The Jazz Kid (2 page)

So I knew that Ma thought I was the artistic type, and I might be able to talk her into letting me join a band. If I convinced her, she'd get around Pa somehow.

Ma had a soft spot for me. I think she figured out a long time ago that I was on a different track from other people, and she allowed for it. “You're not a bad boy, Paulie,” she'd say. “Just got a mind of your own. But you've got to understand how it looks to other people.”

But talking her into it wasn't going to be easy, for I hadn't stuck to the piano lessons and she wouldn't believe I'd stick to the band, either. So I said, “Ma, taking up an instrument would probably teach me to discipline myself, the way Pa always says.”

“Ho, ho, ho,” she said.

“You sound like Santa Claus,” I said.

“
Well you better keep it in mind I'm not.”

“Honest, Ma, it would teach me self-discipline. I'd have to practice and all.” I still felt uneasy about that. There wasn't any way I could be in a band if I didn't practice. Would I be able to make myself do it? Or would I get discouraged by something like the cardboard keyboard?

“Fat chance you'd practice. You didn't before when we were paying twenty-five cents a week for piano lessons.”

So I said, “Honest, Ma, I would. How could I practice on a cardboard piano?” She gave me her squinty look. “There's something fishy going on here, Paulie. You've got something in mind.”

“No I haven't, Ma. I haven't got anything in mind. I just want to get into a band.” I couldn't tell her it was those flashing colors and that shiny confusion that got me. She'd never understand that.

“I don't trust it,” she said. “I never saw the time before when you set out to make work for yourself.”

“Please, Ma.”

“Oh, all right, Paulie. I'll talk to your pa about it.” I could tell she knew she shouldn't have given in, but she had that soft spot for me. She waggled her finger at me. “I'm not promising anything. I'll see. You better start getting good marks in school.”

To tell the truth, sometimes I wished I did better at school. It would be more comfortable to be a good kid like John and do things right. But I couldn't make myself. Sitting in school, I'd order myself to memorize all the raw materials of someplace nobody ever heard of, like Costa Rica; and the next thing I knew I'd have shaded in with my pencil the O and A's in Costa Rica, and Miss Hassler would be screaming at me for defacing school property.

Or I'd tell myself to carry the garbage down carefully; and then I'd start studying the way my shadow got bigger and smaller as I passed under the hall light and suddenly there' d be orange peels, egg shells, and coffee grounds all over the hall.

Or hang up my clothes—there's a good example. The truth was, I didn't like it
when
my pants and shirts were hung up in a neat row in the closet; I liked it a whole lot better when they were scattered around the room—one shoe under the bed, sock on the floor by the bureau, shirt crumpled up on the table where we did our homework. How could a kid like that ever do good in school, even if it would be more comfortable?

I
HELD MY
breath. There was no telling if Ma would be able to get around Pa or not. I spent a whole afternoon—well, half an afternoon—hanging up my clothes and cleaning up my room, I took the garbage down without spilling it, I even got seventy-eight on my spelling test. I thought about changing it up to eighty-eight, which I could have done easy, but there was a limit on how bad a kid I was willing to be.

In the end it was Rory Flynn who got me into the band. I wasn't supposed to know that, but I did, for one night when they thought I was asleep I heard them talking about it in the kitchen.

Pa said, “If Paulie hasn't got nothing better to do in the afternoons he could sharpen some chisels for me. Or do some schoolwork for a change.”

Ma said something, but I couldn't hear it exactly. So I got out of bed, cracked open our door, and crouched there, listening. Oh, I knew it was wrong to spy; but it was me they were talking about, wasn't it?

Pa said, “Or clean up his room. You can't hardly walk in there without stepping on something. He has more clothes laying on his floor than I had the whole time I was growing up.”

“I told him to pick up his clothes until I was blue in the face,” Ma said. “It's like talking to a wall.”

“You should talk to his fanny for him. He might see the point.”

“You're off the subject, Frank,” Ma said. “When was the last time Paulie came around begging for a chance to accomplish something?”

He didn't say anything for a minute. Then he said, “You got something there.”

“For another thing, it'd keep him from spending so much time with Rory Flynn.”

“Flynn? Peggy Flynn's kid?”

“The same,” Ma said.

“
Jesus,” Pa said.

It surprised me that Ma knew about me and Rory being pals. I never talked about Rory at home, for Mrs. Flynn drank beer and there wasn't any Mr. Flynn. Somebody must have told Ma about me and Rory. Anyway, that was why Pa decided I could join a band—so I wouldn't spend so much time with Rory.

In a way, I kind of envied Rory. He didn't come from a decent home—no carpet on the floor, didn't sit down to a regular supper every night, but got a quarter from his ma and went down to the delicatessen for stuff. But his ma wasn't always on him about his homework, picking up his clothes and stuff, and he didn't have any pa planning his life for him. You could see why Ma and Pa didn't appreciate me hanging around with Rory.

Of course Ma didn't tell me the idea of joining the band was to keep me away from Rory. She said, “Your pa's dead set against it, Paulie. I told him I'd make you promise to do better in school and if you didn't, that was the end of the band.” She bent down so she could stare me straight in the eye—no squinty look this time. “Do you understand that, Paulie? If you don't do better in school, no more band.”

Well, I didn't know if I'd be able to do better in school or not, but I figured I'd worry about that later. The important thing was I was going to be in a band, marching along clanging and banging and being famous. It seemed like just the greatest thing. I was excited as could be.

