Blues For Rashid

By Peter Hoppock

Peter is this month’s winner of $520.00 for putting music into words.

Bio: Peter Hoppock lives in Evanston, Illinois. His short stories and novellas have appeared in numerous print and online literary journals, including Adelaide Literary Magazine, Curbside Splendor, The Write Launch, and Dillydoun Review. His novella "Mr. Pegg To You" was a finalist in the Press 53 Novella Contest. You can find more of his fiction at www.peterhoppock.com

Without further ado, “Blues For Rashid” by Peter Hoppock.

It was one of those molten New York City evenings when the sweat pours out of you, when brick facades act like the walls of an oven. Across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan, on the northeast corner of 1^st and Coleman in Hoboken, children pressed colorful bottle tops into the gooey tar. Excitedly, they arranged the orange, yellow, purple, red, blue, and green tin caps from Nehi, Coke and Pepsi bottles into colorful designs. A mix of Black and Latino residents gathered on stoops whose railings were too hot to touch. Old women sat on plastic chairs with their skirts pulled above their knees. Young men leaned against whatever cool surfaces they could find, t-shirts rolled up to their chests.  Open windows framed bodies that hung as much outside their heat-choked apartments as fear would allow. Every backfire, trash can rattle, dog bark, baby’s cry, even sudden laughter—brought a sense of dread and a sudden twist of heads. You held your breath until you were sure nothing terrible ensued.

61-year-old Rashid Wilson, tall and lean and well-groomed, with charcoal skin as smooth as satin, stood on the front porch of a three-story brownstone. He was dressed in a wrinkle-free, white-cotton, starched-collar, short-sleeved shirt and beige linen slacks, looking as if the heat did not affect him. He was on the porch to welcome his “latest project,” a young musician who was about to get the surprise of his young and troubled life.

Rashid was 6’6”, but stood with every joint bent slightly, as if he were trying to lower himself to average height. But he was not average. He was anything but—especially for this neighborhood. He looked out on the streets he had grown up on, where he’d played stoop ball and hidden from cops. Streets that had nurtured him, toughened him, energized and propelled him to an adulthood not even his own family could have predicted.

He was not average around here for many reasons, among them his ownership of the building on whose porch he stood. He was not average because he had made a lot of money—as a sought-after session musician. A multi-instrumentalist, but most well-known for his blues harp solos. Most people had never heard of Rashid Wilson, but his name graced the liner notes of scores of blues, jazz and pop albums by the greats and not-so-greats.

And he was not average because of his recent turn towards nurturing young talent, currently an 18-year-old guitarist named Willie Maxwell. Yes, that Willie Maxwell, still a couple years away from being crowned “Best New Blues Artist” by the Blues Foundation at their Blues Music Awards. Three years until he would win Best Blues Album and Best Blues Performance at the Grammys.

But that evening, he was just Willie—who even as a young man was also not average. And he was late for his Monday-night lesson.

*                                  *                                  *

Rashid had spotted Willie a year earlier at a music club called Winkie’s in Brooklyn, hidden among the blocks of factories along the East River, north of the Manhattan Bridge. The club was near Lifeline Studios—a niche Brooklyn music house Rashid owned a piece of—and where session players often went after midnight to unwind.  It seemed to Rashid that Willie was misplaced in the rock-n-roll band he was playing lead guitar for. His licks had a world-weary feel, straining against an overly-heavy drum and bass assault. After the show, Rashid had spoken with the boy—curious to know if he, too, felt the dissonance, if this was a band he’d been part of for a while, or just sitting in on.  He introduced himself, giving Willie a short history of his accomplishments, waving his hand when the boy expressed disbelief that a real-life blues legend was showing an interest in him, a high-school drop-out with no formal music training—and a white boy to top it off.

It quickly became clear that Willie really wanted to play blues music, and Rashid told Willie that if he really wanted to learn the blues, he would teach him. But first Rashid had to know who he was really talking to. Their chat morphed into a kind of interview. Rashid grilled Willie for over an hour, until Winkie’s closed. But they didn’t talk music. Rashid extracted the young man’s story: how at ten, his parents divorced; how Willie turned to music as an outlet for his restless energies, learning on an acoustic six-string his father had left behind in the divorce settlement; how when he turned twelve, his mother and absent father had chipped in to buy him a Fender Jazzmaster and a small amp, and he started playing in bands with high school-aged boys. He confessed he often had to crash at fellow musicians’ apartments, after he’d quit high school and left home. Poorly-paying gigs—whenever and with whomever he could play—had been his sole means of support for a few years.

