Read Catfish Alley Online

Authors: Lynne Bryant

Tags: #Mississippi, #Historic Sites, #Tour Guides (Persons), #Historic Buildings - Mississippi, #Mississippi - Race Relations, #Family Life, #African Americans - Mississippi, #Fiction, #General, #African American, #Historic Sites - Mississippi, #African Americans

Catfish Alley (10 page)

BOOK: Catfish Alley
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"Oh,
I remember," says Adelle. "I was down on Catfish Alley with my mama
that day. We were buying catfish for supper. You came bursting out of Green's
store all puffed up and about to cry because those boys were ignoring you,
telling you to scram and get home." Both women laugh, and then Grace tells
her story.

 

March
1924

 

Junior, Zero, and I are sitting on
the curb, drinking a root beer out back of Green's store on Catfish Alley. It's
Saturday afternoon in the springtime. The sun is warm on my face and I
can smell Miss Mabel's catfish from
Jones's Cafe across the street. Mama sent me to town for sugar. She's got to
have it for a cake she's making tonight. Fine with me, because I get to see
Junior. Junior and Zero will both turn thirteen years old this year and they're
itching to be somewhere bigger than Clarksville. Why do boys always want to be
somewhere besides where they are?

Zero stocks groceries and sweeps the
sidewalks for old Mr. Green and Junior has a job over at the Queen City Hotel.
Junior's papa always planned on him following in his footsteps and becoming a
doctor. But he doesn't want anything to do with doctoring; crazy thing is, it's
Zero who wants to be a doctor. Every chance he gets, he's running errands for
Dr. Jackson, or offering to clean his clinic.

Junior eats, sleeps, and breathes
music. Ever since the day Louis Armstrong first came to the Queen City Hotel
last summer, and played to a Saturday night crowd of every colored person
within forty miles, Junior has been saying that playing music is what he's got
to do.

Mrs. Anna Lee Jackson, Junior and
Adelle's mama, is a musical person, so I reckon Junior came by it honest. They
even have a piano in the front room of their house. They're lucky.

Their mama taught them both to play
the piano when they were little. Adelle plays for the Missionary Union Baptist
Church on Sundays. But Junior ... Junior plays jazz piano. He's talking about
Louis Armstrong again.

"I'm telling you, Zero, you've
got to come hear Louis Armstrong next time he comes to town. He's got this big
smile and he dresses really nice, like a white man. And what he can do with
that trumpet. He had people dancing and singing. It was something to see. I
want to do that, Zero! I want to play jazz piano for a band! I'm going to get
out of this town and travel with a band like Mr. Armstrong's."

"Why you always talking about
leaving, Junior? What's wrong with Clarksville? I think it's nice here," I
say.

"Be quiet, Grade," Zero says.
"You don't know what you're talking about."

Zero's always trying to look big
when he's around Junior. I get real quiet and sulk.

"That sounds great, Junior, but
I got a plan in mind myself," says Zero. "I'm going to medical
school. I want to be like your daddy. Except, I'm going to leave Clarksville,
too. I'm going to a place where a colored man doesn't always have to go in the
back door, or wait behind the white people to get served."

"And where is that?"

"I'm not sure. Someplace up
north. Or maybe out west. Maybe I'll move to California and be a doctor
there."

"California? You can't go all
the way to California!"

"Why not?"

I look over at Junior. I don't think
he knows why not. He's quiet for a minute. I don't think he knows where
California is.

"Your grandma ain't ever going
to let you go that far away from home."

"That's right, Zero," I
say stubbornly. "Grandma wouldn't stand for that."

Zero frowns at me. "Don't you
have to get home, Grace? Get that sugar for Mama?" Zero takes the last
swig of his root beer. "Anyhow, Grandma's not going to be around forever,
you know. Besides, I still got to finish high school and college and go to
medical school." He turns back to Junior, trying to ignore me. "Your
daddy told me maybe I could go to the same medical school where he went in
Nashville, Tennessee."

"I tell you what, Zero. You be
a famous colored doctor and I'll be a famous jazz musician and we'll meet back
up in Clarksville when we're old and tell stories."

"That sounds good to me,"
Zero says and leans back on his elbows, smiling like he's thinking about being
famous.

"You know the last time Louis
Armstrong and his band were here, there was a big fight out in the alley behind
the hotel," Junior says.

Zero looks at me and motions for me
to leave. "I'm not ready to go yet, Zero, and you can't make me," I
say. " 'Sides, I want to hear what happened at the Queen City."

"She ain't hurting nothing,
Zero," says Junior. "Let her stay."

Right about then I want to kiss
Junior Jackson, but that would ruin everything. He only thinks of me as Zero's
little sister.

"Okay, okay. So what
happened?" Zero asks.

"A Tanner is what
happened."

"Ray Tanner got in a fight at
the Queen City Hotel? I didn't think he'd be caught dead at a colored
hotel."

"Not Ray. It was his daddy, Rufus.
Rufus has got him a new girlfriend since Ray's mama passed two years ago, and
she talked him into bringing her to the show. Says she loves jazz and she
doesn't care what color the musician is — she just wants to hear the
music."

"How do you know all of this
stuff, Junior?"

I can tell that Junior gets a kick
out of showing off all the good gossip he knows from working at the Queen City.
He's looking real smug right now.

"I just keep my eyes and my
ears open. You'd be amazed at what white people say. They don't really see us,
you know. So they don't think we hear all of their gossip and such. So anyhow,
here comes Rufus Tanner waltzing in the front door of the Queen City Hotel,
looking around like he owns the place. I just happen to be passing through the
lobby when he comes in with his new girlfriend. She looks to be about twenty
years younger than him, got on a short dress, her hair all cut off. She's a
pretty woman, smiled real big when she saw me. I didn't look at her, though. I
know those Tanners and I don't want to get my ass whooped."

