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the archive(s):
issue no. 4:
Resurrecting Homer / Paul A. Toth
White Boy Floyd was dead, gone now the most famous modern trombone player in New Orleans, although famous was hardly the word for the closed circle respect he enjoyed. In his honor, only a lone trombone player tagged along to St. Louis Cemetery #3, and only he would play When the Saints Go Marching In on the way back.
They carried him through the French Quarter, the long parade of mourners marching behind the casket. The trombone filled the air with an endless honk, a goose with a cold making a mockery of Nearer My God to Thee. The postcard blue sky seemed not to respect the proceedings, and the sun laughed at them with its relentless shimmer and sparkle. "You take yourselves too seriously," it seemed to say. But the mourners stared at the pavement, still wet from an early morning rain. In the dissipating water they found a more appropriate setting for the event.
Meanwhile, Betty Floyd walked in front, and if the reason she did not weep for her husband remained a mystery to everyone else, it was no mystery to her.
***
On June 7th, 1948, at 2:33 a.m., White Boy Floyd, a/k/a Milton Harris Floyd, awoke his bride, despite it having taken her two hours to fall asleep in a humidity that seemed capable of breeding a jungle. She rolled over, forehead wet with beads that reflected the moon like deliquescing jewels. Her expression said, "Do not disturb." Her frown registered fury. She was a woman who loved sleep. He knew this, yet could not stop himself from waking her.
Milton had been awake even longer than Betty, three hours now, and not even two shots of vodka could put him under, as they so often did. He had stared at his trombone in the corner. It reminded him of a rifle. He looked at his wife, who he thought might be able to hold his sin like a bottle. He would slip a piece of paper that contained his secret into the bottle and let it drift across the sea. Perhaps Betty could dream it away during her many hours of sleep, send it away on a black sea, where it would sink to the bottom, never to be discovered, except perhaps by dreamt fish.
"What?" Betty said, squinting at him as if he were an idiot who had broken into their house merely to disturb her sleep.
"Well -"
"Goddamn it, Milt," she said, "if you got something to say, say it."
"Right," he said, and ran his hand through his soaked hair, the pomade gumming up his fingers. "There's something I haven't told you."
She moved up on the pillow, resting her head on her palm. "Yes?"
"No, nothing like that. I've never lied to you about that kind of thing. It's my father. He didn't die the way you think he did."
"You said he died of heart failure."
"That's what I said, but that ain't what happened. What happened is I shot him, when I was 13 years old."
"You what?"
"I said I shot him when I was 13 years old, and for no damn good reason, really. I mean, he punished me. He slapped me around pretty damn good one day for some dumb thing I did. But I don't think that's why I did it. I really don't know why I did it. There was a gun lying by the table, and after punishing me, he went outside. While he was gone, I picked up the gun to see if it was loaded. It was, and when he came back inside, I just pulled the trigger, and that was that. That's how I ended up in that orphanage. I guess he did die of heart failure, but it wasn't from natural causes."
She turned to face the pillow. He thought she might cry, but instead her mouth hung open a little, as if she might be sick. He started to touch her shoulder but pulled back. She turned, looked at him and said, "So you're gonna kill me the first time you get mad? Is that what I got to worry about from now on, for the rest of my life?"
Although he shook his head no, he knew that's exactly what she would worry about. For now, she closed her eyes and went back to sleep, leaving him with his trombone/rifle. Her jeweled forehead shone even brighter, as if she had become illuminated with the newfound knowledge of her husband's true nature.
***
After the proceedings, they all met at Luke Crawford's big house in the Garden District. To no one's surprise, Betty found an armchair and remained aloof, sipping a gin and tonic, thinking that Milton Harris Floyd could not possibly have died of anything other than what he had: heart failure. She believed that in such a world as this, the jokes build upon themselves and get less and less funny to everyone but whoever constructs them, God or whoever, whatever. Her life had been one joke upon the next until even she began to believe she might as well not move but let paralysis serve as her final statement.
She watched the mourners mull, linger, chatter, shuffle, smoke, drink, giggle, chortle, pat backs, shake hands, kiss cheeks, embrace, embrace, embrace. No one said a word to her because no one liked her. All those musicians thought she held Milton back, that when he was having a good time, she stopped it, that when he smiled, she frowned, and that when his spirit lifted, she demanded an emergency landing. She knew they were right, and she did not regret it. She was Milton's prison term and he was serving life. That was his price for deceiving her, for all the times she had checked in closets and under beds for a rifle, and for the thousand occasions when she had watched him play and imagined bullets flying from the bell of his trombone.
