Three Wise Men

by Jon Heath

Depressed as hell shit flies with heavy heavy drink problems and fifty quid a day coke habits gathered at the blue-brick street corners ready to pair off for cobblestone waltzes. The men flies led the lady flies this way and that way in time to the wafts and whiffs of music cannonballed out from the various warring discos like a turgid smell needled straight into the arm. When at last exhausted and wing weary, the men flies led the lady flies to the dinner tables shaded by the slats of the street benches and there, under romantic candlelight, they dunked their buzzing heads into the sad stinky shits of the Saturday night pavements and last-suppered on the brown fruits bestowed before them. Greedily they tucked in with matchstick knifes and forks and special urine spoons for the soup puddles puddling in the concrete cracks.

Centipede waiters scurried about them in disorder delivering goblets of wine to the gelatinously coiffured soldier ants partying loudly on a stag, whilst sleek and silky worms in the VIP section enjoyed flutes of champagne. The head centipede directed his staff with authority and care around the trainered feet of the giant humans that paced in the neon-lit courtyard with their beers and smokes, talking about Plato and microwave chips.

Honey bee strippers entertained the soldier ants with table dances and air kisses, though the performance was cut short, before the loosening of the brassiere and tasselled breast finale, when the Rosie’s were startled and splattered by a sick and twisted young yob in a polo shirt crashing to his knees and suddenly streaming puke down upon them like a gut geyser unplugged. They fled with their many high-heeled shoes clutched tightly to their chests, flicking and picking chunks out of their braids. The ants were dismayed and grew rowdy, beating their chests like apes. Quickly they formed formation and set about a plan of attack. The silk worms thought the whole thing absolutely ridiculous. The ants swarmed the grossly yellow-faced young man as his buddies chuckled on, languidly laughing at his demise as they turned their attentions back to the foamy faces of their cider pints.

And as his bones were picked clean, once the last ant had sucked dry all the fat from his fingers and slumped back down into the cracks and cobwebs of his bohemian alleyway, the good old boys swept into the warmth of the pub and continued their larking about. The pub was small and brazen, damp and dark, crippled and downtrodden. Its walls lined heavily with the puffing faces of many a great jazz musician. Its water-stained ceiling bowed under the weight of four blade fans whirring and bare bulbs tittering like crows. A beer-splashed bar lines one wall like a membrane, punctured only by those in the know, girls with hair like snakes and painted fingernails and bearded boys with clipped claws. They drag ass serving booze to the punters and stuffing cash in the register. The chessboard floor squares off in all directions from under their feet, to the italicised gents and ladies, to the dank dripping cellar where the barrels sleep, to the corner of velvety pillowed stools where comb-over kings puff cigars and sweat in French turtlenecks, eyeing their young French mistresses clapping and dancing their knockoff cowboy boots across the black and white board.

The band have been polishing their brass and plugging in amps for the last twenty minutes or so, tuning dials, laying wires, tightening drum skins and relaxing vocal cords with beer and cigarettes and cheap talk. There are six men up their on the stage at least two heads height above the crowds – the trumpet the sax the bass the drums the piano and the banjo – and they call themselves The Wise Men. The crowd is familiar with their faces and their style, they come every other weekend to share their rhythm and blues their broken back jazz their crumbling soul and blue collar bass. When they’re about to kick off they all take up positions and somebody behind the bar flicks off the stereo that’s been playing popular smash hash for the last few hours to warm everyone up. The dancers cool it and return to the laps of their dates to sip at multicoloured drinks through bendy straws. All is silent all is well. And then they’re ready.

Outside, one fly, a skinny rake with bad hair and ripped pinnies, leapt up from the window pane as the band kicked off, he’d been stood up and stranded by his date and now felt recklessly drunk. As the sounds of the band and the pub and the neat little hidden square faded behind him he whip-lashed his way through the evening air up up up and away. The weather worn jigsaw of streets and pot holes, sand castles and paper weight tin can rust bucket cars itched his skin like a red dick rash.

