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Johnny Ace at the Pearly Gates by Jeffrey Hantover
Johnny Ace (John Marshall Alexander, Jr.)
December 25, 1954
The last week in December was always a busy period for St. Peter. Many of the infirm and the aged who willed themselves to make it to Christmas expired a day or two after the holiday having triumphantly crossed the finish line. Distant family members came together for the holidays, and old grievances and resentments were rekindled in close quarters. Domestic spats lubricated by too much drink turned violent and fatal. Regrets multiplied, depressions deepened, and death seemed the only answer in the 4 a.m. darkness. St. Peter had to call upon his brother St. Andrew to help out with the extra load at a temporary desk set up thirty paces to the left of the gate. Even with the help St. Peter was frazzled by the constant parade of the dead in their gaudy Christmas sweaters and their ill-fitting blouses and shirts they would have returned in the next few days.
St. Peter heard the whoosh of a new arrival. He looked at him and then down at the book of life to confirm the identity of the young dark-skinned man, about five feet seven, who stood before him in a shiny gray sharkskin suit.
“Mr. Alexander, I am sorry to see you here so soon.”
Johnny Ace looked around, confused by his surroundings. He looked down at his polished alligator shoes. “What happened, sir? He asked in a soft lilting Southern voice.
“There was a bullet in the chamber.”
“I didn’t hurt Olivia, did I?”
“No physical harm. I’m afraid, that’s all I know.”
Johnny Ace twisted the three-stone diamond ring on his right hand. “She gave me this today.” He paused. “And Big Mama. Is she okay, sir?”
“You frightened her terribly, Mr. Alexander.”
Johnny Ace didn’t look St. Peter in the eyes. He spoke quietly, full of “yes sirs” and “no sirs.” He was a shy, polite young black man born and raised in the South who knew his place when speaking to a white man. St. Peter had waved many innocent young black men in their prison stripes through the gate. Johnny Ace had a sweet baby face marred by a wispy moustache and pomaded hair. His suit was tight across his chest. He carried more weight than he should for a man of his slight frame. St. Peter could tell without looking at the book that the young man was not taking care of himself. He was not eating right and drinking too much. Successive one-night stands hundreds of miles apart had taken their toll on his once slim body and youthful appearance.
St. Peter sensed the young man’s discomfort at being called by his birth name. Everyone knew him now as Johnny Ace. Calling him “Mr. Ace” seemed awkward to St. Peter. Against normal protocol, he addressed him as Johnny. In the last two years St. Peter heard the angels humming Ace’s hits. It was often the last thing that teenage drivers heard when their speeding cars veered off the highway into gullies and trees. Though he grew up in Memphis, the home of Beale Street blues, Ace was a mellow baritone, a crooner of heartfelt ballads with a warm, relaxed tone. There were a sadness and vulnerability to his singing that cut across the musical color line.
“Johnny, do you know where you are?”
“Looks like the pearly gates I do believe, so you must be St. Peter with those keys dangling up against that white robe of yours. Am I going to heaven, sir?”
“That’s for God to decide.”
“Don’t have the Lord go talking to my mama. For sure, I’ll be going straight to the fires of hell.”
“But I see here in my book that you sang in the choir of the Bethel AME Church when you were younger. That must have pleased her.”
“She thought I lost my way, sir, playing my guitar down on Beale Street. The blues was the devil’s music to her way of thinking.”
“I’ve heard your music, all those hits you had. They were sweet and gentle to my ears. No shouting, no rough words.”
“Thank you, sir. But for mama if it weren’t church music, it was the devil’s music.”
“Your mother took in your wife and child. That was a fine thing to do.”
“Yes sir, she treated Jean and little Glenn when he came along like family. But I wasn’t welcome in my own home. She said I wasn’t doing right, said I had lost my way.”
“Was it just the music?”
Johnny didn’t say anything. He tugged on the sleeve of his suit, avoiding St. Peter’s eyes. He seemed to St. Peter like a child caught stealing a candy bar from the neighborhood grocery store.
“Up here Johnny you have to look at the truth head on. This is the last stop on the train. Do you understand?”
“Yes sir.”
“I see you were dishonorably discharged from the Navy.”
