Of Jazz and Shadows

It was a cool and breezy November evening. Golden leaves, with splotches of brown here and there, fell gently from dry branches. A sky of pinkish hues settled comfortably in the dusk hours on Prairie Avenue. Something, however, was terribly wrong.

Prairie Avenue was only a stretch of dirt back then, in the days of flappers, bootleggers and marathon dancers. A small crowd, silent and somber, had gathered around the wreckage of a sleek black Model T. There were no survivors. Tinny sounds of Jazz music with a hint of Gospel continued to play on the radio as static crackled through the sound waves of WOAN.

"He's only a child," they murmured. Many other whispers that day were stolen by the wind. Everyone sadly nodded in agreement.

Urgent sirens of a white Ford ambulance shrieked in the background-twenty minutes too late. Could he have lived if help had arrived but ten minutes earlier? Most likely. Johnnie Gilbert breathed for at least ten more minutes after a violent collision with a newly erected telephone pole. The nineteen-year-old student from Hope International University in Los Angeles was exhausted. Nonetheless, after a long week of grueling classes and a long choir tour he opted to take the short drive home instead of staying in his dorm. An eighteen-year-old research assistant at Bell Labs, named Effie Loren, held onto Johnnie's hand throughout his ordeal.

It wasn't anything Effie would ever forget, though at times good friends reminded her that she had been his angel in the last few moments before death. But Effie Loren lived her days haunted by Johnnie's memory and allowed herself to walk in perpetual sadness.

"Grandma Effie, why are you always so sad?" I once asked her before Thanksgiving dinner. She smiled, which made her face seem ten years younger even though her brown eyes had faded and the lines on her face were too many for only sixty-five.

We, her beloved grandchildren, had asked her many times of the young man she was to marry but was lost to her in a car accident.

"Was Grandpa Calvin his best friend, Grandma?" I asked.

"He was," she would whisper. "More than a friend really . . . a brother."

Albeit Grandpa Calvin Lee and Grandma Effie had a good life together, one could easily see that she never gave herself the chance to heal her broken heart. Grandpa never talked about Grandma's pain.

"What do you have there, Grandpa?" I asked while preparing the stuffing.

He paused, sighed, and then half jokingly said, "A picture of Grandma's first and only love." He dropped an old black and white photograph into my hand. "Johnnie Gilbert," he mumbled.

Piercing eyes framed by strands of thick playful hair stared at me through space and time. On his chiseled face was an everlasting smile that reached from beyond, proving that Johnny Gilbert indeed had lived once. This boyish smile, forever etched in black and white, must have haunted Grandpa's spirit as Johnny's hand rested on the shoulder of a very young Grandma Effie for an eternity.

"Don't be silly, Grandpa, you are the love of her life," I said. "She told me so many times." I put the fading photograph in the pocket of my new Parka.

He grinned. I don't think he believed me. Grandpa slowly walked outside the whitewashed walls of his quaint country home. He labored down the stone steps to the backyard. It was then, for the first time, that I noticed how his shoulders hunched and his steps were short and weary.

It was another cool and breezy November evening by the time I left Grandma Effie's house that day. Moss-covered stones surrounded her small garden from which we had picked the fresh tomatoes, carrots and other vegetables for dinner. We never smoothed over the soil we so frivolously disturbed. Grandma would do it later.

The tasty aroma of left-over turkey and stuffing wafted through candle-lit windows. I took one last look at Grandma and Grandpa, his hand reaching gently around her shoulder, waving goodbye from their open French doors. Then I was off with my cousins, Darcy and Renee to the movie theater-a Lee tradition on Thanksgiving Day.

"Let's find some Jazz on this radio," I said.

"Grandma would be so proud of you, Eff," Darcy said.

"Hands on the wheel, Darcy," Renee warned. "Let Effie find it."

"Please, Darcy, eyes on the road, I'll find the station," I said. "You don't have a very good track record here."

Darcy was offended but got over it soon enough. We chit chatted about Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's house as Thomas A. Dorsey sang the blues over the ever-popular WOAN. A nice hint of Jazz echoed through his song.

In the back seat Renee's tired body slumped against the window. Her safety belt knotted together with her fine blonde hair and a bright orange scarf. I smiled. Feeling rather exhausted myself.

