Funeral Flowers

Maneuvering his car along unfamiliar streets, I pull up behind two cabs waiting at a stoplight.  I, again, doubt what I’m doing, then look out the window to distract my thoughts.  A low building angles back from the corner and I follow dim glass brick windows to the alley.  The monotony of grey and brown tones—sky, sidewalk, smog, mood—is broken by a wild display of color jutting from a dumpster.  Dozens of purple orchids nestle among white lilies, overwhelming the glossy bow circling the arrangement.  A newly acquired instinct allows me sudden recognition of this place as a funeral home.  A faded sign confirms my hunch, proclaiming this one belongs to the Johnson Brothers. 

The light has turned green.  I turn my wheel sharp to the left and dart into the alley.  Parking alongside the dumpster I now notice two smaller bouquets.  Multi-colored carnation petals litter across puddles and stray down among twist-tied bags.  The other bunch, roses, is covered in coffee grounds.  “Java-rose.” I assign the strange scent a name and fantasize its marketing possibilities.  I’m avoiding their sadness, but my eyes are drawn back to the orchids perched proudly atop the trash, unmarred and very alone.  The lily petals are spread wide, arms out in invitation.  Denied the right of every flower plucked from soil, they’ll die without owner or observer since purchased for a dead person and placed at a funeral where no one is allowed to enjoy their beauty.  I’ve made a decision before I am conscious of it and begin gently releasing flowers from their Styrofoam hold.  The plastic, silver base is too large and too obnoxious to take.  I gather a bouquet, a pleasant one that lies across my arm.  I use the ribbon to tie it and sigh, sending breaths of regret to the other blossoms. 

As I place my assortment across the passenger seat the quell I knew would come arrives.  I curl forward to rest forehead on steering wheel and let it pass.  I don’t know who sent flowers to his funeral.  I didn’t see them, didn’t notice, didn’t care.  There must have been a lot, there wasn’t even room to stand and that’s what people do in awkward situations—order flowers over the phone on credit.  They’ll at least remember him until next month’s statement is paid. 

I never thought about an evening janitor gathering all that floral sympathy, tossing it out.  His grandma probably hadn’t gotten flowers in years.  If I’d given them to her, she could have shared with her entire floor at the old folks home.  Or they could have filled one of three tiny rooms of his aunt’s bare apartment, furniture long ago sold to her habit.  Where the flowers ended up I don’t know nor need to; it’s easy to justify my inattention to the funeral clean-up, minor among my recent sins.  I ease the car into gear, disoriented and unaware as to where I am headed.  I turn right out of the alley and catch a glimpse of myself as I check the rearview mirror.  My hair is washed and combed which makes me remember.

--------------------------

I arrive at the bar, only a little late after my flowered distraction.  I walk up to a crowd mostly of strangers and right away regret coming as I knew I would.  He steps forward and eases the introductions with a hand on the small of my back.  His brother, Michael, is in town.  I concentrate on the warmth on my spine and manage to nod and look him in the eye.  I’m grateful to retreat into a high-backed chair even though it gives his brother a good angle to glower at me.  Michael thinks our timing is all wrong. 

I don’t think about things like timing anymore, which is probably how I ended up here.  That and my suspicion that he doesn’t either.  He carries the evening on his smile and alcohol loosens suspicion.  I’m the newcomer and people want to know about me.  I offer them nothing. The truth too raw, yet it feels disloyal to ignore it or make up something else.  That makes me a girl with no past, intruding on a group of friends who are protective of the one I’ve met. 

He doesn’t care, he says.  He’s crazy about me and he’ll wait to find out, or doesn’t need to know at all as long as I keep agreeing to see him.  This is the fourth time, each outing a huge breath of air that keeps me alive through stretched out reclusive days.  I’ve shunned sunlight, conversation, shaving cream and vegetables.  I’ve embraced heavy makeshift curtains, memories, morbid photos and Twinkies.  I started keeping the box in the trunk of my car after getting sick from eating five in a row at four in the morning.  But it had taken up forty-five minutes, nibbling each curved end, then sucking as much crème as I could before needing to eat away more of the cake lining.  Keeping the snacks off site ensures slow consumption.  I have a lot of Twinkie rules now; like I can never eat them outside and can only bring one in at a time.  I am allowed to buy two boxes at the store since going is an ordeal.  I sometimes think I’d make it through my husband’s death if I just had someone to bring me Twinkies, but it’d have to be an invisible someone.  That’s what this man is, I realize. 

