Fiction by Samantha Linn.
I’d wanted to hear the burning wail of his sax for some time now. I saw the ad in the paper, beside a photo of him. His smile was something else, even on newsprint, which usually ruins a face. Beyond the black ink I made out a glaze of copper, a hue of brown-orange bleeding from his instrument into his look. Man, I saw his skin as clear as day, even if the paper was just black and white. I knew somebody’s look just ain’t that simple. That, really, it’s kind of more convoluted, more honest, I reckoned.
I used to read about him in the paper, Art “King” Lewis playing with Long John Hunter at the Kings X. That was way back in the ‘60s. I was just a kid, five, six maybe. I heard the rave of Hunter’s electric instrument mixing with the blaring whine of Mr. Lewis’ sax. They say it was like sweet maple syrup just leaking from their fingers. A couple of men making sounds that just oozed into you and gave you life, they said. I never heard it myself, but in a town like this, man, you believe what gets ‘round.
I started seeing the saxman, Lewis, everywhere after that, in the buttons of my shirt, at the bottom of my glass, at the park – I thought I really saw him – standing cool and relaxed, and I couldn’t get him out of my thoughts. I suppose it was the spirit of my old man trying to tell me something, and I had to convince myself that couldn’t be, that sort of thing didn’t happen, that it couldn’t, ‘specially for a person like me.
I sat at my rickety table, a hunk of oak with four wobbly legs. I held my glittering sax between my fingers, letting it rest on my lap. The evening swam through my filthy windows, just barged past all the grime and gunk packed onto the walls and windows of my place. It reached the horn I held, and everything ‘round me grew dim. Something funny, sort of odd, happened. The studio, my crib, kind of faded from my view. I played my sax low and calm. I had all evening, just warming up for my gig. Why, I played a sweet run, just let it roll out of me. The air never felt so still, the outside world never stopped for me like that, never just froze, you see. I closed my eyes, but, hell, I could still see. I was in a dark room, by my lonesome self, just speaking to my brass. She understood all I was saying even though I wasn’t speaking no real language. I made out faces that started filling the blackness. I played wild. The faces fought their eyelids from closing, but my sounds won. They all closed their eyes as if to hear me clearer. And this is the real freaky thing, man. It gave me goose pimples all ‘round. All of a sudden I was leaving myself. Hell, I thought I was dying. I just split. I done became one of them cats in the crowd, and I saw myself playing cool and slick. I thought the scene looked a lot like that cubist painting my high school teacher, Miss De Leon, showed us when we studied forms, contrast and shadows. Yeah, I remember –– Picasso! I remember seeing that chaos of colors, the one with the three musicians, for the first time. Miss De Leon said in her kind of squeaky way, “Look closely at the rhythm, now.” I thought, there ain’t no rhythm to see. The only rhythm I knew was the shuffle beat of jazz. Miss De Leon was trying to teach you can see a rhythm, too, with your eyes, and not just hear it. She said, “Notice the colors and repetitions. Try to see it as one and understand it as best you can.” I tried, but couldn’t make sense of a harlequin, a pierrot and a monk being friends. And somehow they each meant something queer, something I knew I felt but I couldn’t really understand.
I reckon because of Miss De Leon, I see rhythm everywhere now, in a trash bag turned inside out from a can during a heavy gust, a crowd of tumbling leaves crossing a road, and in faces, too, I see a rhythm. Why, some are slow and cool, others unpleasant and needy. I see a rhythm whenever I think of Mr. Picasso and the three musicians. I see repeated lines. I see sound. I feel it and become it.
Anyways, I looked like one of them on the stage, all crazy and square. But somehow that way of looking at myself made sense. I understood my- self more than I would’ve if I looked ordinary, if I didn’t resemble a piece of the whole, a part of the band. And what really freaked me, that saxman, Lewis, was right beside me the entire time, and I didn’t know. The third one, he looked like my old man. He played the keys so soft, looked so in love with his instrument. I never saw someone show so much affection toward them keys like that. Well, my old man, he let his fingers ride wild to their own likin’. He done let them soar across them keys, just like he used to on the little platform stage in a jazz club.
