Hopperesque

Hopperesque

Monday, 20 January 2025

Charles Beaumont



         And he laid back his head and fastened the horn and pulled in air and blew some more. Not sad, now, not blues - but not anything else you could call by a name. Except .... jazz. It was jazz.
         Hate blew out of that horn. Hate and fury and mad and fight, like screams and snarls, like little razors shooting at you, millions of them, cutting, cutting deep ........ And Sonny only stopping to wipe his lip and whisper in the silent room full of people. "You're saying it, Spoof ! You are !"
         God Almighty himself must have heard that trumpet, then ; slapping and hitting and hurting with notes that don't exist and never existed. Man ! Life took a real beating ! Life got groined and sliced and belly-punched and the horn, it didn't stop until everything had all spilled out, every bit of the hate and mad that's built up in a man's heart.

excerpt from
Black Country
Charles Beaumont
1954
(originally published in Playboy)

          https://pattinase.blogspot.com/2021/06/short-story-wedneday-black-country.html

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