Jazz Moon by Joe Okonkwo

Author:Joe Okonkwo [Okonkwo, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-04-04T04:00:00+00:00

“Comment allez-vous? . . . How are you? . . . Je suis de l’ États-Unis. . . I am from the United States.... Quelle heure est-il? . . . What time is it? . . . J’ai vingt-deux ans . . . I am twenty-two years old.”

He had to distract himself, so he sequestered himself in the cabin and plunged into French. What a strange language. Adjectives followed the nouns they described instead of the other way around. You could address someone in either a formal or familiar way depending on their age or class. Every single noun was either masculine or feminine and you had to memorize which was which. But French was beautiful, too. He recalled the French guests he had served at The Pavilion, their nasal tones, the melodiousness of their speech.

“Excusez-moi, mademoiselle. Comment arrive-je à la gare? . . . Excuse me, miss? How do I get to the train station? . . . Pouvez-vous me dire combien cela coûte? . . . Can you tell me how much this costs?”

Were colored people supposed to talk this way? In Dogwood, any colored person speaking French would be derided as some kind of strange creature. Human, surely, colored, yes, but only on the outside. Colored Dogwood wouldn’t approve. Neither would the whites. An uppity French-talking nigger would qualify as an impeccable candidate for lynching. Both coloreds and whites would perceive it as trying to fly higher than you had the right to. A bird flouting the boundary of the sky in a profane attempt to reach the moon.

That’s what Baby Back wanted. To crack the sky, reach the moon, then reach higher, fly farther. How far? The question bedeviled Ben. Baby Back’s ambition bedeviled him. Not the ambition itself, but its magnitude, its greedy and still-evolving shape buttressed by his discipline, his talent, his majestic confidence. Baby Back would be a star. It wasn’t in him not to be.

Ben admired him. He envied him. He feared himself unworthy, that he may not be the lover Baby Back needed. Deserved. He couldn’t match the trumpeter’s ambition. He wasn’t confident or big and broad-shouldered. He lacked the moxie to electrify a room. He was talented, but his talent was a quiet one, an intimate gift that might make people cry (if he was lucky), but never dance.

Ben would never be a Baby Back Johnston.

Until now, he hadn’t known how much he wanted to be. What would become of him when Baby Back outdistanced the moon?

The question tormented him as they lay in bed later after making love. Though early morning, outside remained the color of night. Baby Back had entertained passengers jolly, drunk, and ravenous for jazz until the wee hours, then sought Ben. He had been gentler than usual, though no less zealous, his blood still rumbling from the performing high, the audience high, from having roused the very essence of his artistry that simultaneously invigorated and exhausted him; that shot him up and burned him down.

“Why do you love me?” Ben asked.

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