The Jazz Age

September 9, 2013 //

Joe’s History of Jazz
Lesson 2
The Jazz Age

After World War 1, jazz went through something of an explosion. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald coined the term The Jazz Age with his 1922 short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. The period was also known as The Roaring Twenties. (If some of my comments seem pedestrian, please recall that original audience of these posts is a pair of young teenagers.)

Prohibition, enacted via the 18th Amendment was another factor in the growth of jazz. Because pubs and bars were closed, speakeasies,venues selling illegal alcohol, proliferated and the entertainment in these clubs tended to be jazz. Radio broadcasts from 1922 onward expanded the reach of jazz from the clubs to the general public.

And then there was the touring. “In 1919 Kid Ory’s Original Creole Jazz Band of musicians from New Orleans played in San Francisco and Los Angeles where in 1922 they became the first black jazz band of New Orleans origin to make recordings.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz#1920s_and_1930s). Ory’s Creole Trombone has a definite Dixieland feel to it, but there’s a lot here that became standard in jazz. You can hear the theme develop in the first half of this 3-minute track and then listen for improvisations on the theme by several band members before resolving the theme in the last 15 seconds or so.

Hot Jazz took a leap in Chicago with Joseph Nathan “King” Oliver, a composer and cornet player who developed his technique with the mute. He also taught Louis Armstrong. Oliver started his career in New Orleans but left the south in 1918 for Chicago. (There’s probably a dissertation or two on how racism influenced the development of music in the north in the period before the Civil Rights era.) I’ve chosen Oliver’s Room Rent Blues as the theme of what to do when you can’t make the rent seems to come up regularly (cf John Lee Hooker’s John L’s House Rent Boogie; Bessie Smith’s House Rent Blues). Room Rent Blues also has a really sweet clarinet solo.

A note on instrumentation. In jazz, eventually every instrument in the orchestra came to take part. As noted in the last lesson, banjos were central to Dixieland but fell out of favor somewhat, though Oliver and Ory both called their groups Creole Jazz Bands and you’ll hear banjo and the Dixieland flavour in general in their work. The whole of the brass and woodwind sections, guitar, piano, violin, stand-up and double bass and a variety of drums all find their ways in.

And there are probably several dissertations on women in jazz. Bessie Smith, who was primarily a blues singer, came to prominence in this period. Lil Hardin (who later married Louis Armstrong) played piano with King Oliver. Josephine Baker found her initial fame in the 20s in Paris. (We’ll hear more from her in one of the next lessons.) Bessie Smith’s career is notable in a jazz context for a couple of reasons. First off is that stylistically jazz and blues music are fairly inextricable at this time. She also recorded with a large number of jazz musicians including Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins. She started performing in 1913 and landed a recording contract with Columbia in 1923. Moonshine Blues (1924) was composed by Ma Rainey, with whom Smith performed in the 1910s.

Jazz, like R&B, and later rock and roll, was a primarily black musical form which found much of its popularity when performed by white musicians. Sometimes this works to good effect, sometimes it can be rather embarrassing. That said, the man who carried the title The King of Jazz in the 1920s was a white bandleader named, no joke, Paul Whiteman. An argument can be made that the jazz his orchestra performed is rather anemic and generally catered to a conservative white audience. Note that his bands tended not to be integrated and they played from written arrangements (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_in_Blue#Is_it_jazz.3F). On the other hand, at various times his band featured notables such as Bix Biederbecke, Bunny Berigan, and Jack Teagarden. His vocalists included Bing Crosby and Billie Holiday. Whiteman’s most interesting contribution to music (not just jazz) lies in his commission of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (track 4, a recording which I’m pretty sure features Gershwin himself on piano).

Gershwin (and his brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin) wrote primarily for the theater, but his works include the jazz ballet An American in Paris and the score for Porgy and Bess, which itself spawned the jazz standards I Loves You Porgy and Summertime. Rhapsody in Blue takes jazz into the orchestral realm with its various movements while maintaining room for improvisation. For example, Gershwin didn’t write the score for the piano solo until after the first performance. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_in_Blue#Premiere) I can imagine Gershwin’s “wait for nod” notation made Whitehead rather nervous, given that his band members always had scores in front of them.

