Shotgun — Jr. Walker & The All-Stars (1965)
An excerpt from the novel No Ordinary Love
Damn her, Cane thought. Georgia Jamaica had been his faith for nearly a decade nonstop, his crescent moon and stars. Much like the art of boxing, she destroyed him every time he saw her, only to rebuild him, layer-by-layer.
“Damn her,” he said. He sat in his red-brick Chevy with the vegetable-dyed interior still smelling new and looked at himself through the rearview mirror. What he looked for in his eyes, the flat line of his black eyebrows or the nose he pinched whenever he was nervous or confident, he didn’t know. He realized all he knew was that she was a woman named Georgia Jamaica and that she was from only one of those places with no living people left in either by 1965.
Cane looked out into the horizon as the blue sky gave way to a fiery orange that eventually cowered to the gray swathes of clouds that made room for the night’s purples and blacks. We’re not there yet, he thought of the waning light. The day is still day. “But who the hell cares?” he asked out loud. He laughed when his husky voice responded, “She doesn’t.”
Cane hadn’t thought he needed saving until he met Georgia, until he placed her luggage in his trunk and she set her fine ass in the passenger seat next to his, peering from under her Southern-girl hat and flashing deep dimples every time she smiled. Cane didn’t think so, though Georgia knew so, as if by osmosis, that she had become his salvation, his nightly deaths, and morning births. She became all that was right and wrong with his world, including a mother to two more of his children. Those ten years were transformative for Cane. Georgia’s husband had died in Georgia. His wife wished him dead in New York. And he and Georgia had promised the other they’d never let go. Then she did after he let his hand hit her in the face before checking his emotions like he’d been trained to do.
—
Georgia was nervous about stepping out because it had been so long. Sitting in her new 1965 blue Chevy, she checked her make-up in the rear-view mirror, pulled leather gloves on, and drove uptown to The Lodge. She knew she was breaking norms by stepping into the night for fun without a man by her side, and to a club where rules were ignored, but she was on a mission. She had to shake Cane, even if word got back somehow that she was hot-stepping. No need, she realized, when she became aware of Cane’s car trailing her up Seventh Avenue. She wasn’t afraid and knew that he would probably stay inside of his own car to avoid any kind of public confrontation with or about her. It had been years, but their secret was still their secret.
Walking up to the club, she kept her eyes focused on her destination instead of over her shoulder where she knew Cane was sitting in his car watching her. Confident that he wouldn’t wait all night, she sashayed through the door, fox-shawled and heels clicking, determined to outmaneuver her frustrated lover. A tall man in a brown wool Tyrolean hat opened the door and whispered, “Dorothy Dandridge reincarnated,” as she moved past him.
“Hot damn she’s fine!” said another man. “What’s your name, sugar?”
Georgia smiled, kept her sarcasm to herself, and found an empty seat at the bar. A brandy with orange juice and lemon twist in hand, she turned her attention to the live band blowing and strumming out an Etta James tune underneath a chandelier lightening the wine-colored velvet room. Scanning the cigar-smoked room, Georgia saw no one that made her want to uncross her legs, say more than thank you when a drink was bought for her, or accept when a hand was put out for a slow dance.
“I’m quite comfortable here,” she said many times.
“Maybe, but a fine woman like you shouldn’t be sitting in this place without company,” one man said. “Where’s your husband at?”
“In the grave,” she answered. Georgia wanted to laugh, but didn’t blink.
Sensing the stranger’s recoil, but also his fascination with her, Georgia looked up at the face that belonged to the voice. The man was tall, imprinted with dimples of his own, and wearing a pinstriped suit that made him look like a million gold pieces. She liked his style.
“Honestly beautiful, I know you must have a husband,” the man pushed.
“I told you, my husband’s in the grave,” she replied. “But, if you want to talk about a dead man at the same time as thinking of yourself, then may I suggest you rethink your next words?”
By now, Georgia was on her third glass of brandy and her fifth simple conversation of the night. She was forming the words to dismiss the man in pinstripes and his free drink when a slight commotion erupted at the door. A man with a constellation of dark freckles under emerald eyes and wearing black clothing from head to toe emerged with pamphlets clasped in his fingerless-gloved hands. The chairs and tables in The Lodge were leg and armrest close, like trees in a forest necking together, but the disruptor wove in and out of them like a salsa dancer. Georgia kept expecting him to knock knees with someone, but he didn’t.
“Mi familia,” said the stranger. The band’s saxophones and trumpets stuttered. Georgia thought the stranger’s voice was wrapped in rhythm. “I don’t mean no harm, but I come to you with urgency,” the man in black continued. “Harlem is dying. We are dying. I come with words of freedom and information. There is a live or die movement going on that needs you. You are not immune—”
“What’s this Negro talking about?” said the man sitting next to Georgia.
“Be quiet,” she said, quickly sobering up. “I’m trying to listen.”
