Accordion Crimes (44 page)

At last he got it down to three. They could play these, and he pushed back the thought that it could be hard to win with them. He rattled out a fast minute of “Money Money Polka,” showing off their style, that wild honkying minor, a barbarian tension, the feeling of being on the edge of losing control that made their sound, which nobody else had, that made dancers go crazy. Looked at the woman to gauge her reaction; she looked surprised in a sour way. He grinned at her, pouring on the charm.

“Guess you can play, all right,” she said.

Now beef up the sob story, and make a deal with the old bitch.

The kids were asleep, Florry in the bed, Artie in the shopping cart, when he came in, and Sonia was leaning at the mirror, dabbing on her makeup, bare legs showing beneath her bathrobe. Their clothes were hanging on the back of the door, not a wrinkle in them.

“Got ’em,” he said, slapped her on the rump. “It’s only six o’clock.” He cracked open a beer, took a pint of V.O. from his jacket pocket. “Wanna shot?”

“Yeah. They any good?” Looking at the instruments. Big old black things, they wouldn’t go with their costumes. She picked up one of the Colombos and played a little, ran through the opening chords of their old novelty ethnic number that they didn’t use anymore, “Dyngus Day Drinkin’,” where the music got progressively sillier and looser and he mimed putting down the shots with beer chasers, then he switched at her legs with imaginary pussy willows and she jumped, still playing the accordion, did a big bellows shake. The tone wasn’t lively and she could hardly jump, the instrument was so heavy. Anyway, they’d dropped that number for a complicated medley of tricky rhythms and familiar tunes. Joey knew that winning duets stayed away from weird stuff, gave the audience something familiar and comfortable yet played fast with a lot of tricks: “Love Ya,” “Happy Us,” “Wonderful Times,” “My Happy Baby.” She thought of their lost instruments, Norwegian spruce soundboards, handmade reeds, the grilles cut out in their names.

“It’s heavy,” she said. “It sounds muddy.” She tried the other instrument. It was a little better, maybe, but one of the keys was loose and made a clack every time she hit it. She
wanted her blue accordion. Actually it was his; he’d gone to court against his brother over it when old Hieronim/Harry died. The old man left only one accordion and both of them wanted it, but Rajmund could hardly play and Joey got a cheap lawyer to make the case that the one who could play should have it. Rajmund just wanted to sell it and have the money. He’d do anything for money, but things went against him. Those long arms like an ape. He’d grabbed a package of bills, three tall stacks packed close and bound with a brown paper wrapper, from the woman behind the check approval counter at the Kmart, did it on impulse, all that money and her just standing there with it, trying to hold open a canvas bag with the other hand. He ran out. But in the parking lot the package blew apart, sending out a big cloud of red dye that got all over him, up his nose and all over his face and neck. He dropped the money and ran to his old maroon van, but there was a cloud of red floating behind him and red all over the van where he touched it, and the engine wouldn’t turn over.

Now in the hot-bed motel Joey started the salty comic piece “What’s That Thing Between Us?” and their voices fitted together, hers husky and full, his reedy tenor surprisingly pure and high from that heavy chest, so that she carried the melody and he took the harmony. It was OK and she relaxed. Maybe they’d pull it off. The voices counted for a lot. She started to practice the runs, hating the loose key, sipping at his boilermaker. He played better when he was a little drunk. So did she. And it made it easier to drink the liniment mixture.

“You rent them?” she said.

“I made a deal. Don’t worry, it’s OK. You think of the name of that diner? And the town it was at? I’m getting those accordions back, don’t care what I do.”

“I looked on the map. It must of been Morley, because I
remember it was after that long road with nothin on it, then we come to this town. But I didn’t see the name on the diner.”

He gave her a disgusted look. “What the hell good are you? Tell you one thing, we’re gonna pull out of here tomorrow morning and spend the day in fuckin Morley until I find the guy that took ’em, then I’m gonna run over the black bastard until he turns into strawberry jam.” He took a hard belt of the whiskey and smacked the glass down.

“OK, get it over with. Get the stuff.” She got the bottle of Dr. Jopes Red Rock Healing Liniment, with the silhouettes of horses galloping across the label. Joey measured a capful into her glass and topped it up with beer.

