The Difference a Day Makes (part 1)

IV / The Difference a Day Makes
(part 1)

You guys all know me. I’m Jack Ruby.
– to the policemen who wrestled him
to the floor after he shot Oswald

You can get more out of me. Let’s not break up too soon. I have been used for a purpose, but it can’t be said here. Unless you get me to Washington, you can’t get a fair shake out of me. Dallas is a homicidal town.
– Ruby, to Earl Warren


When the motorcade hits Dealey Plaza, Jack’s five blocks away
at the Dallas Morning News, placing an ad for the Carousel.
He’d be at the parade, but he’s already pushing the paper’s
Friday-at-noon deadline, and these days he has to pay up front
for everything. In the composing room a portable TV can barely contain
the breaking news. Jack can’t believe anyone would whack a president
in this kind of broad daylight.
He’s stunned but undeniably
excited, racing to Parkland Hospital. He’s always known the shortest route
to any spectacle in Dallas. There’s bound to be some serious actiongoing down there, and he wants to be one of the first to find out
if Kennedy’s going to make it. And if not, should he close the club –
it would be the gentlemanly, graceful thing to do –
and for how many goddamn nights?

He’s there in time to hear the doctor pronouncing death. A black eye
for the city, Jack says to the man standing next to him. And why
does it have to be the weekend, when things are smoking most
in his business? A Saturday is worst of all to lose.
His ad’s already paid for, true, but surely for Jack Ruby
they can turn it into something more respectful: Closed or In Memoriam.
Whatever’s classy. He’s up to his neck in this historic moment:
no club he’s put over half his heart or money into voluntarily
has been dark for even a single night. He hope those unpatriotic
Weinstein brothers in their greed stay open for everyone to see.

***


It’s way past dark when Jack makes one of his trademark stops
at Phil’s Delicatessen: a dozen corned beef sandwiches, a dozen
bottles of celery tonic. He’s jawing to the counterman: In my mind
suddenly it mulled over me that the police were working overtime.
So to speak. An impossibly detailed description of the suspect,
Oswald, was circulating scant minutes after the fatal shots were fired.
Seventy-five minutes later, he’s hauled out of a movie theatre,
a matinee showing of Audie Murphy’s War is Hell, and this day in Dallas
has been that kind of war: president assassinated, governor wounded,
a mail-order rifle and shell casings found in the Book Depository,
an Officer Tippit gunned down miles from Dealey Plaza, supposedly
with a mail-order Smith & Wesson .38 in the hands of this scrawny,
omnipresent 24-year-old ex-Marine. And something about Russia
and Fair Play for Cuba, and Jack is still waiting for his order
and thinking out loud it’s in-fucking-credible, how fast
they’re fitting all these pieces together. How much news there really is.
And foot soldier Jack wants in before this war is over. He’s not too proud
to buy his usual position up at the front line. From way back
he’s been an enlisted man with a bad haircut, but he can dream,
can’t he: No shit, it’s been a nightmare, Phil. And my goddamn feet
are killing me. He means this day in Dallas. How it just doesn’t quit.

***

Jack steps off the elevator at midnight, and cockeyed luck is with him:
he’s being swept along through the crowded hall to the Dallas PD’s
basement assembly room where Oswald’s about to be put on display
so the rumors that this prisoner’s been in any way manhandled
can be laid to rest. In this blur of wingtip shoes that’s passing
for history’s forward momentum, no one’s about to stop Jack Ruby.

In his dark suit and customary snap-brim, Jack could almost be
a plainclothes detective. He’s standing on a table in the back,
craning his neck, making notes like a reporter. He could be mistaken
for either one, and for the moment he’s having it both ways:
the time of his imaginary life. He’s correcting the district attorney
who’s just mentioned Oswald and Castro and a “Free Cuba Committee” –
that’s Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Don’t these guys ever listen
at least to the news? And now comes his first good look at Oswald
himself: he seems so small, so lost in the crowd, as if
he’d be a lot happier right now giving a souped-up Chevy the gas
and gunning down Main Street until there’s nothing but the day ahead.
Even his matter-of-fact I’m a patsy is all but swallowed up
in this ricochet of questions, the crossfire of self-congratulation.