At 2 am, with the owners pressing for their departure, Rashid’s expression changed. Willie was talking about one time when his father had shown up, unexpectedly, threatening to kill himself, and then, in a stupor, falling asleep while Willie played his music.

Rashid cut him off.  “What are you afraid of, boy?” he asked suddenly. When Willie stayed silent, Rashid  pressed, “I asked you—what are you afraid of?”

Confused and nervous, Willie’s mind went blank. No one had ever taken so deep an interest in him before, and he didn’t understand why Rashid would ask such a question. Nor did he have any clue how to answer it. Only that the question made him nervous. So Willie talked about women—a subject that also made him nervous, but deflected momentarily the more difficult one.  He spoke self-consciously; how he’d learned early on that his looks appealed to girls—his thick, long eyebrows; brown, sadly-angled eyes; dark unmanageable hair. And that his musical gifts attracted older women, who assumed he was older, too. By the time he’d turned fifteen, he said, they’d taught him how to kiss them—on the lips, and elsewhere—and how to do what pleased them. Inevitably, all of them mistook his surprise and confusion during sex for passion, his dissociation afterwards for composure, his sulking for depth of feeling. None of the women had ever understood him—nor made any effort to.

“So, I guess you could say girls scare me,” said Willie, hoping the confession would lift the weight he felt Rashid was placing on him. Still, Willie feared he was failing somehow, with someone who really seemed to care about him.

Rashid remained silent. Willie became more and more agitated. “I guess I don’t know, then,” he said, so nervous he couldn’t stop his feet from tapping. He felt the opportunity to learn from a blues master was slipping away.

Rashid asked him a third time: “What are you afraid of, boy?”

Willie begged for one lesson, at least. He would think about the question, he promised, and would find the answer. He just couldn’t answer it right now.

“I don’t work like that son. This ain’t no part-time, give-it-a-try thing. I got to know if you know, before I take you on, what you are most afraid of in this world.”

“But I don’t see what that has to do with me learning the blues.”

“Then you won’t be learning from me, I guess.”

Willie felt tears coming when it became obvious that Rashid was going to snatch the dream away from him before it had even started. His chest felt tight and hot. Rashid stood up and held out his hand for Willie to shake. Willie felt too weak to lift his body out of the chair. The words burst out of him as suddenly as a geyser.

 “I’m afraid of being alone!” Willie shouted. The few remaining Winkie’s patrons turned their heads. “I’m afraid, OK? I’m afraid!” he repeated. Rashid walked around the table, crouched, and hugged him. He held tight, until Willie’s breathing slowed.

            “That’s right,” said Rashid. “I believe that is the truth.” He felt Willie’s breathing slow, and his arms loosened their grip. “When you play the blues, you sing the blues—you tell the truth, else it ain’t the blues.”  He stepped back, to give Willie room to wipe away his tears. “The blues is about going to that place in your heart most folks don’t have the courage to go to,” he added. “Somebody’s got to lead them to it. Is that gonna be you?”  

 When Willie had regained his composure, Rashid handed him a card with his Hoboken address on it, and told him to show up there the following Monday night, 9pm, to begin. He told Willie that he would arrange for Telly Barkman, Lifeline’s co-owner, to let Willy live in the Studio’s third-floor bedroom in exchange for occasional session work, while he worked on his craft.

“You’re going to be the next Mike Bloomfield, or Eric Clapton,” said Rashid.

The Monday night lessons began as promised.

Over several months of Monday nights, Rashid had revealed bits of his own life. Willie learned that Rashid had a twenty-six-year-old son named Mario, whereabouts unknown, and an ex-wife named  Loretta—who was not Mario’s biological mother but who had helped raise the boy. And that after Rashid and Loretta separated, she moved into the first-floor apartment of his building, and they still got along well. Rashid confided that over the years he’d had only a handful of “students” whom he had guided in their musical careers. The most recent was a girl named Camille, who lived with her father on the second floor of Rashid’s building, and for whom he had taken the extraordinary step of recording a three-song demo track.  After listening to the demo, a friend in L.A.—who worked for Interscope Records—had expressed enough interest to invite her out.  

