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“The Mysterious Axeman’s Jazz ” was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 70th Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author.

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Wikimedia Commons

Elysium and Tartarus or the State of Final Retribution (1791)/by James Barry (1741 – 1806)

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The Mysterious Axeman’s Jazz

by Ruth Knafo Setton

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…..Buchenwald. April 11, 1945. The images of the survivors—more bone than flesh—were seared into Jimmy Armstead’s mind and heart. Shadows followed him now, even in daylight. His mother and grandmother Mémé, the two women who’d raised him after his father vanished, pleaded with him to come home to New Orleans. The war was over, they insisted. He’d done his part. It was time to return to life.

…..“I need more time,” Jimmy told them, his voice hollow on the transatlantic line.

…..There was a pause, the crackling static like distant gunfire. Then his mother’s voice, low and urgent: “There’s a murder,” she said, “and it involves your music.”

…..Jimmy’s pulse quickened. “Jazz?”

…..His grandmother’s voice cut in, weathered and knowing. “Yes, jazz.”

…..“What does the murder have to do with me?” The images of Buchenwald flickered behind his eyelids. “I’ve seen enough murder. I don’t want to think about it.”

…..“You need to hear this.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “When you’re ready, you come home.” His Mémé sighed. “But don’t wait too long. I’m getting older by the minute.”

…..But so was Jimmy. And he needed to search for signs of humanity before he sank into the pit of darkness like some of his fellow soldiers. He needed to go after the light. And for him, music was light. The minute he stopped playing, the darkness came out.

…..He went to Paris, bought himself a used Benge trumpet. Its rich golden resonance reminded him of sunset over the Mississippi River. He shared a cramped room in Montmartre with another Black ex-serviceman. By day, he washed dishes at a café in the Place des Abbesses, hands raw from hot water and cheap soap. By night, he haunted the jazz bars and clubs that were springing up like defiant flowers through the cracks of post-war Paris. He did his best to blow back the blues, each note a small victory against the shadows.

…..Two years passed. His ma and Mémé kept urging him to come home, their letters growing more cryptic, more insistent. But there were all-night jam sessions, Blacks and whites on the same stage, and every song he played was thumbing his nose at the Nazis.

…..One night at an underground club, he watched through a haze of cigarette smoke as a short curly-haired Moroccan Jew named Maurice attacked the drums, then made love to them. There was a fury in Maurice’s playing that Jimmy recognized—the rage of someone who’d lost everything and was trying to beat it back with rhythm. But there was also something else: hope.

…..Jimmy joined the musicians, trumpet to his lips like a lifeline, and for the first time since Buchenwald, he felt something loosen in his chest. There was a sweetness to Maurice, even as he pounded the drums, the kind of innocence Jimmy thought he’d never recapture. At dawn the two men strode to Les Halles, arm in arm, collars turned up high, Gitanes dangling from their lips.

…..“Frères,” said Maurice, with his soft French accent. “We both know what it is to see Hell.”

…..“Brothers,” agreed Jimmy, the word tasting strange and hopeful on his tongue. For the first time in months, he slept without nightmares.

…..Another night, he and Maurice went to the Caveau de la Hachette, where they dug the sound of the pianist, Dix—a tall, skeletal Black man from Memphis whose fingers seemed unnaturally long in the dim light. Dix jabbed the piano keys like a prizefighter, giving them no leeway. He made the piano seethe, until smoke seemed to rise between the keys.

…..When the three jammed, Jimmy’s torment, Maurice’s purity, and Dix’s rage combusted. Magic happened. In early 1948, after recording an album, they decided to return to America.

…..First stop: New Orleans.

*

 

…..They arrived in winter—unseasonably cold with heavy rains. No one was smiling. Maurice said it reminded him of the Jews in Casablanca during the war: “We walked tilted to the side, one ear close to the ground to hear the German and Vichy boots.”

…..The three men crashed in the back bedroom of the old shotgun house on St. Philip Street where Jimmy had grown up—rooms lined up so you could shoot through the front door and the bullet would exit the back. A straight line of death.

…..Jimmy’s mother, Lucille, had lost her joy to the war, looking over her shoulder like she’d be jumped. His grandmother Mémé needed a cane now, her face a map of wrinkles, black eyes too deep, as if they’d seen things no one should witness. Yet tiny as she was, she held herself with pride.

