I'm Just a Traveling Man

Paris is a tough town and I was getting tough breaks one after the other. And then to have those two big-winged white birds run off with my money that night, that was the worst. It was raining again when I got back to my hotel room and the old femme de chambre had busted my looking glass with her mop handle. I didn't know whether that meant more bad luck for me or for her.

I shouldn't never ought to've got mixed up with white people in the first place. I was making out OK with my guitar the way it was till I got the dumb idea to go into partners. Now I had my money stole from me, hungry and out of cigarettes and a headache besides.

That hotel didn't have the least heat, so whenever I layed down on the bed it was like laying down on perfectly wet sheets, like somebody'd sprinkled the room with a sprinkling can. I'm too young to get rheumatism, but you can easy catch TB in a place like that.

Every damn which way I looked I either saw blotchy wallpaper all hanging loose or my big feet propped up on the bedstead or that bad-luck busted mirror. It was just that time of night nobody had their radio tuned up so I couldn't even at least hear a little music coming out of someplace. I'm a man likes his music. You hear enough real-life sounds before you die, got to break it up sometimes with a jazz trumpet, or guitar strings. But all I heard all night that night was drunks down on Rue Jacob getting in and out of taxicabs.

I was just as solitary as you can get and the only comfort I could think up was strumming a little private guitar, but I got to be in a good-luck mood for that. When I play guitar all to myself I want to have a little supper in my stomach or at least some prospects of supper. In a little while, feeling low down like that, I knew what it was I wanted. I wanted to take off.

I wanted to pick up and clear out -- not only just out of that hotel but all the way out of Paris, maybe all the way out of France. I sat up straight in bed, thinking about it. Almost broke out sweating over it. That's the way notions come to me, like a bolt. I smiled and relaxed and hummed a little tune I wrote one time, hummed I'm just a Traveling Man, trying to remember how the words went and all the time I was humming I was thinking about getting on the go. I wanted right then to go on off someplace, someplace warm and sunshiny where I could sit outside nighttimes and daydream.

But travel takes money. If I had a credit card I'd Go Now, Pay Later, but all I had stuck in my sorry billfold was a card copy of my Army discharge and a bunch of punched-out métro tickets. Travel, anyway, is cash and carry. Travel works up an appetite and you want to have supper money come suppertime. I play guitar and I figured I could almost near play my way down to Spain. Hitchhike for transport. I started putting my shoes on again, all excited, thinking fast, thinking: Got to start with some cash someway. I had to at least get up a sinking fund, in case I got sunk.

I added up all the people I ever knew that bought me a café noir when I was broke. There was that guy André Somebody that stole suitcases out of cars parked around Gare de Lyon -- but he was French and had better sense than to lend me money. My sculptor buddy with the big arms worked out at Les Halles loading fruit nights, but I don't like to borrow money off of working people. There was always that NAACP lady from Washington, D. C., U. S. A., but she lived on the Right Bank and the concierge wouldn't've let me in this late. The only legitimate touch I could think of for sure was Roger-D Rogers. He had the steadiest job in the world. He had a prostitute working for him.

• • •

Roger-D was white, but I always try not to hold a man's color against him. I been done plenty of dirt by white-colored people, but actually some of my best friends are white. Roger-D's hotel was in Little Algeria on Rue de la Harpe, on the wrong side of Boulevard Saint-Michel. Lot of couscous dives off from there and some North African night clubs -- every place decorated up to look like a Turkish bath, Arabs talking Arab right next door to Frenchmen talking French. Streets all around through there were trouble streets right then. Not long ago France was having a big fight with Algeria. Pretty mean times on the side streets. If the club you joined had the wrong initials your best friend'd knife you down. People were blowing people up with plastic bombs like no tomorrow. I never saw such meanness. But I wasn't too afraid to go in there by myself, (continued on page 96)traveling man(continued from page 87) not even nighttimes. I got good protective coloring to get me past African-type trouble.

