Young Man With a Horn

by Dorothy Baker

  Rick stopped playing, drew his sleeve across his mouth, and said, ‘I thought we were going to do some drinking.’ He put the trumpet on top of the piano and went to the bar, but the others didn’t follow; they found their cases and got ready to play.

  Rick came back with a glass for Jeff and set it on the piano—can’t be playing piano around here on mush and milk, try this one. You like that? Pink; it’s got grenadine in it; I’d better ask the General over there to make us up a bowl of this and put it where we can get to it easy. He went back to the bar and asked and it was done. A full pitcher of it, pink lemonade of a sort. Rick drank a tumbler full of it at a shot, just as a thirst-quencher. Playing made him thirsty. It burns a man to tear music out of himself for a long time; it dries him out, leaves salt in his mouth, dust in his throat. He has to keep it wetted down, keep everything moving easily, not let anything grate against anything else.

  —General, fill up the jug, but not with any more of that pink wash; fill it up, dear General, with some of that French cognac out of the bottle with the stars on it.

  They played music, then; piano, drums, two reeds, two brass. Smoke marked out the boundaries for them and led them wherever they went with a beat that pulled them along, a sensitive, infinitely various, but uncompromising beat—the core, the pumping heart of music.

  It was an all-star show that night at Silver’s. The only unproven man in it was young Les Cohen, and he proved himself twenty times before the night was out, playing a clarinet that was a wild, sweet thing. He had them raising their eyebrows at each other.

  ‘When’d you start playing that clair’net?’ Smoke said to him, and Les said:

  ‘Oh, papa took it on a loan and the guy never paid, and I got to blowing around on it so much that papa got me a teacher for a couple of weeks. I guess I was twelve.’

  ‘You’d be sure out of luck if the guy’d come back and pay up now, and take it away, now you’ve put yourself to so much trouble learning how to play it,’ Milt Barrow said.

  ‘That would be all right,’ Les said. ‘I’d just go and buy another one.’

  ‘You would? Well, ain’t you the kid, though!’

  ‘What are you guys doing, trying to kid me?’ Les said. The liquor and the excitement had him pretty vague.

  Rick said, ‘You play that clarinet of yours, boy, and none of them can kid you; nobody in the band business can tell you anything when you’re playing that thing that way, don’t you know that?’

  The boy blushed all the way up, and Rick poured him another drink. ‘Here, toss that down and see if you can do any worse or better.’

  He looked across at Art Hazard, that great black ball bouncing on the edge of a little chair. ‘What would you care to play now, Mr. Hazard?’

  ‘I don’t care much what we play, Mr. Martin,’ Art said, ‘just so we get playing it while I can still hold on to this here iron horn of mine. Keeps slipping out of my hand like nobody’s business. I don’t know what’s ailing it tonight.’

  ‘Funny,’ Rick said. ‘I’ve got just the other trouble. I can’t seem to keep mine from sticking to my hand. Can’t shake it off. Like that damned cat.’

  ‘What damned cat?’

  ‘Oh, just a damned cat. Keeps walking on my face, sticking to my hand.’

  ‘I used to know a guy that got toads,’ Hazard said. ‘They’d hop all over his bed, hop all over everything. Hop hop. He tried to stab one once and got himself in the leg, right in the shin. Never did heal up.’

  ‘But this cat,’ Rick said, ‘I’ve really got this cat. It sort of belongs to me. It’s a Siamese cat, and they’re the worst kind.’

  ‘So did this other guy I was telling you about. He was in bad shape with those toads.’

  ‘But this cat—oh hell…’ Rick picked up his trumpet and played the opening bars of “Bugle Call” good and loud, and the rest of

  them were ready for it with a terrific blare at the end of the opening bars; they kicked it back and forth among them, twenty choruses, taking turns at solo variations on the actual bugle call and then jamming through the rest of the thing all together; then reversing the process and doing the bugle call all together and laying off and letting one man solo it through to the end, which was never the end but simply a return to the bugle call. Never-ending bugle call; endless belt of bugle call.

