Young Man With a Horn

by Dorothy Baker

  There was only one more flash from her. She came home late one afternoon to change her clothes. Rick was in bed but awake and in a mean mood, and when she came in he began to kick his head off about how Ramundo could never get around to doing the vacuum-cleaning until he got to sleep. And another thing: that dock-tailed, Oriental, female, slant-eyed cat.

  Amy was standing in front of a mirror brushing her hair, using long, rough strokes. She was tightly bound around with her long, white robe, and while she brushed her hair she looked deep into her own eyes in the mirror. But still she could talk. She didn’t say a thing about the cat, but she did say that Ramundo worked hard; he was a part-time student at Columbia and he did his very best to get his work to fit in with his program, and he had her permission to do the vacuum-cleaning any time he pleased, good old Ramundo did.

  ‘How about him doing it at night?’ Rick said, ‘and letting me get a little sleep?’

  ‘No. Not night. He has to do his home-work at night. He has to do his sums.’ Amy bared her teeth and looked closely at them in the mirror. Then she went on to say that never in her life, not since she’d been out of dormitories, had anyone kicked about the way she ran a house. She kept a damned fine house, and not one friend of hers but would say the same.

  ‘I’m not a friend of yours,’ Rick said, and he sat up to say it. ‘I’m your husband.’

  Amy put down the brush, then, and looked at her husband in the mirror. His hair hung in bright rings over his forehead, his chest was bare, and his face was flushed. She turned away from the mirror, walked slowly to the bed, and lay down by his side. Then she looked up at him, curiously, and said, ‘So you are, and a stunning boy, too.’

  But even after that, she couldn’t have dinner with him, she had an engagement. Rick asked who, and she gave a name, just any last name, Hopwood, or Hotchkiss, or Hitchcock.

  Rick came home at one o’clock again that night, but Amy didn’t come in either that night or the next day, and he didn’t manage to see her for three days. When he did see her he was going down the stairs on his way to work at about eight-thirty, and she was coming up with a girl and a man. She was extremely friendly; she introduced him as her husband and asked him to come on back up and have a drink. She even had a kind of prideful gleam in her eye as they talked. Rick in evening clothes had a kind of somber, youthful elegance that was impressive. He shook the man’s hand, bowed to the girl, and said he couldn’t go back upstairs, sorry.

  The man was young and bald and he wore an overcoat with a fur collar. ‘You’re playing in Phil Morrison’s orchestra, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘I’m terribly sorry you can’t stay with us and give us a tune.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Rick said again, and Amy walked down to the second landing with him, telling him that that was Jay Barker, terribly rich but fun, and the girl was somebody she knew, and didn’t he think it would be sort of fun if after the dance he could round up Smoke and Jeff and she’d try to catch Josephine; it would really amuse Jay to meet them, and he was crazy about jazz.

  ‘You’ve been drinking,’ Rick said.

  ‘Oh, God, yes,’ Amy said. ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rick, looking at her. ‘I mean no.’

  ‘I can’t stay here forever,’ Amy said. ‘It’s impolite. See you around one-thirty.’

  He went on down the stairs and took a taxi to the hotel. He had a good night on the stand. He was playing for the fun of it for the first time in months; not quite for the fun of it, but for the relief of being free of Amy after all the poison she’d fed him. He was as light-hearted as a boy out of school, because he didn’t have to care any longer where Amy was or what she was doing; he just didn’t have to give a damn. The vision he had of those three coming up the stairs was all it took. He felt good and clear in his mind now. That punk saying give us a tune didn’t even make him sore, it just made him laugh his head off. Give who a tune, for God’s sake?

  Morrison came up to him during an intermission and asked him why he was hitting so hard, had he had good news or what? Sounds like a bugle.

  ‘Too loud?’ Rick said. ‘I’ll play nice next time. Give me a nickel; I’ve got to do some phoning.’

  ‘You can’t phone now. You’re on with the trio.’

  ‘How’s about Mr. C. going on with the trio? I got to phone.’

