Chapter Two Malcolm Davenport #2
“Always an optimist, aren’t you?” I reply.
“We can save them. I just got to figure out a way to shut this place down before…” I sigh.
Hard. I can’t say before they die. But from Jayla’s expression, she knows.
“I swear, as much as we travel through time trying to do good, help the poor, and help our people do better, seems like something’s just as busy making it worse.
You ever wonder if all this hate is natural or supernatural? Like some cosmic game?”
“Shut up.” She lowers her voice. “Don’t talk about the supernatural. You’ll get a one-way ticket to an asylum.” The way she cuts her eyes at me lets me know I better close my mouth.
Loot approaches and slides another drink my way before I’ve finished the last.
I gulp it fast. “Mmm. Tastes like showtime.”
“Good.” He grins and dries the spill on the bar. “I’ll let the crowd know they’re in for the performance of their lives.”
A hum buzzes through the juke joint when I step out of the shadows and stand in front of the mic.
I squint up at the spotlight man on the balcony, hoping he’s gonna lessen the amount of light blinding me.
I glance at the audience, and the crowd surges forward with a rush of excitement; men in crisp collared shirts and sleek waistcoats blend into an ocean of women in cotton dresses that vary in shade more vividly than the beautiful brown skin of the women wearing them.
As I sing the first notes, chorus girls burst through the shimmery cream curtain behind the stage, circling me and grinning like they are performing with musical royalty.
They gyrate to the sounds and look like exotic birds with their bubblegum-pink bodysuits and ostrich feathers as they do their high kicks.
I’ve got to figure out a way to shut this spot down before the Klan attacks. No one in here should be hurt just because racists aren’t happy with Loot.
But first, I’m gonna enjoy my time with the music. I hit a high note. Mama always said my voice was light and cool as a cloud, but heavy enough to rain joy on an audience. I pluck my guitar and watch the dancing people in front of me. They go wild. Bodies jumping, arms swaying, and fast footwork.
My heart is a bass drum. My fingers don’t just fly over the strings—they are the strings.
The music moves in and out of me as easy as air.
I need it to survive. I sing with passion, glancing at the dancing beauties circling me and the band playing behind me.
I nod to the band, and the music transitions into a jazzier sound that I taught them when we rehearsed the last time I was here.
Time to bless the crowd’s ears with a Malcolm Davenport original, something I wrote after my first broken heart.
“Protect what you love
Till that love kills you
’Cause life ain’t livin’
Without someone to thrill you.
Try to laugh harder than you cry
’Cause we ain’t really livin’, just waitin’ to die…”
I always feel like a king onstage. The greatest. My voice is like a flame at the feet of the people on the dance floor, making those feet rise up and pound down harder as their hips move.
I slam on my guitar. Women sway and shake their hips.
The beat moves me too, awakens the magic in me.
Without me trying, my power bubbles up, like foam in a champagne bottle.
It fizzes inside me and spills out of my guitar.
My sister notices. She sits up straighter on her barstool, looking wide-eyed and scared as blood-colored smoke bends and rises from the neck of my shiny guitar.
The crowd can’t see it. But they feel it.
The smoke snakes all over the room. A guy dancing across from Jayla’s seat is bopping in a stiff-collared white shirt, a waistcoat, and dark trousers.
He dips a dark-skinned girl in a yellow dress.
The girl stays down low, tilted at an impossible angle, with her skirt catching wind and her entire body balanced on a high heel.
The crowd moves in slow motion, almost frozen as their bodies wind to the beat.
The drunken joy is stuck on their euphoric faces, smiles barely changing, mouths wide with excitement.
It’s like they forgot all their bills, their problems, and the hate they face outside these walls.
Part of me wants to hold that happiness forever.
Stay lost in the music, in the fun of being one with the beat and each other.
But that would be like trading sure for unsure.
It wouldn’t be right. If I use the power of my music on people for too long, it can create hypnotic delusions.
Delusions that some would rather die than wake up from.
That others would kill to have, like getting one last kiss from a dead lover.
It may be beautiful. But it isn’t real. Protecting their real joy is why I’m here. It’s why I helped Loot start this place to begin with. And it’s why I gotta shut it down tonight.
