I was walking a crowded downtown sidewalk when I felt a hand hit mine. A crisp scrap of paper stuck between my fingers. I looked around, but whoever touched me was gone, spun back into the churning swirl of nobodies on the sidewalk. I turned completely around, then kept walking, finally raising the note. Scrawled on it was a time and location. They wanted to sit me down. So we met at a sidewalk café. We sat on the high iron chairs, at a high table. I sat in the shade, my back against the building as always, the sun shaded against the awning and trees lining the street.
“So… what up, G-men?” I looked away, bored. They had never wanted to meet face to face like this before, and certainly not in public. I thought maybe they were canceling operations. Or maybe terminating my contract. For good this time. Real good. Maybe they wanted to do it in public, make a big show of it. I’d rather they handle these matters in private, in some musty old brick warehouse somewhere, in some back alley, on a secret plane to nowheresville, maybe tossing my body out over a swamp. There is a dignity to that, a flair to it.
“Some of us have grown increasingly concerned about you lately,” Main Dude looked into my eyes, as if trying to weigh the measure of my mental state.
“Cooonccccerrrrned,” I slowly whispered to myself, trying the word on for size, really drawing it out.
“Concerned,” Stupid Helper Guy repeated sternly, as if he were ready to take me out right there.
“Specifically, that you haven’t been righteous enough lately,” Main Dude leaned in.
“Rrriiiiighteous,” I tried that one on for size as well, taking its sound out for a nice, smooth little stroll, letting it all hang out there, baby.
“What’ve you been listening to?” Stupid Helper Guy asked.
“To whatever I damn well please, Jack-o,” I nodded, answering as if I had posed the question to myself, as if it were an existential question regarding your moral code rather than some simple math equation, like: how many eggs do we need to bake this cake?
“Lately…?” Main Dude whispered. “What’ve you been down on, my man? What’ve you been groovin’ to?”
“You know what we mean,” Stupid Helper Guy tensed up.
Again, it seemed they were trying to peek inside my noggin, ascertain what I’d been listening to, who I’d been swingin’ with, who I’d been workin’ for, and that info would give an indication as to my general state of mind and thus which way I was planning on leaning in the near future.
“Mingus?” Stupid Helper Guy asked. “Any Mingus at your crash pad?”
“Ah, I don’t really remember,” I drew up a big, dramatic breath. “Daddy-o.”
“We’ve been observing your behavior… For the past two weeks…” Main Dude looked around.
“Where’s Carl?” I asked.
“Carl?” Main Dude asked, as if I interrupted his train of thought.
“Carl’s not available, man. We don’t know where Carl be,” Stupid Helper Guy leaned back.
“He busy,” Main Dude stated flatly. “Un Available. Dig?”
“Where?” I exhaled. “Where Carl be at, Dude of mine?”
“I’m sure he’s cool,” Stupid Helper Guy looked me over. “You needn’t be concerned with his affairs. Worry if you’ll see tomorrow, secret keeper.”
I looked around. I noticed a big ol’ jive turkey milling about down the block, looking the other direction, checking things over. And right then I knew he was with Main Dude, maybe here to contain me, maybe lay me down for the big nap.
“He’s fine. Really,” Main Dude leaned back.
“Well, where he at?” I shrugged. “I needs to know, dude-a-reeno.”
“He’s not available at this time,” Main Dude looked down the block.
“I can see that,” I folded my arms tightly. “Can’t you see that I can see that?”
“You’re changing the subject,” Stupid Helper Guy stated, his voice a modulated monotone.
“No I’m not, you are. You’re the one who’s changing the subject,” I threw my cup down the sidewalk in protest.
“Now he’s being argumentative,” Stupid Helper Guy looked over to Main Dude as if to indicate that he had predicted such an outcome.
“Carl’s off fighting one of the secret wars,” Main Dude sighed. “I’m sure he’s fine. Fine-a-reeno.”
