The Jazz Kid Read Online Free Page A

had it here eight, ten years, I reckon. They ain’t got nothin’ like it in New York. Nothin’ nowhere near like it.”
    I knew that if I didn’t check out those faucets pretty quick Pa’d swarm all over me. “Were you just rehearsing?”
    â€œJust jamming a little,” the cornetist replied. “Herbie said since the place was closed anyway, we could come over and jam.” He pointed his thumb at the piano player. “Me and him, we don’t get to play together all that much.”
    I didn’t know what he meant by jamming, but I didn’t want to look like a dope by asking. “How could you learn to play like that?”
    The piano player chuckled. “Can’t learn it.” He put the cigar back in his mouth and shook his head. “That’s a plain fact. You got to get a feelin’ for it.”
    From down below there came a shout. “Paulie, what the hell are you doing up there?”
    I leaned over the trapdoor. “I couldn’t find the toilet.”
    â€œWhat the hell? It’s that door right at the end of the bar.”
    It surprised me that he knew where it was: he hadn’t come up out of that cellar the whole time we were here. “Do you play here all the time?”
    The cornetist shook his head. “Sometimes I’m here. Nothing regular.”
    The piano player chuckled. “Jazz musicians don’t play nowhere all the time.”
    The cornetist pointed at the piano player again with his thumb. “He got a nice gig over at the Arcadia Ballroom. I’m here for now. No telling how long it’ll last.”
    â€œMaybe I could come over and hear you.”
    The cornet player shrugged. “I doubt if they’re going to want any kids in knee pants running around here. This is a pretty rough joint.”
    â€œPaulie!”
    â€œWhat time do you start?”
    â€œIt’s an after-hours joint. We don’t start till midnight. Sometimes don’t get out of here till the sun’s up.”
    My heart sank. If only they started around eight or something, I might figure a way to hear them. But there wasn’t a chance Ma would let me go anywhere at midnight. “Do you ever play during the day?”
    â€œYeah, sure. There’s tea dances sometimes. You never know when one’ll come up.”
    â€œCome on, Tommy. We done palavered long enough.” He rolled a series of chords up the keyboard.
    â€œPaulie, get your tail down here.” I ran out of there to check the faucets, before Pa ate me alive. But it didn’t matter, for finally I’d come across something maybe I could discipline myself about. And I knew for sure that for me the plumbing business was a dead duck.

A FTER THAT I couldn’t think of anything but the music those guys were playing. It kept going around and around in my brain. I could actually hear it. Of course I couldn’t remember exactly everything they played, but I could hear the sound of it, the feeling that was in it, in my head.
    But it wasn’t good enough just to hear it in my brains. I wanted to hear it for real again. I never wanted anything so bad in my life—never wanted a fielder’s mitt or a bike or anything so bad as I wanted to hear that music again.
    Naturally, I couldn’t rest until I tried to play it myself. As soon as we got home that night I unpacked my cornet and tried to play jazz. I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t know where to begin. I sat there for a minute, holding my cornet in my lap, and thought about it. I remembered how there always seemed to be a song flickering around in what they were playing—a song that would pop out here and there and then disappear again. I figured the thing to do was to start with a song. I picked out “Maryland, My Maryland,” which I knew by heart. Nothing happened. I couldn’t figure out how to put the jazz into it, and it came out plain old “Maryland, My