I had sufficient to live on anyhow, plus all the food I could eat at the club. Miss Frostbite had always insisted that the customers’ tips (she called them gratuities) were shared with the kitchen staff. Now, with the war on and with more money around and servicemen anxious to spend it, these tips were often substantial. I could depend on at least five dollars a week and with a further two dollars or so won at poker, I could live quite nicely and save my rail fare with a little left over.
Then, the night before I was due to leave Toronto, Joe sprang a big surprise. Miss Frostbite had decided that, despite the law preventing me from playing in a nightclub because I was under-age, I was to play for the first band session after their double piano act. ‘You got your solo part chance jes one time, Jazzboy. Play good. It be yo farewell present from the cats in the band. Mr No Pain gonna step aside, but if’n you no damn good and cain’t hack it, he gonna kick yo sweet ass an’ shift you off that pee-ano seat pronto. Don’t let me down now, you hear? This yo first scuffin’ job and it pay two dollar. Yo mama, she gonna be here also. This the last time she gonna hear you for a long, long time, so play good, Jazzboy.’
There had been times when I was younger that Miss Bates had remonstrated with me, yelling, ‘Stupid, stupid boy! Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong again!’ until she’d left me emotionally tattered. But Joe’s injunction not to let him down gave me perhaps the most anxious moment in my musical career.
I’d practised my solo part a hundred, maybe five hundred times, maybe even more, but when the moment came I could feel my knees begin to tremble beneath the keyboard. Having my mother seated at a table directly next to the stage, along with Miss Frostbite and Joe, didn’t help calm my nerves either. Though my mom was no jazz expert, she’d heard me on the harmonica so often that there was no doubt she knew a good musical passage when she heard one.
Noah Payne, alias No Pain, handed the piano over to me and introduced the band: ‘Ladies an’ gennelmen, welcome once again to the Jazz Warehouse, where the band gonna play you some real nice jazz. Tonight for the first session we have us a special privilege to introduce the one and only Jazzboy!’ He paused, then, raising his voice like they do at a boxing match, went on, ‘From Toronto, I give you Mr Jack Spayd at the piano!’ A bit of sporadic clapping followed and No Pain brought us to life with a sweep of his hand.
I knew the opening routine like the back of my hand and played it almost effortlessly. It was smooth, easy and relaxed – ‘smooth as whipped cream on a satin bedspread’, as Mickey Spillane had said, describing the skin on the thighs of one of his fictional molls. With the extra musicians from the US, this was now a truly good jazz band, perhaps even the best in Canada at the time.
Then the awesome moment arrived when No Pain signalled the start of the solos, pointing at me to begin. I took a deep breath and began to play, all the while looking at my mom. The band had already played through the basic melody and progressions, so first of all I repeated the chords. Then I started embellishing a little with my left hand and doing a few showy bits like trills and fast scale runs with my right hand. The grins from the other musicians boosted my confidence and I turned back to the keyboard to concentrate as I threw in some passing chords to make things more interesting. Then, halfway through my solo, I grabbed my harmonica and stepped over to the microphone and jammed with it, keeping the musical thread and pumping out the beat. This was a complete surprise for the band, and glancing down at Joe I could see his eyes were near popping out of his head. But equally surprising was the burst of applause from the audience as I moved back to the piano to complete my solo.
Joe would have handed me my two dollars scuffing money anyhow, but he seemed genuinely pleased, and at the break No Pain and the other musicians came over and congratulated me, as did Miss Frostbite. Turning to my mom, who was standing shyly off to one side, she said, ‘Gertrude, I truly think the boy has made the correct decision. That solo piano with the harmonica interlude just summed up everything for me – from that first day Joe brought Jack in out of the cold until now. It was splendid, truly splendid. You can be justifiably proud, as indeed am I.’
My mom smiled her best new flashing smile, but I could see she was close to tears. ‘Thank you, Floss, for giving us a chance,’ she said quietly.
Joe gave me ten dollars and Miss Frostbite gave me fifteen. It was generous of them both and meant that if I didn’t immediately find a job, I’d be financially secure for a month at least. But that wasn’t all. What had actually happened was that my mom had saved every cent of my wages, a sum that amounted to $150, and she wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer when she gave it to me. ‘At least I’ll know you’re going to eat properly and sleep warm, Jack.’
