chapter fourteen “THE BACKBONE DROPPED OUT”

My father was thirty-two years old on November 13, 1971—ten years older than Opal Jewel. She often sought his counsel on navigating the music industry and recording process, as their relationship crossed from professional admiration to something inappropriately intimate. And yet at the most consequential moment of their complex affair, when he asked her to walk away with him from the Smythe that night, it was the balcony, filled mostly with strangers and loose acquaintances, that swayed her.

OPAL JEWEL:

The weed plus adrenaline had me mellow and alert at the same time, like I could reason and focus on everything at once inside that crazy space with the red curtains all around. But I could see through the crack in the curtain leading out to the stage, and there was my mic set up all pretty and waiting for me; I looked to my right and there was my friend Nev. Bursting into the wings, tall and skinny as an exclamation point, grinning and giving me the thumbs-up with his acoustic guitar strapped across his chest and that black eyeliner he’d scribbled on like war paint. And he ignored Jimmy and said in my ear, with the people in the balcony still pumping me up, “Do you hear that, my Girl in Gold? Are you ready to show them who we are?”

I don’t think I even answered him; I didn’t need to, because my blood knew that it was time, showtime, and it was coming at me fast. Nev nodded, and I nodded, and the choice was made.

I remember Nev saying cheers to Jimmy, holding his hand out to shake, like, Bye—I guess he assumed Jimmy was gonna leave me alone, pull out of the set. But your daddy wouldn’t shake Nev’s hand. He told him real low to get out of his face with that bullshit, to never say boo to him again or he’d be picking himself up off the floor. I remember Jimmy turned his back to me then; I remember his hair puffing out the edge of his snap cap, his drumsticks in his jeans pocket…. I can still see him standing strong on his own two feet, striding through the crack in the curtains past Johnny and Sol, sitting down at his kit.

And then it was just me and Nev standing together in the wings, and without Jimmy there suddenly I got a little nervous. And Nev wasn’t much better—he’d gone whiter than he already was, taking off his acoustic guitar [since the shared electric waited for him onstage]. He was telling me it was going to be okay, everything would work out in the end because this was our moment, and just listen to that crowd. Said it like he was convincing himself too. I breathed in deep, thought about that noise like a wild wave to ride, and I stepped out just like we’d rehearsed—a few beats behind the band, so I could have a moment to shine before Nev came out. My heartbeat was thudding as loud as my shoes across the floor of that stage, the biggest I’d ever been on. It seemed like all the other sound dropped out while I crossed the distance to my mark, right in front of Jimmy’s kit. I planted my foot down on one side of my mic, boom. Then the other one, boom. I expected to feel the spotlight hot on my skin, but we had come out so quick I guess it took a minute for whatever poor child was at the controls to catch up to what was going on. So without the lights blinding me, I could see very clearly the people in the audience, I could see these bogeymen in the front row with their windburned faces and their hands circling their mouths, I could see one scratching himself like a damn monkey and another one making that filthy gesture with his tongue between two fingers. Sol and Johnny started up with a little intro music, warming up, and then Nev jogged out [downstage left, beside Opal]. Howie was supposed to announce him, you know—“Ladies and gentlemen, Neville Charles!”—but obviously that didn’t happen.

Then the lights cut on and the people whited out, and in their place all the noise rushed back in—I could pick out the booing down at my feet, yeah, but up above, in my cheering section, they were loving me in a way I had never been loved before, and when I raised a fist they cheered louder, and that rush of energy just… it boosted me into a different frequency. Behind me I heard Jimmy start the count [for “Yellow Belly”]; he kicked in with the beat double time, either trying to rush us off or mess us up, I don’t know. But the other guys were too good, and they sped up perfect to match him. We had that proto-punk thing going, you know? Nev’s fingers were flying across the strings, struggling to keep up, but right when it was time for him to charge in with the verse he didn’t miss. And I thought, hey, Jimmy was wrong—Nev was the real deal, a talent worth taking a gamble on. I thought, This is it, this is it! My confidence just soaring, go go go. I kept pumping my fist up to the balcony, and swiveling my hips side to side and shaking my head with the beat so that my wig was flying around, the ends of it slapping me in the face, strands getting stuck in my lipstick…. It was getting real good to me. And then the vibe changed.

