Jazz on the Mississippi

By Joe Deckname

A bitter Arctic wind has descended over the continental United States as Robert, a former magician employed in the software division of a financial services firm, contends with his son’s illness and a deadline that looms at work. When a college friend moves back in town, she begins to organize a fundraiser to help with the medical expenses. In the meantime, Robert spends his nights awake at the hospital, trying to reestablish a connection with his son while plotting his own escape. A story about loss and rage in the Midwest, Jazz on the Mississippi is a taut family drama and a dark meditation on the modern American Dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joe Deckname
• Release date: Mar 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005969721

Joe Deckname

Joe is a very long list of things: a lifelong reader and an aspiring writer; a film fanatic; a misanthropic humanist; a lover of high art and also all things pulp (particularly comic books and gritty crime fiction); a skeptic and a science enthusiast; a gadfly, a kneejerk contrarian, and a pain in the ass; a museum-goer and event-attender; a guy who likes to wander.Born in Torrance, raised outside of St. Louis, Joe currently lives in Berlin, his favorite city, where he plans to stay until he dies. (Or moves someplace else.) He can be found eating fancy cakes and drinking specialty coffee in cafes, going to movies at the Babylon and Arsenal, reading in parks, walking along the Spree, and street-harassing dogs.

Book preview

Jazz on the Mississippi

Joe Deckname

Published by Joe Deckname at Smashwords, copyrighted work, blah blah blah. They wouldn't let me self-publish my book without a title and copyright page because at no point over the past three centuries has our sclerotic society managed to innovate a better way to pay its artists. So there you have it, folks. If you give an unauthorized copy of this novel to a friend, the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover will send a posse of G-Men to hunt you down. Probably.

Copyright 2020 Joseph K. Havermann

To Everyone.

And No One.

#1

Jazz on the Mississippi

0

…And how did you get to work this morning, Sharon? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, did you see the traffic on Sixty-Four? …And you better believe that I did, Sam, and I drove in with the heat on full blast because that weather outside is no laughing matter! With that sleet and that cold rain, we're all on thin ice — HEE HEE HEE! But seriously, better bundle up or stay in, because we've got another rough day ahead of us outside…

…If fifteen minutes have elapsed and it's time to go and he wins the fight against his pickled eyelids (or if he feels the sear of hunger in his gut), and the soles of his feet have begun to peek out from underneath the blankets, not the sheets, then he'll roll over to his right. Burrowed beneath floral comforters, jagged elbows lie like flippers angled against the fitted linen, his knuckles covered with rattlesnake skin, palms in hibernation across his chest, a musk ox head on a fluffy pillow hill: to get out of bed on a cold morning is a struggle. He rolls over to his right…

Legs dangling near mahogany, he is dressed in plaid boxers he can't identify but always wears, his stretched shoulders loafing while an innocent cough swells into a bellow, a howling at the full moon, and he yanks one of the crumpled tissues dotting the nightstand landscape that surrounds his reading lamp. With one quick slap the alarm goes silent, ham-fisted voices replaced by the formless Gregorian hum of hot air passing through the vents.

He dips his toes into the champagne-colored carpets, gets out of the bed, and passes by the nightstand and the draped windows, one hoof in front of the other. The furnace roars through the vents again, and for the first time he notices the goosebumps on his forearms. Even though he's in his boxers he feels naked, the way in warmer weather he feels naked when he's wading in the shallow end of a swimming a pool. He ignores the digging sting of a hangnail in his toe. He disregards his knees.

With descending shoulders, he is a man who stands at 5-feet-10, and there is a small prairie mound around his midriff, one he tucks in in front of mirrors. An army of fuzzy bristles has invaded his face, blitzing toward the tip of his Adam's apple. His snout sits in reasonable proportion to higher-than-average cheekbones — not unattractive. When he frowns, his mouth is a pair of overturned horns, his eyebrows a v-shaped scowl, but when he smiles, and I mean truly smiles, his impish lips climb up his left cheek in the manner of an inside joke. Right now his lips are a line so flat you could measure them with a spirit level. He has light brown hair and forgettable eyes.

