Read Online Jack of Diamonds by Bryce Courtenay - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bryce Courtenay
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was every weekday except my library days. Reading was something I could never give up, but I persuaded myself there would still be plenty of time to read at night. Besides, after three hours my lips were too sore to play. If I could spend two hours playing under the steps at the back of the Jazz Warehouse and then another hour at home, perhaps I might one day learn how to play jazz.
CHAPTER THREE
WITH THE LIBRARY SORTED out, I had four afternoons a week free to ‘hit the steps’, as Mac had said after our visit to the Jazz Warehouse on Friday. He’d encouraged me to play my harmonica, but we both realised that trying to listen to the jam sessions while I worked on a few chord progressions wasn’t going to work. After my initial attempt, he decided to join his old group out in front so I could mess about trying to follow the musicians. I’d said to him, ‘Mac, I don’t mind not playing at the jam session. I can take stuff home in my head and work on it there.’ But he wouldn’t hear of me not playing the harmonica at a session.
‘Jack, never mind me. I get to hear the music properly with my friends and you and me can talk on the way home. Hey, that’s what buddies are all about – leave some space for one another.’
While it was true that I could carry a lot of music in my head, it was much better trying to work it out on the spot. In this way I could hear a melody or some piece of musical phrasing, then attempt to play it. Then, when it was repeated later in the jam session, I could play along and see how I was doing.
I sensed that Mac was a bit of a loner, too. He never talked about other guys. I think he’d enjoyed the twins when they were little and he’d tell me funny stories about them, but now they were teenagers, going on fifteen, and I don’t think it was the same for him. Like I said before, I wished my mom had married Mac and that he was my father. He was always cheerful and didn’t seem to have bad moods, even when he’d been in a labour line since early morning or done a hard day’s manual labour on a work site. Sometimes he’d come to the jam session looking shabby and dirty after work, but he’d always greet me with ‘Hi, Brother Jack,’ poking his head under the steps and waving to let me know he’d arrived.
After that first time, when Dolly and the twins had been out quilting, we’d separate when we approached the neighbourhood, just in case someone from Cabbagetown saw us together and told Dolly that the one-time ‘enemies’ were thick as thieves. I’d go ahead and he’d wait five minutes before following.
Three weeks went by and it was the Christmas school-holiday break, so I had almost nothing to do during the day except practise and read and play marbles with friends or go skating with them on the big pond in the factory area along the banks of the Don. It stank to high heaven in the summer and even frogs wouldn’t go in it, but when it iced up and the stench froze it was our winter playground. I was a pretty good skater and shinny player. We’d play in the mornings when the air from the gas depot didn’t stink as much and the surface of the pond was freshly frozen. But still, if you fell and got your face near the ice, it smelled real nasty. Pond hockey was the best part of winter.
One night a Panhandle Hook blew in over Lake Ontario, and I knew that next morning the ice on the pond would be perfectly frozen with no slush. I was on my way to play shinny when I met Mac coming down the stairs. ‘Hi, Jack,’ he said quietly, so his voice wouldn’t carry to ‘them upstairs’. He pointed to my skates tied by the laces and slung over my shoulder. ‘Shinny?’
I nodded. Then he pointed to the front door to indicate that he’d meet me in the street.
Once outside and away from the house, he said, ‘Let’s have a look at that hockey stick.’
I handed him the worn and battered stick, and after examining it for a moment, he said, ‘Bit small for you, isn’t
CHAPTER THREE
WITH THE LIBRARY SORTED out, I had four afternoons a week free to ‘hit the steps’, as Mac had said after our visit to the Jazz Warehouse on Friday. He’d encouraged me to play my harmonica, but we both realised that trying to listen to the jam sessions while I worked on a few chord progressions wasn’t going to work. After my initial attempt, he decided to join his old group out in front so I could mess about trying to follow the musicians. I’d said to him, ‘Mac, I don’t mind not playing at the jam session. I can take stuff home in my head and work on it there.’ But he wouldn’t hear of me not playing the harmonica at a session.
‘Jack, never mind me. I get to hear the music properly with my friends and you and me can talk on the way home. Hey, that’s what buddies are all about – leave some space for one another.’
While it was true that I could carry a lot of music in my head, it was much better trying to work it out on the spot. In this way I could hear a melody or some piece of musical phrasing, then attempt to play it. Then, when it was repeated later in the jam session, I could play along and see how I was doing.
I sensed that Mac was a bit of a loner, too. He never talked about other guys. I think he’d enjoyed the twins when they were little and he’d tell me funny stories about them, but now they were teenagers, going on fifteen, and I don’t think it was the same for him. Like I said before, I wished my mom had married Mac and that he was my father. He was always cheerful and didn’t seem to have bad moods, even when he’d been in a labour line since early morning or done a hard day’s manual labour on a work site. Sometimes he’d come to the jam session looking shabby and dirty after work, but he’d always greet me with ‘Hi, Brother Jack,’ poking his head under the steps and waving to let me know he’d arrived.
After that first time, when Dolly and the twins had been out quilting, we’d separate when we approached the neighbourhood, just in case someone from Cabbagetown saw us together and told Dolly that the one-time ‘enemies’ were thick as thieves. I’d go ahead and he’d wait five minutes before following.
Three weeks went by and it was the Christmas school-holiday break, so I had almost nothing to do during the day except practise and read and play marbles with friends or go skating with them on the big pond in the factory area along the banks of the Don. It stank to high heaven in the summer and even frogs wouldn’t go in it, but when it iced up and the stench froze it was our winter playground. I was a pretty good skater and shinny player. We’d play in the mornings when the air from the gas depot didn’t stink as much and the surface of the pond was freshly frozen. But still, if you fell and got your face near the ice, it smelled real nasty. Pond hockey was the best part of winter.
One night a Panhandle Hook blew in over Lake Ontario, and I knew that next morning the ice on the pond would be perfectly frozen with no slush. I was on my way to play shinny when I met Mac coming down the stairs. ‘Hi, Jack,’ he said quietly, so his voice wouldn’t carry to ‘them upstairs’. He pointed to my skates tied by the laces and slung over my shoulder. ‘Shinny?’
I nodded. Then he pointed to the front door to indicate that he’d meet me in the street.
Once outside and away from the house, he said, ‘Let’s have a look at that hockey stick.’
I handed him the worn and battered stick, and after examining it for a moment, he said, ‘Bit small for you, isn’t
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