  He turned away from Phil and left by a back door, no look of mutiny on his face. Phil looked at the door, gave it a look that would have split some doors, but not this door. Then he went to get a man to bat for Rick. He could have let himself get sore, but he knew better. He was a slave-driver, and pity wasn’t in him, but love was. He loved his band, he loved the money it brought in, and he loved Rick Martin, first trumpet. The band leader never lived who could have stood in front of Rick night after night for all those years and not feel thankful for every phrase he played.

  He found Jack Crandall and said, ‘Go play for the trio. Martin’s on a tear,’ and Jack Crandall said, ‘He’s been letting it go, all right.’

  ‘He’ll pipe it down,’ Morrison said. ‘I just spoke to him.’

  Rick telephoned The Afrique too late to catch Smoke in an intermission, but he left a message: ‘This is Martin. Rick Martin. Tell Mr. Jordan I’ll pick him up after the show and we’ll go over the line down to Silver’s if he wants to. Tell him to ask anybody else he wants and I’ll try to get some guys myself. Tell him I’ll get a car and he can bring the potato salad, and if he can’t go have him call me before one. Is that straight? Before one here. Tell him I’ll bring Barrow if I can get him. I’d have called sooner only I just got the idea. Any time before one.’

  He made three more calls, invitations to get in it. He slipped into his chair at the exact moment Morrison was ready to start the next set, and he played himself back into good repute in no time at all.

  At one when they were clearing away, Phil came up and said he hoped he wasn’t sore about anything and that he hoped he wouldn’t forget overnight that they were making a record tomorrow at ten.

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Rick said. ‘I’m making one at eleven behind Josie Jordan, too.’

  ‘Did you ever sit in with the U.S. Army band on a record?’ Morrison said. ‘There’s a bet you missed.’

  ‘They might ask me yet,’ Rick said.

  He left and took the biggest Chrysler they had at the U-Drive Garage. Milt Barrow was standing on the curb in front of The Afrique, and Les Cohen was with him. They had their instrument cases tucked under their arms and their shoulders were hunched under their collars. It was a cold night. Rick pulled the car into the sidewalk and one wheel jumped the curb. Barrow and Cohen scattered for cover, and didn’t come out from behind a lamp post and a mail box until Rick had killed the engine trying to get the car back on the street.

  ‘Where did you get that car?’ Barrow said

  ‘I bought it,’ Rick said with pride, ‘and it’s a dinger. Get some of this.’ He got out and fiddled around with a spotlight mounted on the running board—a big light, almost two feet across. It came on and sent out a beam that stayed strong and round for five hundred feet.

  ‘They use this one when they’ve got to drum up trade at the Paramount. Is that a light!’ He stood behind it on the running board and turned it straight up in the air.

  ‘Look at that old light go,’ he said. ‘I start flashing this light around in windows and I bet guys would start jumping out, one after another.’

  ‘This is the same car you had last year the night we went up to New Rochelle; I know this one.’

  ‘This is the one I always buy.’

  ‘Turn it off. You got to have a permit to run a light around like that.’

  ‘No you don’t.’ Rick shot the beam straight into a window of The Afrique, and then snapped the light off. ‘That’ll make them think twice in there,’ he said. ‘Let’s go in. Freeze our feet off out here.’

  They met Smoke and Jeff and Hazard coming out.

  ‘Where’d you get the car?’ Smoke said.
r />   ‘It’s a U-Drive,’ Rick said.

  ‘What’s the idea of you driving it up on the sidewalk?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I was going to stop it right there by the curb, but I couldn’t get the cock-eyed thing to quit moving. Something went haywire, I guess.’

  ‘Who’s going to drive it?’ Smoke said, looking at it.

  ‘I am,’ Rick said. ‘I’m a damn good driver, once I get the hang of it. It just takes me a little while to get onto it after all this time.’ He looked at Smoke, who was kicking a tire to see if it was still all right. ‘Unless you’d like to,’ he said. ‘You can drive it if you want to.’

  Smoke got in under the wheel, saying, ‘Well, I sort of would like to.’

