“We had a request for ‘Camptown Races,’ ” Charlie said.
“Forget it,” I said curtly. “We don’t play that nigger stuff till after midnight.”
I could see Billy-Boy stiffen as he was sitting down to the piano, and then his face was smooth again. I could have kicked myself around the.block, but, goddammit, a man can’t shift gears on his mouth overnight, or in a year, or maybe even in ten. In those days nigger was a word I hated and kept saying.
I went over to him. “I’m sorry, Bill — I haven’t been myself tonight.”
“Sure,” he said, but his eyes looked over my shoulder and I knew my apology wasn’t accepted. That was bad, but I’ll tell you what was worse — knowing he was disappointed in me.
I told them about the gig during our next break, being square with them about the money and how
Scollay was a hoodlum (although I didn’t tell them about the other hood who was out to get him). I also told them that Scollay’s sister was fat and Scollay was sensitive about it. Anyone who cracked any jokes about inland barges might wind up with a third breather-hole, somewhat above the other two.
I kept looking at Billy-Boy Williams while I talked, but you could read nothing on the cat’s face. It would be easier trying to figure out what a walnut was thinking by reading the wrinkles on the shell. Billy-Boy was the best piano player we ever had, and we were all sorry about the little ways it got taken out on him as we traveled from one place to another. In the south was the worst, of course — Jim Crow car, nigger heaven at the movies, stuff like that — but it wasn’t that great in the north, either. But what could I do? Huh? You go on and tell me. In those days you lived with those differences.
We turned up at the Sons of Erin Hall on Friday at four o’clock, an hour before. We drove up in the
special Ford truck Biff and Manny and me put together. The back end was all enclosed with canvas, and there were two cots bolted on the floor. We even had an electric hotplate that ran off the battery, and the band’s name
was painted on the outside.
The day was just right — a ham-and-egger if you ever saw one, with little white summer clouds casting shadows on the fields. But once we got into the city it was hot and kind of grim, full of the hustle and bustle you got out of touch with in a place like Morgan. By the time we got to the hall my clothes were’sticking to me and I needed to visit the comfort station. I could have used a shot of Tommy Englander’s rye, too.
The Sons of Erin was a big wooden building, affiliated with the church where Scollay’s sis was getting married. You know the sort of place I mean if you ever took the Wafer, 1 guess — CYO meetings on Tuesdays, bingo on Wednesdays, and a sociable for the kids on Saturday nights.
We trooped up the walk, each of us carrying his instrument in one hand and some part of Biff’s drum-kit in the other. A thin lady with no breastworks to speak of was directing traffic inside. Two sweating men were hanging crepe paper. There was a bandstand at the front of the hall, and over it was a banner and a couple of big pink paper wedding bells. The tinsel lettering on the banner said BEST ALWAYS MAUREEN AND RICO.
Maureen and Rico. Damned if I couldn’t see why Scollay was so wound up. Maureen and Rico. Stone
the crows.
The thin lady swooped down on us. She looked like she had a lot to say so I beat her to punch. “We’re the band,” I said.
“The band?” She blinked at our instruments distrustfully. “Oh. I was hoping you were the caterers.”
I smiled as if caterers always carried snare drums and trombone cases.
“You can — ” she began, but just then a ruff-tuff-creampuff of about nineteen strolled over. A cigarette was dangling from the comer of his mouth, but so far as I could see it wasn’t doing a thing for his image except making his left eye water. “Open that shit up,” he said.
Charlie and Biff looked at me. I shrugged. We opened our cases and he looked at the horns. Seeing
nothing that looked like you could load it and fire it, he wandered back to his comer and sat down on a folding chair.
“You can set your things up right away,” the thin lady went on, as if she had never been interrupted.
“There’s a piano in the other room. I’ll have my men wheel it in when we’re done putting up our decorations.”
Biff was already lugging his drum-kit up on to the little stage.
“I thought you were the caterers,” she repeated in a distraught way. “Mr. Scollay ordered a wedding cake and there are hors d’oeuvres and roasts of beef and — ”
“They’ll be here, ma’am,” I said. “They get payment on delivery.”
‘ — two roasts of pork and a capon and Mr. Scollay will be just furious if — ” She saw one of her men pausing to light a cigarette just below a dangling streamer of crepe and shrieked, “HENRY!” The man jumped as if he had been shot. I escaped to the bandstand.
We were all set up by a quarter of five. Charlie, the trombone player, was wah-wahing away into a mute and Biff was loosening up his wrists. The caterers had arrived at 4:20 and Miss Gibson (that was the thin lady’s name; she made a business out of such affairs) almost threw herself on them.
Four long tables had been set up and covered with white linen, and four black women in caps and
aprons were setting places. The cake had been wheeled into the middle of the room for everyone to gasp over.
It was six layers high, with a little bride and groom standing on top.
I walked outside to grab a fag and just about halfway through it I heard them coming — tooting away and raising a racket. I stayed where I was until I saw the lead car coming around the corner of the block below the church, then I snubbed my smoke and went inside.
“They’re coming,” I told Miss Gibson.
She went white and actually swayed on her heels. There was a lady that should have taken up a different profession — interior decoration, maybe, or library science. “The tomato juice!” she screamed. “Bring in the tomato juice!”
I went back to the bandstand and we got ready. We had played gigs like this before — what combo
hasn’t? — and when the doors opened, we swung into a ragtime version of “The Wedding March” that I had arranged myself. If you think that sounds sort of like a lemonade cocktail I have to agree with you, but most receptions we played for just ate it up, and this one was no different. Everybody clapped and yelled and whistled, then started gassing amongst themselves. But I could tell by the way some of them were tapping their feet while they talked that we were getting through. We were on — I thought it was going to be a good gig. I know everything they say about the Irish, and most of it’s true, but, hot damn! they can’t not have a good time once they are set up for it.
All the same, I have to admit I almost blew the whole number when the groom and the blushing bride
walked in. Scollay, dressed in a morning coat and striped trousers, shot me a hard look, and don’t think I didn’t see it. I managed to keep a poker face, and the rest of the band did, too — no one so much as missed a note.
Lucky for us. The wedding party, which looked as if it were made up almost entirely of Scollay’s goons and their molls, were wise already. They had to be, if they’d been at the church. But I’d only heard faint rumblings, you might say.
You’ve heard about Jack Sprat and his wife. Well, this was a hundred times worse. Scollay’s sister had the red hair he was losing, and it was long and curly. But not that pretty auburn shade you may be imagining.
No, this was County Cork red — bright as a carrot and kinky as a bedspring. Her natural complexion was curd-white but she was wearing almost too many freckles to tell. And had Scollay said she was fat? Brother, that was like saying you could buy a few things in Macy’s. She was a human dinosaur — three hundred and fifty pounds if she was one. It had all gone to her bosom and hips and butt and thighs, like it usually does on fat girls, making what should be sexy grotesque and sort of frightening instead. Some fat girls have pathetically pretty faces, but Scollay’s sis didn’t even have that. Her eyes were too close together, her mouth was too big, and she had jug-ears. Then there were the freckles. Even thin she would have been ugly enough to stop a clock — hell, a whole show-window of them.