Cajun Waltz Page 2

  The promoter should have known that Joe Falcon could sell out any venue in south Louisiana without help from of an out-of-state string band. Joe and his fiancée Cleoma Breaux, him on accordion and her on guitar, had recorded two sides for Columbia Records in a hotel suite in New Orleans last spring. Now every area jukebox featured the thirty-five-cent 78 of “Allons à Lafayette” and “The Waltz That Carried Me to My Grave,” as did all the tumbledown households that had found dollars to buy a hand-cranked Victrola from the Montgomery Ward catalog or a Silvertone Super Deluxe from Sears Roebuck so they could hear Joe and Cleoma’s Cajun crooning whenever they wanted.

  Smoking cigarettes and sharing discreet sips from a flask, the couple looked like Jazz Age swells from New York or Chicago rather than the sharecropper and housemaid they’d been before social sing-alongs brought them together and led Cleoma to leave her husband and hit the road with Joe last year. He was Richie’s age; his tailored suit and rimless glasses made him seem older. And Cleoma was nothing but cute with her red lipstick, black curls spilling out from under a slanted hat, and tiny feet in audacious heels that pushed her height to barely five feet, putting her eyes level with Richie’s slack mouth as he stared at the couple.

  “Mes compliments.”

  It took him a moment to realize she was talking to him.

  She continued in English, “You sung real good, we like so much.”

  Joe nodded beside her. “Mon amour was dancin’, she was.” Their accents were burred and smoky—Cajun accents, which next to Richie’s Texas twang was like weathered driftwood compared to Formica.

  “Nice o’ you to say, pros like yourself.”

  “We play,” Joe said. “It pay some, we happy.”

  Joe removed his jacket in preparation to go on, smoothed down his shirtsleeves and straightened his tie. Resembling a stockbroker holding a toy, he fitted his right thumb through a leather loop on one side of his black-lacquered Monarch and his left hand under a strap on the other side. It was as precise and comfortable as a ballplayer donning his glove, Joe’s pull on the bellows while playing a reflex riff equivalent to a last smack of the pocket before taking the field. Cleoma was equally dapper in unpinning her hat and passing her guitar strap over her head without mussing her hair. The guitar, a National steel resonator, looked big as a cotton bale in her arms. She strummed a chord and tuned the strings to Joe’s accordion notes.

  A dispute broke out at the back of the room. Richie’s bandmates were bitching to the promoter about tonight’s fee. The man scornfully pulled bills from his clip. Richie saw his mates take the money and scoot out the far door, dumping him before he could dump them. The promoter pocketed his clip. Seeing Richie watching him, he gave a snide wink to match Richie’s earlier—paid in full, it said. Richie wasn’t upset and in fact felt bleakly affirmed, like a priest watching sinners behave as expected.

  Joe and Cleoma had observed the exchange. “Not right,” she said.

  Richie shrugged. It was time to get a real job. “He hated me from the start.”

  “Us same,” Joe said.

  “Come on. You sold out the joint.”

  “’Cept he say Walter can’t play with us. We ain’ go for that.”

  “Don’t know no Walter.”

  “Be me.” A young man dressed in a suit and white shirt had come up behind them. “I’m the Neg in the show.” It was an amiable term in Cajun circles. “Walter Dopsie.” He carried a scuffed cardboard suitcase in one hand and in the other a flour sack holding—you could tell by the mismatched shapes inside—a violin, bow, and corrugated washboard. He set the bags down and reached out.

  They shook hands. Richie liked black women but preferred the men at a distance—though this Walter was black only if you looked for it. His hair was brushed in slick waves against his temple and his color was like the fingerboard on Richie’s guitar, originally dyed dark to mimic the ebony of pricier instruments but which heavy use had worn back to maple. A girl slouched beside him in a pleated white dress and brown Oxfords. Europe infused her features—green eyes, honey skin, raven hair in loose ringlets so shiny they seemed oiled. Twelve or thirteen, she was stunning by any measure. “My daughter,” Walter said, watching Richie. “Angela. Go by Angel mos’ time.”

  “Pretty.”

  “Talk about. Need me a shotgun soon.”

  Richie, unable quite to pull his eyes off her, directed the only words he could think of to a vague spot above her head. “You love your daddy?”

