OZZIE TAYLOR WAITED NERVOUSLY FOR his big chance as he sat in the front pew of the Cleveland Chapel Baptist Church. Fanning air to his mouth, he looked down at his olive shirt and saw to his horror that he had sweated right through the armpits. It was nine o’clock on a Sunday evening and the sun was long gone, but the night heat down here could roast a rabbit on the run. He still hadn’t got use to these new uniforms. The pants flared out at the sides, making him feel like a waddling duck when he walked, and the collar was so tight he could barely move his vocal cords. The itchy wool cocoons might come in handy during the French winters, but here in Dixie they made the nights long and the days longer. He scratched at his neck and fidgeted his feet nervously, until Big Jim, enthroned at the organ, shot him a stern glare to settle down.
Up front near the choir, Noble Sissle finished playing Amazing Grace on a violin, and Big Jim followed his composer buddy on the keyboard with an encore of Say Brothers, Will You Meet Us? When the final notes were struck, the packed Negro congregation rose to its feet with such ecstatic applause that the little church seemed on the verging of levitating.
Big Jim stood from the organ and bowed in gratitude for the acclaim. “We soldiers of the 369th Infantry want to express our appreciation for your kind invitation. Noble and I have felt the presence of the Lord here in your house of worship tonight. We all have received from you the blessings of the Almighty in song and music.”
“God bless you, Jim!” cried a local woman from the pews.
“You boys are gonna bring ’em to their knees over there!” an old man shouted, spawning another round of testifying and praise-giving.
Ozzie watched Big Jim lower his luminous white eyes as if in humility, but in reality to steal a few gulps of dripping air. The Boss had been finding it more and more difficult to breath in this Southern heat. Earlier that year, before leaving New York, he had undergone two operations for his neck goiter, and he hadn’t quite been himself since. The doctors said he could die of strangulation if he didn’t get his throat glands working, but he kept right on pushing, drilling and training like the rest of them. Some of the boys had been whispering that Colonel Hayward and the Army doctors were looking the other way, unwilling to discharge Big Jim because he was needed for the recruitments.
The applause heightened, finally causing Big Jim to plead, “You folk are going make me cry now! I feel the work of the Lord working here in Spartanburg. You’ve made us feel right at home.”
Ozzie caught Sissle rolling his eyes. He knew they were both thinking the same thing. This cracker town was a lot of things, but hospitable wasn’t one of them. These few black folk who lived in the shacks on the far side of the railroad tracks had done all they could to make existence bearable for the unit. But in the week since they’d been transferred to Camp Wadsworth, tensions with the white residents had been running high. Two months ago, at Camp Logan in Texas, the all-Negro 24th Infantry had been goaded into a riot. Sixteen whites had been killed, and more than fifty Negro soldiers had been hanged or imprisoned in retaliation. Now the mayor down here was going around town making noises that the same thing was going happen in Spartanburg. Just to be safe, Colonel Hayward had warned the men to keep their noses clean, even if the taunts started flying fast.
“We have one last special treat for you tonight,” Big Jim told the congregation. “One of our fine soldiers, Private Ozzie Taylor there in the front row, has been lugging around a new oboe for awhile. Now, folks, an oboe player is about as rare in these parts as a bad pulled pork sandwich, so I hope you’ll indulge me in this request. Private Taylor has been dogging me for months to let him play in public. I’d like to give him that chance tonight, if you’re willing.”
“We ain’t use to rubbing elbows with such high-class fare, Jim!” an elderly woman shouted, drawing laughter. “Go on and let the child play us some of his city sounds for us!”
Big Jim winked at Ozzie, the signal for him to stand up and ascend the podium step. “All right. The Good Lord, I trust, will forgive us putting a little rag in our step to finish out the night and take His Gospel to the vastness of His Creation. Private Taylor is going to play a solo rendition of Slipping Through My Fingers.”
Ozzie tried to soak the double reed in his mouth, but his tongue was dry enough to file down sandpaper. He wrapped his tremoring lips around the heart of the reed, its thickest point, and let go. He felt as if he were standing outside his own body; he heard a flurry of loud notes and realized that he was blowing too hard and creating harsh sounds instead of the oozing melodies he usually managed. Try as he might, he couldn’t force himself to ease off the air. His heart was thumping in his chest, and he tried to calm down by closing his eyes, but the Devil himself had taken over his body—in a church, of all places. Finally, blessedly, he came to the end, and lowered the oboe from his lips, keeping his eyes down.
Dead silence, and then the church echoed with a smattering of applause.
