The Rock Child (27 page)

“Simply music of the people’s sort with an American flavor.” Well as I liked Sir Richard, I’ve never denied he was a snob.

“I thought perhaps native was a reference to people of color,” says Daniel soft as you please. When these gentlemen go after each other, they do it with tiny, shiny blades.

“That as well,” said Sir Richard. “What is the origin of the music?”

“Much of what we’ve been playing originated with the Negroes,” Daniel said politely. “The white folks, at least Louisianans, took some of the songs as their own. We primmed them up in the process, straightened out the rhythms, and made the harmonies more conventional. To my ear that made them more regular and less interesting. I hope we’ll return to a kind of Creole music, the white folks’ versions given back some of their black spice. That’s what I prefer to play.”

“Creole?” said Sir Richard inquiringly. His voice sounded poised to jot it down in his notebook.

Daniel’s eyes could look dangerous with hardly a change. “Really it
means born of Old World parents in the New World,” he said evenly. “People use it to mean mixed-blood.”

“Black and white,” said Sir Richard.

Daniel nodded.

“Red and white.”

“Yes, mestizo,” said Daniel.

“Black and red and white.”

Daniel gave a little smile. “That too. In Louisiana we call such a person a redbone.”

“Black and red?”

Daniel nodded once more. “Washinango,” he murmured.

“So you Americans have many words for the mixtures of black blood and white.”

I kept thinking one of them was going to slap down a glove and demand satisfaction at dawn.

“In the South,” said Daniel with a soft edge, “in order of percentage of white blood, the words are mulatto, which is half, quadroon, octoroon, and griffe, a sixteenth. Full-bloods are called blacks, Africans, Africo-Americans, or, fancifully, blackamoors. Also negroes, as they say it in the North, nigras as we say in the South when pretending civility, and when being honest, niggers.” His voice was coming up hard now. “Then there are the gradations of color, black, brown, olive, meriny, and high yaller.” His pale face was broken out red, like measles spots. “Let us not forget the condescending terms—darky, Crow, Cuffee, Sambo, blueskin, Senegambian, and tarbrushed folk, or the offensive ones such as coon, smoke, snowball, kink, boogie, and Zulu.” His wagon was rolling downhill fast now. “Tell me, I pray you, why we pick out black women with such names as negress and nigger wench, or designate their children affectionately as dinkey, pickaninny, and tar pot.”

Seemed a miracle he didn’t bust.

Sir Richard didn’t interfere, protest, help, or do anything else. He just watched with an expression of high curiosity.

After a few breaths Daniel began to fold his wings and look a little less warlike.

“I have been much in Africa,” said Sir Richard in an easy tone, “Arab Africa. I have seen the slave trade up close, and I abhor it. It debases white and black alike. I know not which is more repugnant, to be slave or master.”

The color began to drain from Daniel’s face, which meant he was back toward normal.

“I gather that you are similarly inclined.”

Daniel nodded. He took a moment to get out one of those cigarillos and made a ceremony of lighting it. “Back home they call me a nigger lover.”

Sir Richard nodded and regarded Daniel. He was using that power he had to hold people’s eyes, command their full attention.

“Is that why you are not fighting the war?”

Daniel shook his head no. “The war has other causes than race,” he said. I thought I saw an approving light in Sir Richard’s eyes. “I do regret having run to a town like this, full of racialists.
Virginia
City,” he said wryly.

I noticed his complaint wasn’t “Secessionists,” and I know Sir Richard did, too.

“Why did you,” Sir Richard hesitated, “run at all?”

Daniel looked at him plenty put out. Guess it wasn’t a question a gentleman would ask. But Sir Richard often said he wasn’t a gentleman, he was a writer, and so never let manners curb his curiosity.

To both our surprise, Daniel began to tell it. “To keep from killing.” Then he went on short and direct. “I fell in love with a woman of color. Very little color. We proposed to be married. She’s now dead, by my foolishness, and my child dead within her.”

His glare dared us to ask more.

To my amazement, Sir Richard did. “How did she die?”

Daniel’s eyes turned cold and dark—I hope I never see a tunnel that cold and dark. Yet he began to speak. “I took her dancing in a place, a place for whites only. I should have known better. A fool challenged us. I acted belligerent. Knives appeared. Just when I thought we were going to set to, and I had every intention of killing him, he used the knife instead on … her. She died in my arms.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sir Richard.