It’s time for me to go.  I’ve reached the limit as happens on these visits to alive-world.  Guilt for being there, out living among people, overwhelms me and I usually leave without saying good bye. 

This time, he catches me.  “I know you have to go.  My brother and I could use a ride.” His eyes don’t betray a motive.  We walk along sidewalks chilled by dark.  The pair is boisterous, somewhat drunk and light, and their chatter scares the shadows away.  I’m glad for my decision until we reach the car and his brother opens the door. 

Michael stares from the flowers, to me, and back as if they are ingredients in a witch’s brew that he knows well.  His eyes accuse me, I think, then realize I’ve mistaken shock for something sinister.  When he erupts into laughter its my turn for surprise.  Not merely amused, Michael cackles and is joined by his brother as soon as he spots the bouquet of provocation.  They both attempt to, but neither can voice an explanation through their laugh-pulled lips.  They snort and stomp, lean on one another and rock in awkward steps while their abdomens push extra air to supply their hilarity.  I look on bewildered, ask a few lame questions, begin to concoct excuses. 

“I cannot believe it,” his brother forces out, igniting an even stronger round of shrieking.  They both crease, giving in to the weakness laughter has made of them and sink to the pavement.  They don’t stop and can’t glance at each other without smirking and deepening the laugh.  They’ve tapped underlying muscles.  They hurt and begin to moan. 

I consider leaving them, a heap of hysterical brotherhood slung against a city wall.  Finally, they begin to manage a story for me, through great gulps of air, and taking turns finishing the other’s sentence.  On the way to the bar, he’d tried to make the cab driver stop.  He’d wanted to turn left, into the same alley I’d spotted.  He’d seen the orchids, wanted to take the lilies.  His brother protested.  It’s unethical, it’s disgusting, it’s not convenient.  What would he do with them anyway?  He’d give them to me, he’d said and to this Michael sealed the argument: you can’t give a girl funeral flowers.  Michael then instructed the cab driver to continue on.

“He looked back,” Michael says in short gasps.  “As we pulled away through the intersection, he looked back at the flowers like he was missing out on something.”

I can’t believe my luck, which surely couldn’t be luck but a warp in the universe created just for me and my grief.  I reach into the car, select even numbers of purple and white and hand the makeshift bouquet to him.

“Come on, I’ll take you home.”                       

Mundane Madness

Dale Johnson had been waiting in line for 45 minutes now, and was damn glad of it, he thought, as he looked behind him at the line which stretched all the way down and curved between the center isles of chairs.  He was irritated at the four people who had managed to secure positions in front of his, but knew this was somewhat childish so kept it to himself.  Carolyn, after all, had already reprimanded him upon arrival when in his rush to get her seated and himself into line he had dropped her purse scattering loose change, lipsticks, and an address book under the row of plastic chairs.  He’d had to stoop and stretch and reach, nicking his head twice on steel supports and scuffing his crisp khakis at the knee.  And while he retrieved the contents of Carolyn’s purse first one, then another unaware passenger casually took a place in line, causing Dale to sweat and mumble a curse.  “Really, Dale” Carolyn clicked her tongue and Dale could feel her eyes rolling.  Settled now, Dale looked over at his bulging wife and his agitation softened thinking about his soon to be son.  Carolyn just hadn’t traveled much and didn’t know how the train cars filled quickly, overhead bin space being quickly consumed by overstuffed travel cases, baby bags, and old ladies’ plastic sacks spilling over with unnecessary items.  Dale wasn’t going to risk being diverted by a search for suitcase space leaving his seats empty to overbooked passengers who traveled in packs of pregnant ladies trailing scraggly kids followed by old men with canes, making it impossible for a decent man like himself to oust them once they’d claimed his bench.  When he’d tried to explain all this to justify a very early departure from the house, Carolyn protested in the same patronizing tone, “But we have assigned seats.”  “Poor Carolyn,” he thought, but good thing she had him along.
 
