'bout right! Not by a long shot! But what you remind me of is the dude who's been complainin' all his motherfuckin' life about one thing or the other, and when he gets it squared away, he keeps on complainin' 'cause that's all he knows how to do.”

“See! See what I'm talkin' about!” Abdul jabbed his finger at Ojenkasi, giving his followers and would-be followers a focal point. “That's one of the things wrong in here, that jiveass, superduper, intellectual bullshit! The minute one of us starts talkin' about doin' instead of talkin', we get twisted back around the stick with a bunch o' words.

“We wants some action! Damn these proverbs and stinky, pootbutt pacifist ideas! Action, brotherman! Action is what we need! Direct, coldblooded action!”

Lubertha, in the middle of the discussion, quietly stuffed her notes into her purse, her mind already dealing with the sad letter she would have to write Kwendi, and stood up to leave.

The room was silenced by her movement.

“Hey, don't stop arguin' 'n squabblin' for my benefit, just because I'm leavin'. Keep it up, maybe some good will come of it. I sure in hell hope so.”

Tears wobbled around in the corner of her eyes, threatening to spill out. “I don't have anything bad to say about or to anybody here, nobody knows better than I do what frustration will make you do. I can't really make myself feel the way Abdul feels, or Chiyo or Kwendi or anybody else because everybody comes from a slightly different place in their heads.

“All I can say is this, I understand. As a black woman, as a black American human being, I understand.”

She strolled down the aisle to the exit, nodding to the people she felt close to. They nodded back, knowing that she had dismissed herself.

She closed the door behind her softly, stood on the outside leaning against it for a minute or two, listening to the shocked silence and then to the furious sounds of ten different debates.

God! she whispered to the shadows what will it take to get black people really and truly together, some kind of way?

Lucille stared out at the darkness absently, tired. “And then what did he say?” she asked politely, glancing at the sight of Lubertha stumbling down the street. Looks like she's been drinking.

“Nothin', that was it. You know how it is, they don't really wanna rehire me no way, at my age, with a bad back. If it wasn't for the union, they woulda fired me the day I got hurt.”

Lucille Smith stirred her spoon around slowly in her lukewarm coffee, worn down from doing Mrs. Bernhammer's housework, mind half on her husband's problems with getting back to work, receiving retroactive compensation, a foulup, courtesy of Ms. Swartz, and coercing a reluctant company doctor to grant him a medical clearance. The other part of her consciousness dealt with more prosaic hardships the bills piling up, the rent due, Mrs. Bernhammer, hip to her problems, becoming snottier every day, making up for all the independent retorts she had received from her “house-worker” in the past.

“Aren't you finished with the furniture polishing yet, Mrs. Smith?”

“If I had four hands I'd be finished by now.”

“Maybe age is slowing you up, Mrs. Smith.”

Fergy looked down at his hands circling the coffee cup and felt worthless, helpless. What a helluva way to tie a man up. They tell you that you're able to go back to work, but ineligible. They say that you need a clearance to go back to work and the only one who can grant it, the only one, is the company's doctor, who doesn't want to see you go back. And if that ain't enough, there's the goddamned Industrial Accident Board and that crock-minded bitch handlin' the case, Mzzz. FuckitupSwartz.

He looked up from the cup into his woman's face.

Damn she looks tired.

He reached over to stroke her hands.

“Don't worry, baby we gon' work it out somehow.”

She looked down at her man's hands, so strong and felt a little less tired. “Fergy, I ain't worried 'bout a gotdamned thing!” she spoke out with sudden energy and started clearing the table. “This ain't the first time we been shot through the grease, 'n it probably won't be the last time.”

He slouched in his chair, watching his woman's hips shimmy slightly as she rinsed their coffee cups out, the movement accentuated by her glistening nylon nightie.

She turned to him suddenly. “Fergy, did you take your medicine tonight?”

He uncoiled himself from his seat and walked over to embrace her. “Nawwww, I didn't take it, and I ain't gon' take it tonight.”

“Why not?” she asked, halfway between honest curiosity and middle-aged coyness.

“'Cause they put me right t' sleep, and I don't feel like goin' right t' sleep tonight,” he replied purposefully and kissed her flush on the mouth, tenderly.

Chapter 6

Midweek Changes

Kanoon looked deeply into the almond shaped eyes of the tall, dark skinned woman standing under the exit sign with him at the front door of the Pot.

“Why can't I spend the night, Kanoon?” he heard her ask through his cocaine, music soaked fog.

“'Cause like I told you, baby … I don't like to spend the whole night with nobody, they think they own you when they spend the night.”

The woman looked out sadly at the cold streets beyond the large, black-painted picture window, and all around herself at the uptilted stools and tables of the club.

“You sho' is cold, Kanoon,” she said quietly.

He shrugged eloquently, denying nothing.

She leaned her lush pelvis into him and smoothly draped her arms around his slender shoulders. “Why can't I stay a lil' while longer?” she cooed into his ear, a fountain of promises in the question.

“Number one, 'cause I don't want no mo', and number two 'cause I got some work to do.”

She withdrew her arms and stood back to take his full measure, eyes narrowed, hands on hips. “You know, they told me when I first got on the scene that you were a heartless, cold-blooded lil' motherfucker, but I didn't know you were this.…”

Kanoon unlocked the door and stood beside it like a Prussian doorman, impatient for his latest guest to depart. “Good night, Justine.”

