Elegy For Stiletto

by djr

The great trumpeter David Milius was no two-bit hood, and Tate Hopkins was no trumpeter.  Didn’t make no difference to either one.

With “Blues Elegy” riffing in his earbuds Tate checked his watch.  Two-thirty.  “And on a school night, no less.”  He smirked.  Maybe it was time to head home after all.  The boys were gone, his fun was done for the night.  Almost.  Tommy C wanted his money.  His take for the night was still a bit short.  His eyes searched like a t-rex, looking for movement.  They found it.

The sole bus stop in the village had one lonely resident.  RJ’s car had died only the night before and he had left everything of value at work.  No sense carrying pawnables to a bus stop in the early morning hours.  Having forgotten to claim a seat with anyone leaving the club and nobody knowing his ’78 Regal’s engine-knock had turned fatal, he was taking the bus. He texted his wife that he was on his way and closed his flip phone…yes, his flip phone.  Used cars, home-haircuts and K-Mart shoes. RJ was a battle between quality and quantity.  He never wanted More.  All he ever asked for was Enough.

RJ and Tate.  Two worlds from the same street and disparate existence were about to collide. 

“Let’s have it old man.”  Tate was calm and quiet.  Almost conversational.  “Whisper.  Makes ‘em less likely to elevate,” he’d always told his boys.  Prophetic words tonight.

“Have what?”

“Don’t act a fool, old man.”  Tate’s knife glinted in the streetlight.

RJ saw it.  Didn’t mention it.

Tate noticed the reflected metal-halide streetlight in RJ’s eyes.  He smiled and moved the blade that reflected the blueish light back and forth.  RJ tried moving his head to keep the light out, but Tate just moved with him.  He didn’t know why.  Maybe the same games he played in school as a kid—reflecting the sun off his watch into the teacher’s eyes.  He’d stopped enjoying that kind of thing long ago, but never stopped doing it.  Just habit now.  He kept it up.

“Let’s go.”  Tate’s impatience grew with the tension of Milius’s trumpet.  He liked the soundtrack feeling he got from the music in his ears and the action in front of him.  He reached out and grabbed RJ’s coat and pulled him close.  “I ain’t waiting no more.” 

Something in RJ had had enough.  Maybe it was the impertinence.  Maybe it was the taunting light in his eyes.  Maybe…maybe it was that RJ had only ever asked for Enough and now this child was trying to take even that.  Why he chose to take a stand…right here...right now…with this kid…Hell, even he didn’t know. 

But he did.

Regardless, it was over in a moment.  Sixty-five years came to an end right there.  In the dark on a deserted street at two-thirty in the morning.  No family.  No reporters.  No speeches.  No sound at all.  Just a short series of shorter breaths.  Tate removed the blade and RJ was dead.

Rifling through pockets, Tate came up with a few bills and an old Walkman. 

A cassette-playing Walkman. 

A cassette-playing Walkman that was duct-taped together. 

With cassette.

No credit cards.  No ID.  Hardly worth the effort of wiping the blade clean.  Headlights approached but all they revealed was the cooling body of an old man.  The tears were tomorrow’s business.

Tate crept out as the early afternoon sun hit his room.  He was at Clyde’s door waiting for him to open up. 

“Sell it yet?”

Clyde flipped his sign to Open.  “Everybody know it’s yours.”  Tate breezed past him.  “Don’t know why I keep buying it back.”

Buried deep in the old tubas and trombones and coronets in various states of disrepair and missing mouthpieces and valves and sliders next to treasures not yet found by collectors and prosthetic legs and guitars was a banged up old case containing one, complete, working trumpet.  Bought with the last salary spent by his father on his family before he split.  Seventh grade band.  Tate’s trumpet.

He put RJ’s cash on the counter.  “Back on my feet again.”

“Uh huh.”  Clyde eyed him as he gave him a receipt.  “Sure this cash shouldn’t go to Tommy?”

Tate’s smile faded.  “How you know about that?”

“I listen around.”  He deposited the cash in his register.  Nodding to the case, “Ever gonna learn to play it?”

“I know how to play.”

A laugh escaped despite Clyde’s resistance.  “I don’t know anybody call that playing.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Tate turned for the door and stopped suddenly.  He turned back.  “Anything for this?”

Disbelief widened Clyde’s eyes, “Cassette?  Duct tape?!  You playin’.”

“I ain’t playin’.  Antique.  Right out of the eighties.  Give me a couple of bucks?”

“It work?”

“Yeah, ‘it work’,” he mocked.  Tate hit play.  Nothing.  The salesman in him kicked in.  “Hold up.”  He adjusted the duct-taped door slightly.  Nothing…as was Clyde’s expression.   He wasn’t biting and he wasn’t buying.  “Hold on.  You’re going to love this.”  Tate finessed the PLAY button and the Maxell Gold wheels started spinning slowly.  Tate put the headphones on Clyde--yes, the originals: metal headband and all.  Clyde’s smile returned.  Head bobbing.  “Yeah.  Yeah.  See Clyde?  I--”

“Player aint’ worth nothing,” he interrupted.  “But that player…” pointing to the cassette. “That’s something.”

“Huh?”

Tate grabbed the headphones and put them on. 

He stood there and stood.  Everything melted away.  It was as though he could feel his blood running through his veins and the air filling his lungs and the electricity sparking out of his fingertips.  Despite the low-quality recording, the sound!  The unmistakable sound!  Unbelievable sound.  Amateur recording of a small jazz quartet: piano, bass, drum, and trumpet.  Beautiful trumpet.  The golden voice.  Low and sweet.  Big and bawdy.  Applause.  The MC stepped in, “All right, all right.  Let’s hear it for our very own trumpet master, Mr. Ronald Sanders.”  More applause.  The wheels stopped.  The PLAY button popped.  Old school.  He quickly flipped the tape and hit PLAY.

The live show continued, and that trumpet spoke right to Tate.  His eyes moved to his trumpet case.  “That will never be you,” it said softly to Tate.  “Ever.”

“Time to go Tate.”

“Huh?”

Clyde said, “You been standing there forty minutes.  Time to go.”

“Oh…forty…Yeah.  Right.”

He grabbed his case guiltily.  In a brassy haze he opened the door.  He didn’t hear the bell announcing his exit, but the heat of the day woke his senses and he looked around.  He saw the car head down the street.  A spotless, shining black 300.  Tommy.  So out of place on this dingy street.  Though he had the money now, he needed to pay it back his own way.  With the 300 out of sight, he headed home.  Ronald Sanders making his footsteps light as the Walkman hissed gently in first rate Dolby.

Down his street he saw several strange cars grouped near a house.  A lone police cruiser parked among them.  He crossed the street and lowered his hat just over his eyes, forgetting the headphones.  He adjusted them.  With a sidelong glance he saw people on one front lawn gathered.  Worry-worn faces and low voices.  Voices that seemed to penetrate the thin foam on the headphones even from across the street.  But these were the sights and sounds of his life.  His street.  His city.  His city was different than the city by the stadiums.  Different than the city of trendy bars and clubs.  His city saw wheelchairs and shopping carts on the sidewalk every day.  Crutches.   License plates inside rear windows.  Cops taking statements about dead people.

Worry-worn faces and low voices were nothing new.

Past the cruiser, dipped back in the alley, he pulled out his phone and dialed Tommy C.  Before he could put the phone to his ear he was lifted up, placed on a garage wall like bad art, and held there by two huge and very strong hands. 

…