Note: Copyright Graeme Smith, the owner of this site.
Chapter 2
Sax on a first date
Jackson Square, New Orleans. Two an’ a half acres of tourist dollars, all walkin’ round looking for new pockets to live in. You can play there. Just stick to the corners, not the sides. An’ the benches, not the steps. There’s Rules, ones the city makes you keep and ones you’ll find out about keepin’ first time you don’t. Bands will even let you sit in, if’n you’re good enough. Me? I was a sax player who couldn’t play sax for shit. So why was the sax case in front of me so full? Well…
“Damn, sha. We might just have to stay those good friends after all. You can really blow! I been cruisin’ the square. They like you, they do. But you gotta play some shit they know! Like, what’s that thing you blowin’? What is it? I ain’t never heard it before.”
My fingers slow, lips and lungs lettin’ go. I shrug. “It ain’t nothin’.” A last few notes, soft and long. “Jomy-J.”
“Hey now. Your girl comes up to listen to you, like she said she would, y’all don’t just say her name. You say ‘Hey, sha! You lookin’ good, gir…”
I can feel it, feel her, under my fingers. Each touch, each caress. Notes wander some more, the late afternoon air shivering under them, over them, round them. I shake my head, Crystal’s beak slipping from my lips. The notes fade. “Guess Crystal meant it. She likes you.”
“What?”
“Thing is, I can’t play for shit.”
“What? But…”
“Momma got me Crystal. Damned if’n I know why. An’ she got me some music classes in town with Mr Joe-Bob. He taught in the town school I never went to. So I know my notes an’ sheet, but that’s it. I can’t play ‘em for shit. I know every note of all kinds of it. But I can’t play worth a damn. I blow and blow, and I sound like a dyin’ cat.” I wait, but now she’s not talking. She’s listening, and she’s waiting too. “See, it’s Crystal. She can play. Me? I’m just the fingers, just the wind. Last night? Last night, that’s what she started playin’.” I shrug, and grin. “Didn’t know its name ‘til right now. Jomy-J.”
She blushes. The look on her face, it might just have been a while since she last did. “Damn, sha. Memaw never tol’ me…”
I raise an eyebrow. “Memaw?”
She blushes again. “Oh, never mind that. But you. I’m gonna have to think about you some if we gonna stay these good friends. You dangerous, sha.”
I grin. “Dangerous? I ain’t nothin’ but a streak of water with a few clumps of Bayou mud in me gir…”
She’s grinning too. “Sha, tête dur. Not ‘girl’, sha. Go on, give it a try.”
I shrug. But I keep grinning. “OK. Sha. But like I said. I ain’t dangerous.”
“Riiiight. Tell that to Bobby. He was figurin’ he was goin’ to be getting’ a whole lot more iron in his belly than even his doctor might like.”
“Steel.”
“Say what?”
“Steel, sha. Iron don’t hold no edge. Anyways. Likely I wouldn’t have.” I shrug. “Well, unless he’d… Well. Momma had Rules, an’ she made sure I had ‘em too.”
“Well I’m glad she did, an’ glad you was there sha.”
I remember Bobby, remember the dollars changin’ hands. An’ then I don’t. Bother rememberin’, I mean. Thing one, if it was a frame, why? I’m fresh in town and I ain’t nothin’ anyone’s gonna pay for. An’ thing two, how could she have known where I was gonna be? An’ thing three? Thing three, Momma really did have Rules. An’ it don’t make no never mind why anyone else does what they do. It jus’ matters why you do what you do, an’ that you knows why you’s doin’ it. That’s what she said. An’ yeah. If Bobby had… well. If he had, I’d have fed him steel for sure. But Jomy, whoever she was, didn’t have to know that. I just had to know, and to know why I would’a done it.