The streets, navigated somewhat cumbersomely by the nights marching vultures, rolled along below his buzz and though he detested the sight of lip-smashing, tongue-curling, chew chewing chomp chomping couples brightly in love, they continuously caught his eye and filled his little fly heart with grief and longing and depression. Tears filled his little fly eyes and dribbled away from him into the din.

Like a bellhop dressed tour guide in an open-topped bus zipping around dirty and shameful tourist attractions with a plugged in microphone and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the decaying nooks and crannies, the bench sleeping junkies, the twenty flight leaning towers, the pizza and wet towel joints, and the brown town, piss puddled, overgrown jungle johns where fags and hags go down and shoot themselves up on juice or suck dick for two bits of copper and a lollipop – this one little fly cruised around and digested his misery.

So who better to take your hand and lead you further astray than this observer of downtown disease, this curator of old sinful ways, this captain of the air. I’ll leave you in his shadow to see the sights and taste the tastes of savagery run amok. Take some uppers, downers, pop a pill, have a beer, hell spank your plank if it floats your boat, do whatever, just as long as you’re sat back and relaxed and ready to rock and roll. I’ll swing by again when the shows over and we’ll continue on with the story.

(The PA system clicks on with a blast of white noise and we’re away…)

“Hello and welcome to Brown Town Air Tours, we hope you enjoy your fly with us and will come back again soon. If you look to your left now we’ll begin, you’ll see those red double-decker…”

Red double-decker pile-ups at the traffic lights, cursing at each other through grimy grills and speeding off go go go as the shutters blink green, only to dock every four feet or so at bus stops and stations to vend their sea-sick sailors out onto the laminated city streets where they slip and slide their way to pubs and clubs and complimentary back rubs from tight skinned Chinese broads in back alley pussy parlours. Greasy chameleons in disco shirts pull on the hands of their dayglow dates as they hustle to queues already forming at the mouths of carnivorous bubble pits. Beefcake bouncers with thick accents check their lists, check your id, check your shoes and cop a hand under the skirt of your date before deciding to let you in and even then you might not get your date back, but live with it asshole.

The glow of gold brings out the sunglasses. Aviator girls hide stony eyes behind pink and yellow lenses and shade the world in pretty colours. The glow of silver brings out the handcuffs. Clusters of glow in the dark coppers with their hard shelled dunce hats spy odiously around at the enemy, the computers in their brains scanning the bare bones of the night time street and isolating public offenders. The smell of punks and airheads and brainless blondies is ripe in their noses, heavier even than the smell of urine clouding dangerously above the outside piss buckets. Cars with pumping exhausts and hippety hop stereos rip up and down the drag, the tinted glass and scripted stickers whizzing by at two hundred three hundred miles an hour, nothing more than pouting cosmetics that hide the cars real face and shape, like makeup over rust spots and bad skin. Every expensive detail is caught under the watchful eye of the trendy train spotters, the body-kit police, the low-rider inspection crew, who sniff up the smell of burning rubber like a prescription drug carved out on a bathroom vanity mirror. In plastic tracksuits and spongy soled classics they line the curbs and stare out from under the flat peaks of their baseball caps. Sneakily they cup badly rolled joints in the palms of their hands and take a poke whenever the coppers aren’t looking. The sexy cigarettes make them feel sexy too under the glow of looming old men street lamps.

Rag doll beggars with chapped lips and tufts of matted hair on their chins set up camp with paper bag flags and acoustic guitar-playing dogs. Sinking into the swing of the Saturday night buzz they choose chewing gum corners outside warmly lit spars and one-stop shops or the old cold steps of banks carved from solid blocks of grey marble. There they observe the fancy dress couples and white cloud goths who wait to glove up their hands and pull their stinking money from the cows ass.

Gas head football players and creamy John’s with dry flecks of toothpaste on their cheeks strut up and down the catwalk streets singing anthems and scratching their bellies. They knock shoulders with college lecturers and dentists emerging from restaurants with their soapy eyed wives, heads down concentrating on their shoes and trying not to be noticed, just to get back to their cars safe and unlynched. But the Johns pay no attention bouncing around like pinball balls, mesmerised as they are by the paper aeroplanes floating overhead, graffitied with the catchy slogans of super clubs and vinyl-lined wipe clean cum bars.

