The Rising Sun
Where it had once felt cold and unfamiliar, the metal of the gun is warm against his hands. He traces the curves of the barrel back toward the hammer, and turns it over slowly, rocking the cylinder in place, wondering how many bullets it still holds. Knowing it can be no more than four.
From where he sits on the floor beneath the window, he can hear Mrs. Shepherd calling to him. She’s coming down the hall toward his room — the one at the end, away from the others.
“Mr. Adams?” she says, knocking on his shut door with the hand that isn’t already turning the knob. “There was a law man here asking about you. I sent him away. Said I don’t talk about my guests ‘les they give me a reason.” She pushes the door open and stops suddenly as she sees him. He’s wearing the same suit he’d been wearing the night he arrived, but it’s more crumpled and worn than it was then. They’re both looking at the gun in his lap, and the way his finger has wrapped around its trigger. Frozen, her eyes stay there as his lift up to look at her. There are dark circles under them, and his greasy, matted hair falls into his face. Outside, they both hear her children laugh as they play in the front yard.
“Have you ever been to New Orleans?” he asks her. All she can manage is a small shake of her head. “There’s a house there, they call it the Risin’ Sun…You keep those kids away from it. It’ll ruin ‘em…Way it ruined me.”
“What happened to you?” she says quietly, still looking at the gun.
When you’re a musician, you go where the music is. For me, that wasn’t up near Dockery. We didn’t even have a train stop, and we certainly didn’t have a decent band to play with. I couldn’t stay, not when there was so much life out there waitin’ for me.
My mother told me not to go. She said I’d end up like my father — said I’d be lost to all the gamblin’ and the drinkin’. But I’d never had a drink and I barely had a nickel to spend, let alone bet. And I had to see what it was like somewhere like New Orleans — somewhere dust didn’t swirl up every time the wind blew down Main Street.
Mama cried when I left, but when I got there, it was incredible. There was so much action — more lights and life than you can imagine. All these crowds and commotion. . .
And the music. . .
Every door you passed screamed with the screech of a trumpet or clarinet. Some bands even played while they passed you in the street. Soloists marched to everywhere and nowhere at the same time, with the best rhythm section you’d ever heard trailin’ behind ’em — makin’ men stop to swing some flapper around his arm for as long as he could still hear the beat.
I played on a few corners that first week. I had a trumpet Mama bought me with the money she made sewin’ jeans at night, and I tried to blend it in with all the other music I heard, but I wasn’t playin’ anything close to what they were. Still, I asked around the boarding house and all the bars and restaurants, and eventually I found a band leader lookin’ for a horn. He offered me my first gig. At the Risin’ Sun. . .
My mama would have fainted if she’d seen the streets of New Orleans. She’da died on the spot if she saw the inside of the Sun.
It was like nothin’ you’d ever believe — less like a bar and more like this tornado that rolled past our town when I was eight. It was a ways off, but we could see it from the porch, and it’s what I thought of standin’ in The Sun that first night. The whole room seemed to spin and shake. Servers skittered back and forth either deliverin’ fresh drinks or splashin’ old ones with whatever was in the flasks they carried in both hands. Dice and dollars were thrown up into the air along with hands and fists — when the fists weren’t bein’ thrown other places, of course.
There wasn’t a single bit of that house that wasn’t crammed full with shoutin’, screamin’ sinners gamblin’ or drinkin’ or dancin’ in front of us. The bell of my trumpet shook when I put it up to my lips, and beyond it was a blur of legs thrown up in all these flips and dips. I missed almost every cut off that night, and when the gig was over, it was like the music hadn’t stopped. The dancin’ had ended, but the movement hadn’t. That just spread out to the tables and bars, with most of the band folded in — myself included. I had both hands on the handle of my trumpet case as I basically tiptoed toward one of the roulette tables.
