Accordion Crimes (45 page)

“We don’t want nothing weird or extreme, you know? There’s rules now, the association’s made rules.” She was booking them for the August Missouri Hog Farmers Polka Kick-Down. “We got the Civic Center auditorium again.” Joey groaned. The acoustics were hellish, the P.A. system was a clapped-out old wreck that amplified music into a metallic din.

“What’s the matter, couldn’t you rent a jumbo-size culvert? Effect’d be the same.”

“Now Joey. Craft booths on the east, food booths on the west, also the tables for records and tapes, then at the back we put the sign-up table for the door prize. This year it’s gonna be a metallic metal-flake Aztec-blue Ford. Also at the back door the ticket takers. Now, musical performers for the contest—that’s you—get six minutes apiece, and for the dance the bands change every fifteen minutes. Give plenty of variety. Line dances only, puts the dancers face-to-face with the performers, get that crowd electricity going, see, it’s more satisfying, people have more fun than just watching some old-style fanatics dressed up in wreaths do a two-hour wedding dance. Line dances makes a nice display. Only one song in Polish. Most people don’t understand it, but one song gives a nice ethnic flavor. That’s what we want to stress, ethnic
flavor.
Let me tell you something, Joey. Ethnic music is not that old-time stuff anymore. These days
everybody
is ethnic, might as well make money on it. They come for the music and to have a good time. And the beer and kielbasa. They don’t want that mournful folk music sound no more or those complicated couple dances going into circles and weaving around and slapping their asses and crossing into the next lane. No more of that
Kozacy na Stepie,
Cossacks on the Steppe, stuff. Everything gets mixed up unless you got a Ph.D. in Polish clogging. It’s no fun. You know, I’m not Polish, I’m Czech. What’s Czech these days? It’s boiled down to
kolác
pastries and polka. So get out there and play loud, fill the place up with good fast happy polka. Fast and happy. Show them what it means to be ethnic. You’re guaranteed three hundred anyway, and if you win—audience response on the applause meter determines the winners—it’s what, fifteen hundred and the Missouri Hog Farm Polka King crown.”

That particular gig was sour. She was expecting Florry and she’d lost about ten pounds and felt lousy all the time. (Both Florry and Artie had been born on September fifteenth, though
two years apart.) Joey had worked up a showy version of “
Zły Chłopiec
” which they called “Bad Bad Boy.” It didn’t go over too well but was better than Jerzy Wald’s numbers where only three couples came out on the dance floor, and the spare applause had hardly died down when a big guy jumped up, his thin long hair pasted to his sweating forehead, and began to shout at them.

“This is not Polish polka, not Polish music. I am a Pole from Poland and in Poland they would laugh at you as I do now—
Ha! Ha!
—for saying this garbage you play is Polish! That is not Polish food”—he gestured toward the lawn covered with ethnic food booths, each a ten-by-fifteen canvas tent with a steam table and a cooler and some folding card tables in back and a counter manned by ladies’ auxiliary types—“that is NOT Polish food, that crap you call kielbasa and kishka. I wouldn’t feed them to a starving man. And that American mess, potato salad with little two-tone olives and pieces of pineapple and sugar-flavored mayonnaise.
Ha!
Language? I laugh in your faces!
Ha! Ha!
Ruined words forced into hilarious phrases; broken grammar to make a real Pole hysterical, you think this is your ancestral language? Never! Pig Polish!” And so on. Later she saw him sitting alone under a tree eating the American potato salad with a spoon in each hand.

It was all right once they got out there. The rented Colombos worked, the timing was flawless and Sonia’s voice was like a blooded dagger—
this
was what it meant to be Polish: misery suppressed, injustices borne, strength in adversity, endurance—how that poignant, rusty voice could hold a note until the audience gasped and breathed for her. And then a terrific polka
that got the hippies in the audience clapping in rhythm, and the rest of the audience took it up—a good sign; they were with them. They got the most applause of anyone so far, announcer Jan Reha pointing at the applause meter and shaking his head in mock amazement.

They ran into the dressing room, sweaty and high with elation that it was over and had gone well.

Henry Bartosik, ready to go on, trembling with rage, stood outside his cubicle looking at the stage back door and at Cass Bartosik who came through it tearing off his overcoat and fumbling with the hasps of the accordion case he carried.

