Figure 2:
Stage 2: Blue Rose
Stage 2: Blue Rose (detail)
NARRATOR:
Down in the bottom of Deep Ellum
In the Lavender Room at the Oasis Lounge
On gin and powder that night in 1924
She's playing
With the big blue Negro's horn
Moaning in tongues
Fluttering like wings
His rage at love
...Got a Rich Man Disposition
With a Rag Man Bag a Woe
And it doing her
The first time she knew it for real
Like she was never done before
And later
When a wealthy white woman shot him in the head
In the sheets of the bed in a suite at the Fairmont Hotel
She heard about it
"Mr. Night Mood got plugged"
And cried all afternoon at the thought of it
Of life's sweet up-side-downedness and tragic silly loss
And how, just exactly, that is music.
Figure 2:
Stage 2: Blue Rose
Stage 2: Blue Rose (detail)
Listen to excerptBLUE ROSE.
IT IS 1958.
THEY HAVE BEEN TOGETHER LONGER THAN THEY WERE EVER WITH ANYONE ELSE.
IT IS LATE AT NIGHT.
THEY LAY IN SEPARATE BEDS AND TALK ABOUT THEIR LIVES.
THE STORIES COME UP...ONE BY ONE...AND GREAT SPACES OPEN UP AND MOVE IN AND OUT BETWEEN THEM.
SHE SAYS A PERSON HAS TO DIG INTO THE HEART OF EVERYTHING...AND WHAT LITTLE GETS DUG OUT IS ALL THERE IS...OR WILL EVER BE.
HE SAYS HE REMEMBERS EVERY GAME.
SHE SAYS SHE REMEMBERS EVERY SONG.
AND IT IS NO LONGER JUST ABOUT THE TWO OF THEM...IT'S ALL OF IT.
MOST OF WHICH CAN NEVER BE SAID.
IT JUST LAYS IN SECRETS IN THE DARK...LIKE THE BLACK GAP BETWEEN THE TWO BEDS THAT HOLDS THEIR HANDS.
IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GROWING OLD.
Figure 2:
Stage 2: Blue Rose
Stage 2: Blue Rose (detail)
That afternoon in South Alabama,
He'd stuck a pencil through a batter's tongue
During the bottom of the 6th.
The batter got beaned in the adam's apple.
He was having a convulsion and trying to swallow his tongue.
While other players held him down, He'd grabbed the umpire's
Yellow scoring pencil and shoved it straight through
To the other side.
It didn't work.
The batter passed right there in the box, purple as a turnip.
Both clubs stood around awhile looking at him, then two of his
Teammates put dimes in his eyes and carried him off and laid him
Under a quilt behind the concession.
They finished the game.
That night in a roadhouse
Called only 'HUMMINGBIRD', he drank beer and watched a big
Jar of pigs feet pickled on the counter.
A victrola in the back was playing some scratchy thing
He didn't know.
It was moany and niggery and sad.
The next day
They played a double header up in Mobile then took
The night train back to Houston.
He was 46 years old and he hurt all over and it was 1932
And he would never play ball again.
He still might manage if they paid him enough,
But that pink tongue had did it.
He was hanging up the spikes.
Figure 2A:
Stage 2: Base
MAN VOICE:
A lot happened in the summer of 1895.
In May,
He never went back to school after the third grade.
The teacher ran off with a ballplayer from St. Louis.
He didn't know what a ballplayer was, but he knew he liked it.
Teachers were scarce in Missouri.
In June,
He got his first ball glove.
His Pa, mystified by the unusual configuration of the thing, traded a plug of tobacco for it from a tonic drummer.
He thought it to be a cushion or perhaps some kind of hat.
He tried out various other speculations on it...none of which worked worth a damn.
"To hell with the sum-bitch"
An threw it in the barn.
The boy found it.
He didn't know what it was, but it set well with him.
He liked holding
it and looking at it.
He liked the feel of his fingers inside it.
In July,
His older brother, who'd never told him nothin, told him it was a ballplayer thing...a Catch Mitt...and then told him the ball being played was called 'BASE', a game made up by the famous Mr. Thomas Alva Edison during one of his rest periods
in-between inventing the electricity light.