He flicks his tongue in and out of his mouth, his cheeks ballooning like a bullfrog's. And he says: RIBBIT! RIBBIT…

With a thrust-out chest he coughs again, giving up the goods, the tissue this time slipping though his fingers and landing somewhere on the floor, resting undisturbed like an unread book. Where a tasteful mirror hangs, where mismatched socks loiter in pairs, where ebony shelves showcase silver spoons and dusty figurines, he walks, carried by bison thighs and balanced by his forearms, heading toward the edge of the master bedroom, stopping periodically to assume the position, sometimes flamingo and sometimes theropod, squawking like a macaw. Somewhere on a dresser a glass beaded bracelet, various hand-finished necklaces, and white gold earrings reside inside a jewelry box, pink and closed. A laundry basket, beige and upside-down, climbs a pile of thin white undershirts over in the corner where the dog used to sleep when they owned a dog. He says: RUFF RUFF!

Entering the walk-in closet, he walks in the way that a ring-tailed lemur would, and neglecting the light switch, he goes straight for the ground, swooping up a pair of black trousers, which he tosses around his neck like a scarf. A wooden tie rack displays his gifts from every Father's Day…

…And do you know what this is, Reader? This is a cliché, is what this is. But I think there's an undercurrent…

He digs his talons into the carpeted floors of the closet.

Rows of wedge heels, pumps, and comfy flats lead to the back-wall horizon, fitted out with fishing poles, camouflage coats, and a tackle box. Kneeling on the floor, inhaling heavily through his nose, he sniffs a pair of boxers to verify they're fresh, keeping them clutched in hand while he rifles through his business-casual shirts, settling on a gray polo that he rips off the hanger. He doesn't worry about the socks because he knows they're waiting in the bathroom. Elsewhere in the closet: an inviting evening gown dangles next to the other dresses, blouses congregate in cliques, one t-shirt appears after the other, all the Oxfords associate with other Oxfords, etc., etc. What they say is true, he assumes, about birds of a feather…

Once he flips a switch every crevice of the bathroom adopts an orange tinge. He lets the clothes fall onto the floor, including the pants around his neck, and approaches the tub, the cold linoleum needling his feet. His hand an automaton, he turns the shower knob, waits for the floods to come — removes his boxers and steps away. The curtains, a thick patterned vinyl, prevent the spraying showerhead from splattering water onto the floor. Standing at the counter, he reawakens to the steady drum of rainlike water drops tapping against the white tub. The water is getting hotter.

In the bathroom mirrors where the fog gathers along the edges, wiped clean with the palm of his hand, his eyes are tired, and he twists the sink handle to the far right while spray-paint water droplets condense around the spout, and a thick stream whirlpools down the scalding drain. He hunts for a can of shaving cream hidden among the detritus of the bathroom counter, the mascara and the paddle hairbrush, toothbrushes and a tipped-over tube of moisturizer, a soap tray caked with milky scum. Ugh.

Either because he hasn't shaved or because he needs a shower, his face itches as he spreads the satin shaving cream across his cheeks and neck and chin. The blade is dull. It's a disposable razor, mid-range. Every time he uses it he remembers that he has once again forgotten to add a package of replacements to the shopping list, and he curses lists, and he curses words. As he shaves, he moves the blade in calculated, upward thrusts, hand as steady as a sniper's, stopping often to run the blade under the rushing water, watching closely for specks of blood. Clumps of shaving cream and black whiskers cling to the sides of the sink. Dried blood on chapped lips and drops along his chin…

When he steps into the shower the hissing water tickles his skin. Now he is lathered up with citrus soap bubbles and lavender shampoo, and now his eyes are closed as he rinses off under the showerhead and waits for the heat to leave the water. Have you ever seen a snail shower? He cranks off the knob and opens his eyes again. It's about time.