Walk up Roger-D's hallway and you see right away how French hotels segregate their customers. First floor all plush and plaster -- picture map of Paris in the lobby -- padded stairway carpet and the wall fresh painted. Second floor almost nearly the same, but the paint's a little streaked. Third floor no pad and the carpet's got holes in it. Fourth floor no carpet, fifth floor no paint. Roger-D lived on six and you had to strike matches to find him. The door was off the w.c. and the smell like to blew your matches out.

When I found his number I knocked; no answer. Knocked again and thought I heard somebody say something or somebody belch and tried the knob. The door slid open by itself. Room was lit up bright white with a single I-don't-know-how-many-watt bulb in the ceiling -- whole room was whitewashed white and about the only furniture was a plain kitchen table and a ruptured-looking bed. Roger-D sat in the window sill smiling a happy cat smile at me, all dressed up in those pointy Tangier bedroom slippers, T-shirt and a jockstrap. He had a pencil stub stuck behind his ear.

"It's only just me," says I. "Comment ça va?"

He didn't say nothing, just giggled a little and goggled at me. He was his normal self. A little high on Stuff. Stuff, that's what he called it, the stuff he took.

I told him I just came by to say hello and worked the subject around to money...

"...next thing I knew they ducked out on me, took all the cash we already collected and I got left holding the big fat empty bag."

Old Roger-D just busted out laughing. He stuck his head out the window and his laugh went all up and down the air shaft. He like to scared the pigeons off the next-door rooftop.

And here I thought I was singing him the blues.

"Got right out from under you, you say?" he said, still giggling. But he at least came back inside the window, rain all in his face from leaning out -- or tears from laughing, I don't know which -- so I knew I was getting through to him.

"Yeah," I said, trying to sound sick. "With every bit of the cash money. I ain't even got cigarettes."

Which was the wrong thing to say; he got to laughing all over again. Damn fool. I never saw anybody to laugh like that over tragedy. Gets on a person's nerves. He told me that's what I got from smoking cigarettes.

"Nicotine'll rot your brain out, you know that?"

Roger-D never smoked, but he was a first-class full-time addict. He shot everything under the sun, and some more besides. He figured it was plenty funny to razz me about plain ordinary French tobacco I smoked. Sometimes he could hardly talk from giggling. Too stoned out to rub the rain out of his eyes. Addicts got a special sense of humor all their own. Here I was trying to be serious. At the same time I was trying to figure out whether he was just coming off a high or just going into one. That's the trouble any time you try to negotiate business with a junkie.

"I don't so much mind the cigarettes, but I sure in hell need some supper to eat."

That didn't get through to him any too good either. Roger-D gave up eating long time ago. And he looked it, looked like a skeleton sitting there in his T-shirt. His prostitute must've practically had to feed him soup with a hypo needle. He was on a steady diet of dope, and that's a one-course all-day meal.

I felt sorry for him, looking at him that way. See a man down to bones like that -- a man that used to be somebody -- see that man in a bare-ass room laughing like a maniac over nothing, sitting in his flophouse window in his jock, getting rained on (you can get double pneumonia that way), his inside arms all shot full of needle holes like about a million mosquito bites, only 26 years old and the skin on his skull shrunk up like an old man's, all yellow-faded, his pulse probably down to about ten and his brain all clouded up with smoke...see a man like that make you almost cry. I nearly did for a minute.

"What you want with money for," he said between giggles. "You just get in trouble."

But he could be aggravating as hell when he got cute on you like that. I didn't answer him.

He finally said, "How much you need?"

"Can you spare fifty?"

"Old francs or new?" And his own joke just about collapsed him. Old francs, that'd be about ten cents. He laughed his self into a fit and rocked back out the window again. Made me half mad, half nervous at the same time. I got to worrying about him, afraid he would fall out the window.

"New," says I, dead serious. That's only about ten bucks.

He finally poked his head back in again. He was a pitiful sight. I was sitting on the edge of the bed and got up and took him the tore-up French army blanket that was on it. I layed the blanket around his skinny shoulders to keep him halfway warm.

