The Jazz Palace (5 page)

The crack of a bat worked its way into Benny's dreams. He heard the shouting and, gazing out, saw Moe Javitts with a group of their pals, playing in the lot below. Moe, like Benny, was dark skinned and small, with curly hair. He was pitching and threw an impressive fast ball. Some of the boys from the nearby neighborhoods were good, and because it was summer and there was no school the boys played whenever they could.

The vacant lot was a dry patch with a few tufts of grass and weeds, tucked between two buildings, and Benny had lived most of his life across from it. He hung out here with his brothers and the neighborhood boys. It was covered in broken bottles and trash. Albany Park was only a few blocks away, but this was where the boys preferred to be. They'd played mumblety-peg, hurling pocket knives at their feet. They'd made pushmobiles out of orange crates and old roller-skating wheels. As they grew older, they played ball. In the winter they brought girls here and roasted potatoes over open fires. They slipped their hands into the warmth of soft skin and wool coats.

Benny gave a holler across the dusty expanse, and Moe waved up to him. “Come on down,” Moe shouted from the pitcher's mound. If he hurried, Benny could get in an inning or two before his music lesson. He wished he could skip it. He was tired of Mr. Marcopolis and the Beethoven sonatas that he didn't want to learn. Though he
went through the motions of practicing, he'd never play them right. Now he didn't bother bathing or brushing his teeth. He just threw on a shirt and trousers, his shirt hanging out, and gulped down a bowl of cold cereal and juice. Despite Hannah's efforts to run a comb through his hair, Benny dashed out the door.

It was the bottom of the third, and the Tuley High School boys were ahead. He stuck his sheet music under a makeshift bench and took the field at shortstop. He fielded a few grounders and made a good play at second. At bat he doubled, and then scrambled to third on a line drive. On a bungled catch he stole home. In the next inning he ran down the line hard to get a single and caught a scorcher barehanded. His palm ached and his fingers burned. For a moment he wondered if his wrist was broken. When he heard the church bells chime nine o'clock, he walked off the field. “Come on, Benny,” Moe shouted, “forget about it.” Moe, who played the French horn, thought nothing about missing his lessons.

“Can't.” He shook his head. “I gotta go.”

“Mama's boy,” somebody called.

Benny shot a glance and scowled as he walked to the corner where he hopped a streetcar heading west. As the tram moved up Lawrence, Benny brushed the dust from his knees. He rubbed his sore fingers, which still smarted from his catch. His hand stung as he got off at his stop. On the street a pushcart peddler was selling rags. Benny walked past the tumbledown buildings whose corridors reeked of herring, pickles, and faulty plumbing. Climbing the stairs, he stood in front of his teacher's apartment. As he raised his fist to knock, he froze in midair. He wasn't going in. He didn't think he could bear to be inside that apartment with its odor of stale tea and unlived lives.

He turned and snuck down the stairs, then dashed back into the street much faster than he had come. He caught a tram heading east and then south. The houses got bigger. There were trees and streetlights. He got off at the river near the Shadows where the dockworkers and prostitutes dwelled. Red-lipped women called to him, but he ignored them. He wandered along the wharves as a crew toted bushels of corn and potatoes, lugging boxes of cargo off the ships.

The
Eastland
still lay on her side while a pitch-black tug with the strange name of
Favorite
was trying to right her. Benny sat on the dock as the sailors on the hull struggled to secure more lines. He thought about how many people in his neighborhood were gone. A man across the way had lost his wife and his daughter. At night Benny heard his sobs. One woman had lost all six of her children. How could a person go on after something like that?

His mother had only lost Harold. But he was the youngest and the sweetest of her boys. Benny couldn't help but chuckle as he looked again at the tugboat's name.
Favorite
. That's what Harold was. Her favorite. It had been a knife in Benny's heart. How Hannah doted on him. She saved for him the juicy chicken thighs, the marrow bones in the soup. The tenderest cut of brisket was never for her husband, always for Harold. And then she'd lost him, and though she'd never say it, Benny really was to blame. She had entrusted him with the boys. She cried for a year, then one day she stopped. But the headaches began, and they'd never gone away. Somehow the three boys who were left didn't count. It made no difference when Benny said to her, “You still have me.”

“How's it coming?” he shouted to the pilot of the tug.

“Good as can be expected,” the pilot called back with a wave. Benny lingered on the docks, then hopped the “el” that they called the Alley, which would take him downtown. He was happiest in motion. He didn't want to sit still. If he could, he'd just keep going. He had thoughts of getting away, heading to some of the river towns. Davenport or St. Louis. Maybe even to New Orleans. He rocked with the rhythm of the “el” as it took him down Satan's Mile past the saloons where Mickey Finn rolled customers for their wallets and left them naked on the streets. Benny didn't care if the South Side was dirty or dangerous. He got off at Thirty-First Street and walked the rest of the way.

The alleyway smelled of grease and dog shit, of piss and smoldering trash. The stink of a Chicago summer got into his clothes and his hair. He put his ear up to the tavern door and soon the music seeped out as he knew it would. Even at this early hour someone was playing the keyboard. At first he thought it was two people. It didn't
seem possible that it was only one. Whoever was playing seemed to be hitting all the notes at once, but the right hand ran wild while the left kept a steady bass. The notes swirled in murky colors, and the key kept changing. He couldn't make sense of the chords.