“One thing’s certain,” said the elderly woman who only moments before had clamored for the performance. “Christ and His Saints ain’t sleeping this hour.”
“Not tonight they ain’t!” agreed one of the old men sitting behind her.
The worshippers arose from the pews and filed by, hugging Big Jim and Sissle and gifting them with prayers for their safety in the war. Most of them stopped in front of Ozzie, reached for his hands, and patted them silently, like mourners at a funeral. When Big Jim and Sissle finally managed to escape the well-wishers, they walked out of the church and donned their regulation flat-brimmed campaign hats. The soldiers strolled down the darkened street toward the center of town, which led back toward Camp Wadsworth.
Ozzie trailed a step behind the two officers, packing his oboe on his shoulder and wondering if Big Jim was ever going to comment on his performance. They had walked a quarter of a mile with the suspense nearly killing him, and he finally blurted, “Well, what’d you think, Big Jim?”
Big Jim lost his broad smile. “Lt. Europe, soldier!”
Ozzie was taken aback by the Boss’s sudden return to formality. “Yes, sir.”
They walked another ten steps, and Big Jim, sounding irritated, remarked in a low voice to Sissle, “What’d we learn back there?”
Sissle shrugged. “I don’t know, Jim. What did we learn?”
“We learned that the Army is going to throw us into that fight over there in France before we’re good and ready.”
Sissle stopped. “How’d we learn that from a church service?”
“You saw what happened when I let Private Taylor here talk me into letting him embarrass me. I spent twenty years building up my reputation in the business. Now those folks are going home thinking I’m a fool! Thinking I don’t know what a professional musician is!”
Tears flooded into Ozzie’s eyes. “But, Boss—”
Big Jim swung around and loomed over Ozzie. “Lt. Europe, damn it! How many times do I have to tell you, Private? You think all of this is a lark?”
“Easy now, Jim,” Sissle said. “Don’t get your blood rushing.”
Big Jim bent over, gasping and heaving for breath. Finally, he recovered enough to complain, “The damn government is doing the same thing to us. All this puffering and hollering about how tough we are and how we’re going to go over there and give the Germans a lesson. We’re gonna get our heads handed to us, just like this Amsterdam Avenue street barker did tonight!”
As his two heroes walked on ahead, Ozzie trailed behind with his chin to his chest, his spirit crushed. He had been practicing every spare minute he could find, but now he had ruined his lone chance. He could never ask Big Jim for another chance to show what he could do.
Ignoring Ozzie, Big Jim kicked at the dirt. “Damn, Siss. I miss New York.”
“I hear you.”
“The Castles opened their new show on Broadway last night.”
“First one without you,” Sissle said. “I’d bet a steak dinner that Verne and Irene now realize how you were the straw that stirred the drink.”
Big Jim began coughing and hacking again. He stopped to drop his hands to his knees, desperate for air.
“You sure you’re okay?” Sissle asked. “We should get you to the infirmary.”
Big Jim looked over to a corner, where several dozen men from his regiment were standing around a sandwich stand operated by two local Negroes. He called out to them, “Hey, any of you know where I can buy a New York newspaper?”
Ozzie, a few steps behind, perked up. “Some of the boys bought one this afternoon at that hotel across the street, Lieutenant.”
Sissle looked at him with a skeptical glare. “That’s a white hotel, isn’t it?”
One of the Negro sandwich vendors overheard them. “They don’t necessarily cotton to us locals, but I seen some of your soldiers go in there to buy newspapers from time to time. I’ve waited tables in there. Ain’t hearda no problems.”
Ozzie saw his chance to make amends. “I’ll go in there for you, Lieutenant.”
Big Jim pulled a dollar from his pocket. “No, Siss, you go.”
Sissle bristled. “Why are you sending me?”
Before Big Jim could answer Sissle, the man behind the stand, learning for the first time that it was the famous James Reese Europe in his presence, stepped out. “If he’s afraid to go, Jim, I’ll go in there for you.”
Ozzie watched as Big Jim eyed down Sissle, as if testing his friend to determine if he was the type of man who could be counted on in a hot spot.
Sissle angrily grabbed the dollar. “Come on, Taylor. Let’s get the officer’s damn newspapers for him.”
Sissle marched across street, with Ozzie hurrying to keep up. When they reached the hotel’s front porch, Sissle peered inside the large glass window.
Ozzie pressed his nose against the pane and saw several white officers at the bar. The paper stand stood next to the lounge. “Lot of white folks in there, Mister Siss.”
“You stay here.”
