"Howard Waldrop - Ike At The Mike" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

He'd been in four bad marriages, his only kid had died in the taking of the
Japanese Home Islands in early Forty-seven, and he'd lost one of his arms in a
car wreck in Fifty-five. He was found in a flophouse. They'd put him in a
nursing home and paid the bills.

Ike had gone to visit. The last time they had seen each other in those
intervening twenty-odd years had been the day of the fist fight in
Forty-three, just before the Second World War broke out. Patton had joined the
Miller Band for a while but was too much for them. He'd gone from band to band
and marriage to marriage to oblivion.

He was old, old. Wild George was only five years older than Ike. He looked a
hundred. One eye was almost gone. He had no teeth. He was drying out in the
nursing home, turning brittle as last winter's leaves.

"Hello, George," said Ike, shaking his only hand.

"I knew you'd come first," said Patton.

"You should have let somebody know."

"What's to know? One old musician lives, another one dies."

"George, I'm sorry. The way things have turned out."

"I've been thinking it over, about that fight we had," Patton stopped to cough
up some bloody spittle into a basin Ike held for him. George's eyes watered.

"God. Oh, jeez. If I could only have a drink." He stared into Ike's eyes. Then
he said, "About that fight. You were still wrong."

Then he coughed some more.

Ike was crying as they went into the final number. He stepped forward to the
mike Helen had used when she came out to sing with them for the last three
numbers.

"This song is for the memory of George Smith Patton," he said.

They played "The Old, Rugged Cross." No one had ever played it like that
before.

Ike broke down halfway through. He waved to the crowd, took his mouthpiece
off, and walked into the wings.
Pops kept playing. He tried to motion Ike back. Helen was hugging him. He
waved and brushed the tears away.

Armstrong finished the song.

The audience tore the place apart. They were on their feet and stamping,