Other nights blues greats had shown up: Willie learned sequences and phrasing from Robert Lockwood, Jr., and had his hands analyzed by John “Bluesman” Wilcox, who after pronouncing Willie’s fingers tough at the tip, said: “You’ll never be a bluesman, boy, till your fingers is tough right-the-whole-way.”  After Willie had protested that only his tips touched the strings, Wilcox had frowned, spitting into his empty glass of bourbon, and rambled on: “Son, it’s the hands tell you how tough a man's heart is. You either tough, or you dead.”

One Monday night Rashid had Willie meet him in the kitchen in back of the “Blues For Sale” nightclub when Blind Jeff Healy showcased, and the three men jammed for two hours with an audience of four cooks and a limo driver. When told that Willie was white, and only eighteen, Blind Jeff pronounced himself “fooled completely.” Willie repeated what John Wilcox had said about his hands. Jeff took hold of them and said, “You don't got to have nothin' but the heart to do the thing, and it’ll get done. Parts that need toughenin’ will toughen up along the way.”

But most importantly, from the very start, was the instrument Willie played whenever he was in Rashid’s apartment. Told to leave his Jazzmaster at the door, Willie was presented with a Gibson B-25 acoustic hollow body with a single Fishman sound hole pickup installed fretboard-side. The orange and black sunburst front was instantly recognizable; Willie had heard this model played in the blues sessions he’d listened to, and was in awe of its full, meaty tone. The guitar had been a gift to Rashid from Robert Lockwood, Jr. “To eliminate the temptation to find fake emotions through the tonal tricks of electronic manipulation,” said Rashid, as Willie held it for the first time. “Just the one pickup—to put the sound into the room, not twist it. You got to make it real,” he added. “Not take it off the shelf.” 

Back then, not singing was one of Willie’s defense mechanisms: he worried that singing might siphon away what he was channeling through his fingers. It didn’t help that all the singers he’d been observing at sessions were damaged in some way. He was mortified by the faces they made; every song a string of tortured, agonized expressions. Singers would leave the sound room drained rather than fulfilled—especially the blues singers—and suck as desperately at a line of coke, or the lip of a shot glass, as a starving man would shovel a few grains of rice into his mouth.

*                                  *                                  *

 At 9 pm, with the streets outside his brownstone empty except for old men and women sitting in fold-up chairs and stools at the top of their stoops, Rashid knocked on the window of Loretta’s first-floor apartment. A beautiful woman with copper skin, smooth-combed hair that swirled down to her shoulder blades, and thin red lips like Lena Horne’s, opened the window. Cool air poured out onto the porch.

“Loretta,” said Rashid to his ex-wife. “I got to go out. Would you mind waiting on the porch for my student?”

“The one you never introduced me to? That white boy? You’re waiting on him?”

“Don’t get on me now Loretta. I got my reasons.”

“I hear you finally put Camille on the train this morning. How’s Mario taking it?”

“I thought I’d go check on him. I heard not so good. But then I heard she mighta got off. ”

Loretta put her hands on her hips. “Well, what’d you expect?”

Rashid turned to go, but Loretta reached out and grabbed his arm. “The two of them had damn near a whole year to work it out, Loretta,” he said angrily, pulling away from her.

“You hoping she got back on that train?”

“Or worst case, she went back to her daddy, and not him.”

“I ain’t heard nothing in their apartment. And I’d have heard something if she’d come back. Her daddy thinks there’s more to it than just you helping her career, though.”

“I can’t control what people think, Loretta.”

            “And now you’re figuring to try it again. You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

            “It’s what I got to do now, Loretta. And I got an eye for talent.”

            “That you do. But a white boy?” Loretta shooed him off the landing. Rashid took the steps two at a time. “You haven’t got the sense God gave you!”

            It was dark, but still humid and hot, and Loretta was sitting on the uppermost stoop step when a yellow taxi pulled up. The cabbie rapped his knuckles against the partition, waking his fare. Once outside the cab, Willie passed his money through the passenger side window, turning when Loretta called out to him. He ran up the steps two-at-a-time, and his already-damp shirt quickly became discolored from sweat. Loretta stood up and blocked his way into the building.

“Lady,” said Willie nervously. “I’m late for my appointment. I’m here to see—”

Loretta cut him off with her arm—and her voice. “I know who you’re here to see. We probably should’ve been introduced a long time ago, ‘cause he has probably told you about me. I’m Loretta. Rashid went out a bit ago. Should be back soon. You missed all the excitement.”   She sat back down and he joined her, setting his guitar case behind them. Loretta drew her skirt up above her knees to cool off, and he looked past her at the Manhattan skyline where the spire of a skyscraper pierced a blood-red moon. “What excitement?” he asked.

