Clayton Byrd Goes Underground Read online

  He repeated the steps of his plan, his eyes on the window left ajar, as the sheer blue curtains swayed. Soon it would be too chilly to keep the window cracked open, but Clayton was so hot. So angry, his skin hurt. The cool air wafting into Clayton’s room was a good thing. Perhaps the only good thing that night. For, along with the steps of the plan ran all the thoughts he held on to about his mother. None of them good. Not a one.

  All he knew for the moment was the plan, and that she would be sorry that she had taken everything away from him. Everything that was rightfully his.

  In the morning, his mother said, “I’m only doing what’s best for you.”

  Clayton gave her a vacant look. He drank his milk, took two bites of his toast, chewed, swallowed, and stuffed the rest in his mouth.

  “Keep it up,” his mother said.

  “Or what?” His mouth was full of toast.

  She already had his blues harp. What else could she take? Clayton didn’t care. Clayton had a plan.

  Ms. Byrd was exhausted by Clayton. She took a moment before she spoke. “You’re not a teenager yet, so stop trying my patience.” She handed him an envelope. “Give this to your teacher. I can’t come running to the school if you decide to fall asleep in class. There’s nothing wrong with you, so stop creating problems where there are no problems. You’re fine, Clayton.”

  He took the envelope and bent down to put it in his considerably lightened book bag. He kept the book bag at his feet, almost under the table, so his mother wouldn’t notice its sunken-in shape. She would discover his textbooks, calculator, and pencil case under his bed later.

  The school bus honked and Clayton said, “Bye.”

  Clayton and Omar boarded the bus, and the bus lurched forward. Then one voice said, “Yo, Sleepster!” And the other voices joined in. It took only one person to start things.

  The driver stopped the bus.

  “If I hear one more ‘Sleepster’ I’ll turn this bus around and the troublemakers can all go back home. Let’s see how you like it when you walk to school.”

  No one seemed worried by the driver’s threat. Clayton knew the bus driver couldn’t kick anyone off the bus. The last driver who had ordered a foul-mouthed kid off the bus had been fired.

  Nonetheless, the noisiness quieted down. As soon as the bus driver restarted the engine, someone shouted “Sleepster!” in a high-pitched, funny voice. Even Clayton laughed. Then, for the rest of the ride, the rowdier kids snored loudly. Clayton joined them.

  Omar slugged him in the shoulder, the way friends do.

  The bus pulled up to the front of the school, taking its place behind a line of unloading school buses. Clayton, Omar, and the other kids got off the bus to join the mob of kids waiting to enter the building. Clayton and Omar neared the entrance.

  “Dang. No pen.”

  “Take one of mine,” Omar offered.

  “That’s all right, man,” Clayton said. “I’ll run across the street. Pick one up.”

  “You’ll be late.”

  “I’ll run fast,” Clayton said, and took off toward the bodega. Once inside, he stood near the door and watched Omar disappear into the school. He went to the counter and said, “MetroCard,” as cool as he could. He put his ten-dollar bill, his cut from playing with Cool Papa and the Bluesmen, on the counter. The store clerk, who didn’t give Clayton a second glance, smacked a MetroCard down on the counter.

  It was seven forty-five and the plan was in action. Clayton avoided the main streets and began the three-quarter-mile hike to his house. His mother should have been on her way to work, creeping along on the expressway in her car.

  Still, Clayton took a deep, careful breath when he turned the corner onto his block. He saw what he expected to see. An empty driveway. He exhaled, ran to the side door, let himself in with his key, and ran up the stairs. So far, so good.

  He opened his mother’s bedroom door carefully, as if she might still be there. But he was alone. And now, to find his blues harp.

  He opened drawer after drawer of her highboy. Six drawers of silky things. Underthings that belonged to his mother. It was when he pulled open the highest drawer that he knew. He should have known to begin with! The highest drawer was a hiding drawer to keep something away from a kid. But though Clayton was a kid, he was tall enough to get what he needed from the top drawer without having to stand on anything. He was sure he’d be able to look his mother straight in the eye in another year. After all, his mother wasn’t growing any taller, but he could feel himself inching up.