Dale hadn’t liked the idea from the beginning.  Carolyn had began in her sixth month, commenting over dinner or during an afternoon drive how she really ought to go see her mother up in Crighton.  “It really is beautiful there, especially this time of year” and “Oh, Dale, let’s take the train up, it would be a lovely ride.”  Dale had hoped this urge would go away, stalling, figuring to use her progressive condition as an excuse, but she persisted.  When one day he arrived home to her waiting on the front stoop he knew he’d lost.  “It’s all arranged” she said with flushed cheeks.  “I spoke with my mother today and she is delighted!”  Imagine a women almost eight months gone boarding a train for a nearly five hour journey, but what could he say?  So Dale kept quiet.
 
There were three main boarding gates, and depending on your train car, you were directed to stand in one of the three growing lines.  He smiled, slightly amused, at the passengers who lounged in waiting chairs and tried to reason where along the track car 9 would end up, trying to calculate the best approach.  If it stopped to the right of his line’s entry point, he would have to compete with passengers from the second que.  It was difficult to estimate the distance of nine train cars, but he was pretty sure it would halt nearly directly in front of him and this pleased him very much.  He also wondered what to do about Carolyn.  It was now just thirty-five minutes until the scheduled arrival and she made no signs of joining him.  Perhaps best if he went ahead, secured her seat and she could make her way slowly into the car, but how could he think to leave his poor, pregnant wife to fend for herself in the crowd.  Looking back over his shoulder, he tried again, in vain, to catch her eyes so he could signal her to join him but was abruptly interrupted.
 
“Jake, is that you?” a pinched face man exclaimed loudly as he approached the fourth person in Dale’s line.  The intruder outstretched his arm a good 4-5 steps before he reached Jake and closed in to boisterously shake hands with his acquaintance.  Dale shook his head slightly to clear it and then looked left, right, searching for where this man had come from and finally focused forward again at the newcomer.       
 
“Frank?  Frank Owens?  Well I haven’t seen you since, well when?  The Marlos’ holiday party last year?  Good to see you!  How’ve ya been?” 
 
Frank smiled broadly, “I’ve been just great.  Goin’ up to Crighton today to check on some property deals.  I’m tellin’ ya, business has just been knockin’ on my door!”  He exhaled loudly, “Well how’s Ann?” and set his briefcase down.
 
Blood rushing to his head drowned out the conversation as Dale stared incredulously at the briefcase.  “Wait just a minute,” he thought, trying to calm down he squeezed his eyes shut and took a breath.  As he opened them he realized his clenched fists tightly at his sides and released his fingers.  His heart was still pounding loudly but he felt more in control.  “Relax,” he told himself.  “This Frank guy is just going to have a chat with his buddy and then he’ll move off down the line.”  He reasoned they were all business men and this guy wouldn’t possibly have the nerve.  He shifted his weight from his right foot to his left and began listening for an indication that the two men were wrapping things up.  But Jake was detailing his daughter Emily’s part in an upcoming school play Frank’s eyes sparkled with interest that Dale knew had to be put on.
 
He glanced around frantic now for Carolyn to join him.  “Can you believe this?” he thought to no one in particular.  This is exactly the kind of thing he had been trying to warn Carolyn of.  He bore his gaze into the back of her hunched shoulder but she didn’t look up from her magazine.  “Just who does this guy think he is!”  He had half a mind just to tell this Frank character to move off but the thought of confrontation held him back and when he realized this, a flood of shame was added to his anger, a mix of emotions that was intoxicating.
 
“Listen, buddy, you just hold my place in line here while I run over to the men’s room.”  Frank clapped Jake on the shoulder and turned to go. 
 
