Honky-Tonk Girl by Jr. Charles Beckman, Jr. Page B

something like that.
    As he drove, he thought about the girl in the hospital, Ruth Jordon, whom he had known now for two months. He had first seen her one night at the old Hesperus nightclub on the waterfront. All the musicians in town had gone there that night to hear Blind Joe Mamba, the great Negro pianist, perform. Mamba had come to town for only one night.
    Johnny had walked in and, across the milling crowd and thick blue layers of smoke, he saw Mamba, a wizened old man by then, looking like a shriveled, mahogany-colored spider with claws for fingers. But the greatness of his music had not diminished. Like Jelly Roll Morton and those other early masters of the eighty-eight, Joe Mamba had played in Storyville in the early 1900s in places like the Frenchman’s on Bienville and Lulu White’s on Basin Street. When Johnny saw the old man, his eyes misted and the years fell away.
    Mamba was playing an old blues. A girl was standing beside him singing into a microphone. She was a cute, long-legged blonde. She wore a plum-colored sweater that hugged her curves and a brown wool skirt and brown suede high heeled pumps. There was a blue ribbon in her hair. She looked like somebody’s kid sister away at college, eyes filled with the expectancy of excitement.
    When she sang, it was with her head tilted to one side and her voice was husky and very good.
    â€œ In old New Orleans....
    In old New Orleans Town.... ”
    She was one of the few white women Johnny had ever heard really sing the blues. She was better, even, than Christine.
    The Hesperus was a rickety, tumbledown building on the waterfront. The room was stuffy, and had low, smoke blackened ceilings, cardboard patched windows and a few dim, fly-spotted light bulbs. The concert was closed except to musicians and jazz lovers who could appreciate what was being done up there on the bandstand where the spindly old man sat bent over the keyboard, his head shining like a polished mahogany knob.
    There wouldn’t be many more concerts like this. Blind Joe Mamba was one of the few early pioneers still alive and there weren’t many more tunes left in his tired fingers. Johnny’s heart contracted with pain when he saw how frail the old man had grown.
    When the girl finished singing, Mamba played some of his own compositions— Salty Dog Blues , Glory Morning , and Red, Red Woman . And when he finished, there wasn’t even the sound of breathing in the room. It was the finest kind of applause they could have given him. The old man turned and bowed to them, grinning and nodding his head, flashing the diamond set in his front tooth.
    He was dressed in the flamboyant sartorial splendor of the gay dogs who had strutted down Rampart Street when he was in his waisted trousers and brown and white shoes.
    Johnny pushed through the crowd to the stand. “Hi, Pops,” Johnny said huskily.
    Mamba half-rose from the piano bench, holding out his hand for silence. His face was agitated. “Was that Johnny Nickles’ voice I jes’ hear? Or is the good Lord foolin’ these tired ol’ ears?”
    A path opened magically for Johnny. “You know the good Lord ain’t going to play tricks on the finest pair of ears in the business,” Johnny answered in his gravel voice.
    â€œJohnny boy!” The old man reached for him happily and wrapped his arms around him, and patted him on the back. Tears were trickling down his parchment-like cheeks. In his excitement he lapsed into Cajun French. Johnny laughed and answered in the same dialect.
    â€œLor’, Johnny I jes’ never know where you’ll turn up! Last I heard about you was when you made that record album with your new band. It’s fine, boy, mighty wonderful. You got a nice bunch of boys there. Miff Smith, Richey, Tizzy Mole. I know ’em all. They’re all my boys, all from my home town. All except that boy on the clarinet. I reckon he’s a Chicago boy or a New York