Folks from the earlier decades of jazz continued to have success as well. Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers notably struck with a recording of King Oliver’s Doctor Jazz (track 5).

Leon Bismark “Bix” Beiderbecke taught himself trumpet and found success with a crew called the Wolverines who had a long engagement at a speakeasy in Ohio. He recorded his own composition Davenport Blues (track 6) under the name Bix and His Rhythm Jugglers in 1925. He went on to play in Whiteman’s orchestra, but a combination of Whiteman’s heavy touring schedule and his own alcohol dependence led to his death of pneumonia at the age of 28 in 1931.

However the biggest players, especially during the late 20s, were Louis Armstrong, Earl “Fatha” Hines (who collaborated with Armstrong), and Duke Ellington.

Hines started his career as accompanist to Louis Deppe, a Pittsburgh vocalist in 1920. By 1924 he had already toured much of the country with Carroll Dickerson, a jazz violinist and band leader (Jazz violin? Yeah. Later on I’ll share some Stephane Grapelli, a French jazz voilinist whose career lasted from the 1930s to the 90s.) who would shortly incorporate Armstrong into his act. Well, read one way, that’s the case. Read another, it sounds like Armstrong and Hines turned Dickerson’s band into the first of Armstrong’s Hot Fives. Hines at this time, about 1927, took over piano duties previously performed by the aforementioned Lil Hardin. Weather Bird (track 7) comes from a 1928 recording session.

Hines’ band in the late 20s, comprising from 15 to sometimes 28 musicians, played Al Capone’s Grand Terrace three to four shows per night, six or seven nights a week, often broadcast live. It doesn’t seem as though those early broadcasts have been preserved, however At the Apex Club, with clarinettist Jimmie Noone, seems to document a small combo appearance from around this period (Apex Blues, track 8).

Armstrong started playing cornet as a child, playing seriously while doing stints in the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs. King Oliver was a mentor, and Armstrong’s first big break was taking Oliver’s place in Kid Ory’s band (everything’s connected!), but shortly followed Oliver up to Chicago and joined his band. After a stint with Fletcher Henderson in New York, Armstrong returned to Chicago where he formed and recorded with the Hot Five and Hot Seven combos. He concluded the 20s in the orchestra of a Fats Waller review called Hot Chocolates, from which he recorded (What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue (track 9) several times. As previously noted, we’ll be hearing more from Armstrong in the coming decades.

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was raised in Washington DC near Dupont Circle. (In the original version of this lesson, I note the proximity of Dupont Circle to where several of my/my nieces’ relatives grew up/live.) He spent the late 1910s playing society balls and embassy parties in DC and Virginia before moving up north. A 1923 gig in Atlantic City, NJ led to what became a 4-year engagement at the Hollywood Club in New York. In 1927 King Oliver turned down an offer for his group to be the house band at the Cotton Club in Harlem, an offer Ellington didn’t refuse. In the late 20s Ellington’s band recorded under several names including The Washingtonians. I’ve included the early hit East St. Louis Toodle-Oo (track 10) because it was the first Ellington composition I ever heard (on Steely Dan’s 1974 album Pretzel Logic).

Oh, and listen, another song about getting dosh to the landlord, Rent Party Blues (track 11), recorded by Duke Ellington and the Jungle Band in 1929.

I realise looking at this list that it’s quite blues heavy, so I’ve pulled a couple more 1929 Ellington recordings, the Jungle Band’s Harlemania (track 12) and A Night at the Cotton Club (Parts 1 and 2) (tracks 13 and 14) which comprises The Cotton Club Stomp, Misty Mornin’, Goin’ To Town, and Freeze and Melt. These have the feeling of live recordings, but they don’t have the feeling of a band with the freedom to stretch beyond the 3 1/2-minute limitation of a 10” 78 rpm record. My guess is that those concert broadcasts would have had more of the improvisation heard later on recordings like Ellington’s 1940 Live at Fargo, recorded direct to 16” 33 1/3 rpm acetates on which several tracks run over 5 minutes.

We’ll definitely be hearing more from, as Stevie Wonder called him, “the king of all, Sir Duke” as well.

Next up: The Swing Era!