There was a silence, me holding out, being stubborn until I got a more specifics.
“We need to secure access to a rubber processing plant,” Main Dude sighed.
“For one of the secret projects,” Stupid Helper Guy added.
“So we sent him in,” Main Dude finished.
“But right now, we’d like to discuss you,” Stupid Helper Guy pointed. “We’re concerned you’ve been dabbling in Mingus’s earlier, less righteous works. And we just wanted to meet with you face to face to express our concerns.”
I tightened up, looked away. “Oh, yeah, hey, well, Big Daddy, you just do that then,” I muttered.
“We will. And with a sense of purpose,” Main Dude nodded.
“Conceeerrrrrrrrnnnnns,” I sang to the air, to myself.
“You might try out for another crew,” Main Dude offered as a potential example. “Maybe a different set of cats to groove with.”
“Who are you to decide what I swing to, baby?” I looked over and glared at them, sitting in their uptight suits and being so ungroovy that it hurt to be around them.
“We’re your friends,” Stupid Helper Guy stated flatly. “What you do is a reflection on us. Dig-o-ramma.”
“We care about you,” Main Dude whispered. “About all the positive and negative influences out there,” he looked around dramatically. “Never know who might be creepin’ into your own little crib,” he nodded down to my arms, which were both encased in plaster casts from my wrists to my elbows.
I thought about this for a moment. “Just some secret Mingus recordings, that’s all. Nothing too heavy, Daddy-o. Just lots of subliminal messages and instructions—from on high, that’s all,” I got up, slid off the tall metal chair and walked off, down the sidewalk. “Nuthin’ of your concern,” I looked back. “It’s not like they tell you all everything there is to know either… Compartmentalization… Dig it, man.”
Across the street a car door opened and some young betties hopped out. They crossed the street at an angle to meet me. They were wearing bandanas over the lower part of their faces, tied around the back of their heads to obscure their identities. They carried sawed-off twelve gauge pump-action shotguns. One had a sawed-off submachine gun (The guns had markings stenciled in white on their barrels—indicating they once belonged to several different local law enforcement agencies. The local authorities are not big on advertising the fact that occasionally a carload of their firearms might happen to go missing).
“Ah, look what we have here,” the last one opened her arms, commenting on my appearance,[1] “Finally takin’ a more pro-active role, becoming that ‘knuckle merchant’ we always felt you could be,” she teased (I liked that about her—that she’d notice me, comment about me, think to tease me). “Takin’ a more hands-on approach to your affairs now, are we?”
“Whatever life offers,” I gestured to the streets. “I guess you just have to graciously accept.”
“Well, you’re alive,” she drew up a real big deep daddy-o breath. “I guess that’s a reflection on something.”
“Whatever helps make the world go ‘round,” I shrugged.
Two of the girls stopped, crouching back-to-back in the street, each scanning down one end of the block. The third and fourth walked up to me. The third knelt and looked up, scanning the windows of the buildings above as if sniper fire was imminent. The last one approached and held out a small piece of paper. I took it, unfolded it, looked it over, handed it back, and nodded. She looked me in the eyes, then turned and headed back to the car, cool struttin’ an alligator boogaloo as always.[2]
Main Dude came up from behind. “What was that?”
“Got a call from on high,” I gestured to their car, obviously a borrowed nondescript sedan, as the girls hustled back inside. “Some cat ain’t bein’ righteous an’ must be shown the way to enlightenment.”
“Hhmmm,” Main Dude watched the car squeal off. “Ring his bell?”
“Gotta go make some trouble,” I nodded to the car. “Punch his ticket, Ray. Real tight, you see. Real tight.”
The car sped down the block, spun around in the intersection a few times, all squealing tires and smoke, then jetted back this way, swerving to rocket past as we continued down the walk. It was late afternoon and neither of us was thinking about our secret wars. I guess I was just enjoying the afternoon—the sky, the patterns, the hidden possibilities in every window, in every soft shadow, behind any door, around any corner.
