The Magic Keys Albert Murray (read novels website TXT) 📖

such a good listener. She could tell how keen his ear for music was just by the way he listened. So she checked him out and she invited him over to her house and they started listening to her collection of records and she said, Deke, that boy heard everything. She said, He listened like an arranger! And that’s what led to her giving him that bass fiddle she had fixed up for him. So he could get some student in the string section of the chapel orchestra to teach him to run scales. Not that she was trying to make a musician out of him or anything like that. She just liked the way he kept time when all he was doing was listening just to be enjoying himself. And I’m not talking about dancing in your seat or something like that. What I’m talking about is that you don’t have to be a music mechanic to be musical. That’s what she realized right away. Hell, when you come right down to it, a lot of big-time musicians turn out to be more mechanical than musical!

Yeah, yeah, I see your point, Skeeter said as he turned his chair for his next customer to be seated. Just listen to how musical all them church folks always been and most of them can’t read no music even if it’s in boxcar printing.

Anyway, Deke Whatley went on, I know Miss Tense well enough to know very well that she knew good and well that this boy hadn’t come up here to college to learn how to be no musician. No question about that. Because that’s just how hip she is. So even when it turned out that along with all that special talent for time that she spotted from the stage that night, he also had that magic gift of whatsitsname, whatchamacallit, absolute whatchamacallit, absolute pitch! That’s it—absolute pitch! Tone-perfect. And also that other genius-gifted thing, whatsitsname— total recall, photographic memory. One go-around and this cat’s got it cold! But you see now, that’s the boss lady for you. Even when she decided that he was good enough on that thing to start earning a little emergency change gigging with her combo out at the Dole from time to time, she still wasn’t trying to entice him away from whatever it was that he was trying to do with his life.

But hey, he said, interrupting himself as Red Gilmore came in from next door, as I expected him to. Here’s old Red boy. He knows almost as much about Hortense and old Giles and all this as I myself do. Tell him about them and this boy, Red.

Then when Red Gilmore shrugged off the compliment and bowed, signaling for him to continue, he said, Like I said, when she got to the big Bossman Himself to let him go fill in that summer while they were looking for a replacement when old Shag had to cut out and go back home. She said she was just trying to help him pick up some summer cash and see some more of the world on his way to graduate school. Right, Red?

Right, Red Gilmore said, and it was the same when he cut out from the band to spend that time doing what he was knocking around doing out there in Hollywood.

And, Deke Whatley said, as Red boy also remembers me telling him, it was old Giles himself that was the one that brought me the word about his girlfriend graduating and him marrying her that same summer in her hometown and taking her straight on off to graduate school with him like it was the same as going on their honeymoon.

Well, Deke, Skeeter said, since they both had them graduate school fellowship awards or grants or whatever you call them, it was a kind of honeymoon, a special kind of honeymoon, wasn’t it?

That’s exactly what I’m saying, Deke Whatley said. Hell, they both come through here on scholarship awards from high school, him four years from that Mobile County school and her three years when she transferred from State as a sophomore when he was a junior.

So now here he is, gentlemen, Red Gilmore said, back down here because they sent for him to come back and join the faculty, even before he finished his Ph.D. Nice going, Mobile.

Like old Giles said, Deke Whatley said, that just goes to show you about this generation we got coming along down here in this neck of the woods these days. And they fanning out and making good in every section of the nation. Check it out. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out for yourself.

Well, heyo, there, young Mobile, old Showboat Parker said. He had pulled up out front in his Cadillac taxi and had come in and waved and waited while Deke Whatley and Red Gilmore said what they were saying about Giles Cunningham.

What say, there, Mr. Globe-trotter? We been hearing that you just might be heading back down this way for a while. So when did you get in?

And I said, Number nine, number nine. Old getaway number nine. Yesterday afternoon, number nine. Number nine and old Floorboard whatshisname, or was it Dashboard?

Floorboard, Showboat Parker said. Because he was the one noted for stepping on the gas to get the chippies back on campus before library closing time during the old days of warden-strict deans of women, and herd-riding housemothers. Old Floorboard is taking it easy somewhere down in Florida these days, young . . . excuse me, young prof!

And speaking of Florida, Red Gilmore said, that’s where old Giles and Miss Tense ought to be rolling back in here from, just about now, this being registration week and also season opening week out at the Dole. Old Wylie was in to see me yesterday. Everything is all set and ready. All Giles and Tense need to do is to get back in place in time to greet people.

Hey, Skeets, I