Things snowballed after that.
By August,
He'd seen his first exhibition game at a county social...had begun to practice diligently and learned most of the basic rules and, before the first blue norther hit in late September, had already played in twenty-five seven inning games.
He didn't care who invented it.
He knew he could do it and he knew it beat hell out of farming.
"Can't hit for shit...but the lil sum-bitch can throw"
Even his Pa learned the game.
Figure 2B:
Stage 2: The Bench
Listen to excerptWOMAN VOICE:
Inside
The Poppa is down on his knees...big hands thrown out before him, crushed white with prayer.
But his head is up, twisted rigid to the right.
His mouth is wet and
his eyes bulge with revelations.
A full-bodied woman is playing the piano.
Her dress is black and he is studying her ass move on the bench.
The church is nearly empty.
If there is sound, it is hissing.
Figure 2C:
Stage 2: Wide Open
Outside
Steam spews from the engine.
The platform is mobbed with people and banners wave.
A brass band is playing.
Two blacks jump high, kicking their heels in the air.
They both look like Uncle Sams and hold tiny flags.
Blue smoke hangs over the barrels of pistols.
The boys are on the train...jammed out the windows, waving and leaning
to kiss the girls.
Every mouth is wide open.
Figure 2D:
Stage 2: Redleg
Stage 2: Hero
Listen to excerptMAN VOICE:
"Yr Pa spent 3 day down in a dugout dirt trench full of blood up to his chin...couldn't even raise his head because they was more lead shot in the air then they was air. Said in a field once after a fight, he seen more human guts layin in the dirt then they was blades of grass.
So ye let him be boy..."
He'd dogged his Pa about it...dogged him about the war.
But he'd clam up...just go on about whatever he was doing or walk away. Be he kept doggin him.
Finally, his Ma jerked him up by the arm and carried him off into the field.
"He warn't no murderin redleg trash like that James clan.
He served with honor with the Tennessee Volunteer.
Three his brothers warred for the Yankees, but yr Pa an his baby brother warred for The Cause.
Day they left they stood right out ere in Town Road solemn as preachers and shook hands...shook hands an went off different directions to kilt one another...brother against brother.
Them was dark days.
When they left, they own Pa...Yr Grandpa...was so disturbed he kilt their Ma...shot her in the heart...then kilt his own self with a ball in the mouth.
Whole family got kilt...cept yr Pa...an he wouldn't say nothin, nary a word...for four year after he come back from it.
I'm the only one he ever talked it to...an after it was all out he said that's it...It's out and it's over an it's did an I ain't sayin it ere to no livin soul agin.
So boy, let him be.
..them was terrible dark days."
Figure 2E:
Stage 2: Thirteen Years Old
WOMAN VOICE:
Inside
Her tongue is hanging out.
Her eyes are blank.
She is naked...spread-eagled in a broken bundle of hay.
A pair of bloodied knickers lay in a wad near a stall.
The livery is empty...except for one pale horse.
Deep red welts bubble up along her arms, her throat...across her stomach and the insides of her legs.
Strings of vomit pool and cake across her flat boney little chest.
She is thirteen years old...and drunk as a skunk.
Figure 2F:
Stage 2: The Edge
Outside
A photographer covers up his head and looks out the camera.
Up close and centered to the left...
The shadow of a figure running is blurred, black against the wooden slats outside a livery.
In the middle and slightly to the bottom...
A crowd of people wave at a great black train covered with flags...pulling away.
In the distance, far to the right and near the top...
The dark silhouette of a man in a flatbed wagon with, what appears to be, a piano tied to the back.
Even at this distance, the man seems excited...frantic
even, as he whips a horse who's head is lost, disappeared off into the edge.
Figure 2G:
Stage 2: Slick
Inside
The photograph, sepia toned and centered with a white border on black paper...held with tiny black corners glued down with spit.
At the bottom, Someone has written in a small but elegant script
"Summer of 1918, Our Boys Go to War"
And under that, in the same slanted hand
"While they take their leave, we make the windows slick from crawling out at night"
If there is sound, it is piano.
Continued on page 3