Finally, the Main Dude sighed, “So, tell me about this other Mingus.”
“Looks like they’re cookin’ up a real blue fungus on this one, man. A real lurching Lester. Like us that time in Algiers, but without the powdered wigs. . . . What a gasser, man.”
“They gonna potato farm some banana club?”
“Don’t know, my man,” I squinted. “Prolly just gonna Rufus some Benji. Like you and me in Toulouse, Marrakech, Tangier, but without the clowns and baby giraffes.”
“Yeah. Yeah,” Main Dude sighed, relieved. “That makes sense.”
“It does. It does,” I nodded. “…as much as anything makes sense anymore.”
Actually, I had been neglecting my work lately, or at least not taking as much joy in it as I should. Perhaps it was the warm weather. Weather can do that, can make you dreamy. Perhaps it was that girl with the ice blue eyes, high cheek bones, splatter of tiny freckles, handkerchief over her face. Maybe the mystery of her had me distracted—who she was, where she was from, who she really worked for.
Main Dude walked silently beside me, staring ahead. I wondered why he hadn’t taken me out yet. Perhaps he was still thinking about it, still planning. Or perhaps it was the weather.
[1] Both my arms were in casts, I had a decidedly blackened eye, a purple lip, and scrapes on my face. People suspected my current appearance was from recent fisticuffs, but what they didn’t know was that one of the broken arms and the scrapes were from one of those old, heavy wooden ladders, a real tall one, that had fallen on me while I was helping a neighbor paint her garage. The rest of the bruises and injuries were actually from two separate altercations—a guy tried to strangle me with a wire (I got my thumb stuck in his eye socket), then a woman in a ski mask tried to snap my neck with her thighs. Both ended up in the river, one with a snapped neck, the other with pokey-pokey hurties all over. It had been a busy week in the trade, although her implication was correct—it was unseemly for me to be parading about with such up-front advertisements for my vocation.
[2] She was that one. Always that one. For some reason time always stood still when she was around—the one with the high cheekbones, the ice blue eyes, the curves, the shadows. Part of the mystery was that I only knew her this way—with most of her face concealed. And me, just left there exposed. Her knowing me. Me not allowed to know her. It was like some game. And that made the tension even more anxious. I wanted her all the more. I wanted to know the rest of that face, run my palm over those sharp cheekbones, hold them, feel that they’re real. I wanted her to preach her sermon to me, the sermon of her eyes, those eyes cookin’ up something, those cookers.
I mean, it wasn’t just that juju walk of hers, purposeful, Bennie-Green-back-on-the-scene. Dig it man, a real blue walk, an’ by a bad fine momma. A real midnight special, Ray. A genuine night dreamer. And then her congregation of hair blowing in the wind, like an answer to all your forgotten dreams rushing back in an easy walkin’ new conception of black fire. Oh, man, it’s everything all at once, man —all of it, a real swirl of colors, like a night in bird land, a free pass to her secret soul, a real drifter, man. And everything else disappearing.
I mean it’s just me and her eyes in that moment, dig. When she hands me that slip, those ice blue cookers just above the handkerchief, riding them high cheeks, working their work on me. Just me an’ her eyes, baby, an’ nuthin’ else.
The worst is when she spins and leaves. I hate that part—just gazes into my eyes an’ then she’s gone, man. I hate that when she leaves like that, like something’s left just hangin’ in the air like that—just there, an’ in a flash she’s real gonesville man, leaving me feeling like someone’s squeezing my insides ‘til I’m a dried-out rein.
And I follow her in all the reflections—her cat walk in the windows, an’ windshields, slidin’ down the shiny sides of cars, slippin’ away, searchin’ for a new land, an there ain’t nuthin’ no hip cat can do about it, Jack. No way. No how. A real blue moan left to ring out in a pure holler. Ho daddy.