Someone touched her shoulder. She looked down at a wrinkled old black hand that could have been anybody's. She shook free of it. The anonymous man sighed and walked away. She wanted to say, "What do you know, you old fool? You think you knew Milton? You didn't know a goddamned thing."
But then she began to wonder if Milton had confessed his secret to the musicians. Just what kind of man was Milton? She had stopped trying to find out on the night of his confession and simply kept her distance from him thereafter, attending what events were necessary and avoiding the rest.
She stood and wandered outside for some air. On the way, she wondered why she had never left. She could have packed her things and fled one night when he was out of town. It would have been so easy, yet she had stayed.
She began to worry that she had stayed in love with him all those years, lying to herself then and now. In the front yard, she shuffled in the sunlight and wiped away the beads of sweat that reminded her of That Night, as she called it. There was That Night when he confessed, and now there was That Day when he died.
A frantic energy came over Betty. She had a feeling she had better hurry away, before someone grabbed her elbow and said, "We knew all along, but we forgave him. You should have, too, but it's too late now. You cheated old Milton, but you cheated yourself worse."
She rushed away, toward the cemetery.
***
At the orphanage, certain children were allowed into music class. They had to pass an entrance exam meant to discern who had enough talent to bother trying to teach, and Milton was one of them. A week later, he was led into a large closet with eleven other children. There were a dozen dilapidated instruments: drum kit, French horn, trumpet, xylophone, clarinet, saxophone, violin, cello, flute, tuba, oboe and trombone. It was the trombone that Milton noticed. There was something safe about it, something that told him it was simpler than the other instruments. And even when he learned it was not as simple as he had thought, he still felt safe with it, perhaps because it was taller than he was at the time. It was like having a bigger, stronger best friend in whose presence he did not feel threatened. Over time, he forgot the reasons for his attachment to the instrument. He only knew that when he held the trombone, he felt like a frightened baby given its safety blanket.
***
The topic of Milton's deed never arose throughout all the years that followed, at least verbally. Yet it was always in the air, buzzing in his ear like a fly. Sometimes, when he read the newspaper or watched television, he caught Betty staring at him. He knew what she was thinking. It took everything he had not to snap at her, but he did not care to raise the issue. He would choke back his anger, swallowing hard. Before long, he would find himself stirring a drink in the kitchen. He would down one drink right there, then pour another and return to the living room. On his return, Betty would sigh and leave the room.
"Lord," Milton would whisper to himself, "if only I didn't deserve it."
***
The simple marker stated, "Milton Harris Floyd, July 2, 1926 - August 18, 1979." It was a small plot, as if he had been buried in one of those New York City studio apartments they stayed in when he was on tour. Poor dead Milton, she thought, shaking her head.
Strange recriminations began to creep into her mind as the hot breeze wilted her hair. For one thing, he had wanted to be cremated, and now she realized she had ignored his wishes not because she objected to cremation but out of spite. She was even angrier with him on the day he died, realizing he had never earned enough to leave her anything, that she would spend her last years struggling to survive on Social Security. She wondered if she could have his body exhumed and cremated later that week, but then thought better of making such a phone call. He would just have to lie in the earth, that's all, the same earth his dead father occupied.
"Why'd you do it," she whispered. "I guess it don't matter. It don't matter at all now."
She turned and started walking home. The sky was beginning to cloud over, but she knew it wouldn't rain; the exact same weather had been occurring for two weeks now, a bright blue morning sky followed by a cloudy but rainless afternoon. The sky was a pregnant woman who would never give birth.
***
At the orphanage, a social worker of some kind would stop by once a month and interview all the children. Milt hated the interviews, as it always seemed they were digging for something, the secret he did not want to reveal. And the one thing they always picked at him about was his father. Each time, Mrs. Miller would ask, "Now what happened to your father, Milton?" But he would just shake his head. "Okay," she would say. "If you don't want to talk about it, maybe next time." Then Mrs. Miller would ask him if his mind raced, if he ever thought he was someone special, someone whose name would go down in history. Somehow, he knew he should answer that he was no one special, just another person, and that's what he said. Yet he did believe he was someone special, that his name would go down in history. The music teacher had already said he was enormously gifted, that perhaps he should seek a scholarship or join the Marines so he could play in their band.
Later, long after he left the orphanage, he realized Mrs. Miller thought he was manic depressive. But even if he was - and his mind certainly did race sometimes, race so fast he had to clutch something or else pitch forward and faint - he could not stand being asked those questions again, like a criminal at the interrogation table with a white hot lightbulb overhead. No, he would make his own way and somehow survive, even if sometimes what he thought happened and what really happened separated just a bit, like a double exposure photograph.
