Short Fiction Contest-winning story #5: “Traveling Magic,” by Kay Sexton

March 5th, 2004

.

.

New Short Fiction Award

We value creative writing and wish to encourage writers of short fiction to pursue their dream of being published. Jerry Jazz Musician would like to provide another step in the career of an aspiring writer. Three times a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original, previously unpublished work.

Kay Sexton of Sussex, England is the fifth recipient of the Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award, announced and published for the first time on March 5, 2004.

.

 *

.

.

Kay Sexton

Kay Sexton spent two years as an agony aunt for nudists — it was an education, although for what is not clear. She is also a philosophy graduate, recreational runner, and hostage to a capricious muse. 

Traveling Magicis an homage to John Coltrane, whose ‘Blue Train’ has been begging her to write a train story for as long as she can remember. Currently she’s working on a story based on Art Blakey’s ‘Moanin’ …

.

.

___________________________

.

.

 

.

Traveling Magic

by Kay Sexton

.

___

.

…..There are coyote in The Balcones Canyonlands Preserve in West Travis County, Texas. One family; with three cubs. As always, the alpha female is the only one to breed, her two sisters will help her rear the cubs to maturity. She is a young female, less than two years old, and her sisters are her littermates: this family, barely more than striplings themselves, have fought hard to establish themselves in this reserve, managed for deer and birds, but not for coyote. Most Texans still shoot first, and ask themselves only afterwards if the beautiful golden corpse in front of them could possibly have posed a risk to livestock or pets.

…..This alpha female is unique. If you could see her, in the settling light that follows sunrise, as she and one of her sisters head out to hunt the forest edge for small mammals and unfledged birds, you would see what makes her into the rari canis. She has green eyes. Green as jade, greener than Texan grass.

…..She crests the hill-line and looks back, blinking into the light of the mid-morning and — as she drops her head and closes her eyes, to scent the air for other predators, for prey, for the currents all around that shape a world as full of odour as of colour — her eyes change.

…..Far away, the train pulls out of Austin station. It labours slowly, weighted with passengers, freighted with love, hate, expectation, fear, regret. A trainload of feelings traveling to a hundred destinations.

…..“My baby’s on that train. Heading north to the cold-lands; three years college and who knows if she’ll come back to me?”

…..When the coyote opens her eyes again, the green has gone: they are simply yellow.

…..The train rolls.

…..In a booth in a Chicago club, a jaded critic sips latte and slits his eyes against the brightness of the alto sax held by the woman on the stage. It is too early in the day to play jazz. She is too young to play jazz. She is a she. The sax is too bright and shiny. He sighs, feels the pull of the scar tissue against his re-activating ulcer and drinks morosely of his medicinal milk.

…..Frannie Moore lifts the sax. In the moments before they swing in behind her, the band hear the train sliding its way through the windy city. The noise is subliminal, visceral: if you play here much it becomes part of the music. Frannie breathes deep and opens her heart to the world…

…..After a couple of minutes, maybe five, maybe seven, the critic stops staring and starts writing. He covers sheet after sheet of notepad, sometimes turning two or three pages over together in his haste, sometimes writing off the edge of the page onto the greasy wooden table. Later, when he tries to decipher what wired his hindbrain to his writing hand without bothering the intellect in between, this is all he can recover…

…..“We’ve had blues, we’ve had mellow, we’ve had the golden age. What else can there be? The greens. When Frannie Moore plays, you hear the green heart of this planet, singing out to you from within the core of this woman’s being. She brings mockingbirds and honeysuckle and puts them right down on the table with your coffee and smokes. She carries you out to the end of the branch where the dew-drop hangs from the freshest leaf you’ll ever see in your life, and she lets you hear that dew-drop fall. You don’t just hear it hit the forest floor, she can make you know how it sounds as it’s falling through the air. This is music like we’ve never heard before — if you want to feel evolution in action, then hear Frannie Moore and know that the blues are dead. Long live the greens.”

…..Frannie lowers the sax. Behind her, the band is silent.

…..“My girl wants to be a journalist. She’s going to win the Pulitzer one day. Is she ever going to come back here for some semi-loco guitarist? God I hope so. I’m not gonna stand in her way, but I’m following that train in my mind. My heart is going north with her.”

…..On the other side of Buffalo there is a garden, so far beyond manicured that it looks as though it has had a lift and tuck and liposuction. The train roars along the bottom edge of a lawn that is as precision-trimmed as a GI buzz cut. The panes of a custom-made glass house vibrate gently as the carriages pass.

…..Inside the greenhouse, the rose grower is deliberately not watching the opening of his rose. He has set the spray of three perfect buds under the infra-red bulb, balanced by a daylight bulb on one side and the blue light from a halogen bulb on the other. He knows that he could simply prise the petals open with his fingers to see if he has succeeded, but he is a perfectionist and he wants the bloom to open of its own accord. An impatient perfectionist though: of its own accord but in his time, to his schedule. Hence the array of light and heat, to trick this rose into revealing its secrets.