And no matter where he finds himself, this is Jack’s time of night.
A few more minutes, and Oswald’s gone. Show’s over, but Jack
is in no big hurry to leave. He likes being awake at this hour
with his usual roll of cash and loaded snub-nose in his pocket.
And this evening’s no exception. Yes, he should be considered armed
but not real dangerous tonight. He’s pressing the flesh
with the out-of-town reporters, handing out his “Jack Ruby, Your Host
at the Carousel” calling cards, and they should try to stick around
a few days, he can make it worth their time. The drinks are on him
when the club reopens, when all the Dallas hoopla finally dies down
and Jack can make it his business again to give folks a little
something they can’t get at home: a taste of pizzazz and a shot
of hubba-hubba. And when the reporters ask can they quote him on that,
he says of course, he does it all the time himself.

***

IV /The Difference a Day Makes (part 2)
IV /The Difference a Day Makes (part 3)
IV /The Difference a Day Makes (part 4)
V / Jack Ruby Spends His Last New Year’s Eve with His Sister

***

From Jack Ruby's America

By David Clewell

Jack Ruby Talks Business with the New Girl

III / Jack Ruby Talks Business with the New Girl:
November 21, 1963


I will say this only once to you, I promise: business
is business. It’s nothing personal. All business
is good business. You heard of selling the sizzle,
not the steak? Be sure you’re only sizzle. Nothing but.
They’re hungrier than that, they can beat it somewhere else.
I run this place so clean, some nights people hear it squeak.

Smile all you want, but no life stories, ever. I never knew
a smile that hurt, but keep your real name to yourself.
And when you hear whatever name you’re going by tonight,
it’s your turn to dance. And you dance. With class. Like
nobody’s business. You make your entrance, hit your mark,
and get it done. And let’s face it: the music
isn’t much. But it’s all yours. Do what you can.

And somebody thinks he knows how to soften you up with sweet
talk or a roll of bills, remember: you always know better.
This is no business to make that kind of mistake in.
Take it from me: you don’t want to walk into anything
you can’t talk your innocent-enough way out of.

And if there’s trouble you didn’t see coming, don’t worry.
That’s what I’ll be out there looking for. I may be incognito,
just another hat in the crowd. But if you want to know the truth,
all you have to do is ask. You say Jack and I swear
I’ll come through. Say the word, and some guy’s as good as dead.
He’ll learn fast: guys like him are our business, and who we are

is really none of his. As long as you’re working for me,
you’re covered. Partners. No matter how it has to mostly seem.
Yeah, you’re the one who’s out there at point-blank range,
but I will never leave you twisting in the wind, whichever way
it’s blowing that night, alone in any of this business.

*

IV / The Difference a Day Makes
V / Jack Ruby Spends His Last New Year’s Eve with His Sister

*

From Jack Ruby's America

By David Clewell

The Chicago Cowboy

II / The Chicago Cowboy

I have heard stories of personalities that are notorious. That is the extent of my involvement in any criminal activity.
– Ruby, to Earl Warren (1964)

We could not establish a significant link between Ruby and organized crime.
– The Warren Commission Report

***

It was 1947. Jack heard he’s be getting a call.
After all these Windy City years, it was surely his time to go West
and he was thinking Los Angeles, maybe Vegas. He was thinking
he was that important: finally they’d let him have his own piece
of some sophisticated action. When the word came down
he’d be heading to Dallas, Jack couldn’t believe someone had him
all wrong. His talents would be wasted in a nowhere town like that.
The Chicago Boys smelled Texas oil, and they were looking
to control the wide-open gambling scene. They thought of Jack
as a man who could handle the chump change, and would he please
be good enough to dole it out as needed, making fast friends
with the Dallas police?
They promised he’d feel bigger down there,
and Jack had to admit he liked the sound of that, even if
down there was some kind of joke. He’d suck it in. He’d zip it up.
He’d be their Chicago Cowboy, as long as he got his.
He’d ask them to spring for a little velvet, something jazzy
In a white snap-brim hat. He could show them good, but
they shouldn’t count on Jack anymore to be that good for nothing.