Tags Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Kid Ory, Louis Armstrong

Categories Jazz

Jazz Origins

September 2, 2013 //

Earlier this year I started compiling a history of jazz at the request of my nieces in California. So far there are six lessons which bring us through the rise of Bebop.I hope to post them here on a regular schedule, but knowing me. A lot of my facts are garnered from that font of all wisdom, Wikipedia. I try to source my quotes and factoids, but occasionally I fail. Apologies in advance. Comments, corrections, criticisms, and questions are always welcome.

Note also that the target audience for these posts are a pair of teenagers. Sometimes I’ll sound like a junior high school teacher.

Joe’s History of Jazz
Lesson 1
Jazz Origins

A music critic (whose name is lost to history) once noted that “talking about music is like singing about economics.” In the 70s this was updated to “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” (http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/11/08/writing-about-music/) The fact remains that learning about music is best done in the experience of music.

The origins of jazz can be traced to the music of pre-abolition slave gatherings, post-abolition minstrel shows, and the interchanges in the late 19th century between African-American musicians and those who had developed Afro-Caribbean musical forms. (A twice-daily ferry ran between New Orleans and Havana at the time. My guess is this ferry ran until Castro’s revolution in 1959.) The big difference between the two is that slaves in the American south where not allowed to use drums, whereas Africans in the Caribbean were able to maintain the drumming traditions brought over from Africa.

It starts in New Orleans, though others might argue that St. Louis, MO deserves the credit. Others will argue for Memphis. Later on, jazz will have centers all over the US – Chicago, New York, San Francisco, even Los Angeles (a most un-jazzy town, if you ask me). There are periods, one could argue, in which the purest jazz could only be found in Europe. Mind you, “pure” jazz sounds to be almost an oxymoron. Jazz is muddy, crazy, claims multiple inheritance, and is very hard to pin down.

The earliest recognizable jazz music includes ragtime and the blues in the 1890s and Dixieland from the period around World War I, though the forms of ragtime appeared as early as 1860 (!) in the music of a half-Jewish, half-Creole gent from New Orleans named Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Gottschalk performed extensively throughout the US, Caribbean, and South America before his death in 1869 (track 1).

Note that the term ‘ragtime’ does not indicate a time signature (as waltz time is 3/4, for example). “The defining characteristic of ragtime music is a specific type of syncopation in which melodic accents occur between metrical beats.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragtime#Musical_form)

While Scott Joplin is the best-known proponent today of ragtime, he was far from the only one (and Joplin himself was prolific in other musical forms as well, including opera). Tom Turpin’s Harlem Rag (track 4), for example, was the first rag published by an African American. Whole books on the subject of music publishing have been written and much of the history of popular music is wrapped up in publishing and rights ownership. Suffice it to say that in the 1890s, publishing referred primarily to sheet music. Vess Ossman, a white banjo player and dance band leader, recorded popular versions of rags in the first decade of the 20th century, including the Buffalo Rag (track 3), another Tom Turpin composition. The Mississippi Rag (track 2), is considered the first ragtime composition, was published in 1897.

W.C. Handy was one of the first to document the blues, which evolved out of 19th century spirituals and work songs, publishing St. Louis Blues (track 9) in 1912. She’s a Mean Job Blues and Gulf Coast Blues (tracks 7 and 8) are examples of Handy’s own work. I preferred Armstrong’s take on St. Louis Blues to the Handy recording I found.

Other early published blues songs include Jelly Roll Morton’s Jelly Roll Blues (track 5, a band version featuring banjo and clarinet, and track 6 a solo piano version, composed 1905, published 1915). To my ears, however, this is more ragtime than blues.

“The basic 12-bar lyric framework of a blues composition is reflected by a standard harmonic progression of 12 bars in a 4/4 time signature. The blues chords associated to a twelve-bar blues are typically a set of three different chords played over a 12-bar scheme.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues#Form) Note also the AAB rhyme scheme in vocal blues.

Memphis Blues (track 10) is sometimes considered the first published blues, it’s also argued to be more of a cakewalk, one of the precursors of ragtime. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz#Within_the_context_of_Western_harmony) I’d argue that Handy’s St. James Infirmary (track 11) straddles blues and what became jazz better than some of Handy’s other songs.