Johnny smiled. “Yes sir, the Navy didn’t agree with me.”
“I can’t see that you ever had a real job.”
“No sir. I spent most of my days shooting pool and horsing around with my pals down on Beale.”
“How did you support your wife and child, Johnny?”
“Mama and my father looked after them.”
“You never gave your wife and child any money? Not even after your records were selling and you were performing all over the country?”
“No sir,” Johnny mumbled softly.
“Come closer, Johnny so I can hear you better.” Johnny took two small tentative steps toward St. Peter. “I thought all you singers liked to be front and center in the spotlight.”
“No sir. I just sat at the piano and sang. Big Mama liked the bright lights not me. Guess you would say I’m shy. Always have been, unless I’m juiced up.”
“You did drink a lot.”
“Not when I was younger. It was all that travel that got me down. I’d wake up in the morning and didn’t know what town I was in. Drinking kinda softened the edges, you know what I mean.”
“Was it dangerous on the road? Were you afraid of getting robbed? Was that why you bought that gun down in Florida?”
Johnny laughed, “If anybody give us trouble, we would have sicced Big Mama on ‘em. Didn’t need me no gun. I could take of myself. I always wanted a pistol since I was a kid. Played cowboys and Indians out in the alley. Liked to wave it around like the Lone Ranger. Driving down the highway, I’d stick that pistol out the window and shoot holes in Burma Shave signs. When I had me too much vodka, I’d put it out the hotel window and shoot a few rounds off for fun.”
St. Peter wanted to reach over the desk and give Johnny a good shake, but the time for shaking was past. “You could have hurt somebody.”
“I was just funning. I meant no harm to no one.”
“Johnny, if there is a time for truth telling, it’s now. Did you mean to kill yourself?”
“I know the Lord don’t like people killing themselves. I didn’t kill myself. I wasn’t playing no Russian roulette. I was just drinking vodka and playing around. My tooth was aching bad. I wasn’t sure I could go back on stage after intermission. I put an aspirin against my tooth. Dear Lord, I sure am sorry for being such an ignorant fool. I was waving that .22 around. Pointing it at Olivia – sure glad I didn’t kill that sweet lady– and her friend Mary and her friend a fella I barely knew. One, two, three clicks, and I am laughing. That fella didn’t like me pointing the gun at his girl and him. If you want to point it, point it at yourself he says. Always up for a dare, I put the barrel to my forehead, ‘I’ll show you it won’t shoot‘ I said. I heard it fire, felt the heat against my face. That’s all I remember.” Johnny Ace shook his head side to side, tears running down his cheeks.
He looked up, one of the few times he looked straight into St. Peter’s eyes. “It don’t look good, does it? I can smell the brimstone.”
St. Peter prided himself (but not to the level of a sin) on keeping calm in the face of lives cut short or wasted. The why and when of death was God’s department. God had his reasons beyond St. Peter’s understanding. God gave man free will, and so St. Peter’s anger was directed at Johnny Ace. An anger that surprised him. A beautiful voice. A wasted gift. Just twenty-five. Dead from foolish recklessness on the day of Christ’s birth upset him even more. How could he be angry at a child who didn’t know better. Johnny Ace was a man child, a boy in a grown man’s sharkskin suit.
“Sir, all I ever wanted to do is make music. To sing. The folks at Duke records sent me to a tailor. Bought me some fine clothes. They wanted me to look high class they said, not like some sharecropper straight out of the cotton fields. I had to look as smooth as my voice. I didn’t sing rough like Howlin’ or Muddy. They bought me a Cadillac, and I sure did like driving around in that car. But true, I didn’t need all that to make music. I played down on Beale Street for nothing. I just wanted to sing, that’s all. Maybe I could have been another Nat King Cole.”
He was a child not fit for the hard ways of the music business. St. Peter’s anger turned to sympathy. He felt sorry for Johnny Ace. All he knew was music.
“I had me a new song, ‘Pledging My Love.‘ Just out a few days. It was going to be a hit. You could bet on it.”
“Can you sing it for me, Johnny.”
