CHAPTER TWO THE COOK-OUT
CHAPTER
TWO
The Cook-Out
The taste of Coke lingered sweetly on Cora’s lips as they drove, stopping on the way at Jackson Hole to pick up Benny’s best friend, Roscoe. Benny leaned on the horn in front of Roscoe’s dingy boarding house, until Cora shooed her brother’s hands from the wheel.
‘Stop making all that noise,’ she said. ‘It’s not just Roscoe living here.’
Seconds later Roscoe came bounding out of the house like a giant puppy. He poked his handsome face into the car window and flashed Cora a playful scowl. ‘What’re you doing in my seat?’ Then to Benny, ‘You know I ride shotgun. You throwing me over for your little sister?’
‘He sure is,’ Cora said, teasing him right back. ‘Looks like you’re riding in the rear today.’
‘So, that’s how it is.’ Eyes dancing, he folded his broad frame into the back seat of the Plymouth. ‘I’m gonna remember this, Cora North.’ He pulled the door shut and the handle nearly came off in his hand.
‘Hey! Take it easy,’ Benny said. ‘I don’t want to have to fix that again.’
His boss at Keeler Motors had thought the car was beyond repair and sold it to Benny for parts. He’d looked on in amazement as his employee painstakingly restored it, one belt, one screw, one pump at a time, to something roadworthy, even if it looked like a junky old jalopy.
When Benny and Roscoe had clasped and slapped hands in their own special greeting, with Cora rolling her eyes at just how long it can take two people to say hi, Benny drove on to Jasper, who came out trumpet in hand.
Ever since Jasper had started performing at the local clubs a few years ago, people expected him to play something at every gathering he went to, so he’d taken to bringing his trumpet with him wherever he went.
When he didn’t have it in his mouth, Jasper talked a mile a minute with not a thing in the world to say, so that was another reason to keep him playing.
Not one second after he climbed into the car, Jasper was already running his mouth about lawn fertilizer.
‘I’m telling you, it’ll keep your grass green as you like. No more patchiness and you’ll never have to re-seed.’
Jasper lived on the third floor of an apartment building and had never owned a blade of grass in his life, but he had a new day job as a parks attendant, and three months in, he styled himself a green-thumbed expert.
Roscoe groaned. ‘Nobody here’s trying to plant grass, Jasper.’
Cora tried to stifle a giggle that came busting out as a snort.
‘Oh, you think that’s funny?’ he said.
‘She thinks so because it is,’ Roscoe said.
At the same time Benny said, ‘It’s not Cora’s fault Roscoe’s got jokes.’
The two of them eyed each other through the rear-view mirror and grinned approval, like two peas in a pod.
Blowing a puff of air through his lips, Jasper slouched lower in his seat. ‘I don’t care what you do with your patchy grass. I’m just telling you how to keep it green, but you can have brown, raggedy, bald grass all you want.’
When Benny pulled up to Lee’s place, Cora’s stomach bunched into a knot. She caught herself biting her lip waiting for him to step out of his uncle Drew’s townhouse.
Lee and Jasper had met playing the clubs together. A true musician, Lee played the trumpet, clarinet, French horn and especially the saxophone. When the two hit it off, Jasper introduced him to Roscoe and Benny and he became a kind of plus-one to their three musketeers.
Cora stared as he came out of the house, because looking at Lee was like looking at music.
The energy, the rhythm, the pull and sway of him.
Lee was a beat change, a key shift, the tune you didn’t know you were waiting to hear until there it was, gliding right through you, setting everything on fire.
‘Morning, Cora,’ he sing-songed, the rise and fall of his voice like a siren call. She couldn’t even answer him. He slid into the car with a short, ‘Fellas,’ for the other three, and they were off.
Most folks were still at church when they arrived at Aunt Teen’s, so the five of them got busy helping Aunt Teen and her daughter, Patsy, drag card tables out back to set up the food.
Aunt Teen’s patch of back garden flowed into her neighbours’ on the left and the right, but since she invited them to her cook-outs, they didn’t mind that her friends spilled over onto their lawns.
Her small patch of balding grass dipped down into a ditch, and on the other side of the ditch, the brown grass led to the next row of houses.
Cora saw Jasper looking at it and jumped in to say something before he started in on fertilizer again.
‘Momma said to say sorry she can’t make it until later. They changed the schedule on her. Someone got fired so …’ She shrugged. So, the rest of them had to pick up the slack or face the same.
Cora and Patsy took dish-towels out to cover up the food they’d put on the tables, waiting on everyone to arrive. Out back, Lee tossed a baseball with Benny, Roscoe and Jasper. Cora followed the ripple of his muscles, the swing of his arm. No one threw like Lee.
This season he’d been picked up by a Negro League team to play catcher, so now he had every fellow with a half-decent arm coming out of the woodwork wanting to throw with him, trying to prove they were pro-ball material too.
The guys tossed the ball around and when Lee caught it, he pulled back his arm to throw, but then he saw her watching him. Their eyes locked and he grinned. Then he threw.
‘Ouch, Lee! What’s the big idea?’ Jasper shook the sting out of his hand.
‘Sorry, Jas,’ Lee said, stealing a glance at Cora. ‘I got a little carried away.’
Sister Pearce was the first of the church-goers to show up, having ducked out before the last song.
‘I did not need to listen to Sister Candice screeching about peace,’ she said. ‘I had more peace picking myself up and getting out of there.’
The others arrived in a flood, and Lee used the commotion to take Cora’s hand and guide her to the hall closet, looking left and right to make sure no one saw them before pulling her inside.