***

Sixteen years later there’s not much left for Jack to think about:
the Carousel club, 1312 ½ Commerce. The half’s because he’s one flight up,
where rent’s a little lower. The stenciled message on the stairway wall,
A FEW STEPS CLOSER TO HEAVEN, wasn’t Jack’s idea. The single
rectangular room wasn’t quite the place he’d hoped for, either.
He’d dreamed of a sumptuous club-in-the-round, slowly revolving
on the top floor of a tower, where some kind of breathtaking view
was just a reservation away.

Still, by his peculiar standards,
he’s made the most of it: jet-black booths, dark red carpeting,
gold mesh curtains. Over the bar, a squadron of gold crowns
hanging from the ceiling – Jack liked the idea of working around those.
From the moment he first walked in and took over the operation,
he could see it wasn’t called the Sovereign for nothing.
And one enormous black velvet painting of a well-hung stallion in gold.
Jack guaranteed the bartender who helped him nail it to the wall:
The 3-D effect is what makes it real class. His favorite word,
class, is all he wants to be known for. This wouldn’t be a joint,
but a nightclub. And his girls would be dancers, hostesses,
entertainers. Truly a man ahead of his euphemistic time, this Sultan
of Schmooze, this Kibitzer King, with his homespun sense of nobility.
And this is his low-rent kingdom. Welcome to the house
that Jack built: If they complain about the two-dollar cover,
tell them it’s worth it just for an eyeful of the décor. We’re fucking
class on top of class in here.

***

Before making a go of the Carousel: the Silver Spur. The Ranch House.
Hernando’s Hideaway. Then enough of the Texas motifs. Let’s try
the Vegas. And, of course, the Sovereign. Jack had a rapid succession
of dreams that didn’t stick. But this is the one he can’t seem
to shake: the Carousel, sandwiched between the Weinstein brothers’
Colony Club and the Theatre Lounge – where every night is Amateur Night
and the Weinsteins have got Jack fuming. He’s the one paying
for professional talent, trying to keep up some thin veneer of class.
He’s been known to travel out of town just to recruit it.
He’s still trying to live up to the good name he’s made for himself.
Jacob Rubenstein’s no proper name for a night-spot operator.
The reporters and cops come here to hang with Jack Ruby, club owner,
Producer, dispenser of small favors: free drinks any time.

***

If you ask Jack, he just can’t help thinking of Dallas
as one gigantic Amateur Night. In his heart it’s never been a city.
Back when Chicago was nearly wiped out by fire, Dallas was barely
on the map, too green to burn. It’s still too new. There’s no fire,
there’s nothing neighborhood about it, and Jack is neighborhood
all the way: do-for-you, do-for-me. No questions. No problem.
He learned his lessons on solid concrete stoops, along miles
Of narrow fire escapes, in tenement backyard clothes-flapping breezes
where any street worth its name had something new to teach you,
like how you could finally manage to stand to your own full height
and deliver. Even as a sawed-off kid, Sparky Rubenstein delivered:
sealed envelopes, a buck an errand, for Capone’s associates.
He pushed keychains, bottle openers, knives from a cart. Scalped tickets
outside Soldiers Field, hustled peanuts during the game. He sold himself
on helping others: tip sheets at the races. Carnations in the dancehalls.
Awful chocolates in the burleyque’s raucous dark.

***

Jack believes in what he insists on calling his orchestra:
four sorry tuxedos sitting at the back of an otherwise naked stage.
Ever since the night a musician bit off the tip of Jack’s finger,
there’s been no love lost between Jack and the music. Still, he wants
to do it up right. He’s always looking for any cut above.
More clothes are coming off to the sound of rock ‘n roll records
all over town. But where Jack’s the master of ceremonies,
he wants everything live.
He’s making his uneasy way through the crowd
with a microphone in his hand, when bang, out of nowhere:
the drummer’s rim-shot. And good evening, he’s our host, Jack Ruby,
and we’re not going to believe what he’s planned for us this time.

***

The best music Jack ever heard was in Havana.
When he squeezes shut his eyes just right, he can still see
the dazzling lights of the Tropicana after sundown. Now, that
was a nightclub, cabaret, casino supreme – room after room
of posh and glitz. No other action in the world came even close.
In exchange for delivering some crates of unnumbered rifles and guns,
Jack shot the Caribbean breeze with the wheels of the operation:
Santo Trafficante, Carlos Marcello, and his particular heroes,
Meyer Lansky and brother Jake. As long as Batista could hold on,
there would be the fabled Tropicana, where the insignificant likes
of Abe and Barney Weinstein would be spots on the silverware.
Everyone at the table knew what was coming if Castro moved in to stay:
there goes the glittering neighborhood.

