Читать книгу The Book of Harlan - Bernice L. McFadden - Страница 33

Chapter 25

You can’t expect a child not to become a product of his environment. If you’re a drinker, you’ll raise a drunk. If you’re a single mother, traipsing men in and out of your bedroom in front of your girl child—mark my words, in time she’ll claim a corner and charge money for what you gave away for free. Kings and queens raise princes and princesses. That’s just the way it is.

So who knows why Sam was floored when Harlan—barely fifteen—walked into the house, dropped his school books on the floor, and declared, “I’m done with school, gonna pursue guitar-picking full time!”

“Say what now?”

While Emma had finished high school, Sam had only made it through the fifth grade. Being one of ten children, he’d had a responsibility to his younger siblings, or so his father had reminded him every morning as Sam headed off to work, leaving the senior Elliott splayed on the couch balancing a jar of corn liquor on his chest.

Harlan would have been the first in a long line of Elliotts to attend and graduate high school. Now, his decision to drop out all but dashed Sam’s dreams to silt.

“Well, let’s see what your mother has to say about all of this,” Sam said.

When Emma came home, Harlan repeated his plans.

Sam braced himself for the fury. Instead, he was treated to a delighted response from Emma worthy of a million-dollar windfall.

“He don’t have to drop out of school to play guitar. He could do that after he graduates,” Sam stated meekly.

Emma waved her hand at him. “Oh please, Sam! You know the boy ain’t good with books and numbers. What he’s good at is playing the guitar. So let him do that.”

It was ironic, to say the least—Harlan abandoning the very institution that had introduced him to his calling.

Harlan had studied piano in Macon. In New York, he continued to practice under his mother’s tutelage, but it was soon clear to Emma that he didn’t possess the same passion and talent she had. On top of that, he didn’t really like it.

Frustrated and disappointed after one of their lessons, Emma caught Harlan by the chin. “Well, if not the piano, then what?”

Mayemma’s son John had taken up the trumpet—this after witnessing Louis Armstrong’s magic at one of Bill and Lucille’s Friday-night parties. Harlan figured if John could blow, so could he. “The trumpet, I guess,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

The experiment had been a failure: Harlan clearly didn’t have the lungs for the instrument.

It was in his high school music class that he first became acquainted with a battered caramel-colored Stella Parlor. When Harlan raked his fingers over the six strings, his entire body vibrated. He’d never thought of himself as incomplete—one half of something he could not name—but there it was, the very thing that had been missing from his young life.

Emma ran right out and bought Harlan his very own Stella Parlor and promptly signed him up to study with Vernon Craig, who at that time was considered a master of the guitar.

It cost a small fortune for Harlan to train with Vernon, but Emma didn’t see the dollars and cents of it, just the glow of happiness on her boy’s face.