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

A spur track confused him. He looked down the tracks, couldn't see a number.
Trains waited all around, ready to hurl themselves toward distant cities. He
went to the station entrance.

Four black men, ragged of dress, were smiling and playing near the door. What
they played, young David had never heard before; it was syncopated music, but
not like a rag, not a march, something in between, something like nothing
else. He had never heard polyrhythms like them before. They stopped him dead.

The four had a banjo, a cornet, a violin, and a clarinet. They played, smiled,
danced a little for the two or three people watching them. A hat lay on the
ground before them. In it were a few dimes, some pennies, and a single new
halfdime.

They finished the song. A couple of people said. "Very nice, very nice," and
added a few cents to the hat.

The four men started to talk among themselves.

"What was that song?" young David asked.

The man with the cornet looked at him. through large horn-rimmed spectacles.
"That song was called `Struttin' with Some Barbecue,' young sir," he replied.

Dwight David reached into his pocket and took out a shiny dollar gold piece.
"Play it again," he said.

They nearly killed themselves this time, running through it. It was great art,
it was on the street, and they were getting a whole dollar for it. David
watched them, especially the clarinet player, who made his instrument soar
above the others. They finished the number, and all tipped theirs hats to him.

"Is that hard to learn to play?" he asked the man with the clarinet.

"For some it is," he answered.

"Could you teach me?" Davis asked.

The black man looked at the others, who looked away; they were no help at all.
"Let me see your fingers," he said.

Eisenhower held out his hands, wrists up, then down.

"I could probably teach you to play in six weeks," he said. "I don't know if I
could teach you to play like that. You've got to feel that music." He was
trying not to say that Eisenhower was white.

"Wait right here," said Ike.

He went inside the depot and cashed in his ticket. He sent two telegrams, one