Dixieland includes elements of both blues and ragtime and is sometimes called Early Jazz or Hot Jazz. Louis Armstrong had early combos called the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, perhaps for this reason. (You’ll hear Armstrong’s name a lot in these little essays as he was one of the earliest jazz performers and had a long and prolific career.) “The term Dixieland became widely used after the advent of the first million-selling hit records of the Original Dixieland Jass Band in 1917.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixieland#History) You can hear both ragtime and blues in their recordings. It seems to me that Satanic Blues (track 12) is really neither, but it sounds almost as quintessentially Dixieland as When the Saints Go Marching In.

When the Saints Go Marching In (track 13) was traditionally a funeral march. In the funeral music tradition of New Orleans, often called the “jazz funeral”, a band accompanying the coffin to the cemetery would play The Saints as a dirge. On the way back, the band would switch to the familiar “hot” or “Dixieland” style. You can hear a small taste of that dirge in Pete Fountain’s version, though I have heard versions which make the distinction much clearer.

Next: The Jazz Age.

Categories Jazz, Music

Crutch, part 1

January 25, 2013 //

A couple of years ago, I wrote a relatively long short story called Crutch. I’ve reworked it a couple of times, but I also know that there’s a lot of information and a lot of back story that might make it more interesting. I also know that if I set a goal of posting a page or two here every week, then I’ll have the impetus to polish it into something quite nice.

Getting off the front of the bus and mostly sober now, the young man doesn’t much heed the apology of the trench-coated woman who knocks his leg with her cane as they take different directions. He’s still in his head trying to recall the name of a song the DJ at the club recommended.

The late spring night is warm and moonless, but he can only see a few stars between the white light of the sodium lamps and the porch lights triggered by the motion sensors everyone seems to have bought in the last few years. He continues in the same direction the bus had been traveling while she in dark soft boots turns right at the corner. The sweat of a night spent almost entirely on the dance floor encrusts his tight black t-shirt and his short black hair no longer holds its gelled spikes. A well-worn denim jacket hangs limply from an elbow. He keeps to the lit parts of the pavement although he sees no one about regardless who would help should there be trouble.

He doesn’t notice the trench coated woman fall in step into the shadows behind him. He remembers the fire that took out three of the houses on the next corner, where his apartment building now stands. He remembers the hook and ladder and the heat and the permeating smell of kerosene.

Turning up his own block, his heart starts to pump harder than it had all night as if, he thought, someone had spiked his last whiskey with a great hit of niacin. He wonders if the boyfriend of that dreadlocked girl he’d talked up had slipped him one. Nearing the gate to his apartment complex, he gasps a last time, trying to wrap a fist around his heart, and falls in a quiet heap to the pavement.

No lights come on as the trench-coated woman hurries to the young man and examines the wound she’d given his leg. She sees a trickle of blood, but the wound is otherwise clear. Clicking a radio on her wrist, she says crisply, “Number 12 down, boss.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Categories Fiction

Another possible start…

November 18, 2012 //

I’ve not jumped in to NaNoWriMo this year – have some other writing-related opportunities on the radar, and trying to clean up some older material. below is the most recent exercise for my writing group. A friend posted the opening sentence to his blog feed with a link to a music article. The music article linked to a Wikipedia entry. I just loved the sentence so much I suggested it to the group. We all hated it as a fiction prompt because none of us write/have yet written science fiction to speak of. That said, I feel that what I came up with may lend itself to a future longer piece…

“It’s time for you to re-familiarize yourself with the suppressed decade known as 19A0 and the Phantom Time Hypothesis.”

Keren didn’t precisely hate her Fundamentals of Time Travel course. The whole first week had felt like a rehash of what they already knew. The entrance exams assumed knowledge of the hypotheses already. It was more that the entire degree program required her to learn a lot of theory that had nothing to do with building time machines. All she’d ever wanted to do was design and build Time Travel Devices since she could distinguish past from future. All her aspirations hung on the degree and all its theory. Legally, however, practice had to wait.

“When Wozniak patented the crashless engine in 1985…” The professor whose name Keren couldn’t manage to remember sensed confusion and stopped a moment. “1985 Original,” he continued, “what we’re now calling 19A5 to specify the fifth year of the first of the sealed decades. When Wozniak patented the crashless engine, he threw several industries into a panic. It wasn’t long before the people were baying for a crashless economy.”

