Reach the Shining River Read Free

large anti-trust cases. Successful young and hadn’t looked back.
    “How’s my girl?” Lloyd asked. “Not used to being out of the spotlight, are you?”
    “I can handle it, Daddy.”
    He barked a laugh, gazed at the head table. “Isabel looks fine today,” he said. “Though not in your league, sweetheart.”
    “Daddy!”
    He looked down at Emmett.
    “No argument from me, Mr. Perkins.”
    Lloyd nodded curtly, cleared his throat. Scanning the room, he said to Emmett, “You busy tomorrow?”
    “Sunday?”
    Lloyd waited.
    “No, not busy,” Emmett said, glancing at Fay. “I’m free.”
    “Meet me at Mission Hills. Two o’clock. Some men I’d like you to meet.”
    He touched his daughter’s shoulder and moved off. Short strides, parade-ground swing of the arms.
    Fay raised her eyebrows. “Mission Hills Country Club,” she said. “That’s an invitation you don’t get every day.”
    A gust of warm air stirred the curtains, a whiff of moisture and a change of pressure. White-coated men hustled to the windows and extended long, brass-hooked poles to close the fanlights. Bad weather on the way.
    “He didn’t invite me to play.”
    “One step at a time, Emmett.”
     

 
    3.
     
    On Saturday night, Eddie hadn’t shown for work. Arlene was in the Sunset Club dressing room, if you could call it that, putting on her make-up. Piney Brown came in without knocking.
    “Where is he?”
    “What’s a lady got to do to get some privacy around here, Piney?”
    She sat on a beer barrel peering into a shard of broken mirror. Her hand shook, making it tough to get her lipstick straight. Behind Piney was the buzz of a full house.
    “I can’t wait no longer.”
    “Then get Otis to play,” she said. “He knows the tunes.”
    “Otis all gowed-up.”
    “So what? The man plays better when he’s high.”
    She drew in her lips to seal the color and carefully wiped the corners of her mouth. She did not want to think about Eddie right now. It was all she could do to get ready for the show. Busiest night of the week. He wanted to get all personal about this, well, that was his problem. Otis might lose the rhythm once or twice, but nobody would notice.
    Piney fretted. “I don’t know, Arlene.”
    She stood up, smoothed the sequins of her gown, adjusted the camellia in her hair. “Get Otis to warm ’em up,” she said.
    “What you opening with?”
    “‘Lady Be Good’. In G.”
    *
    A full house was tough on the nerves but easier to gather and please. If you knew what you were doing, and Arlene did. Had known from the beginning when, eleven years old, she sang “Go Tell It on the Mountain” in the Mount Zion church choir. Hitting the notes, yes. But plenty of singers could carry a tune. You had to get the audience involved. Start a conversation with them. You had to have soul.
    Otis was at the piano, warming the crowd with a little boogie-woogie. Piney gave him the high sign and he segued into the first song.
    The audience stirred, and faces turned stage left. Draymen, day laborers, housecleaners, cooks, domestics: these folks worked with their hands but knew their chord progressions. “Lady Be Good” was Arlene’s calling card – not the white-bread Fred Astaire arrangement but Bill Basie’s Kansas City version, up-tempo, swinging, with Lester Young soloing on tenor like he was making love to the long-legged gal serving drinks.
    Arlene stepped into the light, singing just a shade behind the beat, her hands moving down along the sequins of her dress, from breasts to hips to thighs. It wasn’t the words that carried the soul but the ghost of Young’s saxophone, its sexy lines floating in her mind. Voices called out from the semi-darkness, filled with lust and admiration and surprise. Glasses clinked. The air was blue with cigarette smoke. Ecstasy and longing and gospel shouts. But this wasn’t church.
    Listen to my tale of woe
    It’s terribly sad but true
    All dressed up , no place to go
    Each evening I’m