  “Nope. Wanna go back Shreveport.”

  Her father laughed. “Shreveport? You a Creole girl. B’long in a field, or a pogie plant makin’ that fish meal all day long.”

  Her mouth formed a tough pout. “Not gonna.”

  “Oh no?” Walter tried to look mad but couldn’t sustain it. He said to the others, “Twenty dollar a month cuttin’ ’cane, packin’ fish? She hate that shit much as me.”

  Hollis Jenks, the young deputy sheriff, was scanning the house from behind the curtain. He barked over his shoulder, “Cut that talk, boy.” His glance hung a second too long on Angel, Richie thought.

  “Yes, sir,” Walter said. “My ’pologies.”

  The promoter announced it was showtime. When Joe and Cleoma didn’t respond, he got the hint, licked his thumb, and pulled bills from his clip, leaving each one wet with saliva. “How I be sure you gimme the full hour?”

  “They our people,” Joe said. “We go all night for them.”

  Cleoma slid her guitar to one side to give Walter a parting embrace. “Come see us in Eunice. We make a new song for the radio.”

  “I needa do a little earnin’ first.”

  “I know, an’ we so sorry for this.”

  “Boss make the rules.”

  An idea came to Cleoma. She whispered in Joe’s ear.

  He nodded. “Après ‘Lafayette.’”

  She turned back to Walter. “La seconde,” she promised. “Pour vous.”

  * * *

  THE CROWD CLAPPED politely when the two musicians took the stage. The cheering swelled when they commenced “Allons à Lafayette,” the popular side they’d cut in New Orleans. Without spotlight or amplification they held every eye and filled the hall with sound. Joe’s accordion, its effortless volume, dominated, the flight of his fingers contrasting with his torso’s imperceptible flex as he worked the bellows in and out. Cleoma was barely more animated as she strummed, the sway of her body visible to the first few rows at most. Yet the tune bounded along in cheerful two-four time that soon jammed the aisles with handholding Cajuns twirling in a snug little mob. Joe and Cleoma seemed not to notice. They gazed out from the stage with blank intensity, like blind people hearing their names called across a room.

  Joe sang in a clipped, almost conversational tenor whose plaintive cast would have made even good-time lyrics sound bleak. Cleoma came in on the chorus with a whiny warble that shimmered at the high end. They looked spellbound and slightly embarrassed by the dynamic effect of their sound. Richie had no idea what the French lyrics were saying. Walter sighed beside him. “Sad, sad.”

  “The song? Coulda fooled me.”

  “Tha’s Cajun. Broken hearts, bound for the graveyard, still they gonna dance.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Man wanna marry his girl even he know she trouble.”

  “You know French?”

  “I am French. Much as them.”

  “Lafayette” ended and the applause was loud. “Boy!” It was Deputy Jenks. He’d been jiggling to the music and now in the lull reverted to previous fixations. “No nigras allowed back here.”

  “Okay we listen one more?” Walter asked.

  Jenks sighted over his pointer finger. “One and git.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Onstage, Joe and Cleoma conferred before starting the next number. She gave Walter a warm glance over her shoulder. From the song’s first notes it was clear the crowd wasn’t sure how to take it. Cleoma played a progression of min
or and seventh chords, and her vocals, in French, were mournfully strained. Joe added bits here and there, accordion fills behind the melody that echoed her ragged wail. The song’s volume was low. People leaned toward the stage, trying first to determine what the music was and second to decide if they liked it.

  Certainly Hollis Jenks didn’t like it. At the sound of Walter singing along behind him, he dealt him a nasty glare. “‘Blues Negres,’” Walter said, answering the question before it was asked. He put an arm around his daughter. “‘Nigger Blues.’”

  Jenks pointed to the exit door.

  Walter took up his suitcase and flour sack. “Blues ain’t nothin’ but a good man beat down,” he said to Angel. “Them’s the words Miss Cleoma singin’. My words.” And to Jenks: “My song.”

  He put his shoulder to the steel exit door. He was on the scrawny side, and Richie reached across to help push it open. Then Richie followed Walter and his daughter outside, somehow sure he’d regret it if he didn’t.