With his feet back on the bathroom floor, he rubs his hair and dripping skin with a towel that smells like mildewed flowers and industrial-strength soap. He selects a pair of socks from the handful left on the floor, black and stiffer than he'd prefer, thick in the toes and thin in the heels. The boxers he dons, their plaid pattern different from the plaid pattern of the ones he wore before, tug snugly at his waist. When he peers to his side he sees that the mirror is frozen over with warm swirls. First he puts his black slacks on one leg at a time, and next he pushes his arms through the sleeves of his gray polo. Though when you stop to think about it it's really all the same…

A nagging pain hurls up from this stomach and spreads to his sinking shoulders as he journeys through the tight hallway outside of the bedroom. His spine tingles. He skips and whistles by framed family pictures hanging on hallway walls that are spotted with fresh plaster of paris, and as he passes a closed door his forearms thrash like wings rising against the indestructible wind.

On the wall of the living room a muted screen paints the morning news with flashy, saturated colors. Tsk, tsk! Somebody left the T.V. on; luck alone has kept the volume low.

A faded pair of jeans, clean but wrinkled, adorns the back of a reclining chair not far from where a couple of empty bottles line the fireplace. A tan couch conspires with the loveseat, and an unassuming end table props up a gold lamp, covered by a thin sheet of dust. A mocha coffee table and a rug in the center of the room provide the accents. He says: QUACK-QUACK! QUACK-QUACK…

Making the most of his mornings is what he likes to do. And as you can see, it's what he's doing now: he is in the bedroom, placing the shriveled white undershirts into the beige laundry basket, since turned right-side-up. He is filching an extra twenty minutes of shuteye while spread out on the couch because the days are short and the nights are long: Sit, Boo-Boo, sit! Good dog.

In the kitchen, hovering over the soapy water of the sink, he is scraping and soaking plates — gifts from years ago, now coated in cheese from frozen pizza. He is in the study on his personal computer, playing Solitaire and winning. And what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

He says: MOO! MOOOO…

Crouched in the living room, he sifts through the newspaper sections sprawled on the floor, first the sports and then the metro, now the world news and then the weather, searching for the funny pages like they were a lost child. (Oh gee golly whiz!) It makes sense that the papers are spread out on the ground, just like it makes sense that there are a pair of jeans on the recliner, just like it makes sense that even today the pages of the newspaper are filled with classified ads. A horse is a horse: of course. Of course…

By the door in their tiny mudroom that leads to the garage, he plops down a full black trash bag, the opening closed by a knot and a rubber band. No longer are there any bottles by the fireplace or newspapers on the carpet of the living room. He enters the kitchen without stopping to wash his hands. At the first burning growl of his stomach he sashays over to the coffeemaker and the toaster on the counter by the refrigerator. He pulls away a stray hair that twirls around the handle of a craft-show coffee cup, an ugly, violet mug with flowers painted on the sides. He cribs two slices of extra-fragile bread from a plastic bag, dropping them into the toaster and pushing down the lever. Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man. Bake me a cake as fast as you can…

Thank God there is still a little coffee left in the pot, however old. He empties it into the cup, overlooking the Liesegang rings formed at the bottom. As the bread toasts he warms the coffee, watching the cup spin around and around through the door of the microwave, removing it at the sound of the toast popping up from the toaster, before the timer has finished counting down. Sitting with the cup and the bread at the table, the crust as tough as gristle, his back slanted at a 45-degree angle against the chair, he bites down and waits as the slit scent of burnt crumbs slowly leaves the scene. He's hungry for more, but he needs to lose weight. He breathes thickly through his nose as he chews and spreads a bit of butter on the sides of the bread, having reached over for the porcelain butter dish and the butter knife in the center of the table. He studies a crossword puzzle with unblinking eyes. There is a light tap-tapping against the windows.