He didn't know what this new music was called or if it even had a name. He just knew he heard it when he went to those places where his mother said he didn't belong. Often Hannah chastised his father. “You shouldn't be sending that boy on deliveries down to the South Side. He's too young to go there.” She had read
Chicago and Its Cess-Pools of Sin
. Evils awaited her son in that part of town. “Lost souls” was what she called those who went there. But Leo protested, “He's the only one who wants to go.”

Not many of the boys would venture down to the South Side because it was rough. Sometimes they had their tips stolen, but Benny begged his father for those jobs. It didn't matter to Leo who did the South Side as long as it got done. He didn't want any competition in the area of rail and stockyard workers, so he gave Benny that part of town whenever he asked.

When the music stopped, the silence was slow to reach him. He stood motionless as a huge caramel-skinned man in a soaked white shirt flung open the door. His hair, the color of molasses, was cut short, making his big head look like a balloon. His eyes were molasses, too. Bees must flock to him, Benny thought. The man glared at the boy who stood gaping. “What're you doing here, son?”

“Just listening.” Benny shook as he said it. The man gave him a smile, and a diamond stud glittered in his front tooth. “Was that you playing?” The man nodded, staring down at Benny so he thought he'd better say something more. “I was wondering, that music, what's it called?”

“Why do you wanta know?”

Benny shrugged. “I haven't heard anything like it before.”

“What's it worth to you?”

Benny dug into his pockets. All he had was his carfare home. “I've got this.”

“Ah, forget about it.” The man gave him a grin. “It's called jass.”

Benny stood, not moving, repeating the word. “Jass.”

“You know, son, this is the devil's music. The demon dwells here. It's Negro music, boy. Whorehouse stomping. Coon shouting.” The man was taunting him now. “It's what your mama told you to stay away from. So you better do that. Now you get outta here.” And the man planted a kick in the air.

I
n August the White Sox bought Shoeless Joe Jackson from Cleveland for twenty-five thousand dollars. In sandlots boys were slamming line drives into left field, hoping that one day Shoeless Joe would miss one of theirs. On a hot Saturday afternoon Benny hit a grounder onto Leland Avenue. He had a good stance and a strong swing, and he whacked it out of the lot. He rounded the bases with his mother hollering from the window that he'd be late for his piano lesson. As he touched home plate, he gave her a wave and waited until she went back inside. Pocketing the money she gave him to pay his teacher, he hopped a trolley, heading south.

Once more Benny got off at the Shadows and walked along the docks. Now the black tug was gone, and so was the
Eastland
. The river was devoid of the tragedy as if it had never occurred. Nothing marked the spot where 844 people drowned in the hull of a ship. The river flowed, greasy and dark, and Benny shuddered as he walked along Clark Street. The sounds of Tom Brown's Ragtime Band, coming from the Lamb's Café, made him pause.

Inside a piano man was warming up. Benny stared at the poster of Joe Frisco, the “American Apache,” as he danced “the frisco” bug-eyed with derby and cigar. At the bottom of the poster Benny saw the word written for the first time.
JASS BAND
. He stuck his head in as the band was setting up. “Hey, when's the show?” he called to a waiter in a white tie and tuxedo, but the waiter shooed him away.

“Scram, kid,” the waiter chimed, slamming the door in his face. Benny waited outside, hoping the band would warm up again. When it didn't, he took a school pencil from his pocket and crossed the
J
out of “Jass.”
ASS BAND
, it read. Then he caught the Alley to Satan's Mile
until he stood again in the alleyway near the trash cans where a dog chewed a bone. The stink of rancid meat made him swoon. He put his ear to the door and recognized the sound.

That caramel man was pounding out a tune, and those buttery hands never missed a note. Pigeons roosted overhead. The shadows grew longer as Benny tried to see the music in his head. But the colors weren't coming out clear. They were kind of gray, fuzzy around the edges. Everything that was jumbled up inside him was flowing through that door. He tried taking the notes apart, but nothing was making sense. This was no written-down, planned-out thing. Nobody had played like this before. Benny listened the way a sleeper listens to his own dream. He wanted more “jass.”

As he was leaning against the door, it opened, and he tumbled against the trash cans. Startled at first, the big man laughed. “You back again?” He was rolling a cigarette, licking the paper with his long pink tongue as Benny nodded. “You must be stealing,” the man said nonchalantly.

Benny looked around the alleyway. What was there to take? “Stealing? I never stole anything in my life.”

The man laughed. “Music. That's what white kids steal.”

Benny shook his head. “I don't understand.”

The man lit his cigarette. “So what d'you want here, boy?”

Benny tried to find the words for what he wanted, but they eluded him. “Nothing,” he replied, though he knew this wasn't true. He did want something.

“Then why you keep showing up?” The man stared at him, but Benny held his ground.

A few minutes ago he hadn't known what he wanted, but now he did. “I want to come inside.”

The man let out a gruff laugh, thick with smoke. “Well, be my guest.” He flashed a smile with his diamond stud and poppy-seed kernels between his teeth. Making a deep bow, he let the boy pass through a haze of perfume and smoke. Billiard balls clacked in a corner while two girls with red nails and creamy red lipstick leaned against the bar. Their breasts were pushed up almost to their chins, and they wore black lace stockings hooked onto a garter belt and
red bows in their hair. Benny had never seen girls dressed like this before, and he looked at them more with curiosity than desire.