Stephen King – The Wedding Gig
The Wedding Gig
by Stephen King
In the year 1927 we were playing jazz in a speak-easy just south of Morgan, Illinois, a town seventy miles from Chicago. It was real hick country, not another big town for twenty miles in any direction. But there were a lot of farm boys with a hankering for something stronger than Moxie after a hot day in the field, and a lot of would-be jazz-babies out stepping with their drugstore-cowboy boyfriends. There were also some married men (you always know them, friend; they might as well be wearing signs) coming far out of their way to be where no one would recognize them while they cut a rug with their not-quite-legit lassies.
That was when jazz was jazz, not noise. We had a five-man combination — drums, cornet, trombone,
piano, trumpet — and we were pretty good. That was still three years before we made our first record and four years before talkies.
We were playing “Bamboo Bay” when this big fellow walked in, wearing a white suit and smoking a pipe with more squiggles in it than a French horn. The whole band was a little tight by that time but everyone in the crowd was absolutely blind and really ramping the joint. They were in a good mood, though; there hadn’t been a single fight all night. All of us guys were sweating rivers and Tommy Englander, the guy who ran the place, kept sending up rye as smooth as a varnished plank. Englander was a good joe to work for, and he liked our sound. Of course that made him aces in my book.
The guy in the white suit sat down at the bar and I forgot him. We finished up the set with “Aunt Hagar’s Blues,” which was a tune that passed for racy out in the boondocks back then, and got a good round of applause. Manny had a big grin on his face when he put his trumpet down, and I clapped him on the back as we left the bandstand. There was a lonely-looking girl in a green evening gown who had been giving me the eye all night. She was a redhead, and I’ve always been partial to those. I got a signal from her eyes and the tilt of her head, so I started weaving through the crowd to see if she wanted a drink.
I was halfway there when the man in the white suit stepped in front of me. Up close he looked like a pretty tough egg. His hair was bristling up in the back in spite of what smelled like a whole bottle of Wildroot Creme Oil and he had the flat, oddly shiny eyes that some deep-sea fish have. “Want to talk to you outside,” he said. The redhead looked away with a small pout. “It can wait,” I said. “Let me by.” “My name is Scollay. Mike Scollay.” I knew the name. Mike Scollay was a small-time racketeer from Shytown who paid for his beer and skittles by running booze in from Canada. The high-tension stuff that started out where the men wear skirts and play bagpipes. When they aren’t tending the vats, that is. His picture had been in the paper a few times. The last time had been when some other dancehall Dan tried to gun him down.
“You’re pretty far from Chicago, my friend,” I said. “I brought some chaperones,” he said, “don’t worry.
Outside.”
The redhead took another look. I pointed at Scollay and shrugged. She sniffed and turned her back.
“There,” I said. “You queered that.” “Bimbos like that are a penny a bushel in Chi,” he said. “I didn’t want a bushel.” “Outside.”
I followed him out. The air was cool on my skin after the smoky atmosphere of the club, sweet with
fresh-cut alfalfa. The stars were out, soft and flickering. The hoods were out, too, but they didn’t look soft, and the only things flickering were their cigarettes.
“I got a job for you,” Scollay said.
“Is that so.”
“Pays two C’s. Split it with the band or hold back hundred for yourself.”
“What is it?”
“A gig, what else? My sis is tying the knot. I want you to play for the reception. She likes Dixieland.
Two of my boys say you play good Dixieland.”
I told you Englander was good to work for. He was paying ins eighty bucks a week. This guy was
offering over twice that for one gig.
“It’s from five to eight, next Friday,” Scollay said. “At Che Sons of Erin Hall on Graver Street.”
“It’s too much,” I said. “How come?”
“There’s two reasons,” Scollay said. He puffed on his pipe. It looked out of place in the middle of that yegg’s face. He should have had a Lucky Strike Green dangling from that mouth, or maybe a Sweet Caporal.
The Cigarette of Bums. With the pipe he didn’t look like a bum. The pipe made him look sad and funny.
“Two reasons,” he repeated. “Maybe you heard the Greek tried to rub me out.”
“I saw your picture in the paper,” I said. “You were the guy trying to crawl into the sidewalk.”
“Smart guy,” he growled, but with no real force. “I’m getting too big for him. The Greek is getting old.
He thinks small. He ought to be back in the old country, drinking olive oil and looking at the Pacific.”
“I think it’s the Aegean,” I said.
“I don’t give a tin shit if it’s Lake Huron,” he said. “Point is, he don’t want to be old. He still wants to get me. He don’t know the coming thing when he sees it.”
“That’s you.”
“You’re fucking-A.”
“In other words, you’re paying two C’s because our last number might be arranged for Enfield rifle accompaniment. ‘
Anger flashed in his face, but there was something else there, as well. I didn’t know what it was then, but I think I do mow. I think it was sorrow. “Buddy Gee, I got the best protection money can buy. If anyone funny sticks his nose in, he won’t get a chance to sniff twice.” “What’s the other thing?”
He spoke softly. “My sister’s marrying an Italian.” “A good Catholic like you,” I sneered softly. The anger flashed again, white-hot, and for a minute I thought I’d pushed him too far. “A good mick! A good old shanty-Irish mick. Sonny, and you better not forget it!” To that he added, almost too low to be heard, “Even if I did lose most of my hair, it was red.”
I started to say something, but he didn’t give me the chance. He swung me around and pressed his face down until our noses almost touched. I have never seen such anger and humiliation and rage and determination in a man’s face. You never see that look on a white face these days, how it is to be hurt and made to feel small.
All that love and hate. But I saw it on his face that night and knew I could crack wise a few more times and get
my ass killed.
“She’s fat,” he half-whispered, and I could smell checker-berry mints on his breath. “A lot of people have been laughing at me while my back was turned. They don’t do it when 1 can see them, though, I’ll tell you that, Mr. Cornet Player. Because maybe this dago was all she could get. But you’re not gonna laugh at me or her or the dago. And nobody else is, either. Because you’re gonna play too loud. No one is going to laugh at my sis.”
“We never laugh when we play our gigs. Makes it too hard to pucker.”
That relieved the tension. He laughed — a short, barking laugh. “You be there, ready to play at five. The Sons of Erin on Grover Street. I’ll pay your expenses both ways, too.”
He wasn’t asking. I felt railroaded into the decision, but he wasn’t giving me time to talk it over. He was already striding away, and one of his chaperones was holding open the back door of a Packard coupe.
They drove away. I stayed out awhile longer and had a smoke. The evening was soft and fine and
Scollay seemed more and more like something I might have dreamed. I was just wishing we could bring the bandstand out to the parking lot and play when Biff tapped me on the shoulder. “Time,” he said. “Okay.”
We went back in. The redhead had picked up some salt-and-pepper sailor who looked twice her age. I
don’t know what a member of the U.S. Navy was doing in Illinois, but as far as I was concerned, she could have him if her taste was that bad. I didn’t feel so good. The rye had gone to my head, and Scollay seemed a lot more real in here, where the fumes of what he and his kind sold were strong enough to float on.