He should call in sick today. He should call in sick because he needs to and because he feels sleepy — and what's the weight of the universe when it has its mass measured on the surface of the Earth, and are the streets really that bad? — even though his temperature is in the standard range, and he should probably skedaddle soon because he's running late, not that he cares, though he can always blame the traffic: those are his cannon-flash thoughts while he sips from his cup and casually chews, another breakfast of lukewarm coffee and buttered bread — Man! — he wishes it were summer and he had the day off work and he could abandon everything and drive as far as the roads go, his music screaming though the speakers, the way he sometimes used to in the used Camaro after sophomore year of college, back when things were easier, but the fact is, well, there are some things a man just can't run away from, and besides, he's been meaning to pick up some groceries. Maybe he can swing by the store before work tomorrow morning, after he leaves the hospital. At the very least he can grab a box of Cheerios and some bananas, and a gallon of milk will be all right if it's kept in the car, what with the weather they've been having. And he needs to start heading for the door because it's time for work, hi-ho! Once upon a time there was fresh coffee in the coffee pot, and the carpet in the living room was vacuumed.

…He is in the walk-in-closet again, pulling a thick gray coat from a hanger, when he realizes to his amusement that he's not wearing shoes. His toes wiggle in their temporary triumph. Over by the bed, he inserts his feet into his black business casual slip-ons. He begins to walk out of the bedroom with a purposeful stride, like a real estate agent on the way to a sale, black mamba — when out of the corner of his eyes he notices the orange glowing light seeping through the cracks around the bathroom door. Standing just outside, straining, he hears the subdued whistling of the water faucet. He nudges the bathroom door open, marches to the sink, and shuts off the waterfall gushing down the drain. The fog has lifted from the mirrors, and he nods. He turns, zipping up his coat, and flicks off the light switch as he leaves.

Hands buried in his pockets, his pace slows. He can feel his wallet but he can't feel his keys. Damn it, how many times has that happened? Every night when he gets home he tries to remember to put his keys in the same spot. But I think you know how that goes…

In his frozen position the light pain in his knees lumbers up his legs and crawls into his spine. He'll need an aspirin when he gets to work. His head is a swinging pendulum. He bites his lip and commences his daily expedition, starting with the cracks of the sofa, then returning to the bathroom, scanning the countertops and peering into the medicine cabinet for reasons unclear. He surveys the coffee table and the rug in the living room. In the emptied kitchen sink he sticks his hand down the garbage disposal and wonders if they made their way into the trash bag waiting by the door. Finally he finds his keys on a footrest in the study, underneath an open magazine he doesn't remember reading (just ninety-nine cents for a single first issue): I'll call that a victory, and so should you…

Stepping into the kitchen, his legs are half lion and half gazelle. The clock on the microwave winks at him, and he needs to sleep. He eats the last of the dry toast, wiping his canines with his tongue when he finishes. He thumps his chest like a gorilla.

His hand lingers on the brass doorknob of the mudroom door. He sighs through his nose. In one jump he passes the event horizon, the panel slamming shut behind him as he is sucked into the bright gray of the garage.

The door has been left up. A swell whips in, the odor of the oil stains from the concrete floor rising, tempered only by the heavy cold, and outside the congealing rain is punctuated by machine gun fits of sleet spraying against the driveway, tit-for-rat-a-tat-tat. Maybe it's true that the walls of the garage shield him from the worst effects of the weather, but his cheeks are still singed, and the crystal wind cuts the pockets of his lungs. Somewhere in the distance is a flapping flag…

Clinking keys in his numb fingers dancing with the breeze, he opens the door of the brown Chevrolet, the one car that remains in the garage. After he shuts the door, he listens to the warning that rings from the side panels like he's won at slots, surprised by the placid silence of the breaths he takes, surprised because he's forgotten what it feels like to breathe without snoring. Carefully, he turns the ignition. The engine heaves and sputters but doesn't give.