  His hand found the candy-bar-shaped metal instantly. He wiped it clean of the silky, girly things it had been smothered by, and then sank it in his mouth to slick it up. Then he blew into all the holes, sliding upward, and drew in the air to slide back down.

  He went inside his room, opened the closet, and grabbed the porkpie hat. He took the rest of his money—seventeen dollars in bills—folded them, and zipped up the cash in his book bag. He ran down the stairs, threw a peanut butter cracker snack into the nearly empty book bag, tucked his MetroCard in his pants pocket, stuffed his silver blues harp in his jacket pocket, and put the porkpie hat on his head.

  He was about to run out the back door, but he stopped. Turned. Walked to the dining room table. Picked up the glass saltshaker. The angel with the glued-on wing. He put it on the floor, raised his right foot, and smashed it.

  Then he left.

  CLAYTON BYRD GOES UNDERGROUND

  Clayton trotted happily, sneakily, down the concrete and steel steps of the subway station. He paid his fare, pushed his slim body against the turnstile bar, and embarked on his adventure. He chuckled to himself. Glee wasn’t a song from Ms. Treadwell’s Great American Book of Glee. Glee was being on the lam, making a great escape. Each level of steps in Clayton’s descent took him farther below street level until Clayton Byrd was truly underground.

  He had never noticed the grunge of the platform before, when he and Cool Papa snuck off to the city to meet up with the Bluesmen on double-shift nights. He was just as blind to it all now as he stood alone. The smoke-dulled wall tiles, the over-spilling garbage cans, the blackened, gummy ground, and the stale air were not enough to warn him away. He didn’t notice the grime and dirt, or the long, brawny rats running across the track—he was too elated by the success of his plan.

  The details of what was to follow were hazy at best. Details such as food, drink, a change of clothing, a place to sleep, and needing more than the seventeen dollars squirreled away in the zipper pouch of his book bag. All of those details would work themselves out when he caught up with the Bluesmen.

  By Clayton’s calculation, this was the last week that he’d be able to find the Bluesmen in Washington Square Park before they headed south. He’d never been to the South, but he knew the Bluesmen preferred the southern climate to the cold that would soon drape over New York.

  Even though he was a kid, the Bluesmen had treated Clayton like a musician. Like a bluesman, although he was still growing into his spot with the band. He knew their rhythms and patterns. He’d play off of their riffs and not on top of them, unless they played a tidal wave of chords where everyone jammed together. He would wait to be waved in and not whine or plead for a solo. He was at his best when he saw himself as a musician. A bluesman.

  A woman’s figure entered his periphery. He felt the heat of her stare on his cheek. If he walked away she’d know he didn’t belong underground. He rocked on his heels and waited for the train.

  At the other end of the platform stood some boys. Two older. The other two not. He didn’t turn his head to look at them. He knew better than to turn and gawk. Instead, he positioned himself so he could see who was on one end of the platform and who was on the other.

  They looked wild. Feral. Definitely not like they were on their way to school, but more like fighting wolf pups, batting and nipping at one another for exercise, especially the younger two. At a glance, those two looked like twins. Though it seemed friendly between them, Clayton
knew that didn’t mean they’d want him staring at them.

  He saw the tallest boy among them hold his hand up. The others stopped clowning or play-fighting and quieted themselves. The tall one stood at the edge of the platform and cocked his ear toward the tracks.

  “Train!” he shouted.

  Clayton stepped closer toward the platform’s edge to peer down the tunnel. He saw no lights and heard no rumble.

  The boys ran to the very end of the platform and seemed to wait.

  Then, Clayton heard the train rumble. Within seconds he saw two bright lights barreling out of the dark.

  When the silver subway train roared into the station, the car before him opened and he stepped inside, found a seat, and looked dreamily ahead while the car took him on his adventure.