“Johnny Otis played some sweet vibraphone, but I’ll try.” Johnny Ace hummed the melody, then eyes closed began to sing, “Forever, my darling, our love will be true.” The words were simple, Johnny Ace’s voice, clear and direct. He was singing not to make a dollar. He was singing from the heart. St. Peter heard the rustle of angel wings. He turned to see a half dozen angels crowded behind the gate listening to Johnny Ace.
St. Peter sent his silent thoughts to God. How could you silence that voice?How could you punish a man who always was and would be a child? How could God deny the blessed of heaven the sweetness of Johnny Ace’s voice? St. Peter waited for God’s decision. God did not usually take so long to decide.
St. Peter waited. He heard a faint divine humming, the tintinnabulation of starlight turned into sound, the soft melody of “Pledging My Love.” St. Peter smiled. He put his hand on Johnny Ace’s arm and led him to the gate. He opened the gate.
“Join the angel choir, Johnny.”
Johnny Ace passed through the gate. His fine sharkskin suit fell from his body, his diamond ring melted into the heavenly ether. With a few steps all that remained of Johnny Ace was the memory of his sweet, gentle voice and his imperfect soul.
Jeffrey Hantover is a writer living in New York. The author of three novels and a novella, his poetry and short fiction have appeared in various literary journals including Flora Fiction.
Altered by Christina Rousseau
There’s a peculiar amount of freedom
that comes with losing everything.
The colors of my life dance around me
as they are stripped away.
Rosy reds of my blood that once washed my cheeks
reminding me that I could feel.
Soft purples of being held.
They gather on my skin and detach from it,
breaking away like the flaky layers of the
dreams it took to make them so.
And I, still enamored by the yellows of my past—
clenching to its innocence, soon learn
to let even those go.
I bid the greens goodbye as they whirl
around my ankles, tickling my toes for the
last time—plucking my raveled roots.
Every shade, shape, and texture
that fashioned this life.
The cranks and shifts of gears.
The buzzing and bustling of bark and stone.
The weary whistling of desire and fear.
I watch as it all falls in front of me.
Rising up and diving from the sky as a hawk
would in pursuit of its prey.
And in the ghastly gore of mash and matter
I sit still enough to see it perish.
In every life this moment awaits.
The refined sentence to see yourself die.
All your colors, your glory, your refuge
gutted and burned.
So that you may start again.
C. S. Rousseau is a writer and visual artist based in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Politics of the Dog & Pangea in Wartime by William Dell Price
Politics of the Dog
I love dogs more than people.
Dogs are quiet, people are loud
And when dogs are loud, there is a muzzle for them
You put a muzzle on a person, you’re called “mad”
Dogs don’t need clothes
We accept them nude
You force someone to walk naked, it’s called “abuse”
You can collar a dog, keep them close with a leash
You try to collar a person, they call you “deviant”
Dogs do what you tell them to do
You throw a stick, they come back with it
You throw a stick with a person you have to ‘convince’ them yo get it.
Convince them, pay them, bribe them, threaten them.
People are so difficult, dogs are so easy.
All I ever wanted to do was to make people easy.
Muzzle, naked, obedient,
I love sogs more than people
If I could only make people like dogs
I could finally love them
I could finally love you.
Pangea in War Time
Take me spinning,
while we still have time
Squeeze me out like lime
Oh, how I long for the arms to reach midnight
In the moment just before we are one
And I, with you, reach with my fingers towards the roof of desire
They call for the lights out,
The dark used to be such a fearful thing
Now that hiding place is my thriving place with you.
I need to hold onto your tempo,
When the glass shakes, and I shiver
I’m kept whole by your internal rhythm
I once read a book about Pangea
I think I wept when I learnt what happened.
All of its parts, drifting away,
Never to be whole again.
I say to myself, ‘You’ll come back,
You have to say goodbye’
Properly this time.
Some call this winning
That you are still alive
But when you are gone
I’m back to a hiding place at night.
Do the continents lie awake
Like we lie continents away
Wishing to be one again?
William Dell Price is a writer, poet, and teacher who is bursting with poetic writing and wishes to share it with others.
Melting Clocks by Jeremy Stelzner
Salvador Dali dines alone.
Gaunt and afflicted with the weight of a thousand brushstrokes.
