Plink, Plank, Plunk (297 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 0.25 on 12 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by baron von munchausen (View user info) at 2007-10-12 20:55:07 EDT
The last time I saw him, he was sitting at a piano stool.
Truth was-I hadn't laid my pretty eyes on Joe Barrigan since the night he wrecked up the Peel St. Pub in Montreal with a pool cue in 1953. Fucking Montreal, fucking cold, he kept complaining about the goddamn cold. We were only in for a two week stint in the first place, but then it turned out we just had no place to go after the Toronto gigs got shot-we got an offer from a place in Quebec City, but Joe said that if we tried to make him go any further north he'd cut our eyes out while we slept. We could never tell if he was serious or not. But it was safest to assume he was.
What the fuck got us up into Montreal in the first place is a story in itself, and I'm not going to get into it in detail-suffice to say that we had to get out of Chicago because Joe would have had bullets in his head from at least seven different gangs, crews, organizations, agencies, mobs, thugs, and the like if we'd spent one more night there. Montreal was the first offer we got, and we had to take it. How I'd allowed myself to get mixed up with a boisterously irresponsible fucker like Joe I could never quite figure out. Shit, man, though, he could play. That was probably what did it.
San Francisco in the early 40s-not exactly the cultural hotbed it was about to become, certainly nowhere for the budding jazz superstar I liked to imagine I would become. My parents, very strongly faith-based folks, chucked me into the Salvation Army band when I was 11 and they gave me a cornet. Then I heard "And the Angels Sing" on the radio and ever since I've been trying to sound like Harry James. Anyways-I met Joe for the first time when I was 17 and he was 18. People are always describing other people by saying that they have "a twinkle in their eye". I have no idea what the fuck that's supposed to mean, but if Joe had anything at age 18 it was a fucking twinkle.
He could play then, too-he had a massive collection of Fats Waller records and could play through each one off the top of his head. He was subbing in for a local band whose piano player who had broken a couple of his fingers (people liked to say later that Joe broke his fingers so he could get the gig) and I was lucky enough that night that I was able to sneak out of my house and into the joint without getting caught. Needless to say he blew me away-until the owner of the place found out how old he was and dragged him out. Based on that display of intolerance and my interest in Joe, I figured it was a good time for me to disappear too. I found him lighting a cigarette in the alley behind the bar and introduced myself. By that time the next day we had hitched our way to L.A. and fallen asleep in a doorway. Two weeks of that doorway, and we had found a bassist and drummer and the Joe Barrigan quartet was up and running.
We gigged in L.A. as much as we could, trying to save as much money as possible so we could buy a shitty car and hit the road. Our dream was to make it to New York, the Mecca of our musical era. But we would need to play our way across the country just to earn enough to keep going. We finally got the car and got out of California in '47. We spent the next six years making our way across the country, only getting as far as Chicago where the aforementioned pressure forced us to move on to Montreal. Even though New York was probably a lot closer to Chicago than Montreal, the offer we got from Montreal was backed by something of a wealthy patron who would take care of our transportation expenses-but of course, only if we took the offer. So, we figured we could head to Montreal and then through Toronto on our way to New York.
So on a February night in Montreal, Joe took a pool cue to a drunk piece of shit who was heckling him all night. Kept calling his hat "faggy". It was a bit of a faggy hat, but everyone else who noticed had the sobriety and tact not to fucking mention it. Joe liked his hat, and being pretty tanked himself, he figured that the most effective problem solving tool at his disposal was the pool cue leaning against the wall to his left. The pool cue held its own pretty well until it finally cracked over the chair the owner was trying to take him down with. There was broken glass and blood all over that place when it was over, and even I had a few bruises-I'm not a big fighter, but, Joe being my buddy and all, I had to get in there somehow. The aforementioned owner and chair managed to eventually subdue Joe and he collapsed, bleeding from his nose, mouth, and gut (the drunk shit's buddy managed to cut him with a broken ashtray before I flattened him), onto his piano stool. That's where he was when the cops showed up, and I wasn't dumb enough to stay around until then. That was the last time I saw Joe Barrigan, and my trumpet-haven't picked up another one since.
