SoC 3:1

Simple

 

M r. Johnny Jukes did not think it normal to spend ten minutes warming up a one year-old car on a sunny May morning. Just like them to need an alibi to sit still and have a little fun. This one’s silly secret sin was (ooh) R&B. And maybe he didn’t want to have to fight the Saturday morning traffic aggravation while he was trying to enjoy himself.

Typical: guy had his music up nice and loud, but his car windows all shut and the a.c. off, as not to offend nor man nor nature. (Yeah, but what about those emissions, Jack?) He looked like a little cooking turkey in there, little red-faced guy with reddish almost real-people hair, sweating and swaying to—beat that, of all things—Trick Bag. Word! The wonderful, the one-and-only . . . Trick Bag.

Life was rich. Johnny smiled and gave the passenger-side window of the man’s car a tiny little tap. But, whoops and damn, the man jumped, anyhow.

Now Johnny Jukes always counted on people not to be alarmed. He hoped his attire and his demeanor might suggest one of those harmless Jehovah’s Witnesses, those strange folks who warn you about the end of the world, then tell you to go on and have a nice day, regardless. When people had had a moment to take in the neat haircut and blue suit, then they could notice the big gray canvas bag slung across the shoulders of the suit, and then Johnny would gesticulate with the little white slips of paper, pantomiming whether they would let him stick one under the driver’s side windshield wiper. And he wouldn't say a word yet, neither, since he knew they had to be pre-prepared for the experience of his sonorous tones.

The little turkey man in last year’s Nippon puddle-jumper glanced across at Johnny. Then, he turned off the radio and the engine, leaned over and rolled the window down a few inches. He used a lot of wrist, cool trying to be cooler, which was good.

“Heey,” said Johnny softly. “Bee-eau-ti-ful day.” He gestured toward the silent radio. “Say now, that was Trick Bag, wasn’t it? WRFR?”

The man nodded, waited.

Should Johnny tell him? He chuckled (let the man think it was some private joke), opened his mouth, changed his mind again, closed it, then just for one more second, hesitated. Damn! Angry for making it so obvious he was covering his tracks, sure he had undercut the effect of the patter before it was even started, Johnny pushed on, nonetheless.

“Say now. Mind if I just put one of these on your window, friend? ‘Kinky telephone sex at ninety cents a minute’? Nope. ‘Bargain basement oil change’? Nah, not that, neither. Nope, just some plastic slipcovers. May I?”

Because the guy wore an expression generic to this neighborhood, Johnny could read his mind like it was "Dick and Jane": At a time when the paper costs seventy-five cents, and the subway, a dollar-and-a-half, why is this neatly-dressed African-American gentleman, no longer in his first blush, passing out advertising circulars for maybe a penny apiece? The mind-reader sighed, tired by the sameness.

“Sure, go ahead,” was the reply, expected, but Johnny was agreeably surprised by the deep, loud voice, by the set of heavy pipes the Lord or someone had placed inside this man’s skinny little neck.

“No, wait,” the man added. (And what was this? He was rolling his window all the way down?) “Here, give me a bunch of them.”

While the leafleteer groped in the bottom of his bag, the Samaritan was rewarded with some extra patter, half-way sung: “Thanks, friend, and I know that when you've read the literature you’ll want to hurry to your nearest telephone in order to order a set—or two—of these fine prophylactic coverings, sure to make your furniture last and endure, and sure to make your love life smooth and pure.” The last nine words were a standardized test, and Johnny watched the man’s wheels turn—fast.

“Sure,” he said. “Whatever that means.” Passable—not bad, in fact. “And don’t worry, I’ll keep the slips a while before I throw them away.” Which meant he had correctly guessed there were spies out there, prowling the sidewalks and peering into the garbage cans, checking for bunches of slips to make sure the peons—distributors—earned their pennies. The man held out his hand, palm up, and waited.

“Hey!” said Johnny. “Fee fie fo fum, I sense the presence of a gentleman.” And, groping in the bag, “Well, well, what do you know, you’re my last customer. Freedom!” He scraped the last twenty or so slips from the bottom of the bag, shuffled them into a neat pile and handed them over with a flourish.

A salute, a smile, a wink, and Johnny Jukes was striding across the street to a mid-sized American car, dark green, not too old, which he unlocked and entered. He rolled down his window, raced the engine and roared up the block.

The little red-headed man watched the larger, Black man disappear. Then, he stacked the slips beneath a flat rock on his dashboard, closed the passenger-side window and cracked his own a couple of inches. Re-starting his engine, which ticked and purred, he immediately moved forward, following in the wake of the bigger car. The moment he turned the corner, he flicked the radio back on. The second hour of the WRFR Saturday Morning R&B Extravaganza had just begun. Like a reward for the small good deed with the slips, the first song was the excellent Can’t Be With the One I love, So I Love the One I’m With. Off to the cleaners!