Willie unbuttoned his shirt, his pale torso in stark contrast to Loretta’s creamy brown skin, her face and shoulders shiny with perspiration.  “You know Camille from the second floor?” she said. “No, of course you don’t.” A small group of children had returned to the corner, pressing their colored bottle caps into heat-softened tar. “Camille was Rashid’s last project, before you.”

Willie faintly remembered the girl Rashid had mentioned during one of their early sessions. He wanted to hear about “the excitement,” but Loretta’s expression changed suddenly, and her gaze shifted to the street. “Rashid, honey!” she called out, standing up as Rashid appeared from the west, out of nowhere, it seemed. In three long strides he arrived at the top of the steps, where Loretta embraced him.

            “Well?” he asked her, ignoring Willie.

            “Mario came by while you was gone,” said Loretta.

            “He was angry? Looking for Camille?”

            “Wasn’t here long enough to tell. Mighta just been anxious. I told him neither of you was here, and he run off quick as he came.”

            Rashid didn’t respond, and Loretta’s expression didn’t change. Rashid looked over at Willie. “You’re late,” he said, brow furrowing deeply. “I ain’t got time for no shit tonight, Willie. This here is your special night.” Willie and Rashid entered the building together; Loretta stayed on the porch.

            Once they reached the third-floor landing, Loretta’s voice echoed up the stairwell from the entrance.  "You know he’ll be back again!”

“I don't suppose he told you when that might be, eh?" said Rashid. Either she didn’t hear him, or wasn’t bothering to answer. “Don’t matter anyways,” he said to himself. They entered and Rashid didn’t bother to lock the door.  The apartment was furnished with black leather sofas and chairs, Italian fixtures, sconces, an entire wall with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a state-of-the-art sound system—the spoils of a successful music career played out behind the scenes, for the benefit of others.  Willie set his Jazzmaster guitar case upright near the door. He eyed the Gibson B-25 leaning against one of the sound baffles.

The walls were jammed with framed photos of session rooms, of musicians smiling in front of enormous audio consoles. Rashid with Lightning Hopkins. Rashid with B.B. King. In another, he had his arms around Sonny Terry and Josh White. There was a group picture taken in a large studio with more faces Willie knew, blues pioneers all: Lonnie Johnson, T-Bone Walker, Albert Collins, Albert King, and many others. Rashid arrived with two shot glasses of whiskey, plain, for himself and Willie.

"Today Loretta reminded me," he said as their glasses touched, "that you are the first white person I’ve ever taken on. Hell, like as not, you’re probably going to be the only white person."  He drained his glass in one tipping. Willie set his glass down after a few sips.  "What say you pick up the Gibson again and get ready."

Willie grabbed the Gibson, it’s lacquered front shimmering from recessed ceiling lights, and fine-tuned the strings. “You’re just going to stand there and wait?” he asked Rashid.

“You going to do anything worth waiting for?” Rashid replied. He held the glass above his lips and savored the few remaining drops that fell into his mouth. “Play, goddammit!”

he commanded.

            Willie began the 8-bar blues foundation Rashid had introduced him to in one of their earliest sessions. As he began the second 8-bar, Rashid produced his harmonica and begun to play, breathing softly into his Hohner Blues Harp. The sound curled up around their ears slowly, like smoke. On the third 8-bar, Willie began improvising, bending the high E-string when the harmonica begged him to, and then Rashid exploded. A string of staccato bursts, as brutal as tuba blasts.

            Suddenly a voice! “When it's midnight...”  Rashid’s deep baritone was like a bear growling.  “When it's midnight, and you're all a-lone!”  The Hohner howled again. “When it's midnight…” Willie felt drawn into the curve of each phrase. “When it's midnight, and you're all a-lone…” Willie watched Rashid’s face as unseen hands shaped and reshaped his skin like it was wet clay. “You cryin’ for your baby—”

Full stop! Willie complied, flattening his hand across the strings.

Rashid kept his foot going and his hands cupped around his harp. The wait was agonizing—and pleasurable.

Finally the release:  “But she ain't never comin' home.” 

They continued; Willie giving Rashid the rhythmic backing his improvisations needed, until Rashid dropped his hands and nodded to Willie. Without thinking, all the possibilities for notes appeared to him at once—all available, all inviting. A year ago, he might have tried cramming everything he felt into a single burst, but tonight he selected notes, as if he had all the time in the world, like Ted Williams watching the seams of a ninety-mph fastball rotating in slow motion. His body vibrated, it hummed; the first few phrases he played settled easily, like a bird gliding in for a landing.