You know “Yellow Belly”; you remember how at the bridge everything falls out but the drums and my vocals, that whisper that builds up. “Run, honey, run…” Very sparse and dramatic and I was aiming for glory. Well, just before I pulled in my breath to sing, I heard one of them down below shout out to another one, like some big hilarious joke, “Hey, So-and-So, ain’t she just the kind of gash you like?” And it was the tiniest pinprick to my spirit—just enough to make me lose some air, make me miss my cue. I was standing there dumb behind my mic while Jimmy lined up a second pass, a third, and I heard Nev say, “All right?” next to me. I guess I was waiting for the other one’s punch line; I guess I’ve always been the type who wants to know where she stands, wants to hear it to her face. So I was craning my neck and trying to make them out of the blur, trying to find which face to look into. I hate that I gave whoever it was the satisfaction. Because he could see me but I couldn’t see him, and right then he said loud and proud, “That nigger? Looks like my tailpipe spit her out at the Georgia line.” And then the laughing.

Since I was standing there like a waste of space, Nev picked up the slack and went to the last verse [skipping over the bridge], and my moment on the song was over. I got so damn heated then—literally, I was sweating from the lights and that thing I could feel wrapped around me and just pure, overwhelming rage—but I took another deep breath to fill myself up again, and I remembered I had my own little gag. A joke that made me laugh. So just as Jimmy kicked into the next song I stepped off my mark and got close to the edge of the stage. I didn’t need no microphone, I shouted it out: “This one’s for you.” And I turned around and bent over and flipped up the bottom of my tutu so they could all see, see that X kissing the crack of my Black ass, see exactly what I thought about them and all their hate. My fingers found where Virgil had tucked in the end, near my hip, and I pulled it loose and popped back upright at the same time. For just one second, before I turned back around to face them, I caught eyes with Jimmy and he was shaking his head at me—Don’t you dare, girl, even though he couldn’t have known. Well, nobody could tell Opal Jewel what to do, because she had it under control. Before that girl even blinked she was sneering into the lights, holding that flag high over her head so that everybody in the house could see it good, and she stuck a couple fingers through one of the holes she’d made with Virgil LaFleur’s good nail file and she yanked and yanked till the thing ripped apart.

I was standing there with a piece of it in each fist, breathing hard like I’d just whipped somebody in the hundred-meter hurdles. I let go of one piece and then the other, and don’t you know it, both happened to float down right at my feet. So yeah, I stomped on ’em good a couple of times—they were in the way and I had to get back behind my mic to do my part. Maybe they were shocked [in the audience], maybe they were booing and hissing, maybe some folks were laughing along, I don’t know. While they were collecting their little emotions I was already burning through “Red-Handed,” pushing all my power and energy into my diaphragm like Jimmy had taught me to do. I had my eyes squeezed shut so I could focus, so I could see the red, red, red of my own pulse, my own power, and all of a sudden the backbone dropped out. I always call my drummer the backbone, because it’s the beat that holds the whole thing together, and once it goes everything else falls apart.

They tell me that Beau Bond stumbled out [onto the stage], and that Jimmy got some good licks in—that it was like your daddy had been tensed for a fight, the way he sprang up from behind the kit quick as lightning and tackled that boy, straddled him and whaled him a couple times across the face with his sticks. All that, I can believe. But they also try to tell me that Beau Bond wouldn’t have hurt a fly, that he didn’t have a mind or the heart to come after me, that probably he was only trying to dive for his trash before it caused a bigger mess. Maybe so. But how was Jimmy supposed to know that? How was I? Because Beau Bond mighta been the quiet one, but he made it perfectly clear in his silence that he was with them. And then here he come charging out like the Redneck Avenger. Like Bubba the Bobo.

