Megan Bergman: Almost Famous Women: Stories

The bus driver quit last night, and Ruby is behind the wheel of Big Bertha again, going fifty down I-95 in the dark, the bus jostling and rattling over hot tar. It’s late August, and even with the windows down the sweet, muggy air hangs over the women, heating the tops of their instrument cases, warming the expired cold cuts Tiny asks Ruby to keep in a bag behind the driver’s seat so she can make sandwiches and sell them to the other girls for a profit. I gotta hustle, baby , she says, sending Ruby out to buy the meat at the nearest grocery store while the girls practice.

The band lives on the road, gig to gig. They stay up late, practice in the gymnasiums at colored schools, do each other’s hair and makeup, call home if there’s a home to call. The days are starting to run together, Ruby thinks. The nights at the clubs too.

How long can it go on? Ruby wonders. Sure, there’ll be an end. There always is — I just can’t see it. Why work so hard? Why travel so much? We sure as hell ain’t getting rich. We’re getting tired.

Ruby blots her face with a handkerchief. She’s thinking about Tiny as she drives, watching the cotton undulate as the big bus passes field after field. Last night Tiny started a set with her signature line: “I make my living blowing! Horns, that is.” Ruby was having a drink — she was rarely onstage, though she wanted to be — and heard the bartender mutter something about “that fat dyke on the trumpet.” It hadn’t set well with her. She’d gritted her teeth, started sweating, angry as hell. But she couldn’t think of the right thing to say. No, she thinks. I knew the right thing to say but I didn’t say it. Scared as a cat at the dog pound lately.

He don’t know, Ruby thinks, shaking her head. Tiny’s a prophet. A genius with no education. A lover and a fighter. A performer, through and through. Shit, man, Count Basie and the Duke want her onstage. She’s a star! She can hit a high C!

A foul smell finds its way into the bus window, the unmistakable smell of pigs, hot shit, and slop that’s all over Carolina. Like rotten eggs. When the Yankee girls get to squishing up their noses about it, asking, “What’s that smell?” Tiny is quick to say, “Smells like money to me.” Ruby smirks. She’s always Tiny’s audience, not that she ever lacks one.

But no one is awake now. When it’s this quiet, her ears ring. Too much horn. Too many drumbeats. It doesn’t hurt when she plays, just when she listens. More playing then, she thinks, shaking her head a little.

It’s just me and this long, flat road, Ruby thinks. This big blue moon.

She notices bread crumbs scattered across the bus floor from dinner; she’ll sweep them up when they stop for breakfast. She can smell old smoke and the bandleader, Anna Mae Winburn’s gardenia perfume, though Anna Mae has long taken off her white gown and plumed hat and fallen asleep in a berth with cold cream on her face.

Occasionally Ruby passes a farmhouse with the windows thrust open and a light on, and she wonders what people are doing up at three in the morning, if there are sleepless mothers with children or lovers fighting. There’s laundry drying on the lines, the silhouettes of cows in the fields that remind her of the farm her grandfather worked on. More driving. More pine trees. It’s so flat out here, she thinks.

There’s a paper mill on the horizon, smoke billowing from its stack. She thinks of the people working the late shift. People like her father. And then she thinks of nothing at all, just gives herself over to the soothing vibration of the bus, the terribly slow bus, and smokes.

She likes smoking. They all do, even the pretty girls. Cigarettes are good for the jazz singer’s voice; they smooth it out.

Someone taps Ruby on the shoulder. It’s Rae Lee, the manager, lipstick still clinging to her lips in the middle of the night, peering at her through cat-eye glasses.

“Any trouble?”

Ruby exhales smoke out of the open window and clenches the cigarette between her teeth. “No trouble.”

“Anyone ask you any questions?”

“No questions.”

“We’ll honor our commitments,” Rae Lee whispers. “We won’t upset the girls with details. Nervous girls are bad performers. Best to keep on, nail our gigs in Kinston and Rocky Mount, then head up 95 through Virginia and over past Washington, where we can rest for a few days away from Jim Crow. We can regroup and pick up some supplies.”

“Yep,” Ruby says, nodding slowly, eyes fixed on the road. “Fine with me.”

Rae Lee claps a hand on Ruby’s shoulder, then turns and shuffles back to her seat in her new slippers. She’s the only one with new slippers. “She’s skimming off the pot every gig,” Tiny has whispered to Ruby. Maybe it’s true, Ruby thinks. But I’m not going to say anything . I’m going to look the other way. I’m lucky to be here. I’ll do what I’m told.

Ruby is the do-anything girl. It’s not the best job in the world, but it’s a job that keeps her close to Tiny and close to music. She sets out dinner or runs errands to buy sanitary napkins and Coca-Cola when the girls practice. She loads and unloads luggage. If Pauline gets sick and can’t play drums, Ruby plays drums. If Johnnie Mae needs a break from piano, which she hardly does, Ruby plays piano. And if the bus driver quits, and several have, because he’s tired of running from the law, Ruby takes the wheel.

“I can’t do it anymore,” the driver said to Rae Lee last night. “I can’t take sheriff after sheriff banging on the bus door every gig, asking if we have white and colored girls mixing. They know we do. Hell, we advertise it! America’s first integrated all-girl swing band or whatever the hell you call it. I don’t want to go to prison. I’ve got five granddaughters.”

“The police can’t keep you,” Rae Lee said, hand on hip.

“They can do anything. And if the police don’t do it, you know who will if we keep talking about ‘the blood of many races’ and whatnot.”

Ruby knew who the driver was talking about. She’d watched men walk right up to the bus, tucking vicious notes underneath the windshield wipers: How can you sleep, eat, and work together? You disgust me. Leave town or you’ll burn while you sleep. Black, white, Jewish, Mexican, Asian, Hawaiian, mixed up — the International Sweethearts had it all. The girls were chased out of diners and gas stations, refused restrooms, had shop doors closed in their faces. And yet the lines of people still wrapped around the clubs every night, though when the gigs were over Ruby half-expected to see torches coming for the bus. She was always looking over her shoulder now. She was often left alone with the bus, or laundering uniforms in some back-alley place. If someone was looking to pick a fight or make a point, she was an easy target.

Not afraid to use that blade I keep in my back pocket, she thinks. Not above raking it down some man’s face, especially if he’s got a white pointy hat on.

Tiny had the Klan on Ruby’s brain. Last night she got going about it as soon as she got the mic in front of her face. When I think of the South — I think of something southern. Like magnolia blossoms… chittlins… hush puppies… and those three bad brothers, Klu, Kluck, and Klan.

“You can’t go talking about the KKK into a microphone,” Rae Lee hissed when Tiny finished her second encore. “You can be funny but you can’t be outrageous. You can’t put us all in danger like that.”

“You’ve got to entertain or go home,” Tiny says, shrugging Rae Lee off. “You gotta take the audience someplace.”

“You’ve got to keep it clean .”