RL's Dream

Twenty

When Randy arrived the next morning he found Soupspoon dressed and ready to go. The old man had his guitar case, a harmonica fixed to wear around his neck, and a tambourine to tie around his leg.

Kiki was in the bathroom throwing up.

“You coming, Kiki?” Randy shouted through the door.

“Maybe later.”

Randy’s booth was in front of an Italian restaurant on the east side of Carmine. He had a long table that was just an unfinished door covered with piles of folded T-shirts. At the back of the booth T-shirts hung from wires that were suspended between two long poles anchored to cinder blocks on the street. The shirts were all sexy and macho in bright colors. Randy got them from Ralphie Dee, who worked for Wild Chests of Brooklyn. Ralphie loaded the shirts he’d taken over the months into his station wagon and left the keys for Randy.

To the left of Randy’s booth two young men had a concession where they sold bootlegged audiocassettes that were counterfeited to look like the originals. To the right a group of potters sold wares from their studio; heavy cups and wobbling plates that old ladies swooned over before passing them by.

People sold toys, novelties, batteries, antiques, and clothes. There were a lot of clothes. Designer overalls in psychedelic colors, natural wool sweaters from Chile, straw hats, old suits.

And then came jewelry. Earrings mainly, from gaudy cheap plastic to delicate handmade. Nose studs and nipple rings. Lots of silver, but no gold to speak of. Garnet rings and freshwater pearl necklaces, silver-plated bracelets and silver skulls for your fingers, toes, throat, and ears.

At the corner near Bleecker they had food. Italian sausages with peppers, fresh deep-fried doughnuts, flavored ice, fried rice, and hot dogs with pretzels and mustard.

“Hey, Claude,” Randy called across the street to a man in a booth over which flew a banner that declared, TATTOOS. Behind the little black-haired man was a white screen covered with the decals he could give you to pretend for a day or two that you had the courage to be marked. He had skulls, butterflies, naked women, and MOM surrounded by a big red heart. He had an American flag but no swastikas, because Claude was a Frenchman and he hated the Nazis.

“Hey, Randy,” he answered. “You got a lot today.”

“Got entertainment.”

“Wet T-shirt?” the little man asked, completely serious.

“No, uh-uh, we got a blues guitar man.” Randy gestured toward Soupspoon, who was getting himself set up on his stool. He had on a three-button black dress jacket with slim dark slacks and black-and-white patent-leather shoes over red silk socks. He wore a red shirt with fake onyx buttons and a short-brimmed, olive-colored Stetson hat that sported a yellow feather held in place by a red-enameled hat pin.

Everybody who walked by noticed Soupspoon with his bright red guitar and his old-time fancy clothes. People were asking about T-shirts before they got their doughnuts. Mrs. Rich, the Carmine Street fair administrator, asked Randy about Soupspoon, but she wasn’t mad. Music is a great thing for a street fair. It makes people just wandering through want to stop; and when they stop they’re more likely to spend.

At first Soupspoon wanted to get to know his guitar again. He strummed a few chords and then, almost like that day in Arcola, he began to play. No singing at first, he just fingered out the words while strumming the chords on behind. “Placated Woman” was the first thing he played, then “The Sophisticated Blues,” a song he learned up in Chicago when he and Mavis first left the south.

He played “Hangman’s Blues” and “Momma’s New Shoes.” He played those songs without singing a word. It wasn’t until the second song that he stomped his tambourine foot. It wasn’t until the third one that he blew his harmonica.

People came around the booth nodding their heads and tapping their toes. The sun was beating down hard, but Randy put up a big yellow parasol that colored the air around Soupspoon’s eyes.

Hare showed up. He wore the same weathered clothes, and he had an umbrella too. It was broken on one side but he held the good half over a large buxom woman who wore tight denim overalls. She had a good deal of facial hair and very little practice smiling as far as Soupspoon could see. He did see why no man could take away her trestle house. SallySue was the size of a football player. And it wasn’t soft fat that she was made of either.

Hare had a brown paper bag in his hand that had molded itself into the shape of the bottle it carried. He offered the bottle to his date but she declined.

“Hey, Mr. Wise!” Hare shouted.

“Hey, Hare. How you doin’?”

“It’s Saturday. I told you I was comin’ t’see ya!”

“You sure did.”

Soupspoon was a black visage against white T-shirts. A spectacle and a witness all in one. He saw the little children with their snow cones and their mothers in halter tops and shorts. He saw the swaggering men who found the rhythm of their bluster in his songs. He saw the way people walked with music in their step even when they didn’t stop to listen, and he saw the clouds pass by, ignorant and grand. When the music got good, and he closed his eyes to feel it right, he saw the backside of his life — the people who he’d walked with and left behind.

The women who raised him because he just showed up one day and asked if they knew his mother. They didn’t, but they made him wash up and eat grits at their table. They bathed him and saved him and shared their love for eight years.