By the time I realized what was happening, some more of them had run out from the wings all het up and they pulled Jimmy off that boy like he was nothing but a twig. They started punching and kicking at him till he just rolled down the little set of stairs on the side of the stage [leading down into the auditorium], real methodical, talking about teaching the spook a lesson, and I guess their thug friends were just in it for kicks—they were down there waiting to snatch him up like zoo animals when the raw meat gets dropped in the trap. I was trying to get down to Jimmy but I still couldn’t see right, the stage lights were still blazing. Then somebody knocked into me hard and I wasn’t braced for it—a bone in my ankle said nah! inside the straps of those shoes and I fell off ’em like a bag of bricks. Busted my lip, skinned my knee… I was down on my stomach struggling to get up, but the pain in my ankle shot up through my skull, and then somebody had put their body over mine—I guess that was Nev. I heard the people screaming; I was screaming. Let me tell you, the noise of that night was bad enough—meat pounding on meat, one of the amps buzzing right by my head…. But nothing was worse than the minute the stage lights finally clicked off and all the house lights came up [so that the audience could find their way to the exits]. I don’t see how Nev could ever forget one minute of that night, and at the same time I wish to hell I could too.

People were scrambling over chairs, over each other—the theater was almost cleared out except for the devils down in front taking their time to beat the tar out your daddy, and the goons watching. And for the few of us still on the stage, we were high up and could see everything down on the floor—it was like the tables had turned and we were the audience now. They had Jimmy surrounded in a half circle [in the space between the front row and the stage]; they were tossing him from one to the next. I saw a boot connect with the side of his face, and his nose was gushing blood, his eyes were swelling shut, his mouth was a mess. I was screaming at him, “Get out! Get out!” and at one point I think he must’ve heard me. He managed to push up to his feet and I saw him try to run for it, but obviously he was delirious, halfway to gone. He stumbled into one of their old ladies, and when that white girl fell back on her ass with Jimmy bleeding and breathing heavy on top of her, when she started screaming her fool head off… Well. That’s an old song—you know how it goes.

One of those thugs picked your daddy up so he had his arms pinned, and they let the white girl kick him in the stomach and then spit in his face. I knew that would hurt him more, haunt him more, than any violence they could do. And it was like nobody was doing anything to try to save him. I didn’t see Johnny, I didn’t see Sol, I didn’t see my people in the balcony coming down to help, or the cops, or anybody else.

So I hit and scratched at the body that was holding me down till it let me go, and my ankle was obviously good and broke but I crawled toward a mic stand that had fallen down on the stage. I took that mic out the cradle, I whipped it around like a lasso by the cord, and then I let it fly. I caught that bitch right in the back of her head.

She was bleeding from her scalp, all down her face…. I always thought it was odd that nobody went to her to see if she was okay, they just let her sit her ass back down on the ground and cry. But they weren’t gonna just let it go. That’s when they threw Jimmy into the seats, as unbothered as if they were tossing a sack of trash, and the ones who were hanging around and gawking, they scrambled out the way so they wouldn’t get hit. They didn’t even try to catch him. So Jimmy landed hard. I saw his neck hit and snap back, and his body slide down. I was screaming, hysterical. Hustling to undo the shoe that was on my good foot, because I figured if I could just get up and hop I could reach him. But before I could a couple of them had stepped up on the stage. Coming, I guess, to see about me.

Nev grabbed my good ankle and pulled me back and started up with his fast-talking, telling them they’d done enough, they’d made their point. Those thugs weren’t having it, though, they were hovering over us, calling him a faggot, a limey, asking if he was a goddamn nigger lover. And one of them said, “This bitch wants to fight, let her fight.” That one kicked Nev in the face and the chest till he was hugging himself and I was exposed. I was scrabbling backward on my hands, one shoe on and one shoe off, looking for something to grab. Somebody tossed a bottle in my direction and it hit an amp and shattered right over my head; the noise made some of the white girls who were supposedly gonna kick my ass scream and run—it sounded like a gun popping off. I tried to get up one more time, tried to balance and push myself up, but I cut my palm clean open on a piece of glass. That’s about the time the cops showed up and started doing what they do.