He speaks in the third person,
politely ordering a tapa of roasted veal with an asparagus coulis.
When it arrives, Dali studies the plump meat.
Alone on the plate,
it glistens with all the artistry the chef de cuisine can muster.
The sommelier salutes the great Dali with a Port.
It is bloody, earthy, and bold.
With delicate nibbles, Dali settles into his supper,
each bite sweetened with a swishle of Port and a sigh.
The sigh serves as a grateful prayer to the God of creation.
He lifts a cigarette and uses the candle flame to light the paper.
A heavy breath of smoke drawn in beneath his pencil-thin mustache,
a sketch of style,
a scribble of rebellion.
In the delight of that toxic inhalation, a thought spawns from the desert of Dali’s mind.
Images sprouting from the cracked surrealist dirt.
A melting clock.
The absence of time.
The absence of absence.
Dali exhales the image into the world.
He brushes off baguette crumbdust from the butcher paper tablecloth with the inky tip of his finger.
One last bite
One last sip
One last smoke
to honor all the melting still to come.
Jeremy Stelzner is an author, poet, and educator from Silver Spring, MD
Two Black Dresses by Jonathan Ferrini
Every day at three o’clock as the afternoon sun fought through the dusty windows and the high school down the street let out, a teenage girl would slip quietly into the boutique. She never spoke, never bought anything, just wandered to the same rack and lingered over a particular black dress. Minerva watched her, recognizing the weight of grief in the girl’s eyes she knew too well.
The girl would lift the simple black satin dress off the rack and wrap it around her as if embracing somebody very special. After a few moments with the dress, the girl returned it to the rack and quickly left the store without a word spoken with tears streaming down her face.
Minerva used her late husband’s life insurance money to buy a little boutique she’d admired for years. The shop sold consignment women’s clothing and served as a sanctuary for Minerva to pour her sorrow into something tangible, to help women and girls find joy in clothing and accessories. The shop was a fragile haven built from a life including love, loss, and longing. Every shelf, every dress, every faded photograph tucked behind the register was a thread in the tapestry of her survival, but a lump found during a breast self-examination ignited anxiety which weighed heavily upon her.
Each morning, Minerva opened the shop, she was certain the lump was a “call” to “fold her hand” as the world felt like it was determined to break her.
One afternoon, as the bell tinkled above the door announcing a customer, Minerva looked up from her ledger. The girl was there again; her gaze fixed on the black dress. This time, she hesitated, then approached the counter, clutching the black dress including a second, almost identical dress but in a different size.
“Could I try these on?”
“Of course, dear.”
“The fitting rooms behind me.”
A few minutes later, the girl emerged, the black satin dress draping heavy over her small frame. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, then turned to Minerva, uncertainty clouding her face.
“How does it look?”
Minerva stepped closer.
“May I ask, why this one?”
“It doesn’t seem to fit you properly.”
“I believe the black cotton dress will fit you perfectly.”
The girl hesitated, her fingers twisting the hem of the satin dress.
“My friend and I… we wanted to dress up and go to the prom together.
“She was killed in a hit-and-run accident.”
“I can’t stop thinking about her. This black satin dress… it’s the only thing she tried on here.”
“It’s all I have left of her.”
Minerva’s heart clenched. She spoke as if embracing the girl, her voice soft.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Loss is a heavy thing to carry.”
The girl’s eyes shimmered with tears.
“I just… I wanted to feel close to her again. “I thought maybe, if I wore the black satin dress, I could remember what it felt like to laugh with her.”
Minerva nodded, her own memories surfacing including her daughter’s laughter, a husband’s steady presence, and the ache of their absence.
“I can only imagine the emotional trauma you’re suffering, but please, allow me to share my sorrow with you, and together, we might lessen our heartache and move forward, stronger.”
“I lost both my daughter and husband. Once, my world included a loving husband, Paul. “He was a hard as nails career Marine whose stern exterior hid a heart that beat for his family.”
“Marrying Paul provided me an opportunity to escape the role of only daughter to dysfunctional parents rooted inside a small town offering no prospects for self-fulfillment or escape. Marriage to Paul included a patchwork of military bases and hurried goodbyes, of late-night phone calls and the constant ache of uncertainty whether he’d be called to war.”