He went out on the road at fourteen and never looked back for them again.

There was JoDaddy Parker, who taught him to play guitar in the whorehouses where white men came to meet Negro women. He learned to live on tips from JoDaddy, who was gray-haired and wide-eyed from the time he was a boy.

He remembered grim-faced Bannon and the apples and the burglaries; the days and days of talk padded with history, hatred, and love.

He remembered meeting Mavis in Pariah, Texas. She was shattered and sad and on the way to drinking herself to death. She was distraught and lonely over a boy she lost in a flash flood. Soupspoon tried to comfort her, and then one day he found that she had spent a night with Robert Johnson. He made love to her that very night with a passion that surprised them both and then wanted to marry her, to save her. He tried.

Everything was already set. He remembered decades between notes. He had everything right there in his heart. Every time he stomped his belled foot, pain traveled up his leg. When the pain got bad he began to sing.

Randy sold fewer T-shirts than usual but he put out a Tupperware plastic bowl and people were putting down their money for Soupspoon’s pain.

Thousands of people passed by, hundreds stopped to listen to the blues. Almost every black man and woman stopped and cocked their ears. They heard something in Soupspoon’s notes. Something that some people call Africa. Soupspoon would have told them that he didn’t know a thing about modern Africa except that “them po’ people sure got a hold on some blues. From starvin’ to slavery they sure done paid the tax.”

Rudy came by in black jeans and a cream silk T-shirt. Sonó was with him, followed by a small girl that she had by the hand and by a teenager who carried a baby in her arms. Cholo and Billy Slick came behind them. The men looked out of place in the daylight. They kept looking around from behind black-lensed sunglasses. They walked in a cloud of smoke that came from their own cigarettes and cigars.

But Sono took off her shades when she first heard Soupspoon play. The teenager didn’t even have sunglasses. She leaned up on Randy’s table like she wanted to rub her face in Soupspoon’s music.

Harry came by. He had a new boyfriend, another young blond. They stood back and listened, holding hands and whispering back and forth. He said hello to Soupspoon with a nod and a smile.

Kiki came around noon, already drinking, already drunk.

Soupspoon’s music was for everybody and everything. He saw the plastic bucket fill up with quarters and dollar bills. He felt the pain and saw it too. He played his guitar until he knew he’d have to stop, but he kept on for one more song, and another. Every now and then he’d wink at the young girl who came with Sono — the girl with the baby on her hip. He liked it when the baby and the young girl smiled.

When Soupspoon finally broke down and took a rest the people put their hands together for him. Rudy came up after the music was over. But the young girl, with a baby girl in hand, walked up first.

“You from Arkansas, uncle?”

“Mississippi, mighty damn close. What’s your name?”

“Chevette,” she said. “I know you must be from somewhere close, ’cause you play the music like the old men used to when I was a baby.”

“Well, you know when I play I always kinda direct my music t’somebody out in the crowd. I musta known you was from down home because’a how you looked.”

“You was playin’ for me?”

“Prettiest thing out here.”

Chevette didn’t smile, didn’t show pleasure at this compliment. The closest thing to an emotion on her face was hunger. The little yellow girl she had by the hand could feel it. She stared up at Chevette and then she smiled at Soupspoon.

“You gonna play some more?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sono came up then with the baby on her hip. Soupspoon could tell that it was Sono who was the children’s mother.

“Sono, this is, is... What’s your name, uncle?” Chevette asked.

“I know who he is, Chevette. I’m the one brought us here. But you know it’s gettin’ too hot for George and Hamela. We got to get outta this sun,” she said. “Hi, Mr. Wise. You played real nice. I knew you would.”

“Yeah,” Chevette said. “Real good.”

“Could we go now?” Sono said. “I’m hungry.” The baby was struggling in her arms and crying on and off.

“You gonna be here awhile?” Chevette asked.

“Prob’ly till they break down. I’m here with my friends.”

“We come back when they eat.”

Soupspoon was sure that the girls would be back. He’d been a musician long enough to tell. He nodded at them as Rudy and his entourage came up from behind.

“Hey, Soup,” he said, putting an arm around each of the two young women. “You know you never played for me before.”

“You didn’t like my music when you used t’come visit, Rudy. You just liked ice cream and the Lone Ranger.”

“Then call me a fool.” Rudy was grinning. “What you think, Chevette? You think Atwater here should come play at my club?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. Soupspoon could see much more than that in her eyes.

“What you think, Sono?” Rudy asked his waitress. “Do we need some blues down there?”

“I guess that be okay,” sour-mouthed Sono said. “Least we have somethin’ good for you old folks.”

“You wanna pay’im?” Kiki’s voice came from behind. Her gaunt face, that had never been pretty, was now sick with alcohol. Soupspoon had seen that bony-eyed look many times before. On their way to the grave. Her eyes drooped and her smile made him want to cry.