Ozzie watched through the window as Sissle walked inside. Unable to hear anything, he slinked around toward the door and watched as Sissle made his way down the long corridor toward the newsstand. Several of the white officers, sitting in chairs, nodded to Sissle, who pulled out a couple of papers from the stand and paid for them. Ozzie breathed a sigh of relief. He was about to run back across the street and tell Big Jim the good news—
“Hey, nigger! Don’t you know enough to take your hat off?”
Ozzie turned and saw a white man in a bartender’s vest grab Sissle at the collar from behind. Every other soldier in the hotel had his hat on. Sissle reached down to retrieve his hat, which had been knocked off his head. The white bartender kicked him and swore again. Sissle looked dazed. Ozzie didn’t know whether he should run in and help Sissle or go back to the lunch stand for help. Before Ozzie could decide, Sissle climbed to his feet to confront his attacker.
“Do you realize you are abusing a United States soldier?” Sissle said. “That is government property you knocked to the floor.”
“Damn you and the government!” the white bartender gruffed. “No nigger can come into my place without taking his hat off.”
Seeing how Sissle needed help, Ozzie scampered off to call for the other men of the 369th hovering around the food stand. “Mister Noble’s in trouble!”
Big Jim came running up. “What happened?”
“The white man who owns the hotel is roughing him up!”
Big Jim and the other men started marching toward the hotel when Sissle came staggering out and looking for a car to take him back to the camp in a hurry. “Siss! You all right?”
“Leave it be, Jim,” Sissle begged. “Let’s don’t start another Brownsville.”
A white soldier no taller than Ozzie came running down the hotel steps. “That peckerwood kicked him around.”
Big Jim saw that the soldier reporting the incident was wearing one of those skullcaps that the Jews back home sported. “Who are you?”
“I’m with the Twenty-Seventh,” the boy said. “I’m gonna go get some of my buddies. We’ll teach these rednecks they can’t treat us like that.”
“Us?”
“New Yorkers!” the Jewish soldier shouted as he ran off for help.
Big Jim traded confused glances with Sissle and Ozzie, stunned that white soldiers were offering to fight other whites for the honor of Negroes. He nodded his determination to handle the situation alone, and began walking into the hotel. “You men stay here.”
Ozzie risked another chewing out by sneaking into the lobby behind the Boss. Come hell or high water, he was going to be there at his side if needed. He hid behind a chair as Big Jim walked toward the proprietor, who was still ranting and cursing. The white officers in the bar had gathered around and were regarding the raving Southerner as one might a dangerous animal at a zoo.
Big Jim approached the white hotel owner, who was now tending bar. “What’s the problem, sir?”
The owner pointed toward the door. “That nigger came in here and didn’t remove his hat.”
Big Jim slowly removed his own hat and held it at his chest. “I’ll take off mine just to find out what crime Private Sissle committed. Did he commit any unlawful offense?”
“No, I told you. He didn’t take off his hat.”
Several military police, including white soldiers from the 27th Infantry, burst into the lobby, prepared for trouble. The white officers watching the confrontation from the bar shook their heads at the bigoted owner.
Big Jim just stood there, hat in hand.
The white officers made a point of saluting him, rubbing the gesture of rank and equality in the face of the bewildered Southern proprietor. “Well done,” one of them whispered, praising Big Jim’s restraint. “I suggest you get your men back to camp before the Klan shows up.”
Ozzie looked up from his hiding niche to see dozens of his buddies from the 369th pressing toward the door, itching for retribution. He waited for Big Jim to give the signal for the fisticuffs to commence. Instead, Big Jim drew the hotel owner aside to speak to him privately. Ozzie crawled from chair to chair, eager to hear their confrontation.
“I’m not going to belittle you in front of your people, like you did my friend,” Big Jim warned the hotel owner. “But if you ever lay hands on one of my men again, I won’t be so charitable.”
“Go to hell, and get out of my establishment! This country’s in a damn fix if we have to send niggers to fight the Germans.”
Big Jim put his hat on in front of the white man, making a point, and then turned to walk out of the lobby. From the corner of his eye, he spied Ozzie huddled in the corner behind a lamp.
Caught disobeying orders, Ozzie slowly came out, expecting to be punished.
“Thanks for covering me, Private Taylor,” Big Jim whispered.
Ozzie brightened like the first day of Creation.
“I’m gonna need an orderly when we get to France. You up for the job?”
Ozzie straightened and saluted, beaming with pride.
“Just one rule,” Big Jim said. “No more oboe playing in my presence. I’d at least like to come back from the war with my hearing intact.”