The saxman stood in the middle. My Pop and I looked a lot like the two thieves next to him, because he was the star, he was the savior. After some time, though, none of us was better than the other. We became one and the same, kind of like the Trinity, three-in-one, man. We were all just the same, jamming until our chops were beat, smoking up the room. Well, the traffic outside of my shabby studio suddenly froze, everything around me froze, and I could’ve sworn I nearly heard my old man say, “Go, Son.”
So, I figured I’d go see the saxman play. I didn’t know what to expect. I just knew I had to, and I couldn’t stop my legs from moving towards the little adobe building. I walked along Dyer Street away from my muddy Pinto. I glanced back at her and sighed. I felt an awful prickling throughout my body, but I kept moving anyways, just like my old man always told me, “Keep moving along, keep goin’ in life, Son.”
My daddy used to tell me how majestic the saxman could make a person feel. He always said jazz makes you feel things you didn’t know you could. He taught me that Jazz is a language you don’t have to learn, anyone can feel it, and it doesn’t discriminate. He used to say, “Mr. Lewis speaks all kind of languages into his horn. When he’s playing, man, I tell ya, he makes a doll forgot all she knows ‘bout livin’. He makes that man in his zoot clothes think he’s poor as any beggar. And he don’t care. Nobody needs nothin’ when they hear the sounds of a horn. They just wanna remember they’s alive, they wanna speak the universal language, they wanna know what it means to just ride, ya see.”
When I was just a boy, I used to ask him what he meant by all that. He said one day I’d understand. When I started playing the horn myself, I understood because I felt that oneness, that loose sensation, that freedom and salvation. Why, Mr. Lewis is the reason I play. Folks always said Mr. Lewis can make a woman move even when she don’t want to. He can make a person confess all their sins as if the Lord’s returning for his rapturous sounds. They say, too, that you can see the sky open up, the clouds part like the Red Sea, as if the Lord himself is trying to catch the least echo of Mr. Lewis playing a lick on his horn. I suppose I wanted that magic, too. I started playing real young; played like a rusty gate in the first few years. But I really caught on fast. I picked up that horn and never put it down. I was going to be a real saxman, and my old man said I could, so I reckoned it was true. Now, I figured I’d forgot everything my father taught me. Because I don’t seem to feel it anymore, not like I used to anyway. Hell, I can play the notes, but I ain’t communicating the way I was taught. I suppose I stopped ever wanting to hear Mr. Lewis play as I got older because I stopped believing in him. Then that magic happened when I left myself, and man I couldn’t help but seeing what the saxman had for me. I just had to know what made him so special, because, hell, I wanted some of that magic, too.
I strolled under the lamplight, resting my hands in the pockets of my ragged trousers. I felt the cool dryness of the desert air. I done felt more alive than ever before. I suppose it was the wind on my skin and the sound of something muffled playing in a nearby building; it made me hungry to jam.
I spotted a red, hand-painted sign out front. It read, The Musician’s Bar. I’d be lying if I said the area didn’t feel empty and forgotten; the sign, the outside of the bar, the way every sur- rounding thing was asleep, except for this one. I’d read in the paper that Mr. Lewis owned the place, but I started to have my doubts. I reached the front door and slowly pushed on it. My heart began to race. I tried to reason with myself, saying in my head that I could leave at any moment. I best leave now before anyone even knows I’m here, I thought. But then the wooden door was open, and without realizing it, I was standing in a room with patches for carpet.
I felt transported to a spiritual world in that place. The lighting was dim. A single lamp hung from the ceiling above where four or five men sat in a circle. Save for some neon glowing signs and lamps fastened to the wall, there was no other light. The room was small, but it didn’t appear so because of the mirrors lining the top half of the walls. Hell, the room felt over-sized. Wherever the mirrors didn’t cover the wall hung blood-red flock-patterned wallpaper – something left behind from the days of the Wild West. Honest to God, I couldn’t tell the men’s moving shadows from the patterns on the wallpaper. Hell, I just reckoned there was something in the wall trying to make its way out, a ghost dancing a jig.