…..Maurice saw it right away: “Your Mémé is a force. Like this town.”

…..Lucille fed them gumbo and crawfish etouffee, and Mémé advised the men on the best way to eat crawfish: “Pinch the tail and suck the head.” Her words had the cadence of ritual, of wisdom passed down.

…..As soon as Jimmy arrived, he hugged his grandmother, feeling the bird-like bones beneath her dress. “I made it home, Mémé. What did you want to tell me?”

…..Her eyes flickered toward the windows, as if checking for eavesdroppers. “Soon,” she promised, her voice barely above a whisper.

…..Night after night, the three musicians rehearsed. It was the only time they could let go and feel free. There was a small club on Frenchman Street, where they jammed with local musicians, dove into bebop, added more improvisation, extended solos, and wild experimentation. They’d sit for hours too, absorbing the new music, letting it fill the hollow spaces inside them.

…..One February night, the rain tapping against the windows like impatient fingers, Mémé told Jimmy it was time. The women sat in the two stuffed armchairs facing the stained-glass windows that opened onto the street. Mémé puffed on her pipe, smoke wreathing her head like a ghostly crown. Lucille’s fingers flew as she knit a pale green blanket for Jimmy’s sister—she was expecting a baby in Chicago, where she’d moved with her husband.

…..Dix hunched over the antique piano, his fingers unable to resist feathering the keys, coaxing out whispered melodies. Jimmy and Maurice sat on the floor and leaned against the low table, where a bottle of rye whiskey and five shot glasses waited like silent witnesses.

…..In a voice like rough honey, Mémé told them about a killer who’d terrorized New Orleans when Lucille was a teenager. Fear had stripped the town of color—everything and everyone turned black and white.

…..“That hasn’t changed,” said Jimmy, bitter.

…..“The Axeman,” Mémé continued, the name hanging visible in the air. “He’d wander the streets at night, no weapon in hand. Imagine waking to find him in your bedroom. He’d smash heads with their own axes. Most victims were Italian-American grocers. A dozen people during 1918.”

…..“He tried to kill a dozen,” Lucille corrected. “Only got five.”

…..Mémé snorted. “Them that got away never lived full again. You escape the bogeyman once, you spend your life waitin’.”

…..Her deep eyes met Jimmy’s. She understood the darkness he carried. “Did you ever see him, Mémé?”

…..“I did.”

…..The candle guttered.

…..“I did too,” said Lucille. “I was sixteen, rebellious, sneaking out to meet my boyfriend near St. Louis Cemetery. That’s where I saw Malvina Latour, who’d taken over the voodoo work. Almost as scary as the Axeman—you never met her eyes because once she saw you, she could make you do things.”

…..“The police and gris-gris workers like Malvina searched for the Axeman,” said Mémé. “But this man lived in the dark, and Malvina lived in both. To see him, you needed eyes that see in the dark.”

…..The musicians pictured Nazis they’d fought—men of the night who did unspeakable things in daylight.

…..“You think I’m making this up?” asked Mémé.

…..“No,” said the three men at once, as if compelled.

…..After a moment Dix’s fingers rippled across the keys and stopped with a discordant chord that seemed to linger too long in the air.

…..“Folks started thinking the Axeman must not be human,” said Mémé, shadows dancing across her wrinkled face.

…..Jimmy looked from his grandmother to his mother, a chill creeping up his spine. “Well, did they ever find him?”

,,,,,Mémé puffed on her pipe. The faint maple sugar scent of her tobacco brought back Jimmy’s childhood, when he sat on her lap and listened to that wonderful voice tell stories about old New Orleans. But this was no fairy tale.

…..Without looking down at her clicking knitting needles, Lucille said, “The Times-Picayune ran a story, and what a story! It was a letter written by the Axeman himself to the people of New Orleans. He said he was a Devil writing from Hell, and he promised more murders. He enjoyed them.”

…..Mémé told Dix to open the piano bench. He pulled out a stack of yellowed newspapers and sheet music, brought them to the table and scattered them over the surface.

…..Mémé aimed her pipe at the folded newspaper. “My eyes ain’t what they used to be, cher,” she said. “Go down to that part that starts with ‘Now, to be exact.’”