  The hard-staring woman took the seat directly across from him.

  “Look sharp. Be cool,” Cool Papa used to tell him when they were on the train heading toward the city. He took those words now as if Cool Papa was there beside him keeping his secret. He cocked his head and looked sharp so no one would see a boy on the lam, and would instead see a bluesman on the way to his gig. Gig. A Cool Papa word. If he looked like a bluesman on his way to some place in particular, no one would look at him the way the lady on the platform, now sitting before him, did.

  If only he had shades.

  Clayton did have his blues harp, and that was the main thing. A bluesman without an ax was just a man riding the train. And a kid without his ax couldn’t claim to be a bluesman. Ax. Another Cool Papa word. He had his ax, or what Jack Rabbit Jones had called his “union card.” The way he worked on those square holes, he might as well be chopping wood. One day he’d get that blues bend just right. He’d make that harp start from a deep place, then turn around the corner until that bent note came up crying. He could feel it. He was that close.

  And he had Cool Papa Byrd’s porkpie hat. He set it low on his head. When he took it off, he could smell Cool Papa’s scent in the headband.

  The hard-staring woman didn’t exactly shake her head, but Clayton could feel she wanted to. He stared past her, when he felt like getting up, walking up to her, and asking her to please lean away so he could get a good look at the subway map. That would only invite questions. Where are you going? Shouldn’t you be in school? Boy, where is your mama?

  He stared off. Better to not give himself away.

  The subway pulled into the next station and the doors flew open.

  A smell—foul, sweet, and funky—caught his nose. His nostrils closed faster on their own than he could have told them to. A woman in rags pushed through the moving train with her shopping cart of treasures. She was a mound of soiled clothes, surrounded by knotted plastic bags, bundled newspapers, and a falling-apart suitcase, stuffed with who knows what. She unloaded herself down into the corner seat of the train way over on the far end of the car and her smell kicked like two mules. That was a lyric from one of Cool Papa Byrd’s blues songs.

  “You kicked me, baby, worse than two mules can kick a man when he’s down.”

  He hadn’t paid much attention to the part about two mules kicking when he clamped down on his blues harp and played while Cool Papa sang those words, but when the woman’s funk caught him, he knew what it was to be kicked worse than two mules kicked. He covered his nose, but not his ears.

  She was singing. First he thought she was saying something. Talking to no one, the way fidgety, homeless people do. Then he heard a familiar sound. A tone and rhythm. It was a church rhythm, wrapped up in the blues.

  He was tapping before he knew he was tapping. Nodding before he knew he was nodding.

  “It’s gonna be all right. . . .” the woman moaned. “It’s gonna be all right.”

  Clayton would give an “amen” to that, if he were the amen type. But he agreed with the bad-smelling woman. It was going to be all right. He almost reached for his blues harp but let it stay in his pocket.

  What if Cool Papa sent the hard-staring woman to let him know he still had his eye on him? What if Cool Papa sent the bad-smelling woman to let him know it would be all right? He wondered if spirits jumped from body to body because their old body was in the ground. Clayton didn’t know for sure, but sitting in the train with one woman across from him and another at the other end of the car, he didn’t rule out the possibility.

  EVERY RIDER, CLAP YOUR HANDS

  If Cool Papa was talking to Clayton through the homeless woman, his spirit had vacated her now slumped-over body. Once her bluesy church song turned to snoring, her funky odor intensified, mule-kicking Clayton in the nose and gut full-on. Holding his hand over his nose was no longer enough.

  Clayton coughed hard, then sprang out of his seat. The car bounced and jerked as he made his way over to the other end of the car to escape the woman’s strong odor. He coughed again, swallowed some air, and coughed harder.

  He had to get out of the car.