-2-

It was a windy day, and as soon as the red-headed Mr. Oliver Nelson pulled into the supermarket parking lot (hurrying, conscious of his wife waiting for the things she needed in order to start dinner), the plastic around his suits started flapping and he noticed that the tarmac was practically carpeted with circulars. Hundreds of them, swirling everywhere, each one red, green and blue on a yellow background. This considerable mess reminded the alert and retentive Mr. Nelson not only of the slipcover slips, but of a peculiar announcement he and his wife had heard on the radio the previous Fall.

It was the Sanitation Commissioner, come on the air to request public assistance in sweeping and bagging leaves, which was fair enough. But, for some reason (inebriation, perhaps), the political man had waxed lyrical.

“This is the Fall season of the year,” he announced, “when the streets of our fair city are covered with millions of leaves, leaves of every hue and color: red, yellow, orange, green, blue and brown.”

This blunder brought mirth to Oliver and his wife, and Oliver remarked, “ Blue, eh? I suppose it isn’t all that surprising these days—what with pollution, narcotics, synthetics, cloning and all—that there’s a lot of confusion about the natural world.”

“What we clearly need,” Mrs. Nelson replied, “is a World Naturalness Court. Hey, what harm would it do to add one more to all the pleasant-sounding, ineffectual world bodies?”

And then, as he remembered it, he had suggested that the W.N.C. be headquartered in Zurich or The Hague, after which they had stopped pounding the idea.

Oliver parked, turned off the engine with the radio still on (commercials), locked up, then tramped through the circulars (supermarket “specials”) and through the automatic IN-door to meet . . . the slipcover man.

Except now he was the grocery bagger. The same guy. He had shed his suit coat and put a red apron over his nice (white) shirt, (red) tie and (blue) pants. As Oliver Nelson came in, the other man happened to look up, and, obviously recognizing Nelson, he spoke without breaking rhythm in his bagging.

“My man!” he said. “Slipcovers? What’s happening?”

“Shopping time.” Oliver stepped alongside the bagger, then moved a little closer in order to get out of the stream of shoppers that had followed him into the store. Curious about this man and his two jobs, Nelson tried to think of a tactful way to pry.

“Rush hour,” the man said, sounding apologetic because he could not pause to chat properly. He lifted out a double roll of paper towels to make room at the bottom of a bag for a half-gallon of orange juice, then laid the towels back in flat, on top of the other items. A smiling Black child now looked up from the top of the bag. “Little soul brother,” the man remarked with a smile and a gesture, as he started right in on another bag. “It’s always busy in here around noon on Saturdays.” So he had been there previous weeks when Nelson had shopped.

“Right, I know. Uh, did you finish . . . uh . . . ?” Nelson saw the man reading his mind.

“‘Hewers of wood and drawers of water,’ “ he began, then went on non-stop. (Was he drunk with fatigue or just talking to relieve the tedium of his task?) “I know what you want to know, friend, and I’ll give you the answer, free of charge. Why not, you obliged me before, right? Still got those slips out in your car, right?” Without waiting for an answer, he winked and went on gabbing, even as, with quick, precise movements, he went on bagging. As he divulged information, he kept glancing at Nelson, as if to see how he was taking it, and Nelson, aware, nodded every time the man met his eye.

“Four jobs altogether. Weekdays, eight-thirty to four-forty-five, I’m a midtown mail room menial. Second, I’m the custodial superintendent—janitor—of my residence. Three and four, you already know. Today and tomorrow here, probably twelve hours total, which would be seventy-three-fifty, net, if you’re wondering. And this morning, thirty bucks, three-thousand leaflets, which two of my kids are still out unloading the last of those. Why? Now ask me, ‘Why?’”

Resisting an urge to say, “Because you need the money,” Nelson said, “Why?”

“My wife don’t work but one job—secretary—because we don’t want our two kids who are still at home with us to become no latchkey kids. Oh, no, not in this day and age.” He came up for air. “Yes, it’s hard. Yes, we get by. Yes, I should of stayed in school all those years ago. ‘The things I used to do,’ “ he sang softly, then muttered, “And shouldn’t of.” Then sang, “And didn’t used to do.” And muttered, “And should of.” And concluded, “Any questions?” He smiled and started on another bag.

At this point Nelson noticed that the man was perspiring in the air-conditioned store, that his forehead shone. He had some gray and a widow’s peak, and Nelson silently guessed (afraid to do it out loud, for what if the man was actually thirty or sixty?) that he was in his mid-forties. Which gave him a good fifteen years on Nelson.

“You know, I do have a question, but . . . ” And as he heard himself starting to ask, for some reason Nelson reminded himself of the Langston Hughes character, that faux naif observer of Harlem life, Jesse B. Simple.

“Go on, friend, speak up, no question too stupid or embarrassing. Don’t worry, if you overstep, I’ll shuck and jive, I’ll circumvent.”

“Okay. Thanks. Just one, then, please. Why did you laugh? On the street before? When you recognized that song on the radio.”

