Mister Satan's Apprentice: A Blues Memoir

2. Everybody in Harlem Knows Satan

C H A P T E R T W O EVERYBODY IN HARLEM KNOWS SATAN If Bessie Smith had killed some white people she wouldn't have needed that music. —LzRoi JONES, DUTCHMAN TAY OUT OF HARLEM! was the first thing Helen and I had been warned when we moved into neighboring Morningside Heights back in 1980. Her fellow English grad students at Columbia—white folks, all—were adamant. Never make the mistake of taking the No. 2 or No. 3 express subway north past Ninetysixth Street, or the A train north past Columbus Circle. Always transfer to the No. 1 local. Forget to do that and you'd end up in the middle of ... Harlem! Mortal danger. This was said with a nervous laugh, repeated like a mantra, taken as self-evident common sense. A male grad student—a white guy—had been killed the year before, we were told. He and his girlfriend, walking home late at night, had been followed into the lobby of their apartment building on Morningside Drive by a black guy with a gun. They'd behaved like dutiful white people, handed over their money and watches. As the black gunman spun away, the white guy's wallet slipped out of his pocket. 29 s Mister S a t a n ' s A p p r e n t i c e "You dropped something," the white guy reportedly called out. With a trace, it was whispered, of inappropriate jauntiness. The black guy turned and shot him in the face. Helen's new colleagues shuddered as they warned us: Morningside Park is full of junkies. Harlem is only a couple of blocks away. The Heart of Darkness is at your doorstep. Be careful. HARLEM wASTHE LAST PLACE on my mind during the summer of '86, half a decade later. Nat's vision of El Cafe Street as a moveable blue feast had become my own; I'd flown over to Paris in June with my Mouse and gotten loud. I'd taken trains down through Avignon to the Riviera and back up to Amsterdam, jammed with dozens of guitarists, drummers, singers. I'd sweated in the Metro tunnels and strolled seaside cafes, been teargassed by the flics, drunk too much vin rouge and draft Heineken. I'd had several memorable affairs and a regrettable one-night stand with a Milanese heiress who'd offered me two weeks at St. Moritz. Two years after losing Helen, my wounded heart had finally begun to heal, or at least scar over. I put away my Mouse when I got back to New York in late August, spent. Found a part-time job tutoring writing at Hostos Community College in the South Bronx, picked up a few harp students to make rent. In my spare time I was struggling with a road novel that couldn't quite capture the unlikely romance my busker's life had been. I was blowing a little harp, jamming occasionally at Dan Lynch in the vacuum left by Nat. I hadn't seen or talked to him in more than a year. I missed him. I'd recently moved to Inwood, at the forgotten northern tip of Manhattan Island. My usual commute to Hostos was down the East River Drive and across the 145th Street Bridge. One day in October, a hazy Indian summer noon, I suddenly got inspired. Why not take a shortcut through Harlem and stop off at Sylvia's Soul Food? Helen and I had been there once and enjoyed a delicious, if anxious, Sunday brunch: creamy scrambled eggs, sage-fragrant patty sausage, grits topped with half-melted hunks of butter. Biscuits, black coffee. The real American deal. I jumped in my Honda and took off. Harlem from Inwood was 30 New Life due south on the open road. I blew down the Henry Hudson Parkway , swooped under the George Washington Bridge, rolling down the window and punching up Jazz 88 as I went. A tenor sax—had to be Stanley Turrentine with those whooping-cough lines—was singing to me. River air whipped through. America was raw, fragrant , sprawling, jagged, electrical. I held seventy in fifth for three minutes and slid off the ramp at 125th Street. I started to get nervous, rolling across Broadway past Kentucky Fried Chicken under the subway's webbed cathedral arc. This past spring I'd ventured alone to jam sessions at...