C'mon, he says. Come on, old girl, don't fail me now…

He briefly massages his temples. He shakes his head and bites down on his knuckles. He stares at nothing out the windshield. And every harsh breath hangs in the air…

…I want everything to be okay, you hear? I want everything to be okay…

The car starts on the third try…

1

…And the checkered glass-and-concrete tower on Pine shoots twenty stories into the sky…

His badged lanyard crouched in the lowlands of his back pocket, Robert trots through the lobby, over the dark marble tiles that blend into the walls. By the buzzing water fountains a rubber cart holding a yellow bucket, stable for now but near the edge, is nudged toward the doors by a dark-skinned man in a blue jumpsuit with hunched-over shoulders, preparing to mop the floors: his job. Pant-suited women rub shoulders with men in blazers, a par-for-the-course crowd staring in unison at the shifting carnival lights above the polished elevators, like seasoned birdwatchers waiting for a finch. A woman with a conservative purse slips through the doors of the restrooms. A man and a woman, mid-twenties, dressed in their Sunday best, gather around a suit-wearing gentleman with white streaks of hair, a curved spine, and cheeks like Father Time. The gentleman points into the air and says, So then the judge goes, 'You tell me!' (His audience supplies the laugh track.) The doors to the elevator open, as reliable as a geyser, and close after the cluster has shuffled in.

Suddenly the sound dies, no more brouhaha and not a peep out of the busy bees, no warm coughs or idle chatter, no ding-dinging of the arriving elevator; if a pin dropped, you wouldn't hear it because the universe has stopped communicating through particle vibration. But just as suddenly the muffled footsteps and the tumbling gossip start back up, and the quiet laughter ricochets without a fuss off the corridor walls. He is at the end of the lobby, standing alone by an abandoned metal door, far away from the entrance of the building, the dead zone, and it's here that he removes his thick gray coat, unnoticed. Either he is looking to his left, or he is looking to his right, but either way, he is scouting the periphery.

The toes of his right shoe he kicks against the ground. He snaps his knuckles and eyes the pull plate of the door. With one gulped breath he yanks the door open and pounces in, landing at the base of the concrete steps, the door banging shut behind him. He waits, but no one comes; his face screams, and no one listens. He puffs out his chest, a spring to his step. Leaning back, his feet shoulder-length apart, he cocks his body like he's about to throw a discus. On your mark, get set…

And he rockets up the stairs as fast as he can, lunging, running, jumping, he sprints up three steps at a time, his coat a flying cape, his right foot crashing onto the platform of the second floor, his fist hitting the wall, narrowly preventing a collision, and he pivots and keeps going, never slowing down, catapulting up the next flight of stairs. By the fourth floor his legs are zigzagging from one side of the staircase to the other so that he lands to the right on one step and then vaults over to the left, coming down three steps higher and blazing on, bolting up the building. He travels by leaps and bounds. He pelts across the platform of the fifth floor and juts up the steps again, and by the sixth floor his coat has traded hands and his palms are sweaty, his heart an inmate pounding on the walls, but he's still running, his shoes smacking every step, his fingers brushing against the white paint of the concrete wall when he rounds the bend on the platform to the eighth floor. On the ninth floor, the air in his lungs an arsonist, he slingshots up the steps for the final sprint, grabbing the railing and hoisting himself onto the tenth floor, collapsing over, letting his coat fall as he gags and he wheezes. And he laughs.

Coughing, panting, reaching down to snag his coat, fingers combing back his slippery hair, he grabs onto his tuckered knees. He has made it. He is finished.

That was good. It's an announcement made to no one. That was good…

His wrist is a washcloth for his mouth. He slides the roped employee ID around his neck, and he presses a metal bar and steps into the office. A sign on the closing door reads, WARNING: ALARM WILL SOUND.