…..Jimmy skimmed the first few paragraphs, his heart quickening with each line, then read aloud:

 Now, to be exact, at 12:15 o’clock (earthly time) on next Tuesday night, I am going to pass over New Orleans. In my infinite mercy, I am going to make a little proposition to the people. Here it is: I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions, that every person shall be spared in whose house a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, well then, so much the better for the people. One thing is certain and that is some of those persons who do not jazz it on Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the ax.

Well, as I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tartarus, and as it is about time that I have left your homely earth, I will cease my discourse.

…..Jimmy frowned. A word had gnawed at his ear like a mosquito. He went back and found it. “Tartarus,” he said. “What does it mean?”

…..“The place of punishment for the wicked.” Mémé narrowed her eyes, and in the candlelight, they seemed to glow. “The jail at the bottom of the world. Under everything else. We’re walkin’ on Tartarus every day of our lives.”

…..Jimmy felt something unlock in his chest. “That’s what it was like,” he said quietly. “In the camps. Like walking on Hell itself.”

…..Dix sank to the floor next to Jimmy and Maurice, his long frame folding awkwardly. “Did I understand this right? This Axeman murderer was a jazz lover?”

…..“And he’d spare any establishment that played jazz?” Maurice rubbed his scruffy chin. “Every man must have some good in him.”

…..“But do you think the Axeman really wrote that letter?” asked Jimmy, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

…..“Pour yourselves a drink, boys,” said Mémé, her gaze fixed on something only she could see. “You’re gonna need it.”

…..They drank. The whiskey burned.

…..“March 18th, 1919,” Mémé continued, “jazz played in every building in New Orleans. Like cries to angels. The entire town lit up, blasting music against the darkness.”

…..Lucille set aside the knitting needles and blanket. She leaned forward and pointed at the sheet music—a song called, “The Axman’s Jazz (Don’t Scare Me Papa),” by Joseph John Davilla. The cover was a cartoon of a family frantically playing music while looking out the door.

…..Jimmy and Maurice studied it, the yellowed paper almost brittle under their fingers. “Who’s this guy, Davilla?” asked Jimmy.

…..“A musician,” said his mother. “He wrote the song the very next morning after the night of jazz, and he started to play it right away, and to sell it. The cops believed he wrote the letter and then wrote the song to make money off it.”

…..“But you don’t think so,” said Dix, his perceptive eyes fixed on Lucille’s face.

…..“There were many suspects.” Lucille glanced at Mémé, who was staring at the front windows, as if expecting someone to appear.

…..Jimmy picked up the newspaper again. His ma used to tell him that he didn’t see the world, he heard it. And his ear told him something was off-key. That mosquito was gnawing at his ear again. He fumbled through the dozen or so folders of sheet music. They were all jazz songs written in the early twentieth century. He didn’t know what he was looking for till he found it: a word that lit up the page and stopped the gnawing.

…..He tapped the cover sheet, his pulse racing. “This here song: ‘Requiem for the Dead.’” Jimmy opened the folder. “And this line: ‘The heat of my Tartarus.’”

…..He lifted his head, his eyes wide. “Not just Tartarus, but my Tartarus. His Tartarus. Now, that don’t seem like the most common word. And this song is dated 1917. Before the Axeman wrote his letter.”

…..The silence that followed was deafening.

…..Mémé held up her glass, her hand steady despite her age. “Pour us another round, Maurice. I believe it’s time to raise a glass to Lucille. She noticed the same thing back then.”

…..“To Madame Armstead,” said Maurice, his voice hushed with new respect.

…..When they set down their glasses, Jimmy said, “The songwriter—”

…..“He was staying here,” said Lucille, her words falling like stones into water.

…..“Here?” Dix looked spooked, his eyes darting around the room. “In this house?”

…..“It used to be a rooming house,” said Mémé. “The back bedroom where you boys are staying, two men shared it. They were strangers to each other. One was a salesman, a chubby man with a big heart.”

…..Lucille clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “The other one was heavy-set, but quick on his feet. Very dark, very quiet. Went out most nights, hat tilted low, coat collar high. When I sneaked out, I saw him. Some nights this man went to bars with his trumpet—”

…..Jimmy groaned. “Aw, hell, you didn’t say he was a trumpeter.”

…..“I’m sorry to say he was. But I wanted to find out where he went the nights he didn’t take his horn with him.” She caught her breath. “One night I followed him.”