Whilst down in the clearing at the roundabout centre, where a whirlpool of silver beamers and mercs circle endlessly, and double ender vaginal limousines with screaming girls popping boner-like from out the sunroof, crowds of nohopers huddle and wait around looking to see what direction to take. A parade of Catholic Laurens in tennis skirts and blouses chuckle and mope by the bus stop, hiding behind the advertisement confessionals to smoke cigarettes and unbuttoning the top of their blouses to let air at their pert and holy young bosoms. Already they’re gazing up at the roadies and bikers with lovelorn fishnet stockings. Smudged mascara around their eyes, one backpack strap hanging provocatively off one shoulder, a smitten copy of Henry Miller’s ‘Tropic of Cancer’ spilling out from the bags side pocket like overly ripe cleavage. The teacher stands to one side romantically entangled with a coach driver waiting for his load to finish in the theatre. She has stared so long at the four blank walls of her Catholic cell that the sight of this disgusting potbellied ashtray sends her knees quite the quiver.

One old badger is still awake and prowling the bowels of the city centre with a crinkly handful of leaflets campaigning for the end of the war in some far off and dusty shit heap, though most of his hard work falls like snow onto the pavements. His glasses reflect the ugly faces of the people bearing down on him and he sadly regrets the fate of his dying Albion mistress. A future where pub landlords are mown down in the streets, where grim reapers with switchblades linger in dark doorways, where coin operated politicians massage big red buttons and whiskey headaches. His mild mannered wife pats his back and wipes his tears away, though this rare moment of beauty is quickly lost and smothered by a babies cry and the teenagered mothers heavy sigh.

By the waterfront where the fountains fluff, war vets sit and ponder under the awning of their community centre. Saggy cheeked women gossip. Raisin bread men chewing tobacco tab their tough leathery palms down on the tickers of stop clocks to complete their chess moves. One black knight takes two steps back and one step to the left to negotiate a standoff with a meddlesome pawn pounding straight for the finish line and the promise of reincarnation. Only to be blindsided and jacked by the white towered castle prowling along its own back line reeling in the fish and helping his good buddy pawn get promoted up the ranks. This is the kind of mythical game that will never end, though the king may be slaughtered in his sleep he will arise anew and the two old men will reset the pieces, chalk up the score on the blackboard of their minds and settle down to play again, fresh tobacco on their tongues to roll and gnaw. From this well defended corner they, like us, are cinemagoers to this wild game of cat and rat stretched out on a screen of skyscrapers and neon.

Up the hill and on a bit with the haunting church and the library made from books and words, skaters and beboppers peel scabs and rub reverse one eighties against the bench ribs. Chicks stretch bubble gum tongues and twirl them round and round fingers until snap! Further up the hill charging towards the canons roar, misled punters are flanked and outnumbered and all can hear the warp and wail of businessmen trying to run greasy spoons with chicken fingers and kebab smiles. Fierce turf wars rage behind the scenes, between the purple table-clothed Indian cuisine restaurants, the flying wok Chinese takeaways and the British fish n’ chip slop houses. The brown trousered chinks so far leading the field with a furlong to go, having jumped the most fences, slashed the most faces and suffered the least casualties, whilst successfully branching out on every back alley street corner and smuggling their army in from China on tugboats and in the back of meat wagons cruising through harbour customs unchecked. Meanwhile the peace and ceramic sanitation of an all-night halal meat market at the crest of the slope, where dangling machetes and skewers joust in the window displays, is a far cry from the toenail turmoil of the ball and chain of fatty deposits. Outside, under the dim bulbs, halal man and halal women and all their little halal children get haircuts.

Moving away from the vortex now, ducking and diving light footed down through the overflowing bins that grouchily stand guard outside the sleeping steel-lidded eyes of the shop fronts, through the bauble of Christmas fever hanging without cheer from telephone wires, rotten tinsel and sharp smashed orange bulbs, and up over the multi-story car parks where burnt out cars still smoulder. The shopping district is deserted and smelly like the gutted belly of a shark caught and strung up for all to see. Fast food wrappers alone roam the once jostled valleys, lording it over all the other assorted bits of abandoned rubbish with bullying playground taunts, whilst the stock still mannequins watch on from behind the glass on their designer platforms.