“Where the fuck you
been?
We’re on right now. I been going crazy!”

“You can’t get through, the traffic’s a mess, I had to walk eight blocks to get here—Christ, I’m frozen, my fingers are numb. Stall ’em a minute.” He ran hot water in the sink. “Hold the accordion over the register, it’s ice cold—quick, quick, come on.”

“You tell
me
come on? Goddammit, I can smell the whiskey from here.”

“Fuck that, I was getting something to eat. I don’t feel so great, see? I had a drink, one drink, to settle my stomach. Now get off my back.” One of them worked the bellows trying to get warm air into it, pressing the cold keys. “Ah, Christ!” Cass let out a series of small belches. From the stage, as the applause for Joey and Sonia died away, the announcer called out, “weren’t they great? A terrific duo, husband-and-wife team Joey and Sonia Newcomer. And now, what all you young people have been waiting for, a duo covered with fresh notoriety from their Milwaukee triumph at the Polish Street Festival, those outstanding interpreters of Polish tunes in popular styles, the Bartosik Brothers, Henry and Cass BARTOSIK.” The two brothers clattered off toward the stage
stairs, Henry cursing and Cass belching, hiccuping, stuttering “you can’t get blood out of a dead dog.”

“Tonight the Bartosik Brothers—by the way, folks, Cass Bartosik is the fastest typist in the U.S. of A.—are going to change things around a little bit, popular tunes in
polka
style, and will play a memorial-tribute medley of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin tunes—but they’re not gonna smash their accordions and set them on fire!—so get ready to rock! The Bartosik Brothers!”

They heard the applause, the expectant silence and then the two accordions pumping out “Me and Bobby McGee Polka.”

Joey laughed. “Listen, the instrument’s too cold—the bellows is slow. They’re in trouble.” He poured half an inch of whiskey in her paper cup and she threw it down for the quick heat and the loosening sensation, the sense of relief. Suddenly from the stage they heard the slower accordion stop, a pause, and an enormous howl of laughter from the audience that went on and on though above it now were the sounds of scuffling and muffled shouting coming closer. The contestants waiting in the dressing room to go on pressed around the door, saw Cass and Henry fighting at the top of the stairs to the stage. In the auditorium the voice of Jan Reha beat against the laughter, soothing, making jokes against the tide of shrieks and howls.

“What the hell happened?” said Joey, for it was apparent that Henry was pounding Cass furiously, while Cass bent over to escape his brother’s blows. Cass leaned forward abruptly from the waist and vomited on the steps.

Joey crowed. “Jesus, he threw up onstage. He must of. Oh dear blessed Jesus, oh Holy Mother, saints and martyrs, suppose we’d had to follow that? What is it today, they’re throwing up all around me.” But someone rang down the
curtain and two women with mops and buckets rushed onstage. Henry lurched into the dressing room, leaving Cass retching in the corridor, a security man guiding him toward the men’s room. Henry was beyond rage, filled with a great Polish froth of madness, about to do something irrevocable and frightful, Sonia thought, seeing his blazing cheeks and white eyes, but he only thrust his accordion into its case, put on his overcoat and went out into the night. The snow-speckled wind swept into the corridor. Onstage the voice of Jan Reha was calling their names, the winners, the
winners,
that husband-and-wife lovebird duo Joey and Sonia Newcomer! And the middle-aged lady who played between intermissions was pumping out “Climb Every Mountain” as they came up to take the check and shake Jan Reha’s scaly hand.

“Honey, OK, what do you want to do, go out for dinner or get something, get a bottle and some fried chicken, take it back to the motel? Listen, honey, I know the place is a dump but suppose we hadn’t won—it was all we could afford if we didn’t win. Look at this sweet check, fifteen hundred smackers—we got beautiful, beautiful money again. You beautiful little doll, you want to change to a different motel, something ritzier? We’ll do anything you want, just say the word.”

She wondered what he would do if she said yes. “I don’t know. I don’t want to go out it’s so cold, I kind of thought we might stay for the rest of the program, eat here, some good Polish food, it smells great. They’ve got potato cakes with roast beef. And there’s dancing.” Joey liked to dance at the outdoor festivals, where it wasn’t so crowded.

