Taft

John Nickel, a former jazz drummer, manages Muddy’s, a blues bar on Beale Street in Memphis. His life is defined by the absence of his nine-year-old son, Franklin, who lives in Miami with his mother, Marion. One afternoon, a young woman named Fay Taft enters the bar seeking a waitress position. Though she claims to be twenty, Nickel is skeptical of her age. He feels a connection to her and, impressed by an unexpected conversation about President Taft, hires her on the spot.

Nickel’s thoughts drift to his tumultuous past with Marion. When they met, he was an in-demand drummer. He reacted cruelly when an eighteen-year-old Marion joyfully announced her pregnancy, and he continued to mistreat her. He missed Franklin’s birth by refusing to take her call during a gig, which led to his name being left off the birth certificate. The sight of his newborn son transformed Nickel, filling him with a desperate desire to marry Marion. By then, however, his change of heart was too late, as Marion’s love had turned to hate. They lived together for a period while Nickel took the steady job at Muddy’s to support her through nursing school, but she never forgave him. Eventually, Marion moved out with Franklin and later relocated to Miami, seeking a new life away from their painful history. Their relationship now consists of strained phone calls and monthly child support payments.

The night he hires Fay, Nickel receives a frantic call from Marion. Franklin fell on a piece of glass and needed seventeen stitches near his eye, intensifying Nickel’s anxiety about his son’s safety. Fay starts work and proves to be a capable waitress. Her seventeen-year-old brother, Carl, begins showing up each night to walk her home, lingering at a table for hours beforehand. Nickel quickly recognizes that Carl uses drugs, though the boy is quiet and polite. Fay is fiercely protective of him. As Nickel gets to know the siblings, he begins to have vivid daydreams about their deceased father, Taft. He imagines Taft as a proud, working-class man in east Tennessee, devoted to his family and deciding to build a deck to keep his teenage children close.

One Friday night, Carl fails to appear at the bar. Nickel agrees to drive Fay to her aunt and uncle’s home in the wealthy Chickasaw Gardens neighborhood. Carl is not there, and a frantic Fay insists they search for him. They drive through rough parts of Memphis before Nickel realizes Carl might have gone to Muddy’s. They find him passed out in the bar’s doorway. Nickel carries the unconscious boy to the car and back to the house. When Carl cannot be roused, Fay begs Nickel to carry him inside, a request he fulfills despite his intense fear of being discovered in the all-white neighborhood. Back in the car, Fay confesses she wants to go home with Nickel and touches his neck. He feels a thrill but gently rejects her. Later, Nickel imagines Taft on a hunting trip with a sixteen-year-old Carl, who impatiently but skillfully shoots his first deer.

On a rainy night, Nickel drives Fay home so she can attend her uncle’s birthday party. They share a passionate kiss outside her house. From the bushes, Nickel watches her family through a window before leaving. Distraught, he impulsively calls Marion’s sister, Ruth, and arranges an immediate sexual encounter at his apartment. The next day, Marion and Franklin arrive in Memphis for a surprise visit, and Nickel is overjoyed to see his son. He endures a tense dinner with the Woodmoores, where Ruth acts as if nothing happened between them. At the bar, the bouncer, Wallace, informs Nickel that Carl has been dealing drugs from his regular table. Nickel confronts Carl in his office, confiscating his drugs and cash.

The following day, Carl is arrested at the zoo for cocaine possession. Nickel drives Fay to the police station, where she presents her ID to secure Carl’s release. Nickel learns it is her eighteenth birthday. To celebrate, he takes her to dinner at a nearby restaurant. During the meal, Fay proposes marriage. Nickel, though moved, tells her he cannot marry her but agrees to think about it.

Later that night, Carl breaks into the closed bar to retrieve his drugs and money. He confronts Nickel and Wallace with a .38 revolver he stole from the office desk. During the standoff, Carl shoots Nickel in the neck. Wallace immediately disarms Carl, breaking his wrist against the bar rail. Fay, who was waiting outside, rushes in and applies pressure to the wound. To protect Carl from a long prison sentence that a mandatory police report would ensure, Nickel refuses to go to the hospital and insists they take him to Marion. Wallace drops Carl on a nearby lawn before driving Nickel and Fay to the Woodmoores’ house.

At the house, Marion, a registered nurse, takes charge. She calls a doctor friend, Dr. Bowles, who agrees to treat Nickel privately in his office. Fay stays behind, where she is comforted by Mrs. Woodmore. Dr. Bowles determines the bullet missed the carotid artery but severed the jugular vein, which he successfully ties off. Nickel is taken back to the Woodmoores’ to recover under Marion’s care. Mrs. Woodmore tells Nickel that Fay confided everything to her, including her love for him and Carl’s troubles. Fay has decided to step away from Nickel, believing it is best for his family, and will now face her own family with the truth. In a fevered state, Nickel imagines Taft’s final day, envisioning him suffering a fatal heart attack while a terrified Carl is unable to help.

Nickel wakes in a twin bed in Marion’s childhood room to find Franklin asleep beside him. Holding his son, he has a moment of clarity, realizing his primary responsibility is to be a father. The story ends with Nickel’s final imagined memory of Taft with his four-year-old children, a moment of perfect fatherly love that turns ominous in its final seconds, representing the precious and precarious nature of the role Nickel now embraces.