“I learned to be strong; to pack up our life at a moment’s notice, but I also learned to find beauty even inside environments built for war. I found work inside clothing stores wherever we landed because I was drawn to the way fabric could transform a person, and how a simple dress could make a woman feel alive, special, or different even for one occasion.”
“I apologize for tearing, but you remind me of our daughter, Emily, the light of my life. Emily’s spirit was wild and restless, her laughter echoing through the cramped military apartments and purring inside my heart.”
“Emily drifted away to somewhere unknown inside her mind as if being pulled by currents I couldn’t fight including Paul’s ’tough love’ and frequent physical admonishments also inflicted upon me. The phone call came on a cold November morning: Emily was gone, lost to a fentanyl overdose on a bed inside a stranger’s home.”
“The grief rolled over me like a tidal wave, relentless and suffocating.
Paul tried to be strong, but the loss hollowed him out like no weapons he’d ever known. Less than a year later, his heart stopped forever, leaving me with nothing but memories and the silence of an empty house we purchased after Paul retired.”
“Some days, the memories are all that keep me going.”
The girl looked up, surprised.
“Does it ever get easier?”
“Not easier, but you learn to live with the pain of loss. I’ve learned kindness helps stitch the pieces back together.”
The girl glanced at the price tag, her face disappointed.
“I can’t afford both dresses.”
“You don’t have to.
“These are my gift for you.”
“But, why?”
“Because I know what it’s like to need something to hold onto. Giving is the only way I can heal.”
Tears spilled down the girl’s cheeks.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
Minerva carefully folded the dresses and placed them inside a gift box including a pink ribbon adorned with small hearts around the box. “Promise me you’ll remember the good times and let yourself laugh again, when you’re ready.”
The girl nodded, clutching the box to her chest.
“I will.”
“Thank you.”
Minerva watched the girl slowly leave the shop and turn towards her before exiting. She mouthed the words, “I love you.”
The girl left and the slight spring in her step signaled to Minerva signs of hope flickering in the ashes of her sorrow, and although Minerva didn’t get her name, she instinctively knew it was a brief encounter with her beloved Emily which gave her the final contact she desperately needed.
The doctor diagnosed Minerva with metastatic breast cancer. Minerva remembered staring at the ceiling in the doctor’s office, feeling as if her body was telling her the fight against grief was soon to be completed and she could join Emily and Paul in the afterlife.
The hardest blow came when the doctor informed her, “The treatments will include a double mastectomy surgery, chemo, and radiation. “If you want a chance of beating the cancer, it will require your complete devotion to rest and recovery.”
“You won’t be able to keep up with the demands of operating the business.”
The words echoed in her mind as she stared at the racks of dresses, the sunlight struggling to pour through the fabrics mirroring the tears behind the black veil Minerva wore at two funerals and today, a struggle for her own life. Closing the shop felt like losing another piece of herself.
She lingered by the window, watching the sun dip below the horizon. She thought of her daughter, husband, all the moments lost, and the memories that remained. In giving the girl those two black dresses, Minerva was reminded that even in the depths of loss, kindness could stitch together the torn fabric of a broken heart. She had hoped to hear the familiar chime above the door open one final time and reveal the lovely girl. Minerva knew she was off chasing her own life which would reveal twists and turns. Minerva prayed the girl would be guided by kindness and knowing loss and misery is universal.
Recalling the happiness in the girl’s face carrying both dresses helped Minerva find the resolve to survive. She turned the sign on the door to “Closed,” knowing she would never open it again. But as Minerva locked up, she felt, for the first time in a long while, that she was not alone and would confront her illness head on with a newfound resolve to live.
Jonathan Ferrini is the published author of over seventy fiction stories and poems. A partial collection of his short stories may be found within “Hearts Without Sleeves. Twenty-Three Stories” available at Amazon. Jonathan also writes and produces a weekly podcast about film, television, and movies named, “The Razor’s Ink Podcast with Jonathan Ferrini.” Jonathan received his MFA in motion picture and television production from UCLA. He resides in San Diego.
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