“But sir,” a classmate piped up, “that was 234 years (objective) ago. We’ve only had crashless engines for sixty years.”

“Sixty-three, son. And this is why we talk of various time hypotheses. Who can name the seven time hypotheses?”

Keren already understood the basics of the seven theories on which most time travel scientists depended, and started talking before the professor pointed at her raised her hand. “Pseudo-Real, Real, Imaginary, Actual, Phantom, Uncertain, and Stratified, sir.”

“And under which hypothesis do we discuss a 234 year old crashless engine, young lady?”

“Keren Moss, sir. Under both Stratified and Actual. The sealed periods fall under Real, Pseudo-real and Phantom.”

“Good. But impertinent. Surely they’ve taught you to wait until called upon to speak.”

* * *

As the lecture hall emptied, Keren started chatting with a young man who was walking alone from building. “We already know the names of the hypotheses and the underpinnings of each one. In mnemonic order and in orders of importance. But at a certain point…”

“I know,” the boy replied, “All the hypotheses run together – the equations all look the same. I’m Shan. What’s your name?”

“I’m Keren. It’s not that bad. Show me one equation and I can usually tell you what hypo it goes with. But, come on, Strat and Actual are the only ones that really matter in practical TTD construction. Why do we have to get into it with all the others?”

“That may be so, but all the big firms want you to show you can analyse the lot within an inch of their propositions.”

That was Keren’s problem: All the program’s studies pointed to the dreaded Seven-Level Exam. They’d heard horror stories. The admissions packet even contained an FAQ to address these.

“Do we really have to take the exam naked?”

“No. Should you be invited to take the Seven-Level Exam at the end of your studies, you will arrive at the testing centre on the appointed day, at which point you will change from your street clothes into an examining jump-suit. All supplies you need to take the exam (pencils, pencil sharpener, and paper) are provided in the testing room.”

The student then had to prove each of the hypotheses to the extent known with no recourse to any calculating equipment. Full credit on at least five and nothing less than partial credit on the other two, or you could kiss goodbye any dreams you might have entertained of TTD design. Any time travel you wanted to do at that point, you had to pay for.

The mechanicals firms would look at your CV if you earned full credit on the right three. Less than that and you might as well resign yourself to being a retail time machine grease monkey. Passing the program’s entrance exam got you that far, though.

“Shan, I’ve been building limited TTDs since I was six years old. I outgrew the 12/100 law when I was 8. All I’ve wanted for thirteen years is to program and build the reals ones. For the love of Ford, I have more practical knowledge wasting out of my fingertips than 80% of the kids in that lecture hall combined.”

“You’re way ahead of me, Keren, and my mom’s a programmer for Muscis Temporis. If I’d been able to transport a hundred grams of anything twelve seconds into the future, much less twelve minutes, my family would have jumped for joy. The machines I was able to build, back when they let me, had to have fire-proofing. If I don’t make it through the exams, they might as well pack me off to Middle Ages. And mom probably will.

“Wait a minute, Shan. Your mom’s a Time Fly? She must have been top of her class. Which school did she go to? What year?”

The founders of Muscis Temporis thought they were very clever naming their firm with the Latin for Flies of Time. The puns got worse from there, though. Entry-level programmers were even called Maggots. At least it made sense once the promotions came around to be able to say you’d earned your wings. The hiring agents at Muscis Temporis, however, required a full Seven. No partial credit. This is one of the ways they became the premier manufacturer of Time Travel Devices – most students aspired to being Time Flies, no matter what their actual proficiency.

“Oh great,” Shan groaned. “Another fan-girl.”

“I’m sorry, Shan. It must be hard on you.” She wanted to be sympathetic, but couldn’t help continuing, “That said, I’d donate major organs to be a Time Fly.”

“Keren, my parents would donate my organs for me to be a Time Fly. I’ll be happy to get out of the program alive. Heck, I’d be happy flipping burgers for Genghis Khan. TTD design is my mom’s dream, not mine”

“Wow, I’m really sorry to hear that. If you don’t mind my asking, did they pull strings to get you into the program? Don’t answer if you don’t want to.”

“No, that’s okay, Keren. I figure we’ll be in this together for a while. You may as well know where I’m coming from. They did not pull strings, but I took an extra year off after finishing my undergrad. My parents got me private tutors and all I did was TTD maths and TTD history for the year leading up to the entrance exams. I lived and breathed TTD for that entire time.” He stopped as though stung by the memory.

