Paris in May. D. Grey
owner who wanted to have a casual talk because he didn’t charge enough for a bag of feed when the price he charged was written on the bag, then again by a landscaper on account of not cutting down a tree he was told to cut down but the homeowner wanted to save. He never received payment for the work he had done. This kind of treatment was fairly common, but still he would have to go, hat in hand, looking for another job that would sustain him. He steeled himself as he returned from the barn, stood by the rail fence next to Mr. Carle, and waited for the hammer to fall.
Mr. Carle looked at Bootsy and asked, “So what do you mean when you refer to an American piano player?”
Bootsy thought for a moment that the question might have a double edge. Mr. Carle might be looking for a reason to assume that he was an uppity black man. In the political history of the area, that alone would have been justification enough to terminate Bootsy. Or it may be a real question in search of a genuine answer. So with some nervous hesitation, he chose the latter and answered honestly.
“Okay, so an American piano player is an American who can play the piano, but that is not what I meant when I was talking to the boy. What I was talking about was a jazz piano player. A player who knows the music of America and can play it with a jazz feel. It is not European music played in that style. It is one hundred percent American. It is what some musicians call American classical music. It springs from the American experience and sounds like the American experience. How the music sounds is different. The scales are often different. In one common blues scale, for example, the third, fifth, and seventh are flat.”
“You mean it’s played differently than serious music?” asked Mr. Carle.
“First of all, people make a big mistake when they talk like that. Jazz is as serious and as complex as any other music. I think the only way you would understand is for you to listen and try to appreciate it.”
Even though he had no real way of judging, what the boss heard first was his stableman talking intelligently about something that he, Mr. Carle, knew little about. It both surprised him and made him more curious about what else he didn’t know. It seemed that the essence of this man went beyond caring for horses and cleaning stables.
“Do you play an instrument Bootsy?”
“Yes. I started out playing guitar when I was a kid, and then I switched to the piano. I just play for myself now. I used to play for a living, but that was a long time ago.”
“Did you play jazz?”
“Yes. I played jazz and everything else.”
“What do you mean by ‘everything else,’ Bootsy?”
“Just that. After years of studying European classical music, I switched to jazz. So yes, I can play anything.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Mr. Carle. “Who taught you to play the piano? What I mean is, where did you get the exposure?”
“Mr. Joe Alfred lived down the road from me and gave me lessons. He was a great teacher and an expert musician. When I was in New York, I met a few people who remembered him.”
Bootsy could tell that Mr. Carle did not believe a word he was saying. Mr. Carle himself began to think his stableman was outright lying and had a vague notion that the whole episode was somehow comic, maybe even sad. What it said about a man who could create such a fantasy out of thin air was beyond his ability to grasp. Nevertheless, he kept his conversational composure and continued to be polite to his stableman.
“That’s great, Bootsy. It was nice talking to you. We like the job you’re doing out here. Keep up the excellent work.”
“Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow, boss.”
Bootsy turned and walked into the barn past the horse stalls. He showered, changed his clothes, and prepared to leave for home, where, at the end of this day, he would make himself dinner and, like every other day, would watch the news on TV. He would then sit at his beloved piano and work his talent on the things he could not yet play, always searching for the pieces that could help him maintain his technique and inspire his imagination.
For reasons that eluded him, Mr. Carle was haunted by his conversation with Bootsy. It played in his mind repeatedly as he looked for the key that would open the door of truth. How could his stableman have achieved what he professes? The years of study it would take to develop the required knowledge and skill would not land him in a place like the stable. On the other hand, at no time in the years that Bootsy worked for him had he been disingenuous or a teller of tall tales. Other men who worked on the farm had tried to bullshit him and were noted storytellers, but he never had reason to suspect Bootsy was one of them. Until today, he saw him as a good, trustworthy employee. Was he telling the truth, or was he just another prevaricator?
When he arrived the next day, Bootsy saw the boss’ truck parked near the barn under the umbrella of the willow oak. Mr. Carle leaned out of the window of the truck and waved Bootsy over. The sun had not yet warmed the atmosphere, nor had the stableman gotten warm enough to want to talk. At this time of day, Bootsy saw talking as an annoyance.
“Is all that stuff you said yesterday true, Bootsy?”
“What stuff, Mr. Carle?”
“Can you really play anything on the piano?”
“Well, I might have stretched the truth a bit, but to the unschooled ear, the answer is yes,” Bootsy answered.
“Okay then. Jump into the truck and come with me to the house.”
“The man wants to test me,” Bootsy said to himself. “I’m not up to this shit this early in the morning. Why can’t this motherfucker leave me alone?”
They drove the short distance to the house, and Bootsy followed behind Mr. Carle through the back door and into the kind of wealth he had not seen since he played for the private parties of the well heeled on Fifth Avenue and Central Park West. He shook off the morning slows and, out of necessity, cleared his head. He instinctively knew where he was being taken. So wide-eyed and slightly nervous, he readied himself for the challenge. Bootsy followed his boss into a well-lit room with sunlight streaming in through the floor to ceiling windows on the east and south side of the house. There, in the middle of the room, stood a 1916 ebony Steinway Grand, model A3, that Mr. Carle introduced with pride, even though he knew nothing about pianos. This was the quality instrument that a talent like Bootsy should be playing, but he rarely got the opportunity.
“Here is our piano, Bootsy. The one Kenneth plays.”
“This is a beautiful instrument, boss. Your son is an incredibly lucky boy to have the opportunity to play it.”
Bootsy walked over to the piano and smiled as he stroked it like one would touch a lover or beloved child. He turned to the boss. “Is there something you’re in the mood to hear, Mr. Carle?”
The evening before, Mr. Carle called Kenneth’s piano teacher and asked her about difficult pieces. “If one were to ask a piano playing braggart to play a piece of music that would expose his or her limited knowledge and talent, what piece would that be?” Then armed with a request that a man like Bootsy could not possibly know, Mr. Carle asked for Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2. They were now at the Rubicon—the moment when Bootsy would be slapped down by his own exaggeration. The moment when his stableman would be publicly humiliated and marked as a liar. Mr. Carle had practiced the speech he would give if this whole thing was a mistake. He would pile the stableman back into the truck and dump him into a pile of horseshit where he belonged.
There was no sheet music to read, so the stableman sat quietly for a minute with his head bowed as if in thought and his hands in his lap. For Mr. Carle, time seemed to have stopped. All his questioning, all his need for truth, and the consequences he had imagined if Bootsy was not genuine hung in balance in a ball of anticipation. Then Bootsy raised his arms, and his fingers lay softly on the keys without making a sound. First, a two-hand chord followed by a bass note and then another followed by a bass note, and then the sound of the concerto filled the room produced by fingers so swift and smooth that they could not be seen.