I stood there for a while, tryin’ to make sense of it all — tryin’ to follow all the money that was thrown and all the shoutin’ that came behind it. I started leanin’ in after a while, tryin’ to hear exactly what everyone was sayin’ beneath the whir of the room. But instead, I heard her voice. It came up from behind me, and it was as soft and sweet as the hand she laid on my back.
“You don’t just have to watch, you know.”
Those were her first words to me, and I jumped when I heard ’em, but as I turned to see her, I settled down for the first time that night. She had big, green eyes that smiled up at me, and she was the only woman in town who still wore her hair long. It fell in beautiful blonde curls that swept over one shoulder onto a bright red dress that hugged her hips but opened into jagged strands at her knees.
“You could make a bet,” she said, noddin’ toward the table. I could feel myself blush as her eyes repeated what her lips had just said.
“Oh, no ma’am,” I told her. “I couldn’t do that. I barely had enough money to get here.” She told me it wouldn’t take much and I told her again that I shouldn’t, but she kept tryin’.
“Then I’ll have to bet for us,” she said, and she took my hand and led me to the table, pushin’ past and through the crowd.
“Now I couldn’t in good conscience let you do that,” I said, losin’ myself in those eyes. And while the room continued to spin, for a second, we weren’t part of it. We stood still together and the rest of it spun around us.
“Well one of us is bettin’,” she declared, shiftin’ her weight and challengin’ me. I hesitated again. I was tryin’ to think of what to say, but she beat me to it. “It’s easy: Red or black?” I was still tryin’ to say no, but she wasn’t lookin’ away, and my answer just kinda slipped out.
“Red looks pretty good to me.” She smiled and pointed to the dealer. “On red, please,” I said to him, handin’ him some of what I’d made that night.
“Please?” she laughed. “A proper southern gentleman in the Risin’ Sun? Who would have thought it?!” She laughed again and so did the dealer, even as he kept his head down, stackin’ the dollars and cents tossed from every angle. But the laughin’ stopped a second later as a shadow fell across the table — a shadow cast by the bear of a man who’d just stepped up behind him. Answerin’ a question I hadn’t asked, she told me that he was the owner, a man named Luther Kaa. The dealer stood up when he felt his boss there, but still Luther had to bend over to whisper somethin’ into his ear. Straightenin’ back up, Luther took a long look over the crowd before settlin’ on the two of us and smirkin’ just a little while the dealer called for final bets.
“Here we go,” she whispered, leanin’ close enough that I felt her breath on my neck. Again I felt myself blush, but this time I felt my heart quicken, too, faster than any beat we’d played that night. I watched that little white ball spin and I felt her hand reach for mine, and when it did, my heart quickened again — and then it quickened again as that ball started bouncin’ across the whole wheel before finally settlin’ down.
When the dealer called “red,” half the table groaned, but she threw our arms into the air and we both let out cries of joy — all those nerves explodin’ out in excitement. It felt amazing. And with that rush in our heads, we finally introduced ourselves.
She told me her name was Anna McIntosh, and I remember thinkin’ it was the prettiest name I’d ever heard. I gave her mine and when I heard her say it back to me, I blushed for the third time.
“Well, Everett Adams,” she said, “a win deserves a drink,” and she jabbed her arm out toward a passin’ waitress.
“Oh, no,” I said again, puttin’ my hands up, but she acted like she didn’t hear me, and she handed me one of the two small glasses she’d managed to grab. “Isn’t it illegal?” I asked, knowin’ it was and knowin’ full well this wasn’t a place anyone cared. Again Anna laughed. I loved her laugh.
“You wouldn’t let a woman drink alone, would you?” she asked, raisin’ her glass to her lips, pushin’ me to do the same.
The smell was terrible, and I knew I’d hate it even as I gave in to her, like I was always gonna. As quickly as I could, I put it to my lips and tried to swallow it all in one motion. It burned on the way down, with a fury that set my whole insides runnin’ to escape. I coughed and sputtered and grimaced while she howled — and while she handed me another glass, too.