“Me too,” says I.

Sir Richard murmured, “Race in America …”

“Our destiny and our doom,” said Daniel.

“Dan!” The word was yelled so loud and sharp it sounded like a shot. We all jumped. It came from the bar, the mixologist. He jerked his head toward the piano. We all sat there a minute, calming our nerves back down. “Perhaps a more pleasant conversation later,” said Daniel, and rose to go to the piano.

Quick before we started in, Daniel took the banjo and real soft showed me how to flatten those certain notes and squeeze that certain chord. Then we made music, Daniel’s new kind now. I fell in with his tricks quick enough, though I couldn’t always make them sing handsome as he could. Hitting those off-the-beat rhythms hard made it really happen, I found out. That was fun.

We made music—made it white, made it Creole—for two more hours. Sir Richard was gone. I ate and drank a sherbet while Daniel smoked, and we went back to playing. This time Daniel suggested we switch instruments, and we did that. Worked out real fine. We picked and plunked until I don’t know what hour of the morning. All I remember is that Daniel saw me home, seeming no more sleepy than he was ever hungry. I fell into bed so exhausted I couldn’t even check on Sun Moon, asleep in the next room.

Sun Moon said to Asie, “Where’s Sir Richard?”

He opened his eyes and blinked. She saw him absorb the fact that the sun was well up, then the fact that she was standing in his bedroom. He said, “What time is it?”

“Noon.”

He shook his head slowly and sleepily. Then he jerked his face toward her. “Sweet gizzards,” he said, “I’m supposed to play the dinner hour at the Heritage with Daniel, and I’m due there now.”

“Where is Sir Richard?” she repeated softly. “He not come home last night.”

“You sure?”

She nodded.

Asie swung his feet onto the floor and adopted an attitude of thinking.
Funny, how Americans tell things twice, once with words and once with bodies.
“Don’ know,” he said.

He threw off the sheet. She flinched before she realized he’d worn his pants to bed. She flinched again, inside, when she realized she’d wanted to see him stripped.

“All night?”

They also asked things twice, Americans.

She wondered what his thoughts were. Hers were simple—whores, whisky, or opium. Though she had learned to care for Sir Richard, and to see a certain magnificence in his spirit, she saw well his spirit’s waywardness.

She stood up and turned all the way around the room twice. She wrung her hands. She pictured Sir Richard in a siege of dissipation in this strange city. Behind him, like a huge, black shadow, loomed Porter Rockwell. Without Sir Richard the shadow would turn into a killer.
Mother Mahakala, make my heart fierce
. She wondered why no one but her foresaw Rockwell’s coming, and feared it.
Mahakala, give me courage
.

She said to Asie, “You going find Sir Richard.”

He stood up close to her. “I gotta go to the Heritage.” He looked at her solicitously. “You seem better.”

“Yes,” she said, “better today.” She stepped back from him. “Please go. Find Sir Richard. We leave here soon.”

“A week after your fever stops, that’s what the doc said.” He brushed back his black hair. She watched thoughts and emotions play on his face:
Yes, I do like your company
. He was almost like one of her people in his open face and simple, guileless manner. So different from most Americans and Europeans. His yearning to play music was direct, touching.

“Come with me,” he said.

She shook her head no.

“Hey,” says he, “I’m gonna pick.” He pantomimed playing the banjo. “You like that.”

“Next time.”

“I’ll bring you some dinner when I’m done,” he said. “You’ll be OK.”

“You find Sir Richard, please.”

“OK. If he ain’t here. After work tonight.”

He disappeared out the door.
You have no idea, none of you do
. A good heart, Asie, a grand heart, but no awareness of her world, her heart. Yes, she was better. But she was not well. She wasn’t home. She was ill, she was homesick, she was scared, and she was on the run from a maniac and murderer. Besides all that, maybe she was with child.

“Fine,” said Daniel. “Let’s look for him in Chinatown.”

I scratched my head. I scratched my tail. I stretched my back. I felt queasy-like about going into Chinatown, especially way after midnight like this.

Daniel was already ambling downhill. Chinatown was below the rest of the town. I was making up excuses not to go.
In this high-mountain air
, I grumbled at myself,
we’ll freeze just catching our breath
.

Oh, heckahoy,
says I to myself—
Sun Moon says I look Tibetan, maybe I’ll make Chinese friends
.

