Mid-western coffee

It was a February day, some town in Portland- I’d lost track at some point after I’d left Montana. Coffee, people, faces, 10 fingers, 10 toes. Bradshaw’s coffee house filled at 12, and emptied at 2; I’d kept careful note, ordering usual and unusual customers in my head.

I had no idea where I was, but every inexhaustible variety of some vaguely Mid-Western coffee house was irrevocably forged in my mind. The agreeableness, the palpable pleasantry, a testament, to the unparalleled motion of human nature. Minds and words alike, crushed and filtered through stained coffee mugs. 

Minds and words seemed dark and black, and left a sour taste on the tongue around this town, but this firmlike agreeance permeates. I wondered if it was the air.

It's been 10 days since I rocked up on a rickety trailer, and tipped a penny in the farmers’ hat. This place is so ordinary, so replaceable, that I hate how much I've fallen. This nomadic, transient roleplay, has met stage curtains at the godforsaken midwest. Everything is roses on bitterness, and I sit perplexing and trivializing this dark world; I seem to be the sole bearer of the lens to see through this impermanence.

There’s a college somewhere nearby; I hear brilliant people, yearn for their simple passion, their childlike tribulation at a life they’ve uptaken and have no desire to quit.

February 9th. The day I decided to locate myself in this mindful mess of time, no time, and a blurry, drunk-sober remembrance of the past week, 2 weeks in some Midwestern pit. I’d kept lodgings opposite the coffee house, coming every morning, every afternoon, and every foolish inbetween hour. I liked Bradshaw’s, and I didn’t like a lot of things, and the things I did, I couldn’t really remember or had died.

February 9th, a young Jazzer walked in. I’d seen him around and I knew he took his coffee black. He was always humming some kind of tune, something European, with thick melodies rolling through the motioned air. 

He took his blackened coffee, at 3:01pm, and drew out a paper book, the type with 5 lines and musical jottings. He scratched a few idle notes on the page, writing out the highs and lows of the melodic thrum in dark, cursive letters. I liked watching him- it was some old world grace; he too was a foreigner to the blank Midwest. 

He left at 4:24, passing the street with a concerned look, warning cars and himself of some deep-seated precarious nature. 

He came and went, and didn’t come back for 3 days, and when he did, his eyes seemed to brighten, and his lips cast a smile as he took his coffee black.

“Good news?” I asked, from my seat along the bar.

He looked to me, a conflict stirring in his eyes as he assessed my threat- he seemed to be in some kind of survival mode, trapped in the eternal purgatory of unfamiliarity with this town.

“Yeah” he said, pausing, and pulling a stool 2 seats down, an unusual spot; he wanted to speak with me. 

“Found out I’m conducting the orchestra at the next show, might even convince Doc to let them play some of my stuff,” he cleared his throat, staring into his mug as if he’d overspoken.

“Who’s Doc?” I asked casually, as if his musical interlude had slipped the meticulous filter of my brain.

“Doctor Hauffenhauser,” he smiled politely.

“Mouthful”, I remarked. 

“Yeah, that’s why I call him Doc.”

The air fell silent for a few moments. I turned back to my notepad.

“Hates that I call him that.” he said uptaking our conversation, and extending a friendly look.

“What’s your name son?”

“Booker Black.” he said, nervously affixing his gaze to his mug once again.

“Marshall Neri” I replied, extending a hand.

“Good to meet you sir.” he took my hand, and shook it fervently, nervously and with an overpowering taste of excitement.

“What’dya play?” I asked.

“Mostly tenor sax, but I dally with piano”, he said, tilting his body to face mine.

“I play a bit. '' I responded with a reminiscent smile.

He returned my smile, nodding to himself.

“Used too”, I added.

“You should come down to the Chapel one day.” he said. “I play there erry’ Sunday at 9.”

“I just might”, and I meant it.

The Next Sunday, I woke up early. I filled the wash basin with warm water and pulled on my best waistcoat. 

I got to the Chapel and took a seat in the middle pew.

The air was dark, and alive, and the pews soon filled with people singing out hallelujahs and swaying with the piano song. 

Booker sat at the stool, almost jumping up and down with every note; he was the soul and he was the body of his music. He was overcome by raw and gritted passion.

I watched him with fascination, and let the waves of this defiant, dark joy roll over my skin. 

“You’re good kid”; the chapel was empty now, and I sat in my pew as Booker piled his music into his case. 

“I didn’t know you’d made it.” he said, smiling as he jogged slightly down the aisle.

“Not much else to do in this town”, I sighed.

“Not much at all”, he finished.

“You playing around anywhere else?”, I asked.

“Just the college show.” he smiled courtly.

“Agh yes your music and the ‘Doc’”. I returned his smile. “I’ll be there.”

“You know you should come jam with me, I’d love to hear you play.” Booker offered, filing away the last of his papers, and so I did.

Tuesday mornings at Bradshaw’s, Sunday morning’s in Chapel, and Friday nights in the old college studio room, with a busted tenor sax and an out of tune piano; I was no longer an observer to this dark coffee world, I was an instrument, a melody. 

The town didn’t know me, and I was it's’ unfamiliar fascination, throwing my music and hat in a ring of uncreamed coffee and a young jazzer. 

“Hey Book,” I started, pulling up a stool at the bar, one Tuesday morning.

“Hey Mr Neri”, he said jubilantly. 

He handed me his pad, and I skimmed over the notes; he’d write and I’d read and hum his tones aloud.

It was in these moments 2 became one as I brushed the notes of my foggy reflection. Booker Black of the midwest disappeared and took a trolley down to Portland and hit it big, as Marshall Neri, but I came back to this silent town to retrace my roots in some midwestern pit I never belonged to.

I took my coffee black that Tuesday, and took that same trolley back to Portland; fortune doesn’t favour the brave or the dark in small town America, and I needed more, someplace where my music isn’t Bradshaw's or an old college studio or an old Chapel down the wrong side of town.

My life is my music, and as I buried the notes of my past with soil as dark as coffee grounds, and sat on the trolley back to Portland, I had no regrets.