Where the speckled tarmac of the bistro forecourts comes to an end and the glare from emergency lights can reach no further, the industrial horizon begins. One last lonesome sky-reaching hotel stands like a watchtower over this desolation scruffland. The last quilted haven for laptop jockeys working through the night on double doses of demolition whiskey and filter-less cigarettes. Start smoking today with Starts. From this far outpost the black tarmac veins cut the land in all directions, only intermittently lit so that thieves and prostitutes and thieving prostitutes can hide and skulk, whispering like beached and scaly sirens every time an expensive car rolls past window down. Above their heads the dull and dirty signs of a thousand discount stores and car dealerships snake along the rooftops, pointing them to their discounted dooms. For sale signs and fifty percent off signs in every window. Boarded up crumbling knockdown tenements where waifs sleep on newspapers in the fireplace. A cyclist lies dead in the gutter with tank tracks across his back. Forgotten prom queens queue at the chicken parlours for tummy tucks and lipo with coke on the side. This is the end of the line, my friend; the train doesn’t go any further.

Out here where the river smells of human garbage and the silence is shattered by gunshots and screams, the electricity of the city grows weak. The terraced rows of Victorian faces and the parallel parked cars with in turned wing mirrors curl away like contour lines under the watchful all seeing eye of whip-bearing dictionary-reading pylons. It may be greener over those hills far off but we’ll never make it there alive, the mire is too vicious. So with a final salute and a kiss goodbye we’ll head back soberly to the city with all its charm and forget the mortar-scarred crashlands we’ve seen, those dull carbon copy lives aren’t for us.

Chug chug over the pointed spires and ventilation shafts of the workingmen’s money dripping hives. Turning once and turning twice to make the final approach for the marble strip with the bomb bay doors open, target area sighted and locked on. One last look from the heavens at the colours and shapes of the cities tender vomit and then go…green light…air rushing…parachuting down with the man from the moon and the poet sat on your shoulder and you can just about hear the jazz and the smiles and the beer being knocked back and finally the last cry behind you from your soul searching host is “remember your vouchers!” but you won’t need to take that crappy tour again. Doubloon tiled pirate pubs creep closer as the ground rushes toward your feet. You recognise those bones, that noise, the salubrious smell of uncorked wine and the armpit of the honey on your lap. Welcome back, have a beer for Gods sake.

A hairstyled girl boxes and tapdances on fairy feet through the lion roaring crowd with a donation bowl for the puff cheeked and sweaty band. A few paper notes and a fistful of buttons. The pubs palpitating skin of harkers and merry masters is raw from the cavalcade of jazz tidal waving over them from the wooden stage. A few nurses run palindromes around the head of sweet Jimmy in the corner trying one on. Leather hat man hugs his wife into the grey forest of his chinbeard. Golden cornflake faces in every corner. A little batman on his mummies knee bangs a rhythm with his kneecap drums and caresses strungout dandelion fingers across his ribcage keyboard and exhausts his twin trumpet lungs. One sad Alice sat lonely and still on a slidy steel stool drinking jack and coke and thinking about Woody. At the end of a song the crowd cheers and whistles and claps away and the lead with the trumpet taps the microphone for silence and says “just one more folks” to much applause and hooting and “more more more”.

Then hush. The sax opens up, slow, pausing, then slow blow on and on till higher then out screaming and down again, takes a breath quick and deep lunged into belly storage. Brow furrowed and damp hair plastered to a crinkled scalp of jazz age wisdom. Spittle on the lower lip. A foot taps to time the band for accompaniment and the piano tinkles in slowly lightly like cutlery on china plates, then the trumpet blasts a beep interwoven with the sax and the pianos chirp chirp. The sax leads the golden trumpet down a seaside path when the banjo wind stirs up a strum, the sax hop skipping hand in hand with its fairy lover bounding. And down on into the sea they tumble and the beat of its waves crash crash against the rocks with the snare kicking in and then soaking through the sand as the stringed whisper of a roll tings and counts to fifty softly. The bass is the crack in the rocks, letting the water through and inside to hollow caverns where the deep is deep and violent. So they’re all going now, the sax and trumpet making love on the floor with the banjo flying gulls about them squawking, the drums kicking up a foamy white fuss at their ankles and the bass in their heads like lust on a Sunday morning, piano man plonking his stool on the pier to call in the night.

