End of the Jews Read Online Free Page A

over.
    â€œThank you.”
    The drummer glances up from the leather strap he’s fastening across the top of the bass drum’s box. “Our pleasure.” He is a small, lithe-limbed fellow, perhaps twenty-five, with skin the color of teak and a long scar over his left eye.
    â€œThey make you pack the drums?” Tristan asks, bracing to be indignant.
    The drummer chuckles. “They’re my drums. I gotta haul ’em uptown now, to play a rent party.”
    â€œY’all”—Tristan tries to say the word sharp and quick like Lady Les did, but his tongue can’t make it work—“y’all are playing again?”
    â€œYessir. This was just to warm up.”
    â€œWhat’s the name of the place?”
    â€œAin’t no name. We play and the cat who owns the pad charges some bread at the door so he can pay his house note. We jam as long as folks wanna dance. His wife be cookin’ up a hurricane, too, man. Plenty of food, plenty of liquor, plenty of women.”
    â€œAre you leaving right now?”
    â€œSoon as I can. Matter fact, if you want to tag along, we can split a taxi. The cats always stiff me, ’cause with these drums there’s only room for one more in the car. They split a cab three ways and leave me dangling. Never no girls left neither by the time I pack up. I’m telling you, I’m gonna do like Lester did and switch over to horn. I already got a tenor I been practicing on. So what do you say?”
    Tristan fingers the change in his pocket, yesterday’s craps profits, and wonders what the ride will cost. “I’m with you—as far as thirty cents will get me.”
    The drummer flashes him a smile, hands over a case. The cavemen gaze at Tristan as he walks past them, as though he is carrying the choicest slab of flame-charred mastodon on which they have ever laid eyes. Not until he’s clear of the table does one of them pipe up, a prodigiously nosed fellow who might be Sammy Fischer’s older brother.
    â€œDropping out to join the band?” he calls.
    Tristan spins, heat rising to his face, and almost floors a passing waitress with the snare. The cavemen are all smiles, and it takes Tristan a moment to understand that the attention is friendly.
    He sets down the drum case, lifts a hand to his upper lip, and smoothes the tips of an imaginary mustache. “I am inflamed,” Tristan declares. “By men and women, drink and song.” The cavemen erupt in laughter. The sound is loud enough to dominate the room, and all around Oswald’s, heads turn.
    â€œGodspeed,” says Fischer’s double, and Tristan nods and hefts his parcel. The troll opens the door for him, and Tristan exits the club and stands on the corner, guarding the drum. The name stenciled in white on the black box reads
Albert Van Horn.
    â€œSo why is the saxophone player called Lady Les?” Tristan asks him when they’re both wedged into the cab, drum cases atop and between their knees.
    Albert shrugs. “Just Lesterese. He calls everybody Lady. Reefer is ettuce, like
lettuce
without the
l,
cops are Bob Crosbys, the bridge to a tune is a George Washington, anything depressing is a Von Hangman. Just keeping up with his jive is a job in itself. Sometimes I be figuring junk out weeks late. Les always used to talk about his people after a gig, like ‘Boy, my people were smooth tonight.’ One time, I said to Paul, ‘I didn’t see Les talking to anybody. What’s all this about his people?’ Paul told me, ‘Man, his people is what Lester calls his finger pedals.’”
    Albert shakes his head. Tristan stares out the window, turning over the idioms of Lesterese in his mind and enjoying the ride. He’s been in a cab only once before, the time his brother broke a wrist playing street football and had to be rushed to the hospital.
Medical bills are a luxury this family cannot afford,
Jacob had lectured