They threw him in jail for a pretty long time. I never saw the other two guys again-they disappeared early and god knows where they are now. I spent the next month and a half washing dishes to pay for a bus ticket back to San Francisco. After a lot of fuss, my parents put me up again until I got a job-I've been making a decent living off numbers on pieces of paper ever since. In 1966 I was on a business trip to San Antonio when I thought I'd step into a noisy bar to have a drink and relax for the evening, and Joe Barrigan was playing the piano. I had no idea how the fuck he had survived so long, let alone got to San Antonio-Joe was the kind of guy who woke up each morning and dug his hole a little deeper. He'd been in over his head since he was 13.
But it was Joe. He was wearing a thick blue bandana, and the cigarette dangling from his lips threw the smallest glow onto his now rough and callous face. A man in a black suit walked through the back door and shot him once, twice, three times in the head, and he slumped without protest over the keys. I managed to get out among the cries and screams and commotion and was on my train back to Frisco the next morning, ready to sell numbers on pieces of paper to men with brown shoes.
The last time I saw him, he was sitting at a piano stool.
User Reviews
Submitted by c1ndy (user info) at 2007-10-13 11:28:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by Maddog (user info) at 2007-10-13 05:31:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Oh, and the Bears suck cock.
Submitted by Maddog (user info) at 2007-10-13 05:30:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice read
Submitted by ChristPuncher (user info) at 2007-10-13 03:50:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
BOOOOORRINNGGG
THATS WHAT YER HAIRY MOMMA SCREAMED AT THE MOMENT OF YER CONCEPTION
OMG HAVE A -2
AFTER ALL ITS KIND OF A FAMILY REUNION
GO BEARS WOO!!!
Submitted by baronMunchausen (user info) at 2007-10-13 01:41:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I totally beat you to the punch there. Also, if you use such simple, specific and closed-minded criteria to evaluate writing, I don't understand how you could ever actually...enjoy anything. The fact that you expect certain things to be certain ways all the time, as in, THIS must be THIS WAY in a story or else it is BAD points to a weakness in your critical ability-which I do have respect for, when it's done with real intention. Perhaps I meant for the jumps in time to be "choppy"; and I wasn't exactly going for intense action sequences, though what little is described I wouldn't characterize necessarily as elementary. I was evidently not going for points in the character description category, as there wasn't very much; instead of immediately categorizing it as "generic" perhaps the effect on the reader might be considered. It has been hypothesized by people much smarter than either of us that French people have more developed imaginations that Anglos because they have fewer words in their language to describe everything. Not that I would disregard the power of description-but maybe you should not immediately dismiss something just because it isn't the way you're used to calling "good". Anyways. This will be the last time I respond to a rating of yours because I don't want to get frustrated and start acting like a whiny bitch. I would like your opinion on my last post as I consider it my best so far.
Submitted by ilikesteak (user info) at 2007-10-13 01:02:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Ohh. Apparently by the time I had realised you'd get bitchy about it, you already had.
Damn my typing skills.
Submitted by ilikesteak (user info) at 2007-10-13 01:01:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Also, to offset your inevitable whining about my previous statement, I leave you with the following.
This reads as a bad combination of a diary, and a memoir.
Whatever form of "action" being described in the scene was written with all the talent of a sixth grader.
The timelines were far to choppy, and have no good transitions between the various tracts of time.
The first and last line are the same thing is only supposed to be used if it's done well.
Your charachter description wasn't awful, but it was very generic.
Please try to suck less next time.
Submitted by baronMunchausen (user info) at 2007-10-13 00:56:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Why am I not surprised...
Submitted by ilikesteak (user info) at 2007-10-13 00:51:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Holy suck!
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2007-10-13 00:48:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
HOLY SHIT!!!
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2007-10-13 00:39:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-10-12 21:55:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1