In a little while he took in some fresh air and turned dreamy. Kind of gargled a little bit like a baby and started to fade. Even with a blanket on him his bones showed through. He was staring into that big bright light bulb, looking for the Word or the way out or I don't know what. I figured right now was my last chance to make contact, so I bent over his ear where the pencil stub was stuck behind it and told him: "I got to get fifty francs, I got to get it. I got to take off out of this town. I'm going out of my skull in this town. I'll die in this town if I don't get going. Do me a favor, Roger old man, and let me have fifty francs, travel money."

I whispered it, sang it -- almost cried it in his ear -- but all he said back was, "You're interrupting the music."

"Twenty-five, then."

But his inside eye was inside that light bulb and his head went to nodding, keeping time, nodding to some particular music only Roger-D Rogers was hearing.

"I got to have some money, Roger man."

I had my own song to sing, but nobody was listening. By that time Rog was reaching out into thin air, playing a piano that wasn't anyplace in that room, wasn't anyplace anywheres. Looked like a little boy lost, the look on his face. Gave me the willies to watch him. I went and sat back down on the bed. He went right on playing, all to his self -- fingers moving just the same as if there was ivories under them. His long skinny arms stuck way out of the blanket and when he went to make a fancy chord and crossed his arms over, the blanket fell down and one of his Tangier slippers dropped off. It was a sorry sight. It was pitiful. I just sat there, not able to help none, taking in the whole sad scene.

You see, Roger-D Rogers was one time one of the best jazz piano men there ever was, back before jazz got corrupted to hell. Back then Roger-D was special number-one ace of them all. Ask anybody -- anybody who knows anything. But that's all over and done with. When people start paying six-fifty minimum with everybody's elbows in everybody's drinks to sit listening to some quartet in tuxedos and berets, it's goodbye jazz. The only music you'll get out of nightclub jazz is cash registers ringing. People (continued on page 180)traveling man(continued from page 96) don't know how to make music or listen to it anymore anyway. Jazz music is dying fast. Jazz. That's a long sad story I'm going to put to music myself one of these days.

Then when I least expected, wasn't even thinking about it, Roger-D closed his piano lid down and scratched his stomach, satisfied. He must've played a mighty cool little tune, and I would've give a lot to hear it played out in the open. Then he closed his eyes, his head hanging down like a busted puppet. I got afraid he would fall on his face if he fell asleep and I got up again and went over to him, picked his head up and held him under his chin with my big guitar hands wrapped around his skinny skull.

"Listen a minute, Roger."

No answer.

"Listen, damnit."

No answer. Dead asleep. I could've cried. All my good plans gone bust, just ten bucks, for Christ sakes. I wanted that money in the worst way. I tried to decide if I would steal it off him, but I was too chickenhearted to steal, and I knew it. I'm a lousy thief. I got too much imagination to steal. Besides, I wouldn't even know the first place to look. How you going to find anything in a room that empty or pickpocket a man that's only just wearing a jockstrap? Anyway, I wouldn't've done it. Not for any money. Trouble was I liked the bastard. As near as a black man can like a white man, anyway.

I figured I'd pick him up and carry him over and put him to bed. Maybe tomorrow I could get hold of that NAACP lady. Maybe my sculptor buddy could get me a job hauling fruit with him. Maybe I could play up a little travel money with my guitar in two or three nights. You never know. But right then I was surprised to hear Roger-D saying, "Lulu's down on charity of late."

Lulu was his prostitute. Old Rog was wide awake again. He took my paws down from his skull and slid down off that window sill just as easy as you please.

"I only just want the loan of it," I said, automatic.

He walked kind of shaky, but solid, too, you know -- man with a hangover walking around a place he knew every inch of. He went over to the table and pulled out the knife-and-fork drawer. That was where he kept his happy stuff. Spoon, needle, candle, matches. Little envelopes full of God knows what. I sat back down on the bed to watch him.

