The Jazz Kid

by James Lincoln Collier

  What was the point in Pa taking away my cornet? I wasn’t going to pass, no matter what. He’d put me in the plumbing business, and soon enough I’d run off and go into the music business anyway. Why not let me do it now? But I knew he wouldn’t.

  I was still lying there like that when I heard him and John come into the apartment. They were laughing about something. I sat up on the bed to listen. Then I jumped up, opened up my cornet case, took out the mouthpiece that Tommy gave me, slipped it into my pocket, closed the case, and lay back down on the bed again. Two minutes later the door opened and Pa came in. “All right, son, give it to me.”

  I looked at him, but I went on lying on the bed with my hands behind my head. “It’s over there. If you want it, go get it yourself.”

  For a long moment he went on staring at me. Then he said, “Paulie, pick it up and bring it to me.”

  “No,” I said. “If you want it, get it yourself.”

  “Paulie, I’m warning you.”

  “I’m not going to get it.”

  He moved so fast I hardly saw him coming. The next thing I knew he hauled me off the bed and stood me upright. He smacked me across the face with his palm about as hard as he could. Then I found myself sitting on the edge of the bed, blood running out of my nose, across my mouth and onto my shirt. I put my hands over my face and started to cry. I didn’t want them to hear, and I tried to hold my mouth shut with my hands. But the sobs kept busting out anyway. After a while I lay down on the bed with my face in the pillow to cut down on the sound. I was smearing blood from my nose on the pillow, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about them, or having a decent home, a job, or a future. I didn’t belong there anymore.

  AFTER A WHILE I quit crying, got off the bed and had a look at myself in the mirror. There was blood all around my mouth and my nose was swollen. I wondered if it was broke. Could you play the cornet with a broken nose? I took a look across the room. My cornet case was gone. I took out my handkerchief and cleaned myself up as best I could. Then I went back and laid on the bed in the dark.

  They left me alone. John did his homework on the kitchen table, where we ate, and they kept their voices down, in case I was asleep. But I wasn’t asleep; I was lying there in the dark, thinking. It didn’t seem like I had any choice. I had to run away.

  It scared me to think about it. Had I ever been away from Ma and Pa? I thought back. I’d never been away from the family, not for a single night. Once in a while Ma or Pa might go off to visit some relative, but never both at once, unless they took me and John, like a couple of times we went downstate to see our uncle. Actually, it was kind of nice when Ma was away for the night, for Pa would take me and John out to a greasy spoon for supper, and let us choose whatever we wanted—hot pastrami sandwich, hot dogs, chocolate cake, anything.

  One way or another I’d always been with my family. It was mighty scary to think of living somewhere without them. I reached in my pocket and felt my mouthpiece, for the comfort of it. Could I take it? Would I get homesick and come crawling home with my tail between my legs? That would be terrible. If I was scared, I’d just be scared. I’d have to stick it out.

  I got off the bed, went softly to our bureau, opened my drawer and hauled out the money I had hidden under my shirts. I took it over to the window where some light was coming in, and counted it. Forty-seven dollars. That was a lot of money. But it wouldn’t last forever. I’d have to lay out something for a cornet. I probably could get one for fifteen bucks in a pawnshop if I took it without a case. That’d leave me just over thirty bucks. If I was careful I could stretch that out for two, maybe even three weeks. Time enough to get some kind of a job. You could always get a job as a newsboy, although it hardly paid enough to live on. But I wouldn’t need much, a place to lay my head somewhere at night and my meals. I could eat pretty cheap—doughnut and coffee for breakfast, cheese sandwich and soda pop for lunch, a plate of beans or hash and a couple of pieces of bread for dinner—maybe a dollar a day for food.

  Meanwhile, I’d get some playing jobs going. I’d be able to take jobs at night, now. That’d make a big difference. And without anything else to worry about I could get in four hours a day practice, easy. Go around with Tommy to where his band was playing and learn the new tunes. Sit in where I could. Why not? It was how Tommy got started in music.

