Read Online One Day the Wind Changed by Tracy Daugherty - Free Book Online Page A

like Mama’s word puzzles. An eight-piece trap kit sat in the middle of the living room, between two wooden floor lamps arranged like spotlights. In the lamp glow, the bright red drums sparkled like Dorothy’s slippers in The Wizard of Oz .
    Reginald brought my father half a glass of beer. Then he sat on the stool behind the snare drum and picked up a pair of sticks. Brushes-similar to my father’s painting tools. Reginald kept his sunglasses on. “I looked y’all up,” he said. He did a “slow Celtic march” with the hi-hat, the bass drum, and the snare. “In the library. The genealogy section. O’Doherty. You come from the north of Ireland. County Donegal. Rebels, warriors.” The drumbeat quickened. A tick-tick on the large gold cymbal, the chiming of a bell. “The O’Dohertys were the last remaining tribe to resist the British before the shame of the Ulster plantations—one of your ancestors, a fellow named Cahir, sacked the city of Derry. That brought the Brits’ blood to a boil, let me tell you.” He laughed. “They came after him and that’s when your family crammed into the shanties. I was right about you.”
    He varied the march-beat. Jazz and genealogy were his hobbies, he said. His family was Scottish. One night, in the downtown library, he had researched our name when his great-grandmother’s trail dead-ended. “The thing I like about family history is it makes you bigger than you are, bigger than the daily grind. Like flying. The desert’s a hell of a lot more impressive from above.”
    He thumped the tom-tom. “So, young lord.” He looked at me, eyes hidden behind his shades. “Bet you didn’t know you had the blood of rebellion in you, eh? Next time someone gives you guff, remember you’re a warrior!” He offered me the sticks. “Take a turn?”
    He was the warrior, I thought. The clan-lord. A sky-god.
    A pilot. A drummer. A father of pretty girls.
    On his right arm, a running-horse tattoo.
    I glanced at Dad, pleading. Can I take the sticks? He shook his head.
    â€œBut Dad!”
    The gentle tyranny of his frailty. My family’s heroes have all passed on, I thought. Long ago. Nothing now but ghosts, hoping to suck us dry. “We should go soon,” Dad said. “Baby girl back home …”
    â€œHow ‘bout it, boy? Got a hobby?” Reginald asked me, grinning.
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œI took up drumming when I was your age,” he said. “It’s kept me going, all these years. We all need something . You should try it.” He made the hi-hat hiss. “What about you?” he asked the slumping shanty man in the corner. “What’s your pleasure, old fellow?”
    My father stared at his empty glass. “Oh. I paint, I guess.”
    As he spoke, Ceci Jo and Jeannie pranced into the room. “There they are, the Scottish queens,” Reginald said, staring with frank delight at the beauty of his girls. He rattled a tambourine—first against his knee, then on top of his big, bald head. I had never witnessed such a talent for life. It embarrassed and excited me.
    The girls slipped out the door, wearing tight blue shorts. My father rose. “Okay, young lord,” Reginald said to me. “Next time, you’ll play me a paradiddle.”
    â€œThanks for the beer,” Dad said. He stepped out under the stars. I followed him. He was quiet. “What’s that one?” I asked, pointing to a constellation south of the Milky Way. He didn’t respond.
    â€œDad?”
    â€œHm?”
    â€œWhy don’t you paint anymore?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” he said.
    â€œI think you should.”
    He laughed. “I thought you were afraid of my little jokester?”
    How did he know? Had Mama passed my secret fear on to him? How did she figure it out? It was my turn not to respond.
    Laughter, low and mean, from