FYI, fuckers...this is Part III...if you have not read Part I or II, you may not understand the brilliant conclusion below. Then again you may. But the choice is yours. My advice? Go read the first two parts...you can click on the links to them at the right side of the screen. But whatever...without further delay, here it is, the ingenius climax to my story!
...And now Jack stepped back into Gordon’s. Nobody even looked up. He stood at the door for a moment, surveying the room, going over his options again and again, and wondering which he would choose. The jukebox was playing some trumpet jazz that he didn’t recognize. The bartender was leaning back against the cash register, reading the paper, and six or seven men sat scattered before him at the bar. Other men were sitting at tables, and two were walking slowly around the pool table, smoking, considering their shots. Nick was one of these, and his back was to Jack. The girl was not in the bar.
Jack started limping slowly toward the bar. As he eased himself onto a stool, some of the men glanced over, noticing him for the first time and wondering just what in the hell he thought he was doing. This man must have lost his mind to step back in this joint after the beating he took for what he pulled. They thought this, but they did nothing. Said nothing. They watched Jack out of the corner of their eyes and tended to their drinks.
“See that game last night?” one of them said.
“Yah,” another grumbled. “If they don’t do somethin’ about that secondary they’re pretty much fucked the rest of the year.”
“No shit,” the first man said. “I said that last year. These bums come in here that can’t throw a ball to save their lives, and we just lettum pick us apart.”
“It’s bullshit,” agreed a third.
The bartender looked uncomfortably at Jack and nodded. Jack asked for a beer, trying to keep his voice low, but it drifted across the room, registering with Nick in a second, and suddenly the game of pool was neglected. Nick wasn’t too drunk yet. It was still early after all, and he thought perhaps another beating could be avoided. So he took the stool next to Jack, ordered a fresh beer, and motioned that the other men at the bar should mind their own business.
“I gotta admit, Jack,” he said without looking at him. “Didn’t think you’d show up here tonight.”
“Just want my wallet back, Nick.”
“Jack, ya know, you’re the type of slimy mother fucker would take a man’s adored girl back into a filthy fuckin’ mensroom and fuck her. You’re a real piece of shit, Jack, ya know that? They let you play your little saxophone in here cause you got talent, but you creep everyone out, walking around with them fuckin’ shades on all the time, hitting on anything with a pussy. You’re a real fuckin’ creep.”
Jack sipped his beer and reached for his cigarettes. “I didn’t fuck her.”
“Just shut the fuck up. It don’t matter. You would’ve, and you know it, and I know it.” They sat there for some time without saying anything. Sipping their beers. The other men in the bar watched the muted television, or talked in low voices, but each one down to a man were straining at the neck trying to hear what was being said. Nick glanced down at the case under Jack’s stool. “What’d you bring your horn for? You ain’t got a gig tonight.”
“Another gig I had got cancelled. I felt like playing. Thought maybe they’d let me on here for a bit. Thought maybe I could get my wallet back and try to smooth things over with you guys.”
“That easy, is it?” Nick laughed. Again they sat for a time in silence. Jack could see Nick was controlling himself, but he knew that could stop at any time. And Nick was growing angrier. That someone could fuck his girl, take a hell of a beating, and still have the balls to show up and talk so bluntly to him less then twenty-four hours later...it was bullshit.
The jukebox was playing Charlie Parker. Jack tried to stand up from his stool, but he could feel the pressure in his temple again, and the white lights flashing in his pupils. He swayed uneasily and steadied himself on the bar. He just wanted to get to the microphone in the corner and play a little. He reached for his saxophone.
“Where are you going now?” Jack ignored the question and turned slowly to face the rest of the room. They were all looking at him. But they’d always liked the way he played. They’d always tipped him and told him to come back. They’d always yelled out songs. They’d always danced with their women while he jammed, and shouted go, Jack, go. He’d show them the spice, play for them despite what they did, and they’d let him go, and they’d forget the whole thing. Everybody liked Jack. He was cool. He was a cat. And he had talent.
He tapped on the microphone. It wasn’t on. He looked around to see where he could plug it in, but his eyes wouldn’t focus on the chord long enough to see where it ended. Ah, fuck it, he thought. It was a small bar, they could hear him just fine. He bent slowly down to unzip the saxophone, and tried to tell them to turn off the jukebox.
“What?” somebody said. Why couldn’t he get his words out right? He concentrated this time and managed, “the jukebox.” Nobody moved. Forget it, he thought. I’ll play anyway. They’ll turn it off in a minute.
So Charlie Parker was jamming over the machine, and now Jack’s trying to play one of his own. The first song he’d written after he bought that beautiful Selmer tenor. He didn’t write much, but man could he make a tune when he put a little effort into it. This was a ballad. A sexy piece, always got the women in a swoon. He called it Ol’ Mystic. But as he tried to play, his fingers were slipping off the keys, and all he could hear in his head was Charlie Parker. “The fuck is he doing?” someone complained.