“His place, his place!” Dale felt blinded, his eyes glued to the briefcase left standing in front of him.  “Carolyn,” he called in a clipped voice, suddenly not caring about his etiquette.  Her head snapped up and she turned.  He beckoned her with curt, demanding motions and an almost crazed look, with no tolerance for her innocently bewildered expression.   He motioned her again, pointing this time to get over there!  The seconds seemed to crawl as she turned, folded her magazine, latched her purse strap over her right shoulder and finally began to make her way.
 
“Excuse me,” she said softly as she maneuvered through the throngs of waiting passengers who now filled the isles.
 
Dale couldn’t watch.  “Come on, come on!” he prodded her through clenched teeth.  Reaching him in line it was all he could do to get out the word “bathroom” as he dashed off.
 
Carolyn stared after him curiously.  It was very unlike her husband to experience such urges, but she supposed nerves can get to everyone and he had been particularly uptight about this trip.  “He’s just concerned for me is all,” she thought warmly and turned to face the tracks.
 
Dale returned by sidling up to Carolyn, reaching his arm around her and cupping his wife’s elbow in his hand.  “Thanks,” he murmured and her questioning response was swallowed up by the loudspeaker announcing the train’s arrival.  There was a great shuffling created by a consensual shift of anticipating travelers as people gathered their bags and jockeyed in line.  The briefcase remained on the floor and Jake looked around.
 
“Hmm, I wonder what’s keeping him,” he said out loud as he looked around.
 
A station attendant clicked open the gate.  “Let’s go honey,” Dale said calmly and filed towards train car number 9 following four people in front of him.
 

Living Legend - A Conversation with Carey Bell

“I just knew there was somethin’ better than this,” so at age thirteen, Carey Bell took his harp and left his life “behind the mule” in Macon, Mississippi. Carey’s mother died when he was five, his father just two years later and he seemed destined to work his grandparents’ farm with a host of cousins. “I got tired,” Carey explains simply.  “Tired of cotton, corn, hay, tired of those mules.” He headed for Meridian, staying with friends and scrubbing hospital floors for six months before getting hired on and paid for the work.  But it was an ironic twist of these humble beginnings that produced this legendary harmonica player.
 
“Ya know those little battery radios?” Carey leans into his question and I nod, eager for a good story.  “I’d sit around listenin’ to Louis Jordan on his sax and want to play one so bad.  All sax players since never got that sound.”  His granddaddy recognized Carey’s yearning and at about age eight, brought him home a Marine Band Hohner harmonica, the brand he plays to this day.  “No sax, but guess cause they cost but fifty cents then. I fell in love with it.”  Carey and his Hohner became inseparable.  He played it any chance he got, sliding it out of his pocket during quick breaks in his chores or to settle into a long Mississippi evening. 
 
His passion developed talent.  At age eleven or so, Carey began performing under unlikely circumstances, with an all white country and western band.  I ask him how that was for him, being the first black kid to play with a white band in Macon.  “It was good for me, cause I made money!”  Carey says with his typical humor.  “People never seen a little black boy play.  They’d just throw money up onto the stage.”  The band leader nicknamed him “slick” and would let him run around and collect the coins and cash as soon as his set was done.  Carey figured he was on to something and went off to Meridian where his Godfather, Lovie Lee was playing piano professionally.
 
Carey played with various bands for a few years and in 1956, Lee took twenty year old Carey and moved to Chicago.  Paying gigs were hard to come by, so Carey worked odd jobs by day while spending his evenings on harmonica in various south and west side clubs.  Bustling Maxwell Street gave him a place to play and earn tips on weekends.  Where Chicago lacked in providing income, it made up for with invaluable tutelage.  Carey took lessons from Little Walter Jacobs and was musically “adopted” by Big Walter Horton, becoming a premier harpist and playing alongside blues greats like Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and Earl Hooker.  Carey remembers that his career was still not solid.  “For a while harmonica faded and when it faded, I faded.”  During this time, Carey took up playing bass guitar to make himself more versatile and therefore, employable. 
 
