Coming Through Slaughter Read Free Page A

the band, the kids.
    He didn’t say anything.
    He stands up and goes towards her.
    Who was he with.
    I don’t know.
    Tell me.
    He has covered her against the window, leaning very close to her, like a lover.
    You’re shaking Webb.
    He won’t last by himself Nora, he’ll fall apart. He’s not safe by himself.
    Why are you shaking?
    He needs you Nora, who was he with last?
    Crawley. Another cornet. He was playing with him in Shell Beach, north of here, never came back.
    Just like that?
    Just like that.
    I could find him. Tell me about Crawley.
    She moves his arm away holding the cloth of his sleeve and goes to the door, opens and leans against it. She is a mask, her hand against the handle, he almost doesn’t realise what she is doing, then walks to the door, angry at her coldness.
    Do you want me to?
    Looking hard at him.
    I’m not going to hire you Webb.
    Jesus I don’t want your fucking money!
    I don’t want your fucking compassion Webb. If you look for him then do it for yourself, not for me.
    I’m very fond of him.
    I know that Webb.
    He’s a great talent.
    Silence from her, lifting her hand and moving it across the small dark living room and its old wallpaper and few chairs like a tired showman.
    Most of the cash went down his throat or was given away.
    You never did find your mother either did you?
    What?… No.
    Sad laugh over her face as Webb moves past her. Webb steps backward off the doorstep with his hands in his pockets.
    Are you with anybody now?
    Long silence.
    No.
    He’ll come back Nora. When he married you, before you two went to my cabin in Pontchartrain, he phoned and we talked for over an hour, he needs you Nora, don’t worry he’ll be back soon.
    Nora closing the door more, narrow, just to the width of her face. Webb grins encouragement and walks slowly backwards down the four steps to the pavement. He has remembered the number of steps. He is wrong. Bolden will take two more years before he cruises home. Her door closes on him and he turns. Spring 1906.

He went down to Franklin and bought bananas. Hungry after seeing Nora. Webb got off the bus as soon as he saw the first grocery store and bought six bananas, then a pound of nectarines. Put them in the large pocket of his raincoat and walked on downtown following the direction of the bus towards Lincoln Park. It was still about 8 in the morning. He ate watching the travel of people going both ways. For those who saw him it looked as if he had nothing to do. As it was he was trying to place himself casually in a mental position that was so high and irrelevant he hoped to stumble on the clues that were left by Bolden’s disappearance.
    It looked as if Bolden had no notion he was not coming back when he left for Shell Beach. Webb took much more seriously than others of his profession sudden actions and off hand gestures. Always found them more dangerous, more determined. Also he had discovered that Bolden had never spoken of his past. To the people here he was a musician who arrived in the city at the age of twenty-two. Webb had known him since fifteen. He could just as easily be wiping out his past again in a casual gesture, contemptuous. Landscape suicide. So perhaps the only clue to Bolden’s body was in Webb’s brain. Sleeping in childhood stories and now thrown into the future like an arrow. To be finished when they grew up. What was Bolden’s favourite story? Whose moment of terror did he want to witness, Webb thought as he began the third banana.

Don’t go ’way nobody
Careless love
2.19 took my babe away
Idaho
Joyce 76
Funky Butt
Take your big leg off me
Snake Rag
Alligator Hop
Pepper Rag
If you don’t like my potatoes why do you dig so deep?
All the whores like the way I ride
Make me a pallet on your floor
If you don’t shake, don’t get no cake.
    The Cricket existed between 1899 and 1905. It took in and published all the information Bolden could find. It respected stray facts, manic theories, and well-told lies. This