Page 25 of Shadow Ticket

Streamlining on into afternoon deepening to blue evening, through Depression Pittsburgh, a ghost city, fires at the iron- and steelworks banked, massive structures unlit, though not unoccupied.

Later on, up in the mountains, between Pittsburgh and Altoona, entering deeper into the night run, having left behind and below what neon still shone, the Hoovervilles, the ghost-city light, hobo gatherings around trackside trash fires, stray auto headlights gliding briefly alongside the tracks, some fractional moonlight through the windows plus a few dim electric lamps in the observation car, deserted at this hour except for Hicks.

“You OK in here?” It’s a Pullman porter, whose name, as he’s quick to point out, isn’t George but McKinley. “We’re running underweight tonight, there’s empty berths back there if you want to grab some shut-eye.”

“Thanks, I’m fine catnappin in here, if it’s OK.”

McKinley Gibbs turns out to be running a sideline in race records, and before long is showing Hicks a good-size stack of platters carefully interleaved with newspapers he’s also bringing on to points east.

“Interest you in a Defender here, makes a good Hoover blanket too.”

“Sure, thanks, but mind if I ask, what’s with all this ‘Turn Lincoln’s face to the wall’ and so forth?”

“Hate to be the one to tell you the sad tale, but everybody knows by now what Hoover is, and it ain’t no Lincoln.”

“But he’s an engineer, ain’t he, a management expert, solved the hunger in Europe, anybody knows how to fix the economy it ought to be him. Besides which, come on, all those loudmouth Democrats down yonder there?”

“Who’ll keep doing what they want regardless of which of these two rich white guys gets in the White, did I say White House…Some choice, ain’t it.”

“Some’ve been calling Roosevelt a traitor to his class.”

“Makes him worth a look at least. But he needs the Solid South. Whoops,” as a shellac disc comes sliding out of the folded Defender and he dives to catch it.

“Got some Hits of the Week, Fletcher Henderson band, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Moten, that young Basie?” so forth.

“That’s if you dig it of course—here, Jabbo Smith and his Rhythm Aces, one of your local Milwaukee horns, there’s people say he’s better than Louis Armstrong, whole lot of these Paramount platters here, straight out of Grafton, practically your hometown, just up the road, give you the factory price… ”

“Blind Blake, ‘Police Dog Blues,’ mind if we…”

McKinley brings it over to the club-car Victrola, puts it on. Before bar three Hicks is about to topple into a romantic nostalgia episode. “I’ve heard this. Not on a record, not in a club, but…”

Down some long hallway someplace deep in April’s place on Brewer’s Hill, maybe upstairs, maybe down…no fixed hour, some nights not at all.

Hicks has been around enough close-up card-trick artists to know when he’s having a card forced on him, and yet here he finds himself with a record he didn’t mean to buy. No label, pure black geometry.

It’s April. Natch. First time he’s ever heard her on shellac. Her voice is different—electrical as a thunderstorm, yet somehow reluctant…Orchestral backup seems to be a little more grand-scale than usual—strings, a Latin percussion section.

If I Tell You (Bolero)

If I tell…you, if I

tell you, what it’s, all a-bout…

Somebody better sell, you,

a tick-ket on the next-train out,

forever—

Leave

me to my real times, just

be off and away…

don’t even think of me at mealtimes,

waitin for that souf-flé…

To fall— Just

remem-ber when you asked me,

Asked me what’s it all about,

I coulda let-it sail

past me, but

was-there really a-ny doubt,

that someday,

darlin I’d fum-ble, and you’d

have-to-be dumb not to tumble, so unbel-

-lievable with you, but

less, com, -pli, -cate, -ed, with, out…

oh, dim-

-wit of my dreams, yeah,

strange-as-it seems, that’s

what it’s about…

all about, my ba-by—

all about…

Plays it over a couple more times, nods out, wakes up to find the turntable of the Victrola still and empty, and no promise of a restful evening.

A quick pass up and down the train looking for the disc and the shellac merchant who sold it to him, but nobody up at this hour has heard anything, though maybe once there might’ve been a McKinley Somebody or other, except he’s long retired, some say to California.

Horseshoe Curve, Gallitzin Tunnel, track unwinding back into the dark, sleep it seems nowhere in the cards. The rhythm of the rails does nothing for Hicks the rest of the night but repeat wottachump, wottachump, wottachump till dawn, which arrives sometime between Harrisburg and Paoli.