He held his self up with his hand on the tabletop and fumbled around in the drawer for something, then pulled the pencil stub off his ear and scribbled something. In a minute he staggered over to me and dropped a little flat package in my lap. I just sat there like a big black Buddha, waiting.

"Take this over to Lulu for me, will you?"

"You want me to take it?" I said, stupid.

"She works out of Hôtel du Monde, Rue Saint-Denis."

"What's in it?"

"Take it over to her, will you, dad? Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies. Do me that little favor. Take it over to her and tell her I sent you. She'll be standing out front of the hotel. Lowest neckline in Paris. Blue sweater with a big V cut down the front of it. She cut it that way herself. Raincoat. Umbrella with flowers on it. Mademoiselle Lulu, can't miss her. Or ask the desk clerk where she went."

Then he put a 100-franc note on my knee -- 20 bucks -- and flopped over on the bed beside me, all the way out of it again.

• • •

I went down the hotel steps with my little package of whatever. I've done worse things, what the hell. I was just delivery boy. Looked to me like Lulu had a special customer, had somebody liked dreamtime better than games. Lulu's worry. And Roger's, not mine. I had Spain waiting for me and I was getting 20 bucks for asking no questions. But somehow I didn't feel just right about it, all the same. I was carrying a pocketful of knockout down those hotel steps, and I knew it.

Street outside was all warm and black and still raining. I made my plans. Hike over to Châtelet even if it was wet. Buses too far apart and the métro closed down this time of night. Hike over to Châtelet and head up Saint-Denis, give Lulu the Stuff and beat it. I could of threw it down a sewer and be done with it, but I'm too goddamn honest.

There was some people in the street from where the night clubs were letting out, but not too many. I heard a Vespa backfiring over on Saint-Michel somewhere that sounded like a machine gun, but I started off. Then before I even got to the corner of Huchette I saw three cops bearing down on me with their big capes flapping like the Three Musketeers. The breath went out of me and my heart stopped ticking.

I rocked around, ready to run the other way, but the other way was a whole mob of cops moving up from behind. I saw which way they were looking, and they meant me. Looked like a threshing machine -- all those arms and clubs churning along -- about to mow me under. I didn't do nothing but stand right still, capes and cop whistles closing in on me.

I wasn't the only one caught. They threshed up an Arab along the way, some sick-looking tobacco-colored rug peddler. That's color for you. Had to be dark-colored to travel that neighborhood, but you had to be white-colored to get out. Cops took his fez off of him, unrolled his rug he was carrying, looking for plastic bombs. I stood stone still, sweating BBs, feeling that jail package in my pocket. I was without even my guitar with me for identification.

They put the Arab in the wagon anyway, just for being an Arab. One of the cops gives me a quick feel alongside my sides and up and down my legs, looking for knives, looking for trouble, and finding it, naturally. Found the Stuff in my pocket, first thing.

Spain, you just got smashed up for me, like that busted mirror back home at my hotel. They got music in jail? All the trouble I ever been in, I never been locked up before. My insides all squeezed up tight. My blood was running rain water out there in the rain.

The one cop unwrapped and the other ones crowded around to see what it was.

Why me? Why Jesus why?

"Qu'est-ce que c'est?" the cop said.

Opened up, it was a chunk of chocolate tied up in a note. The note just said:

Je t'aime. Je t'aime. Je t'aime.R.

That's all. That's just exactly what it said. They wrapped the chocolate up again and gave it back to me. Checked my passport -- I was American -- and let me go.

Crossed across Pont Saint-Michel practically walking tiptoe, barely touching ground. Bridge lights showing in the Seine. Lights along Cité all yellow runny in the rain-slick streets. The big old blue-and-gold clock stuck up on the Conciergerie said ten minutes past midnight, so it was tomorrow already. Spain today. Spain just down there somewhere waiting for me. Rain was soft and steady, like champagne fizz. Twenty bucks in my pocket, easy earned. Words to a sweet little song in my pocket. Tune to that song inside the head of a laughing sad jazzman. Him and his prostitute. "I love you" wrote out three times on a piece of paper just now saved me seven years' bad luck.