Lamps made of skin pulled tight and surgical over spindly metal elbows stand on the stage casting pink fleshy glows against the band bent brawling bastardly with their souls rent and torn exhausted. The beat and hung poetry of the trumpet players singing cuts through the flapping brass and hum and all the eyes in the crowd staring are stolen by his sweet miserable voice. A girl swoons. Young men with wives or mothers or both at home waiting by the phone, get erections they cant hide. One cropped libertine puckers up and detaches himself from the twisting tentacles of the jazz blast, pinching a cigarette from an open carton and delicately stirring his cocktail as he minces dandy footed smoothly and unnoticed through the crowd caught in rapture with the noise and the twinkle in the musicians eyes. He playfully plays fully with a breast and licks lullabies into one older woman’s ear, words of come hither and wither and slither. He takes her hand with a smile and leads on out into the blackhole night before the song has even finished, his four poster is waiting, cold and crisp and bathed in truffles. The cold midnight sneeze rushes in through the door and dastardly dares to kiss necks shivering. A tumbleweed rolls on in too, crawling its way around the feet of the sandwiched cowboys swigging from great canteens of beer. It keeps rolling and rolling over hilly high heels pushed on by the last of the gushing whisper to streak through from the slowly closing door until it creeps round the bar and tumbles down the cellar steps into the ratty shadows.

“I’m so sad and lonely” the trumpeter is moaning eyes down in mock dooming despair shaking his head side to side while the band is stamping behind him shooting flames they play so dog gone hard. A few wasted punks stagger at the front by the stage singing their hearts out, swishing slops of cider over Sally’s and Sue’s struck dumb by the beauty of everything. The band is about ready to explode, like a dodgy ticker beating overtime after a vicious run along the misty canal path at two in the morning, like an erection humming after a dirty gorging three hour sexual connection with the girl who used to play songs to you down the phone and makes your fingers nervous. Their playing is so intense and all consuming that six seems like one, just a gypsy with a drum on his back and an accordion strapped round his chest, bells on his knees that clang and a harmonica propped up under his chin. A feather in his cap and eyes like fuzzy kaleidoscopes, concubines follow behind him where ever he goes, like entrails torn from his gut by birds driven insane. They are totally lost and floating away like untied balloons escaping into the skyline sink.

The sax enjoys a quick solo and the kid seven feet tall at the back has his hat blown right off. The kid stoops seven feet down to reclaim his head piece just as the young pretty lass before him has her skirt blown right up too, all at the saxmans command, her pale buttocks turn to him and blush and a great love affair is instantly born. The sax then gives way politely to the trumpet which struts up chest out and beefs around in everyone’s face for a while, loud and brassy, deep and intellectually vocal, though quickly quieting down red faced and bruised. The banjo is next up to parade and conjures up dusty country roots though the notes are lost in the chaps’ grizzled beard all to quickly so the bass muscles in. The drums rat a tat tat kablam bop bop ching ching and explosively roll to the right and the blur of sticks and pumping forearms and twisting thick vein neck is rainbow colourful and storm-cloud magnificent. Endless drum rolls that sentence us all and crashing thunder beat beat beat shaking our very soles and electrifying the hairs on our legs until hedgehog-like we curl up to protect the twisting caverns of our delicate ears. The piano calms things down and hauntingly takes over tinkle winkle to bring the song to a smooth righteous end. A long heavy sigh.

The curtains close, the credits role depressingly as the voice of a puberty starved jazz enthusiast presenter counts off next weeks exciting playlist, but somebody out there straightens up and reaches for the remote to change the channel. Oh look! Wildlife!

