Thunder and Roses (29 page)

“I didn’t say anything for a minute. This wasn’t the way I’d planned it at all. On the other hand, I had half of what I wanted. Drago was not going to hear Manuel. I was sore, but not sore enough to stop being smart. I said, ‘Let’s get back to it. And try to sound at least like a cylinder phonograph, will you?’

“It was the longest evening I ever sat through. It was awful. The music was good enough to dance to. Period. Nobody ever got anywhere playing music just good enough to dance to. Once I noticed the Marshalls making get-up-and-go-home movements, and I saw Drago stop them. That was encouraging, but not very. We just played it out, and played-out was the way we sounded.

“At last, they were shutting the place down for the night and we were at the dock with our cases, waiting while Manuel warped in his old ark. I was so disgusted I almost forgot to be mad. The Marshalls and Drago came down the duckboards. I could hear Drago talking. He was saying something about being sorry to have kept them there so long. ‘That redhead was playing very clean drums when we arrived. I was hoping to hear more of it. A fluke, I guess.’ Oh, brother! Was it a fluke!

“Manuel tied up and we loaded aboard. I hated the looks of that launch and the smell of it and the whole idea of getting near it. If it wasn’t for that Manuel, why I’d be—I dunno. I was fit to blow a fuse. When he came down the companion ladder—the seats were inside ranging around the crummy old engine—and spoke to me, I barked at him. He said there wasn’t enough room forward for all the instruments. Would I mind storing the drums in the lock-up on
the dock? He’d pick them up in the morning. I told him to do whatever he wanted. He went away again.

“Drago was sitting across from me, talking quietly with the Marshalls. It occurred to me to squeeze into the conversation and do myself some good, but I didn’t have the heart for it.

“Manuel cast off and kicked the starter. The motor caught. Great grovelin’ day, what a racket that was! Not loud. No. It sounded as if every rev would be its last. I never had trusted the old barge, but this trip it sounded really sick. Something the matter with the timing, it seemed like. The first cylinder to fire let go with a sharp
wham
, and the second barely popped, and the third and fourth just gasped. What with that series of torturous sounds, over and over and over again, and the intermittent
clip clop
as the wheel took up the slack in the steering lines, it was a fit finish to a dismal evening.

“The noise of that sick engine crawled in between my ears and curled up there with every intention of spending the night. I looked around for something—anything—to take my mind off it. All the guys were looking at Drago.”

Red gulped down the last of his drink and spread his hands on the table. “Ever watch a drummer really sending? Most of ’em talk it, especially when they’re doing a lot of shifting. Sometimes they do it right out loud while they work. Sounds crazy by itself, but it makes a pattern that you can follow with your sticks.
Skiddle-d’wee, skiddle d’wat, skwit-bap, skiddle-d’tat
,” he recited, tapping the table.

“Yes,” I said. “A lot of them do it.”

“Well,” said Red, “that’s what Drago was doing. His eyes were glazing over and he was talking along with that deathbed motor. I followed it on his lips. He had it just right:

“I looked around again. Joey’s hands were moving. Fred and Brot leaned forward suddenly as if they’d been pulled by the same string. Stompy just looked vacant. His three valve fingers trembled the way they do when he’s clearing his horn for a high riff.

“I tell you, it rocked part of you right to sleep and brought something else in you wide, wide awake.

“All of a sudden there was another noise in with it. The steering lines, whipping up slack as the wheel was twitched from side to side—not enough to turn the rudder, mind you; just sufficient to slap the lines against the inside of the guards—and mixed up in it was the very gentle tapping of feet on the deck overhead and a little aft, by the wheelpost. One toe, one heel. And all the while this motor noise backing it. Subtle? Hey! I’ll try to talk it for you:

“Drago sat there soaking it up. He put his palms together very carefully and began to squeeze, and began to smile a little too. Brot gasped something about ‘That’s for me!’ and dove for the forepeak where the instruments were stowed. He tore his clarinet out of its case, just dropping the case where he stood—and Brot was usually a very careful character. He got the reed into his face and ripped out that incredible climbing gliss that had been torn out of him the first night Manuel played the drums. And all the while that motor was beating it out—

