Jeri Smith-Ready - WVMP Radio - Rave On, ☂ UPLOADED (Unsorted) ☂, ✿ ♂♀ Romance, ✿ ♂♀ Authors
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JERI SMITH-READY
“RAVE ON” BY SPENCER WALLACE
Memphis, 1959
It sure didn't feel like a goodbye kiss.
Jean shifted and moaned under my lips, then rolled away, her long dark hair fanning over the pillow like
she was flying. I stroked it once, and she frowned in her sleep.
"Good night," I whispered. I left the bedroom door open so she could hear the baby cry, then tiptoed down
the hall in the dark, carrying my shoes to keep quiet.
The kitchen was clean, and empty except for a sandwich in wax paper sitting beside a stack of unopened
mail on the counter. I pulled a bottle of Coke from the icebox and covered the top while I opened it,
hushing the hiss. Little Donna slept so bad, a spider could wake her tripping over its own feet.
I bit into my sandwich as I pawed through the mail, realizing Jean must've been too tired that day to sort it
for me like usual.
Suddenly my stomach twisted, chasing away my appetite. The envelope at the bottom of the pile was the
same pale blue as the one that came the week before, and the week before that.
I dropped the sandwich and yanked the trash can out from under the sink. Today's newspaper was on top
with that same story as yesterday, about the Russians stopping our convoy in Berlin. I stuffed the envelope
inside the paper and shoved it to the bottom of the trash, telling my hands to stop shaking.
I didn't need to open the letter to know what it said, words Jean should never see. If she knew what they
called me, what they said they'd do to me, she'd beg me to stop playing that music, maybe even move away
from Memphis.
But I'd worked too hard for this bright little house that had everything she wanted-right down to the lace
curtains and flower boxes, in a nice neighborhood with trees along the streets. Better'n them armpit south-
Uptown apartments where we grew up.
The phone rang, killing the silence.
"Son of a bitch." I stumbled over to pick it up before it could ring again.
Too late. From the other room, Donna started to wail.
"This better be important," I growled into the receiver.
"Spencer, it's me," said Charlie, the station manager. "Just wanted to know your plans for tonight."
I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes, trying to recall how much sleep I'd gotten that day, squeezed in
around Donna's crying fits. Two hours? Three?
I took a long gulp of Coke and asked, "What plans?"
"For Buddy and Ritchie and J.P. Figured you'd want to do one of them retrospectives."
My breath stopped, and my hand tightened on the bottle so hard it felt like I'd shatter the glass. "A
retrospective?" Maybe that word didn't mean what I thought it meant. "Why?"
He was silent a long moment. "You didn't hear?"
"Charlie, I just woke up a half hour ago." I didn't bother keeping my voice down—the baby was already
up.
"Hear what?"
"They're dead, Spencer. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and—damn, I'm sorry. Your friend J.P., too. Plane
crash last night. They didn't find them 'til this morning." Then he added, "Up in Iowa," like that would
somehow make sense of it.
I couldn't speak. I just stood there, hearing Charlie going on about tributes and listener call-ins, and Donna
screeching her little lungs out, and Jean cooing to her that everything'd be all right. Something in me
had
sunk
, like the bottom of my chest wanted to be part of my feet.
After he hung up, I stood with my forehead against the wall, waiting for that heavy feeling to disappear.
It wasn't just that J.P. Richardson (or "The Big Bopper" as most people knew him) was a fellow disc jockey
and a friend. Tell the truth, I wasn't even thinking of him. I was thinking of those kids, Buddy and Ritchie,
and all the records they'd never make—that
I'd
never play. I felt robbed.
"Spencer? Honey, what's wrong?"
I turned to see Jean, holding Donna against her shoulder, rubbing her back in little circles. Jean's eyes were
dark underneath.
"Nothin', baby," I said, still holding the phone. "Go back to sleep."
"I would if I could." Her lips went tight as she glanced at our daughter, then back at me.
"Sorry." I hung up the phone. "I gotta go."