“Yeah, OK. Jesus, did you see the look on Henry’s face? They’re washed up now, they’re through. He’ll have to play the chordovox at the Washington Senators games. This’ll travel like wildfire all over the circuit. Can you imagine him calling up Jerry and saying they want a spot on the Doylestown? And Jerry says in that sarcastic voice, ‘no, thanks, we don’t think throwing up onstage is a real great act.’ Tell you what, sweetheart, I got to get these accordions back to whence they came from before eleven. Why don’t I go back to the motel, check the kids, get the car, turn in the accordions and then I’ll come back here and we’ll have some fun. Go to mass in the morning, it’s a polka mass, right across the street, have the Polish breakfast and start back. Stop in that town, Morley, talk to the cops about our instruments. We’ll have a couple hours then tomorrow afternoon to sit down with the checkbook and get some bills paid. Like that, wouldn’t you?” She nodded.

“OK, then, I’m gonna run. See you in about an hour.”

At midnight she was still waiting, sitting on a folding chair and talking to people about the music and the Bartosik Brothers, looking constantly toward the door until she was too tired and walked back to the motel through the snow, eight inches deep now and drifting. Cars and trucks slid and stalled on the greasy streets and she was shaking with cold by the time the sign
HOTEL POLONIA MOTEL
came in sight. Under the streetlight, a few hundred feet from the Polonia, something small stuck out of the snow. She picked it up, a pack of cards with a rubber band around it and a folded paper. She pulled the paper loose, it unfolded into two ten-dollar bills. The pack of cards showed whores in bizarre display postures.

It was after two when he sidled in, hot breath stinking all the way from the door. She’d just got Artie quieted down and her throat ached from the liniment and the singing and the
vinaigrette salad dressing on the sliced beets. She was bone-tired. He plunged around, swearing, found the bed and sat heavily on the edge. She moved Florry closer to the wall.

“Sweetheart,” he said. “I’m late. Went to the auditorium and nobody there. Gone home.”

He struggled with his shoes, the snow-wet knots difficult to loosen. “I went to the bar where they were all hanging out. What a scene. Cass was there, drunk, had a fight. This old guy played the bandoneon, ever hear one? Tangos. A couple got up and danced. Jesus, like a couple of kangaroos with glue on their feet. They do this little kick, it’s like a dog scratching. Here. Brought you a present.” She could feel something square and hard, then her fingers felt the buttons. She sat up and put on the light, dimmed with a towel wound around the shade. He was a mess, hair wet with melting snow, face flushed, red-eyed, shirt half unbuttoned. He thrust a small green accordion at her.

“Here. You know how to play this. Pretty little accordion for my pretty little wife. Or give it to little Florry, if you want.” His face rippled and he moaned. “Oh, sweetheart.” She stretched her arms out and seized him; maybe she loved him after all. The accordion, caught between them, groaned.

After he got rid of the accordions he wasn’t in any mood to go back to the lousy motel and listen to kids whining and coughing and throwing up. He was chilled, he was excited, the check felt hot inside his breast pocket. He filled up the car with gas at an all-night station, dumped in a can of antifreeze so frost wouldn’t form in the line. He thought suddenly of the dead heater, wondered if it was the heater fan fuse; why hadn’t
he thought of that before? It was the fuse. Should have been the first thing he checked.

Cruising down the icy street, the present on the seat beside him, the beautiful hot air blowing on his feet, he saw the red neon,
Hi-Low Club,
and the red banner flapping over the door,
NA ZDROWIE POLKA FANS
. He pulled into the parking lot, jammed full—Christ, it was cold—and made his way into the noisy bar, hit by a blast of hot accordion music—Cass Bartosik at the mike, drunk and brilliant—got a whiskey and beer chaser and made his way to the long, narrow counter along the far wall, the only place he saw an empty barstool. Half the people in the place had accordions; there was music or at least noise coming from all over, “Autumn Leaves” mixed up with “What’s New, Pussycat?” and polkas.

He sat next to a guy in a grey sweater, an aging man with a big nose and a black hat listening to Bartosik play his rock version of “Okie from Muskogee.”

“I despise this music,” said Grey Sweater.

“I despise it too. Bartosik’s a pain in the ass. He should go back to his typewriter.”