“That’d be great,” she said, looking into Billy Slick’s face. “You could help us make some money while I find a new job.”

“Yeah,” Billy Slick said under the pressure of her gaze.

“What’s your name?” Kiki asked.

“Come on, Billy,” Rudy said. “Put your eyes back in your head. We gotta go.”

“What? What I did?” he asked, but his eyes were locked with Kiki’s.

“You wanna help me stack shirts, Kiki?” Randy asked.

“Not right now.” There was a big smile for Billy on her face.

“So, Soup, you still wanna play for me?” Rudy asked.

“Yeah. Damn right.” He saw Chevette smiling at him and Kiki leaning toward Billy Slick. He could smell the Delta on the sweat of his friends.

“You get Randy here’s number. He gonna be my business agent. Right, Randy?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Wise.”

“All right.” Rudy was looking at the boy, at his hair actually.

“Give Billy here how he could get in touch wit’ you and he’ll tell you what we could do tomorrow.”

Randy scribbled his phone number on a brown paper bag. He handed the bag to Billy but the big man hardly noticed. He was talking to Kiki while she studied his face.

“Come on, Billy,” Rudy said again.

Rudy left with Billy and Cholo. Sono and Chevette hung around with the kids nearby. But before Soup could talk to them he turned to Kiki again.

“What’s the matter wit’ you, girl? Why you drinkin’ like that?” Soupspoon was really worried.

“It’s okay, honey. I can take it. I can take it.”

Her arms felt cool around Soupspoon’s neck as she whispered, “That was beautiful, honey. I knew you were something. I knew it.”

They walked together, Kiki draped over him, to Randy. He was sulking and counting the money from Soupspoon’s bucket.

“Forty-two dollars not counting the twenty-dollar bill somebody put in. Sixty-two in all.”

“Man, if I made money like that back in the old days in the Delta I might coulda retired.”

“It’s all yours, Mr. Wise.”

“Uh-uh, Randy. We partners, so we split it.”

“But I got the shirts.”

“Don’t matter. Don’t matter at all. You got me here and I’ma pay ya for it.”

Kiki slid from Soupspoon to the ground next to Randy’s feet. She put her head on his lap and he moved his dusky fingers in her hair.

The afternoon set was more popular than the morning. Sono and Chevette came back. The little girl liked dancing with Chevette. The baby boy was asleep most of the time in Sono’s arms.

Music came back to Soupspoon from a time so long ago that it didn’t even seem real anymore. He felt like he was making up the music. There wasn’t a thing he had to worry about. He didn’t even mind the pain.

They made eighty-three dollars in the afternoon. Randy gave Soupspoon ninety-seven dollars in bills and kept the change for his “bank.” Kiki sobered a little but was hungover. She went with Randy to take his shirts to the station wagon while Soupspoon looked after the door and cinder blocks.

Sono and Chevette came up with the children and a big bulky-looking young man. They came over to Soupspoon while he was packing away his guitar. The little girl Hamela was crying and Sono tried to calm her down. Soupspoon liked Sono more then, because she wasn’t yelling at the child. But he really liked Chevette. There was something about a woman-child with a baby in her arms that made him feel good.

“What’s the matter with your leg, uncle?” Chevette asked.

“Musta been sittin’ funny. You know you had me workin’ hard out there.”

Chevette showed him her teeth. “You was workin’ fo’you. I ain’t done mithin’.”

Soupspoon held out his hand to the big young man and said, “Atwater Wise, but my friends call me Soupspoon.”

“Gerald Pickford, but call me Gerry.” The young man’s voice was high and crackly but Soupspoon had heard worse in men. It’s better to be a big man, he always said, if you got a girl’s voice.

And Gerry was big. He was barrel-chested and long-armed. His face was all pushed together and sharp like a wedge. He wasn’t a pretty man by any means.

“I’m hungry,” Chevette said. “Why’ont we go get sumpin’ t’eat.”

“I cain’t go with you guys,” Sono said. “I got the kids here.”

“We could take them to Swenson’s,” Gerry offered. “They could have some ice cream.”

“Ice cream,” Hamela said.

“I got money from my guitar right chere in my pocket. The sundaes is on me.” Soupspoon looked straight into Chevette’s eyes.

Randy drove up and looked around for any extra shirts he might have left. Then he flipped down the back door of the station wagon and started to load in cinder blocks. Without a word Gerry lent a hand.

“Where’s Kiki?” Soupspoon asked.

“She’s asleep in the backseat.”

“You need help, Randy?” Soupspoon picked up his guitar case.

“No, sir. We got this. Jump in.”

“Naw, uh-uh, don’t worry ’bout me. We goin’ out. Tell Kiki that I’ll be back later on.”

Randy looked at the girls and gave a quick smirk. “You got it, Mr. Wise. You want me to take your guitar?”

“No, no. I got it.”