“Life goes fast, Poet.”
Memphis cupped her cheek in his hand and put his mouth on hers. Theta had never been kissed the way Memphis was kissing her now. There had been fumbling boys thrumming with nervous want. There had been theater owners, older “uncles” who pawed at her when she walked past or who wanted to “inspect” her costume to make sure it was decent down to the undergarments, men she granted the occasional kiss in order to stave off something worse. And there was Roy, of course. Beautiful, cruel Roy, whose kisses were declaratory, as if he needed to conquer Theta, to brand her with his mouth. Those men had never really seen Theta. But Memphis’s kiss was nothing like theirs. It was passionate, yet tender. A mutual agreement of desire. It was a kiss shared. He was kissing her. He was with her.
Memphis pulled away. “Everything jake?”
“No,” Theta said.
“What’s the matter?”
Theta looked up at him through thick, dark lashes. “You stopped.”
He drew her to him. She grabbed the clothesline to steady herself, and they fell to the ground, laughing, in a tumble of laundry that would have to be washed all over again.
“Let’s just stay right here,” Memphis said, and Theta rested her head against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart as he held her close.
Outside, the city stirred and sighed in its sleep. Steam hissed up from sewer grates and coiled around a lamppost like the tail of a forgotten god. Deep under the ground, in the half-finished tunnels of the new subway lines, rats scurried along tracks just ahead of something they imagined chased them, something more horrible than their rat dreams ever conjured. A storefront psychic whose connection to the spirits was nothing more than the pull of a string with a toe to make a knocking under the table felt compelled, quite suddenly, to cover her crystal ball with a cloth and lock it up in a wardrobe. In Chinatown, the girl with the dark hair and green eyes bowed reverently to her ancestors, offered her prayers, and readied herself to walk in dreams, among the living and the dead. North along the Hudson, in an abandoned, ruined village, the wind carried the terrible death cries of some ghostly inhabitants, the sound reverberating ever so faintly in the village below so that the men bent over their checkers in the back of the general store glanced nervously at one another, their play suspended, their breath held for several seconds until the wind and the sound were gone. Elsewhere in the country, there were similar stirrings: A mother dreamed of her dead daughter and woke, she could swear, to the chilling sound of the words Mama, I’m home. A Klansman who’d left his meeting in the woods to piss by an old tree jumped suddenly, as if he’d felt hanging feet dragging across the tops of his shoulders, marking him. There was nothing there, but he brushed at his shoulders anyway, scurrying back toward the fire and his brothers in white. A young Ojibway man watched a silvery shimmer of a hawk circle overhead and disappear. In an old farmhouse, a young boy nudged his parents awake. “There’s two girls calling me to play hide-and-seek with them in the cornfields,” he whispered. His father ordered him sleepily back to bed, and when the boy passed by the upstairs window, he saw the incandescent girls in their long skirts and high-necked blouses fading into the edges of the corn, crying mournfully, “Come, come play with us….”
And farther still, in the vast prairies mythologized in the American mind, a figure stood shadowed in the dark, biding his time, a scarecrow awaiting harvest.
THE ANGEL GABRIEL
Gabe didn’t feel the press of ghosts as he walked west toward home, his head still buzzing from the reefer he’d smoked at Alma’s party. The night had turned chilly, and he blew on his hands to warm them. It had been a good day, as good as any Gabe could remember. Meeting the great Mamie Smith. He was only eighteen, but the other cats treated him like he was one of them, grinning as he took his solos, complimenting him on his chops.
The only cloud had been the fight with Memphis. What was he thinking, bringing that girl to their party? Sure, she was pretty. But there were lots of pretty girls who weren’t trouble—or, at least, no more trouble than most women were. He didn’t like that they’d left it on such a bad note. Memphis and Theta had breezed on out without even saying good-bye. If that was the way he wanted to play it, fine. When that girl dropped him for some white big shot, who would have to hear the whole sob story? Gabe, that was who.
A sound startled him. One, two, three; one, two, three. A three-legged cadence, like an off-tempo waltz. But when he turned around, he saw no one.
He was getting worked up about Memphis and his girl, and it was killing his good feeling. Gabe flipped up the collar of his jacket, a temporary buffer against the wind howling off the Hudson, and kept walking. The wind had to content itself with kicking a tin can down the street. Overhead, the tracks of the Ninth Avenue El groaned in their emptiness. In his head, Gabe replayed the day’s best moments. The camaraderie with the other musicians. Shaking hands with Clarence Williams, who promised him a bright future with Okeh Records. “Gonna have you playing for everybody,” he’d said, and Gabe felt made.
The sound intruded again—one, two, three, one, two, three, click, step, step, click, step, step.
“Somebody there?” Gabe called into the shadows. Something darted out from between the wide tires of a parked Ford and Gabe let out a yelp. As the cat slunk away down an alley, Gabe laughed. “Lord, cat. Announce yourself next time. I don’t have no nine lives.”
Shaking his head, he carried on, scatting a little bit of Miss Mamie Smith’s song under his breath, his hands unconsciously fingering an imaginary trumpet. The latticed tracks of the El bridge left stripes of light on the road, and Isaiah’s warning drifted back to him: The bridge. Don’t walk under the bridge. Gabe never would’ve said anything to Memphis about it, but there was definitely something not quite right about Isaiah. This business about telling Gabe’s future was a good example. Isaiah took the joke too far; Gabe had actually believed the kid was scared, too. Too much imagination—that was the trouble with that boy.
One, two, three, one, two, three, click, step, step.
There was that damned sound again! Gabriel turned around. It had gotten very foggy all of a sudden. The lights of the Whoopee Club were a distant haze.
Don’t walk under the bridge. He’s there.
Gabe pulled his collar tighter at his throat. Why was he letting that boy’s silly words get to him? The sound of footsteps echoed. It seemed to come from all around. The fog was even thicker. How was that possible? How could it have gotten thicker in just a matter of seconds? Was he walking closer to the river? Had he gotten lost? Gabe felt disoriented. Which way was back toward the clubs? The sound of whistling carried through the mist.
“Gabriel…”
Somebody was calling his name. He didn’t recognize the voice.
“Who’s there?”
“Gabriel, the angel. The messenger…”
“Memphis, that you? Lay off, now….” Gabe looked for something he could use to swing if he needed it, but he couldn’t see. Don’t walk under the bridge. He’s there.
If this was a joke, Gabe wasn’t laughing. He walked quickly ahead.
The man stepped from the mist as if born of it. His clothes were old-fashioned and he carried a silver walking stick. He was smiling at Gabe. It was a cold, cold smile, and Gabe felt unsteady on his feet.
“Gabriel the Archangel, whose trumpet did rend the sky.”
“If you’re looking for a horn player, I already play with the Count’s outfit,” Gabe said. His heartbeat had picked up something fierce. It was just some odd cat with a cane who was probably drunk. Gabe could take him if it came to that. So why was he suddenly so scared?