The Jazz Kid by James Lincoln Collier Read Free Book Online

chance of that, not until we were grown-ups. “Okay,” I said.
    I wanted to rush out right away and buy a jazz record, but I couldn’t, because John would get suspicious. Oh, I could hardly stand waiting—I couldn’t think of anything else all evening, and I might as well not have gone to school the next day, for all I learned. What if it turned out that the New Orleans Rhythm Kings record wasn’t any good? Suppose it didn’t give me that feeling that Tommy Hurd’s band did? Suppose it was just plain music? I didn’t see how that guy at the five-and-dime could be wrong, though. But suppose he was?
    I didn’t wait a minute after the last bell rang, but grabbed Rory and off we went to the five-and-dime. The same guy was there. “Well if it isn’t the jazzbo kid. Got hold of some money, did you?”
    â€œI borrowed it off my brother.”
    He looked at Rory. “You having trouble at school, too?”
    â€œHell, I got left back.”
    â€œI’m shocked,” the guy said. He took a record off the shelf, and handed it to me. It was the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. One side was “Oriental” and the other “Farewell Blues.” “I’m recommending this one,” the guy said. “It’s the cat’s meow.”
    â€œI thought it was the cat’s pajamas.”
    He gave me a look. “You got a pretty smart tongue for a kid who isn’t doing so hot in school.”
    I didn’t want to argue with him, but I gave him the money and we walked back to Rory’s, me holding on to that record with two hands and walking slow so I wouldn’t trip. It was a thrill just to have that record in my hands. In my whole life I never owned anything that gave me such a thrill—not the fielder’s mitt Pa got me for my tenth birthday, not even when I got my cornet from Hull House.
    Rory’s apartment was on the third floor—just a kitchen, and two other rooms with a bed in each, a table, a couple of chairs. Rory had cut out pictures of guys from the Cubs and stuck them on his walls, and Mrs. Flynn had put up a few ads from magazines in the other room. There was a calendar in the kitchen, but it was two years old and was there for the pictures, which Mrs. Flynn changed around from time to time, so that even the right month wasn’t up.
    They didn’t have a toilet up there—you had to go down to an outhouse in the backyard. The phonograph was in the room where Mrs. Flynn usually slept. Some old boyfriend of hers had given it to her a long time before. It was pretty beat up—the box all scratched and the handle loose, so you had to hold it at a certain angle when you wound it up. I tell you, my hand actually trembled when I slipped that record over the spindle. Rory wound it up good and tight. I pushed the lever to set it spinning, and put the needle on. Out came the music.
    Well, it was something, all right. I stood there with my mouth open, just hypnotized. Of course it was sort of tinny, nothing like as clear and alive as the real thing. But it had that magic to it, that bounce, that sparkle, and it made me sparkle inside, too.
    â€œWhat the hell kind of music is that?” Rory said.
    â€œShhhh,” I said. Rory sat down and began tapping his foot to it, but I went on standing, not able to move.
    Finally the record got done. “Boy, isn’t that something,” I said.
    â€œI didn’t get it,” Rory said. “It sounded pretty confused.”
    â€œYou got to get used to it.” I turned the record over and played the other side, standing as close as I could to the phonograph so as to hear it as good as I could. Then I turned it back to the first side and listened to it all over again.
    â€œHow many times you going to play that damn thing?” Rory said.
    â€œI don’t know. A lot.”
    â€œI don’t know if I can stand it, Horvath.”
    â€œYou’ll get used to