…..“Alone,” she said, catching Jimmy’s look. “I was tiny and fast, and this was my town. He went far out of the Quarter to a small frame house. I hid while he circled it, then disappeared inside.”

…..Her eyes went distant. “Next day, terrible news—a nineteen-year-old girl murdered at that same house. That man slept here. Used our towels. We served him café au lait and beignets.”

…..She gulped her rye. “That man was the Axeman.”

…..Wind shrieked outside.

…..Lucille cupped her palms. “I held knowledge here, and I had to trust someone. There was only one person I could go to with something like this.”

…..Mémé grunted.

…..“Of course, you, mama. But first, I had to talk to Malvina Latour. I was trembling, but I went to her in daylight and told her the truth. She wasn’t surprised. She said I needed the most powerful and dangerous gris-gris, the kind that called on spirits from other realms. She needed two days to gather ingredients and prepare. And that’s when I went to my mama.”

…..“About time, too,” Mémé’s voice was sharp as a blade.

…..Jimmy looked at these two queens seated regally on their armchairs, and he wondered if he’d ever really seen them before. His mother and grandmother had fought their own war, won their own battles. “Weren’t you both scared of this voodoo lady?”

…..Mémé sighed, a sound like wind through ancient trees. “Marie Laveau and Malvina Latour both worked strong gris-gris, but they were also healers. Women with power, and no man like to mess with that. I believe men made up stories about those women so no girl would have the guts to step out of line. Except my girl.”

…..Lucille sat up straight. Her eyes glowed the way they used to when Jimmy was a boy, before the war stole their light. “Two days later mama and I went to Malvina Latour’s house. She gave us the powder, explained what to do. Three days, she said.”

…..“We stirred it in his café every morning,” said Mémé. “Mixed it with everything we served him. Kept smiling, talking polite, as if we weren’t poisoning the man.”

…..Mémé studied her pipe for a moment. “It took four days. A big man like that, he had a huge appetite. He didn’t chew his food, he just swallowed and asked for more.”

…..“On day five, he didn’t wake up.” Lucille looked at the musicians, her gaze unflinching. “They took him away. The killings stopped after that.”

…..Jimmy lit a Lucky Strike from Dix’s crumpled pack on the table. His hand shook as he lit the match, the flame dancing wildly. “Ma. Mémé. You…”

…..Mémé snorted. “Don’t you get high and mighty with us, boy. We murdered a man who murdered many others, and who showed no signs of stopping.”

…..“After that, we were all different,” said Lucille, her voice hollow. “We saw what a human being could do to other human beings.”

…..“Maybe that’s what life is,” said Dix, his fingers unconsciously playing a minor chord. “Just recovering from one bad thing after another.”

…..“Don’t forget the bright spots,” said Mémé. “Like you boys coming here and making music. You’re the bright spots.”

…..Lucille leaned toward her son. “Jimmy boy, you’re the light coming out of the dark.”

…..Jimmy inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. For the first time in years, he went back in his mind to the Day of Liberation when he and his fellow servicemen entered the concentration camp, Buchenwald—the pit of Hell—that Tartarus aboveground—and he saw the skeletal creatures. A mound of bodies thrown over each other. At first, he thought it was a mass grave. But some were clinging to life, by a thread, and they were mixed in with the dead.

…..His heart shuddered at the memory of touching the dead and pulling out the living. They were nearly all bone, no flesh, their eyes stunned like they’d come back from the other world.

…..Later, one of the survivors said to him, “You smiled at me, and I couldn’t remember the last time I saw a smile, and I wanted to cry but there were no tears left in me.”

…..Jimmy recalled how he’d had to force that smile up from somewhere deep inside him, and how it felt like his face was cracking.

…..Maurice set his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “You okay, mon frère?”

…..Jimmy blinked. Mémé stared through him, to the heart of him, as if she could see what he saw, and his eyes burned with the survivor’s tears that hadn’t been able to fall that day, and with his own tears that he’d held back for too long, and once he started, he couldn’t stop.

…..In the distance, he heard his grandmother’s voice: “We have to rise up against the darkness. We have to be the bright spots.”

