Innocent Read Online Free

such a good player.”
    “I figure I’m the best player in Hope. ’Course, there’s not a lot of competition.”
    “If there were a hundred players, you’d still be the best,” I said.
    “Kind of you to say so.”
    “I mean it.”
    “I know you do. ’Sides, if I can’t get any gigs, I can live off my savings for a while. Then, if worse comes to worst, I can sure enough get work in a kitchen. I do have twenty-two years of experience, and a cook is a cook. People always need to eat.” He paused. “It will also be good to be around some of my own people again.”
    “People from the south, from Louisiana?”
    He laughed. “No, musicians. We’re all just one big family. Don’t matter if a man is from the north or south, whether he’s old or young, whether he’s white or a Negro. The music makes us all brothers.”
    I guess I understood that. The girls at the orphanage were sisters even though we had different mothers and fathers. We were all close—so why hadn’t Toni said goodbye?
    “I know you’re sad about Toni leaving the way she did,” Joe said.
    I startled out of my thoughts. How did he know I was thinking about her?
    “She didn’t have much choice. She chased herself away. I think because the two of you were so close, she didn’t know how to say goodbye,” he said.
    Were so close? I thought. If we really were so close, she would have found the time, found a way. Then again, in my rush to get out, I hadn’t offered more than a few words and hugs to the others. I’d kept telling myself it was just goodbye for now. I had to think the same thing about Toni. I had to. It was the only way to move forward.
    “That’s not the last you’ll see of each other,” Joe said. “Toni said she’d write. You’re all supposed to write.”
    “We’re to send our letters to Mrs. Clifford at Loretta’s Diner, and she will forward them once she has our new addresses,” I said.
    “That’s a good plan. I’ll make sure to drop a line or two myself, in case you girls are interested in what happens to old Joe.”
    “We’d be very interested—or I know I would be. Please write!”
    “I will. You know, when I came to be a cook at the orphanage I figured it was only gonna be for a month or two tops. I’d save me a little money and be gone.”
    “But you’ve been there since before I arrived,” I said.
    “A week became a month and a month became a year and then a year sure enough became twenty-two years.” He paused. “Do you know what happened?”
    I shook my head.
    “I got comfortable, and, maybe more than that, I got happy. I’d drifted halfway around the world and never felt like I had a home. At the orphanage, I got treated like I belonged.”
    “You do belong—I mean, you did belong. You were part of our family.”
    “And you were all part of mine.” He laughed. “Who would have thunk that I’d have two dozen daughters?”
    His laughter, as always, was infectious, and despite my fears I found myself laughing along.
    “’Sides, I always liked cooking, and it wasn’t like I didn’t still have my music.”
    He’d had his guitar, and that little transistor in his room, which he’d brought to the kitchen when he worked. It was always on Top 40 hits throughout the day. At night, when he could get stations from far away, he’d listen to what he called Negro music. We could hear it through the walls of his room when we passed through the dining hall. He’d have it playing loud, and we could often hear him singing along to it. Some of it I liked, and some of it I wasn’t sure of.
    I knew Mrs. Hazelton didn’t like it at all, and out of respect he’d turn it off when she was around. Her musical tastes pretty well ranged from anything classical to hymns. And, to be fair, Joe did help us with choir practice, and he did know all the old-time gospel and church songs as well as the songs on his transistor.
    “I’m gonna really miss Toni,” he said, “and I’m gonna miss you.”
    “I’m