My head feels like it’s splitting in two.
It burns between my eyes as I try to force the smoke back into the guitar.
I gotta do it. Red clouds roll close as hell.
Gold music notes flicker in them like lightning.
They stretch and twist like arrows. I exhale slow, trying to stay calm and control the power before those arrows bend into knives and stab someone’s heart.
Haze steams right in my face, and though I’m scared the pain will blaze hot enough to kill me, I stare into it.
The notes and arrows shimmer around me, aimed at a ghostly thin picture flickering in the clouds.
It’s a beautiful Black girl with a broad nose and hair so long it looks like a dark river.
She’s standing at the entrance to one of our concerts in a gleaming ruby-red dress.
Her eyes find me. Dark brown with bursts of hazel like drizzles of honey on a praline.
My mind feels locked until her image fades.
A warmth flickers through me. She’s like seeing a dream that I didn’t know I needed.
A dream I don’t want to wake from. Her face plays on repeat in my mind after the vision ends. Who is she?
The arrows become music notes again and vanish as the guitar smoke melts into thin air. The crowd speeds up like a movie on fast forward until the folks are dancing normally.
I gaze down at my guitar. It usually only shows me images, snapshots of the futures of those I’m around. I wonder if the vision girl will be part of my future, but it’s probably just wishful thinking. I’ve never seen my future before. That’s not how the gift works no matter what I do.
But I feel drawn to her in a way I’ve never felt drawn to anybody … like I’m supposed to know her. I have to find out who she is.
I finish the song and take a bow. The crowd explodes with applause. Riding the high, I head back to the bar.
“Do five more songs.” Loot slides three glasses in front of me. “Every time you hit the stage, people buy more drinks. Keep them happy—and our pockets full!”
I flash him a weak smile and wrap my fingers around a tumbler. Loot bops over to serve other folks at the bar. My thoughts spiral as I strategize the best way to help them. The echo of the girl’s face is distracting me from what needs to be done tonight.
The guy sitting on the other side of Jayla looks at her and starts humming. He’s sad ugly with a pointy beard and the kind of face his mama must have cried about. “Mmm, darlin’, if you was a book you’d gotta be the finest print.”
My sister rolls her eyes. “And you’d still never get in my covers.”
I laugh.
He fires off another corny overused pickup line. “Baby, you’re like pork chops and gravy. I wanna take you home and sop you up with a biscuit. Let’s—”
“Watch your mouth,” I say.
“Mind ya business,” he spits.
My sister scoots away as the man moves closer to her. Her face is all scrunched up because his breath probably reeks of booze and funk.
“I may not be the best-looking guy here, but—” He inches closer to Jayla. “My desire for you is like diarrhea, darlin’.” His thick hand grips her thigh. “It can go all night.”
Jayla pushes him off.
“If you put your hand on my sister again, you gone lose it.” I jump out of my seat, so he knows I’m not playing. I didn’t want to fight tonight. But I will if I have to.
“Didn’t I tell you to mind ya business.” He tries to grab Jayla’s waist.
She stands up.
I lift my fist, but before I can land a punch, Jayla picks up her barstool and swings it at the man’s head.
He somehow sidesteps it, and the stool hits a man in the corner.
That man didn’t see Jayla toss it, so he swings at the nearest possible perpetrator.
Then that guy flips a table and punches him back. A full fight erupts.
Loot turns toward the chaos. “Stop that now!” He rushes from behind the bar and tries to break it up.
I look at my sister. What the hell?
Jayla mouths, I got you, and smiles.
Oh, I get it. I nod back.
I swing at the man who groped Jayla. My fist connects with his face so hard my knuckles hurt.
He should know better than to touch a woman without her permission.
Then I “accidentally” hit someone to the right of him.
That guy swings at me, and my lip splits open.
Dang. Now I’m battling both these fools.
It’s hard too, because I have to concentrate.
Sometimes when I’m riled up from the stage, the power inside me can translate to excess strength.
Even if that one dude is a jerk, I’m not trying to kill anybody I came to save.