  They drove through the tube and five miles into New Jersey to a road-house off the highway, a place known as Silver’s. Silver’s was always the first place the law looked into when a round-up was called, but that didn’t hurt business any. A woman named Olga Vogel ran it; it was called Silver’s for someone no longer there.

  The three white ones and the three black ones stomped into the house and got a greeting. The players are come to Elsinore and they’re of a mind to play. ‘Lookit the jig-men,’ Olga said. ‘I thought you’d give us the go-by. How are you, Rick Martin? Hi, Art; Hi, Jeff, Smoke, Miltyboy. Who’s your little friend here? So? A Mr. Cohen? Glad to see you, Mr. Cohen; there’s always room here for a countryman. You boys want to stay down here, or do you want to be alone? There’s a piano both places.’

  ‘We don’t want to play,’ Smoke said. He had drums hanging all over him. ‘We just come out to see how everything’s getting along out here.’

  ‘You’d better go upstairs,’ Olga said. ‘Lou Marble’s up there. She was singing awhile ago. I don’t know what she’s doing now.’

  Olga pushed them through the room and into a door that opened on some stairs. Rick was the last one, and she linked an arm through his on the way upstairs.

  ‘They tell me you married a society girl, Rick,’ she said. ‘Is she pretty?’

  ‘No,’ Rick said, ‘she looks like a coal miner.’

  ‘What’s her name?’ Olga said.

  ‘North.’

  ‘Sort of an odd name for a girl, isn’t it?’

  They went into a big room. There was a fireplace at one end of it and a bar at the other and ten or fifteen empty tables scattered around.

  ‘Name it and take it,’ Olga said at the bar. ‘This one’s on the house.’

  They named it. Gin straight down the line. Six golden fizzes.

  Olga said, ‘My God, not only do I set up drinks but also a half-dozen eggs. Why don’t you ever come out any more?’ she said to Art Hazard. ‘Did I do something to annoy you boys?’

  ‘You didn’t annoy me,’ Art said. ‘Rick got married, and none of us seen anything of him. And anyhow it’s been too cold to get out of town. You say Lou Marble was here? I don’t see anything even looks like her in here.’

  ‘She left,’ the barman said. ‘She got sick and her friend took her out back.’

  Rick was at the end of the line, next to Jeff, saying: ‘We’d just call it the barrelhouse eight or some name, and we could make records that would split them all wide open, make them sit up. Do up a lot of old ones, “Twelfth Street Rag,” “China Boy,” “Dinah,” “Lime-house,” “Bugle Call,” all the ones we used to play; make a regular thing of it, same bunch all the time under the same name.’

  ‘They wouldn’t do it,’ Jeff said. ‘No record company would want it, because it wouldn’t sell enough records. The only records that pay for themselves are the new ones with a vocal. People buy them to learn the words.’

  ‘We could get Josie in and give them vocals, or else Cromwell from Morrison’s; he knows how to sing.’

  ‘Yah, but they already know the words to the old ones. They buy records to learn new words. They don’t care how you play it. You and Art on the same record wouldn’t matter a damn to more than two hundred people in the whole country. Who buys records is the high-school girls. You know that? Talk to that man Brown and he’ll tell you. I had the same idea myself once. But the really good stuff doesn’t sell records. Oh, in two three years it does, but they don’t like to wait that long. They like to make them and sell them the same day. Guys that gang around music stores to buy Morrison’s records as soon as they’re released get to hear some damned good horn playing, but they don’t know it. They just want to learn the words.’

  ‘I never thought of it that way,’ Rick said. He drank with a sad look on his face.

  ‘It’s the true,’ Jeff said. ‘Nobody knows what we’re doing but us, the guys that do it. I’ve heard them say they liked our record of “Melancholy Baby,” and I say thanks, what did you like about it? and they say it’s sort of catchy or some damn thing. And that’s about the best record we ever made, some ways. The way Jimmy slides out of Davis’s solo there and runs up eight bars enough to drive a man crazy, best piece of trambone playing I ever heard in my life, absolutely the best piece of trambone, and they say catchy; cute tune. I never heard anybody except you and two or three others even mention Jimmy on that record. That man Brown at the studio never even heard it, and he was there when we made the record. It’s a long time ago now, but with Jimmy playing like that I think it’s maybe our best record.’