But no one can take it away
from Jack now: his few days in the Cuban sun, the bloody steaks
a cut above, the umbrella drinks he never touched, but he liked how
they were there for him. Trafficante himself nearly busting a gut
when Jack played Conway Twitty air guitar on It’s Only
Make Believe. And Jack soaked it in, he ate it all up, this living
at last high off the hog, an honorary Kosher Nostra boy.

***

This afternoon Jack’s in his tiny Carousel office,
and his head is spinning. Along with the gun-metal-grey desk,
beat-up easy chair, and the hand-lettered sign on the wall – SHOW
SOME CLASS – now there’s a safe Jack actually had installed.
For the man who’s always kept his cash in brown paper sandwich bags
or wadded thick in his pockets, who’s never had a checkbook,
who never cracks a smile when he calls his money dough,
this may take some serious getting used to. He’s on the phone,
letting his attorney know he’s just in from the Tropicana
in Vegas, and he’s got the simoleons to pay off his back taxes.
And Jack is nearly giddy, for Jack. He’s off the hook again.
He can keep his doors wide open for the indefinite future.

They’d told him it was the least they could do, a small 40-grand
favor he should consider more of a thank-you for all the years
in the Texas sun. For being there.
And for a minute
he almost dreams himself out of his cash-and-carry life. Jack’s
good for it is what they’d said. For Dallas. For business.
For the long green. Somewhere out West he’s sure he could be
a real nightclub operator. A-listed partygoer. Fedora sensation.

Confidant to the stars.
But there’s no time off for good behavior
in the Lone Star State, and the Chicago Cowboy will be right back
where he’s always been: would-be highroller in a rumpled suit,
in precarious business for himself again
a few steps short of heaven. 1312 ½ Commerce – halfway between
the police station and the county jail. A rock-and-a-hard-place
kind of thing, he jokes nightly at the mike. The cops drink free
and barely pay attention. But except for the Weinstein brothers,
Jack’s never minded being in the middle. If there’s any action.

So plug him in and light him up. Full of his misguided sense
of decorum, he’s about to go out there again and try shooting off
his mouth full of cornball gratitude in front of another crowd
that isn’t here to listen. They’ve paid their deuce apiece
for Girls! Girls! Girls! and who’s Jack Ruby to insinuate himself
into such a straightforward arrangement?
He’s learned one thing
over and over again in his obligated life: there’s no way
he can really help himself.

*

III /Jack Ruby Talks Business with the New Girl
IV / The Difference a Day Makes
V / Jack Ruby Spends His Last New Year’s Eve with His Sister

*

From Jack Ruby's America

By David Clewell

Jack Ruby Orders the Chicken Salad

I / Jack Ruby Orders the Chicken Salad:
November 21, 1963

You know how I need it, Sweetheart: all my orders are To Go.
I’m the king of Carry-Out. Today I’m good for a dozen – half rye,
half rolls. These are heading down to the station, so pile it on
a little thick, OK? They know me there. I’m a regular
no-baloney guy making sure the cops get a decent shot at lunch.
You can’t say I don’t love Dallas, but still: give me Chicago
for cold cuts a man like me could die for – hot pastrami, corned beef,
tongue that doesn’t quit. I go for sandwiches in a big way, a handful
of good will folks can sink their teeth into. And people remember
certain things. Don’t get me started on how crazy it is sometimes
to be me, in Texas. But then I’ve always liked going out of my way

if it lets me in on the action. When you’re the one with the sandwiches,
you let other people do the talking. Just look who’s talking now,
right? I need sandwiches, I’m friendlier. So to speak. Human nature,
if you ask me. I’ve studied it. I’m talking my whole life. Go ahead
and ask me is there anything I don’t know about human nature. I’m here
to tell you mostly it’s not much: I’m talking one sorry load
of chicken salad sandwiches bagged up in the front seat of a car
in the Dallas sun. At noon. You know it won’t be long before
it goes completely bad. And we’re Texas, down here so Deep
in the Heart that it’s never been lip-smacking good to begin with.