“Stompy and Joey beat their heads together on their way to the fore-peak. The sound of it faded right in on an upbeat. It was beautiful. Brot carried that frantic solo until he saw Stompy with the brass on the side of his mouth, the trumpet bell turned upward like a nestling
waiting for breakfast. Brot blew out that hand-over-rail wail and the trumpet went right up after it, caught it, brought it back down again and threw it to the motor like:

“And by that time Joey had undressed his guitar and was throwing a chord-circle around Stompy’s theme. Minors, they were—A minor, D seventh, B flat minor, A again, like:

“It was heartbeat, Jack. It was murder. It was riff-marole, but brutal.
And me without my drums!

“Aw, I had to admit it. Nobody there needed drums. Fred was in there now, with a quiet, bubbling sort of trill on the sax that took the clarinet and trumpet down to it, and the three of them stayed low that way, sort of tumbling over each other and getting fainter and fainter. And then it came.

“The wheelpost was behind us and over our heads—a bronze casting, kind of an inverted funnel. It had an opening at deck level, so that in effect it was an upside-down megaphone. Out of that hole came the shuffle:

“The real walkaway. Fred opened a corner of his mouth away from the sax and came out with the oddest squeak I’ve ever heard from a human being. Then he set his lips around that alto horn and tumbled on into the first notes of his fugue in re-bop, with Stompy and Brot right in there. They played it in technicolor, but through a sepia filter, if you dig me. Low and easy, bright but quiet. Drago’s eyes rolled right up out of sight. I had to see that shuffashuff done. That was backbone stuff, man.

“I ducked out of the cabin and looked up at the wheel. Manuel
was up there, staring ahead at the channel lights, and scrubbing the wheelpost with two big wire brushes, the kind you use to dress rusty iron before you red-lead it. I could see the gleam of brass under the brushes where they’d taken the paint off. But his hands were light as—as—did you ever see a cat drink milk? You know how his whiskers twitch on the surface? It was like that. I went back below and sat down and pictured those hands while my eyes were closed. Oh, a handsome drive those hands had!”

They wound up that fugue and came out even, Joey coming in powerfully on a sixth chord that brought everything over, out and clear. After that everybody just sat, and there was only the motor left:

“Then it slowed and cut, and we bumped the dock gently. We still sat. I think we were waiting for Drago to say something. He finally whispered, ‘Who
is
that?’ as he thumbed the overhead.

“I called, ‘Manuel!’

“He came down, looking as if he had stolen something. He said, ‘What, Red?’ I pointed at Drago. Drago looked at the kid as if he was afraid he’d disappear in a puff of smoke. He said, ‘You come and see me tomorrow. Now—don’t anybody say anything.’ He turned to look at the engine, murmured,
‘Wham-bop’
and went up the ladder like a sleepwalker, with the Marshalls behind him.

“I said, ‘Beat it, you guys. I want to talk to Manuel.’ Fred said, ‘Oh, no!’

“Everybody looked at me. ‘What do you take me for?’ I bellowed at them. ‘I’m not going to do anything!’ Joey came up and looked into my face. Joey always seemed to understand things. He said, ‘Come on, fellows.’ They packed their instruments and went ashore.

“Manuel said, ‘I thought you’d be sore.’

“I punched him on the shoulder, but easy, easy. I said, ‘Manny, whatever else I might be, I guess I’m a cat first. You’re a genius.’

“He looked like he was going to cry. ‘You’re being real big about this,’ he told me. ‘I’m sorry, Red.’

“That flattened me. ‘Sorry? What have you got to be sorry for?’

“He gulped. He beckoned me down below. He leaned over the engine and snapped off the distributor cap. ‘When you ride an old barge like this as long as I have, that beat gets into your blood.’ He lifted out a little crescent of gasket material. ‘You see? When the rotor came around to here, this stuff lifted it enough to give bad contact to two cylinders and delay the third until it was half-flooded when it fired.’ He looked at me. ‘I even made you leave your drums at the Island. Aren’t you sore, Red?’

