Jazz Funeral

I got the cobalts; I got the royal-blues;
    I got the midnight-blues for my brother… the one
    Who gave me music—
    It was working. It was good. Good. It was wonderful. She was loving it, she was loving singing it. Before, it had been only a tune in her head, or hummed softly to herself so no one could hear. Now she was pouring it out from her soles, from the floor, from the ground under the building, from the middle of the Earth; and it felt soooo good.
    “Holy shit,” someone said. “Who is this babe?”
    It was a whisper, but it was a shade too loud. Melody screamed into the microphone. Her hands flew up from the keyboard and she whirled.
    Two of the Boucrees were there—she didn’t know their names, but she thought one was Joel’s father, Tyrone. She’d been so engrossed, she hadn’t even heard them come in.
    “You scared me,” she said, embarrassed, and now even more so, for saying such a dumb thing.
    “Take it easy now; take it easy. We didn’t mean to scare you.”
    The man sounded as if he were talking to a dog: Take it easy, girl; you’ll be okay. She straightened up, got the squeak out of her voice.
    “I’m a friend of Joel’s. Mel—uh, Janis, uh, Frank.” After Anne Frank; someone else who died young, who had an artist’s soul. Melody was pleased with herself for thinking of her.
    “Well, I’m Joel’s dad, Tyrone—and this here’s my brother, Chick.”
    “Baby, you sho’ can sing,” said Chick. He was a fairly young guy, probably not more than thirty, with hair cropped short and round, wire-rimmed glasses; very severe. He reminded Melody of Delfeayo Marsalis, and she thought that was probably not accidental. The way he talked, kind of affectedly funky, didn’t even begin to go with the look. He reached out his hand, as if to give her high five, but then thought better of it and slapped his own leg. “Mmmmph! You sho’ can!”
    She felt herself go red as a cardinal. “No! I can’t—I just— really, I can’t, I was just kind of …” And then she recovered enough to say, “Well, thank you,” in case this wasn’t some sort of cruel joke, which of course it had to be. He must be making fun of her. The idea took hold like oxalis. Her lips tightened.
    She knew with certainty that it was that. Here she was, a white girl out of her depth, out of her neighborhood, and this was their territory in more ways than one. She was fair game. And the guy was probably having an identity crisis, the way he looked like an intellectual and talked like a street kid—he was probably deeply disturbed. That made her feel superior, but not much. She looked down at her lap, trying to think what to do next.
    The other one, Tyrone, said, “Young lady, you got talent.” He said it in that upbeat way that parents and teachers have when they’re trying to be encouraging. She’d heard that tone too often. She knew it was real. She stared up at him, and was glad he cultivated a more relaxed style than his little brother—slightly longer hair, a nice moustache, sort of the Allen Toussaint look, everybody’s pal. She liked him a lot, found him very … well, dadlike. In a way that her dad wasn’t. Even though he fell asleep on the floor and didn’t go home the way he should.
    She gave Chick a second look, with the thought that maybe he hadn’t been kidding. He was grinning. Friendly, she thought, not hostile after all . She found she liked him too.
    Could this be? Here were two members of the illustrious Boucree family praising her music. For a moment she was glad she wasn’t dead. Or maybe she was dead. Maybe in heaven you got to have all your dreams come true and that’s where she was. But she didn’t believe in heaven or hell or life after death or God. She wasn’t about to start now.
    And yet, that stuff was about as likely as what was happening now.
    “Well, listen,” said Tyrone. “Don’t let us interrupt you. Go ahead. That’s a real pretty song—almost made me cry. Let’s hear the end of it.”
    “Well, actually, that’s almost all of it so far. I’m still working on it.”
    Chick said, “You mean you wrote that song?”
    Not sure how to take that, Melody said, “Uh … yeah.”
    He let out his breath, not saying anything, just puffing against his lips. Whether it was meant to be positive or negative, she didn’t know.
    Tyrone said, “Well, let’s hear something. What else can you play?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. Anything, I guess.” No Janis, no Marcia Ball.