Man with an Axe (3 page)

I hadn't seen Tyrone for a while but someone said he had a gig in New York with Woody Shaw and Marcus Belgrave, which seemed a little odd to me since they're both trumpet players. And then I saw Marcus was playing in town, over at Klein's, so I stopped in there and Marcus said that was bullshit, that he wasn't on that gig but Tyrone was supposed to be, only he didn't show. A [woman] at the bar said Tyrone was “up at the lake,” meaning that resort up in the Thumb, Turtle Lake, which I heard they were trying to change the name to Basie Lake, but then another bunch wanted it called Lake Ellington, and then some group suggested Lake Rosa Parks. In the meantime, everybody calls it Nigger Heaven, but not to me, of course. I knew Books had a place up there so I called and sure enough he was up there. I asked Books if he'd seen Tyrone and he said I should talk to Lonzo Butterfield, Tyrone's uncle, a bail bondsman. You remember him, Mul. A big fat man, blacker than a boot.

I remembered Lonzo, all right. If Grootka says he was a big fat man, you can bet he was big. I'd say he topped out at six and a half feet, at least three hundred pounds. He'd been a legendary basketball player in the rec league and an amazing handball player out at Palmer Park and Belle Isle. He'd have been in his early forties then. Some guys are actually hard to look at. Lonzo was one: a ferocious-looking man, very dark with skin that looked too tight, as if it were inflated, almost like a swollen corpse. And he had these jaundice-yellow eyes. He looked angry all the time. Very intimidating.
In conversation he appeared to have the I.Q. of, say, a mud puppy. Grootka had some interesting insights into Lonzo.

You want to watch yourself around Lonzo, Mul. He looks as subtle as a drop forge, so damn ugly he looks like his mother fed him with a slingshot, but he's always thinking, always something going on there. He acts stupid, I figure, because of his size—maybe when he was a kid he was always too big for his grade, and the other kids must of thought he was older than he was and when he didn't act it they figured he must be retarded, and then he figured out it was clever to seem dumb. People make mistakes around a dumb guy, say things they figure you won't get. But I rousted him at his pad once and I seen a few things, like music and books, that made me wonder. He never would let on to me, but I think maybe to you he might let a few smarts drop.

The thing is, people who really know him say he's a pussycat, even though he looks like the old heavyweight, what's his name, Sonny Liston. But I think that's bullshit. Lonzo's a pussycat the way a sabertooth tiger is a pussycat. Anyway, if Books says to go see him, I go see him. Lonzo says he don't know if Tyrone is up to the lake, but he'll let me know. And the next day he calls back and says, Naw, Tyrone ain't up there. He
was
up there, which he wasn't supposed to, ‘cause he didn't ask first or some such shit, but he left. And naturally, old Lonzo can't resist being a tough ass, so he says it's none of my fucking business anyway and why don't I go piss up a rope.

So I'm thinking, Is Lonzo really dumb, or is he just playing to me thinking he's dumb? Or did he let something actually slip? I mean, what's the big deal? I was just asking about Tyrone, what he was doing these days. But you know how it is, Mul. A guy like Lonzo always thinks something heavy is going down. He can never figure it's just innocent interest.

This was an amusing thought: Grootka expressing innocent interest. I tried to imagine these two hard-asses having a simple conversation. Images of the scorpion and the snapping turtle came to mind.

Naturally, I decided to take a drive up there. [
Naturally!
—M.] I could always go visit my old buddy Books. It's about ninety miles, not a bad drive. But it's July and hotter than hell. I was glad to be getting out of Detroit and looking forward to sitting in the shade by the lake, enjoying the cool breeze, maybe on Books's porch or something. I never been there, but I imagined what it was like. What do I know?

The lake is about three miles from the nearest town, which is one of these religious nut places. I think they're some kind of Haymish, or something, but the next town over, where I stopped to get instructions, called them “Hoots.” [
In the text, Grootka refers to them as “Haymish,” or “Hamish,” apparently meaning Amish. In fact, they are a Hutterite sect.
—M.] The men wear beards and black clothes, the ladies wear these little net hats, and the kids wear Huck Finn straw hats. Everybody dresses like before World War I, with high-top lace-up boots. There were some horse-and-buggies around, but most of them are driving regular cars, and pretty big, new ones at that, like Buicks and Chryslers. They mostly raise potatoes and sugar beets, I was told.

