Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

The show over, Metal dropped his news with a smirk. “Mo says your keyboard’s out in the warehouse, and Doug’s gonna let you have it since they didn’t catch on before putting in your order.” The approved vendor had put a five-octave Casio with stand on sale for $79, only four bucks over the property-policy price-per-item limit, so he’d written them a letter proposing a $10 credit for withholding the otherwise contraband metal stand, and they wrote back agreeing to $69 without it. That money order to his inmate trust account from Fuse’s granny right before she died proved worth saving all this time. The business office started rejecting everybody else who tried the same thing because they discovered the official sale flyer only listed the $79 deal. All his years down, this marked the only chance for Fuse to order a board with adult-sized keys.

“You still playing with that butt-kisser up there?” Metal asked, referring to Mo.

Metal used to be up in unit 4C with Fuse and Maurice—“Mo” for “Modern Jazz.” Then a shakedown that turned up the program’s “borrowed” effects pedal caught Metal a theft ticket and cost him his Saturday afternoon music room slot. His tat-gun and makeshift soldering pencil sent him to the hole. When he got out, he landed over in 700 building. Fuse had taken to sitting outside Mo’s cell several evenings a week to play music with headphones joined by a homemade splitter. That big old black man, who looked like he’d waded into a few too many fights back in the day, more than knew how to dance his fat fingers up and down the neck of his knockoff Les Paul — style guitar.

“No, Slim won’t let me use his toy anymore.” Slim’s two-octave I’m a Rock Star! mini-key by Hasbro or Mattel or Fisher-Price wasn’t worth the frustration anyway.

“You put in for your own music slot?”

“Yeah — more than a year ago.”

“The rappers who snaked my slot — Doug says he’s gonna cut ’em loose. Two rode out anyway, and he’s pissed about smelling weed and cock-sweat every time they’ve been in there.”

“But I don’t have a band.”

“Put me on the callout with you. Grab Reggie to play drums. Get Mo on bass — at least till someone else rides in.” As Doug’s music clerk, Mo could help push for Fuse to get that slot.

“You hate Mo.”

“Yeah, well, he’s the best on the compound for now.”

“But all you play is metal.”

“Man, I’ll play anything. I just want back in.”

“All original, no covers?”

“Only,” Metal said, then smirked as he unpacked his guitar and plugged in his effects and mini-amp. He would answer with his hands.

“So this is how you do your time, huh?”

Metal fine-tuned a couple of strings. “It’s play music or fight a lot. Oh, by the way. .”

The killdeer craned his neck to hear.

“You need to watch your back. Your bitch-ass bunkie is still talkin’ shit about you.”

Even though Fuse used headphones, Psycho threw tantrums every time he tried to work on music in the cell. The mere sound of fingers striking plastic keys upset that delicate equilibrium of fixations and obsessive compulsions. Every time the doors broke, Fuse and his Casio headed for base, or afternoons with Metal in the big yard, or evenings in the doorway to Mo’s cell.

“Two more weeks,” Mo said one night. “Tee-Bey got paper, so he’ll be ridin’ to Macomb for prerelease. Ray-Ray and Westside’ll make a play to keep the slot, but Doug says you been here longer. They gotta wait their turn.”

Working with Mo opened new ways of approaching music for Fuse. Some thirty-odd years ago as a fish — a first-timer — Mo had fallen in with some O-head musicians who taught him the rudiments of old-school jazz guitar. Mo moved on to teach himself new styles by listening, experimenting, and playing with others who’d come and gone in the decades since. Mo offered Fuse some of his original material, meticulously charted, and taught him efficient ways to chart his own. They impressed each other, together shaping sound to conjure exhilarating new realms beyond the fence, whether to make bold statements or simply discover whatever they might find. The progressions, the patterns, the styles — Fuse picked up many, then surprised Mo more than a few times by passing along some of his own. Still, what Fuse liked most was Mo’s tendency to hold back rather than diving all in.

“Don’t hit that flat five every time you run down a blues riff,” Mo would lecture. “Save that and the flat six, even the major seventh or minor third. Use ’em only when the chords shift, and then only maybe. Make everybody ache for ’em, wonderin’ when you’ll let ’em slide wit choo.”

Fuse brought several of Metal’s songs to their two-man sessions too, surprising Mo with how that bool shit metal could offer clever nuance and space to layer surprises, sometimes even a groove that jumped the rails and cut its own path toward whatever new places it might dare find.

One evening Mo was shuffling through his charts, looking for something to work on, when he caught Fuse craning to see the faded and creased photo of a young black woman tacked to his bulletin board, her arms in the air, apparently dancing. “That’s my little girl — LaTisha,” Mo said quietly. “She’s thirty-four now.”

Fuse nodded. “Very pretty.” He had lots of questions. You in touch? She live in Detroit? Ever come to see you? Grandkids? Still, he knew you don’t ask, not if you really cared. Mo would say what he wanted to say.

“She was born after I got locked up. I’ve never seen her. Her and her mama wanted nothin’ to do with me. Then her mama got cancer and couldn’t beat it, so she sent me the picture toward the end, said maybe I deserved that much, see what I missed.”

Fuse nodded and waited, resisting the urge to touch his keys.

Mo pulled his footlocker over, fumbled with the padlock, dug through layers of paperwork. “You ever had any kids?”

Fuse took a deep breath, not sure how to answer. “A daughter,” he said quietly. “Amanda — Amanda with the beautiful smile.”

“No contact now?”

Fuse shook his head.

“Her mama neither?”

Fuse shook his head again. “Nobody out in the world since Granny died.”

“That sucks.” Mo located a tattered blue pocket-folder. “Me neither — not since Mom’s died.” He pulled out two small sheaves of song charts, one set neatly handwritten, the other photocopied from the same material. “Doug made me copies,” he explained, setting one sheet atop the footlocker, handing its companion to Fuse.

LaTisha’s Dance, read the title.

And they played it, several times, several ways. Mo marveled at the nuance and style and layered rhythms Fuse added. Sometimes the big guy drifted into wistfulness, closing his eyes as he played, once turning away and wiping his face.

“She would like that,” Fuse offered as Mo put the charts back into his footlocker.

“She’ll never hear it,” Mo replied, his frustration palpable. “I’m doing all day.” Life without parole — a death sentence he’d got. . the slow way.

“I’m eligible in fourteen-some,” Fuse said. “Maybe I can play it for her.”

Mo looked surprised, then very serious. He pursed his lips and rubbed his beefy head. “Maybe,” he said.

The days leading up to the first callout on Fuse’s new Saturday slot found him distracted. He worked on the first seven songs they’d selected — three of Mo’s, two of his own, and two of Metal’s — but often found himself also playing variations on the “LaTisha’s Dance” theme. That invariably led to pondering an unwritten song he couldn’t even begin to hear, no matter how deeply he listened: “Amanda’s Smile.”