Jack of Diamonds (35 page)

Taking me to be a visiting born-again Christian, several of the congregation including Pastor Mullens came over to thank me. Mrs Henderson stood by introducing me, pigeon-breasted with pleasure, basking in the light of her new find.

When at last we crossed the street to the boarding house, she said, ‘Jack, why didn’t you tell me you’d already found the Lord?’

‘Mrs Henderson, I’m afraid I haven’t. I’ve been meaning to tell you, I’m a professional musician.’

A stunned silence followed. ‘You mean it was the devil’s child at the piano?’

‘Was the music not just as sweet?’ I replied. It was a quote from somewhere, though I couldn’t remember where. Maybe Shakespeare . . . no, that’s wrong, of course; that’s ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’.

As we reached the front door she announced in a clipped and angry voice, ‘I shall pray to the Lord for your salvation, Mr Spayd.’

‘Thank you for your invitation today, Mrs Henderson. I found work last night at the Brunswick Hotel and I’ll be home rather late on Saturday nights in future, which will mean I’ll need to sleep in some, come Sundays.’

‘Hmmph!’ she grunted, proceeding to climb the stairway, her broad back and hips rigid with indignation. Halfway up she turned. ‘“I am not mocked,” saith the Lord,’ she shouted down at me.

Reaching my half-room, I decided Joe Hockey had been overgenerous. Lordy Jesus music was a long way from jazz and was not in any sense rhythmic, the exception being ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’, which is almost impossible to play badly. Even Brother Bright on clarinet and Brother Simmons on his recently acquired electric guitar wouldn’t have been able to screw it up entirely.

Thankfully, Jim Greer was out on the Moose Jaw railway platform, sending the gospel down the line by passing out tracts and witnessing for the Lord, and so I had the room to myself for the afternoon. Although the revival meeting had been both bizarre and unsettling, it had also been an intense experience, so much so that there were moments when I felt frightened to be a sinner, and had consciously to resist the offer of salvation and of taking Jesus into my heart and life. I didn’t know if I even qualified as a sinner to be saved. Apart from thinking lascivious thoughts about the twins when I was in bed at night, and the self-pleasuring that invariably followed, I couldn’t think of any particularly wicked thing I’d done. Did any of that require me to be washed in the blood of the Lamb? I played cards, penny-ante poker, but was that a sin? I wasn’t sure. I tried always to tell the truth, unless doing so was pointless and would result in someone being hurt.

The piano had been my true salvation and had kept me from being swept off my feet during the revival meeting. Now I needed an hour or two on my own to regain my balance and exercise some control over my emotions.

I have no idea how many lost souls in the ensuing months were brought begging for salvation into the converted theatre on a Sunday morning by the blazing white cross and its attendant warning in red neon, but I felt fairly certain that tackling the devil head-on with a 7 a.m. Sunday broadcast was counterproductive, an act of poor judgment by the Apostolic Church of the Pentecost. I remained fairly certain Marge’s Mervyn wasn’t the only bleary-eyed sinner, suffering a hangover and desperately in need of a sleep-in, who cursed God’s children singing His amplified early-morning praises. For my part, I continued to wake up with a start at the first strains of the Sunday morning choral alarm and then, covering my head with the blankets, I slept a further hour before going down to Mrs Spragg’s breakfast of four eggs over easy.

What did I know about scuffing? Not a lot. I’d landed myself just about the best job in town and after two months young people started to appear on Sunday afternoons to listen to me practising on the Steinway in the ballroom. Somehow word got around, and every Sunday the crowd grew bigger until Cam Kerr asked me to make it an event and increased my weekly pay cheque. It seemed I’d attracted a new younger crowd. The hotel began to advertise me actively with the banner ‘Jack Spayd Digs the Sunday Blues’, and I soon played for two hours to a packed ballroom on a Sunday afternoon from three till five.

Like the audience outside the Jazz Warehouse, the younger adults in Moose Jaw were jazz hungry, and when you play to an appreciative audience, you always play better than you imagine you can. I enjoyed these sessions immensely, and while they earned me another eight dollars, playing the devil’s music on a Sunday was to prove the final straw for Mrs Henderson. She may have passed the Brunswick and seen my name ‘in lights’, so to speak, because she now never spoke directly to me and accepted her weekly rent with a grunt and a curt ‘Thank you, Mr Spayd’.