Anyway, these folks are into the idea of whatchamacallit, group privacy, or, you know, social kinds of I don't know community things. Something like that. They kind of picked up on this deal about the black folks wanting a place where they could just be black folks, without a lot of fuckin’ whiteys hanging around. So they sold them this big tract of land with a pond on it, which they now can't figure out if it should be Turtle Lake (which it was originally, or Turtle Pond) or Lake Rosa Parks, the woman who sat
down on the Birmingham bus, who happens to live in Detroit now. For all I know, Mrs. Parks has a cottage herself on the lake. She's a big hero, you know. Well, it took some balls.

I guess the land was actually bought by some kind of group of investors, which I guess it was all Negroes, but I didn't look into it. And then they sold lots and put up a clubhouse and a golf course and a so-called casino, which was also a hotel and had a bar and bandstand. There were a bunch of other things that were going to be built but they ain't been built yet, which some of the people who bought in, like old Books, is pissed about. Books bought a lot on the lake and had a cottage built, which it was pretty nice, one of these summer cottage things, fir or something—cedar. It was red cedar, and it looked pretty nice. Mostly glass in front, looking out on the deck and then the little bitty yard and then the little dock, where he had a rowboat tied up. Only the lake had shrunk some. The dock didn't go out far enough. So the rope on the rowboat got longer and longer, so that the boat wouldn't be on the mud, and now the rope was about sixty feet long and you had to walk on these planks that Books laid on the mud to get out to the boat. But there wasn't any reason to get out to the boat, since the pond was full of weeds. You couldn't row in it anyway, and the only fish in it was these little bitty bullheads, which the kids would catch and then throw at each other and they were laying all over the place, stinking. Maybe they should call it Turd-el Lake, ha ha.

It was about as hot as Detroit. The country was low rolling hills, farmland, with these little woodlots here and there and old farmhouses with barns. I don't know nothing about farms, but it looked to me like some of these farms had gone belly up, or maybe a few of the farmers had done better than the others and had bought out some of their neighbors and let the old homesteads go to hell, or maybe it was the Haymish who done it. But there would be these old farmhouses here and there, with big trees in the yard and the
grass all grown up and the lilacs, or whatever the bushes were, growing up wild over the porch. It was kind of gloomy.

The Negroes had I don't know how many acres, a few hundred, anyway, including the pond, but it was in a kind of a basin, surrounded by these low hills and there was only a few grown-up trees, except for a bunch of willows by the pond. So it was hot. Burning hot. And it was very bright in the sun. Hardly anybody about.

You drive in through this fancy stone gate. They had a fence around the place, only it was ornamental black iron for just a few paces, then it was just a regular farm fence, a post-and-wire fence like around a pasture. There was a guard at the stone gate, in a little outhouse, with a wooden lift-up barrier attached to the shithouse, painted with black stripes on white and a couple of orange reflectors. And this guy had a uniform and even a gun! But he had the shirt unbuttoned to his navel and he was wearing silver shades and a Tigers hat. Young guy. Kind of a pain in the ass. “Where you goin'? Who you gonna see?” That kind of shit. “They know you comin'? What's they numbah, I gon’ call ‘em.” And you got to put up with that crap. Even the people who lived there, especially the young chicks. He gives them all a hard time. I found out from Books that most of the people most of the time take the back way, which it turns out is a pasture kind of gate way out on the back side, which is just left open and there is a little dirt road that leads back into the community center.

So I get past this shithead, anyway, by calling Books, and I drive down to the pond. Books's joint is about a block from the community center, which was a mistake, he tells me. The parties at the center can go on all night and get pretty loud.

I asked him what was the problem with the lake, ‘cause I see it's getting farther away, plus the casino, which is across the pond, also has a dry dock, now, and theirs is pretty big. Books says it's a
drought and also it turns out that the Haymish are using more water than they used to, for irrigation, so the little creek—I think he called it Jaxon Creek—is down to nothing. Plus they got some drainage problems. There was supposed to be a sewage-treatment plant, which they got a federal grant, but it wasn't put in right, or the drains weren't, and I think they tapped into the pond or the water table, or something, and at the moment they were using bottled water, couldn't use the tap water at all and you could only flush the toilet once a day, which in the heat was a real bitch. But some of the houses, the newer ones that were away from the pond and elevated, had their own wells and septic systems, so they were all right. And that's where Lonzo had his joint.