“I walked out of it knowing I’d passed. Well enough to get in here? That I don’t know.”

Keren understood that too. She didn’t receive a test result, per se, but a list of schools that would accept her based on the exam results. Westmore was listed in green at the top of her list, meaning the school she was now attending would take her with an application. Blue, black, yellow, and red followed based on likelihood of acceptance. “What colour was Westmore on your results card?”

“Black. They weren’t going to offer me a scholarship, but they were happy to take me on as a full paying customer. And mom didn’t’ blink when it was time to write the first check.”

The two students had walked the length of the small campus from the lecture buildings to the residences. Outside the dining hall they stopped in front of the menu board. The sun was setting and Shan offered, “Given that the folks are covering tuition and expenses, can I buy you a tray of, um.” He waved at the list, “Um, some of that stuff?”

Categories Fiction

Random Shakespeare

October 30, 2012 //

As noted, in my writing group one peson comes up with a prompt and everyone in the group produces something based on the prompt. A few months ago, the prompt was a random page from Coriolanus (the end of Act I, Scene 1 as it turns out) and the suggestion to pick a bit of it and create some fiction. I chose the following lines and came up with the bit below.

‘Half all Cominius’ honours are to Marcius.
Though Marcius earned them not, and all his faults
To Marcius shall be honours, though indeed
In aught he merit not.’

-=-=-=

Connor was lying on his stomach on the top bunk of the bed he shared with his brother Mark. The room was less of a mess than it could sometimes get because every afternoon Connor put his brother’s stuff away to keep anyone from tripping on it. Occasionally a toy car or a discarded sweatshirt would trip him in the middle of the night. How did his little brother manage to sleep through when he always had to get up and tiptoe to the bathroom? The house they lived in with their father and his new girlfriend was small enough that they had to share a room. They never had to share a room when they lived with mom and dad together, but now in this two bedroom house on the south side, they had to take every care. The house itself was clapboard and creaked enough in the wind that it was a wonder anyone could sleep an autumn night through in there. But the others managed to.

So Connor grabbed a quiet afternoon moment while Mark was at baseball practice and dad and his girlfriend were out shopping to read on the top bunk. He liked having the top bunk – it was warmer there when it got cold and closer to the rattling ceiling fan when it wasn’t. Good thing Mark didn’t mind the bottom bunk, Connor guessed. He’d hate to have to fight his little brother for the thing, especially because hours of batting practiced gave his brother a mean punch.

While it was quiet in the house, Connor could just sink into the comic books – especially if the toys were off the floor and all the clothes hung back on their rack. It didn’t matter whose clothes were on the floor, if dad’s girlfriend saw even one article or one toy out of place in their room, Connor got the blame. So before he could relax with a comic book, he had to make the room neat. He didn’t mind so much, except when there was blame to hand out.

“Like last week,” he told one of his friends, “All of my things were neat as a fucking pin. My books were all neat on their shelves, my socks were rolled tight, and the top bunk, where I’ve slept since we moved in to that place, was made.” Connor really knew better than to swear out loud, but he had to. He couldn’t spit out any anger at home at anything or he’d be lucky not to be sent to stand at attention in the back yard until dad or the girlfriend let him back in to the house. “Honestly, I’m supposed to make both beds now? What is wrong with him that he can’t make his own bed?”

“I don’t know, Conn, but you’re too close to home to be talking like that.” Connor and his buddy Brad were at the other end of the block and across the street, but close enough that if dad was sitting on the front porch looking at his paperwork, he might catch a word or two if the wind was right. That had happened, too. “Best get home. You know I always look forward to tales of your house, but if you don’t get to your homework, you might not have one to talk about.”

That was another thing. No matter how much he cleaned, how well he did on his tests, how hard he tried to keep out of everyone’s way, there was always the threat that they’d boot him out. The girlfriend, when she was upset (and when was she not?), always said something like “We can always just send you back to your mother. Oh right. She’s not really anywhere she can take care of you. Best fly right then, young man.” As if Connor needed any reminder that his mom had taken the fall for them. “Yes, ma’am,” was really all he could say. Any third word and she’d go off on another tear. And he didn’t dare look at his father in those moments. Dad was so ashamed of what would happen that when the subject of his ex-wife came up, his cheeks would burn and he wouldn’t look anybody in the eye until something innocuous came into the conversation. A minute’s silence might be enough that he could turn to Mark and talk about sports.