As soon as he shut the door behind them, his mouth found hers, probing and gentle but hungry.
If they’d been truly alone, she would have stripped off her clothes to press her skin against his.
‘Lee,’ she said when he released her mouth and they’d drawn ragged breaths.
‘I missed you,’ he said, nuzzling her ear, his hands cupping her bottom.
‘It’s only been three days.’ Her arms circled his neck, her lips curving into a satisfied smile.
‘Much too long.’ He kissed her again and ran his hand up her front to her breast. ‘When can I see you again?’
‘I don’t know.’
He pulled away and looked at her with hard determination. ‘Saturday.’
‘I don’t know if I can sneak out.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m gonna come to your house and knock on your door and take you out,’ he said. ‘You want to go to the pictures?’
She stared and blinked. ‘What about Momma?’
A smile spread across his face, dimples showing. ‘I don’t want to take your momma to the pictures.’
She smacked his side to make him be serious. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yeah.’ His voice turned tight. ‘I know what you mean. But, Cora, I’m tired of waiting on folks to think I’m good enough for you. I want you and you want me. Isn’t that all we need?’
She bit her lip as anxiety closed her throat, thinking about the fit her momma would have if she knew. Out at the party, she heard Jasper’s trumpet belting out a tune.
‘You do want me, don’t you?’
She leaned her face close to his, cradling his cheeks. ‘You know I do.’
‘Good. Because I’m crazy about you, Cora May North.’ When he kissed her again, she felt it in her toes. ‘No more hiding,’ he said against her mouth.
‘What if—’
‘No what-ifs.’ He nuzzled her neck. ‘You’re a grown woman, Cora.
You can step out with whoever you want.’ His lips trailed up to her jawline.
‘If you let them, they’ll tell you how to live your whole damn life.
’ He slipped his hands around her and squeezed her bottom, pressing himself against her. ‘Please don’t let them.’
She sighed at the feel of him, going a little lightheaded with wanting. She nodded, only half knowing she was doing it.
‘Yes?’ he asked, grinning as he kissed her. ‘Saturday?’
She nodded again, pulling him against her. ‘I’ll try.’
Cora wanted to step out with Lee. She just dreaded the gossip and whispers and snide comments about good-girl Cora dating godless Lee with his juvenile record.
Church would be unbearable, and Momma the worst of all.
But if they were going to have a future, she needed to find her courage.
It was high time everyone knew about them.
Like he said, she was a grown woman. And Lee was her man.
By the time they slipped out of the closet, ruffled and rumpled, the party was in full swing. Cora smoothed her hair and fixed herself a plate of food behind some church men debating Joe Louis’s chances in his next fight: a rematch with Buddy Baer in Madison Square Garden.
‘I don’t know why he thinks he can beat the champ,’ Deacon Gray said. ‘Joe’s already given him a whipping.’
‘I guess he’s ready for another,’ said Brother Jones.
Cora spooned potato salad onto her plate.
‘I heard a radio interview where Baer said he’s been practicing for months with nothing on his mind but taking the heavyweight title,’ Brother Twiggs said. ‘To hear him tell it, Joe better watch out.’
‘Just because you say you can do a thing, it don’t mean you can,’ Deacon Gray said through a mouthful of food.
‘But you can’t always win either,’ Roscoe said. ‘He’s got to lose one day, and it’s his twentieth title fight.’
‘Joe will do him just like he’s done all the others,’ Deacon Gray said. ‘Keep knocking them down until they don’t get back up.’
Sister Hammond clapped her hands and called for music, with a pointed look at Jasper.
‘I just got done playing,’ he said, holding up his plate of food to show he wanted to eat.
‘Fine. Finish your plate, but then let’s hear something stepping,’ she said.
He piled on more chitlins, more rice and beans, more collards, more cornbread.
Patsy picked up Jasper’s trumpet from where he’d left it by the side of the house and handed it to Lee. ‘How about it, Lee? You haven’t played yet.’
Lee raised his eyebrows at Jasper, asking if it was all right with him.
When Jasper nodded, he took the instrument, testing the finger stops and checking the mouthpiece.
Then he locked eyes with Cora, slid his tongue across his full lips and brought the trumpet to his mouth.
The notes eased out like buttered honey.
His best instrument was the saxophone, but he still played a better trumpet than Jasper any day.
He sounded like Satchmo himself right there on Aunt Teen’s lawn.
His whole body swayed with it as his fingers danced over the stops, and Cora flushed hot, feeling his music vibrating right through her.
‘Now, I know for a fact,’ Aunt Teen said in her teacher voice, like Cora was back in her class in the eighth grade, ‘that your momma wouldn’t want you making eyes at that boy.’
It was like ice water down her spine.
‘Let me take that for you, Aunt Teen,’ Cora said, plucking the empty plate from her hands and turning to march inside. Standing by the sink, she felt like screaming.
Lee was a good man. Why couldn’t people see that?
It wasn’t his fault he’d been raised by the streets, running wilder than wild, getting into trouble until his defense lawyer saw his potential and turned his client into his ward.
Even after six years, the good people of Saints of Mercy Baptist couldn’t see past the hellion he’d once been.
And no matter how many times he’d been to the house on his best behavior, Momma still called him Benny’s hooligan friend.
Cora rinsed her hands and straightened her spine. Saturday. She had until Saturday to bring Momma around. She and Lee were right for each other, and Cora was a grown woman. Momma, and everyone else, would just have to learn to accept that.