No use telling Jean about the crash. She wouldn't feel it the way I did, down in her gut and her toes. Her
not feeling it would make me feel it less, too, would make it small.
So I didn't kiss her on the way out the door, just grabbed my coat, making sure my switchblade was in the
right-hand pocket. I left the car in front of the house, even though it was three miles to the station.
I needed to walk these streets tonight, make sure the music was still alive.
* * *
The cold February air had chased the street musicians inside—Beale Street was empty except for the people
hurrying from bar to bar.
I passed the King's Palace and made for one of the smaller clubs, where a young colored couple were
coming out. They couldn't have been much older than twenty. The lady stumbled on the bottom step and
clutched her man's arm to steady herself.
"Hoo, it's cold out here!" She tossed the tail end of a moth-eaten fox stole around her neck. The fox's dead-
alive eyes glittered at me in the white streetlight.
The man took her free hand and rubbed it between his. "Let's go home and get you warmed up, then."
I watched them lurch down the sidewalk, laughing, and remembered the first time I talked Jean into
coming with me to Beale Street. Got her drunk enough to marry me.
The bar door flapped in the breeze, missing the latch. Acoustic guitar notes floated from inside—odd to
hear in '59, since most everyone had gone electric years before. The sign on the window read,
One Week Only
Home from Chicago
"Mississippi" Monroe Jefferson
I held the door open, listening. That wasn't no Chicago blues; heck, it sounded like that cat had never left
the Delta.
I went in, even though I knew that the Tuesday bartender watered down the whiskey something fierce. In
the back corner of the musty joint, a stage light gleamed off a man in a white hat and suit. I slid up the
edge of the room, saying hello to those who knew me, which was most.
Monroe's voice sounded young and old at the same time. His style of playing hailed from the early forties,
but his ebony face was as smooth as the polished wood of his red guitar-he looked maybe late twenties, no
older'n me.
He started in on Muddy Waters' "I Just Want to Make Love to You." A pang of shame shot through my grief.
See, it wasn't just rock 'n' rollers who got chased by the skirts. Disc jockeys, we delivered the music, we
handed out that forbidden fruit, like rum-running bootleggers. The magic of Elvis and Jerry Lee and Johnny
Cash rubbed off on all of us.
So even though I wasn't much to look at, and I just worked the midnight shift at an itty-bitty westside
station, a week didn't go by when a chick didn't promise me a little nookie, no strings attached. But I'd
given Jean a vow, and I aimed to keep it.
Until Lillie, that is.
Just the night before, I was sitting in the studio, when all a sudden I felt the urge to go to the window. It
wasn't easy, getting around the equipment and the stacks of free records the labels had sent. I leaned over
the table, pulled the shade, and saw her.
She was standing across the road, staring up at me. Hair so blonde it shone almost silver in the streetlight,
but cut short above her chin in waves, the way I'd seen in pictures from the twenties. Her raincoat was tied
at her waist, and I didn't see a skirt under its hem. Just legs.
My head went swimming, and I grabbed the edge of the window to steady myself. She was crossing the
street, gliding like the breeze was carrying her.
I never touched her, I swear. She wouldn't let me. But Lillie touched me, with her hands cool as silk, and
her mouth warm as velvet. It was a miracle I kept the show going.
She didn't say much after she was done, and Lord knows I could barely breathe, much less talk. But she
looked up at me, with eyes the pale blue of an August sky. Those eyes wanted more.
I reached for her, but she backed away so fast it was like trying to grab the wind.
"Tomorrow," she said in a honey-sweet voice. "I'll come back, and you can have me any way you want." She
untied her coat and let it fall open to show a short red dress. "But you have to ask me."
I stared at the place where the tassels swept her thighs above her rolled-down stockings, and thought of
the other girls I'd turned away. Why couldn't I say no to this one?
The song faded, and I jumped out of the chair to cue the next 45. My hand shook as it held the needle
above the spinning black vinyl. My mouth was too dry with panic to give an introduction, so I left the
microphone off.
