my pea brain didn’t settle on no thoughts as clear as that, ’cause it do often let me down when I’m trying to think sensible, and I needed a clear head to figure out how I was gonna get to New York when the money jar I kept for rainy days was lower than I’d seen it for donkeys’ years partly ’cause Freddie’d been putting his big hand in it to dole out money every Sunday for the organ fund at the church.
That’s the onliest bad habit Freddie B’s got which is trying to act like we can do more than he can afford to when it come to the church collection. I tell him, ‘There ain’t no shame to you being broke and out of work, and all you got to say to Deacon Penrose when they ask for our organ donation is, ‘‘I ain’t got it. Pure and simple,’’ ’cause he probably been out of work hisself and knows that if you could be out earning a wage packet, you would be.’
But Freddie B thinks it ain’t Christian not to give when we get asked.
‘Shoot,’ I tell him. ‘What kind of a mean so-and-so do you think God is, if he held it against a man that worked hard all his life for being a bit short on the church collection from time to time. Anyway, the organ ain’t for God, it’s for Deacon Penrose who claims that organ music is so important for lifting up our souls. A guitar and a tambourine would do just as well, and he knows it good as I do! Like when Brenda and Joy was singing up at First Tabernacle and all we had was that jangly ol’ upright that Sister Fletcher’s sister bequeathed to the church. Brenda still sang good and won them gospel contests, and wasn’t nobody jumping up to the pulpit in the middle of her solos to say, ‘‘She ain’t got the spirit ’cause we ain’t got no organ’’.’
But I can talk to Freddie B sometimes till I’m blue in the face and he don’t listen. So his hands been in my money jar so many Sundays that there was nothing left in it but sixty dollars. Which ain’t nothing, so I tried to think on who I could call and borrow some money off and not leave them short, and the onliest person who came to mind was Sebastian Egerton.
Much as I harped on that Joy would of been better off to stay with her own kind and leave them white boys alone, I would have been more than happy if she’d of settled with Sebastian, ’cause if a man loves a woman crazy, like Sebastian did Joy, that’s who you put down roots with. Don’t matter what color he is. Like me turning up with Freddie B. I didn’t take a mind to marry him ’cause he was either smart nor cute nor light with his lanky self. I married him ’cause he was plum loco about me and with him heading out for the war, I figured I wasn’t gonna find nobody living or dead that loved me as much as Freddie B did. And thank God I did the right thing. Which is more than I can say for how wrong Joy did by shining Sebastian on. She said he was too tall and thin to be sexy.
‘What’s that got to do with anything,’ I tried to say, but even my countrified eyes could see Sebastian didn’t have nothing but a young boy’s body though he must of been twenty-two at least. And though that was six years younger than what Joy was, I reminded her that Freddie’s younger than me by two years but that didn’t stop us from getting hitched up.
‘Here comes Mister Too-Lean-to-be-Seen,’ Brenda used to holler at Sebastian when he climbed on stage with them other three musicians that played back-up for Bang Bang Bang. And Sebastian would just laugh with that shy way he had and pop a toffee in his mouth and walk on over to his keyboards. I hadn’t never seen nobody but my brother Caesar eat as much candy as Sebastian and have a full set of healthy looking teeth and still be the size of a rail. It gave the impression that he was way taller than six foot one inch and what with him being long limbed as well, in body he reminded me of Freddie B when we was young. But that’s where the similarities stopped.
Sebastian was always pushing that flop of blond heavy hair of his back, ’cause it was always falling in his eyes, and from where his hair separated into a natural parting, I could see it was his natural color though Joy was always teasing him that he got that perfect straw color out a peroxide bottle. There’s no denying Joy sure knew her blonds, and when we was all working down in LA for the first promotion tour, Joy said she preferred them tan, blond surfer boys to Sebastian ’cause they had some meat on their bones. It was a shame that she said that in front of Sebastian, ’cause even though he would laugh like he saw the joke in it, I know it probably hurt his feelings with him being so gone on Joy.
Brenda said there was two things that put Joy off him. The first being that he was too crazy about her and the second being that he didn’t have nothing but the wages he made off playing for the Bang sisters. But with that said, I could see he didn’t love nothing living better than a black Bechstein he got to play when we was recording in the LA studio and a silver and brass trumpet he carted everywhere like it was his only child. He’d named it Sunshine and kept the silver and brass on it gleaming better than I could.
Seeing him around them Southern California boys, Joy said you could tell right off that Sebastian was foreign. And it was true. He didn’t even have to open his mouth for you to hear that English accent of his that I liked so much. Though Freddie B thought he talked like a fairy. But like I said to Freddie B to put him straight, them English soldiers that Freddie said he met when he was fighting overseas during the war must of sounded just like Sebastian, and Freddie had told me when he come home how brave he thought they was for white boys. They wasn’t no sissies. And neither was David Niven that Sebastian sounded just like to me.
Sebastian had him a college education. In fact he explained to me one night when he was setting in my room waiting on Joy that he had him two college educations, ’cause he’d been picked out special from all the people at his music college to get him a degree from a university at the same time he was taking a special musician’s course. I didn’t get all the gist of it, and I had a hard time trying to picture him being at two different schools at the same time, but I believed him, ’cause even though he was a atheist, I could tell he wasn’t no liar, and in spite of him throwing cuss words around all the time, even when he wasn’t mad, you could kinda tell he was real smart and from good people. He would just cuss for the sake of it, and like other folks would say good morning, with Sebastian it was always ‘F’ this and ‘F’ that.
It put me off him at first, but Joy told me not to take no notice ’cause he didn’t mean nothing by it, no more than them other musicians did. But I didn’t never cotton to it. But seeing as he wasn’t no child of mine, wasn’t nothing much I could say to him. He was nice enough otherwise and had a gentle way about him that I liked.
Seeing Joy standing with him reminded me of the first time I saw her walk out swinging Bernie Finkelstein’s arm when we was living on Grange. Her and Sebastian looked made for each other, and the few times I saw her let him put his arms ’round her, I could see that he didn’t want nobody else in the world but Joy. He’d kiss her on the cheek with his lips just about grazing that rouge she wore to go with her fire engine red lipstick that was all the rage then. His lips would just barely touch her like he thought she was too delicate to kiss harder which used to make me want to laugh, ’cause delicate was one of them things Joy wasn’t. And sometimes when we’d be waiting, the whole crowd of us, the girls, the musicians and the roadies, waiting to check into some hotel where we was staying on tour, I’d see Sebastian stand just close enough to Joy for their shoulders to touch, but he wasn’t never bold enough to put his arms ’round her unless she put her arms ’round him first which she didn’t do unless she wanted something off him.
Joy charmed Sebastian into loving her when he first started working with the girls. But I think it was ’cause she was antsy, with Rex off touring in Europe. She said she was bored and needed a diversion.
‘A diversion! Sebastian Egerton ain’t no road re-route. He’s a man, Joy, and you can’t get him all excited about you if you don’t mean to do right by him, ’cause that stuff comes back on you.’ And sure enough she got the same treatment from Rex Hightower.
I know Joy had Sebastian