  There was depth in his voice. He was talking about the thing, not the people.

  ‘Hell,’ Rick said, ‘maybe we’re all lucky to have jobs, one way

  you look at it. Maybe we’re lucky to get tunes like “Melancholy Baby” that get so popular they’ll sell no matter how good you play them.’

  ‘We couldn’t sell “Twelfth Street,” or “Dinah,” all over again, I know that, if we had Gabriel himself sitting in,’ Jeff said, ‘unless we had the money to do it on our own hook, pay the cost ourselves.’

  ‘What would it cost?’

  ‘Plenty; more than we could get together in ten years.’

  ‘Maybe we could get some rich bastard that likes good jazz to stake us.’

  ‘You get him.’

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ Rick said. ‘Let’s go sit down.’

  They broke away from the line at the bar and sat down at a table. They were something to look at, the two of them there: Jeff, the thoughtful, the Latin-featured, and Rick, the tight-drawn Northman, saying what they thought, knowing that art is long and life is a moment.

  ‘If we’d just get a good bunch together, though,’ Rick said one more time, ‘get Barrow to play sax, and this kid Cohen I brought tonight, and La Porte that plays fiddle for Morrison, he can play it really hard, so that it sounds as good as any instrument in the band. Funny thing, you should have heard him up at Jameson’s one night; you wouldn’t think a man could do that with nothing but a fiddle, but he sure was. It was just as hard, just as...I don’t know; he’s good, that’s all; you wouldn’t think a damned old vi’lin...’

  ‘I know it,’ Jeff said. ‘I heard him on the record he was in with Deane’s. He’s the best thing on the record. It doesn’t matter so much what a man plays, if he knows how. Take whatshisname, guy that plays the marimba at Moss’s…’

  ‘Roland.’

  ‘Yeah. The way he plays it it sounds like a piano, only different, better than a piano. And there’s nothing I hate, usually, like a marimba.’

  ‘Me too,’ Rick said. ‘I can smell them a mile. And then here’s this boy Roland, that knows something to do to it, and I get so I really like the thing.’

  ‘Ain’t it the truth? Same way with me. Remember in “Muddy Water” the way he comes in there, three notes over and over like he can’t get off it, and then it breaks over and he’s going, remember? Goes sort of like this.’

  Jeff got up and went to the piano, hit a note or two, and then sat down and played single notes with his right hand as if he were hammering them out. Rick went over and watched him.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘That sounds exactly like it. It sounds like a piano all right;
I mean you make it sound like that marimba.’

  He opened his trumpet case, wiped off his trumpet and put the mouthpiece in, and stood there a minute listening to Jeff before he began to play. Then they were playing ‘Muddy Water’ and Rick was driving it straight ahead, not doing anything in particular, just playing the simple tune one note after the other, and making each single note a shining, fresh thing. He stopped at the end of one chorus, and Jeff took it while he listened, and when Jeff’s chorus was complete, he tilted his trumpet up and took his turn, fulfilling the promise that was in the restraint of his first playing. Jeff looked up at him, squinting his eyes to give more knowledge to his ears. The four men at the bar turned around and listened, their heads twisted sharply up for the sound. It was pure Martin, unmistakable. He stood, one foot hooked over the rung of a chair, and he blew the breath of life into that lean, whip-like trumpet.

  The four at the bar drifted up toward him, and Olga stayed where she was, leaning against the bar smoking a brown cigarette. Smoke pulled a couple of metal tubes out of his vest pocket, shot the brushes out of them, and began to drum lightly against the sides of his legs. Les Cohen’s eyes were popped out a little watching Rick, and every little while he’d shake his head and whisper boy. He was only nineteen then, and it was the first time he’d ever been asked out with any of the great ones.