So when I took off for Moose Jaw I was stinking rich with $175 in my wallet. I determined that, come what may, I wouldn’t touch my mom’s money, and when I returned it would go towards her nose job. At that time, the twins’ contribution to her plastic surgery was still in the future.
The kitchen at the Jazz Warehouse set me up with three days’ worth of sandwiches, mostly meat and pickles, a dozen hardboiled eggs, six apples, a packet of peanut biscuits and finally, as a special treat, a large Hershey’s chocolate bar. Even the cook shook my hand in the end and said he’d half forgiven me for breaking the glasses and making the kitchen floor lethal for days, and concluded that I had been a top dishwasher.
Mac, Joe Hockey, Miss Frostbite and, to my surprise and delight, Mrs Hodgson from the library were all at the station to farewell me. Remarkably, the twins appeared, having given up an evening’s work to support my mom, who was trying hard not to cry. These were some of the people who had made me what I had become at seventeen. Miss Bates and Miss Mony, who had also profoundly influenced my life, were absent, but all of them would remain forever in my mind.
Now I was to leave them all behind to find myself. It seemed paradoxical that I had to leave the people who’d influenced me most to find out who I truly was. This was the first time I’d be on my own, I mean with nobody, absolutely nobody, I knew at my side. While the prospect was exciting it was also sad – for all of us. Even hard cases like Mrs Hodgson and Miss Frostbite shed a quiet tear. It was nice being loved but I knew in my heart of hearts that Joe was right: it was time to go it alone. But whatever was to come, these people would always be a part of me.
With a shrill blast of his whistle, the conductor shouted, ‘All aboard!’ Then the train, metal wheels screeching on steel rails, let off a blast of steam and started to pull away to much shouting from passengers and those who had come to farewell them. My last glimpse of my mom was of her back as she wept in the arms of the twins. As the train gathered speed and the wheels clicked over the rails, the rhythm seemed to be announcing Wrong-wrong-wrong-and-wrong again! Chuff-a-chuff-a chuff-a chuff – stupid-stupid-stupid boy!
I had all I could possibly eat for the journey, with plenty left over to share with a young guy in my compartment named Pat Malone. He was small in stature, like Mac, maybe an inch or so taller, but undernourished, thin and weak in appearance with a body that seemed reluctant to coordinate itself with his mind. He looked as if he lacked the strength or energy for physical work.
He’d been rejected for military service because he suffered from asthma and was going on to Moose Jaw as a volunteer agricultural worker on a combined wheat and cattle ranch. The army doctor had sent him to work on the land saying it would be good for his asthma to be out of the city. All they’d given him was a warrant for his train fare and he was almost stony broke with only two dollars in his pocket.
As it turned out, Pat Malone was a bit of a chucklehead. He’d shared my grub for breakfast and lunch on the first day out of Toronto, and seemed to relish the beef and pickle sandwiches, wolfing them down like he hadn’t eaten for days. Around midafternoon it occurred to me to ask him if I could take a look at his rail warrant. He handed it over and I saw that he was entitled to eat in the second-class dining car. ‘Hey, buddy, it says here you can eat in the
dining car,’ I explained.
‘Yeah?’ he said, astonished. ‘Here . . . right here on the train?’
‘Where else?’ I laughed. ‘Compliments of the government.’
‘I can’t do reading that well,’ he admitted, adding, ‘I never was no good at school.’
He trotted off to dinner that first night and returned with a roughly tied napkin which he handed to me.
‘Open it, Jack,’ he said, giving me a goofy smile.
I untied the napkin and saw that it contained a broiled chop and two roast potatoes. ‘I didn’t bring them green beans – anythin’ green’s no good for ya, Jack,’ he’d explained, his expression serious, as if it was a universal truth.
‘You shared your dinner with me, Pat? That’s real nice of you, buddy.’
‘You did the same for me, Jack. They gimme two o’ them chops and four o’ them roast potatoes and a heap o’ beans I couldn’ eat.’
‘Pat, I really appreciate it, but I’ve already eaten.’ I pointed to the chop and two potatoes. ‘You’ve only had half your dinner.’
He looked guilty. ‘I ate all the puddin’ . . . rice custard.’
