Black Hornet

Frankie weighed a hundred pounds in eight-pound shoes. Despite his diet and the fact that he never saw sunlight and hadn’t so much as walked around the block in forty years, he was fit and trim and probably could have picked up the office and carried it down the street on his shoulder. He was already three times my age and, I was sure, would outlive me. “Don’t matter what jew eat, what jew do or don’t do,” he said frequently. “’S all genetics.” He pronounced it gene-etics.

“Want some chicken?” he asked one day when I dropped by to see if he had anything for me. Collections, papers that needed serving, whatever. Jobs were getting scarce. People had suddenly stopped acting like they had money they didn’t have, and my own strictly-cash economics showed the wear.

Frankie picked up the greasy carton and held it out.

I shook my head. “No, sir. But thank you.”

He redocked it.

You didn’t often find a white man offering to eat after a black one those days, even in New Orleans.

It made me remember my father and me back in Arkansas ordering breakfast through a window to the kitchen of Nick’s (where the cooks were all black, the customers all white) and eating it on the steps of the railroad roundhouse by the levee at five A.M. It was godawful cold, forty degrees maybe, with wind shouldering in off the river. My father’s breath, when he spoke to me of the life I could expect there, plumed out and mixed with the steam rising off grits and eggs.

“You sure?” Frankie said, r drawn out, New Orleans-style, to wuh.

“Yes, sir.” My own r carefully sounded.

“Don’t know what you’re missing.”

He fingered a drumstick out of the tray. Bit into it, rotated, bit again. Put the bone with its cap of browned gristle back.

“Best dam’ food ’n the world.”

“You’ve got something for me, Mr. Frankie?”

“Sure I do.” Shu-wuh. “I ever not had something for you?”

“So: what? I have to guess? That it?”

He grinned. “Two hundred a week.”

“Okay. You got my attention.”

“First week guaranteed, possible re-up for two more. Could be a lot longer.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Man called, tells me he needs a bodyguard. Says he’s heard good things about B amp;A, the service we provide, wonders if I might know someone could do the job.”

“And it just happens you did.”

“Yep.”

“Me.”

“You.” He picked a wing out of the carton, pulled off the skin and ate that, then nibbled away till bone was again glistening.

“I wouldn’t even know how to start.”

“What’s to know? You walk him aroun’. Swing your dick, give anyone the eye gets too close, pick up your money.”

I could probably do that.

“You know an easier way to bank a few hundred?”

I didn’t know any other way at all.

That first client was a local city councilman being groomed for national elections. Though he sat high on public-opinion polls, grievous differences between him and his wife’s family persisted. For one thing, that was where his money came from, and her old Creole family grieved at seeing Greatgranddaddy’s wad used to nurture unseemly liberal causes. Neither were they sympathetic to the mistress who’d been his student in Poly Sci at Loyola or the one who lived over Gladfellows Lounge with its neon martini glass (where she worked) on St. Charles.

Threats had been voiced, more serious ones implied.

Councilman Fontenot, as it turned out, made one of those clear choices he was always talking about in campaign speeches and took the Hollywood high road: true love over career. Two weeks after I joined the troupe he jumped ship and moved in with his coed.

Fontenot had a passion for old black music and young white women. Two or three nights a week, myself in tow and doing my best to look suitably dangerous, he’d tour the Negro clubs along Dryades and Louisiana. He especially liked listening to Buster.

So did I, and long after the councilman tucked himself away in his coed’s drawers, I went on showing up wherever Buster was playing. There wasn’t any work for a while, and since I was around every night, Buster and I started getting friendly. I’d sit sipping beers during his sets, then afterward we’d crack a bottle there at the club or back at Buster’s. He’d play and sing this incredible stuff I never even knew existed. Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Willie McTell, Sonny Boy Williamson.

Eventually there was no reprieve from it, I had to get back to work. Off and on I’d still drop by clubs where Buster was playing, as I did that autumn night, but it was never the same. When’s it ever the same once you’ve left?

The night I told Buster I wouldn’t be around anymore, we got so drunk that toward morning he fell out of his chair and smashed the big Gibson twelve-string he’d just bought. I woke up hours later on the levee, with my legs in the water. I remember raising my head and looking at them just kind of bobbing about down there in the wake from ferries and tugs, bobbing along with the candy wrappers, paper cups and other flotsam that had collected around them.

Chapter Three

“Lewis. Been a while.” He was wiping his head and neck with a dish towel as he nodded. A quick, shallow nod you could miss if you weren’t ready for it. “Been a long while.” The barkeep slipped a tumbler of jug wine, three ice cubes, onto the bar in front of him. Buster nodded at him, too. “I’m in danger or what, get you out this time a night?”

“We may all be.”

“Not less you done turned white, Lewis. Have to tell you, I always thought you might have that in you.” He laughed.

“Yeah, well. It’s hard enough being a black man in this town now, B.R. Way things are going, it could soon get a lot harder.”

He looked at me a moment. “See your point. Crazy gon’ always make room for more of the same.” He slapped the towel across a shoulder. “But damn it’s good to see you, boy.”

“You too.”

“And looking good. That jacket silk?”

“Better be, what I gave for it”

“Stayin’ busy, I hope.”

“Rent gets paid. Most of the time, anyway.”

“And Miss Verne?”

“She’s fine.”

“She is for sho’. That’s a stone fact.” He sipped wine. “Whoo- ee. Raccoon must of pissed in the cask that year. Let’s go find us a place.”

I followed him to one of the booths at the back. Maybe half the upholstery and stuffing was still hanging on. Some kind of plastic film had been put up in the window there, each pane a different color, gold, bottle green, purple, a stained-glass effect. Now the film had baked dry and started chipping away at the edges.

“So who you think this is? Got to be a brother.”

I shrugged. “Not my business.”