Jayla antagonizes others into the fight. She’s brilliant. A bar fight will trash this place, put it out of business for a while so no one gets killed by the Klan. I’ll help Loot to clean up and reopen when it’s safe.
Someone hits me so hard my face swings to the right and my ear rings. This isn’t helping my headache or my mood. But if getting my butt kicked saves somebody, so be it.
I hit the guy who punched me, and his body lifts three feet before he falls.
Another guy clobbers me in the side of the head.
I pivot toward him and punch him back. This time I try to go easy, but he still sways and falls, breaking a wooden table as he tumbles.
I have too much strength pouring out of me right now, and the adrenaline is making it worse.
More people jump into the brawl. Across the bar, a lady in a pink dress pushes a woman in green. That shove leads to another. The woman stumbles and falls, green dress ripped, knees slamming into the floor.
I glance over my shoulder at Jayla. The back of her headpiece jerks from side to side. She’s locked in combat with some woman. Yeah, she helped me tonight, but this is why I wanted her to keep her butt home. It’s hard enough to focus on saving myself, but now I gotta focus on protecting her, too.
I fight near her, in case she needs help. But she stands above the crumpled woman, who is knocked out from her punch.
I hit pointy-beard guy again. He pulls out a blade, raising it high. “That the best you can do?” he taunts.
I move in front of my sister. Definitely didn’t expect weapons, but that’s my bad. Everyone carries something in this time period. I just pray no one has a pistol. Not even a time traveler can outrun a bullet.
Pointy-Beard swings his blade, slicing my suit and cutting the dang pocket off.
At least he didn’t get me. Still, he’s not about to get away with trying to draw blood.
I swing at him, take his knife, and catch him in his gut.
Not deep enough to kill, but it’ll sting like hell and make him think twice about disrespecting women. Especially women in my family.
He doubles over, gripping his oozing wound.
“Get moving!” I shout to my sister.
Loot’s jaw is clenched, and his fist is shaking. He’s pissed. Somebody tosses a chair. It arcs toward the stage and crashes into the piano. Red-faced and fed up, Loot knocks him out. “ENOUGH! All of you get out.”
People stagger about, continuing to tussle around us, despite bloody wounds and busted lips.
Chairs and barstools are broken, bottles behind the bar shattered and dripping off the shelves.
Even the piano is damaged. It’s gonna take a lot of money and time to fix this mess.
Guilt pools in my stomach. But at least everyone’s still alive.
I yank Jayla hard, pulling her out of the way of another airborne chair. It smacks the wall by her head and crashes down on the ground. She jumps over the broken heap of wood, and together we run out of the juke joint. We dash away from the fuss, laughing as we run.
“Yo-o-o, that was wild!” I shout. “I swear. I can’t go nowhere with you!”
At the top of the street we turn right, heading toward the forest. A full moon lights our way. My whole body tightens up. Shadows hang like lynched men. A warning.
With Jayla beside me, I rush into the trees.
The forest feels alive as I step over a rotted log and eye the tangled vines and green velvety moss around us.
Ravens swarm overhead. I glare at them, not wanting to deal with that bad omen.
A pit is burning in my stomach. I think I know why they’re here, but I’m not gonna focus on it, not yet.
I whip out my golden vintage lighter from my pocket and rotate the tiny dials on a cryptex on its side, programming in our date and destination: PHILADELPHIA, 2024. My genius invention to help sharpen my family’s ability to move through time.
Gold-purple flame flickers up from my lighter.
I find a spot between two Y-shaped trees.
I guide the fire from my lighter, outlining a rectangular shape I’ve drawn a million times before.
I think of how so many of my relatives had to do this, cloaked under the shade of night, making fiery doors, hoping light didn’t draw any onlookers and praying they ended up in the right year.
The space shifts apart to become a door made of waving gold-purple flames.
I love time travel, but this next part always stings. I grab the burning doorknob. I bite down hard and try not to scream.
The door swings open to reveal an ocean of black studded with stars. Crescent moons and Caribbean suns sparkle in waves of darkness as constellations float past. Ma always called it the universe spreading itself out.
I grab my sister’s hand and pull her inside.