In Virginia during the day you saw Celestials (that’s what everyone called ’em) all around town, mostly selling donkey loads of wood—“One dollah load,” their cry was, crooking through the streets. They were also commonly employed as servants, cooks, laundrymen, and even physicians of a sort, going place to place with their herb and tea cures. What they might be at night in their own place, out of sight of white eyes, I didn’t know. Half of me wanted to find out, and half had the cajoolies bad. Yellow demons, said that half. Even telling myself Sun Moon was yellow, too, didn’t help none. Not after what the Celestials done to her.

As we got there, I could smell how it was Chinese better than see it. Charcoal fires. Blood, probably from some many chickens getting their heads cut off right in the street. Spices—ginger, garlic, red pepper, angelica, and I don’t know what else. The smells of many kinds of tea. The sandalwood they burn for incense, strong odor of that. Smells I don’t have no idea of, much as I’ve since been around Celestials. And the sweet aroma I later learned was opium.

Daniel led the way to a cut in a hillside, and within that a low door. Pulling it open, he said, “I don’t expect to find him here, actually.”

We went through into a dugout. Inside, a dim red lamp hung from the center of the ceiling. A man that looked to be in charge sat at a table jammed with paraphernalia—horn boxes of opium, pipes, scales, spatulas, wire probes, bones covered with black dots—all opium-smoking gear, but I don’t know how some of it’s used. Two walls were stacked with bunks, and every one was chock-full of smoker. They stretched out on grass mats or old blankets. In every bunk was a little alcohol lamp burning blue, every one had a little light used to light the opium pipe. Some smokers were propped on one elbow, others sleeping, others laying back with eyes open or part-closed. Now the sweet smell was strong as poison, and had a bitter tang. They say that opium makes the brain dreamy, misty. Everything in that half-lit room was like that.

Daniel spoke soft to the proprietor. “No white man here,” the Celestial said. He spread his arms wide, like saying, “Look for yourselves.” With his droopy sleeves he might have been a bat. I wanted to shrink away from him. Then I had a thought I didn’t like. I wondered if this was what it meant to be what Daniel called a racialist, and I was one, too.

They exchanged a few more words in low tones, and Daniel led the way out. “We’ll try somewhere else,” he said. I thought of asking Daniel how he got so well acquainted in Chinatown. But I could feel that he didn’t like being asked personal stuff.

The next opium den looked more like an ordinary business from the outside. Inside it was rigged about like the other one, bunks on bunks, each full of its own dreamer. Jumpin’ Jeehosaphat, opium wasn’t like liquor, it sure didn’t seem to make folks sociable.

A couple of exchanges between Daniel and the head Celestial and we were on our way.

“What about a saloon?” I asked. “He might be boozing.”

“Chinatown has no liquor establishments,” says Daniel quiet-like.

The third place looked like a parlor in a pretty decent house, and they brought us green tea. After Daniel asked a couple times for the proprietor, a meek-looking middle-aged man wearing loose shirt, baggy pants, and skullcap came out.

“A white man, tall, with mustache?” Daniel inquired, slashing his own left cheek with a finger.

“As you see, no one here but yourselves,” says Meek-Looking.

“In the back room, however,” says Daniel, pointing, “there are opium smokers.” It was true—the smell was strong.

“No, Sir.”

“White people smoking,” says Daniel.

“No, Sir.”

They went another round or two in that line. Then Daniel says, “May I speak to Tommy, please?”

“Tommy? Who Tommy?”

A couple more rounds like that, the most polite lying you ever heard. Finally, Daniel slips something into Meek’s palm, looked like a Spanish gold coin.

“The gentlemen wait, please,” says Meek-Looking, bowing.

When the fellow went out, I says to Daniel, “We don’t have to pay to find Sir Richard.”

“I’ve been wanting to meet this fellow,” says Daniel.

We waited and drank that bitter tea for maybe half an hour. Then in came a Chinaman, looked to be in his mid-twenties, no more, decked out in as handsome a business suit as you ever saw, gleaming silver, with scarlet silk cravat at the neck and a matching handkerchief. The stock exchange in San Francisco doesn’t sport any better. “Good evening, gentlemen, I’m Tommy Kirk. How may I help you?” Here we were a-visiting Flabbergastonia again, for his English sported a plummy accent just like Sir Richard’s.