“‘Recognized that song’? “ Nelson felt himself the subject of another appraising glance, a serious one. “Trick Bag? ‘Why did I laugh?’ You ready?” Nelson nodded. “Well, you may not believe me, Mister . . . uh, I didn’t catch your name, did I?”

“Nelson. Oliver Nelson.”

“Pleasure,” said the man, then muttered, “Huh! Play a little tenor, do you?” An allusion Nelson had heard before.

“Jukes. John Jukes.” And then there was a moment’s hesitancy, and then a quick touching of palms initiated by Mr. John Jukes. “Mr. Oliver Nelson, sir, you may not believe me, friend, but I laughed because I . . . well, yes, I wrote that song. That was my song. Fact of the matter. Yes, sir, I wrote Trick Bag.”

“No kid . . . ”

“Gospel. In fact, that particular tune, Trick Bag, was one of the three or four biggest hits my brother and me ever had, way back when. You ever hear of us, friend? ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Jarvis and Johnny Jukes, the Jukes Brothers.’ We were big time in the Sixties, yes, the Sixties was our time. Once, 1962, I believe it was, we had two songs on the Top Hundred R&B charts at once: Trick Bag, and another one you probably never heard of—wasn’t as good—called Lady Dee-Dee-Lilah. Yes, sir, the Jukes Brothers.”

“Well, it does . . . ” Nelson started to lie, trying to be polite.

“‘Sound familiar,’ “ Johnny Jukes continued for him. “Thanks, anyhow. That’s okay.”

Sensing that the monologue had run down, Nelson was thinking of something else polite to say when he looked up just in time to see that he had drifted out into the aisle and was in danger of being steamrollered by a young woman with spiked green hair, pink jogging suit, and elaborate sunglasses. She had shoved her change into a pants pocket and scooped up two bags just packed by Mr. Jukes, and now she came ploughing silently through the narrow aisle. Hopping aside, Nelson accidentally brushed shoulders with Johnny Jukes, who was bagging away again and jumped at the contact, without comment.

“Excuse me,” Nelson said. “Sorry, but . . . ” He returned to the aisle, calculating intensely. “The Jukes Brothers,” he thought. The name really did seem vaguely familiar, but the ages and dates were wrong. For, if this man was now in his forties, he would have been a child in the early Sixties. Besides, the song, Trick Bag, sounded like it came from the Fifties, or even earlier. Well, maybe the song was . . . ageless. Or the man was.

Johnny Jukes laughed. “Say now,” he said, “you look like you trying to count without using your fingers.” Nelson smiled sheepishly, and then the bagger at the next counter, at whom he had not yet looked directly, also laughed. This was a fat man, also black, also not young, also with a shiny forehead, but with a little mustache, as well. Now he laughed a phlegmy laugh for several seconds while, like Mr. Johnny Jukes, he never broke stride in his bagging. That he had listened to the whole conversation was obvious.

“Yessir,” said the fat man. “It’s every word of it true. Pinch yourself, friend, you talking to Mr. Johnny Jukes, himself, ain't no dream. Now, as for all those songs him and Brother Jarvis wrote, the damned shame is, the damn shame is . . . he lost them. Yep, he lost them. Every last one of them. You see, this man here was so hard up, didn’t have a nickel to squeeze the Indian over on to the buffalo, so . . . so he had to sell away all those good songs. Sold away the rights to every last one of them, didn't you, Johnny? Every last one of them. For a song, too!” The fat man bent over with laughter.

Johnny Jukes, bagging as ever, frowned, and Nelson sensed that he was now speaking—half-singing, actually—to himself rather than to Nelson or to his co-worker.

“That’s true, yes, it’s true. I may have been wrong, but I sold the rights to those songs. Sold them for a song! A sad song, not a sweet song, no, sirree!” Then he was no longer singing. “However, I did save my own two legs from being broken. Or worse. Fact. And another fact: since—when was it?—June Something, Nineteen-Hundred-and-Seventy-Four, I have never again placed no single wager on those four-legged creatures piss your money right down on to the ground. No, sir. Never again, neither. Huh!”

Nelson was embarrassed by the man’s obvious pain. As for the next-aisle man, he had been bent over laughing during most of Johnny’s lament, bagging from a crouch.

“For a fact,” he now said, then added, laughing, “and while you're at it, friend, check out the grapefruit, two for eighty-nine. They’re good, I had one for my own breakfast this morning. Sweet as sugar. Right, Johnny? Sweet as . . . ”

“Sugar. Fact of the matter.”

Johnny still seemed lost in sad reminiscence, and then Oliver, not knowing what else to say, impetuously and most unfortunately, played the fool.

“Say,” he ventured with a sly wink, “this isn’t your brother here, is it? This isn’t Jarvis, by any chance, is it?”

The baggers looked at each other with an unmistakable “Who’s your friend?” expression, and Nelson, sharply embarrassed, experienced a sudden, palpable change in the weather, against which he had no protection.

“Shoo! You kidding?”