“Well, I got—I got sort of a school, I guess you’d call it.”
“A school?”
“It’s a sort of academy. And I’m the head of it. I invented it.”
He flipped a card from his case as though he were shaking down a thermometer.
“Look.”
She took the card. In large lettering it bore the legend
JAMES POWELL; J. M.
“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar”
She stared in amazement.
“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar?” she repeated in awe.
“Yes mamm.”
“What does it mean? What——do you sell ’em?”
“No mamm, I teach ’em. It’s a profession.”
“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar? What’s the J. M.?”
“That stands for Jazz Master.”
“But what is it? What’s it about?”
“Well, you see, it’s like this. One night when I was in New York I got talkin’ to a young fella who’d been drinking some. He was one of my fares. And he’d taken some society girl somewhere and lost her.”
“Lost her?”
“Yes mamm. He forgot her, I guess. And he was right worried. Well, I got to thinkin’ that these girls nowadays—these society girls—they lead a sort of dangerous life and my course of study offers a means of protection against these dangers.”
“You teach ’em to use brassknuckles?”
“Yes mamm, if necessary. Look here, you take a girl and she goes into some café where she’s got no business to go. Well then, her escort he gets a little too much to drink an’ he goes to sleep an’ then some other fella comes up and says ‘Hello, sweet mamma’ or whatever one of those mashers says up here. What does she do? She can’t scream, on account of no real lady’ll scream nowadays. She just reaches down in her pocket and slips her fingers into a pair of Powell’s Defensive Brassknuckles, debutante’s size, executes what I call the Society Hook, and Wham! that big fella’s on his way to the cellar.”
“Well—what’s the guitar for?” whispered the awed Amanthis. “Do they have to knock somebody over with the guitar?”
“No, mamm!” exclaimed Jim in horror. “No mamm! In my course no lady would be taught to raise a guitar against anybody. I teach ’em to play. Shucks! you ought to hear ’em. Why, when I’ve given ’em two lessons you’d think some of ’em was colored.”
“And the dice?”
“Dice? I’m related to a dice. My grandfather was a dice. I teach ’em how to make those dice perform. I protect pocketbook as well as person.”
“Did you——Have you got any pupils?”
“Mamm I got all the really nice, rich people in the place. What I told you ain’t all. I teach lots of things. I teach ’em the Boodlin’ Bend—and the Mississippi Sunrise. Why, there was one girl she came to me and said she wanted to learn to snap her fingers. I mean really snap ’em—like they do. She said she never could snap her fingers since she was little. I gave her two lessons and now Wham! Her daddy says he’s goin’ to leave home.”
“When do you have it?” demanded the weak and shaken Amanthis.
“Three times a week. You’ll just be one of the pupils. I got it fixed up that you come from very high-tone people down in New Jersey. I told ’em your daddy was the man that had the original patent on lump sugar.”
She gasped.
“So all you got to do,” he went on, “is to pretend you never saw any barber.”
They were now at the south end of the village and Amanthis saw a row of cars parked in front of a two-story building. The cars were all low, long, rakish and of a brilliant hue. Then she was ascending a narrow stairs to the second story. Here, painted on a door from which came the sounds of music and voices were the words:
JAMES POWELL; J. M.
“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar”
Mon.—Wed.—Fri.
Hours 3-5 P.M.
“Now if you’ll just step this way——” said the Principal, pushing open the door.
Amanthis found herself in a long, bright room, populated with girls and men of about her own age. The scene presented itself to her at first as a sort of animated afternoon tea but after a moment she began to see, here and there, a motive and a pattern to the proceedings.
The students were scattered into groups, sitting, kneeling, standing, but all rapaciously intent on the subjects which engrossed them. From six young ladies gathered in a ring around some indistinguishable objects came a medley of cries and exclamations—plaintive, pleading, supplicating, exhorting, imploring and lamenting—their voices serving as tenor to an undertone of mysterious clatters.
Next to this group, four young men were surrounding an adolescent black, who proved to be none other than Mr. Powell’s late body-servant. The young men were roaring at Hugo apparently unrelated phrases, expressing a wide gamut of emotion. Now their voices rose to a sort of clamor, now they spoke softly and gently, with mellow implication. Every little while Hugo would answer them with words of approbation, correction or disapproval.
“What are they doing?” whispered Amanthis to Jim.
“That there’s a course in southern accent. Lot of young men up here want to learn southern accent—so we teach it—Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Eastern Shore, Ole Virginian. Some of ’em even want straight nigger—for song purposes.”
They walked around among the groups. Some girls with metal knuckles were furiously insulting two punching bags on each of which was painted the leering, winking face of a masher. A mixed group, led by a banjo tom-tom, were rolling harmonic syllables from their guitars; there were couples dancing flat-footed in the corner to a record made by Rastus Muldoon’s Savannah Band. “Now, Miss Powell, if you’re ready I’ll ask you to take off your hat and go over and join Miss Genevieve Harlan at that punching bag in the corner.” He raised his voice. “Hugo,” he called, “there’s a new student here. Equip her with a pair of Powell’s Defensive Brassknuckles—debutante size.”
III
I regret to say that I never saw Jim Powell’s famous school in action nor followed his personally conducted tours into the mysteries of Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar. So I can give you only such details as were later reported to me by one of his admiring pupils. During all the discussion of it afterwards no one ever denied that it was an enormous success, and no pupil ever regretted having received its degree—Bachelor
