Half-Blood Blues (22 page)

‘Go on, buck,’ he hissed. ‘Get us the hell out of here.’

I tapped the gas, and we moved forward, gliding on into the free west.

PART FOUR

Berlin 1992

A
fter a minute, Chip said, ‘You still mad, ain’t you. You still thinking about it.’

I ain’t said nothing, just shifted grimly from second to third, that Mercedes purring under my hands. We was pouring like syrup along those sleek Berlin roads, the bad white sun cut by the tinted glass. That seductive new leather smell around us.

Chip slipped out his old titanium cigarette case, flicked it open with a click. I gave him a long brooding look.

‘You ain’t smoking those in here,’ I said. ‘And put on you seatbelt.’

‘Aw, Sid. Don’t be like that. You allowed to be just a little excited, you know. Ain’t no law against it.’

‘Seatbelt,’ I said again.

He slipped an elegant cigarillo into his mouth, then reached up, pulled the old belt on. Then he turned to me and gave me this uneasy, hurt look. ‘Just so you know,’ he said. ‘Just so it been said. I ain’t got no hard feelings.’

I damn near bit my bridge in half, hearing that. I started coughing.

‘Sid?’ he said again, after a moment.

‘What?’

‘I said I ain’t got no hard feelings.’ He shifted his hips and the ribbed leather squeaked under him. ‘Ain’t you got something to say too?’

‘What is it I supposed to say to you? What exactly?’

‘Aw, I don’t know.’ He sort of brushed this fleck of lint off his sleeve. ‘This the part where you tell me you ain’t got no hard feelings neither. Hell, brother. Come on. You my oldest friend.’

‘You a son of a bitch, Chip. That’s what I got to say to you.’

He was silent for a minute but then he looked at me and gave me this sly old grin. ‘Most likely I am,’ he said. ‘I most likely am that. But I just wanted you to know. In my books you still golden, brother.’

Chip goddamn Jones. Like a damn bull terrier, when he got something in his teeth.

I pumped the brake and the car almost stopped, got up on its rear wheel, took a bow, and rolled over. I mean, that’s how responsive this sweet ride was. An angry driver bore down on his horn, screaming at us as he roared by. We hardly heard him with the windows up. But when Chip rolled his down the whole roar and whine and clatter of the city rushed in. I could smell this singe on the air, like burnt oil. So much exhaust, I thought. So much grit.

Then Chip gave this low whistle through his teeth and I looked over at him.

‘Hell,’ he murmured.

Cause there it was. The Wall. Or what had been the Wall. Sprawled and broken and cleared away. Along the pitted concrete still standing in Potsdamer Platz, a kind of bazaar had sprung up. A Polish market, it looked like. Dour, plump men with fast hands hawking bright oranges, portable radios, sweaters knit so damn tight they looked like armour. The air smelled peppery. I stopped at a traffic light just as a Trabi raced past, its plastic rattling.

‘There ain’t no going back, I guess,’ said Chip, tapping his false teeth together.

I wasn’t sure if he meant to the festival or back to the old days.

‘No, there ain’t,’ I said to both.

‘Sid,’ he said, suddenly very serious. ‘I
am
sorry, brother.’

I was silent a long minute. At last I said, ‘You got to make it right, Chip.’

‘I will. I’ll make it right.’

I nodded. And then I said, gruffly, ‘Roll up you window.’ It seemed indecent, somehow, us coming through here. I don’t know.

So we cut out again, me and Chip. Don’t know what it is about that man. He’s like a weakness for me, even seventy years later. I ain’t a stupid man, no more than most. And he ain’t that damn charming. But it seems we is friends to the last. Why, I don’t know. The best I can say is that it’s like some rundown part of me. See, I got this torn rotator cuff, makes me favour my right arm. It’s like that. I just got this broken switch in my brain, can’t say no to Chip Jones.

We was just pulling slow off a roundabout, into the long vacant roadways leading into the airport when Chip opened his eyes, his face going all suspicious.

‘We’re at the airport,’ he said.

‘Look at those damn bifocals working away,’ I said. ‘You sure got your money’s worth on them, boy.’