“Black or red?” she asked when I’d settled down. I picked red again, and this time, she put the glass to my lips for me, and everything that had been spinnin’ around us swept us up. I coughed less that time, but I yelled louder when red was called again. And I coughed less the time after that, and yelled even louder the second later — and so on and so on and so on. And when we woke up, it was already the next night. And when I woke up, it was already the next year, and I was already in another life.
I hadn’t noticed it happenin’. I hadn’t noticed the way I’d stopped objectin’ to whatever Anna was suggestin’. I hadn’t noticed the way I’d stopped sayin’ please. I hadn’t even noticed that I wasn’t playin’ my horn anymore — that I didn’t even know where it was. I hadn’t noticed that I’d stopped coughin’ or even that the drinks had stopped burnin’. . .
Because I had noticed the way they made me feel. I noticed how all of it made me feel. How every win at the table sent me into Anna’s arms, and how I loved those arms around me. How every drink made us laugh harder and kiss deeper. How every loss did nothin’ but make the next win better. At least at the start.
I followed Anna everywhere, back then. We ate and drank and gambled together — talkin’ and jokin’ in the brief spaces in between. I slept in her room above The Sun, and I stayed up with her until mornin’, then woke up just in time to play with the band — when I was still playin’. There were drinks to help us get loose at night, and then drugs to help us stay up ’til dawn, and other drugs to help us get to sleep. But sometimes I’d even gamble while she slept, and I was gamblin’ enough that they gave me my own room apart from Anna’s. I started to learn the names of all the dealers and waiters and guards, and we got friendly enough that I heard all the rumors about how Luther Kaa ran The Sun. The dealers all said he had a secret safe buried under the bandstand. The waiters said he paid every cop in the city to keep it all quiet. And the guards all said he had a hidden escape tunnel in his office. It seemed like a lot of nonsense to me, but it was fun to listen to while I bounced between ‘em.
And then it all changed. . .
When the dealer turned that last six, I snapped. He’d been pullin’ those on me for hours at that point, and when I saw another one, I flipped my chair and screamed at him. I was yellin’ in a way I hated, but I only stopped when that shadow fell over the table like it had my first night.
“You and I should talk,” Luther said, and his massive hand took hold of my shoulder, and though I had no mind to, I was movin’ a second later, pushed along toward the door that was always guarded by the two men who didn’t hide the guns on their hips. He didn’t say any more has he pushed me down a hallway to an office at its end — a dark, elegant room of rich, polished wood encirclin’ a desk as big as a wagon. There were bookshelves that belonged in a library, and on top of a sideboard across from the desk and its armchairs sat far too many crystal bottles of liquor. There were paintin’s and portraits on the wall, and behind the desk was the biggest fireplace I’d ever seen. It was marble and brick, and there was somethin’ off about the back of it, but I was in no state to figure out what, and I couldn’t anyway with the smoke and flames swirlin’ around it. They filled the room with the smell of applewood before disappearin’ up the chimney — the only sign that a world existed beyond the window-less walls. It was too hot for a fire, but one was burnin’ anyway. In fact, it was always too hot for a fire, but one was always burnin’. And Luther never seemed to mind.
“Sit down,” he told me, and he stepped behind his desk and leaned down onto it with both fists. He told me I was in some trouble and I apologized about the chair, but he just shook his head. “I don’t care about the chair, Everett,” he said. “I care that your bill is due, and you haven’t got the money to pay it.” Everything about that second sentence confused me, and I could feel my face showin’ it. Lookin’ me up and down, he saw what I felt, so he continued — told me that months before they’d given me a line of credit to cover all my expenses, and that the bill had just come due.
“I don’t remember a line of credit,” I said, squeezin’ the sides of my armchair and thinkin’ through every memory I hadn’t already lost. He pounded those fists on the desk, and as he did, the door swung open and two of his guards stepped in.
“Are you callin’ me a lair?” he growled.