Rashid kept the rhythm going with his foot, and the occasional honk of his harmonica. With Willie’s eyes closed, the notes appeared to him like brushstrokes on a transparent canvas. He stretched, but without straining; he let the notes find him—playing not from memory, but in the moment. He lost track of time, the 8-bar clusters coming again and again. He felt like he was peeling away his past, hurt by hurt, note after note, until the Hohner slipped back in like a hand into a silk glove, and Willie returned to the supporting rhythm just as easily.

            Rashid continued with a mix of whispers and growls. “When it's midnight…and you call your baby's name.”  The harp hung by his side. “When it's midnight…”  Then it was at his mouth letting out a tiny squeak—like a bird chirp. “When it's midnight, and you call your baby's name.”  Another series of chirps.  “She don't answer, no no no—” Full stop, like before, except for the foot-tap. “Ain't that a shame, shame, shame.”

            The Hohner snarled to life again, leading to the next 8-bar.  The words fell out of him like a waterfall, like gravity itself.  “When it’s midnight. When it's midnight and the rain keeps comin' down.  When it's midnight, and the rain keeps coming down.” Rashid’s knees bent, his shoulders rolled back, his spine twisted, his eyes closed, and he faced the ceiling. “All you can do is—” Willie and Rashid stopped abruptly, as if both had reacted to a silent command. “Wait till mornin' comes around,” sang Rashid, as if trying to squeeze the last drop of water from a rag. The harmonica started a lengthy, stuttering, gasping flurry of notes and slides like Willie had never heard before, gently wavering, until it faded into a cool ember.  When he let go of the strings, Willie’s left hand vibrated for several seconds.

            Rashid took the harp from his mouth and laughed.

            "That was fucking amazing,” said Willie. Rashid wiped the sweat from his brow, and shook the spit from the gleaming silver Hohner.

“You were feelin’ it,” said Rashid.

“It was like I could see the notes. How did that even happen?”

Rashid took a deep breath. “No use tryin’ to put your finger on a thing that doesn’t want to be put in a frame, or explained.”

            “Did you write that song?” asked Willie, feeling freed from the artificial constraint of trying to explain what he had just experienced.

“I did,” said Rashid, smiling.

“Got a name for it?” said Willie.

“Not yet,” said Rashid. “Name’ll come when it comes.”

Willie glanced at the clock on the fireplace mantle, and realized that they had been playing for nearly twenty minutes. Twenty minutes!  It had felt like only three or four. There weren’t enough lyrics to stretch that long. It had to have been all the time spent improvising. Rashid grabbed his glass and the bottle of whiskey from the counter, and short-filled both their glasses. The alcohol was warm and soothing, but Rashid’s lyrics, still resonating in Willie’s ears, even more so. He could not remember any of the notes he’d played. It didn’t matter.

Someone knocked at the door, and the spell was broken. Loretta didn’t wait for anyone to open the door.  She pushed it open and stood in the doorway, arms at her side as if very tired, face devoid of expression.

            “She's home, Rashid. 

            “Who's home?” Willie asked.

“Camille,” said Loretta curtly.

“Shit!” said Rashid, turning around.  “Is she planning to come up here?"

            "What do you think?"

            "I think I did all that I could.  How could she turn that offer down? What is her father going to think?”

            “Maybe you should spend the night somewhere else, Rashid. Before Mario comes back here.”  She looked over at Willie.  “You and the white boy both.”

            “No,” said Rashid calmly. “I’m not going to run away from my son.”

            “Then maybe young Willie here ought to go,” said Loretta. Willie understood some kind of confrontation was brewing, but the anxiousness in her voice could not crack the trust Willie had placed in Rashid over all these months, and he still felt dizzy with excitement from the music they had just created together.  “I bet he told you you were the first white person he brought up here,” she continued, and without waiting for a response added, “Well, I guess you are, but only in a manner of speaking.” 

            “Hush, Loretta!” Rashid whispered harshly. “The boy is staying. He knows life ain’t easy.”  Below them, a door slammed.  Loretta backed out of the doorway and leaned over the railing. “Is it her?” asked Rashid.

            “No, it's Bill,” replied Loretta. Turning to Willie, she added, “Bill is Camille’s daddy.”