  The big question was whether I had the guts to do it. I wasn’t sure I did. There was only one way to find out. I put the money back under my shirts and lay down on my bed to think about how scary it would be to run away. I can tell you, just thinking about it made me pretty nervous.

  After a while the door opened a crack, and there was Ma in the ray of light coming in from the living room. She peered in at me for a minute to see if I was awake. When she saw I was, she opened the door all the way and came in. “I brought you something to eat, Paulie.” She put a glass of milk and a plate with a sandwich on it on the table.

  “You don’t have to feel sorry for me,” I said.

  She could see me in the light from the door, but her back was to the light and I couldn’t see her. “Poor Paulie,” she said.

  “Don’t call me that,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything. Then she said, “There’s no use in taking that attitude, Paulie. You brought it on yourself.” She turned and walked to the door. Then she turned back. “Eat something. You’ll feel better.”

  I didn’t say anything. I waited until she closed the door before I started gobbling down the sandwich and the milk. Then I put on my pajamas, went to bed, and fell asleep right away.

  We had two days off because it was the end of the term. I don’t know when Pa took my cornet back to Hull House, but it must have been right away, for the first chance I got I took a look in Ma and Pa’s room and didn’t see it anywhere. He never said anything about it to me. I figured he told Mr. Sylvester the truth—I had to quit music until I got my grades up. I don’t guess it was the first time Mr. Sylvester heard that.

  Pa let me sit home for a day with an ice pack on my nose to get the swelling down, but the next day he took me off with him and John on a job. I had to earn my keep around there, he said, and if I wasn’t going to do my schoolwork, I could start learning the business. It didn’t matter to me. So far as I was concerned I was finished with school, finished with the plumbing business. It was only a matter of time. I didn’t have much to say to Pa, either—just did what he told me and kept my mouth shut. Once he told me it was no use to sulk, I’d made my bed and had to lie in it. I didn’t answer but went on with what I was doing.

  I reckoned I’d better wait to run away until school started up again for the second term. That way I could take off in the morning, and they wouldn’t miss me until suppertime. I had to figure a way to get some clothes out of the house. Clothes were mighty expensive, and I wouldn’t have any money to spare for them. I just hoped I wouldn’t grow too much over the next while. Especially my feet: shoes cost a fortune, Ma always said.

  On Monday, when school started up again, I went over to Rory’s. It was too cold to sit outside, so we sat in his kitchen looking at the calendar for July 1921, which had a picture of the Great Chicago Fire on it. “I made up my mind,” I said. “I’m going to run away.”

  “Oh yeah?” Rory said. “You better wait till your nose unswells. People will think you got some disease.”

  “It’s going down. I don’t want to wait too long because I’ll lose my lip.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “Yeah, a little.”

  “Well, you can always go back home.”

  “No. No I can’t. Pa isn’t going to let me play no matter what. Sooner or later he’d put me in the plumbing business working ten hours a day every day but Sunday. How would I ever practice? How would I keep my lip up, how would I learn new tunes? I couldn’t play tea dances because I’d be down in some freezing-cold cellar threading pipe. I have to run off sooner or later. It might as well be now.”

  “Maybe there’s other things be
sides music, Paulie,” Rory said.

  “No,” I said. “There isn’t. Not for me, there isn’t.”

  “It might be better if you waited till you was older. Sixteen, seventeen,” Rory said. “They couldn’t say much about it if you was seventeen.”

  “No,” I said. “You have to practice every day to keep your lip. I can’t take the chance.”

  “What’s your ma going to say?”

  I didn’t like thinking about it. She’d backed me up when Pa wanted me to quit the first time, and here I was, running away on her. “I can’t help it,” I said. “If only she could see I wasn’t cut out for school, or threading pipes, or a nice home. What do I care about having a nice home?”