So what do I finally owe you? Here’s a twenty. Keep the change
and get yourself something later. Something you’ve always been
meaning to. On me. I’m talking something extra: a little bit
of trouble or excitement you don’t really need. That we can live
without either one, thank you, is no good reason. I’m talking America,
getting whatever we deserve. Human nature: remember that. Remember me
to the rest of the shift. I’ll be back. I’m always coming back.
And next time, you can cut the Mister jazz. Jack is good enough.

*

II / The Chicago Cowboy
III /Jack Ruby Talks Business with the New Girl
IV / The Difference a Day Makes
V / Jack Ruby Spends His Last New Year’s Eve with His Sister

*

From Jack Ruby’s America
By David Clewell

*

My review of the book from 2000 when it was new makes much of this opening movement.

Game ball for the 2009 Poetry Scores Art Invitational

This is the game ball for the 2009 Poetry Scores Art Invitational, signed by most of the artists who contributed to our show, which was a smashing success and a rousing good time.

I try to remember to get people to sign game balls when they work on a group project together. I can't exactly explain why, except that I have a mystical view of the game of baseball, and imagine that the game can be used as a metaphor to describe almost anything good.

For example, if I were to field an imaginary baseball team from a selection of artists in this year's Invitational, it might look like this on the lineup card, in batting order:

Jeremy Rabus, SS
Heather Corley, 2B

Michael Hoffman, LF
Jon Cournoyer, RF

Andrew Torch, 1B
Alicia LaChance, CF

Greg Edmondson, 3B

Kim Humphries, C

Robert Longyear, P

Longyear, of course, would be the right-handed starting pitcher staff ace. The ace lefty starting pitcher would be Dana Smith. The closer would be Eric Woods. And the erratic, bearded setup man out of the bullpen, for the problematic 8th inning, would be Tony Renner.

During interleague play, we'd move Cournoyer to DH to rest his wheels and field Gina Alvarez in right (she would bat sixth, moving everyone else down a notch in the batting order).

I'm the manager of this imaginary team, of course, with Thom Fletcher my pitching coach, Stefene Russell my bench coach, and Matt Fernandes (third base) and Stephen Lindsley (first base) coaching the runners and relaying signals.

I know this is all crazy, but I believe every word of it. I can field a baseball team of anything. Anything I care about can be transposed to positions on a baseball diamond and in a batting order. I know a surprisingly large number of other people who feel the same way I do.

By the way, it's a fun road trip game. For example, field a baseball team of your favorite cities, or American states, or U.S. presidents, or film directors, or sandwiches, or alcoholic beverages. Anything. Former girlfriends (or boyfriends). Novelists. Poets, God knows - which is how this whole thing got started, in more ways than one.

If you won't more of this daft, batty stuff, then you should read my essay about the time I mailed a baseball to the Australian poet Les Murray, asking for an autograph, and he mailed it back to me in New York from Bunyah, New South Wales.

It is fitting that this poetry score and art invitational ended with an autographed baseball, because we scored and they made art to Les' poem The Sydney Highrise Variations - and this entire project began with that baseball, mailed back and forth across the Pacific Ocean, between an American rock musician and an Australian poet.

Heather Corley's starving spirit is fed upon the heart

We are lucky to have Heather Corley in a Poetry Scores Art Invitational this year for the first time. Here is her piece, "The starving spirit is fed upon the heart".

I like how it combines her characteristic image of the heart with a gridlike pattern suggestive of an urban grid. This year's Invitational is devoted to a great poem of cities, The Sydney Highrise Variations, so this is very fitting.

Corley went along with our suggested bargain basement $50 opening bid for tonight's silent auction.

Robert Longyear stills the city's conversation

At the last minute, longtime Poetry Scores supporter Alicia LaChance recruited fellow artist Robert Longyear to show in this year's Art Invitational.

This is his remarkable piece, and two details from it. Its starting bid at the silent auction is a measly $50.

Robert chose from the poem The Sydney Highrise Variations the following title: “They rose like nouveaux accents and stilled, for a time, the city’s conversation.”

Robert told me, when he dropped it off, "I don't usually contribute to benefits, but the poem really seduced me".

Here is the part of the score that incorporates this line: "The starving spirit is fed upon the heart" by Robert Goetz.

Here is how the silent auction works.