Mister Satan's Apprentice: A Blues Memoir

16. Do the Right Thing

C H A P T E R S I X T E E N DO THE RIGHT THING Oh, she was pretty . .. pretty as a summer day Oh, I'm so sorry . . . that I let herget away —STERLING MAGEE AND JESSE STONE, "OH SHE WAS PRETTY" (1966) HE NEW YORK SUMMERS of 1988 and 1989 blur together in memory, or rather melt: an endless bruising string of steambath busking days and fan-raked nights under my rooftop apartment's simmering tarred ceiling. Growing up in the suburbs, Pd always thought of June, July, and August as a succession of berry seasons: mulberries, wineberries, blackberries. Summer in Harlem began and ended with the Lemonade Man—a young man, invariably , pulling a dolly through the strolling crowds on 125th Street. His large plastic garbage pail was a sloshing potpourri: several huge blocks of ice and bags of smaller cubes, composite lemonade—powdered mix, canned concentrate, squeezed real lemons—plus floating slices of peach, apple, and watermelon. He'd pause and ladle Mister Satan and me large oversweet Styrofoam cups, a dollar apiece. It felt good to be working hard outdoors, sweating, quenching a bottomless thirst. But there was such a thing as too hot, even for us. A few days after I got back from Mississippi, New York was scorched by the worst heat wave on record, forty-three continuous days of ninety or hotter highs. TV weathermen spoke of "global 293 T Mister S a t a n ' s A p p r e n t i c e warming," when they weren't blaming ashes heaved skyward by the previous year's eruption of Mount Pinatubo. Mister Satan, wiping dead finger-skin off his strings with Lemon Pledge and an old washcloth one torturous July afternoon, thought they were full of shit. "It's too damn hot is what it is," he laughed harshly. "Can't no scientist second-guess Creation. God—G-o-d, that's the Growth of Death, he's got a good thing going on with all those old people dropping dead out in Chicago." I wiped my forehead on the back of my arm. "More tombstones for his trophy yards." "I'm gonna snatch those bastards!" he boomed gaily, putting on God's voice. "Just to show the whole world how big and bad I am!" Mr. Oscar, one of our longtime fans, got up from his folding chair and wandered over. A small, solid, round-shouldered man in his sixties with a shaved brown skull, he always wore the same yinyang t-shirt—black and white teardrops curling into each other to make a perfect circle—and palmed the same two polished steel exercise balls, rotating them in his hand like oversize bearings while he gazed at us and the variously unencumbered women who strolledby. I was working on one of my harps as he came up, massaging a sticky reed with a bank ATM slip. "Hot weather got to it, huh?" he said, gazing down. I glanced up from my crouch. "We play so damn hard these things are always flatting out." "I never could play the harmonica. Saxophone, maybe. I always figured if I put my mind to it I could." "Get on over here, you bastard!" Mister Satan yelled at Mr. Danny, one of many older wine, beer, and vodka drinkers our tip bucket occasionally subsidized. Mr. Danny veered toward him and accepted the crumpled palmed bill. "Thank you, Mister Satan." "I'm basically a frustrated sax player myself," I admitted, giving the reed a quick buff with the jeweler's file I'd pulled out. "Is that a fact?" His steel balls swirledhypnotically. "Gene Ammons, Houston Person, Gatortail Jackson. That's the stuff I love. Organ-sax trios." 294 Hot Town "Huh. Ever listen to country music." I smiled. "When I'm driving through West Virginia." "Hank Williams, Merle Haggard?" "I've heard of'em." "Man," he chuckled. "That's all we had back in Tennessee." A Kawasaki Ninja screamed by like a large furious hornet— engine wound tight, lifting into a wheelie that turned our heads. The next moment a white mag-wheeled Benz spun by,thumping the sidewalk with angry MegaBass drum-talk, a sulking boastful tirade about Puck the police don't be steppin on my toes, 'cause I'm down with my niggaz and my Tec-9 hoes. Mr. Oscar made a face. "I...