Via Dolorosa(28)

Isabella had already set up her equipment. She hadn’t turned on any of the lights, though; like Stonehenge, they had been erected in a semicircle where they stood, like flowers thinly-stalked and top heavy. Claxton arrived on the wind, smelling vaguely of alcohol and cigarette smoke. Out from beneath the stage lights, he looked even younger than he had originally appeared. Nick wondered if he was even eighteen years old.

“Hey, you were really terrific tonight, man,” Nick said hurriedly.

Claxton eyed him—cold-stared him. He had deep, black eyes, both physically and spiritually.

“Who the crumb?” Claxton said to Isabella, his eyes still on Nick.

“My assistant.”

“We ain’t talked ’bout no assistant,” Claxton said. “He the boogie man?”

“He’s going to help me with the lighting,” Isabella said. “Nicholas,” she said, louder. “Nicholas, come here and hook these lights together.”

Nick stepped around the cords and plugged the lights together. The power switch was on the back housing of one of the lamps, but he did not turn it on. He watched Claxton, cool in his loose-fitting shirt and tight-fitting jeans, meander over to the portable CD player, hover just briefly above it in an exercise of incredible balance…then drop a single finger on it, turning it off.

“Ain’t no boundaries wit’ jazz,” Claxton said, talking to the portable CD player. “You get it sexed, do it all so fine and good, then do it even better till y’all feel just ’bout good’s y’all ever goan feel. You dig?”

Claxton stood, thin black arms akimbo, long-fingered hands on his hips. He turned and stared at Nick.

“You dig?” the jazzman repeated.

“Sure,” Nick said.

“You goan be kind to the Goat, boogie man? You goan write me up real nice? I fractured the whole scene tonight, boogie man. You catch that?”

“I don’t…” Nick began. He glanced in Isabella’s direction, but she was busy with her camera now and was not interested in looking at him.

“You catch how I fractured that whole scene, boogie man?”

“I don’t un—”

“Question is, crumb: you dig the Goat-Man for real-like, or you jus’ posturing? You dig the voice of the claxophone, or you jus’ some out-to-lunch cat in it fo’ the scratch?”

“He thinks you’re with the press, writing a review,” Isabella said finally.

“I’m not the press,” he told Claxton, recalling what the large Hispanic man back at the Club Potemkin had said to him.

“You ain’t come to see the Goat-Man thinkin’ you goan see no sugar band. That yo’ fault, not the Goat’s. You dig? That fo’ sure.”

“I’m not the press,” he said again.

“Yeah, you the assistant. I heard. Right on.”

Nick started to laugh. Isabella looked up sharply, first at Nick then at Russell “Goat-Man” Claxton, then at Nick again. He could not stop laughing. Claxton had been playing with him and he could not stop laughing. Claxton himself only stared at him as well, those intense little eyes unmoving and unfeeling…and then he, too, broke into a wide, toothy grin, and started to laugh. The sound of Claxton’s laughter was not unlike the sound of his music: steady, confident, yet too rambunctious to settle on any particular straightaway for an extended amount of time. It was up-and-down, a seismograph printout in C-major.

“Hey,” Nick said, “how do you play those two notes at the same time like that?”

Claxton stopped laughing. Isabella continued watching them, her eyes volleying back and forth between the two.

“What?” Nick said. “What?”

“You down,” Claxton said to him, nodding, then pulled his tee-shirt up over his head. His chest was birdlike and hairless and black as night. His nipples were tiny charcoal discs, the texture of which resembled the coagulated film atop day-old pudding. Claxton tossed his shirt in a ball on the ground. He kicked off his boots then, too, and each one thumped on the wet grass. Squatting, Claxton pressed both his hands flat on the wet earth, tilted his head slightly back on his neck, gingerly closed his eyes. It appeared as though the jazzman was smiling—though if he was, it was such a subtle gesture that it could hardly be catalogued as one. With his eyes still closed, he began moving his hands slowly overtop the wet grass. His fingers splayed, each one moving independently and machinelike, he drummed a soundless beat into the grass. Then he paused, his eyes still closed, the ghost-like smile still haunting his lips, and he pressed two long, tar-colored fingers straight into the earth. He pushed them down easily enough, as the soil was still wet from the storm, and pushed them down straight to the final knuckles. Nick found himself mesmerized. Claxton’s face was the most unconcerned face he had ever looked upon. He tried to imagine Claxton in Iraq—Claxton in war—and found such an image was impossible to conjure. Claxton would never find himself in war; at any such prompt, he would simply dematerialize into nothingness, leaving a streak of vertical heat-waves in his wake never to be seen from again.

Claxton withdrew his fingers from the soil. Nick noted something white and wriggling in the jazzman’s hand—something he had pulled from the earth. It was a cicada, he realized, albino and not fully ripe. Roughly the size of a human thumb, the insect thrummed and buzzed between Claxton’s fingers, its collection of whitish legs stirring the air. Nick was close enough to see its beady red eyes.