The Jazz Kid Read Online Free

how soon will the toilet be on? I got to take a leak.”
    â€œNot till I run this new piece of pipe up. Go take a leak out back.”
    â€œIt’s too cold. I can wait.”
    â€œSuit yourself,” he said. “Where’s that can of grease?”
    Oh, I tell you, trying to concentrate on that plumbing job was about the hardest thing I ever did. That music kept pouring down from up there, one tune after the next, slow, fast, in-between. It was funny: sometimes I thought I recognized a tune, and a moment later I wouldn’t be sure. The cornet player would hint at things, and then he’d go running off in a different direction. That year “China Boy” was real popular, and in different spots it sounded like they were playing it. But every time I convinced myself, “China Boy” would disappear. Another time I got the idea they were playing “Chicago, That Toddlin’ Town,” which naturally everybody was singing along the streets then. But I never was really sure.
    It didn’t really matter what the tune was. What counted was the way that music felt to me, the sparkle that was in it, the funny way it scurried along, going here and there, disappearing behind something and then popping out again. I couldn’t believe music could make you feel that way.
    Hard as it was, I managed to listen to the music with one ear and Pa with the other, and finally we got the job done—well, Pa got it done. Then he said to me, “If you want to take a leak there’s a toilet upstairs. I’ll turn the water on, you crack the faucets in the sink and see if everything’s okay. While you do that I’ll start packing up so we can get out of here.”
    I didn’t have to be told twice, but shot for the rickety old wooden stairs. At the top was a trapdoor. I heaved it up and climbed out. I was behind a bar, which ran along one side of a big room. The place wasn’t much fancier than the cellar—an old wooden floor gray from years of mopping, a couple of big ceiling fans for summertime, the green curtains over the windows, a bunch of wooden tables with dirty red-checked tablecloths on them. Across the room from the bar stood an old ruin of an upright piano that reminded me of a horse ready for the boneyard. The only people in the room were the cornet player, who was leaning up against the piano, one leg crossed over the other, while he played; and the piano player, who was colored.
    But the cornet player was about nineteen or twenty and had straw-colored hair; so it wasn’t nigger music after all. When he saw me pop up from behind the bar he stopped in midstream and took the cornet away from his mouth. “Where’d you come from, kid?” he said.
    â€œWe’re working on the pipes. They were all froze up.”
    The piano player swiveled around on the stool, and sat there looking at me. He had a cigar about the size of a baseball bat clenched in his teeth, a derby hat tipped back on his head, and he was wearing a dark blue suit with the coat open so you could see his fancy plaid vest and gold watch chain. He raised his eyebrows at me. “You always spring from midair like that?” He took the cigar out of his mouth so he could chuckle. “Mighty fine trick. Mighty fine.”
    â€œI came up from the cellar to check the faucets.” I wasn’t sure I ought to ask questions, but I figured I was likely to. “Where’d you learn to play that kind of music?”
    â€œWhat? The jazz?” the piano player said.
    â€œIs that what jazz is?” I’d heard of jazz, but didn’t know what it was.
    â€œYou never heard any jazz?” the piano player said. “Where you been, hiding in a closet?”
    I didn’t want to seem like too much of a dope. “I think I heard it, but I wasn’t sure.”
    The piano player tapped the ash off his cigar. “Mighty hard to miss around Chicago,” he said. “We