I said, “The last time it snowed was the night Alma Jean died.”
Dorothy Margon built another pyramid of torn coasters on the tavern table and watched the Saturday night dancers. Fred Margon and I watched the Duke. The Duke mopped his face with a dirty handkerchief, a kind of desperation in his voice that rose higher, faster, as if he could not stop himself, had to talk while Fred Margon was there.
“I knows that there fox. I mean, I gets up close to tell her do a fade and I remembers that chippie in the snow.”
I said, “It was Alma Jean.”
He sweated in that hot room with its pounding music and packed bodies swirling and rubbing. It was what he had been hiding, holding back. What he had wanted to tell from the start. What he had to tell.
“Back when I was jus’ a punk kid stealin’ dogs, my or man beatin’ my ass to go to school, that there chippie out in the snow was in that school. I remembers. Smart ’n’ clean ’n’ got a momma dresses her up real good. I remembers, you know? Like, I had eyes for that pretty little kid back then.”
The band stopped. The dancers drifted off the floor, sat down. A silence like a blow from a hammer in the hands of the big blue man in the mural.
“I walks off. I mean, when I remembers that little girl, I walks me away from that there chippie. I remembers how good her momma fixes her up, so I walks off ’n’ lets her work, ’n’ I got the blues, you know. I got the blues then, ’n’ I got ’em now.”
“Everybody got the blues,” Dorothy said. “We should write a song. Fred should write a poem.”
“It was Alma Jean, Duke,” I said.
Walter Ellis stopped to say a few low words to the tall, handsome doctor, while I walked down the steps of his modest house and out to the ghetto street. The numbers boss caught up with me before I reached his Cadillac.
“Does that tell you who killed her?” Ellis said.
“I think so. All I have to do is find a way to prove it.”
He nodded. We both got into the back of the pink car. It purred away from the curb. The silent driver in the immaculate suit drove slowly, sedately, parading Ellis through his domain where the people could see him.
“Any ideas?” Ellis said.
“Watch and hope for a break. They’ve all got something on their minds; maybe it’ll get too heavy.”
He watched the street ahead. “That include me?”
“It includes you,” I said. “You were out that night.”
“You know what I’ve got on my mind?”
“I’ve got a hunch,” I said. “I’m going to meet the Margons in Irish Johnny’s tonight. Why don’t you come around and bring Brant, friend of the family.”
We drove on to my motel.
“The Duke hangs out in Irish Johnny’s,” Ellis said.
“I know,” I said.
“I writes me a poem,” the Duke said. “ ’Bout that there chippie. I go home ’n’ writes me a poem.”
The scarred black face of the Duke seemed to watch the empty dance floor as he told about the poem he had written. Fred Margon looked at him. All through the long room the Saturday night people waited for the music to begin again. Across the floor Walter Ellis talked to those who came to him one by one to pay their respects. Joey Brant drank, stared into his glass, looked toward me and the Margons and the Duke.
“Do you have it with you?” Fred said.
The Duke’s eyes flickered above the scars on his face and the new bandage. Looked right and left.
“Did you bring it to show me?” Fred Margon said.
The Duke sweated in the hot room. Nodded.
“All right,” Fred said. “But don’t just show it to me, read it. Out loud. Poetry should be read aloud. While the band is still off, get up and read your poem. This is your tavern; they all know you in here. Tell them why you wrote it, how it came to you, and read it to them.”
The Duke stared. “You fuckin’ with me, man?”
“Fred?” Dorothy Margon said.
“You wrote it, didn’t you? You felt it. If you feel something and write it, you have to believe in it. You have to show it to the world, make the world hear.”
“You a crazy man,” the Duke said.
Dorothy tore another coaster. Across the room Joey Brant and Walter Ellis watched our table. I waited.
“Give it to me,” Fred said.
The Duke sat there for some time, the sweat beaded on his face, his booted foot swinging, while the people all through the room waited for Saturday night to return.
“What happened to Alma Jean, Duke?” I said.
Fred Margon said, “You wrote it; give it to me.”
The Duke reached into his filthy raincoat and handed a torn piece of lined notebook paper to Fred Margon. Fred stood up. On the other side of the dance floor Joey Brant held his glass without drinking as Fred Margon walked to the bandstand, jumped up to the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen!”
In the long room, ice loud in the glasses and voices in the rumble of conversation, the people who waited only for the music to begin again, Saturday night to return, turned toward the bandstand. Fred Margon told them about the Duke and the chippie working his territory without his permission. The Duke alone in the night with the snow and the chippie.
“The Duke remembered that girl. He let her work, went home and wrote a poem. I’m going to read that poem.”
There were some snickers, a murmur of protest or two, the steady clink of indifferent glasses. Fred called for silence. Waited. Until the room silenced. Then he read the poem.
Through the smoke haze of the crowded tavern room they shifted their feet. They stirred their drinks. The musicians, ready to return, stood in the wings. A woman giggled. The bartenders hid grins. Some men suddenly laughed. A murmur of laughter rippled through the room. The Duke stood up, stepped toward the bandstand. Fred came across the empty dance floor.
“I like it,” Fred Margon said. “It’s not a good poem; you’re not a poet. But it’s real and I like it. I like anything that says what you really feel, says it openly and honestly. It’s what you had to do.”
The Duke’s eyes were black above the scars and the bandage. The Duke watched only Fred, his fists clenched, his eyes wide.
“It’s you,” Fred said. “Go up and read it yourself. Make them see what you saw out there in the snow when you remembered Alma Jean, the girl whose mother dressed her so well. To hell with anyone who laughs. They’re laughing at themselves. The way they would have laughed if Alma Jean had told them what she was going to do. They’re afraid, so they laugh. They’re afraid to know what they feel. They’re afraid to feel. Help them face themselves. Read your poem again. And again.”