“Drink it slow so it can take effect.”

“Don’t worry!” The bitter, corrosive sensation began with the second swallow and her vocal cords tightened. When the glass was empty her mouth and throat were dry.

“Enough? Or do you need more?” He was hard about the liniment bottle.

“I’m ready, I’m ready, it’s good,” her voice harsh and high, the sound he loved, the sound of ecstasy and raw pain.

They took a cab to the Polonia Ballroom so the accordions wouldn’t be chilled in the sharp cold. The street was jammed with traffic, horns hooting, a mounted cop beckoning cars forward.

“Big crowd,” said Joey as they passed the ballroom, swung around the corner to the back entrance. He felt his mood lift. A good crowd was what they needed. Now he was solicitous of her well-being.

“You all right?” She didn’t answer. They walked through the
big room, already packed with people shuffling along in front of the concession booths and tables displaying giddily painted eggs, embroidered vests with triangular lapels, carved wooden cups, loops of kielbasa, cakes, intricate paper cuts of the Tree of Life, roosters and hens, banners, subscriptions to the
Amer-Pol Reporter,
a kiosk raising money to help the family of the Reverend Józef Jurczyk in western Poland—killed while he said mass by a madman swinging an axe—travel information for vacation transatlantic crossings on the M.S.
Batory,
pride of the Gdynia-America Line, and at one booth a red banner reading
HELP DEFEND POLISH HONOR!

“You go ahead,” he said to Sonia. “I want to see what this is.” It was the Polish-American Guardian Society collecting signatures and money to sue the Motion Picture Association of America for producing movies defaming and degrading the Polish people and naming
Taras Bulba,
with Tony Curtis and Yul Brynner, along with
Let No Man Write My Epitaph
and a string of other movies he’d never heard of, and a separate petition urging Hollywood producers to make films portraying Poles in a sympathetic and favorable light, films based on the military careers of Pułaski and Kosciuszko, for example.

There were a lot of hippies around the Polish Honor booth. He was half disgusted; Polish hippies, some weirdly dressed in high-collared old-country shirts and short pants, but most of them wearing embroidered vests, their long hair catching in the crusted shoulder stitches. There was also a Vietnam veteran contingent, muscled guys in t-shirts and cropped haircuts, each of them looking capable of swinging an axe, punching each other’s arms and eyeing the coolers along the back wall that would only be opened after the contest when the dancing began. The babble of voices rose above the clack
of unfolding wooden chairs in the back as the crowd pressed in, looking for seats.

The dressing room was community style, partitions separating the sinks and the mirror space. Sonia had the rented accordions out of their cases and under the dressing table near the heater. She was drawing arched eyebrows on her orange face, the lipstick next, protruding redly, like a dog’s prick, she thought, from its gold case on the table in front of her. His costume hung on the hook. She looked at him, threw him a wink, nodding her head at the partition to her left. He opened his eyes at her and she pointed, nodded her head again, he should go take a look. He walked casually to the bathroom at the end of the room, glancing to see who was next to them—the Bartosik Brothers. Only Henry was there. On the way back he stopped, said, “hey, Henry, how y’doin? Where’s Cass? You guys all set?” There was only one accordion in sight, one makeup kit.

“Tied up in traffic; it’s a mess out there.” Shot Joey a look of hate from his ice-blue eyes, turned away and fiddled with a strap.

In his own cubicle Joey grinned at Sonia and began to slather on the ruddy makeup that made them look healthy and vigorous. If Cass was drinking somewhere and didn’t make it or if Cass was drunk and did make it, they had the contest sewed up, rented instruments and all.

Out front the contest had begun with the Kiddy Polka King and Queen contestants and they could hear the too fast riffle of “The Skater’s Polka” and the surge of applause and whistles. It dragged on before the Best Accordion Comix started. By then he had something to worry about. They were in the next-to-last spot, but the coveted last act for the duets went to the Bartosiks. Well, there was nothing they could do about it. He sidled into the wings to watch the comics a few
minutes. The crowd was roaring, laughing at anything, even the joke about the woman skiing down a mountainside while playing the accordion.