I hate sports,” Connor told Brad later. “Do you think that’s why she hates me? I don’t care about hoops or batting averages or which lineman ended up in intensive care this week. Is it wrong that I just want to read and do decently enough in school that I can get out of here?”

“Do you think,” his buddy always replied when Connor talked like this, “that it might be that you have ambitions to get out?”

“Ambitions. Big word that, my friend. I don’t think I’m allowed to use such big words. Shows I think above my station. Or something. The only one they think should be able to get out from under their roof is Mark. I swear, everything I do right, they give him credit for, and every god damn thing he does wrong they blame on me. Can you explain that too me, Brad? Can you find any reason they might not give me credit for any single thing I do. I study hard and do well on my history test – highest grade in the class on that one. Highest. Grade. In. The. Class. And they find something to praise Mark for. As if praise has to be meted out but they cannot bear to expend the efforts of their tongues to my benefit. So he doesn’t get credit for my grade, but they praise him for something.”

“I can’t explain it any better this week than I could last, Conn. I count my blessings when I split for my own home, though. My mom always wishes we could adopt you when I tell her about that harpie.”

Once again they were close to Connor’s house and he had to hush his friend. “Don’t let my dad hear you talk like that. I’ll never get free of the house again.”

“Sorry, mate. I’ll watch it too. Take care.

So while Connor was lying on his stomach on the top bunk reading his comics, a howl came from downstairs.

“Connor August Reynolds, get yourself down here right now.” It was the girlfriend. As he stretched himself out, Connor asked himself what he could have missed. The dishes were done, the dog’s water bowl was full, he’d vacuumed the living room. “I’m in the kitchen, Connor. Where are you?”

“I’m on my way, ma’am.” Dad’s girlfriend had never been married and was maybe 35, but Connor had never figured out a better way to address her. Her given name would never have done. He could imagine getting one of those whithering praying mantis looks she gave his father sometimes if he ever called her Caroline. Or Miss Harvey. So ma’am it was.

“There were two packages of cherry tomatoes in here I was going to use for dinner. What have you done with them? Did you snack on them in your room? I tell you over and over again not to eat in your room.”

“I’m sorry ma’am. I didn’t touch them. I don’t eat in my room.”

“Don’t talk back to me. You might be able to get away with that with your father, but not under my roof you won’t. Not with me, young man. Where are my tomatoes?”

That was the crux of it. The house was hers. No matter how cramped it might be with four of them living under that roof, it was paid for with her hard-earned money, and they were an inconvenience at best. So anything they did, any word they uttered was really at her sufferance. What could Connor do?

“I’m sorry ma’am. I didn’t touch the tomatoes. You know I always ask before I eat anything.” That was a risk, Connor, he thought to himself. Sean would give him the what for too for letting his tongue slip like thatTelling her what she should know. There was no getting out of it, now that he’d let the words slip out. No getting away from Caroline Harvey’s punishment.

The reasoning always varied. This week, missing tomatoes might be one thing everything else depended on, next week it would be leaving clothes in the dryer more than five minutes after the drum stopped spinning. But at least once a week he got it. “You know, Sean, it’s not even as though she administers it. She tells me where she wants me to stand and then tells my father I’ve done something horrible. Like eat a tomato. What am I supposed to do.

“Go to the corner, Connor. I’ll have your father deal with you when he gets home. Is it too much to ask that you have even half the grace the good lord gave your brother.” Connor always tried to turn away before she started talking about Mark. She got this faraway look in her face whenever she mentioned him, and sometimes when he was right across from her at the table. “It creeps me out and I don’t want to think about why.” “I have a good idea why, mate, and I don’t want to think about it either. So Connor and his mate Sean had a pact not to talk about why Caroline Harvey’s faraway looks creeped them out..

Connor was 13 and a half and his brother Mark was twelve, but a big twelve. Some uncle was built of bricks and Mark got all those genes. Even though Connor was older, he was slim and couldn’t put on a muscle to win a bet.

Categories Fiction