I expected her to send me packing and I guess I could have moved out, but the boarding house was convenient for work. Besides, I spent very little time there and when I was in, Mrs H.’s silence proved a blessing. She was a woman who could only think in negatives and saw everyone as a potential cheat, liar or threat.

Jim Greer’s presence on weekends was bearable because on Saturdays he slept the sleep of the dead until the afternoon while I played a regular poker game at the Caribou Café just off River Street. This regular card game came about through a nice happenstance. After my first night playing at the Rotary dinner I reported for work only to be called over by Peter Cornhill. He introduced me to Reggie Blunt, who greeted me in a most friendly manner despite my having stolen his gig. ‘Glad to meet you, Jack,’ he said, immediately extending his hand and putting me at ease.

‘Mr Blunt, I —’

‘No, no, say no more, dear boy, you have relieved old Reginald of a great burden.’

I judged him to be in his early sixties, a short, almost square man, bald on top, although the remainder of his grey hair curled over his coat collar. He had blue eyes and what my mom would call a whisky nose, purple and veined. ‘Peter tells me you wowed the Rotary crowd on Saturday night, Jack.’

I laughed. ‘Not really an overly demonstrative lot, but thankfully I got through unscathed. I don’t think they cared for the blues much, but they liked the ragtime and the old sentimental songs . . . ah, classics,’ I added quickly for Peter Cornhill’s benefit.

‘Good for you, Jack. The mayor is a pain in the backside and the police chief only knows two movements.’ He demonstrated, his arm outstretched with the palm up, followed by a quick retreat into his trouser pocket. We chatted for a while and he assured me I had one of the better music jobs on River Street. ‘I suppose you might make a case for Grant Hall on Main, with all that black marble in the foyer, the rotunda, grand staircase and musicians’ gallery, but is it the top of the Christmas tree? I think it lacks the cantankerous and brash atmosphere of River Street.’ Cackling, he observed, ‘Ragtime and whores go together like prairies and bad weather, no, blues and whores, even better,’ he added, then asked, ‘Do you play cards, old chap?’

‘Yes, but penny-ante,’ I replied cautiously.

‘Poker?’

I nodded. ‘Five-card stud or five-card draw mostly.’

‘Excellent! We have a group, three other River Street musicians and my good self. We play Monday mornings from eleven until two in the afternoon. Like you, musicians have a day off on Mondays. Would you care to join us?’ He nodded towards Peter Cornhill. ‘Peter’s also a part of our group.’

Peter laughed. ‘I’m the flat note. My poker isn’t much better than my music, I’m afraid. I have to be back on duty at two-thirty in the afternoon because Monday is the hotel chauffeur’s day off so I take his place. Sunday evening is always busy with commercial travellers and company men arriving in town for the week.’

‘Hah! Beware this man!’ Reggie Blunt warned. ‘Always remember, he’s a hotel bell captain and doesn’t miss a trick. Sharp as a shark’s tooth, old chap!’

‘I’d like that very much,’ I said.

‘We play at the Caribou Café, Jack, though I should inform you it is always referred to as the John Robert Johnson Caribou Café, don’t ask me why, it just is and always has been. Excellent chap, by the way, most accommodating fellow.’

If Cam Kerr had been right about Reggie Blunt’s poker game, I wouldn’t be out of my depth. There is a saying in poker that if you can’t find out who’s the bunny in the game, then it’s you. I hoped this wouldn’t prove to be the case. It would be nice meeting a few of the local musicians. Maybe there’d be a chance to form a bit of a group later on. I already missed playing sessions with a band.

The poker game took care of Monday mornings and I used the afternoon as well as Sunday mornings for serious piano practice. Cam Kerr had kindly agreed that I could use the Steinway in the ballroom on both days. It was sufficiently isolated from the general business of the hotel for the sound not to intrude and I practised three hours on Sunday and another two on Monday after the poker game.