When we approached the intersection of Prairie Avenue and Century Boulevard I caught a glimpse of a silver Oldsmobile zigzagging in and out of traffic, too fast and on a possible collision course with us. Within seconds the Oldsmobile became a silver streak and life became a blur of foreign sounds and unbearable pain. Minutes seemed endless.

Brakes screeched but failed to stop either car when metal struck metal. Glass shattered and sprayed into the car. Fragments dug into my head. The Oldsmobile spun and we crashed, time and time again. Both cars were caught as if in a twisting tail of a hurricane, spinning against each other in an endless spiral. I don't remember screaming but I heard it. Violently, the engine, as if a living, breathing entity, thrashed through the dashboard into my right leg.

Then, silence-eerie silence. The shadow of a young man reflected through ripples of water. His hand reached for me, piercing the light that separated us. I'm drowning, I thought. Though I knew Prairie Avenue was nowhere near any body of water, I could not breathe. Don't panic. My lungs filled with blood. I was drowning. My eyes closed. My body began to float. Jazz legend, Lionel Hampton, played on. The haunting joust between life and death became painfully clear through dust-filtered moonlight. I was dying.

Suddenly a man's hand masterfully removed the rib that had pierced my lung. "Breathe Effie," he commanded. I coughed and finally welcomed the air, which flooded the core of my soul. Mahalia Jackson's rendition of Amazing Grace rang forth and called me out between conscious moments.

Suddenly, the noise of the outside world came rushing in when our car smashed into an old telephone pole. The horn beeped loudly colliding with the trumpet sounds of forgotten jazz tunes. Golden leaves fell gently through the broken window before wrestling with clouds of steam spewing from the radiator. I groaned.

A small crowd gathered, becoming a part of the noise. They were but shadows to me. Darcy fell out of the car and limped into the arms of strangers. Renee's head hung over the seat belt. Glass shards encircled her. Though I was fully conscious now, moving any part of me proved futile. My body was broken and the damaged, caved-in door stubbornly stayed shut.

"Get them out!" someone yelled. There was a shameful amount of panic in the voice and to whomever it belonged, that person did not intend to get us out. Someone else would have to be the hero.

A young man, not much older than eighteen, came barging in from the abandoned driver's seat. "I've got you," he said.

I was gently pulled, at first, then a yanking was necessary to free me from the engine's debris which held my legs captive. A deep gaping wound appeared below the kneecap of my right leg. I felt no pain. Shock settled. Warm blood trickled from a head wound, but I was grateful to be out of the car.

My hands and face turned cold, almost icy, as a low humming breeze swept over me. The rhythm of my beating heart pounded against my injured lungs. I coughed. I shivered. I breathed.

The young man quietly set me down on a patch of soft grass next to Renee. He held my hand and said, "You're fine, Effy. No one's dying tonight."

How did he know my name? His voice was a whisper. I wondered if he was talking at all. Thomas Andrew Dorsey sadly offered his condolences with lyrics from Precious Lord still humming through the silhouette of time. I cried.

Twenty agonizing minutes went by. No help arrived. A young man's voice pleaded. "You've got to hang on, Effie," he said. "They'll be here soon." He began to sing along with the controversial Father of Gospel music and raunchy Jazz. All the while, singing as if he had written the words himself, he dried each tear that rolled down my face.

"Who are you?"

"Don't you worry about it," he whispered. Even his voice had perfect pitch.

Finally, a wave of sirens broke through the Santa Ana winds. He smiled and I suddenly recognized him. I fumbled around in the pocket of my jacket and squeezed my fingers around the photograph.

"Johnnie?"

He nodded. "You're okay now," he said. "Tell your Grandma Effie to forgive herself and that your Grandpa Calvin was sent to her by God Himself."

I don't remember much after that except Johnnie's shadow walking into the darkness till the warmth of a heavenly light swallowed him. He was singing softly along with the tinny voices, harmonious trumpets and tinkling of ivory keys.

Since that cool November evening, when Johnnie came to Prairie Avenue, Grandpa learned that Grandma Effie's heart had indeed been his from the beginning. And many people who walk the Avenue at night have seen the shadow of a man who still sings the jazzy hymns most churches of his time had banned. Take my Hand, Precious Lord, with perfect pitch.

"But it's not our Johnnie," Grandma Effie would say as she squeezes and kisses Grandpa's hand. "He's in heaven, you know."

Indeed, he must be.