“Well, I just sat down and laughed until I got lost. When I sobered up I grabbed his hand and shook it. Easy, though. You treat hands like that with respect. I said, ‘Manny, you sit in every minute you can, hear? There are things I want to learn about drums.’ ”

Red was quiet a minute, grinning. “He never did, though. Drago took him to New York the next day. He played with the King only one season, and then went out with a band of his own. His name’s Reskin.”

“What?” I shouted. “Riff Reskin?”

Red nodded. “Manuel ‘Riff’ Reskin. Six hundred thousand phonograph records last year. That’s the boy.”

Somebody called from the stand. Red got up, swung back to me, while I was trying to ravel up my gaping jaw. “Hey,” he said. “That list of yours. Remember it?”

“Huh? Oh. I think so.” I ticked them off. “To get into the big time, you’ve got to be good at your spot; you’ve got to be smarter than anyone who’s after what you want; and you’ve got to be able to use the materials at hand.” And I laughed with him.

He went back to the stand. He had a drum break in the next number. He did it with a brush and a stick. It went,

And the joint rocked, really rocked—like a boat.

T
AMARISK JUST HAPPENED
. Some forgotten Conestoga cap’n had chosen the Tamarisk hollow as a route down the valley, rather than the exactly similar hollow on the other side of the rise. The town’s first building appeared when one Pericles Zapappas sold the oxen which hauled his chuck wagon. The old wagon, hub-deep in the sandy soil, was the nucleus. Because it was there, it was logical to set up a general supplies shack near it, and because of the shack and its increasing stock, settlers took to the nearby lush foothills, knowing they had a trading place. With the settlers came the helpers and the hangers-on, the blacksmiths and the gamblers, the assay office and the livery stable and the hotel.

Pericles Zapappas stuck with Tamarisk. He hadn’t planned to; he hadn’t planned not to. It was just that there were so many people to feed—and he liked feeding people. He liked to see the tin plates, and later, the thick china ones, mopped clean with great chunks of sourdough bread, or the muscular black loaves he baked himself. The old wagon soon sported a canvas awning which became a mess tent which gradually acquired wooden walls and a tin roof, and as the busy years and the busy wagon trains passed, there was a new building with a real kitchen, rows of iron skillets, three glass sugar bowls, and a spittoon.

Pericles was the only fixture that showed no change. He was a grizzled, tubby little man, with a complexion the color of a frankfurter and a skin like a silk pillow slip that has been slept on for three hot nights. His eyes were round, clear, and blue, giving the impression of red-hot portholes into an ice box. He smiled often, never laughed, and was always a little frightened—afraid that the meat wouldn’t arrive, that the coffee would boil, that a customer wasn’t getting enough to eat. He absorbed insults and compliments with
the same gentle smile and the same shuffling backward retreat, as from royalty.

Tamarisk was good to live in, as such places go, when the wind was from the hills. But when it came panting up from the desert with fire and salt on its breath, the town shimmered and crackled and dried in it. It was on such a day that Fellows stamped into Pericles’s place, and the youth’s language was not one whit less blistering than the desert wind. His profanity swirled in, all but sweeping Pericles off his precarious perch on a serving table, where he was hanging mesh bags of garlic, strings of melon rind, and chains of herbs and barks to dry; for Pericles was a great hand in the spice department.

“Feed me!” roared Fellows. “By God, likker won’t do fer this. Gimme some o’ that slumgullion of yours, the kind that wallops you hot an’ then smooths you off easy.”

Pericles climbed down and framed the kid in his round blue stare. “Hey boy. Whatsa do—burn down you stable?”

“It’s thet money-jinglin’ Eastern toad, Barstow,” spat the youngster. “Him an’ his gunmen an’ his ‘fer th’ good of th’ country’!”

“Meest’ Barstow is crazy,” said Pericles mildly. ‘Tamarisk is a plenty big town for the valley. Whats ’e wan’ for to make a new one?”