strings felt like spaghetti against his fingers. Sweat as biting as lime juice streamed into his eyes as he clumsily strummed chords that might have belonged to some other singer’s song, but not Lucille’s.
After the show, an angry Lucille pressed her lips together and stomped past Harlan without a word.
Bill was the one who took him aside. “If you can’t handle your liquor, you shouldn’t drink,” he warned angrily.
Shamed, Harlan dropped his head and stammered an inaudible apology.
* * *
By the time they reached South Carolina, Harlan hadn’t had a swig of anything harder than Coca-Cola and he was beginning to perform like a pro.
After a show in Charleston, Cecil loudly proclaimed, “You did great out there!”
“Thanks.”
He pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and held it out to Harlan. “For you.”
Harlan scrutinized it for a second. “Naw, I don’t smoke.”
Cecil’s eyes narrowed. “Aw, you think this is the tobacco type of cigarette?”
Harlan shrugged his shoulders.
“This here,” Cecil announced grandly, “is a reefer cigarette. One puff of this and you’ll know Jesus.” He slipped the cigarette between his lips, pulled a silver lighter from his suit jacket, and fired the tip.
Harlan watched the flame swell and collapse as the drummer puffed.
“You gotta hold it in,” Cecil instructed in a strangled voice. After a few seconds, he blew a stream of smoke into Harlan’s face. “Just try it. One toke, that’s all. That’s all you’ll need.”
Harlan smirked. “Naw, that’s okay.”
“Don’t you wanna know Jesus, boy?”
Craig, the piano player, swaggered by, nodding in their direction. When his nose caught the pungent scent, he turned back. “May I?” he asked, grinning.
Cecil passed him the joint.
Craig inhaled deeply and then exhaled. “Damn, that’s some good shit,” he coughed.
“The best,” Cecil said, thrusting the joint at Harlan for the second time. “You’ll play better than you ever thought you could.”
“Sure ’nuff,” Craig agreed.
Three tokes later, Harlan couldn’t stop laughing at his shoelaces. An hour after that, he was stumbling up and down the dark aisle of the bus, begging for food to quell his ravenous appetite.
Their arrival in Augusta, Georgia coincided with the National Baptist Convention, so all of the colored guesthouses were full. Bill informed them that they would have to spend the night on the bus.
Harlan watched the musicians remove their shoes and fold their jackets into makeshift pillows. “But we passed a hotel not a mile down the road that had a vacancy sign in the front yard,” he said sleepily.
“You talking ’bout the Partridge Inn?” Bill questioned.
“Yeah, I think so.”
Bill laughed.
Lucille pulled a purple scarf over her curls and knotted it behind her neck. “Boy, this ain’t Harlem,” she said. “Down south, you can’t walk through the front door of any establishment you please, sit down, eat and drink your gut full. Down here, if your bladder begs, you got to search high and low for a bathroom marked Colored. This here is Jim Crow territory—the rules down here are different. That vacancy sign you saw was for white folks, not us.”
Chapter 30
The following night, they performed under a massive tent raised in the middle of a cow pasture. Before taking the stage, Harlan sought out Cecil and his magic cigarettes.
“Um, you got some more of that weed?”
Cecil eyed him amusingly, crowing, “You done had all the freebies you gonna get from me. You want some more, it’s gonna cost you.”
“How much?”
“Fifty cents.”
* * *
The band opened with “Chattanooga Man” and moved into “Down Hearted Blues,” “Always Be Careful Mama,” and “Dinah.” After two hours, they closed the show with “Reckless Daddy.”
It was Harlan’s best set to date. He knew it before Bill and Lucille even told him. He had felt like a king on that stage—unstoppable and all-powerful.
And best of all, that night when Harlan bedded down on the cramped bus seat, Darlene was nowhere to be found and he slept soundly.
* * *
In Mobile, Alabama, the entire band stayed at the home of Clarence and Joy Temple, a wealthy white couple who had befriended Lucille early in her career.
“They ain’t your run-of-the-mill white folks,” Lucille called out over the laboring engine as the bus chugged its way up the halfmile-long driveway. “These people are free thinkers. Liberals is what they call themselves.”
The home came into view. Stacked porches, Greek columns, and a sweeping verandah. Harlan had never seen anything like it.
“How many people live there?” he whispered in awe.
“Just them two,” Lucille said. “Not counting the help.”
Clarence and Joy were well into their seventies, silver-haired and wrinkled. Their matching green eyes made them look more like siblings than husband and wife. They seemed hungry for the company. Unwilling to let their guests retire. After the sumptuous meal, the Temples coaxed everyone out onto the rear porch to sip cognac and deliberate on all things musical.
It was near midnight when Harlan, yawning, excused himself and headed up to the room he was sharing with Craig. Before retiring, he slipped into their private bathroom and fired up one of the three joints he’d purchased from Cecil.
Head spinning, floating more than walking, he crossed the room and dove onto the goose-feathered mattress, slipping into blissful slumber.
Just at the tip of three, Cecil stumbled noisily into the bedroom, hissing, “Pssst!”
The room flooded with yellow light.
“Psssssssst! Harlan!”
“Shit,” Craig mumbled angrily.
Harlan sat up, shielding his eyes.
“Turn that light off!” Craig growled. “Ain’t you got your own room to go to?”
Alongside Cecil was a curvaceous raisin-colored woman. Cecil dragged her toward Harlan. “You gotta
