Out in the Be-Bop 1950s Night –With The Stones’ The Girl With The Faraway Eyes In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Jack Harper wished he had met her, the young woman that he called before he met her “the girl with the faraway eyes,” about ten years before where he was twenty or so. Although from the look of her ten years before would have put her at about age ten or eleven, no more, and probably at that time she had not possessed the sorrows that came with those eyes and without those sorrowful eyes he might very well have passed her by. It had all started when he went to his local jazz club hang-out that he had frequented often since he hit Frisco town a couple of years before over in the Fillmore District, the Red Cap Club, on a Monday night a slow night for anything musical and there she was sitting at the bar by herself, drinking slowly from some scotch glass, the neon Miller Hi-Life sign blinking on the wall behind her, and listening to the boys in the jazz combo as they warmed up for their first set. That was when she first looked his way, not at him, not directly anyway, but in his direction.

It wasn’t that she was beautiful, physically beautiful, although her slender frame, boffed brunette hair, brown eyes, and tight –fitting cashmere sweater would have attracted guys who were not irredeemably hooked on faraway looks by one of the neon wilderness waifs of the world. But that look, that ten- thousand year old embedded in the genes look, that look that spoke of unnamed sorrows, of unnamed bumps in life’s road, but spoke as well of gallant knights tilting at windmills trying to erase that look, of trying to bring some sense of order into her world had him transfixed. He was hooked, and so he walked over, he took the ticket and walked over to the wild side. He asked her if he could sit down and she said “suit yourself” but she also said, giving him her best quizzical smile, that she “hoped he knew what he was in for.” And so it started.

They talked for a bit, the usual chitchat bar stuff, he offered and she accepted the offer of another scotch, which she drank slowly as they talked, mainly of jazz, of the boys, the house combo who were going through their paces on the first set. Going a little shy with a big sound early but also sensing, knowing, that if not early, if not Monday night early, then there would be no big sound audience for them to feed off of later. She, Wendy, Wendy Johnson, when they got around to names, was extremely knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the jazz world that was framing the be-bop nights around San Francisco just then. And framing as well the be-bop poetry that guys, guys like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and mad monk Gregory Corso were spewing forth based on the long gone rhythm, the beat beat, beat down beat, beat around cool ass rhythm, all big note stuff, breaking away a little from Father Duke, Father Count, Father Louis and Mother Fatah Hines, getting purely tonal she called it. She noted that the house band had just a year or so before been all juiced up with big Johnny Hodges-like sex sax blows by Eddie Lee but more recently had begun to feature Miles-like trumpets Gabriel-blowing with new band member Sid Lament.

Jack asked her how she knew some much about the jazz scene, was she a music student, or something. She said no that she had had an affair with Luke Lemming the up and coming trumpet player around town and he had hepped her to the scene. (She seemed too young at twenty-one to be able to call any youthful liaison an affair. Jack thought, hell, he was a decade older than she and he had had only one such liaison that he would designate as such.) Luke took her to all the after- hours places, the back rooms, the places where after guys had had their fill of the paying customers and just blew until dawn, looking for that elusive big breeze curling in from the bay high white note before the sun destroyed the night and their dreams. He had also turned her onto kicks (although Jack was not exactly sure what she meant by that term just then). A few months before Luke had blown her off, had told her that even in wide-open Barbary Coast Frisco a freaky black guy and a white girl was nothing but trouble, trouble for him, trouble for him about six ways including moving up in his profession, and hell not getting called on it by the guys on his block. As she spoke about her loss he noticed that faraway look come over her again.

After he bought her another scotch she asked him whether he would like to step out back and do a little tea to get his head in the right place, to get well, to get some kicks. Jack laughed to himself that now he was beginning to understand why she had that faraway look, that heaven- bound angel look that had hooked him earlier in the evening. Jack was no square, or as least he did not think of himself as square, not square in the red scare cold war 1950s night when tea was a sidebar oddity spoken of in whispers in such places as Frisco, Division Street in Chicago, and Village/Harlem New York City but he had never done it. Still he wanted to understand those faraway eyes, to find out what was behind those eyes and so he told her “what the hell.”

They went out back, she passed him a pre-wrapped joint after lighting up and taking two big draughts herself. He following her lead inhaled, inhaled and started coughing like crazy. Although he smoked tobacco, Luckies, the tea smoke just made him cough and cough. She laughed and told him the next gulp would go down easier. She also said she could not understand why men could just not say they had not experienced something when they hadn’t and he turned red at that. Then she patted his hand as if to say it was okay and he suddenly realized that he was also beginning to get an idea of what she meant when she said she hoped that he knew what he was in for.

After a couple more hits they went back inside the club, Jack reeling a little from the effects of the tea. Sid Lament was in the middle of a cool note breeze trumpet solo and she went to the dance floor alone and began doing her dance interpretation of Sid’s blast. Not sexual, not in the obvious way like some Kama Sutra trance. No, more like she was trying to reach something just beyond her grasp and whatever it was controlled the contortions she was going through. A couple of guys at the end of the bar gave leering stares and started to lightly clap like they thought she was mimicking a strip-tease. Drunks probably. Jack, somewhat less inhibited from the tea smoke, joined her following her lead. (The drunks turned their heads back toward the bartender once that knew they had no play.) He noticed yet again during Sid’s play that she would get that faraway look, maybe more so, maybe go to a private place where that trumpet swoon would carry her to some dreamland, maybe take away some unspoken fear, some awful hurts. All he knew was that there was something almost religious, no, spiritual in that look.

Once that number was finished Wendy told Jack that she had to get home because she had to get to work early the next morning. As she was gathering her things to leave she neither invited him home nor made mention of meeting again. He asked her if they would meet again (after having made a big fumbling deal out of whether he could take her home and then getting a negative response asking her for a future date). She said she would be at the club on Thursday night when Benny Bix and his Quartet were playing. That was as far as she would commit to.

Needless to say, he was at the Red Cap that next Thursday night. She was at the bar alone, sipping, slowly sipping that eternal scotch. They talked for a while during Benny Bix’s first set both commenting that the combo seemed a little unsure where they wanted to go. After that set finished up she again offered him to do some tea out back. They then reenacted that same tea blast scene as Monday night, minus the dancing. Bix’s music was for listening, especially when he was on and so they listened through the second set as the combo found a groove. They or rather she, when it was time to leave also reenacted that same ambiguous parting. He tried to make that same take her home/future date play. Again all she would commit to was that she would be at the club Monday night.

Jack though decided after she left the hell with it, the thing, hooked or not, tea-leafed or not, was going nowhere. She probably had some walking daddy at home who let her roam once in a while and she was just toying with him for kicks. Or she was still in mourning over Luke and other sorrows. (He had heard, asking around, that Luke had taken up with Lilly Loft, the torch-singer, and as black as black could be. Luke would take no grief on the block over that choice.) He was no quitter but it was time to get off that ride. No soap, and too bad. Time to move on.

A few weeks later he was sitting at the Hi Hat Club over on Bay Street, a place he was starting to frequent to avoid the Red Cap, when she walked in alone. Walked in, sat at the bar, ordered a scotch, and gave a look in his direction, not directly at him, no, just in his direction. That faraway look. Yah, she was the girl with the faraway eyes that hid sorrows that he could not reach, could not fathom, and could not ease. He finished his drink, put on his coat, and left.