Read Online The Boy in His Winter by Norman Lock - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Norman Lock
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to lengthen the farther we got from the river’s source. Years and years slowly passed—1910, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, ’15, ’16, ’17, ’18, 1919—and we felt only lethargy, a slight boredom, which we dispelled with songs, tall tales, fishing, and trailing our hands in the water, like two girls taking the sun. The sun was out more often than not, or so it seemed to me. Later, as I made the final passage alone, the sky would be black—or maybe it was only my own thoughts that were so.
Have you considered what this story might mean, or are you taking dictation with no other thought than the payment you’ll receive when I have in my hands the transcript of this—what would you call it? An American picaresque?A chimera spawned by an old man’s grotesque imagination? And will anyone care? I wish I had Jim here to sound! He understood things better than I: the river, life, our helplessness, our desire—the human wish to be elsewhere and not alone. To be un alone, unlike me with no company but a hired amanuensis. I spent a long time in the world but never possessed the knowledge of men and women. Not even with her . . . Maybe the fault lay in my most unusual childhood. If it was unusual. Maybe at its heart—beyond the particulars of shape and circumstance—it was simply a childhood. If that is the truth, why have I failed myself? Unless we all do, but with the grace and courage not to grumble.
Below Plaquemine, there was at that time a mangrove swamp overgrown with cottonwood. Encouraged by its desolate appearance, Jim and I tied up there in order to stretch our legs. As we picked our way into the swamp to conceal ourselves, we heard a cornet playing a music unlike any other we had known. Its novelty drew us farther on into the swamp. How do I explain jazz (for so it was) and the effect it produces when hearing it for the first time? I can’t, except to say it held in its volley of sound a mixture of melancholy and exuberance that thrilled. To listen to it was to be cast down and uplifted, at once. To be dizzied by emotions that, I suspect, were more available to Jim at that moment in our history than to me. That description of jazz is as wide of the mark as a greeting card verse is of a passionate truth. But I doubt I can get nearer. Maybe you can’t with words. Mine anyway. Poets might, but their lines would only approximate the music’s. Go listen to King Oliver or Louis Armstrong play their cornets—then you’ll have an idea of what Jim and I felt among the tangled cottonwoods, but only an idea.
Shortly, we came upon a black man resting on a stump,his horn flashing like a heliograph in whatever light managed to fall from the shifting upper branches of the trees. In the stillness of his deep concentration and in the way the dark green shadows commingled with his own native darkness, he resembled a cemetery monument. A dry stick cracked under my foot, and he promptly turned to me with a fearful look until he saw Jim.
“What’s that you’re playing, mister?” I said.
“Why, that’s ‘St. Louis Blues’ by W. C. Handy. Haven’t you boys ever heard jazz before?”
“No sir,” I said. “We’ve been on the river for quite a spell.”
“Jazz music’s up and down the river,” he said. “I was playing cornet with some black boys on the Natchez when the Dixie Shines came aboard at Donaldsonville. White boys don’t like mixing with coloreds—never mind we swing way better than they do. Last night, them sons of bitches set me down on this island, with nothing except my horn to keep me company.”
“Are you a runaway?” Jim asked, assessing the older man with a narrow look.
“Runaway? Oh, you mean like a slave.”
Jim nodded.
“Ain’t you boys ever heard of the Civil War?”
“We stopped at Vicksburg to see it,” I said casually, pleased by the effect I produced.
The man now eyed Jim and me with mistrust.
“What are you boys?” he asked.
“Just two people floating down the
Have you considered what this story might mean, or are you taking dictation with no other thought than the payment you’ll receive when I have in my hands the transcript of this—what would you call it? An American picaresque?A chimera spawned by an old man’s grotesque imagination? And will anyone care? I wish I had Jim here to sound! He understood things better than I: the river, life, our helplessness, our desire—the human wish to be elsewhere and not alone. To be un alone, unlike me with no company but a hired amanuensis. I spent a long time in the world but never possessed the knowledge of men and women. Not even with her . . . Maybe the fault lay in my most unusual childhood. If it was unusual. Maybe at its heart—beyond the particulars of shape and circumstance—it was simply a childhood. If that is the truth, why have I failed myself? Unless we all do, but with the grace and courage not to grumble.
Below Plaquemine, there was at that time a mangrove swamp overgrown with cottonwood. Encouraged by its desolate appearance, Jim and I tied up there in order to stretch our legs. As we picked our way into the swamp to conceal ourselves, we heard a cornet playing a music unlike any other we had known. Its novelty drew us farther on into the swamp. How do I explain jazz (for so it was) and the effect it produces when hearing it for the first time? I can’t, except to say it held in its volley of sound a mixture of melancholy and exuberance that thrilled. To listen to it was to be cast down and uplifted, at once. To be dizzied by emotions that, I suspect, were more available to Jim at that moment in our history than to me. That description of jazz is as wide of the mark as a greeting card verse is of a passionate truth. But I doubt I can get nearer. Maybe you can’t with words. Mine anyway. Poets might, but their lines would only approximate the music’s. Go listen to King Oliver or Louis Armstrong play their cornets—then you’ll have an idea of what Jim and I felt among the tangled cottonwoods, but only an idea.
Shortly, we came upon a black man resting on a stump,his horn flashing like a heliograph in whatever light managed to fall from the shifting upper branches of the trees. In the stillness of his deep concentration and in the way the dark green shadows commingled with his own native darkness, he resembled a cemetery monument. A dry stick cracked under my foot, and he promptly turned to me with a fearful look until he saw Jim.
“What’s that you’re playing, mister?” I said.
“Why, that’s ‘St. Louis Blues’ by W. C. Handy. Haven’t you boys ever heard jazz before?”
“No sir,” I said. “We’ve been on the river for quite a spell.”
“Jazz music’s up and down the river,” he said. “I was playing cornet with some black boys on the Natchez when the Dixie Shines came aboard at Donaldsonville. White boys don’t like mixing with coloreds—never mind we swing way better than they do. Last night, them sons of bitches set me down on this island, with nothing except my horn to keep me company.”
“Are you a runaway?” Jim asked, assessing the older man with a narrow look.
“Runaway? Oh, you mean like a slave.”
Jim nodded.
“Ain’t you boys ever heard of the Civil War?”
“We stopped at Vicksburg to see it,” I said casually, pleased by the effect I produced.
The man now eyed Jim and me with mistrust.
“What are you boys?” he asked.
“Just two people floating down the
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