piano blues as taught in the oiseau old folks home

piano blues as taught in the oiseau old folks home

fiction
edward w Pritchard

That old man will be upset that I am late. He sits in a rocker at the nursing home and watches episode after rerun of wheel of fortune all day, getting up only for lunch and dinner but he will be upset with me for being be late to our piano lesson. He will complain that Vanna White isn't on the show enough anymore and he will tell me about the squeak his brown rocking chair has developed, but mostly he will tell me over and over how I am holding him up and keeping him waiting lately.

The old man, my teacher, is Charlie Westfall. He use to be a small time blues singing and boogie woogie man down in Texas and Oklahoma. He has throat cancer now from smoking and his left hand is bad from a stroke but Can He Play. He doesn't read music.

Charlie complains that the piano is a piece of crap. He played on a Steinway once in a duet with Albert Ammons. He relents a little about criticizing me when I give him a carton of Marlboro and a bottle of gin. Twenty five bucks in quarters and ones will be due at the end of our half hour lesson.

I studied at Julliard but I cannot seem to master this boogie beat. He slaps my wrist with his black good hand. He demonstrates, I think I blush. Some of the other folks from the nursing hallways always come in when Charlie plays. It's electric when Charlie plays. He makes this old piano sound like the souls of a hundred men.

I wheel Charlie in his squeaking wheel chair down to dinner. He has been nipping at the gin I brought in and he sings an old song to one of the women hashing out the food who is about two hundred fifty pounds. Charlie teases at her. I try to stay to eat with Charlie when I can out of respect.

Charlie notices the powder burns on my left hand. When I shot councilman Wilson earlier he knocked at the gun when I killed him. My left hand got burned and singed in the scuffle. That's why I was late for my piano lesson today. Charlie knows about guns and shootings. When I leave the nursing home about dark Charlie gives me heck for being careless. He doesn't just mean for not practicing piano enough or stumbling around with my boogie progressions. He knows I am a for hire hit man. How he found out I don't know but that old guy knows things.

As I walk down the hall leaving Charlie's room he yells at me in a sing song crackling voice, "your supposed to wear gloves when you work suburban cowboy, to protect your hands for playing piano." I smile. That old blues man knows things.