*

…..In the night, Jimmy thought of a question he needed to ask Mémé, it felt urgent, like a dream slipping away, but in the morning it disappeared. And he was raw and aching, every inch of him. He talked to Dix and Maurice, their voices hushed in the pre-dawn darkness. “We need to do this,” he said. “Not just play music but create something that fights back.”

…..“What are you thinking?” asked Maurice.

…..“A Night of Jazz. Like the one in 1919, but this time, we’re fighting back against all the monsters. Every Nazi, every Axeman, every piece of darkness that tries to tell us we can’t make something beautiful.”

…..Later that afternoon, Jimmy called on his old connections in town. Three days later, he, Dix, and Maurice had organized their own Night of Jazz in New Orleans. They spread the word: every bar, club, restaurant, and household was encouraged to play jazz as loud and as long as they wanted, till dawn, to bury the ghosts of the war and bring in a new era.

…..But more than that, Jimmy found himself talking to other veterans and survivors, telling them about music as resistance, about the power of creation in the face of destruction. He wasn’t just organizing a concert; he was building a community of people who understood that art could be a weapon against despair. “There’s a reason the Nazis banned jazz,” he reminded them. “It’s the music of freedom. It’s resistance. It’s everything they hated and tried to destroy.”

…..Jimmy, Dix, and Maurice called it the Night of Hope.

…..In their article, The Times-Picayune called it Illumination Night because there wasn’t a house or club or building that stayed dark and quiet. Even the Mississippi riverboats glowed with fairy lights as musicians on deck performed their magic and set the water on fire. Bourbon Street shimmered with the roar of brass bands. Couples danced to swing the way they used to during the war. Folks gathered at the cemeteries and played and sang, waking up the dead and the living.

…..That night, jazz of all kinds—from before the war and after the war—crisscrossed all over town, shooting off sparks. Bird bumping into Basie, Dizzy into Duke, and on the corner of Desire and Law, in the new club known as Desire, Jimmy, Maurice, and Dix blew back the horrors of what they’d witnessed. They played as if the Axeman would kill again if they stopped. They played as if with each note they murdered one more Nazi. They played as if they’d just been born, and if they didn’t keep on playing, they’d die. By the time the sun rose, they understood that music was survival in more ways than one.

…..Arm in arm, the three men staggered down the dirt road and back to St. Philip Street. Morning light slashed through the stained-glass windows of their house, casting blood-red and sapphire shadows across the porch. Jimmy felt a ferocious need to hug Mémé and his mother. He wanted to tell them they’d buried Tartarus so deep underground it would take a long time before it dared rise to the surface again. And he wanted to ask his grandmother if she’d somehow sensed they would create a second Night of Jazz, and if that was why she wanted him to know about the Axeman.

…..But as soon as they entered the house, he heard wailing.

…..The sound raised the hairs on his neck. No, no, no…

…..He pushed through the house to the room his ma and Mémé shared. His mother sat on the edge of the bed, keening and crying. And Mémé, she lay motionless on the bed, eyes glassy and staring above, a tiny curve to her mouth as if she smiled at something only she could see.

*

…..Mémé’s jazz funeral was dazzling, even in a town known for its astounding jazz funerals. The procession wound through the streets like a glittering serpent, musicians and friends, old and young, joining in and merging their voices and sounds to the texture and harmony of a great symphony reaching for the sky. They were sending off a woman who, with her daughter, had ended a reign of terror—even if only a handful of people knew. And Jimmy and his combo played his latest composition, a song that later became part of New Orleans legend: “Stompin’ on Tartarus.”

…..As the last notes faded into the twilight, Jimmy thought he heard his grandmother’s laugh, carried on the wind. We have to be the bright spots…

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Born in Morocco, Ruth Knafo Setton is the author of the novels, The Road to Fez, and Zigzag Girl, which won Grand Prize in the ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Competition and First Place in the Daphne du Maurier Awards. Her TV pilot based on  Zigzag Girl  won First Prize in the LA Crime and Horror Film Festival, and her feature screenplays have been recognized by Austin Film Festival, Sundance Screenwriters Lab, and CineStory Foundation. An NEA Fellow, she has taught Creative Writing at Lehigh University and with Semester at Sea. Her award-winning fiction and essays appear widely in journals and anthologies. She writes a newsletter for creatives,  Tips, Tricks & Tea with Ruth,  at  www.ruthsetton.substack.com.

 

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