The band all look exhausted as they place their instruments back on stands or in cases. The bass is down quick and at the bar nudging through elbows out to get to the front and order himself a shot of the strong stuff. Necktie wearing limps try to strike up conversation, which he brushes off. One two three down the hatch slap the bar and feeling mighty lucky tonight. He spots a red haired girl stood next to Chuck whooping ass on a videogame, she looks bored and frisky so he sidles over and beats his chest to assert his dominance. The drunkard knows he’s beat and slumps off through the back door to scratch his groin and eat the scraps from an open dumpster with all the other street squirrels lost in their ways and selling magazines about political celebrities and boiler bunnies, just to cut ends meat.

The liquor has been pouring freely for many an hour now and the ghosts of jazz past are beginning to take over. The six wise men share a toast and clink glasses high up in the air. Hoorah! The last bell has just sounded, the students have all but one left and skied off to the glam big city flashing lights, only Alice of the tight denim and crusty lace-ups remains, toying with the hem of her frayed blue scarf and thinking of a million and one things. It’s late and most folk are heading home. Of the band, the banjo loads most of the kit into his car and drives off, the bass is well in there again with the fiery redhead and he’s drinking Russian vodka like mint fresh mouthwash, and the drums, well, the drums had a stroke minutes after the show ended, he now lays slumped drooling onto the skin of his snare (rished poyally). The last three men standing somehow needle a couple of bottles of red from the closing staff and pay with the shows healthy takings and head on out into the night starry night, a barrelling and a rock rolling and a guzzling their sins away.

The streets are almost dead. A few taxicabs roam with headlights on full beam and behind the bullet-proof glass the drivers are still nervous and shaky, mulling over the nightmare of one too many tense knife attacks over a ten quid fare. A troop of girls in stilettos, drunk as hell and all lined up along the roadside, hack gag and vomit in turn one after the other into the gutter like a choir executing the perfect symphony, they’re casual about the whole thing like its the newest slush magazine trend for all young pop wannabes. The three wise man stumble upon them and applaud loudly wolf whistling and stamping around until they’re chased off with “fuck you’s” and “fuck off’s” and the witches trying to give chase but instead sliding around in their own filth and getting nowhere fast. Out of breath and feeling the cold the three men clutch at their trusted instruments of disaster, the trumpet and sax still able to feel the warmth of their own brass through the leather and velvet cases they hold and the piano carrying a rattling bag of bottles thick with wine. They slope between the tall grey buildings along the long grey streets musing aloud and rapping on about love life sex and everything, when Alas! the trumpeter looks to the sky and is awed to see up there shining more brightly than any other, a star of saffron, a star of holy white, a star of butter and gold. He alerts his comrades to the sight and they all behold it for a time unknown as their red shot and smoky eyes adjust to the pitch and the distance. The star seemed to them at first mute and frozen, an empty five spired grave cut into the darkness of the plughole night sky, a paralysed womb slashed open and flushed out, a hole for a child to fill with his childs block. But the longer they stared the more they saw it samba side to side, wink, spurt, shine and somehow reflect the cheap gladrag horror of mother natures hairy tits. Drunkenly they stumbled after that demon star, pinching their eyes to keep it in focus, and arms stretched out they tried in vain to wrap their fingers about its white thighs. They tripped and fell, bloodied knees on chiselled curbs and soaked the wingtips of their twisted flairs in the icy puddles where snails threw themselves and drowned. Up and down streets they went, left and right round corners they turned, swinging on the waists of lampposts and hookers asleep on their feet. The three men barely knew in what direction this shining painted nipple was leading them but they longed strangely for its cosmic milk.

When at last, all of a sudden, as if by magic, pure fate and accidental luck, the three holy and wondrous men of music duly meandered into a flat green square not a minute away from the great duke upon whose strong back they had been riding high the last few hours. A magnificent square of finely trimmed turf and mathematically drawn gravel causeways, though sadly and stagnantly bordered on all four sides by the offices of solicitors, neat little brown brick facades with snazzy blinds and large windows of polished glass stencilled elegantly with long double-barrelled names in gold that entice. At the squares centre a statue of some long passed queen protruded upwards, a robust caricature of pride and strength and kingdom, stained ill by the black and white globules of birdshit and the graffiti curls of young punk artists who waz ‘ere.