She smiled a cool little smile at him as she stepped through the door into the cold air of the pumpkin hour. “Goodnight, Kanoon,” she replied, giving up, and leaned back to kiss him once again.

“Be careful goin' to your car, baby,” he cautioned her. “We got lotsa high crime rates hangin' 'round out there.”

She laid a dazzling, sarcastic smile over her shoulder at him as she clutched her fur to her throat and tripped to the gun metal painted Porsche at the curb.

He stood in the doorway, freezing in his paisley caftan, and watched her zip away over patches of ice and tainted snow. He closed the door, carefully rebolted it and strolled around the empty club aimlessly for a minute, winding up finally seated on the apron of the stage.

The Pot, my club, he bragged to himself, my club, no grubby white hands anywhere in the Pot. Funny, he smiled in the dim light, how many different ideas circulate about how I wound up with this place. Some bitch got it for me. The Mafia owns it. So and so own a piece. I bet all them motherfuckers would shit a brick if they knew that my talk is fo' real, it's all mines. Yeahhh

He sprawled back on the stage, laced his hands under his grimly tattered naps and stared up at the light fixtures in the ceiling for five thoughtful minutes.

Justine, Nancy, Luella, Mercedes, Donyale, Branille, Hora, Tamu, Cleo, Margarite, Shirlean, Flavia, Maureen, Darcye, Susan, Janice, Loretta, Nicca, Graciela, Toshiko, La Na, Amy, Melba, Eartha, Katherine, Margo, Joan, Yellow Birdeyes, Roberta, Lois, Coco, Azul, Otani, Nina, Freda, Francine, Le Noir, Phyllis, Georgina, Wilhelmina, Norma, Clotilde, Ingrid, Anouk, Jo Jo, Alice, Mozella, Madeline, Jakki, Lady, Bop Girl, Stella, Barbara, Sheryl, Veronica, Daisy, Pashalusta, Maisha, Naima, Aissa, Aissa … Aissa.…

He cut off the litany of females he had slept with over the course of the last two years, those that had made an impression on him, by sitting up.

Damn! he mumbled, feeling the weight of his stiffened penis against his thigh. Damn! I should've let that bitch stay.

He sat up straighter, trying to force his erection away Jacqueleen, Carla, Pamela, Francesca, Natalia, Nira … discovered that it wasn't going to happen as long as his memory continued functioning sensually, walked over to the bar, the front of his caftan jutting out like a Greek spear.

He looked up into the mirror behind the bar as he walked toward it, caught sight of the thumb piano beckoning to him from a chair on the bandstand. Yeahhhhh he spoke to the instrument and himself as he did an about face and hopped onto the stand.

He stood looking down at the small, half-kidney shaped box on the chair, at the flanged arrangement over the hole, feeling his erection throb away as he did so. He picked the instrument up with both hands, reverently, and sat down.

Looking out over the twilit zone atmosphere, gently plinking the instrument, the idea of what he felt he had to do suddenly dawned on him. I got to get away got to get away from all the bitches, the dope, this terrible fast life I'm leading, the music I'm playing “The Concerto for Bassssooon, Kanooooon!” echoed in his ear. The Concerto, shit! that's been done already, time to move on.

Why should that fuck with me? he'd asked himself many times, everybody wants to hear what a dude got made on. Duke Ellington still has to play “Sophisticated Lady” every now 'n then to keep 'em cooled out. If Dolphy had lived, he might be getting requests for “Aggression.”

He wandered up and down the keyboard, settling on certain patterns and then reversing them, a soulful, melodic refrain happening, playing on for the very first time, an instrument that he had only been playing at.

Yeahhhh … got to get away, his spontaneously composed tune said to him. Got to get off into another music, yeahhhh, another music. The thought of it, coming to him so simply and directly, jammed both of his thumbs down on the metal flanges and held them there.

A Jazz Quartet for Thumb Piano.

He looked down at the box in his hands and felt tears spring to his eyes because he didn't know the African name for it.

Africa … yeahhhh, Africa … that would be a good, good place to go and get my shit together, the Quartet together. Yeahhhh, Africa. He stood, kissed the wooden box solemnly and replaced it on the chair and gracefully jumped from the low stage.

Yeahhhh suhhh, Africa that's sho' 'nuff where I need to go, Momma Africa.

Bessie Mae Black fluttered her eyes open, stifled a yawn remembering her duty and shook Fred Lee's shoulders gently. “Fred! Fred! you better wake up, baby it's 6:30.”

Fred grumbled something vaguely obscene and buried his head deeper in the pillow.

Bessie looked lovingly at the back of his head, wishing that their roles were reversed, that she was the one who had to hit it on this cold Tuesday morning. “Fredddd,” she murmured in his ear

“Yeahhhh, I heard you, it's time to get up,” he said loudly in clear, theatrical tones, and turned toward her, to snuggle his face into her big, warm breasts.

She locked her arms around his head, loving him.

“Heyyyy, you better loose me, unless you want me to smother to death … or.…” He leaned up on his right elbow with a seductive smile on his face.

Bessie met his look with a warm glow in her own eyes, saying, in essence, if you have to go, you have to go, but if you want to stay, that's cool too.