  Rory shook his head. “I wouldn’t have minded,” he said. “Well, if you need a place to sleep, you can come here. I got a couple of extra blankets. You can sleep in the easy chair.”

  “Yeah, thanks. But this is the first place they’ll look. They’re bound to come over and ask you if you saw me.”

  “Where are you going? Tommy’s?”

  “I guess so. To start with anyway. Maybe his landlady has a room to rent.”

  Monday turned over into Tuesday and Tuesday into Wednesday, and there I was, still living at home, still going to school. I couldn’t go on like that. Either I had to give up on running away and quit music, or leave. But I was having trouble working up the guts to do it. It was scary, all right.

  Wednesday night when Ma said she was going over to see Grampa on Thursday morning, I knew my chance had come. Well, that was it—no choice anymore. Either I did it this time or I could forget about it. So on Thursday morning, instead of going off to school, I rambled around the block and then slipped down the alley across the street from our building. There was a row of garbage cans here, and a heap of old boards and bricks nobody got around to cleaning up. I squatted down behind the garbage cans where I could see our front stoop. It was pretty uncomfortable, and after a while my legs began to cramp up. I shifted around to kneel, which eased the cramping, but then my knees began to get sore from the dirt and stones. Running away was more of a pain than I figured on. I crouched up again to give my knees a break. Then I saw Ma come down the stoop, carrying a bag of stuff for Grampa.

  Suddenly it hit me that I might never see her again. That was a shock. I went kind of numb, and grabbed on to the rim of a garbage can. In a minute she reached the bottom step, turned off to the left, and walked out of sight. Would I ever see her again? Well, sure I would. It was crazy to think that I wouldn’t. But it might be a long time—years, maybe. Suppose she died in the meantime? I shook my head to get that idea out of it. Then I got up, went down the alley and peered out. Ma was out of sight. I crossed the street and went on up to the apartment. Being there alone felt kind of funny. It never happened very much—once in a while, but not often.

  But now it was empty, and quiet—no sound of John talking, no sound of Pa’s footsteps going into the bathroom, no sound of Ma clanking pots and pans on the stove. I went into the kitchen and sat down at the old wooden table. How many times had I sat there before? Hundreds, I figured; thousands, maybe. I tried to multiply it out, but my heart wasn’t in it. When would I sit there again? I looked around. It was all so familiar and homey. Everything in it reminded me of Ma—the big spoons she used to stir soup and beans with, hanging over the stove; the little china teapot she made her cup of tea in every afternoon; the little salt and pepper shakers shaped like swans me and John gave her for Christmas one year when we were little. There wasn’t a thing in that kitchen she hadn’t touched a thousand times. The kitchen didn’t just remind me of Ma; it was Ma.

  I realized I better get out of there before I busted into tears. I got a paper bag out from under the sink where Ma kept them, and went into our room, trying to keep my eyes from roaming over familiar things. I opened my bureau drawer, shoved my money in my back pocket, loaded some socks, underwear and extra shirts into the bag. I got a pair of pants out of the closet, and my old sneakers, and shoved them into the bag, too. That pretty much filled it up. Then I crouched down and got my cornet mouthpiece out from behind the bureau where I had hid it.

  I was pretty nervous, and now I just wanted to get out of there. I had a quick look around to see if there was anything else I ought to take. My history book was lying on my desk. For a minute I thought about taking it down with me and chucking it into the garbage can on my way out. I decided not to. It wasn’t mine—I had no right to throw it away. Then I left.

  Tommy would be asleep. I couldn’t wake him up for a while, but I went out to his neighborhood anyway, killed some time over a cup of coffee, killed some more time in a train station reading a newspaper I found on a bench there. When it got to be four o’clock I bought him his usual coffee and pie and went on up.

  He sat up in bed when I came in, rubbing his eyes. “Boy, what a head I got. They brought this guy Bix Beiderbecke into the joint last night, after he got off his own gig. He sat in all night. I can see why everybody’s just nuts about him, but boy does he drink.”