  * * *

  WALTER DOPSIE HAD first met Joe Falcon and Cleoma Breaux at the Columbia sessions in New Orleans last April. Occasionally crossing paths since then, they’d done a broadcast together at Shreveport’s KWKH two days ago. Walter got fifteen dollars for backing them on fiddle while they did “Lafayette” for the radio audience, a nice payday he’d blown on a room at the colored hotel and a thrift-shop dress for his daughter. Shreveport was Paris as far as Angel knew; she’d never been out of Hancock Bayou down on the Gulf where she lived with her mother. Now it was time to get her home—Walter liked liquor and women and she wasn’t an asset in those pursuits. When Richie mentioned he had a vehicle after they left the Pinefield Auditorium, Walter calculated that free transportation and access to any fais do-dos on the way were good reasons to befriend him.

  “Fais do-do.” Richie had heard the term before. “Be a dance hall, right?”

  “Dance party,” Walter said. “One settin’ up on the highway I seen comin’ in.” He unlatched Richie’s trunk to put his suitcase inside. Angel climbed onto the leather seat from the passenger’s side. “Pay good, too.”

  The notion that these two expected to ride with him settled on Richie agreeably. On the brink of quitting music, he found Walter’s zeal for it encouraging. Too, there was something about Angel that made him reluctant to look at her but also reluctant to give up the chance, as if maybe proximity would build up his immunity to whatever hazard she posed.

  “What you got here?” Walter lifted Richie’s new accordion out of the trunk. “Hooboy, we make some money now.”

  “Ain’t learned it yet.”

  “Leave that to me.”

  “Thought you was a fiddle player.”

  “I play it all, boy.”

  “No colored call me boy, we straight on that?”

  Walter doffed his jacket and laid it atop his suitcase in Richie’s trunk. He slipped his hands into the straps of the accordion and peeled off a giddy melody as he walked around to the front of the vehicle.

  Richie was too bewildered to be angry. Apparently they were a duo now, heading off to play some damn barn dance. “Least tell me you got dough for the pump,” he said, but again received no reply.

  Walter and Angel had caught a ride here from Shreveport earlier today in Joe Falcon’s touring car. On the road into Pinefield, Walter had noticed a tin-roofed meeting hall with hurricane shutters hinged over its windows. Men were hoisting the shutters and hooking them open. That was the signal, plain as neon, that a fais do-do was on tap tonight. Two bits a head, children in free, homebrew for sale by the dipperful, music by whichever act, out of the several that invariably showed up at these things, best filled the dance floor and drew the biggest cheers.

  “They pass the hat, do they?” Richie asked as he climbed in and punched the starter. Angel was squeezed between him and her father. Richie’s guitar in its case lay across their knees. She folded her arms on top and rested her head. Her dark hair fanned across her face and touched Richie’s wrist as he shifted gears on the steering column.

  Walter noodled on the accordion as he directed Richie down the road. Twilight washed the trees and buildings gray in the Model T’s headlamps. “Best band take the pot,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me us. With no kinda practice.”

  “You be white. I do the rest.” At Richie’s look, Walter explained, “Got to be. No Neg gettin’ in ’cept a white man vouch for him. But ain’t nobody play Cajun like me.”

  “Even Cajuns,” Angel said drowsily.

  Richie looked down. Her face on her arms was turned his way, the curve of her mouth reflecting passing lights from outside. She easily, her father too if he worked at it, could have passed for white. Richie wished they’d give it a try, drop the “Neg” and the “Nigger Blues” at least while traveling with him. When Angel moved in her sleep, her hair tickled his forearm. He slid his hand up the steering wheel to make it stop.

  There were more wagons and horse buggies than motorcars outside the meeting hall. Folks milling about in the dusk had a spectral glow from the yellow-lit windows and the flare of cigarette lighters. Ladies collected admission at a front table. Walter told Richie it was early yet, the music wouldn’t start till nine or ten, after the heat of the day subsided. Richie parked beside a shallow flood gully, grabbed his guitar and got out. Walter removed his fiddle and bow from the flour sack and put Richie’s accordion inside to go along with the washboard. He slung the sack over his shoulder like a hobo. Angel fished six thimbles from the suitcase and gave them to her father to keep in his pocket. “Who play the washboard?” Richie asked.

  “Rubboard, we call it,” Walter said. “She feel it more’n she play it.”

