Lye In Wait

I meet a lot of choice individuals in my line of work.

College education, paying taxes and seeing the world through sober eyes are optional to those I encounter in my day to day. While most are walking Scotch bottles with poor style sense, a few diamonds in the rough show up from time to time.

And I don’t mean embedded in their gold teeth.

Yesterday was one of those times when life dusts off someone you see every day, letting their good character shine through.

Not a stitch over five foot two, this wiry black man named Sam made his way to me with a plastic bag in hand. He was somewhere between 50 and 100 years old and he didn’t so much walk as waddle.  The perma-grimace he sported just about screamed “I’m gonna bitch about something and you’re gonna listen.”

Sam is employed by Mr. Shapiro. A proper gentleman, the eighty-year old Mr. Shapiro calls me “sweetcakes” and isn’t happy until I have a cup of coffee with him and he talks me into eating a donut. Or two.

I love Mr. Shapiro.

Sam reached into the plastic bag and pulled out a CD. For your information, I’m not in the music business so this made little sense, but I went with it. In a raspy smoker’s voice, he said, “Honey, you weren’t even alive when I was seeing this man play.”

Looking at the CD, I saw it was Big Joe Turner, the blues legend. I agreed with Sam, that I probably wasn’t alive then, but that I knew of the great Mr. Turner via my dad.

A lover of jazz and blues, my dad introduced me to the greats early on. Dave Brubeck may have been my first concert… though he could’ve been second to The Bangles.

Sam was quickly lost in thought, so I cast myself in the role of “listener” to the story he was about to tell and was just waiting for him to begin.

“In those days, I wasn’t worth nothing’. Young boy who didn’t know nothin’ and was no good, through and through.”

Well, he had me there. I love a bad boy.

“Met Roy over there at Bobby Rae’s,” Sam said, gesturing towards Roy who stood a ways off from us. “It was a dance joint where all the greats used to play…” and then Sam listed the “greats” who I hadn’t heard of. All but the Big Joe Turner, that is.

Sam crossed to the radio and put in the CD. Pressing play, he waited. So, I waited too. And when Joe Turner sang, two things happened: I got jazzy, loving every tune the big man sang and Sam returned to his story.

“Roy saved my life.”

All jazziness stopped and I gave Sam a jigga-wha look.

Sam continued, “I didn’t treat my lady right. Used to mess her up, you know? I was no good, good for nothing, low down, rotten, worthless. She didn’t deserve that and I didn’t know better. One night, she done had enough and made up her mind to do me in.”

“Roy saw the light on in my place and went on up. Said he got there and saw her sittin’ in the kitchen with the pot of water on. Said it was boiling like somethin’ fierce and she was sittin’ in the kitchen with the light off, right next to the pot and an empty bottle of lye.

Suspect she meant to kill me, so Roy sat down to talk wit’ her. She’d done had enough and that was that. Wanted rid of me so she was gonna’ kill me. But my good friend Roy set her straight and she left me that night.

And so I lived.”

The story sank in and I looked from Roy to Sam, with his unburned skin, his normalness suddenly astounding. And Big Joe Turner sang, resonating every difference between that time and now.

Now, I love a bad boy and I love a vengeful woman, but really, I want no part in either. They’re tempting, sure, but like a boiling pot of lye they’re not something you want in your kitchen.