A couple of days later Ma took me over to Hull House, which was near our neighborhood at Polk and South Halsted. Hull House was a real fancy place where they put on all kinds of things for kids— and grown-ups, too. The idea was to help the greenhorns get settled in America. They had English classes, cooking classes, sewing classes. They put on plays, they had sports, they had poetry and painting classes. And of course they had a boys' band. When you got down to it, Ma was right: a lot of it had to do with keeping kids out of mischief.

Hull House was made up of three or four buildings. The one for music was called Bowen Hall. We went down to the band room, where they were having a
rehearsal
—a whole slew of kids sitting on long benches with their music stands in front of them, tootling. And right away I was disappointed, for the kids weren't wearing uniforms, just their plain school clothes—knee pants and such. Most likely they were saving them up for parades. Still, it was a disappointment.

On top of it, the band director was mighty bossy. He had a mustache, his coat off, his sleeves rolled back, waving his stick around. The kids would tootle away for a minute and then the director would whack at his music stand with his stick and the whole thing would grind to a stop. “You're all hopeless,” he'd shout. “Doesn't anyone here know what
pianissimo
means? I've heard cannons softer than that.” He'd raise the stick up. “Take it from letter C,” and off they'd go again, banging and crashing like a herd of elephants on a rampage. I never heard such a racket.

This guy looked like he was tougher than Pa. How long would I be able to stand being bossed around by him before I started ducking out of practice? But it was too late for second thoughts—not after I begged Ma so hard to take up music.

After a while the director got tired of slashing at the air and telling the kids they were hopeless, and took a break. Ma brought me up to him. It turned out his name was James Sylvester. He looked me up and down. “What's the boy's name?”

“Paulie Horvath,” Ma said. “He's desperate to play in a band.”

Mr. Sylvester nodded. “They all are. The uniforms always get them.”

“It isn't just the uniforms,” I said. “I used to take piano.”

He nodded. Suddenly he grabbed hold of my chin. “Show your teeth.”

I opened my mouth. “Aanngg,” I said.

“Just your teeth, not your tonsils. I saw all the tonsils I ever wanted to see conducting the girls' chorus.”

I snapped my teeth together and spread my lips, feeling like a horse trying to catch hold of an apple. “Good,” he said. “I think we can make a cornetist out of you.” He let go of my jaw, and jabbed his finger towards my eyes. “But you have to practice.” He gave me a serious look over the finger. “No point in even coming back if you aren't going to practice.”

“
You hear that, Paulie?” Ma said.

Well, I'd let myself in for it this time, all right. I had nobody to blame but myself. For now I
would
have to practice—there was no way around it. If I hadn't begged so hard I could have gone along with it for a few weeks and then quit. But after Ma'd taken all that trouble—talked Pa around and got me to promise to do better in school, and carried me over to Hull House and everything, I would have to stick it out for a while. I'd outsmarted myself, I could see that. But maybe some good would come out of it. Maybe I could make Ma proud of me for once. That would be nice for a change.

So that's how it started. And for a couple of weeks it was pure misery. Before, when I had heard those kids tootling away in that parade I didn't have any idea how hard it was just to get a sound out of that cornet, much less a note anyone would want to listen to. But after about a week of puffing and blowing, I got so I could get some notes out—pretty wobbly they were, more like a sick cow mooing than music, but notes even so. That encouraged me a little; and I was more encouraged after my third lesson, when I got to where I was playing some little tunes out of the songbook. “Maryland, My Maryland,” “Home, Sweet Home,” stuff like that. Well, I tell you, Ma was pleased as punch. Once, when I was whacking my way through my tunes she came and stood at the door of our room, listening. And I'll be darned if after a minute she didn't reach up and brush at her eye, like she had something in it. Of course Ma wasn't much more of an expert on music than Pa was, aside from singing in the church choir when she was a kid. Still, when she rubbed her eye that time, it made me swell up so much I could hardly play.

That night at supper she told Pa, “Paulie's doing real well on his cornet, Frank. You should hear him.”

“Humph,” Pa said. “Let's hope he's doing real good at school, too.” But after supper he came into our room and made me play “Maryland, My Maryland” for him. All he said was, “Humph,” but I could tell he was kind of surprised. It was those piano lessons, as little practicing as I did for them. They made all the difference, for the hardest part of reading music is getting the time right—quarter rests and dotted eighths and stuff—and I already knew how to do that. For a beginner I was ahead of myself. Even
Mr.
Sylvester said so. “I'm not saying what you're playing could be considered music, Horvath, but I've heard worse. Keep at it and pretty soon I'll put you in the band and give you the uniform that inspired you with your deep love of music.”

It made me kind of proud of myself. I wouldn't say it was the first time I ever did anything right. I was good at baseball—at recess I always got picked second or third after Rory, who had got left back and was a year older than the rest. I was good at sailing paper airplanes—me and Rory would shoot them off his back porch, which was tricky because of the clotheslines. But it wasn't often that I was good at things the grown-ups admired. It was nice having Ma proud of me for a change. But it wasn't pleasing Ma that kept me plugging away at those rotten exercises. It was remembering that gold and red, that sound and confusion and two bands playing at once. Somehow, that stuff was mine, where the plumbing business and fringed lampshades belonged to Pa and Ma and John. That's why I could tolerate those rotten exercises— they didn't have anything to do with the rest of the family.

Still, practicing wasn't any peck of fun. There was always something new to struggle with—a new key signature, triplets, six-eight time. Each time I started on something new I'd have to fight with myself to get through it. But then, when I had as much of the exercises as I could take, I let myself play some of the tunes I already knew. That was fun, just slinging the notes out there and listening to what they were saying; and if I hit off something real smooth it would kind of excite me that it was
me
who was doing it.