Of course, Carey never stopped playing his harp and it has taken him a lot further than Meridian.  His musical career took off with a debut album in 1969.  He developed his own style, “chopping” melodies and interpreting riffs that speak as strongly as any lyric.  In the early seventies, he toured extensively with Waters and Dixon, and throughout the next two decades recorded several solo albums while being featured on many others.  Now he’s played his collection of harps on nearly every continent in the world and has an anthology too long to read in one sitting.
 
Look it up and start somewhere.  It’s certainly worth picking up his full-length solo album, Deep Down, recorded in 1995 by Alligator records to experience Carey’s skill and soul.  Hear how his bluesy vocals and distinctive, funky harp playing helped make an award winning Harp Attack a best seller.  Check out his most recent effort, Harpslinger or his most popular Mellow Down Easy or his most recent solo release Good Luck Man.  Enjoy the albums, but do not miss the chance to actually experience Carey play.
 
Seeing him live is a surreal trick of the senses.  You can see he is only blowing on one harmonica, but the room is layered with notes you’re sure must come from more.  If you talk to him pre-show, you’re concerned he’s too tired or unfocused to take the stage, but then witness a transformation as he energetically belts out a first verse in his timeless, raspy voice.  By the time he’s reached his first harp solo, you’re watching what must be a hologram; pure energy weaved into reeds of the harmonica creating a sound difficult to believe. 
 
Still, none of this is what makes Carey most impressive.  He has an easy way with life that draws me in. Being a Chicago transplant myself, Carey and I agree the warm evening stretching out before us is why we left.  I find myself staying on, just to catch another story in which Carey reminisces about real things told in a real way, no traces of ego to make you bored.  He was playing a festival among a rowdy, appreciative crowd.  In his youth and excitement he jumped, high, and accidentally kicked off a shoe.  “I don’t know what they thought,” he laughs low, sweeping his chin into his shoulder before continuing.  “But the whole audience started kicking off their shoes,” he seems still surprised in the memory of if.  Or tales of countless hours driving from state to state to play and sell records.  Now Carey flies to points across the globe to play, but says it just isn’t the same as being on the road.  Or explaining the reasons he had to leave Chicago, “It was too cold for my joints, I was ruining my liver, and too many people knew where to find me.” 
 
I sit with Carey and take stock.  He’s renting living space, a roommate in the home of a fellow musician.  His eyes are glossed over by a cloudy layer of cataracts he hopes to soon have removed.  Despite an impressive canvas roll of shiny harmonicas, Carey has little in the way of possessions.  I wonder if his record company takes care of him, often hearing of musicians who are household names but make pennies on the dollar.  “Looking back, is it worth it?” I finally put the question to him while thinking that maybe its Carey who has life right.  He’s spent a life doing what he loves, exhilarating and entertaining millions of people across the world.  He’s not held down by stuff and mortgages and dreams of what could have been.  He’s lived his life hard, full-out, you can tell by taking one look at him.
 
Carey seems as lost in my thoughts as I am, then smiles through his prominent front teeth gaps.  “Playing my harp?” he wants to be sure of my inquiry.  I get sidetracked.  “You always say harp,” I half comment, half ask.  He says, “Yeah, like a…” and finishes his sentence with a gesture, arms configured around an imagined giant stringed instrument, his fingers plucking invisible strings.  “Is that what the angels play?” Carey’s friend who has joined us asks.  “I don’t know,” Carey replies straight-faced.  “I never seen one.”  My worries dissolve into laughter as I have my answer.
 
It might surprise some that Carey has chosen to live in Charlotte these days.  When he’s not touring, you may even catch a live performance if he’s stopped in at the Double Door.  Yet, after only a few minutes conversation sitting with Carey on his porch, it’s clear he doesn’t consider himself famous and that our sunny neighborhood suits him just fine.  “I just play my harp,” he explains.  “Heart or harp?” I ask.  “Well, that too,” he smiles.