“I’m talking about the Revolution. Your heroes and my people being water-hosed, gunned down, dog-attacked. I’m talking about injustice!” he said, raising his drum-driven voice as if slowly building to a crescendo. The man went table-by-table and distributed his pamphlets into limp hands. His neatly cut black, red, and green papers fell from unenthusiastic fingertips to the club’s wood floor in silent flutters.
“While you sit here drinking, this country is waging a war against Black people, young people, the Vietnamese people,” the messenger said. “And not one of us is safe.”
A big man scowling in a garish suit, who looked too drunk to endure the words that made perfect sense to Georgia, stood up and approached the man in black.
“Now, we’ve about had enough of this here revolutionary bullshit you talking,” the big man said. “Save this preaching for the pulpit or I’ll put a bullet in you my damn self.”
Calmly, the stranger looked around the room, from the band members to the club’s patrons. Anchored by the room’s silence, a look of surprised sadness replaced one of righteous indignation. “Like I said, I’m not here to cause trouble,” the stranger said. “I’m here out of love.”
“You need to find your love somewhere else,” the big man said. He then knocked the man’s entire hand of pamphlets onto the floor. “Get going.”
Unresolved and obviously unafraid, although he was nearly half a foot shorter than the big guy, the unwanted guest stood his ground. The room was tense, as no one knew how the stranger would react, but he didn’t appear to flinch. Rather, when he looked up at the big guy, his bright eyes showed compassion. “That’s the problem, brother,” he said. “It ain’t you or me we should be fearing. I told you I came in peace. That’s how I plan to leave.”
Georgia thought about the stranger’s pitch and mulled over her own stance on politics. Did she really believe that voting mattered? They had fought for it, got beaten, bitten, bulldozed, bashed for it and still the system felt rigged to her. Still, Malcolm had been murdered only for everyone to swear the government did it. The people voted for judges, and mayors, and governors, and senators and still nothing seemed to change. Georgia thought about Georgia and the constant push back against desegregation. Equality in America felt like a fairytale; made up by someone who sold false dreams. Yet Georgia was mesmerized by the strange man’s ability to exude calm and passion at once. He turned toward Georgia’s direction.
“If you love your people and yourself, then join the movement,” the man said to the room. He retraced his steps and glided back through the maze of tables and knees toward the door.
Clumsily, Georgia got off the bar stool. She felt ashamed of her black foxed shawl, with its head and clawed feet encircling her shoulders. Putting one foot in front of the other, she followed the messenger outside into the skin-biting December air. The force that propelled her after the man’s words was a mystery to Georgia, who paid attention to politics the way most Southern Black folks paid attention, with a combination of disgust, disbelief, and pessimism. Yet the violence felt like smoke. A person couldn’t avoid being affected by it. The rights of citizens were being ripped away before everyone’s eyes and as Georgia saw it, it was a long list of take-aways that included women’s rights, Black people’s rights, gay rights, student’s rights, and even foreign people’s rights. As a Southern girl, she was familiar with America’s bullshit, even as two of her brothers had enlisted and learned to shoot others for a country Georgia would never trust.
In New York City, however, Black folks believed that equal opportunity could happen, even if they didn’t trust the government to make it so. Georgia’s patriotic faith was so depleted she doubted the country could resist its racist ways, even if it were ever to elect a Black president. Nothing could alter the United States except for a good ass whooping. Georgia didn’t know from whom, which was why she inevitably pushed any revolutionary thoughts from her mind, but she felt what she felt. The NAACP was great. The Nation of Islam was great. But, was the needle moving?
Georgia had watched and witnessed Anger in action. Large. Looming. Teeth-baring. Growling and lunging. She wasn’t apathetic; she was weary with witness. The South had become insufferable and suffocating. Georgia knew that when told by strangers who hated her people what their bodies could and could not do, from where to drink to what toilets to use, she knew what danger was and that Anger’s danger must be dealt with delicately. This man in black exhibited what Georgia loved about Harlem, the inescapability of bullshit, while also being several steps away from a freedom-churning movement, where women resist at work and home, where Blacks and whites argue for their right to screw each other, and intellectuals explain the paradigm of race. Georgia felt all kinds of things brewing and she felt this man knew her.
“I love,” was all Georgia could muster.
The man was walking away from The Lodge quickly without looking back and Georgia felt he somehow managed to take her voice with him. With the humming wind stinging her ears and half-bare shoulders, Georgia repeated herself.
“I love.”
The man stopped and turned around, as if listening to spirits. He didn’t know whether to laugh at or walk away from the small, furry woman whom he felt was barely dressed for this time of year. He also wondered where she had come from. Seeing her mouth move, her feet continuing in his direction, and that her eyes were intent upon his, he stood still and waited. As he had thought he had heard, Georgia repeated for the third time, “I love.”
N. Jamiyla Chisholm
N. Jamiyla Chisholm a journalist-turned-educator and author who published the memoir The Community, in 2022. Today, she is working on her first novel and is an associate adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. When she is not exploring far away places, she is spending time with art and food.