The Polish Polka Bums, Stas and Stanky, had a rough but funny act. Stas wore a hula skirt made of rubber chickens, a gigantic pink bra with Christmas-light nipples that lit up cherry red when he pressed the button taped to his palm. His hairy legs ended in steelworker’s boots with big round toes. Those goofy breasts and their red lights were always getting squeezed in the accordion bellows and Stas would roar AH! AH! in mock pain as he sang “They’re Always in the Way.” Stanky, dressed in a small tight black suit, played bent backward, his arms thrust through his legs, his groin arched and the accordion swelling and barking between his black silk ankles. Then he shouted at the audience, “you heard this one? Why does it take four polacks to make popcorn? One to hold the pan and three to shake the stove! Hey, who was Alexander Graham Kowalski? The first telephone Pole! Hey, how can you tell a Polish airplane? It’s got hair under the wings! Hey …”

Górka then, tall, tall and thin, dressed in a jumble of women’s clothes, a red wig, a false nose, a chrome whistle around his neck—and he blew the whistle, pouring water into his ear that spurted out of his elbow and his shoe, lighting up a giant fake cigar that blew up in an explosion of green dust. He had a trick accordion mounted on a Stumpf fiddle, honking the taxi horn, ringing the bells and clacking the pie pans as he played “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby.” And Skippo danced out, his onyx cuff links dragging his shirtsleeves out of the jacket, an orange silk background woven with gold and green lozenges, set off by a brown velvet collar and a tie pleated up like a tiny accordion under his dark jowl.

The comics were followed by a couple of transitional acts, first
the mother of Arkady Krim leading her son, the blind boy from Durango, Colorado, who at age ten had lost his sight and three fingers on his right hand fooling with a dynamite cap. Arkady was dressed in a blue suit with sequins on the lapels. He held the accordion upside down and played a religious number after announcing that music was the gift of God and that he regularly turned down lucrative offers to play in roadhouses, pledging his talent to a higher power. After two encores he was replaced by a middle-aged woman in a strapless gown who began “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” worked “Winchester Cathedral” and “The Tennessee Waltz” and ended with that good old Polish tune “Zorba the Greek.”

Before they married, Joey was already doing the Polish festivals and contests, a living to be made that way, just driving around from state to state, wherever they had the ethnic festivals, dances, parish get-togethers, Polka Days in a dozen states, busloads of tourists pouring in, the California Golden Accordion Fest, the East Texas Czech Fiesta, Hub City Polka Days, Polkamotion Nites, the Houston Livestock and St. Patrick’s Polka Gala, up to Fairbanks for the Polkalaska, the Polkabration Weekend at the Holiday Inn at O’Hare International, jets roaring overhead. It took a year of work before she got out there on the stage with him, before she got over being frightened of the sweating crowd and the snaky cords running every whichaway over the dirty stage, the squealing feedback and the sensation that she was going to pass out in front of everybody. And her throat feeling from the liniment like it had been scraped with a broken branch. She could hardly talk, but all the strength in her leaped into the singing. Then it got good, especially when
they won a contest, exciting when they screamed out Joey’s name—and hers!—and shouted and whistled.

This was the time when fancy accordions were popular, the beautiful instruments from Karpeks, every color, pearls and paste diamonds, rhinestones and script glitter letters, grilles in silver plate and even real gold, the black and white key colors reversed.

The organizers were always a heavyset couple whose lives were subsumed in polka and Polishness. They knew how to make things work, rented the halls a year in advance, planned the publicity, wrote the ads and announcements that appeared in
Accordion World, Texas Polka News, Polish-American Polka Aficionados.

When the first festivals started up in the sixties—let the blacks see that Polish was beautiful—the more Polish the music, the better the organizers liked it, wanted performers to sing in the language or some regional dialect, preferred unusual music and difficult dances that took a long time to get going, music from some isolated Little Poland. It was all Polish people who came then. But the festivals boomed and swelled, turned into everybody-come, beer-drinking weekend good times; the organizers knew what the crowd wanted and it wasn’t cultural esoterica. Mrs. Grab got Joey on the phone, explaining.