Coq au Vin by Charlotte Carter Read Free Book Online

everyday: “First off, tell me what you’re doing over here, if it’s any of my business. Are you in school?”
    â€œNo. I got a little bit of money after my mother died—insurance—and I just headed straight over here. I’m planning to be…”
    â€œBe what?” I asked when he hesitated.
    â€œFamous maybe.”
    I cracked up.
    â€œWell, you sure can play that violin. Is that what’s going to make you famous?”
    â€œYeah. Well, yes and no. I want to do something with the music, sure. But I’m also taking notes for this book I’m thinking about writing.”
    â€œNo kidding? What kind of book?”
    â€œAbout black people in Paris. Musicians mostly, but others too—dancers, soldiers, poets, whoever I come across. And not just the big ones like Josephine Baker and Wright and them. I mean people who worked to get over here and would do anything to stay. They were excited—proud to be here. Not like tourists, you know? Like there was something really at stake for them. People like me.” He paused there. “And you.”
    I couldn’t help it. I was fucking happy he had included me.
    â€œI want to walk around in their footsteps,” he continued, “look up their friends and families, if they had any, visit the places where they lived. Give them their due. It’s hard to do something like that—start over in a strange place. Hard. Lonely. Scary. There’s more than one way to be a black hero—to me, anyway. I want to tell people how admirable some of those folks were.”
    â€œFormidable,” I said. “So there is a little of the race man in you after all.”
    His face went scarlet around the edges. But, thankfully, he laughed rather than bristled.
    â€œWhere’d you study music?” I asked.
    â€œI went to Curtis.”
    â€œYou’re from Philadelphia?”
    â€œNo. Detroit, originally.” There was a sourish expression on his face.
    â€œSounds like you didn’t like it much.”
    He shrugged. “Wasn’t just Detroit. I didn’t like anything that much in the States.”
    â€œI can hear that,” I said.
    I wanted to say something more than that, but I couldn’t quite form the words yet. The permutations of our relationship to the whole of America were endless. You could hate white people but not hate America. You could come to terms with the racism but never accept the insipid culture. You could view our disenfranchisement as a kind of massive swindle—all that blood, sorrow, loyalty, hope, and patience deposited over the centuries, and the check keeps bouncing. You could simply self-destruct. Like I said, endless. I figured I’d hear the particulars of his take on the thing soon enough.
    â€œLike Baldwin said, ‘I had to get out before I killed somebody.’ Is that how you felt?”
    â€œSomething like that,” he answered, not looking at me. “More than likely, if anybody was gonna end up dead, it would have been me. Like I told you before, I’m hardly anybody’s idea of fierce. Keep in mind that when I was little I used to have to walk home carrying a violin. And these thick glasses. It was like wearing a sign that said KICK THE SHIT OUT OF ME.”
    â€œKids are real nice to each other, aren’t they?” I said, chuckling, but angry too. I was thinking about my friend Aubrey’s treatment at the hands of some of our peers. “Who was it that saw your musical stuff and put you in school?”
    â€œMy mother. She could talk you out of your teeth. Got me scholarships to everything. We didn’t have much. My father died when I was seven.”
    â€œWhat was she like, your mother?”
    â€œWhite. Which made things even more interesting than they might have been.”
    Yeah, I thought as much. Aggressive as our DNA is, there were still little hints of the other in his face. “Tell me more,” I