Jazz Funeral

other kid’s, maybe I was just more sensitive. My little brother didn’t seem to take it so hard. Maybe that’s what makes you sing—you just take things too damn hard. Anyhow, I wanted out of there in the worst kind of way. I got a scholarship to LSU and that was it. In the summer I’d come down here and sing in the Quarter, make enough money to go back to school a little while longer. Finally quit school—it did what it was s’posed to do. Got me out of there and over the hump.”
    “You could make enough, just on the street?”
    “Oh, yeah. On a good day you might rake in two or three hundred dollars. But I waitressed some too.”
    “Did you talk about it with Melody?”
    “Sure. That and everything else.” Unexpectedly, she lost her animation, sat rigid, as if remembering something, and burst out: “Oh God, oh God, oh God, don’t let anything happen to that kid!”
    “Do you have any idea where she’d go if she ran away? Any special friends or relatives she might try to reach?”
    Ti-Belle shook her head.
    “Listen, on another subject—I hate to bring this up, but I have to ask you about your relationship with Ham.”
    She smiled, an ironic smile, bittersweet. “You mean, did I have reason to kill him? Oooooh, yes. And I loved him to pieces. We fought all the time. Absolutely all the time. Honestly, I don’t think it was ever going to get better either. I think I might have ended up leaving him.”
    “What did you fight about?”
    “Ham couldn’t … he wouldn’t … I don’t know, he just couldn’t take any kind of change at all. He was so passive, it was like living with a giant oak tree instead of a man. Just somethin’ growin’ in the middle of the road, stopping traffic. You realize this is the house he lived in with his wife?” She was angry now, her voice rising, her eyebrows working. “His wife! I’ve got no idea why I agreed to move in here. I guess I just loved him so much it never occurred to me there could be problems. But then after we’d been together awhile, we needed a place that was ours, not his. And certainly not hers. Well, he wouldn’t even talk about it. He said this was where he lived. I mean, he’d rather keep it than me!
    “He wouldn’t let me buy new furniture. Now I don’t mean he wouldn’t give me the money; I might have cash-flow problems, but I do have charge accounts. I mean, I’d buy something new, have it delivered, and he’d get anxious. He said it was mine, not his, and that made him feel pushed. Pressed. Smothered. Something like that, I never could quite get it. So I’d say, fine, let’s go pick out something together, or even, you go out and get something. You see what this stuff is?” She indicated the contents of the room. “Just any old thing. But if he picked out something he liked, then he’d have to decide what he liked, which he knew he couldn’t do. He was just too damn neurotic. So I had to put up with this shit. I couldn’t pick out something, and he wouldn’t go with me to get something, and he wouldn’t do it himself. You see why I wanted to kill him sometimes?” Her voice had risen almost to a scream.
    She was quiet for a moment, and Skip thought the silence felt good. Ti-Belle could get up quite a head of energy when she was angry. No wonder the neighbors had heard the battles.
    When the singer spoke again, it was in the quiet voice of remembered grief. “And now I’d give anything to have him back again.”
    “I know.” I know the right thing to say, anyway .
    “I’ve thought about what happened. It seems like he was talking to somebody and they got mad enough to really do it, doesn’t it? Well, I could have done that, except that …” She shrugged. “It’s just not the sort of thing you kill someone over. He was the most frustrating man in the world, but it was nothing personal. If you killed somebody, wouldn’t you have to have a damn good reason?”
    No. Blind rage is plenty good enough. Particularly if there’s alcohol or drugs involved . But if Ti-Belle didn’t know that, maybe she was putting up a smoke screen. Skip thought she’d poke around a little, see if she hit any sensitive spots.
    “Did you fight at all about getting married? Did one of you want to and the other one didn’t?”
    The ravishing Ti-Belle spoiled her image by snorting. “He was still married to Mason!”
    “What?”
    “Yeah. Five years later. And that’s over. Way over. Ham was just too damn wimpy to get a divorce.