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piano with blues legends, riding in a bus in the Deep South during segregation.
    During times when he might have looked out a bus window at the countryside and seen a lynched black man hanging from a tree in the distance. Billie Holliday sang about that sight in a song entitled "Strange Fruit."
    "My mama died in childbirth, and I was sent off to live with my grandma," he said softly. "My pa was always traveling in search of work. Then Grandma died… had to be when I was maybe ten. And I struck out on my own, but I never did know for sure how old I was because there wasn't much fuss over birthdays in our house. Always too worried about feeding me, keeping warm in the winter… stuff like that. That was a long time ago. Different times, Georgia. Of course, my grandma was a good woman. She meant nothin' by it—we just didn't put too much stock in birthdays."
    His face was the color of pale coffee, and his eyes were coal-black and, with age, seemed to be perpetually teary, rheumy, the whites turning a yellowish color. He wore a pair of gold wire-rimmed glasses, and his hair was now a soft silver-and-black Afro, with a bald spot the size of a small saucer on the crown of his head. What fascinated me most were his hands. His fingers were long and graceful, wrinkled, the nail beds wide and pale. The tops of his hands were crisscrossed with raised veins, and when he put them to the keys of a piano, magic happened.
    He stood up and went to the shiny black baby grand—a Steinway—by the window. He said it had taken him ten years to pay it off. Closing his eyes, he sat down and rocked back and forth a few times, hearing something in his head, some melody. Then he began to play, humming along to the tune he envisioned while playing complex harmonies and bebops I could only hope to one day come up with on my own.
    Each Sunday was the same; he would start playing, and I would wait. He told me you can't rush the blues. You have to hear the blues in your soul first. Actually,
feel
them first. So he would play and hum, and when I felt that my voice could be quiet no longer, I sang. Sometimes I sang old songs from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, sometimes newer arrangements, maybe some Diana Krall or Norah Jones. Sometimes I would just scat, which means singing nonsense syllables in a way that imitates a trumpet or maybe a tenor sax. With Red, I sang from deep inside, the place that was just instrument and soul. The place I shared with no one. Not even Maggie or Dominique. Most definitely not with Gary or Jack. Sometimes Tony, I guess. But only if we were both drunk. We all have that space. Maybe for some it comes out in prayer; for me it comes from my song.
    I started singing, but Red stopped me, sighing with frustration.
    "Dig deeper. You call that the blues?"
    I gritted my teeth. He never questioned my voice. I hit every note. I came in on the right beat. I got the tempo. He questioned my soul.
    "Red… I'm singing the song as best I can."
    "I heard better blues from a goddamn alley cat."
    I exhaled loudly. He started in on the piano. Again, I sang. I shut my eyes and tried to get lost in the song. Soon I realized I was singing without the piano. He had abruptly lifted his hands from the keys.
    "Georgia… you got your mind someplace else. Now when I say go to that place, you got to go there! Think why you sing the blues. Why? To sing to some roomful of fancy-assed people? No, you sing the blues 'cause you got the blues. Now sing 'em right or go on home today."
    Again, he moved his fingers on the keys, his feet on the piano's pedals. I tried again. He'd made me angry. Sometimes I think he does it on purpose. But sure enough, with the anger came the blues.
    That Sunday, I sang of a man lost, then found. I sang of mothers gone forever… for both Red and me. An hour went by while he and I made music, while we shared something that others only felt in a place of worship, if they were lucky. I sang in a way that was raw and naked and sacred.