  They played hard and they played well and it wasn’t all solo either. Toward daylight they had built up a blend of melody and harmony that was older and emotionally deeper than the brave virtuosity of the first hours. It was the music of men who look backward with wisdom rather than forward with faith. They were tired now, and dependent on each other, not so ruggedly individualistic. They brought the dawn in with sad and mellow music.

  Woke up this morning when chickens were crowing for day,

  And on the right side of my pillow my man had gone away.

  ‘What time’s it getting to be?’ Milt said, and Rick looked at his watch, but he couldn’t make much of it, it moved too fast for him. He looked at it, held it this way, held it that way, and then he knew that something was wrong. He felt waves of intense heat come up his spine and rise to his head, one after the other, and he tried to get his coat off, but then it was all over and he was on the floor with Smoke and Jeff bending over him and telling each other to go get some

  water. Their faces came into focus and he sat up and looked around.

  ‘I remember falling off the chair,’ he said, ‘just as plain. I was sitting there looking at my watch; then I was falling and falling; it felt like a mile.’

  ‘It wasn’t no mile,’ Smoke said, as if to a child; ‘it was only from there to there. Get up. You’re all right.’

  ‘Sure,’ Rick said. ‘All I need is a drink. And not any of that fancy French dope, either. What I need is some liquor.’

  He got up, made a pass at his knees, put his hand on Smoke’s shoulder, and they walked to the bar, which was no longer attended by a keeper. Smoke smelled at two or three bottles, and then poured three fingers of whisky into a tumbler and shoved it at Rick.

  ‘Drink that,’ he said, ‘and lay off this faintin. Scared the pants off me.’

  ‘Me too,’ Rick said. ‘Did I say anything? I mean, like talking in your sleep?’

  ‘No, nothing. You didn’t say anything until you sat up.’

  ‘What did I say then?’

  ‘You said you fell down.’

  Rick drank the drink, and all the rest of them came up to the bar and helped finish the bottle and told what they knew about fainting.—Fainting’s the same thing as passing out, only shorter; you pass out, you’re out for quite a while generally. It’s like sleeping when you can’t wake up. Fainting’s different; you go under a minute and then you come up again.

  ‘It’s a hell of a silly feeling,’ Rick said. ‘You can’t help what you’re doing.’ He poured a half-inch of whisky into his glass and drank it. ‘I’ve got to get back to town,’ he said. ‘Morrison’s making a record at ten. What time is it now?’

  Eight-fifteen, broad daylight and time to be getting out of New Jersey. ‘Get your stuff and let’s go,’ Rick said. ‘What happened to my horn when I took the fall? Anybody see it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Milt Barrow said. ‘It bounced on the floor and lit on top of the piano.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Les Cohen said. ‘I’ll get it for you.’

  He brought the trumpet and handed it to Rick, and Rick looked it over, pushed the valves, ran up the scale light as a feather, went through some arpeggios, and handed it back to Cohen. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Put it away, will you?’

  All of them went to get their coats and cases then, and Smoke stayed with Rick at the bar. Rick took a bill out of his wallet and put it on the counter under the empty bottle—leave that there for Olga and the General.

  ‘That’s a lot of money,’ Smoke said. ‘You got anything smaller?’

  ‘Oh, what the hell? Cost us more than that to hire a hall, and we had this to ourselves all night.�
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  ‘Hire ten halls for that.’

  ‘Olga thought we were sore. Let her know we aren’t. I like Olga.’ He sagged against the bar, saying: ‘I’ve got to keep going everywhere telling everybody I’m not sore all the time. I got to keep doing that until I tell all of them. Stay away a night or two and they think you’re high-hatting them.’

  ‘You been away longer than a night or two,’ Smoke said, ‘but nobody thinks you’re stuck up; they all know you got married, that’s all. Get married you got to stay home more, that’s all. That’s why Arnold started that cigar store, and got out of music; he had to get out. It can happen to anybody. That’s just some guys’ nature, is all.’

  Rick looked up and said: ‘Trouble with you, you talk too damn much. Pop off about everything. What do you know about some guys’ nature, for Christ’s sake?’

  Smoke gulped and looked startled. His voice was sad. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking about when Arnold left the band. He told me he never got any time to see his children, and his wife got to worrying him, and he just figured he could buy this store and be around home nights, like other guys. I was just telling you. Just thought I’d tell you about Arnold.’

