Nighthawk Blues Read Free Page A

inside. There was never a word, of course, not a single word, about her discoverer and mentor—how he was, how he was bearing up under the strain, how terrible it must be for him. She was, after all, his discovery; if she had the talent he was the only one with the willingness to advance it, to promote it, to indulge it, to put up with her absurd middle-class guilt, the lack of necessity behind her art. Her public should give him a medal, they honestly should, because without him—oh, it was absurd on the face of it, he was just distorting the reality. It was Hawk, not Jerry, who had first heard that something in her voice, it was Lori herself who had sought and captured Sid’s attention. Still, if it hadn’t been for him, she might still be in ethnomusicology getting her Ph.D. somewhere, playing timid botdeneck behind some decrepit old bluesman the local Blues Appreciation Society had brought to town, beautiful, deferential, effacing herself and her talent. Her pictures surrounded him mockingly, each click of the camera undeniably capturing some aspect of her appeal but somehow leaving the inner self untouched. Her eyes calm, still, playful, her lips pursed in an oddly self-satisfied smile, her blond hair whipped around her face no doubt by one of those vigorous blushing denials, elusive, teasing, inviting, sensual, the whole obscured by each of the parts, the whole somehow untranslatable—
    He knew now what he should have done. He should have hidden her talent from her, he should have denied it when others spotted it, never even hinted that it might exist. But that hadn’t been an option. That had never been an option. She would have realized, someone else would have told her, and then he would have lost her anyway. He hung up the phone bitterly. “What do you say?” he said to himself, not for the first time. “What do you say?”
    At the airport he was as confused as ever by the dizzying rush, the isolating busde. They were just thousands of strangers gathered under one roof. And yet somehow, as he always did, as he always would, of course, he got through. On the plane he ordered a double Scotch and then another, setded back, sailed into the sunset, and closed his eyes for a brief troubled dream before the rude shock of landing jarred him awake. At the claims area he hung around waiting for his bag, eyeing the black porters, black taxi drivers, black maintenance men, middle-aged and elderly, any one of whom for all he knew might be another Screamin’ Nighthawk, another castoff from another life who might be sought out and lionized by a community of whose existence he could be only dimly aware, while he was himself insignificant and anonymous within his own community. God help him.
    At the hospital they gave him a hard time, because it was after visiting hours. It didn’t seem to make much difference that he had come all this way, nor were they interested in who the Screamin’ Nighthawk was. What they were interested in, of course, was who was going to pay the bill. Indianapolis had enough indigents of its own, thank you, said the admitting nurse, taking down the scanty information that Jerry was able to provide—born December 27, 1902, 1900, 1899? Given name: T.R. Jefferson. Social security number? Jerry almost wished he had brought clippings, but it wouldn’t have meant shit. Name. Rank. Serial number. Date of birth. Mother’s maiden name. Father’s occupation. Maybe these people had it right. Maybe that was all that counted, these statistics, facts, an orderly life’s progression, the very factors whose absence had made it so impossible to locate Hawk for a period of nearly twenty years.
    At last he cornered a young, mustached doctor. Briefly he explained the situation. The doctor introduced him to another doctor, portly, middle-aged, his white hospital gown wrinkled and stained. The old man led him to the elevator, which was stuck somewhere between the fifth and sixth floors, explaining between