The mealy blue carpet is the ocean for an archipelago of crowded powder-coated partitions, the noise from each tiny island dampened but not canceled, and the whispers of old-school ringing phones and office giggling and fax machines and serious talk float through the air. Robert's eyes are a professor of the floor. He slinks along the wall around the outer rim of the office area, steering clear of conversation. He hurries past the plastic plants and work-shirking colleagues who have coalesced around a water cooler (yes, a water cooler), where one man with hotdog fingers wrapped around one of those cone-shaped cups and a shrieking woman with an overbite split up every part of speech:

Did you hear Mark and Sarah —

—didn't even know they were an item!

Two young men with thinly trimmed beards — heads popping up and down, up and down, hands rubbing — talk about current markets or Scala or scalability, dressed in their attempt at a midtown uniform. An attractive woman smirks.

As he nears the workplace kitchenette the rings under his eyes throb, conditioned like Pavlov's dogs, and he marches toward the kind of coffee machine you associate with gas stations on the side of the highway. A filled-to-the-brim pot of decaf sleeps in isolation on the upper warmer, cooked into a syrup, the red handle warning off the staff. He lifts the pot with the brown handle, still a third full, black viscous goddess of the morning, burnt and regular, but soon he also spots the used-up plastic sleeve, devoid of cups. And you were almost there…

Sometimes extra cups are stored in the cabinets. Have you tried opening the doors of the cabinets above the sink? Is it a Tuesday after a national holiday? If it's a Tuesday after a national holiday, then cups won't be delivered until the following Monday. Have you tried looking for another sleeve of cups near the outlet behind the coffee machine? It's harder than it needs to be…

Bingo! That's it, that does it: When he peers behind the coffee machine he discovers one discarded styrofoam cup. When the bitter coffee touches his tongue, he tips his head back with an acid scowl: there's always powdered cream…

Cordoned off in his work space, spying a box of sharp tacks from behind the vented metal stand of his computer monitor, he reaches for the box and flicks the lid open, pulling out a pair while careful not to prick his fingers, a skill formed from years of practice, like surgery. Through sleight of hand a beaten leather wallet appears on his desk by the box. He unslips a flimsy paper rectangle, a comic clipped from days ago that he now remembers.

The partition behind the computer is wall-papered with items from years of newspapers: yellowed columns, a few trophy crossword puzzles, but what shouts at every visitor is the array of comic strips. He leans over his desk, reaching to tack the latest onto the lowest row, the tip of his tongue scraping the inside of his cheek for a memory. He flumps down into his crumb-and-lint littered office chair, now home to his winter coat.

He can't see his coworkers, and his coworkers can't see him. Cowering below his desk, he turns the desktop on, then stares at the graphics flashing on the monitor as the fans begin to spin. In the screen he spies his vague reflection. The heat has stopped working, or so it seems, the office has gone frigid, or so it seems, Antarctic like the coffee that he slowly finishes. The warm air has started blaring through the vents again and abruptly the office feels stuffy, and won't they please do something about the heat?

His IDE has loaded and from the terminal he fetches the latest changes. Wake up, Buttercup. His nose tracks his position; his eyes parse the code. He creates a new class. He reshuffles and reorganizes and renames. Not much remains of the coffee beyond the light brown stains on the inside of the Styrofoam cup. He bites his lower lip, and he bites down on a thumbnail, bites down but not hard.

Gather around the fire, Kiddos, and come watch the sausage get made: what we've got here is a failure to communicate: rigid variables and spaghetti western code committed in a whisper; services in the service of a scarred superstructure, over-architected; a copypasta alphabet soup cooked up at the least responsible moment — no tests. Once upon a time the code was readable…

An hour passes.

A cataclysmic breath pushes past his lips, and he prods the tip of his chin with his thumb and index finger while his dwindling face floats in toward the screen, for inspection or escape. The detritus on his desk — the multicolored paperclips in a plastic bin, the pens with the ends chewed, a small legal pad, Post-It notes and a pilfered Sharpie, a box of tissue,