During the week I’d read in the mornings, or visit the first-rate city library. To get out of my bedroom I’d go to the parlour. Mrs H. had earlier agreed to a request I’d made via Mary Spragg, the cook, for permission to chop wood and light a fire, provided I cleaned the grate after it had cooled and paid twenty-five cents extra on my rent.

Saturday I’d usually do a long walk of about three hours’ bird-spotting along the Moose River or Thunder Creek. I’d never lost my love of birds, first developed on walks with my mom along the Don and still very much a part of me.

I didn’t see much of the remaining boarding-house guests, apart from at breakfast time; all of them, it seemed, were permanent. There were two elderly ladies: Mrs Throsby, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, and Miss Darlington, a frail birdlike woman with a heavy walking stick, which she clunked alarmingly on the floor when she walked. Both complained constantly of their aches and pains and competed over the number and severity of their ‘ops’ (surgical operations). Having to negotiate the stairs was a double daily nightmare. Fortunately Mary Spragg took their breakfast to their bedrooms so that the mornings were free of surgical references. The two remaining boarders, Mr Hardacre and Mr Fobbs, were in their fifties, silent men who wouldn’t say boo to a mouse, although they ate so noisily one could almost imagine it was their means of conversing. Both were clerks at different meatworks: one was stout and rubicund, the other painfully pale and thin. According to Mary, they hadn’t spoken to each other for eight years. She referred to them as Pork and Beef.

For the next six months I really enjoyed the weekly poker game. The group consisted of Chuck Bullmore, tenor sax; Charlie Condotti, drums; Mort Smith, clarinet; and Reggie Blunt, piano like myself; and of course Peter Cornhill, who referred to himself as ‘playing the fool’.

I usually came away from a game with five or six bucks in my pocket, but most importantly, I enjoyed both the company and the game. Poker seemed to suit my personality. I had what Miss Bates called an eidetic memory, that is to say, I could fairly easily visualise a sheet of music I’d seen once or, as I discovered when learning to play poker, remember the cards my opponents were dealt and have a fair idea of the hand they might hold. There is, of course, a lot more to the game of poker than a good memory, but it’s a helpful skill to bring to a game and, as I said, I usually left with a little more change in my pocket than I’d had when I sat down to play. The poker school rather predictably dubbed me Jack of Spayds.

I confess, while the five-card stud we played involved only pennies and was not to be taken too seriously, alas, my approach to poker differed somewhat from that of most social players.

Most young guys learn how to be competitive at a very young age, but I had somehow missed out on that aspect of growing up. I learned music instead, where you compete against your previous best effort rather than against an opponent. If I’d missed this important survival skill, I’d gained another, perhaps doubtful, one in its place. I was possessed of a highly obsessive nature. This was one of the reasons I felt compelled to run to the piano during the revival meeting. It was the only way I could protect myself from being overwhelmed. Any person who claims that the charismatic religions don’t have the power to pull at some deep atavistic emotion is quite wrong. There is a need in many people for blind belief or, as it’s usually more politely put, faith. Like all fundamentalist beliefs, it provides a safe haven and can easily become an obsession.

I had been watching the guys in the band at Miss Frostbite’s playing poker for ages. The thing about musicians – well, musicians who play in a band anyway – is that they mostly practise together and have a fair bit of time to kill – time between rehearsals, time waiting for gigs to begin and time after a gig, when they’re often too high simply to pack up and go home. Musicians entertain others, but are often left with no entertainment themselves. So they reach for a pack of cards and most often the choice is five-card stud poker, a simple game anyone can learn to play but that few play with expertise.

I’d begun to play poker with the band after I’d completed my schooling and before I left for the prairies;
begun to learn
is a better way of putting it. I’d often stay back after dishwashing and get home at two in the morning. Joe, observing me, called me aside one night and issued one of his more pertinent warnings. ‘Jazzboy, now you gonna be careful with that there card playin’, yo hear?’

‘But it’s only for pennies, Joe. Nobody gets hurt,’ I protested. ‘It’s harmless fun and I can sleep in late now school’s over.’

‘Ha, that ain’t no harmless fun, boy, that the beginning o’ big, big trouble. You wanna know why it only penny-ante allowed? That because Miss Frostbite hear dey playin’ for big money she gonna cut off their balls, make dem sing soprano, that’s why.’