  “Who does he sound like?”

  Tommy shook his head. “Sounds like himself. Got a beautiful sound, great ideas. He don’t slur so much the way the colored guys do. Pings off the notes like bells. It’s a whole different idea from Oliver. I wish I could play like that. He got me to thinking maybe I ought to change my whole style.”

  “He’s better than King Oliver?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Different, is all. I got to hear him some more.”

  “Where was this gig? One of Herbie’s?”

  “No. Some other crook named Silva.”

  “Is it regular?”

  “So far.” He swung his feet out of bed and reached for the coffee. “I need that,” he said. “It’s just another after-hours dump out in the old Levee.” He took another swallow of coffee and blinked his eyes. “I ought to learn my lesson. Some fellas can drink and play. I can’t. Lose control of the horn. I was hitting clams all over the place. I wanted to play good in front of Bix and I made a hash of it. These people he came in with, they were loaded with dough and were buying everybody in the band drinks. You don’t like to say no to them. I should of ordered gin and told the waiter to fill the glass with water.”

  “Maybe Bix will come back again and you’ll have another chance.”

  “He said he would. He don’t know how long he’ll be in Chi, but he said he’d come back.” He swallowed some coffee and bit off the end of the pie. “Where’s your horn?”

  “I don’t have it anymore.”

  “What the hell do you mean, kid?”

  “Pa took it back to Hull House. I flunked everything at school and he took my horn back.”

  “Jesus. That’s too bad, kid. Just when you was coming along real good. What can you do about it?”

  “I already did it. I ran away.” I held out the paper bag so he could see into it. “I took my clothes and my mouthpiece and left. I got enough money to last me for a couple of weeks. I got to buy a new horn.”

  “Ran away, did you?” He took another bite of pie and a swallow of coffee. “You sure that was the right thing to do?”

  “If I figured I had a chance to pass I would have stuck it out. Give up playing for a little while until I pulled my grades up. But I didn’t see where that was going to happen.”

  Tommy shook his head. “I never did understand that about you, kid. You ain’t stupid. How come you can’t pass?”

  I frowned and looked down at the floor. “I guess I don’t want to,” I said.

  “That don’t make any sense at all.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s the way I am, is all.” I wanted to get off this topic. “Anyway, it was either run away or quit playing. I didn’t see where I had a choice.”

  “Your ma agreed to your pa turning your horn in?”

  “She said I had my chance. She said I should have tried more.”

  Tommy shook his head. “It’s a tough one, kid. I can see that. Now
you take me, kid, my family was pretty low-class. Nobody cared much about school. My pa could read and write and do sums enough to make sure his money came out right at the end of the week, but he didn’t have much more schooling than that. He didn’t care about it very much. I don’t know what Ma would of said about it, but she was dead. Sis quit school and went to work as soon as she could, and when Pa busted his leg in the stockyard I had to go to work and nobody ever said anything about it. But you come from a good family. Maybe you ought to think about it.”

  “I thought about it already. If I go back home I’m bound to flunk again. Pa’ll put me in the plumbing business and that’ll be the end of music. I don’t care about anything else, I’m going to be a musician. They can’t stop me.”

  “Well I can understand that, kid. I was the same way myself—nothing going to stop me from music. But I didn’t have nothing else going for me. Without music I’d be working in the stockyards, lumberyards, steel mill, maybe.” He ate some more pie and swallowed some coffee. “But you got a chance to get yourself a trade. Something to fall back on if times get hard again. I wish I had a trade.”

  “I made up my mind,” I said.

  He finished off the pie, and licked his fingers. “Well if you made up your mind, I guess that’s it. I ain’t doing such a hot job running my own life.”

  I didn’t get that. It seemed to me he was doing perfect.

  “You’re doing what you want to do, aren’t you?”

  He drank the last of the coffee. “Yeah, but what’s the future in it? I can’t even think about getting married, much less having kids.”