***
Betty was turning the key to her apartment door when that same hand that grasped her shoulder at Luke Crawford's house now touched her hand.
"Betty," he said.
She recognized the voice. She knew it was Luke Crawford without turning to look at him. Instead, she stared at the door.
"Your guests," she said.
"They can take care of themselves. Can I come in?"
She hesitated before nodding yes. He pulled his hand away. She finished turning the key, then pushed the door open. She moved slowly toward a chair by the window. Luke closed the door and sat in a chair on the other side of the table that separated them. He looked out the other window.
"Sure is gray outside," he said.
"Mm," she said.
"Betty, I've got a strange feeling about things. In fact, I've had a strange feeling about things since the day you and Milt got married."
"Is that right?"
"Yes, and I'm not the only one who noticed. Something changed after the marriage, not just with you but Milt, too. He was always heavy with the world, but something weighed down even heavier on him all these years since."
She touched the table as if to steady herself, but she did not look at Luke. Instead, she stared at the gray wall of clouds.
"What happened? There's nobody that's gonna know, Betty, nobody but you and me. You know me and Milt was best friends. We played all over this country. I knew just about every secret Milt had, except for this. Now that he's gone - well, it won't hurt me knowing, would it? It would help me, Betty. It would help me live with his being gone."
She turned and looked at Luke. His eyes were so red he might have been high on something, only Luke never even drank. His black eyes seemed smudged, as if they were dissolving, the pupils invisible. He sat with his elbows on his knees, his hands folded. It did not seem to phase him that she was staring at him, nor did Betty flinch from his gaze.
"You knew all his secrets?" she said.
"All but one, I think. That's my guess."
"It's a good guess," she said. "I do think there's one thing you don't know, that nobody but I knew, and it's been weighing down on me since the day he told me. I was the one weighed down with the world, and it was heavy, very, very heavy. He handed that weight to me. He gave it to me. I didn't want it, but now I had it, and now that he's dead, I still got it.
"He told me the night of the wedding. If only we could have afforded a honeymoon, maybe he would have been distracted and kept it to himself. Instead, we're both lying there, and we can't get to sleep in the heat. Every hot night since reminds me of it, every single one. And when I finally get to sleep, he wakes me up, and then he tells me. I'll never forget the words. He says, 'What happened is I shot him, when I was 13 years old.' I was just a girl. Just a girl. I didn't know what to think. I didn't know if I should run or call the police or call a lawyer. Instead, I just stayed. I tried to forget, but I couldn't. I couldn't forget for one single second what he said that night."
Luke was still staring at her. "I don't understand. Shot who?"
"But I thought you knew all his secrets," she said. "I thought he told you everything. You mean to tell me he left one thing out? But I thought you two were best friends."
"We were, Betty. But I don't know what you're talking about."
"What I'm talking about is his father. He shot his father, when he was 13 years old. That makes him crazy. Capable of anything. He might have shot me, but I guess I was lucky. Yeah, I was real lucky, all right."
Luke shook his head. He was no longer staring at her; he was staring at the floor. "Betty," he said, "that ain't true."
"Oh, because he never told you, it ain't true? It's true. Why else would he tell me? Who would make up something like that against himself?"
"All these years, you thought that happened? Lord, Betty. Lord, that's too sad for me to even think about."
"Well, you think about it. That's what I've been thinking about for decades now. Decades and decades."
"But," he said, standing and resting his hands against the window frame, "that's just not what happened. Killed his father? No. Milt's father ran away after his mother died, Betty. Milt was just so ashamed of it. He blamed himself. He told all kinds of stories. I guess he was a strange, mixed up kid, so it's easy to see why he might have thought it was all his fault. But I never heard that one before. I know I'm right because one day we drove through the town where he knew his father lived, a little town in Georgia not far from Atlanta. He showed me his name in the phone book. He picked up the phone and dropped a dime in the slot, but then he hung up. He never said a word after that, and I never dared ask him about it. But his father was alive, all right. Unless there's more than one Homer Gene Floyd."
Betty stood and mimicked Milt, resting her hands against the window frame behind her chair. Would the clouds never break? Would the rain never come?
"What's the weather?" she said. "Will it rain?"
"Lord, it's a funny world," Milt said. "It's just a funny world. That's why nothing surprises me. Hell, for all I know, it may never rain again."
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