Charlie could hit those notes man. He knew how to play the horn, and Jack had heard him first in third grade. He heard the way he’d jam out some cool chorus line over and over, over and over again, and just when you thought man, I could learn how to do this, he rips off on some wild riff, notes flying like bullets, and little Jack thinking nah, he can’t be reading that, he can’t be. And he wasn’t. Jack would learn what that was called later. Improvisation. Make it up as you go. Consider your options or don’t, but go with it either way and let the music play itself. He knew then that the instrument wasn’t the saxophone. The instrument was the guy behind it being used by the rhythm, the feeling, the flow...being manipulated into bringing the music out, not inventing it. The man was the instrument, the tool. And he went into school the next day and signed up for the band as a saxophone player.
“Little fuckin’ cocksucker,” Nick said, rising up off that stool and making for that staggering, honking musician with both hands. He grabbed Jack who almost took him down as he staggered completely off balance, but he managed to hold him up just long enough to gain his footing and tossed him into a table. Jack looked dazed, and tried to pull himself to his feet, but Nick was on him, landing two quick blows to his face and prying the horn loose from his grip.
“Nick, wait a second,” one of the men at the bar said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Nick roared. “Shut the fuck up!” carefully enunciating each word individually.
“Wait, Nick,” the bartender started.
“You too, fucker,” Nick shouted. “Shut the fuck up!” as he stormed across the room, holding the saxophone with two hands high over his head and bringing it crashing down to the floor with a crunching metallic sound that almost gave Jack a heart attack. He pulled himself up, trying to bring his eyes into focus, panicking, knowing it was too late for his horn, and wanting more than anything he’d ever wanted to kill a man.
Nick repeated the action, and bits of black and gold metal shot across the bar. Nick slammed it into the floor again and again. Some of the men shouted at him, some mumbled to themselves, and others looked down into their drinks and thought how they’d seen this too many times in too many joints over the years. Nick finally stopped. He turned to face Jack and tossed the destroyed instrument at his feet. Jack looked down at it. Looked down at the horn lying there smashed up and mutilated. In pieces. He’d saved for that for two years. All the money from his gigs. Starved himself. And Christ, that thing had been sexy. Possibly the sexiest thing he’d ever seen that first day he’d taken it home, pulled it from the cloth case and laid it out on his bed.
The door to the place opened suddenly, snapping the patrons loose from the spell of the shattered horn, and all the savagery and viciousness that had just occurred. They looked sharply over to view the man who entered. Jack, however, continued to look at the image at his feet. The image of a broken saxophone, yes, but also the image of a man emerging from a dream - a beautiful dream, now waking up to a blizzard morning and all the pains and sorrows of a world that stormed endlessly, and the feeling that comes from that.
“Hey, fellas.”
Nick recognized the voice. The pain from his head cleared, the white spots disappeared, and he looked up into the grinning visage of that wicked little dwarf. Gary. Lips pulled back from his gums, eyes squinting, high voice laughing not because anything was funny but just because words had been spoken. He looked at the fragile little figure of that smiling idiot, the midget whom everyone knew, and the midget to whom the act of two men exchanging words was an immensely amusing dirty joke to be smirked and chuckled at.
And so a saxophone and a gun and several options, and Nick had completely obliterated the former. Gary turned slightly, caught off guard by the silence and seriousness of the men in the room, and noticed Jack for the first time, the smile running away from his face in a shocked, shameful retreat. And all the men in the bar stood frozen as Jack reached into his jacket, pulling out the biggest, shiniest pistol any of them had ever seen, and put six bullets in Nick’s head and shoulders, the maniac falling back into the bar stools with a dumbfounded look pasted across his shattered face, and trying with futility to hold himself up. And now he was dead.
Jack couldn’t remember much of what happened after that. He stumbled out into the street, his head feeling as if it might explode, his eyes completely glazed over and blind. He felt his way down the sidewalk, men, women, and children scurrying to stay out of his way, and he heard a question over and over and over in his mind. “Where’s Connie?” His legs gave out after a time, and he lay face down on the concrete. He could hear voices around him. Urgent voices. Loud but distant. He thought they might be the police. Or maybe paramedics. But he lay there. Dead weight. Floating into the back of some automobile, and feeling his mind going dark. The voices grew more distant and the thoughts in his head spun around without meaning, without order. Charlie Parker. A black tenor. The Greek Diana, smiling up at him, a goddess; helpless out of her element. “Where’s Connie?” He felt himself drowning, struggling to breath and under the weight of extreme pressure. He forced his eyes open, but he saw only the white lights in his pupils. The voices hovered over him, spitting out phrases. Head trauma. Blood clot. What’s wrong with him? Better get him some help first. Jack closed his eyes. His head spun less intensely now and he felt his body relaxing. He could still feel the cold steel in his hands, thought something was prying at it, trying to separate it from his grasp. He wouldn’t let go. Never. And finally, the last thing Jack remembered as a cool breeze washed over him and he felt the sweat running away from his forehead, a voice rising up through age and dust. You got it, man. Don’t ruin yourself in joints like this, man.
Thanks for reading, chums. I hope you found it at least somewhat entertaining, and haven't just dismissed me as some peice of shit hack whose garbage isn't worth the free blog its written on. Either way, leave your reader's review by clicking on the "comment" link below. It will only take two seconds of your time, and while this may seem like a mild annoyance to you, it will make me more overjoyed than you could possibly imagine. Or at least remotely happy. But...until next time...if you have to ask what it is, man, you'll never know.
Mike