‘Sid? What’re we doing here?’

‘What do folk do usually? We catchin a boat.’ I shook my head.

But he wasn’t having none of it. Just looked out at the rows of taxis and tour buses and the sliding glass doors we shuttled past. ‘I thought we was going to Poland, brother,’ he said. And then: ‘You know your flight to Baltimore’s already gone?’

I pulled on into the rental lot, gave him a hard look. ‘I know.’

He looked nervous at me. Hell.

‘Chip, ain’t no damn way I’m driving this rig through to Poland. Size of a damn… Why a man so small rent a car so big, huh? What you thinking? Anyhow I don’t know that it’s even legal to take a rental car over the border to another country. You want to get to Poland, we going to have to fly.’

Can’t tell you how relieved he looked.

‘I thought maybe you wasn’t coming,’ said Chip, as we checked our luggage, his old family of monogrammed brown cases, my one battered never-unpacked bag. And then, later, as we moved through the security gates, he said again, ‘I thought maybe you was going to duck out on me, brother.’

‘It ain’t too late,’ I said.

‘Hell,’ he said with a grin. ‘It’s early yet. It’s always early, while you still alive.’

‘You going to print that one up? Get yourself a bumper sticker?’

Chip chuckled. ‘Sid, Sid, Sid. Look at this. You and me, it’s like old times. Hiero going to be so damn surprised he like to eat his old trumpet.’

I wasn’t really listening. We was making our slow shambling way toward the gate. ‘He going to be surprised?’ I said.

‘Sure, brother. Like a fat girl opening a full fridge.’

And then it hit me. I stopped walking, put one damn hand on the top of my head and blown out my cheeks. I stared up the corridor, looked back at Chip.

‘Chip,’ I said.

He was still smiling, sort of half turned toward me. ‘Let’s go, man. What is it?’

‘Hiero knows we coming, right?’

Hell if he ain’t stopped grinning right quick. I could see him looking at me, trying to decide something. I felt the little hairs on my neck prickle.

Then Chip clear his damn throat and hold out his big hands at me, as if to wave me down. ‘Course he knows. I mean, he don’t know exactly when. But he knows.’

‘He don’t know exactly
when
?’

Chip sort of blinked at me, confused.

‘Chip?’ I said.

‘You forgetting, brother. He
invited
us.’

‘Don’t mean you don’t
tell
a man before you come to
visit
—’

‘You right, you right,’ Chip cut in softly. ‘But how you write something like that? What do you say?
Dear Hiero, we coming up now to see you ain’t a ghost? We sorry your life been so disappointing? We glad you ain’t dead yet?
’

‘How about,
Hiero, we coming to visit second weekend of October. See you soon
.’

Chip cocked his head, gave me a quick grin. ‘That ain’t half bad.’

Some folks was passing us, giving us a royal look, but I didn’t give a fig. I just stood there shaking my head like it ain’t got no neck muscles left, like maybe with the right amount of shaking I could just loosen its screws, and knock it right the hell off.

‘But Sid,’ Chip said after a minute, looking genuinely baffled. ‘He going to be
happy
when he sees us.’

I felt
sick
, brother. I got to thinking all about showing up at Hiero’s damn door and him slamming it in my face. Or him grabbing my old lapels and hurling me off his porch. Hell, even grabbing an old axe from the woodshed and cleaving my skull in two. Maybe me crying, begging for my life. I don’t know. Hell.

But I got on the damn plane. My knees shaking. Chip ain’t seemed to notice. Was a short flight into Stettin’s airport, and then a long damn taxi to the bus station. I ain’t seen none of it. Stettin just seemed very dark, and cold. I kept rubbing my old hands together but couldn’t stop them trembling.

Our bus wasn’t parked with the other coaches but off back by a chainlink fence, under a gloomy concrete building with cracks cobwebbing up its walls.

‘You ain’t serious,’ I said, when I seen it.

Chip put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Hell,’ he said. And then, with a smile, ‘Well I guess it’ll get us there. It look like it been getting folk there for fifty years at least.’

