Slick
Slick came up inside the sporting life of Memphis, and his ambition, if it could be called anything so definite, was to become a respected player in Beale Street’s night world of bars, gambling clubs and whorehouses. But he cared too much whether people liked him, lacked the cold calculation needed to prevail in that hard, bright world and ended up as just another hopeful hanging onto the edges of the scene. His head for numbers and nose for a fixed deal weren’t good enough to get him over as a gambler, and his few stabs at pimping ended with the girls running all over him. He could dress the part and talk the talk, but all the other sports knew he was holding no cards of any value, that if you pushed him he would let it slide with a joke rather than come back at you with muscle, that the women went dreamy over his good looks but didn’t take him too seriously.
Slick was in his early twenties when Bertha Mae Spivey came to town with her show, emerging from giant mock-up of a Victrola in her feathered headdress and necklaces of gold and silver coins, that big, strong, sexy voice filling up the theater, thrilling him. And then afterwards, the hush in the bar when she strode in with her entourage, walked regally right up to him, straight up to no-count Slick Weathers and said “Let me buy you a drink, Sweet Sugar Man”. She was twenty years older and at the height of her fame and he was swept into the gravitational pull of her celebrity and the touring show business life, drinking with the musicians and hangers-on and the local sports in whatever town they hit, laughing at their jokes about him and “that old woman”, making a few of his own, winking and rolling his eyes, but proud that he was the one who she chose to put clothes on and show off and give spending money to as long as he was there to take care of the things she needed taking care of. There were a lot of other women in the early days, and she knew, she must have, but he was careful not to be too public with it and none lasted too long because within days or at the most weeks they would be off to another engagement, another town. And every night he would make it a point to sit in the audience, thinking when she filled the theater up with her big, beautiful voice, that she’s mine. Or I’m hers, it doesn’t matter which.
He wasn’t her booking agent in those days, or her dresser or her bandleader or her hair stylist or her chauffeur- she had people hired for all those things- he was her pretty man. A status came with that, despite all the jokes and ribbing, and he got to see the country in style. The only hard thing she asked of him was to learn to read, getting him a tutor and never mentioning it in public, and if his preferred text became the racing form it didn’t matter to Bertha Mae. When they’d come back through Memphis he could act the big shot, hand out free tickets, buy rounds for his old Beale Street boys. And he came to know her like nobody else knew her.
They’d be in the car, the chauffeur steering them through some sorry collection of shacks, with burnt-out men on the porches and raggedy-ass, hungry, barefoot kids running the road and she’d shake her head and say “This is where I come from”, no matter what part of the country they happened to be in, a lot of sadness and a little bit of fear in her eyes. The fear grew when the engagements moved to smaller theaters and then to tents and barrooms, when she had to let go of the dresser and the bandleader and the hair stylist and the chauffeur- Slick liked driving the car, so that last wasn’t so bad when it happened but it hurt Bertha Mae and one day she said “I’m getting out, Baby, while I still got a little lit of it left.” He was forty then, still had his looks and a suit for every day of the week, but it never occurred to him not to go with her.
Harmony, Alabama has been quiet after the bright lights and big cities, and Bertha Mae sings to herself more than she does to an audience these days. But he’s always been able to look around the Honeydripper and know he’s the best-dressed, finest looking man in the place, royalty in a way, gracing these commoners with his presence. She’s hasn’t been well in the last couple months, coughing and unable to sleep through the night, the business he takes care of for her more that of a nurse than a lover, and the cost of the medicine seems to be eating up their house one stick of furniture at a time. They had to sell the car. Though he tries not to think about it, lately there has been this nagging question- who is Slick Weathers, does he even exist, if he’s not Bertha Mae Spivey’s man?
