Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues

It was no use. I did not believe it.

I knew I should get up, get back to packing, but I didn’t move. An odd feeling come over me then. I could feel my hands and feet tingling like they wasn’t my own no more, and then it seemed like some shadow passed over my heart. I shivered.

I must have slept. I woke with my head twisted hard to one side, a long line of drool dampening the front of my shirt. It was still dark. I got up, checked the clock, grimaced. Still a few hours yet.

Then I was packed and wrestling the battered suitcase down the stairwell and out to the waiting taxi. It idled there in the cold early light, the clouds of exhaust hauntingly white in the street. Gave me a chill, seeing it.

I got into the cab with a groan. The peeling seats smelled bad, like garlic or onions. ‘BWI,’ I mumbled. ‘Don’t go taking no scenic routes either. I got a plane to catch.’

The cabbie wore an Orioles cap turned backwards. I ain’t understood how men got to keeping their hats on indoors in this day and age. He shrugged. ‘Sure thing, boss, BWI.’ He punched the meter and pulled away.

The city always struck me as dirty this early in the morning. The streets wet with the night rains, the slow scuttle of rats under parked cars, the trash and blown papers in the alleys. Wasn’t always this grim.

At my age, a man shouldn’t have to take a cab to the airport. Should be someone he can call, take him there, wish him a safe flight. I ain’t got no regrets about it though.

‘No regrets is right, boss,’ the cabbie said cheerfully. ‘Regrets don’t do you no good.’

I looked at him in surprise. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud.

‘Where you off to?’ he said.

I watched his eyes in the rearview mirror, drifting over to me, away.

‘London,’ I said. ‘I’m going back to London. I live there.’ Better not to tell folks your business, I figure. Nor to let them know you’re leaving your pad empty. A man’s got to be careful these days.

‘London?’ the cabbie said. ‘No kidding. I used to live in London. England’s alright but the food’ll kill you. Whereabouts you live over there?’

I frowned. I ain’t got no mind for this damn small talk. Best to shut him up quick. ‘Not London England,’ I said. ‘London Ontario. In Canada.’

The cabbie’s eyes sort of glazed over. Canada kills any conversation quick, I learned long ago. It’s a little trick of mine.

I was watching the streets scroll on past. Baltimore always seems like the kind of city you’re either leaving or just returning to. Ain’t no kind of place to hang your hat. Even as a kid I’d dreamed of getting out. I watched the green wall of shrubbery along the freeway pour past the cab window, feeling uneasy. I ain’t no fool, I known this was like to be my last trip away.

See, I was born here, in Baltimore, before the Great War. And when you’re born in Baltimore before the Great War you think of getting out . Especially if you’re poor, black and full of sky-high hopes. Sure B-more ain’t south south, sure my family was light-skinned, but if you think Jim Crow hurt only gumbo country, you blind. My pals and I was as much welcome in white diners as some Byron Meriwether would be breaking bread in Jojo’s Crab House. Things was bitter . Some of my mama’s family — two of her brothers and a schoolteacher sister — they was passing as whites down Charlottesville way. Cut us off entirely. You don’t know how I dreamed of showing up there, breaking up their parade. I ain’t so sure about it now, I suppose they was just trying to get by best they could. We could’ve passed too, said we was bohunks or something, but my pa ain’t never gone for that. Negro is what the lord made us, he always said. Don’t want to be nothing else.

At the airport, I checked myself in and started the slow walk to the gate. Long white tunnels, checkpoints, passports. I didn’t see any sign of Chip.

Even when they called for boarding, I ain’t seen him.

Not a bad start, I thought with satisfaction. Hallelujah. Maybe Chip going to miss this plane.

We was set to fly first-class, courtesy of old Caspars, and I’d no sooner settled into the wide seat, slipped off my old orthopedics, and leaned right back, than I saw Chip shuffling on down the aisle toward me.

‘Sid,’ he said, out of breath. ‘I didn’t think I goin to make it. They damn near lost my reservation.’ He looked crisp, sharp, perfectly attired in a black silk suit with a grey kerchief folded in the breast pocket. ‘I think you in the wrong seat,’ he said, studying his ticket.

I pulled mine out, looked at the numbers on the overhead latches.

‘Ain’t you in 2B?’ he said.

‘4D,’ I said. ‘I’m in the right seat.’

He frowned. ‘I’m in 2A. I ain’t nowhere near you. That can’t be right.’

He ducked his head, looking around. ‘On the other side of the goddamned plane,’ he muttered. ‘I put us together, brother, I swear it. Hell.’

‘It’s alright, Chip,’ I said, all of a sudden feeling friendlier. ‘Don’t you mind it. I’m like to sleep the whole way anyhow.’

Chip nodded, miserable. ‘Well. Maybe they’ll let me come over once we get under way. Maybe the seats’ll be free.’

Then he was gone, settling in on the far side, and the stewardess was stalking up the aisle stowing bags and kits and purses. And then we was lifting up off the tarmac and tilting steeply, rising up into the ether. I gripped my old armrests and stared out the cabin windows at the clouds. It was too grey to see much of the city below. Before the seatbelt light come off I’d downed two sleeping pills and drawn the blanket up to my neck.

Well, I thought drowsily. A man ain’t but one kind of crazy.

I could see Chip leaning out into the aisle, trying to catch my attention. I leaned back, closed my eyes. Berlin, I thought. Hell.

Chip looked worn awful thin by the time we set down. More long grey tunnels, checkpoints, passports and the like. Then we was sitting on a tight little bench at the luggage carousel waiting for my damn suitcase to clatter down. It didn’t come. We watched two green bags turn on the slatted ramp, vanish, come back around again.

‘They lost it,’ I said. ‘I fly once in fifteen years and they lose my damn luggage.’

Chip nodded. ‘I ain’t lost a piece of luggage in near forty years. Good thing, too, cause the stuff ain’t cheap, boy.’

I looked at his matching luggage, all monogrammed, high-end leather, set out beside him in descending order of size like a damn family of suitcases. ‘Ain’t that something,’ I scowled. ‘How about that. You just one amazing traveller, ain’t you.’

He chuckled. ‘Aw, Sid, I just saying. It’s alright. I’ll lend you some clothes for the premiere tonight.’

‘I ain’t going to need your clothes. They going to get me my damn suitcase.’

‘Sure they will,’ Chip said encouragingly. And I got that funny dark feeling in my chest again, like something was real wrong. It ain’t normal , Chip being this friendly.

At the luggage counter a man with a natty little moustache told me my luggage ought to arrive at the hotel before me. It been rerouted by accident to Poland. But it coming right back, sure.

‘Poland!’ Chip laughed, as we stood in line at passport control. ‘It just going on ahead of us, to let Hiero know we coming.’ And later, at the taxi stand, he said again, ‘Poland, Sid. Think of it. That ain’t so far your suitcase can’t go there and get back to your hotel before you even arrive. Hell, that’s close, brother. Closer than DC to your old Fells Point pad.’

I scowled and looked away.

On the drive in I told the cabbie to swing us by the Brandenburg Gate. I’d sat up front to get some space from Chip but he just kept leaning on forward, breathing his damn cigarillo breath down my neck.