‘That ain’t going to get us out of the
parking lot
,’ I muttered.

It was a damn
relic
. An old transport bus, bleached white with dust. It sat high on its huge military tires, its joints rusty, its chassis pocked with dents like it been in a battlefield. Its weird Soviet hood looked insectoid, creature-like, and with its luggage doors lifted like wings I got to feeling distinctly uneasy. I couldn’t see nothing through them grimy windows. Bus looked damn abandoned, I thought.

Chip was already stowing our suitcases underneath.

‘Chip,’ I said, still studying the bus.

‘What?’

‘How long this trip supposed to take?’

‘Half a day, I think,’ he said.

‘Twelve hours, half a day? Or have-a-catnap-then-you-there, half a day?’

He shrugged. ‘It don’t matter now. You coming?’

‘You get on that bus, ain’t nothing
else
going to matter.’

But Chip pushed on past me, grabbed the guardrail with one hand and hoisted himself awkwardly onboard. The bus stood so damn high off the ground, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull myself up and in. Should be a damn ladder.

It was dark inside. I started up the short steps, blinking and peering about. The driver sat at his huge steering wheel, looking scarred and rough. I couldn’t see his eyes. Through the shadows I nodded hello. He looked away.

‘Ain’t he going to take our tickets?’ I asked Chip as we sat down.

Chip shrugged.

My eyes was starting to adjust. It was yellow as a toilet inside, the seats foamless and reeking of old piss. There was others huddled in the chill with us, pale and grim and avoiding eye contact. I shivered a little. Folks with strange bundles gripped in their hands, scarves and hoods pulled down low. Their faces blurred and indistinct. A woman was coughing in some row farther back.

Was like they been waiting for us. No sooner had we sat down than the driver got out, banged shut all the baggage doors, and come back on board glowering. He yelled some words in Polish, but no one seemed to pay no attention. Then he sat down, pulled out some levers, started the old engine with a roar, snapped his dusty window open. The brakes groaned, the axles hissing under us like asps.

And then there was a sound like an enormous pressure releasing, and that huge rusted bus started shuddering on its big tires, rolling slowly out into the dead road.

..........

We pulled out through the gloomy streets of Stettin, passing grey façades of chipped concrete, shuttered windows, folks dressed in dark coats carrying bags of groceries. The street-lights was on even though it couldn’t be much past noon. The roads looked windswept, bare, as if readying for winter.

We wasn’t but ten minutes out when the bus slowed to a stop. An old man lumbered up the aisle and, climbing down, started walking out into the dark fields. He carried a sack of onions over one shoulder and I watched him trudge off into the gloam and disappear.

We pulled away again. The asphalt on these roads was bad and the old bus shuddered and crunched and banged its way onward. The city was now far behind and we was driving through the blasted countryside, past desolate fields, long swathes of dark forest. I started thinking all this was real. Hell. I ain’t quite believed it and then I was sure I ain’t believed it and then I didn’t care if I believed it or not. But here I was, no longer really doubting Hiero would be where Chip said he was.

‘
Half Blood Blues
,’ Chip said suddenly. He was rubbing the stubble on his cheeks like he sharpening his old fingers. ‘You know I always figured it was about himself.’

‘Don’t start, Chip. Let’s just leave it for a bit.’

‘But it ain’t. I reckon he named it for Delilah.’

I closed my eyes. Suddenly I didn’t want to talk about none of it, not now, not later.

‘We should’ve brought him something,’ said Chip. ‘A gift.’

I snorted. ‘Like what. Wine? A keychain?’

‘I don’t know. Something. It ain’t never good showing up empty-handed.’

My eyes was still closed. Now I opened them, gave him a look. ‘That’s what you worried about? Not having a gift for him?’

Chip seemed unruffled, though. ‘Doesn’t hurt to be polite, Sid. That’s all I’m saying,’

The hours passed. After a time Chip slept. I slept and woke. Glanced over at him, dead as winter beside me. His face looked real smooth there, the wrinkles slipping back like water so that you almost seen the purity of bone beneath, his essence.