‘Better finish it, eh? Can’t let it go to waste, can we? I hate rice pudding,’ I fibbed.
He looked uncertain. ‘You sure, Jack?’
‘Absolutely!’ I patted my stomach. ‘Chock-a-block. You’re going to need all your strength as a farmhand and cowboy, buddy. Eat up. Never know where your next chop’s coming from.’ I handed the napkin back to him.
Pat Malone began to wolf down the chop and roast potatoes and it was surprising to see how someone so puny could have such an enormous appetite. He ate voraciously, as if he were catching up on all the meals he’d missed in his life.
When Pat had first mentioned the ranch near Moose Jaw where he’d be working, it had suddenly occurred to me that this was no dry-boned prairie I was heading into. You’ve got to wonder which of us was the chucklehead. Geography had never been my strongest subject at school, and most of my ideas had come out of books, such as The Great Lone Land by the Irish-born army officer William Francis Butler, in which he evoked tenantless solitudes in prose that Mrs Hodgson at the library claimed was almost poetic. Hence there was little room in my head for any modification of my imagined landscape of the north-west prairies and Canada’s west.
Whenever the train pulled into a station along the way, I would buy coffee or a soda for Pat and me, and the whole journey cost me the grand sum of three bucks, which left me $172 in my wallet, but most of that was my mom’s nose money. I knew I’d have to find a job quite quickly, but I could probably stretch Joe’s and Miss Frostbite’s money and the little I had over from my rail fare to last me a month. After that, I told myself that if I failed to find a job in Moose Jaw, I’d be riding the rattler.
Arriving late in the afternoon, the steam train let off a loud hiss before coming to a halt beside a very long platform teeming with people waiting for the passengers to alight in what proved to be an enormous railway station.
‘Jesus, Jack, how’m I gonna find the man supposed to meet me?’ Pat said in a near-panicked voice, looking every which way out of the compartment window.
‘Keep looking, they’ll probably be holding up your name,’ I suggested. Then, as luck would have it, I saw a big guy two carriages down from us holding up a large piece of cardboard above his head on which was painted in crude black letters: PAT TORONTO. The paint had dripped down to the edge of the board so that it looked as if each letter was held up by a haphazard arrangement of black sticks. Pat Malone didn’t make the connection until I pointed out the guy, a thickset man who looked to be in his late forties or early fifties. ‘Buddy, I think that’s for you.’
‘Nah, me name’s not Toronto.’ Pat glanced at me reproachfully. ‘I ain’t that bad at readin,’ Jack.’
‘Still, I think you should try him,’ I suggested.
‘He don’t look happy,’ Pat said, hesitating.
I heaved my large rucksack onto my back (another example of Mrs Sopworth’s kindness), Pat grabbed his battered suitcase, and we stepped down into the milling, shouting, gesticulating crowd on the platform. ‘Hang onto me, Pat,’ I instructed, making my way to where I thought the guy stood. I pushed my way further through the crowd, saying, ‘Excuse me! Excuse me!’ with Pat hanging on to my rucksack until we reached the guy. ‘Are you looking for a Pat Malone from Toronto?’ I asked.
‘You him?’ he demanded with a scowl.
‘No, he is,’ I said, jerking my thumb back at Pat.
‘Frank Farmhand,’ he said, addressing Pat and ignoring me. I wasn’t sure if ‘Farmhand’ was his surname or job description. ‘You got here,’ he barked at Pat, then, ignoring his proffered hand, he glanced upwards as if at the sky, even though the platform was under cover. ‘More snow comin’. Got to hurry. Chevy don’t like travelling through mush without snow chains. Fuckin’ idjit ranch mechanic don’t put them back’a the truck.’ He punched a fat forefinger in the direction of Pat. ‘Follow me, Toronto.’
‘Pat! Pat’s me name, sir!’ he called out, but Frank Farmhand had dropped the cardboard sign at his feet and was already pushing his way through the crowd.
‘Go, buddy!’ I yelled, giving him a shove.
Pat set out after the big man. ‘Thanks, Jack,’ he called back and then disappeared into the crowd.
‘Good luck!’ I shouted in his general direction. Poor bastard, it hadn’t been the most propitious start to his new life as an asthmatic cowboy.
