The Songbook of Benny Lament

by Amy Harmon

“Because if you don’t have money, it affects everything else. It’ll drive a man into the ground if he can’t take care of his own. That’s what men were put on earth to do. Protect. Provide.

“He’s family, blood, but you take care of him. He doesn’t take care of you. Why is that, Pop? Family works both ways.”

You said the best songs tell a story. I wanted to tell that one. And you were brilliant. You blow me away, Benny Lament. Like Bo ‘the Bomb’ Johnson. You can level a crowd. We can level a crowd. We are good together. We are great together! It’s magic. I can’t believe this is happening.”

“The thing is . . . people don’t fight like you two do unless they’re fighting feelings. You aren’t fooling anyone but yourselves. You like her. She likes you.

I realized tonight that you two are going to make me a lot of money if you don’t cut us out . . . or get us all killed.”

I shouldn’t have asked her to sing. I wasn’t just slipping anymore, I was tumbling, head over feet, and when she sang, nothing else mattered to me. My head emptied, and I lost all reason.

This was not Agnes Toal or Margaret Bondi or any of the other women I’d avoided or set aside. This was Esther Mine. And I was in love with Esther Mine. The thought doused me in reality.

“She said if you want people to change, you have to show them what it looks like.”

“He was dying. He was trying to make sure you would be okay when he was gone.”

“Lord God, lift us up,” Alvin pleaded. “Give us courage and protection. Bless our voices and our hands. Take away our fear and give us faith. Comfort Benny. He is a grieving son who has lost his father. He needs you, Lord God, and we need him. We thank you for your goodness and mercy in bringing us together, and we pray over the journey ahead. In Jesus’s name, amen.”

I couldn’t speak. My mouth moved around an amen, but my heart was too full. In a few lines, Alvin had given me more family than I’d ever had in my life.

“A movement might unite behind a face, but it needs every voice.”

Very true

“You know how change happens, Money?”

“You show people what it looks like. We’re showing people what it looks like for whites and coloreds to be together. Even if it’s just together on stage.”

“I’m okay, Baby Ruth. Are you okay?” “I’m okay.” “Did they hurt you?” “Just my pride. Just my faith in humanity.”

“The only thing I ever wanted in life was just to play. I wanted to make music. It was the only thing I let myself want. I didn’t let myself love too hard or look too long at anything else. That isn’t true for me anymore.”

“Do you think history repeats itself?” “Yeah. I do. Because people are people. Life is messy and hard. And change is slow.”

Recording—especially with Esther—was my idea of heaven.

I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t need much. I needed a piano, I needed a song, and I desperately needed Esther too.

Christmas was a giant pain in the ass. Everyone was a child at Christmas, a whiny, sad child with unmet expectations and a longing for past Christmases and people that we’d failed to appreciate at the time.

So true

I hadn’t acknowledged his efforts most of the time, and that realization left me hollow now.

Esther was moved by the oddest things, and I wished we were alone so I could ask her why. In my dead father’s constant presence, I had fallen in love with a complicated woman, and in very strained circumstances we were revealing our scars.

“None of us can help who we are. We are born into the world we are born into. The family. The skin. Nobody gets to choose those things. You can’t be mad at a man for who he is. Only what he is . . . and the choices he makes.”

Screw that. Family isn’t the people you choose. It’s the people you’re stuck with.”

“You don’t kill or spook very easily. You do what you want, with any woman you choose, and you do it with the whole world watching.”

“There’s always gotta be someone who shows the world how it’s done.” “You wanna change the world, you gotta show ’em what it looks like,”

“We’re friends, Baby Ruth. I’m your friend, I’m your man, and I’m your biggest goddamn fan.”

“Violence isn’t the answer. Change is the answer. But that’s hard. A whole lot harder than throwing a punch.”

“His dream will come true,” Esther had reminded me then. “The biggest dreams always do. I dreamed of you, didn’t I?”

May we seek to learn each other’s stories so that we might love each other a little better.