From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [127]
“You know what,” he said after a while, “them blues songs sounds like jazz instead of hillbilly, way you play them. Slow jazz, real nigger jazz, like they play in the joints on 52nd Street.”
Prew stopped playing and Friday’s guitar gradually stopped too. “They are in a way,” Prew said. “Theres nobody can tell where hillbilly leaves off and jazz begins. They shade into each other. Me and Andy’s got an idea for writing our own blues that will be our private special blues. We been talkin’ about it, goin to do it someday.”
“Sure we are,” Friday said. “Gonna call them The Re-enlistment Blues. Theres Truckdriver’s Blues and Sharecropper’s Blues, but no Army blues, see?”
Stark sat silent, listening to the rising, falling conversation as they went on playing, listening to it all but taking part in none of it, only smoking silently and communing with some bitter silence in himself.
“That was no way to play Tattoo,” Prew said to Andy, with the indisputable air of an expert. “Tattoo wants to be staccato. Short, and snappy. You dont waste a second on the long notes. Tattoo is urgent. You’re telling them to get them goddam lights out and you dont want argument. So it has to be precise and fast, without slurring the notes. And yet a little sad underneath, because you hate to have to do it.”
“We cant all be good,” Andy said. “I’m a git-tar player. You stick to the bugle and I’ll stick to the git-tar.”
“Okay,” Prew said. “Here.” He handed over the new guitar that was not very new any more but was still Andy’s private guitar.
Andy took it and picked up the melody from Friday, still watching Prew’s face in the darkness.
“You wanta take my Taps?” he offered. “You can take them tonight if you want.”
Prew thought it over. “You sure you dont care?”
“Naw. I aint no bugler, I’m a guitarman, like I said. Go ahead and take them. I never could play them anyway.”
“Okay. Gimme the horn. Heres your mouthpiece. I got mine with me. Just happened to have it.”
He took the tarnished guard bugle and rubbed at it a little, held it in his lap then, as they sat on in the cool darkness, playing softly and talking a little, but mostly listening, Stark not talking any but only listening, gladly but sullenly. Once a couple of men wandering by stopped to listen for a minute, caught by the haunting hope without hope that sang out in the set blues rhythm. But the silent Stark was alert. He flipped his cigaret viciously out into the street, at them, the falling coal shattering at their feet and showering sparks. It was as if an unseen hand had pushed them away and they went on, but they were strangely lifted.
At five of eleven they stopped and all got up, the four of them walking out to the megaphone in the corner, leaving Stark leaning against the wall still smoking sullenly, tacitly accepting his aloofness, him rolling them and smoking and silently taking it all in, not missing anything.
Prew took his quartz mouthpiece from his pocket and inserted it. He stood before the big tin megaphone, fiddling nervously, testing his lips. He blew two soft tentative tones, wiped the mouthpiece out angrily and rubbed his lips vigorously.
“My lip’s off,” he said nervously. “I aint touched a horn in months. I wont be able to play them for nothing. Lip’s soft as hell.”
He stood there in the moonlight, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, fiddling with the bugle, shaking it angrily, testing it against his lips.
“Christ,” he said. “I cant play them like they ought to be played. Taps is special.”
“Oh, go ahead, for God sake,” Andy said. “You know you can play them.”
“All right,” he said angrily. “All right.