  “It’s easy,” Angel said.

  “Easy ’cause you good at it.”

  “Tellin’ me she on with us?” Richie said.

  “Girl lay a spell,” Walter said. “You’ll see.”

  Walter found the fais do-do’s organizers, introduced Richie and himself, and asked where they could store their instruments till the show started; where, too, they might get a sip of something beforehand. The head man’s face and forearms were leathery from outdoor work. “I seen you in Ville Platte one time,” he said. “Played good.”

  Walter scanned around. “Crowd pretty thin.”

  “Joe Falcon in town. He done, all them folks be here.”

  “What you think, then?”

  “Fill the place, we get you twelve, fifteen.”

  “Throw in some hooch?”

  The man put it straight. “Neg need his own cup.”

  Walter made his way to a parked flatbed where booze was being dispensed from jugs off the back. Men standing around it took slugs from shared containers. Before they could react to Walter’s intrusion, he removed a tin cup from his sack and held it out. They flicked their eyes twice from his face to the cup before obliging him with a pour. He raised his hand in a genial toast before taking a good long drink.

  Richie and the fais do-do organizer watched the exchange. “You an’ him partners long?”

  “Not long,” Richie said.

  The man’s voice turned stern. “Keep him sober.”

  * * *

  UNTIL JOE AND Cleoma’s performance ended in Pinefield and their fans began showing up to continue the party at the fais do-do, the crowd inside the meeting hall remained sparse. Walter opted to let a local combo go on first—mom and dad on guitar, daughter on fiddle, son on accordion. Watching through a side door as they twanged away, Richie appreciated Walter’s strategy, for the dance floor was mostly kids horsing around and oldsters getting in a few steps before heading home to bed.

  Kerosene lamps slung from nails in the wood framing threw greasy light this way and that. Birds nested in the rafters. Smelling of sawdust and creosote, the hall was built on blocks off the ground. There was no raised performance stage. The band stood level with the dancers just a few feet away from them, as if playing in somebody’s parlor. “Get any fuller,” Richie
said over the clattering floorboards, “how people gonna hear us?”

  Walter pointed to some large wood crates by the wall behind the band. “Git up on ’em, shout it over they heads.”

  “Stand on them things an’ play?”

  “Feel like you flyin’.”

  Walter took a swallow of moonshine. He passed the cup to Richie, who, in trying to avoid touching his lips to the rim, poured more into his mouth than he’d meant to. Shuddering with the 140-proof burn, he handed the cup to Angel.

  She took a sip, clamping her eyes till the fire subsided. Her forehead was damp with perspiration and strands of hair stuck to her skin. Richie reached over unthinking and brushed them aside. Her glance caught his before he looked away. In the corner of his eye he saw her smile, which annoyed him because she was mixed race for one thing and a mere child worse than that. When she handed back the cup he accepted it brusquely to remind her of her place.

  The next hours passed in a blur. People came from the Falcon show and filled the hall. Late as it was, mothers with infants and children repaired to a side chamber that had chairs to sit on to nurse the babies and cots for sleepy kids; the mothers spelled each other babysitting in order to take turns with their men on the dance floor. Benches lined the sides of the hall. Older women, the widows and matriarchs, sat chaperone as teenagers touched hands and whatever more they could manage in the dim-lit whirl, the twining of arms, the soft collision of hips and torsos. Spouses kissed on the dips, the music breezing overhead like fresh air after rain. Young men and women, nervous hawks and willing prey, surveyed the scene from opposite corners.

  Richie observed it all from his perch on a produce crate between Walter and Angel, his center position dictated by Walter so no one would doubt that a white man headed the band. Richie’s balance was wobbly at first—from the moonshine and also the strangeness of the scene. He was strumming tunes he didn’t know, chasing the lead of Walter’s accordion and Angel’s rubboard rhythm. He looked at her often. Her silver board hung from a cord around her neck, clasped to her front like makeshift armor. Her eyes were shut as she played and her body moved in waves. She wore a thimble on each thumb, pointer, and middle finger. Her hands flew across the board’s rippled surface, giving smacks on the downbeat and a syncopation of zips and runs that made the music jump. Glancing down, he saw that sweat at the small of her back was making her dress cling in the cleft.