“No! No of course not!” I yelled. Anna had told me stories like this — about other gamblers who’d lost their legs because they’d ended up on the wrong side of Luther Kaa’s ledger. Those stories I believed. He reached into his jacket’s front pocket and took out a small slip of paper, then slid it across the desk as he told me that the number on it was what I owed, and that he knew I couldn’t pay for it.
Unfoldin’ the paper, all the air left my lungs. Left the room. Left the whole of Louisiana. I had never even imagined havin’ as much money as was written on that paper, and right then, all I wanted was to be back with Mama — to have never left and let everything get so bad. I had no idea it could get worse. I couldn’t talk for a second, and I stammered when I finally did.
“I…I don’t understand,” was all I could muster.
“I see two possibilities,” Luther started, sittin’ for the first time. “Either right here and right now, these two men can do the work I pay ’em so well to do — before goin’ to visit your friend Ms. McIntosh and maybe even your mother up near Dockery…” Air was even harder to come by when he finished that sentence, and tears joined the sweat that was runnin’ down my face. “…Or you could help us out a little around here.” His whole demeanor shifted when he said that. “Would you be willin’ to do that? If you are, maybe we can keep this between us, and even let you keep livin’ here.” He was smilin’ politely, like he was doin’ me a favor. And I suppose he was.
“Of course,” I told him without a second to think about it, and his smile became a grin.
He took some more papers out of his desk and slid those to me as well. He called it my ‘employment contract’, and pointed toward where he wanted me to sign. I took the pen and signed it as best I could. I didn’t read it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t see the letters on it. All I saw was Anna and Mama’s faces. I signed it, and then I sunk into that chair I only just stood up from. . .
It’s amazing how commonplace it can become. My hand was tremblin’ the first time I slipped a dock worker his weekly persuasion, as Luther called it. Just like that first night on the bandstand, I couldn’t keep it still. Now look at it. I could hold it out like this for hours without even a flinch. Even now. . .
At first, bribes was all it was. I went to the harbor and paid off whoever we needed to pay off to get the hooch back to The Sun. Sometimes it was cops, other times it was politicians, but every time it was men I’d see that night around the tables. The waiters’ rumors had been right, I guess. . .
I was still playin’ at the tables then — playin’ even more really, and drinkin’ more, too. I’d go to the docks in the mornin’ and bring in a shipment, then go straight to the floor until the band came on. When they played their first note, I went back to Luther’s office and drank by the fire until they were done — unless Luther found somethin’ more for me to do, somethin’ that couldn’t be done in daylight. Somethin’ else that became as common as everything else. . .
When you break someone’s hand, the sound of the bones can cut through you like a saw. The screamin’ can, too. But after a while, you learn to ignore it — just like how you learn where to hit someone so they can still walk after a month or so, but not without a limp.
I tried to refuse the first time Luther handed me this gun. I told him I wouldn’t carry it — said I never have and never will. Now, I don’t even know how many people have stared down its barrel — can’t remember how many times I have, either, sittin’ alone in my room, wishin’ I could pull the trigger.
That’s where I was when Lieutenant Gabriel came to tell me the raids were comin’. I tucked the gun into my pocket and ran down to Luther’s office, where he was sittin’ behind his desk — that fire still burnin’ behind him.
“The raids have started,” I panted. We knew they’d be comin’ eventually, but Luther didn’t want to shut down until we had to. “You gotta get out of here,” I said, but he just leaned back into his chair and looked at me like he didn’t understand.
“I do?” he asked, and I actually thought I needed to explain it.
“These aren’t local cops,” I told him. “They’re raidin’ every place in the city. They’re not just gonna let the owner of the Risin’ Sun walk away.” I was leanin’ over his desk as I said it, but I stood back up when he spoke these words:
“I know. So you better go.” A mockin’, satisfied expression spread across his face as he watched it sink in. “I don’t own the Risin’ Sun, you do,” he said, enjoyin’ it. He grabbed a packet of paper and tossed it toward me, open to a page I’d seen once before, when I’d scribbled my signature across its bottom. “I sold it to you months ago.” He laughed out loud at that, with his bald head thrown back into the air. And again, all I could do was stammer.