Quite unusually a travelling circus had come to town that immortal night and pitched up tent and flag in shrinking ripple formation around the orotund stone portrait of queen and country plonked splash down in the middle. Great gypsy marques and old wooden caravans splashed with oily paints in arcing embraces. Spindled wheels. Red and yellow streamers hanging from park lights. Horses stabled to one side, chewing on straw from a fully laden trough. Grizzled men with long auburn hair and platted beards garrumping merrily with mouthfuls of strawberry wine or the finest of all fine apple ciders, jiving their thrumpy women around and saddling them on their knees for big wintry warm kisses around the camp fire blazing and kept fed with crackling logs thrown on by clucking kids in clogs singing ditties and slapping their thighs as they jig and juggle knives and spin hula hoops around the waists of the pretty wee girls whose long pigtails tumble down to their feet and the brown muddy earth that trampolines them skyward. A man humps around with a steel stringed geetar in his hands jumping on chairs and strumming so darn fast. With that and the fire and the nightglow settling above them and their camp, the eve of Christmas is set to run its course.

Lost wide eyed in the carnival lights the three adventuring musicians boogie woogie’d through the maze of tents and campfires, still pulled gravitationally by the stars handsome weight. Nobody paid them any attention but the cows and donkeys and chickens, farmyard poets joined in a strange fellowship, not only by the red circus uniforms on their backs and the cigarettes they smoked but by the long and dangerous road they had travelled together. Quite a chatter was amongst the animals that night, restlessly they paced in their pens, shrewdly they looked upon outsiders. Eventually the three came abruptly to a small carcass of a tent, a fat ladies summer dress torn at the seams and held aloft by rusting poles skewered into the mud. Parked on the fringes of the camp, it held residence with the dustbins and portable toilets, and seemed neglected, erected merely as an after thought, a humble necessity. A faint and flickering candle glow could be seen coming from inside.

The trumpet stared at the sax, the sax stared at the piano, the piano stood drinking wine and ignored them both. The trumpet looked skyward again and sure enough there was that monosyllabic orator, that castigating cyclopes, that mismatched dance partner, still shining brightly, directly overhead now, like a noon day sun refereeing a gun-toting stand off. This was definatly the place. They boldly moved on, all three in some manner trying to anticipate in the mangled distillery of their minds what might lie behind the folds and flaps of the vagabond den set before them. Were they to knock on the gates? Were they to introduce themselves? Were they in any fit state for this hall of fame shit in the first place? The piano fell through the awning and blindly into the next scene, such was his intoxication, the mood was thusly ruined. The sax helped him to his feet whilst the trumpet surveyed the gloom and inescapable illumination held captive beneath the fat ladies summer dress. Rather than candle light there was instead a kerosene lamp stood atop a wooden crate, it’s worth dwindling as the last puddles of fuel were licked up. Around sat a man in robes, two sailors and a donkey, all playing cards and gambling with loose wooden splinters. They all looked up mid hand as the wise men crashed in. Further back a lady also in robes sat hunched with child. Looking very young and uncomfortable in the heavy knitwear hanging from her shoulders, this girl was red faced and exhausted, sweaty and lost in her confused thoughts. Her name was Mary and she looked up at the musicians with a delicate smile.

The three men approached somewhat cautiously holding their instruments and wine still, the piano puffing unceremoniously on a cig bent from the fall and trying to straighten his shirt for the occasion. He wished he knew what was going on. Mary presented them the newborn child in her arms. A tiny bouncing baby boy with emerald headlights and a cute nose, ill-fitting whisps of blond hair at the crest of his head, appropriate ears and a stern jaw, and wrists that appeared too thin.

The sax noted quietly to himself that the child wasn’t as beautiful as his own nephew. None of the three musicians knew quite what to do, the sailors had joined them now in beholding the baby in his mothers arms, and so had the father, and so the musicians found themselves hemmed in. There was a certain unspeakable power radiating from the boy that scared them all. When he looked into their eyes, one man at a time, for what seemed whole eternities, they felt studied, like enzymes on a slide under the watchful eye of a science class magnifying glass. They felt their futures judged. They felt their pasts scorned. They felt their morals chased down in the street and set on fire. They felt their genitals squeezed, their stomachs tighten, their bellies revolt, their throats boil with vomit rising.