…..He has planned this for over two decades: breeding and grafting, hybridising. The rose will be scarlet, like fresh blood. Richly scented, with a bottom note of rare spices. The stamens will be as golden as the crown of Heaven. All this is true of a dozen fine roses, but there will be one difference between his rose and all the rest. The innermost ring of petals, closest to the gold heart, will not be red, but red and white. They will be white petals that bleed the reddest notes of the martyrdom of Christ. White as the Lamb of God. This rose will be called The Nazerene.

…..More than twenty years of failure have twisted the rose grower into something less than human. He has forgotten what made him conceive the rose in his soul, he can only remember the craft that has shaped it in his hands. He is standing with his back to the buds, watching — but not seeing — the train pass. As the last carriage swings away, he turns to look at what he has wrought.

…..Under the trickery of heat and light the topmost bud has opened. It holds its shape perfectly, revealing the perfection of form that he craves. He peers forward, seeing the apparent raggedness of the inner petals, shockingly white, staringly red. But he barely registers them in his grief and pain, because inside the glorious red and white array, the stamens are as green as grasshoppers. He tears the bud from the stem, dropping it to the floor and twisting his foot compulsively on it until it is no more than a damp smear, redolent of tea and cinnamon. He turns away, barely able to walk from the glasshouse, shoulders bowed against the weight of failure. His finger flicks the light switch, amputating at source the tropicality that brought the bud to maturity.

…..Tomorrow, when he returns, he will find the lower buds have opened too, under the natural light that floods the glass walls. They have golden hearts. He will never again see the green heart of the red rose.

…..The train travels: new passengers join, original ones leave. The start point branches to a thousand destinations, the trains spread across two nations like the streams of a delta, carrying hopes and fears, wishes and promises.

…..“She’s my green eyed cat, my girl, my luck. You think I should have gone with her? Maybe so. But look, she’s going to college … she doesn’t need me hanging around there. I’m just a guitar-hack, ax-man; I’ve got gigs here that pay the rent. Up there, could I find work? I dunno. I don’t want to drag her down. If she comes back to me after college, then I’m goin’ to cherish her forever, but if she don’t … then nobody’s ever going to be able to say that I ruined her chances. She’s the first person from hereabouts that’s going to college. I’ll bide my time here, she’ll come back, I’m sure of it.”

…..Outside Toronto, where the sidings lurk in the shade of evening, a drunk sits near the tracks. His bottle is empty. It has been empty for a while now. He is empty too. It has been a long time since there was anything to fill him up. He sprawls with the graceless pain of the habitual drunkard, bottle loosely held to his chest. Passing trains cast bars of shadow and light over him. After a while, a long while, he realises there is something new. Something so small it hardly counts. A speck of green. He lifts the bottle and peers inside. At the bottom is a firefly. The cold green glow, like a fairy bonfire, takes him to a place where he once hunted fireflies, putting them in a jar to hang in the tree outside his bedroom window. He smiles. After a while he falls asleep, cradling the fiery glow of his magic bottle.

…..As she steps down onto Union Station, Toronto is dark and cold. In the small group of travelers, the tall girl with sun-tanned skin and a backpack stands out. She is calm in the middle of the ragged bustle, the movement of people too tired to be enthusiastic, but happy to have arrived. She looks around with frank interest in her new world.

  …..“I want to write her a song. I’m going to write her the song that will bring her home in three years time, to me. Travelling magic’s going to take my heart to her and bring her back safe to me, my green-eyed girl.”

…..Overhead, in the station roof, is a bird. In cleaner places it might be called a dove, but here in the station, it is a pigeon. It is predominantly white, although there is a feral suggestion in the long pinion feathers with betraying notes of marbled grey and dun. It is tired: it blinks one pink eye and ruffles its feathers, preparatory to sleep. The girl hoists her pack. The movement rouses the bird, and once more it lifts its head, glancing down, blinking, observing her shivering form as it crosses the station floor. As it settles again to sleep, its gaze crosses the station. It has emerald green eyes.

.

__________

.

.

Short Fiction Contest Details

.

.

.

 

 

 

Share this:

Comment on this article:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

In This Issue

"Nina" by Marsha Hammel
A Collection of Jazz Poetry — Winter, 2024 Edition...One-third of the Winter, 2024 collection of jazz poetry is made up of poets who have only come to my attention since the publication of the Summer, 2023 collection. What this says about jazz music and jazz poetry – and this community – is that the connection between the two art forms is inspirational and enduring, and that poets are finding a place for their voice within the pages of this website. (Featuring the art of Marsha Hammel)

The Sunday Poem

The cover of John Coltrane's 1958 album "Soultrane"
“Soultrane” by George Held

Poetry

Proceeding From Behind: A collection of poems grounded in the rhythmic, relating to the remarkable, by Terrance Underwood...A relaxed, familiar comfort emerges from the poet Terrance Underwood’s language of intellectual acuity, wit, and space – a feeling similar to one gets while listening to Monk, or Jamal, or Miles. I have long wanted to share his gifts as a poet on an expanded platform, and this 33-poem collection – woven among his audio readings, music he considers significant to his story, and brief personal comments – fulfills my desire to do so.

