Read Online Honky-Tonk Girl by Jr. Charles Beckman, Jr. - Free Book Online

boy. But he play good horn, too—jes’ like ol’ Teegerstrom hisself used to play in the Twenties.”
    Then his face sobered. “An’ Zack Turner. He grew up right in our neighborhood, Johnny. I sure grieved to hear of his passing so sudden.”
    He suddenly pulled Johnny off the stand with him. “I want you to meet the young lady who rendered the songs for us. Make me think Bessie Smith herself come back to life!” Painfully, the old blind man fumbled his way around the stand as he talked, to a table where the girl sat by herself.
    â€œJohnny, this here’s Miss Ruth Jordon. She met me at the train today. She’s fixin’ to write a book ’bout me,” he said proudly. “Miss Jordon, you shake hands with one of my boys, Johnny Nickles. He come to me as a youngster and I taught him how to blow his horn.”
    She put down her drink and smiled. “Johnny Nickles,” she said, in her sweet singer’s voice. “I’ve known you for years. At least I’ve known your trumpet for years. I have every record you’ve ever made.” She shook his hand warmly.
    â€œHe come from a breedin’ place of good trumpet players, Missie,” the old piano player grinned. “Buddy Bolden, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, they all grew up right in the same town where this boy come from.”
    Johnny swaggered a little. “Yeah, they played a little horn, too, Pops.”
    The old man jabbed his ribs playfully. “Same ol’ Johnny. Cocky as a game rooster, but goodhearted down inside. You git your horn now, boy, and let’s make a little music for these people, the way we used to in the Vieux Carré .”
    The girl’s blue-eyed gaze followed Johnny back to the stand.
    Mamba struck a diminished chord, a gray and lonely sound, then there was a breath of harmony like lacy shadows of Spanish moss, rising suddenly to a martial crescendo.
    Johnny lifted his horn and closed his eyes. He knew the girl was watching him and he had the sudden puerile desire to show off, like a little boy walking a high board fence.
    He thought back to when he was a ragged kid selling the Picayune newspaper on street corners. He remembered following the funeral bands and the advertising bandwagons on Sundays to catch a glimpse of his idols, King Oliver and Armstrong. He remembered the high yellow girls in the tenderloin district, the fruit he swiped at the French market, the licorice taste of absinthe. And always the music, the driving two-beat rhythm with the weaving polyphonic patterns and counterpoint and old Mamba telling him over and over, “Play a pretty ho’n, boy. Don’t try for a lot of screeching notes that don’t mean nothing. Keep the melody and the harmony clear in your mind. Then play your riffs from that.”
    Johnny tried to remember those things and put them in his music that night. But other things popped up and got in the way. His mind was fuzzy and uncertain. Instead of thinking about the music, he kept seeing a grinning skull on a scrap of torn manuscript paper and the penciled notes blowing off the paper, whirling away into the dark and empty sky....
    What he played was weak and uncertain. It wasn’t the old Johnny Nickles. The sharp suits and the diamond ring and the swagger were still there. But they were a front. The heart had gone out of his music.
    When they had finished, there was a smattering of applause, but it was only a polite gesture. Johnny put his horn back in the case and went to the bar. He ordered a fifth of Scotch. A half-hour later he had gotten on the outside of most of it, and he was still sober.
    He was seated, morose and thoughtful at the bar, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Old Mamba had taken another rest from the stand. “That ain’t goin’ to bring it back, boy,” he said sadly, touching the bottle.
    â€œWhat the hell you talkin’ about?” Johnny snapped. His face was