No matter how much people said Mr. Lewis sounded like heaven, well, let’s just say this place reminded me of hell with all the lack of light, all the red that glowed like fire on all of them mirrors. Spiritual sounds carried kind of muffled in the breeze of the small room. Mr. Lewis sat caressing his sax. Several other men sat about him, playing other instruments, one pounding the keys, another plucking his bass, one knocking at his drums, and more. The hum of Mr. Lewis’ horn was sublime. I stood at the entrance of the bar, nearly closing my eyes, trying to feel the music, trying to see rhythm and become it, the way I once had before. I heard the sounds of a rushing city. I was far away from this desert, far away from this club. I felt I was in the thick of Harlem, but I wasn’t, and that fascinated me. The sounds just glided through my soul, tore at my physical being, trying to tell me something I wasn’t sure I was ready to know.
All of a sudden, the music softened and released its emotion, its rage and boiling temper. I heard some voices guiding the stop. I opened my eyes.
“Kid, come jam!” called one of the men. I was beside myself when he looked my way. I discovered it was him.
“Nah, I’m just listening, Mr. Lew- is. I ain’t got my horn, anyhow.” I said embarrassed.
“Here, Kid. Ya got a reed and mouthpiece? Then take my horn,” he said walking over, handing me his sax, then disappearing into another room, coming out seconds later with a darker, ancient hunk of brass. I pulled my
Rico reed and a mouthpiece from my trousers and twisted it onto the neck of his instrument.
“All right, ladies, let’s break it down,” he said after sipping his bourbon.
The boy on the keys started playing something sultry and loose. Then the other cats just joined in whenever they felt. I waited some time and finally started playing notes I thought no one ought to hear. As the sounds carried on, Mr. Lewis pulled away from his sax. I noticed he was looking my way, so I imitated his act, stopping my sounds.
He said to me, “Get hot, Kid. Stop playing so cool.”
My face got warm real fast. “Mr. Lewis, I don’t know how to feel it. I know how to play the notes, but I can’t really speak the language. You know what I’m saying, Mr. Lewis?”
He gave me a look of understanding. “I dig it, Kid.”
“Hey, crazies,” he said, addressing the others who were lost in a riff, “let’s give this kid a solo with his horn. Just follow me into it, smooth and easy.”
I listened to him play. I was relearning everything I thought I already knew. He spoke a language I felt in my soul. I couldn’t understand the words. He just spoke truth to my heart. His language didn’t discriminate, it didn’t mean something better to someone else’s soul more than another. It was raw and from his bones to mine, and it overcame the barriers that we had all put up for so long. I reckoned this is what heaven must be like. We ain’t all that different after all; we’re really just one of a kind, even if we think we’re too good to see it.
I joined in, loosely holding my brass, the way I had the day the magic came to me. I thought of the three musicians and Mr. Picasso, imagined we were made of shapes and colors, all just designed to bring music into the world. I felt a silence growing among the others, but I still played whatever my heart told me. All of a sudden it made everything okay, hearing the sounds come out of me without even thinking ‘bout it. It was queer and marvelous and terrifying. I had no control, and still I kept the sound floating. It was out of this world, man.
When it felt right, I settled down from my frenzy and played a final note. The room fell silent.
“Baby,” I heard one of the jammers say, “that was divine.”
Mr. Lewis sipped his bourbon, “Keep it goin’, Kid.” He closed his eyes. “The end of a song’s only the beginnin’,” he said. “Music never ends and ya knowledge of it don’t either.” He opened his eyes again, smiling like he did in the paper. Something like magic happened again, man. Under that one bulb, where a fly wacked it- self against the light, Mr. Lewis’ body shone like the setting sun.
I reckon Mr. Lewis really is a god. He’s too good to be one of us, I thought. I started playing again, and just watched the man before me sip at his bourbon. I started out playing gentle, then played what sounded like thunder. And I spoke a language I’d never known before, but, hell, I under- stood every word.
tags: Fiction
