Read Online Good Hope Road: A Novel by Sarita Mandanna - Free Book Online

the barn, casting bands of haze over the dark wood walls and drawing meadow scents from the hay that carpeted the floors.
    When finally he came back to the house, he found a cummerbund left immaculately folded on his bed. One belonging to his father. A peace offering of dark blue silk and smelling of cedar roses.

FIVE

    Paris • June 1914
    he ticket to the fight cost me nearabout a month’s wages. It’s most of what I got in my pocket, but hell if I care. I’d have emptied my pockets and given my pants too had it come to that, but no way am I goin’ to miss watchin’ Jack Johnson.
    I hold on to that ticket all the way to my room in the 12th arrondissement. What with the fight the next evenin’, and the Grand Prix the day after, Paris was ’specially crowded, and I ain’t ’bout to let no quick-fingered thief pickpocket that ticket from me as he hustles past. I hold on tight, lookin’ down now and again at it in my fist. Just the sight of it got me grinnin’, from one end of my mug to the other like some soft-brained fool.
    Ain’t nobody seem to pay me much mind – things different here in Europe. Maybe these Frenchmen just more polite, or better at hidin’ what they really think. Maybe it just the magic of the City of Light – it bein’ one of those soft-smellin’, slow-movin’ summer afternoons, everythin’ all bee-stung and honey-swollen. Anyhow, there ain’t been one person starin’ or mutterin’ somethin’ unholy as I pass; one or two men even nod and tip their hat to me. By and by, I get over the novelty of this, and begin to tip mine right back. I come across a powerful comely cher, all chocolate eyes and swellin’ curves, and I sweep my hat off my head and bow low. She look over at me, and her eyes, they twinkle as she smiles.
    I laugh from the pleasure of it, and walk on, a bounce in my step. I start to hear it, the secret music of the city, its hummin’bird chords in the gardens, slip-slappin’ note by note through the Seine.
    La Ville-Lumière , they call Paris, but this ain’t so much a city of light but a city of music. A man might sit at any one of the café tables in the Rue de la Paix and what music might burst from his fingers! Treble and bass clefs, and the sax baritone. Beat patterns in every corner – in a bridge that curve just so, in all the carvings of the Notre Dame, through all of these old, old stones. And colour, so much colour – blue, green, and the chocolate of a woman’s eyes, all of it comin’ together like notes in a chord.
    I see the music in my head, can feel the keys of the piano start to dip inside of me, and before I know what’s what, I’m whistlin’ a tune out loud. Grinnin’ like a fool and holdin’ on to my precious ticket, hummin’ the music of Paris right across town.
    I get to my room and hide the ticket behind the one picture frame that sits on the wall. I wink at the old dame frownin’ down at me. ‘Jack Johnson, doll,’ I tell her. ‘I’m gonna watch him in the ring tomorrow, and don’t you wish you could walk right outta that frame and come along.’
    Jack Johnson. I’m talkin’ ’bout Jack Johnson . The Galveston Giant. Four-time defendin’ world heavyweight champion, twenty-one time defendin’ world coloured heavyweight champion. He’s been champion since 1908, with eyes turned now to ‘White Hope’ Frank Moran to see if he can take the title away from the Giant. The papers on both sides of the Atlantic been full of the upcomin’ match and I be goin’ over each article so many times, I can repeat the words with my eyes closed.
    Moran got age on his side – just twenty-seven – while Jack a long- in-the-tooth thirty-six. Moran been in serious trainin’ all the weeks leadin’ up to the fight, hell-bent on droppin’ fifteen pounds before he step in that ring. I hear tell that on top of his runnin’ and jumpin’ rope, he be gettin’ his sparrin’ partner to sock him hard in the jaw. Hard as he can stand – it toughen