By the sheer grace of God, the song was Ritchie Valens' "Donna," the one we'd named our daughter for. I
took a deep breath, silently thanking the music for saving my soul. What I'd let Lillie do to me was bad
enough, but nothing compared to what I wanted to do to her, again and again.
I turned around, to tell her not to come back.
She was gone.
My heart slammed with a fear I couldn't explain. "No…" I shoved open the door to see an empty hallway. I
took the stairs three at a time, but when I got down to the lobby, there was nothing left of Lillie but
perfume in the air.
I ran onto the sidewalk and called her name. It was drizzling, and the streetlight made a mist like a bridal
veil.
The words seemed to leap out of my throat. "Come back."
Unless she was hiding around the corner, she couldn't have heard me. But I'd said it nonetheless, and
damned myself.
Leaning against the wall now watching Monroe play, I realized I'd been with Lillie at the same time that
little plane was tumbling into an Iowa cornfield. Somehow that made it worse.
As if he heard the guilt chewing at my gut, Monroe turned his head and looked straight at me. His pitch-
black eyes made me dizzy, like the first time I saw Lillie. I pushed away from the stage and went to the
bar, where I traded two quarters for a shot of whiskey on my way out.
About ten blocks from the station, far from the bright lights of Beale Street—or the bright lights of
anything, for that matter—I heard two sets of footsteps dogging me. I kept going, a little faster but
hopefully not enough so's they'd notice.
It's nobody
, I told myself.
It ain't those letter writers making good on their promise.
Just in case, I stuffed
my hands in my pockets and gripped that switchblade tight.
The footsteps got closer, louder. The station was near enough I could almost make a run for it.
A giant shadow stepped out of a dead-end alley. I pulled my knife. The blade sprang just as a lead pipe
slammed my gut. I dropped to my knees, breathless, and stabbed the air blindly. A man with a deep voice
cursed in pain, then kicked my wrist, sending the knife flying.
Someone grabbed the back of my shirt and dragged me down the alley. I tried to get my feet under me, but
moving my legs stabbed my right side with pain.
We stopped, way back where I couldn't even see the street. "Why?" I choked out.
"Justice." The big one's gin-soaked breath swept over me. "For crimes against your race."
The other two held me up while his fist smashed my face again and again. My glasses broke, the pieces
spearing my eyes. They called me a traitor and a n**ger lover and worse.
Finally they dumped me on the ground, and the big one snarled, "We warned you to stop playing that jungle
music."
"Just doin' my job," I coughed out, trying to get up to find my glasses. A boot nailed me in the back, sending
a roar of pain up and down my spine. I collapsed on the wet concrete again.
"You know where my sixteen-year-old daughter was last Sunday night?" he bellowed.
I wanted to say,
In your bed?
but knew it'd get me killed.
He spat out the words. "She went to that colored church."
East Trigg Baptist. The white kids went to hear the gospel music I played along with the rhythm 'n' blues
and rock 'n' roll. Most of my listeners didn't know or care whether me or the singers I played were white or
black. All they knew was the music fired them up, got them thinking about dancing and parking and other
divine, dangerous things.
"My baby girl," the man said, "with those animals jumpin' around and clappin' their hands, singin' that
garbage that's an abomination of God."
Now, I wasn't no activist. I grew up in Memphis, and keeping the races apart in most places was just the
way things were. I didn't think to question.
But to say God hated the music that lifted people's souls—well, that just wouldn't stand.
Unfortunately I couldn't think of nothing clever to say, what with my brain all sloshed up against my skull.
So I just slurred around my broken teeth, "You're the stinkin' animal."
I couldn't see their eyes, but the silence told me I was dead.
"Gag him," the big one said.
They shoved a handkerchief reeking of aftershave in my mouth, muffling my screams. I kicked out, but one
of them sat on my legs while the other yanked my arms above my head. Then came the snick of a
switchblade.
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