I went over to the casino with Books. It was just around the pond, maybe three or four city blocks away, but he insisted on driving. I thought it would be an interesting walk, hot though it was, but I guess he didn't want to be seen walking around with a white guy. Which I have to say, it was one of the few times I can remember thinkin’, So this is what it's like to be a nigger. Only I'm the nigger. I can see the people there in the street, they come out of the little grocery store or the post office and they're lookin’ at me driving by and they're thinkin’, What's he doin’ here? Which you get the point. But what the hell, how's Books gonna hide my white ass? I'm sure the minute I come through the gate the word was all over the joint.

At the casino, which is only a frame building built like a T, with the top of the T fronting the road and the long part running out toward the pond, which like I say has taken a hike, and there's this big deck all around the long part. There's a bandstand inside and a bar, a dance floor, and on one side they have these doors which are the walls, which they can take away in hot weather, so the whole thing is kind of open to the deck and the air. It wasn't bad. Pretty nice, in fact. The roof extends halfway out on the deck and it's cooler.

Off to one side there's a big excavation, which Books says is gonna be a public swimming pool, but it's run into some kind of snag and so nothing's happening for now, just a old dragline sitting there by a half-dug hole, which has some stagnant water in it and a couple of old tires and some soggy plywood.

But the casino was okay. They had some pretty good bands come in there. Tyrone played there, but he wasn't there now. I asked about him and I get this bullshit, Ain't seen him, Heard he was in New York, Got a gig in Chicago. Unh-hunh. They'd seen him. He was around. I didn't say nothing. I figured he'd show up if he wanted to. By now he would know I was there. I didn't give a shit. Anyway, it's so damn hot. It's about five o'clock by now, middle of the week. Nothin’ happening anywhere. I'm happy to sit in the cool shade on one of these Adirondack wood lawn chairs, on the edge of the barroom and drink beer and smoke cigars and bullshit with the guys, which a number of them I knew from Motown. No point in mentioning all of them right now, but if it's important. . . [
Here he writes out a list of about thirty names, mostly known to me, of no apparent consequence.—
M
.
]

I'm trying to figure out what the hell is Lonzo's thing and basically it looks to me like this: Lonzo is running this whole zoo. He's the big cheese. I don't know who is behind all this and it don't matter. Mostly it's just what it looks like—working-class folks who bought a little something in the country, up on the lake, to put the wife and kids during the summer, get them out of the neighborhoods. But there's also a scam going down. There's dues, and there's numbers, drugs, probably all kinds of shit. But so what? As far as I could tell, there wasn't anything too heavy. It's just that the folks who bought in found that they weren't through paying and that things didn't go the way they expected them to. The sewer scam was just a part of it, but I think it was like everything else—there was a road tax but the roads didn't get paved, the streetlights didn't get installed and
the bulbs weren't fixed when they got broken or shot out, and houses weren't secure in the off-season, although there was supposed to be a security force (the asshole at the gate, for instance).

The golf course was burning up (no water for irrigation, although there was supposed to be a project and fees had been assessed). But people went out and played. They had low expectations, I guess.

But what the hell . . . by early evening I was having a pretty good time. All the old ladies had been out barbecuing since mid-afternoon and you can smell the ribs and chicken and pork butts. . . oh, man! The ball game is on the TV, and some of the guys had come into the clubhouse with their instruments and were starting to play a few licks. [
He mentions some names, a bass player, a piano, a couple of horns and a drummer, but they weren't familiar to me.—
M
.
]

That's really nice, you know, maybe nothing better. A guy starts picking out some easy blues on the piano and pretty soon the bass takes it up and the drummer starts mixing it up a bit on the cymbals and the brushes, and then a trumpet starts noodling away. Yeah, on a hot evening when nothing else is going on, just an ordinary old summer night with a lot of frogs croaking and you're sitting around chewing on some ribs with real sauce, knocking back a few sweaty brews—there was a Stroh's distributor there, buying rounds—and maybe a shot of something hard now and then, puffing a stogie and swapping a lot of bullshit while the guys just play around on the horns . . . well, you can spend a hell of a lot of time doing that.