Saints + Sinners by Paul Willis

Author:Paul Willis [Paul Willis and Amie Evans (eds.)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626398504
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2016-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

Winner

Trumpet in D

Jerry Rabushka

De way he put a trumpet to his mouth and blow dat thing you almost think he makin’ love to you, and that’s why I’m in de mess I’m in now. It’s like he talking right to yuh ’cept he doin’ it through a trumpet. I’m at de club I’m still thinkin’, hopin’ I got something he wants, still not sure even after…well that’s why I’m here tellin’ a story.

I ain’t no writer. I don’t know grammar, words, forgive me, I don’t know that stuff. I try to write like I talk and then I try to write like I’m supposed to write and it’s a jungle of right and wrong blocking my way. Hurricane come along and took away my chance for school. So since I was 17 I learn on my own. Or not, yuh might say.

I like jazz, I like trumpet, I like soca music too. It’s Caribbean carnival pop mostly from Trinidad. I mad crushin’ on Kerwin Du Bois, soca star, soca stud. Mad crushin’ on dem biceps he carryin’ and dem dreds he swingin’. He sings like he singin’ just to me, like he made a record just for me, like he knows I’m there mad crushin’ on dem looks and that voice and how he uses words in that Trinidad way o’ speakin’, and I’m blue it ain’t true that he’s ever got me in mind. I got dem same dreds and biceps. I do pushups when I’m bored, I pick up metal, I’m a lean mass of man that can’t get what he wants.

Steak, he the trumpet player, he the same way. I mean, I mad crushin’ on him ’cuz I can maybe get to him. Time I met him I didn’t know he’d take to a man, ’specially a man like me.

It’s this club in the quarter. Ten years after Katrina, so they did a special. Hurricanes half price. I said hey, last decade dey was free, they say we lost our ass with that free hurricane. So I fete out my money on dem hurricanes and I see Steak. That’s his name, Steak. Can’t be his real name, but look at him and it’s like seein’ some giant slab o’ meat with a trumpet horn of plenty in his mouth. He’s big. Not muscle, just big like too-many-New-Orleans-fried-buffets kinda big. He puts on sunglasses in the dark club and puts up a trumpet to his lips and starts talkin’. Bass, piano, guitar, and some lady’s singin’ “Stormy Weather”—’cuz it’s dem ten years since—and it’s back like 1950, like he’s Louis Armstrong. Each note matters and the next one, it’s like “hey this is what’s goin’ down with me.” I wanna talk back, but I gotta figure out what he’s sayin’, and if he’s sayin’ any of it to me.

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