Moody Food by Ray Robertson Page B

along, young man,” but enough that they would’ve loved to have busted a popular hipster hangout like the Riverboat for having a single cup of coffee on a table a few minutes after hours.
    I turned back to Thomas. The smile of before had been replaced by the deep pout I’d come to recognize whenever he didn’t get what he wanted.

    â€œWhat?” I said.
    â€œYou never asked me the name of our band.”
    I knew I’d have to give in eventually. “Okay. What’s the name of our band?”
    He waited a second or two for dramatic effect. Then, taking off his glasses, leaning across the table, “The Duckhead Secret Society,” he said.
    I smiled like I knew he’d want me to and clinked his raised cup with mine.
    More than the goofy name, though, I wondered at the unblemished whites of his eyes, unaffected as always by whatever amount of booze or pot we took in or whatever hour it happened to be. I didn’t dare take off my glasses. Thomas could keep looking at me all night if he wanted to, but he’d still only see nothing but himself looking right back at him.

8.
    FOR THE TIME BEING it was easier not to tell Thomas no. He might have wanted to argue, he probably would have sulked, and, more than likely, I thought, the idea of an absolute rookie rhythm-maker like me keeping the beat for whatever the hell the Duckhead Secret Society turned out to be probably wouldn’t last much past tomorrow morning’s hangover. And besides, we were well into phase two of my Interstellar North American Musical Apprenticeship by now and I didn’t want to run the risk of doing anything that might disturb my studies. That more than anything else kept me silent on the subject of Christine and me joining Thomas’s band. Trust me, once Little Richard is introduced directly into your bloodstream, you’d be amazed at all the things you’ll do to make sure the medicine keeps coming.

    And not just the ivory-pounding Georgia Peach, either. A Chuck Berry disc, in fact, was the first classic rock and roll record Thomas stuck in my hand, the first roots music changeup he threw my way. Because once I was lost but now I am found, and so where are all the shimmering harmonies, the softly moaning pedal steel, the weeping fiddle? So much electricity and so little bittersweet subtlety surely must add up to an impure teenybopper art form that all of us musically enlightened ones should turn our properly self-righteous noses up at, right? Wrong.
    â€œI think your colour wheel needs a little filling in, Buckskin,” Thomas said, hand-delivering to my door his own lovingly beat-up copy of 1959’s Chuck Berry Is on Top LP.
    â€œYou’re saying you think I should listen to more black music?” I said.
    â€œSkin colour’s got nothing to do with it. The Good Lord gave you ten toes to tap and two feet to dance with and it goes against His will not to use them.”
    â€œIsn’t this kid’s music?” I said, scanning the track listing.
    Thomas raised an eyebrow; looked me over as if an offensive odour had begun to emanate from my body. He shut his eyes before he spoke.
    â€œBecause the head bone is connected to the hip bone, and the hip bone is connected to the feet bones, the high lonesome sound of a freight train blowing its sad midnight way through the middle of town on a frosty November night is, in fact, the exact same train that earlier that sunny afternoon clippety-clop chugged in perfect 4/4 rock and roll rhythm right past some dreary fool standing by himself by the side of that same set of tracks.”
    â€œUhm ...”
    Opening his eyes, “Just listen to the record,” he said, heading down the stairs.

9.
    AND WHAT DO you know. Chuck Berry could play a guitar like he was ringing a bell.
    Boom pop, boom boom pop, boom pop, boom boom pop, the drumsticks Thomas had given me a few days before and two pillows on my bed coming together to keep