            As heavy footsteps grew louder, Willie felt an uneasy warmth push up from his chest into his head. A huge black man, bigger but not taller than Rashid, so wide he had to turn his hips to advance a leg up the stairs, came into view.  Before he reached the landing, he was questioning Rashid.

            “Did you say anything to my Camille?” His huge frame filled the doorway.

            “Is she home with you?” asked Rashid.

            Bill’s huge shoulders loomed over Rashid, and he repeated, “What did you say to my Camille?”

            “I told her to get on the train. And she did."

            "And you just left? You didn't see her off?"

"I waited a while.  They announced that the train would leave a little late, at 6 pm.  She had sat down on the train and wasn't lookin' at me, Bill, so I left."

            "She didn't go, Rashid."

            "So I heard."

            "Fool bitch is in love with you." Rashid reacted by lifting his arms out to his sides partway up, and let them drop. "Camille ain't but eighteen, Rashid. Your sorry black ass is old enough to be her grandfather. Hell, you could be my father."

            "Ain't we lucky I ain't,” said Rashid.

            “Your smart mouth is exactly why we aren’t together anymore,” said Loretta, stepping between the two men.

            Bill stared at Rashid.  In anger, surprise or whatever—Willie couldn't tell. “I do gotta thank you for what you’re trying to do for her, career-wise,” he said quietly. “But I'm gonna take her to the station myself tomorrow.  Don't try to see her." He turned to leave.

            "Fine with me, Bill. I don't want to see her, truly.  I said my goodbyes."

            "We'll talk about Mario tomorrow."  He plunked down the stairs.  "After she's gone," he called back up. A few seconds later, they heard the second-floor door slam closed.

            Loretta remained with Willie and Rashid in the apartment, closing the apartment door quietly behind her, saying, "Mario is going to be here soon enough.  He'll think she's here."

            “Mario? Your son?” said Willie. “Maybe I could meet him.”

            “You don’t want that,” said Loretta. “Rashid, that won’t be good.” 

            “Why not?” asked Willie.

            “You ought to leave now,” said Loretta forcefully to Willie. “Before—”

“The boy stays,” said Rashid firmly. “He could use a little perspective. Things ain’t never so fucked up they cain’t get worse.”  

            “Don't say that, Rashid,” said Loretta. She seemed weary, as if she were listening to a story she had heard a thousand times.         

            "Mario is my son—by a previous marriage—" said Rashid, nodding to Willie.

“You told me already,” said Willie.

“—To a white woman. Did I tell you that part? And Camille used to be Mario’s girlfriend.”

“But she don't love Mario any more, because she fell in love with his daddy," blurted Loretta, stretching out the a-a-a sound. "Ain't that a bitch?"

            Rashid sat down, sweaty and limp, in a chair across from Loretta and Willie.  He was facing the door.  "I want to show you something" he said, picking up the Gibson. "On 'St. James Infirmary'—"

            Loretta cut him off. She stood with her back to Rashid, between him and Willie. “You’re just as much a fool as he is if you stay here,” she said. But her voice had lost its edge.

            Rashid acted as if she hadn’t intervened, and played the chord progression, banking the instrument’s neck to one side so Willie could see the fingering. Loretta got up in disgust.

            "You don't give a shit about your life," she said, while Rashid played.  She went into the kitchen and poured a drink.

            Rashid stopped and slid his chair close to Willie’s. "You got to stretch your pinky to here to get that E-minor sixth, see, lay it on the high E string, and it becomes a thirteenth. When you sing over it, you’ll understand why.  Try it."  He handed the guitar back to Willie. “Then sing it.”

“Sing it?” said Willie. “I don’t sing.” He knew the lyrics intimately; but it was Rashid who’d always sung them.

            “Fuck you don’t,” he glowered. “Sing!”

            He played "St. James Infirmary" but didn’t sing right away. Rashid watched Willie’s face each time he came to the E-minor thirteenth, listened to the fullness of it, saw in Willie’s face that it was a pillow the boy could lay his head on. Willie sang the first verse in a whisper, and Rashid could tell the effect the chord had on him. It was the epitome of tenderness, against which Willie—that night—began to measure all the tender gestures that would come later in his life. Second time around, Willie sang with more force.

“Sing!” Rashid called out, but it was no longer a command; it was an embrace.  

“I went down to St. James Infirmary…” sang Willie in a high alto, tinny compared to Rashid’s weighty baritone. “She was all laid out upon a cold white table…”