Feature

Jamie Branch's 2023 album "Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))"
On the Turntable— The “Best Of the ‘Best Of’” in 2023 jazz recordings...A year-end compilation of jazz albums oft mentioned by a wide range of critics as being the best of 2023 - including the late trumpeter Jamie Branch's Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))

Poetry

Ali Yahya ayahya09, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
“Black Coffee Blues” – a poem by Mary O’Melveny

Essay

"Lester Leaps In" by Tad Richards
"Jazz and American Poetry," an essay by Tad Richards...In an essay that first appeared in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry in 2005, Tad Richards - a prolific visual artist, poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer who has been active for over four decades – writes about the history of the connection of jazz and American poetry.

Interview

photo of Pepper Adams/courtesy of Pepper Adams Estate
Interview with Gary Carner, author of Pepper Adams: Saxophone Trailblazer...The author speaks with Bob Hecht about his book and his decades-long dedication to the genius of Pepper Adams, the stellar baritone saxophonist whose hard-swinging bebop style inspired many of the top-tier modern baritone players.

Poetry

Three poets and Sketches of Spain

Interview

IISG, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Interview with Judith Tick, author of Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song...The author discusses her book, a rich, emotionally stirring, exceptional work that explores every element of Ella’s legacy in great depth, reminding readers that she was not only a great singing artist, but also a musical visionary and social activist.

Poetry

Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film. This edition is influenced by Stillpoint, the 2021 album by Zen practitioner Barrett Martin

Review

Jason Innocent, on “3”, Abdullah Ibrahim’s latest album... Album reviews are rarely published on Jerry Jazz Musician, but Jason Innocent’s experience with the pianist Abdullah Ibrahim’s new recording captures the essence of this artist’s creative brilliance.

Short Fiction

Christerajet, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Short Fiction Contest-winning story #64 — “The Old Casino” by J.B. Marlow...The author's award-winning story takes place over the course of a young man's life, looking at all the women he's loved and how the presence of a derelict building informs those relationships.

Feature

George Shearing/Associated Booking Corporation/James Kriegsmann, New York, via Wikimedia Commons
True Jazz Stories: “An Evening With George,” by Terry Sanville...The writer tells his story of playing guitar with a symphony orchestra, backing up jazz legend George Shearing.

Short Fiction

photo via PxHere/CC0 Public Domain
“An Un-played Instrument” – a story by Terry Sanville

Poetry

The poet Connie Johnson in 1981
In a Place of Dreams: Connie Johnson’s album of jazz poetry, music, and life stories...A collection of the remarkable poet's work is woven among her audio readings, a personal narrative of her journey and music she considers significant to it, providing readers the chance to experience the full value of her gifts.

Short Fiction

“Sayir” – a short story by Ron Perovich

Poetry

"Jazz Trio" by Samuel Dixon
A collection of jazz haiku, Vol. 2...The 19 poets included in this collection effectively share their reverence for jazz music and its culture with passion and brevity.

Poetry

“Remembering Mose,” a poem by John Kendall Hawkins

Jazz History Quiz #170

photo of Dexter Gordon by Brian McMillen
This bassist played with (among others) Charlie Parker, Erroll Garner, Nat King Cole and Dexter Gordon (pictured), was one of the earliest modern jazz tuba soloists, and was the only player to turn down offers to join both Duke Ellington’s Orchestra and the Louis Armstrong All-Stars. Who is he?

Community

FOTO:FORTEPAN / Kölcsey Ferenc Dunakeszi Városi Könyvtár / Petanovics fényképek, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
.“Community Bookshelf, #1"...a twice-yearly space where writers who have been published on Jerry Jazz Musician can share news about their recently authored books. This edition includes information about books published within the last six months or so…

Contributing Writers

Click the image to view the writers, poets and artists whose work has been published on Jerry Jazz Musician, and find links to their work

Coming Soon

An interview with Tad Richards, author of Jazz With a Beat: Small Group Swing, 1940 - 1960;  an interview with Laura Flam and Emily Sieu Liebowitz, authors of But Will You Love Me Tomorrow? An Oral History of the 60's Girl Groups;  a new collection of jazz poetry; a collection of jazz haiku; a new Jazz History Quiz; short fiction; poetry; photography; interviews; playlists; and lots more in the works...

Interview Archive

Eubie Blake
Click to view the complete 22 year archive of Jerry Jazz Musician interviews, including those recently published with Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom on Eubie Blake (pictured); Richard Brent Turner on jazz and Islam; Alyn Shipton on the art of jazz; Shawn Levy on the original queens of standup comedy; Travis Atria on the expatriate trumpeter Arthur Briggs; Kitt Shapiro on her life with her mother, Eartha Kitt; Will Friedwald on Nat King Cole; Wayne Enstice on the drummer Dottie Dodgion; the drummer Joe La Barbera on Bill Evans; Philip Clark on Dave Brubeck; Nicholas Buccola on James Baldwin and William F. Buckley; Ricky Riccardi on Louis Armstrong; Dan Morgenstern and Christian Sands on Erroll Garner; Maria Golia on Ornette Coleman.

Site Archive