  ‘Oh, all right; tell me about him.’

  ‘I did. Already.’

  ‘Good. But listen, you. I’m not ready to run nobody’s cigar store, yet. And I’m not sticking around home. And I wouldn’t marry the best bitch ever stepped in shoe leather, and don’t forget it.’

  ‘You already did.’

  ‘Her? Well, what if I did, what about it, it hasn’t made me any different, has it? Just because I wasn’t around much for a while, do I get corny? Did I look bad tonight?’

  ‘Baby, you never looked better in your life.’

  ‘Well, lay off me, then. Let me alone; quit ragging me, for God’s sake. I’ve got to figure something out, only I can’t when you keep shooting off your mouth about cigar stores every minute. I got to figure something out.’

  He pitched forward a little and Smoke caught him and leaned him back against the bar.

  ‘You’re all right, boy,’ Smoke said. ‘Come on, let’s go in and run some water over our heads before we go back to town.’

  He took Rick’s arm, and Rick said, ‘You’re the only friend I’ve got, only guy cares whether I live or die, aren’t you?’ And Smoke said: ‘Everybody does. No, not there. In here.’

  Smoke turned on a tap and held Rick’s head under it for two or three minutes. Every time Rick began to bridle, Smoke would apply the pressure of his hand on the back of his neck a little more firmly, but always smoothly, no violence. He kept him under the tap as long as he wanted him to stay; there were no two ways about this business. It was a measure, not a pleasure.

  The iron hand slackened, and Rick stood up and shook his head and threw water all over the place and all over Smoke.

  ‘Just like giving a dog a bath to try fixing you up,’ Smoke said. ‘Only you could have told me you was going to shake. I might as well go in myself, now.’ He turned on the tap and pushed his head into the stream. Not a towel in the place. They dried their necks with their handkerchiefs and just let the water drip off their heads.

  ‘Good thing I did that,’ Rick said on the way out. ‘I wasn’t feeling so good for a minute or two back there. Where the guys?’

  They were in the car waiting, looking cold. Rick got in under the wheel and Smoke got in from the same side and shoved him over and started the car himself. Rick asked politely what the idea was, and Smoke said no idea, he just thought he’d drive. Just felt like it, somehow; you know how sometimes you get to feeling like one thing or another?

  Les Cohen was on the other side of Rick. Halfway into New York he fell asleep, his head bent back over the back of the seat, and Rick said how that boy could sleep driving along in that kind of weather beat him. Must be five ten degrees below zero. And having said the words he went into a chill, a real one. His teeth chattered, bone against bone, and he shook all over. He tried to light a cigarette for warmth, but he couldn’t make it, and Barrow lighted it for him and stuck it in his mouth. But that didn’t do any good; the cigarette dropped out of his mouth in the next spasm of shaking, and he burned his hand trying to find it. It was a bad ride. When they were back in town they took Les and Barrow and Art home and then it was ten minutes to ten, and the three of them went to the Grandbranch Building without stopping for breakfast or a change of clothes.

  Morrison and most of his band were in the studio when Rick and Smoke and Jeff came in. It made a stir: Rick, hatless, his hair stiff all over his head in frozen curls, his face pearl-gray with no light in it. There were ashes all over the front of his overcoat, and one wing of his collar had pulled loose from the collar button and was flying free.

  ‘How are you, Phil?’ Rick said. ‘Turned cold, didn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, sure, it turned cold, all right. You going to be all right to play?’

  ‘Me?’ Rick said. He took off his overcoat and dropped it on a chair. His collar poked him in the chin and he buttoned it and looked better, but not so very much.

  ‘What happened?’ Phil said to Jeff. ‘Did he fall in a river?’

  Smoke made the answer: ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s just rain. What are you making this time?’

  ‘Four sides,’ Phil said. ‘“It Had to Be You” and “I Wonder What’s Become of Joe,” and then “Wistful and Blue” and “I Must Have That Man.”’ He kept his eye on Rick while he talked. ‘We changed the arrangement on “It Had to Be You” this morning,’ he said to Rick. ‘The trio sings first, the way it used to be, but you come out of them and take the first full solo.’

