Colson Whitehead - John Henry Days

Goodman’s Records is the store on the corner, and its windows are so clean compared to the rest of the establishments down the row that it seems to prop up the whole block, like a piece of wood steadying a wobbly chair. Moses burps, feels a finger of bile in his throat. He looks down at the black handle of the guitar case cut across his palm like a blood brother slash. Time to meet the man, he says and pushes in the door, waking bells.

He figures a lot of these people are in from the country, come into town on a Saturday afternoon to pick up what they need to make the neighbors jealous. Yards of fine new cloth, new pots like what they see only in the Sears catalog and maybe a new Bible. Dust in their cuffs and untamed hems, boots for the fields. No place to buy race records where they live, Goodman’s is a telegraph wire to the rest of the Negro world. He’s a smart little white boy: set up shop on the South Side where other white people are too scared to give the folks what they need. Where there’s a clientele and a need. He sees four listening booths along the right wall and a skinny boy disappears into one, clutching some nasty tune under his arms. Generally he’ll stay out of record stores; the names of his fellow songsmiths up there on the wall, or angled up in crates like a plot of wind-fret weeds, depress him. He sees the names of men he has played with, traded tunes with, shared women with. They have been recorded. A young woman, her face hidden by the drooping flaps of her hat, snatches a James record out of a bin; he recognizes the label: Paramount. Paramount and Decca and Lonely Moon. Lemon Jefferson has been dead for years but they don’t want the public to know. They put out the backlog of recordings one after another so people will think he’s still alive. He reads, Paramount Records are recorded by the latest electrical process. Great volume, amazing clear tone. Always the best music — first on Paramount! There’s a little pip of a boy at the register but Moses doesn’t see Goodman. Sweat pouring out of him. He tightens the fat knot of his tie and sees the instruments at the back of the store. Violins and banjos on little hooks on the wall like family pictures, sheet music in rows, folk ditties and Scott Joplin. He sees the guitars. Brand-new Stellas and Nationals for nine dollars and ninety-five cents. Rues his scratched-up old Stella that’s almost as scratched up as him, and works the best as it can, like him. Have you seen the new Tri-Cone Nationals? Goodman asks, coming out of the back room. He nods up to something beautiful that Moses doesn’t see; Moses sees a hundred-and-twenty-five-dollar price tag and strings popped on his old Stella. I’m glad you came down, Moses, Goodman says. The man nods to the stringy boy at the register and sends a stare that orders, don’t let these people put anything in their coats.

Upstairs at Goodman’s boxes and boxes of records are stacked to the ceiling and hide dusty windows. The air doesn’t move up there. Walking up the steps makes him a little dizzy and red snakes writhe popping on his eyeballs. You can take that stool, Goodman says. Moses falls into the stool like a diver. I got the idea when I started doing vanity records for my customers, the white man says. For five dollars I put their songs down for them. “Happy Birthday, Annie,” whatever they want. Then a man came in from American looking for some race records and we started talking. He was supposed to be in charge of the company’s race music label and didn’t know a thing about who’s out there. Hadn’t heard of anybody.

How much do I get for this?

I can offer you forty dollars a side.

I’ve heard people get sixty, seventy dollars a side for work like this.

Who’s paying sixty?

That’s what I heard.

Look, I don’t even know if American is going to go for your stuff. Do you know how much they have to sell just to break even? Five hundred. I don’t even know if what we get is going to be usable.

Do you have something to get me started?

What do you mean?

A little something.

Ah. That’s right. Goodman considers how much whiskey to put in the tin cup, then pours a taste more in. Seems he was prepared, Moses thinks. He knows how to treat talent. Goodman opens an icebox in the back of the room and pulls out a platter of beeswax an inch thick. He says, The heat can ruin it so I have to keep the masters in there.

I’ve heard about that. (Seen it before.)

From that mike, your music will go from the microphone and through to the amplifying stylus and that will cut it into the wax. It’s pretty straightforward.

Alcohol-sick and sick from the heat, Moses feels better after a little rye. Tin cup quivering in his hands. A minute ago he could have heaved his guts to the floor but now he’s calm. Funny how his hands shake in the morning but never when he feels a string, pulls it to the fret and lets the arrow fly. Goodman wants the songs from Rudy’s. Spier said play what you want to play But Goodman stares at him when Moses leans to the microphone. He gives orders.

Let’s do that one you sang about the old house.

“My Baby’s House.”

Let’s do “My Baby’s House,” but this time don’t do the “uh-huh” when you get to the chorus. Leave that out.

Can’t leave out the “uh-huh.” That’s the whole song.

Just for this take. I’d like to hear how it sounds without it.

Goodman signals Moses to play. Goodman keeps telling the man his business. He’ll nod at different parts in the songs, a quick jab, but he does it at parts that Moses doesn’t think are important. Things Goodman hears in what he’s doing that Moses doesn’t even realize.

You changed the chorus. That’s not how you did it last night. He waves his notes from the show last night at the man whose show it is no longer. Like he’s in charge now.

I like to mix it up. Sometimes do this, and then some other time I’ll do that. (It has a mind of its own.)

They do sixteen songs, two sides engraved into the disk while the hot air sucks sweat out of him and into his suit. Goodman says he wants him to come in tomorrow and Moses is so afraid he’s fucked up his chance again that he says yeah, and doesn’t even ask when he’s getting paid. The man gives no sign as to if he liked it or didn’t. Just — can you come back tomorrow at the same time?

Moses walks halfway to his hotel and stops. On the other side of the street an empty lot allows the sun to splash on him, blast of heat through that notch. He sets down his guitar case and starts playing a few songs. Six, seven songs in and no one drops coins in his guitar case in appreciation of his technique and mastery, his shaping of song. They sweat and walk past him, with their sagging bags or sweating bottles, hurry through that patch of sun and back into the shade. Then he realizes that he hasn’t been playing at all, he’s just been standing there panting, holding his guitar and staring off into sunlight.

He is fret.

He goes back to his hotel room and sweats out a few bad dreams before the gig.

Moses oversleeps and makes it to Rudy’s just in time. The room is more packed than the first night. Word has spread. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday. Rudy gives him a glass of whiskey and Moses sets it down next to his stool. Some nights it’s all he can do to drag his ass from song to song, like tramping through ditches, just make it through the set. Then there are nights like this. The second night in Rudy’s in the first song he accidentally repeats a verse — they don’t notice of course — but it works. It makes the song better. The lines had to be said twice to get them in people’s faces, to say you can’t look away, look at me when I’m talking to you. The rest of the song benefits from the mistake, like it let off weight and now it can sail higher, above Rudy’s and all the South Side. People in Canada look up and see it over the Great Lakes. And from there it only gets better.