"So let me get this straight.
Rufus Tanner shows up at the Queen with his girlfriend to see Louis Armstrong?
Did he talk to you?"

"Oh, yeah, he stopped me right
there in the lobby, even though I was trying to lay low and stay out of his
way. He says, 'Hey, boy! Where's that there nigger band you got playing
tonight? My woman here's wanting to hear them.' So I point to the bar at the
back of the hotel and tell him that the show is starting back there in about
half an hour."

"What happened then?"

"Then he and that woman go back
to the bar. I keep working because I've got a lot to do to help the band get
ready for the show.

I'm helping unload the instruments
out of the car, so I'm in and out of the back door from the alley. I'll tell
you something, though. Things changed when Rufus Tanner walked in with that
woman on his arm. At first, everybody got real quiet and sort of moved out of
the way to let them pass. Then that woman flashed this big smile and said,
'Evening, y'all. Please don't anybody get up. We're here to enjoy the show,
just like you.' Rufus didn't say nothing. He just followed her like some big
old bloodhound. Some folks relaxed after that, but not the ones that know the
Tanners very well."

By this time, we've been sitting
back here for a while. Zero turns to see if Mr. Green is looking out the back
door of the store. "Hurry up and finish the story, Junior," Zero
pleads. "I got to get back to work before old Green comes out here and
sees me. What happened to start a fight?"

"So the show started and,
brother, what a show it was. The horns, the piano. I'm telling you, it was so
good that folks was dancing and twitching. That white woman was shaking her
skinny little ass right in front of all of those colored men and Rufus was
standing there with steam coming out his ears."

My eyes must be big as saucers right
now, but I keep quiet because I don't want the boys to remember I'm here.

"He didn't stop her?"

"Last I saw, he tried. But he
had a flask in his pocket and all evening he'd been drinking that home brew he
makes, so he was too drunk to even get hold of her."

"She didn't dance with a
colored man, did she?"

"Naw, she didn't go that far,
but she got right up by the stage, you know. So's the musicians could see her
real good, and that's when it happened."

"What?"

Just then Mr. Green pokes his head
out the back door of the store. "Zero Clark," Green says in his big
gruff voice.

"Yessir," Zero answers.

"Get your black ass back in
here and get to work. I'm not paying you to sit on the curb all day drinking my
soda pop and talking to Junior Jackson."

Zero gets up quick and grabs the
broom. "Yessir," he hollers. "I was just taking a quick break.
I'm going to sweep out the storeroom right now." Zero motions for Junior
to follow him, and I tag along as we go out to the storeroom in back.

"Quick, finish telling me what
happened," Zero whispers.

While Zero makes a big show of
sweeping
near
the door, Junior and I pin ourselves up against the wall just inside out of
sight. I'm so close to Junior right now my heart is about to beat out of my
chest. But it's like he doesn't even know I'm there.

"She got right up near the
stage, you know?"

"Yeah, yeah, I got that."

"And she kept making eyes at
this bass player. Finally, he looked up at her and gave her a big smile."

"What's wrong with that? She
smiled at him first, didn't she?"

"Zero, you dumb ass! This is
Rufus Tanner's girlfriend."

I can't believe how hardheaded my
brother is, even after getting beat up by Ray Tanner just three years ago and
coming close no telling how many times since.

"Nothing happened until after
the show," Junior continues. "I saw Rufus stumble out to his car with
that woman. He put her in the car and told her to get on home. Told her he
would be home later; he was going to meet up with the boys and have a drink.
Well, I'm telling you, that's when I started getting a bad feeling."

Zero stops sweeping. "What?
Why'd you get a bad feeling?" We all peek out the storeroom and see Green
walk out the back door of the store and throw a box on the garbage pile.

Zero sweeps like the devil.

"Something about the look in
his eye. Plus, he didn't head over to J.T.'s, where he usually meets up with
his buddies. He headed around to the back of the hotel instead."

"Uh-oh," Zero says.

I can tell from Junior's tone that
something bad is fixing to happen. Zero stops sweeping and stands there,
leaning on the broom.

"What happened then?"

"When I saw him heading to the
back, I knew there was going to be trouble. So I scooted out through the bar
and grabbed John Luke. You know him; Mr. Webster hired him to make sure things
don't get out of hand when folks start drinking too much." Zero nods.
"I told John Luke it looked like there might be a fight out in the alley.
I figured if anybody could take care of old Rufus Tanner, it would be John
Luke.

"So the bass player, he's out
there in the alley with some of the other musicians smoking cigarettes and
winding down. That's what they do after a show. They get real excited playing
that music and they have to wind down." Junior is acting all smart again.
He's proud of knowing these things about the musicians because he watches them
so close.

Zero's getting impatient.
"Look, Junior, just get to the point. What happened?"

"Old Rufus came into the alley,
drunk as a skunk. He started staggering toward that group of musicians,
hollering, 'I'll teach you not to look at my woman like that, nigger! Who you
think you are, looking at a white woman that way?' Those boys just got kind of
quietlike. They didn't run and they didn't try to fight him. I think they
probably been through this before."

"What about that bass
player?"

"That's the problem. He got up
in Rufus's face and said, 'Maybe you better keep your woman at home then.
'Cause she the one looking at me!' Rufus really got mad then. His face turned
red like he was about to explode. Just as he was about to fight that bass
player, John Luke stepped out into the alley and got between them."

BOOK: Catfish Alley
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