They could stand it no longer. The piano turned and spilled first, his guts glistening on the trampled grass, but the sax and trumpet were soon to follow. The baby boy only watched on. They could do no more but tidy themselves up with already dirtied sleeves and the lapels of their jazz jackets, wiping muck from their chins and smudging it deep into the fabric. The pungent smell that now steamed off them clouded under the thick canopy of the tent unable to escape.

The trumpet thought first of offering up his case, he balanced it on the side of the makeshift cradle and popped it open to reveal the gold inside. Carefully he pulled his trumpet from its velvet bed and laced his fingers through the pipes to rest on the keys, and placed his lips to the mouthpiece, but instead of playing he merely puffed his cheeks and clacked away on the keys to mimic the great sound of jazz. After his little show he placed the instrument down in the cradle and stepped back.

The sax followed suit, the man let his sax rest against his round belly and he too huffed and puffed much to the babies amusement before lying his mistress down on the soft blankets of the cradle. Both the trumpet and the sax again looked to the piano. With no grand piano to pull from his pocket he dipped his hand into the clanking bag at his feet and pulled forth a corked bottle of red to offer as gift instead. In turn he mimicked a great gulping of the wine down down down his dry throat it went, and he tapped on the bottom of the bottle for the very last dropling. With a hearty smile he stashed the drink down against the babies pillow and bowed.

So with the gifts given and the baby looking appeased the three wise men shuffled backwards. One sailor wished to leave his sidearm revolver as a gift also but was persuaded otherwise by his shipmate, how would he explain the loss of his sidearm to the commander? Hmm…he reluctantly holstered his weapon again and backed away.

Looking at the mother and father as they lay their baby down in his crib with the fine fruits of the wider world bestowed upon him, the three jazz brothers and their new sea dog companions felt deeply righteous, though it was a feeling none had experienced before, that they could speak of. An ethereal light shone, but only dimly, like an economy bulb rudely blanketed by a disrobed corset. But with the stooping parents comforting their newborn baby boy in his homemade cot silhouetted against this strange glow the beauty was disarming. Hushed and flushed the travellers crept away.  

On there way out the seamen gave their brief history, they told of their mighty seafaring vessel moored nearby in the salty sea docks. They’d been in town but a few days and tonight they were on shift, meaning they were meant to be shepherding the crewmen sleeping soundlessly down below on bunks of three and four. But with the sound of festivities nearby and the moon looking so beautiful cradled in the clouds they had disembarked in search of liquor, frivolity, loose women and napalm dreams. They had found most of what they sought but at some point had been hypnotised by a witch doctor with placebos for sale and looking into the hazy eyes of a totem-pole hound had been entranced until they awoke with headaches and visions of a star and had eventually turned up unannounced at this ragged tents doorstep. Though they couldn’t explain it, it was more than satisfactory to be returning to ship feeling healthy and blessed, though a little bemused.

Suddenly confronted once again with the jamboree still in full swing in a world quite detached from that little isolated tent, the wise men bid fare thee well to the nocturnal navy duo who hopskotched through the settling fog and back to their cold grey beds. Feeling dragged through the mud, run ragged over stones and torn by thorns, none of the three were in any mood to continue trampling along the nights sordid path. They crept through the crowds of Christmas lovers like ghosts until they found themselves on the edge of the square, able to look back at the celebration still raging, pranksters still in the throes of disorder, children awed by the stories of old, families knitted together and strong. They turned their backs and began across the cobbled alleyways that cris crossed at the feet of the leaning pubs, back to their own wives and warm beds, those, they knew, would be waiting.

Whilst up, up in the wastelands of space, the star they had chased was just clocking off. It pulled from off its back a classic mandolin and began to strum quietly, and like that, with couplets lisping off its tongue, it faded back and became no more extraordinary than any other star on that starry starry night.
 

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~ This piece was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 and was filed under Blog, Featured, Short Story, Writing. You can make comments on it below. ~