“No…this isn’t right.” . . .
“I’m afraid it is, Mr. Adams,” he said, pullin’ a cigar from his coat and turnin’ away from me to light it with the flames of the fireplace. He blew the smoke of his first puff toward me, and it was like that first drink with Anna. I coughed so hard I doubled over to try and keep from wretchin’. When I stood up, I was breathin’ so fast I thought I’d pass out. Thankfully, my hand had found somethin’ for me to hold onto. The handle of the gun in my pocket. . .
“No one will believe this,” I tried, but he shot back quickly.
“Why wouldn’t they?” He told me some ‘ambitious’ friends of his in the city used my signature to file all the paperwork. “And you’ve been the one givin’ everyone their persuasions,” he said. “Somethin’ they’ll all testify to.” He put one hand into the air and put the other across his heart. “I’m just another citizen who has made the forgivable mistake of wanderin’ in here every now and then.” Grabbin’ the papers back from me, he held them up to my face. “Remember those sixes the dealer kept pullin’ that night you signed this? Almost like he had a whole sleeve of ‘em? Well this is my six. Sorry about your luck.” He winked at me just then, and when he did, my grip on the gun tightened, and before I’d even thought to, I’d pulled it from my pocket and pointed it at his chest — which made him laugh harder than he had all night.
I started to say somethin’, but Anna walked in before I could. I hadn’t seen her in weeks. I couldn’t stand the idea of those gorgeous green eyes seein’ what I’d become.
“They’re here,” she said, steppin’ past me and toward Luther, who’d finally stood up. He squeezed her hand, and it was like that hand had reached into my chest and crushed everything inside. It all made sense.
“Perhaps we should leave your latest recruit with his office,” he said, and he pulled at one of the wrought iron pokers beside the hearth, and when he did, the fire started to sink into a trench on the floor, revealin’ a tunnel behind it. The guards had also been right, but I wasn’t payin’ attention to that. Instead, I was watchin’ him lean over and kiss her on the cheek, and hearin’ him tell her how well she’d done. . .
I barely noticed my finger pull back on the trigger. It was the easiest thing in the world. Just a simple, little flick. I didn’t even feel it. And even as I watched Luther crumble to the ground, I felt nothin’. Anna had started screamin’, but I didn’t hear it. I just turned the gun toward her and flicked my finger again. She fell beside him and I stepped over ’em both on my way to and through the fire — into the passageway beyond it, where the smoke surrounded me. It followed me down the tunnel and out into the alley, and down the sidewalks and onto the train. I could smell that smoke the whole ride up here. I can still smell it now. . .
Neither one of them has moved while he’s told the story, and having finished it, his eyes have gone back to the gun.
“Those bullets should have been mine,” he whispers, and she can see that he’s crying. With a dull, rattling thud, he drops the gun onto the floor and climbs to his feet. “You keep those kids away from there.”
She nods as he steps past her, and silently, solemnly, he starts down the hall and out of the house.
He walks back to the train station and breaks stride only long enough to spend his last dollar on a ticket back to New Orleans. When the train arrives, he’s the last one to board. Not because he’s hesitant, but because he isn’t.
With one foot already on the train, he looks up the tracks toward Dockery and the mother he left. He wishes he could go to her, but she doesn’t deserve to see him now and he doesn’t deserve to ever see her again. With one final look, he turns toward New Orleans where the House of the Rising Sun is waiting. Where his future is waiting. Where judgment is waiting.
It’s exactly what he’s earned and it’s all he has left. He ducks his head and steps onto the train, and it lurches forward and starts steaming south.
The story above is part of a series I’m writing called ‘Song Book’ — a collection of short stories based on some of my favorite songs. If you’re interested in reading more, the rest of ‘Song Book’ can be found on my website.