I decided to wait until the crowd thinned and dug into my rucksack for my Mrs Sopworth anorak. I put it on, zipping it to the neck and fitting the hood over my head, then moved over to a station wall clear of the pigeons overhead and sat on my rucksack with my back against it. Jesus, it was freezing! I silently blessed Mrs Sopworth for her two-dollar anorak.
The crowd eventually began to thin and I was about to leave when a train pulled in on a parallel track and the platform was soon crowded again. I began to realise that I hadn’t arrived at a terminus, a town at the end of the line, the Nowheresville I’d always imagined Moose Jaw to be, but at a city that acted as a junction to just about everywhere. All passenger trains on the CPR stopped here to take on coal and water, while transit passengers left the train to grab a meal in one of several dining rooms. I was to learn that, for the most part, these stayed open and busy twenty-four hours a day.
I suddenly felt very alone. It wouldn’t be the last time, but the first time is always the worst. Miss Mony, then Mrs Hodgson, then Mac followed by Joe, Miss Frostbite, the boys in the band, the kitchen staff, even Miss Bates and latterly the twins, they had all been my anchors and understood the why and how and what of me. Was it the same in the country? I was in a strange place with people milling around like a cattle roundup, everyone seeming to know someone or have some sort of purpose, even if it was only to have a nice dinner and then hop back on the train and head for some familiar destination, where they would be met by family and friends and taken to a home with a fire in the hearth, food in the oven and a warm bed. A city is full of disparate people so you can always find someone who shares your peculiarities and understands your background, where you are coming from the moment you open your mouth or behave in a particular way. But I suddenly found myself a dot, a nothing, a cipher, nobody. Shit, I was lonely.
On the train Pat Malone had protected me from feeling the full force of my isolation. Despite his slowness, Pat had been enthusiastic about his new life, peering out of the compartment window like a small child, exclaiming about the smallest things he saw in the passing landscape, gleefully counting the grain elevators whenever we approached a small town or country siding. Would little Pat be happy and find his feet? Could he discover new skills, get to know and love animals? Dogs, for instance. Dogs don’t judge you, just love you for who you are. I’d always wanted a dog. But dogs live off scraps and there was never enough left over. Could Pat make himself useful and needed? All these questions racin
g through my mind sounded like the end of a weekly radio serial I’d listen to on Mac’s crystal set, with the announcer building anticipation for the episode to follow.
But I couldn’t help worrying. Here out on the prairies there would be no crowd where Pat could lose himself. Would country folk look upon him as a simple-minded no-hoper who everyone could yell at and kick around with impunity, laughing and humiliating the clumsy city kid? Was Frank Farmhand the first of many? Pat’s smallness would count against him. Huge and slow-witted lads could always be put to work doing the heavy lifting, the grunt and heave that was part of farm and ranch life, but Pat’s puny frame would be a disadvantage even without his chronic asthma.
My worries about Pat were probably distracting me from worries about myself. It was getting dark and I had to find a place to stay the night. My sandwiches were gone and so were the peanut biscuits. Despite eating breakfast and lunch in the dining car, Pat had polished off most of what remained of the food the kitchen had prepared for my journey. His eyes had almost popped out of his head when he saw the Hershey’s bar and he’d eaten most of it, not letting it melt slowly in his mouth, but gobbling it down like there was no tomorrow or as if someone was going to snatch it away from him.
My own life hadn’t contained too many Hershey’s bars either, but now I urged myself to buck up, pull myself together. My own childhood and teenage years had been filled with opportunity and the kindness of people I had no claim on, not to mention private school, piano concerts, the eye-opening trip to New York and meeting the jazz greats. I’d even been lucky enough to be born with a decent brain. Pat Malone had been given so much less than me, and it was high time I put my brain into gear to solve my immediate problem – food and shelter.
I wasn’t really hungry but I reasoned that the staff in a railway restaurant would be accustomed to strangers asking them for information, and so I decided to blow a buck or two on a steak. It was an indulgence, but if I picked one of the better restaurants at Moose Jaw station, the waiters or waitresses would have been chosen for their initiative, serving as they did a passenger prepared to pay a bit more for their food. Sloppy joint, sloppy waitress: they invariably go hand in glove.
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