  ‘Good.’

  The technical men were getting things ready. The studio was full of men tuning instruments, running the scale, playing snatches.

  ‘Sit down,’ Phil yelled. ‘Get in your places. We’re going to begin. Pull the piano up closer.’ He gave directions like a section boss, told them just what to do. He always told them just what to do, because he was always the one who knew. ‘You stand up there all the time,’ he said to Rick. ‘Stand right beside Harry and play straight into it through your chorus, and pipe down for the backgrounds.’

  ‘Yes, Mr. Morrison,’ Rick said, and he took his place beside Harry Cromwell, the hot man of the vocal trio. Smoke and Jeff sat down in a corner.

  The light came on. Phil Morrison waved his stick and the trio started to sing, backed only by piano and drums, and at the end of their chorus Rick broke through, out in front of the full orchestra for a chorus that was as reckless a piece of trumpet playing as any the Grandbranch Building ever contained. He was Orpheus on the loose for thirty-two bars. At one point Smoke couldn’t contain himself: he said Oh Oh right out loud, and you can still hear it on the record, if you listen closely. At the end of the solo Rick dropped back for the saxophone figures and worked in the background, but after that he couldn’t be heard at all; he kept his trumpet up to his mouth but he didn’t play.

  He looked fine on ‘Wistful and Blue,’ not so mad, not so rash, but better, somehow, more intelligent and sensitive. It was the best record Morrison ever put out—a good melody, arranged not as a succession of solo choruses with varied rhythmic accompaniments, but as a beautifully developed series of variations on a clean tune. It began with a brief ensemble introduction, followed by an equally brief passage from Rick’s trumpet; and the rest was a matter of fine balance, one instrument coming up to show against the background and then dropping back to let another one in. It was a pretty performance on all sides.

  They didn’t finish the four tunes until ten minutes after eleven, and when they opened the door, Josephine Jordan was waiting in the hall with Matthew Brown, and she was on the point of getting temperamental.

  ‘What’s the good of using another studio?’ she was saying. ‘What’s the good of using another room, when all my accompanying artists are in here, in this one, making records for Phil Morrison?’

  Smoke went to
ward her. ‘We ain’t making a record, honey,’ he said; ‘we’re just listening to Rick make one.’

  And then Josephine, who was as big a name as New York could offer in that season, wanted to know just why in hell was it that her accompanying artists would rather loll around listening to a bunch of mugs making a record than make one themselves. Which thing, she wanted to know, was more important? She tapped a patent-leather slipper, fast, while waiting for her answer. Her head was up and there was fire in her eye.

  ‘How could we be on time to make a record with you, when Rick’s going to play on it too and he had to make four for Morrison first? That’s why. We’re just waiting around for Rick to get through with this one, so he can work on yours.’

  That brought a snort but nothing else. Rick came up to them with his trumpet under his arm. Josephine looked at him. She was open-mouthed with surprise for a moment, and then she broke into the Jordan laugh, a well-tempered version of the old Hi-Yi.

  ‘Wait till Amy gets a look at that shiner!’ Rick felt the side of his face. There was a lump on his temple where he’d struck it when he fainted.

  ‘No shiner; it’s a bump. I was in an accident.’

  ‘Yah,’ Jeff said, ‘he was in an accident. It was almost pretty bad.’

  ‘Looks bad enough to me the way it is,’ Josephine said. ‘It looks terrible. What are you going to tell Amy? She was burnt up anyway the way you ran out on her party last night.’

  ‘I didn’t run out. I just didn’t show up. You go?’

  ‘Sure thing, I went. You missed something, running out that way. That boy Jay’s a kick; you want to watch him.’

  ‘Who else was there?’

  Nobody else, according to Josephine. Nobody else except Jay and Amy and that girl Maude, Amy’s friend. Maude Petersen, enough like Amy to be her twin—walked like Amy, talked like Amy, dressed like Amy. The only difference was that Maude, if you wanted Josephine’s opinion, was a little off in the head, just slightly off her nut. She’d sit and stare and stare and then say she was a negro-what’s-it, a negrophile, said it twenty times, couldn’t seem to get it off her mind.