  He read the sign plastered to the window of the connecting car door. Riding or moving between cars is prohibited. The circled image of a person standing between two train cars with a red slash running through the circle was equally clear. Still, he ignored the warnings. Clayton pulled down on the metal door handle and yanked the door open. He found himself between the two cars, the train bouncing violently. He wiped his eyes, teary from the coughing fit, and lingered for a few seconds on the narrow outer ledge of the subway car. He kept one hand on the door handle, the other on Cool Papa’s porkpie hat. He couldn’t let his hat get away from him, and the train was moving fast. The stale smoky air was better than the air he’d escaped from. Finally he pushed the door open.

  Clayton’s sneakers hugged the shaky floor as he made his way from pole to pole. He stopped at the subway map. No one sat in the seat just below the map, so he leaned in to get a good look, and counted the number of stops before he’d reach West Fourth Street station. Now that where he was going was firm in his mind, he slid into the empty seat below the posted subway map. He counted fifteen station stops. It would be a long ride.

  He stared out into the tunnel where graffiti tags passed by. HARD KNOX. LYFER. CRY in puffy white-cloud letters.

  He wished he had something to read. Anything to read—except for The Four Corners of the World. He couldn’t afford to fall asleep on the train. All that was left to stare at was the subway floor, or across the train, or up at the business school ads posted above him. He didn’t want to get caught staring at any of the riders, because people were touchy about being stared at. From quick glances he allowed himself, all he saw were dull, empty faces. People reading or absorbed by the music piped in through earphones. The train seemed to move slowly, but that was okay. Soon he’d be with Jack Rabbit Jones, Big Mike, and Hector Santos. People who knew Cool Papa as a bluesman, and knew him as Clayton Byrd on blues harp. He couldn’t get there soon enough.

  The train pulled into a stop. Its bell rang, ding-dong-ding, and the doors opened. People rushed on, and the recorded conductor’s voice said, “Stand clear of the closing doors, please.” The train bell rang again, ding-dong-ding, and began to close, but a tall kid in a dirty white tank top jumped into the car, wedging himself between the closing doors, and shouted, “Jump on! Jump on!”

  Train Ear! Clayton thought. The kid on the platform.

  Next, a boy wearing a fuzzy white Kangol cap, who was slightly younger and shorter than Train Ear but definitely older than the twins, squeezed himself past the lanky teen and into the car.

  The sliding doors clamped in on Train Ear a couple times, but he stayed in the doorway and shouted, “Come on! Come on!” while the voice over the loudspeaker said, “Stand clear of the closing doors, please,” and the passengers groaned.

  Finally, Train Ear pulled in the last of their pack. A boy about Clayton’s height and age, maybe a year older, carrying a boom box, and then, that boy’s twin, who carried nothing. Once all were inside the car and out of the way of the closing doors, the doors opened and closed twice, and the train wa
s off, the boys hooting and laughing at one another.

  He glanced at the pack. They were positioned in the center of the car and at the center doors on both sides of the car. He glanced, was careful not to stare. The little bit that he saw told him what he needed to know. Their sneakers were all nearly new, although their T-shirts and jeans were ripped and grungy. One wore a white hat. Clayton was no fool. Those sneakers had been stolen. Wherever those boys were from, it wasn’t the same place that he came from. There was no one to see to it that their clothes were clean, heads were shaved around the edges, skin was oiled and not ashy. They were not the kind his mother would let sit at her table with dirty hands to handle her salt and pepper shaker angels. Well, the pepper angel.

  Wolf pack, Clayton thought.

  He wanted to look away but couldn’t. He needed a book. Something to keep him from staring. But he had the sense that the wolf pack was there to do something. They were loud, both begging and daring people to look their way.

  One twin sat the boom box on the ground and clicked the dial. The little bit of sound that crackled through its speakers moaned and died out. The boom-box boy shook the dead box, and slapped it on the sides a couple of times. “Oh well” was all he had to say.

  “I told you, snatch some batteries!” Train Ear yelled at him.

  Boom Box shrank-shrugged.

  Train Ear yelled to Boom Box’s twin, “Step up!”

  The twin jumped out into the center of the train car and made noise. Deep sounds from the inside of his throat, through his nose, lips, and teeth. The boy was a human beatbox.