So they faithfully retold a story that Louis Armstrong noted down in one of his many notebooks: how Holden's name came from the fact that "he blew that horn a real Lick". But the fact is that Lick lost the name Fortis years earlier on Canal Street as he sold his sasparilla ice to the crowds of eager kids.
"A penny a lick!" Lick would shout. "A penny a lick! No penny, no lick!" Truth be told, Lick loved his job for Old Man Stekel and even the kids who skitted him only did so out of jealousy. In the first place Lick was earning money and in the second place he'd gained a certain notoriety as "Lick the Ice Boy". But, best of all, when the steady flow of customers trickled and dried around 11 p.m., Lick and Naps could gorge themselves on sasparilla ice and sneak through the windows or on to the balconies of the honkytonks and listen to the Cooltown musicians play the ragtime, blues and jazz so loud and so hard that their hearts would soon be leaping to keep up.
Lick sucked in the atmosphere of those Cooltown tonks like it was the freshest air he'd ever tasted. His eyes feasted on the black men who cakewalked so pretty (just like the 'airin and gracin' white folk up in Jones or Sinclair) and the white good-time boys who paid double for their hooch though they didn't even know it and the prostitutes who shook their tushes so low they looked like they were buffing the floorboards. But it was Naps who described it best. Because Naps had a way with words that Lick loved to hear.
"The drummer's like a skeeter in the rains, so excited by all that flesh on show. The piano fingers like them river bugs that start to dance when the wind skims the surface. The bass is like a cart nag that can only walk so slow and the sax is like the trunk of a hephelant in Africa that's blowing its nose for all the animals to hear."
"What about the horn?" Lick asked. "Tell me, Naps! What about the horn?" "The horn, Lick boy? That's your pappy's doody! An' you see the face of the cornet player? That's what your pappy look like when he was makin' you with your momma."
And Lick sulked when Naps mentioned his pappy. Because Naps knew all too well that Lick had no idea who his pappy could be.
Hidden at the back of the Cooltown honkytonks, Lick and Naps heard all the first great musicians that the twentieth century had to offer. No wonder it fired their blood so! It wasn't just the Cooltown natives neither but some of the famous band leaders who'd made the twenty-mile journey from Storyville, New Orleans, to experience what became known as the "Cooltown buzz". And there was no horn man greater and none more famous than Storyville's Charles "Buddy" Bolden, the man with a steamer's lungs, steel lips and a tone so syrup sweet that he could make any ballroom, honkytonk or whole damn street smell of sex and good times. Lick only got to hear Buddy Bolden play one time - God knows what year it was but history puts it around 1907 (when Bolden was on the run from New Orleans and the complications of his love life)- and he vowed that night that he would learn to play the horn. It was also the night that Lick got in big law trouble, the best kind of the three.
Generally the doormen, pimps and prostitutes weren't bothered any by the presence of Lick and Naps, not unless there were law officers on the prowl. But when it came to Toothless Bessie's, the biggest honkytonk in Cooltown, it was a whole different story on account of an enormous light-skinned doorman by the name of Evans (or "Good" as he was universally known). There was no reasoning behind it. It was simply that Good had taken a dislike to Lick and he was damned sure that no shooter was going to make a fool out of him. So he ejected Lick and Naps from the honkytonk on such a regular basis that his presence in Canal Street began to hang over Lick like the sword of Damocles itself. And Lick soon concluded that a visit to that particular honkytonk just wasn't worth the sore behind and the mouthful of dust. But the night Buddy Bolden came to Cooltown to play Toothless Bessie's? Well! Even just turned eight, Lick wasn't going to miss an opportunity like that.
The two boys stowed the ice cart down an alley and snuck through a window without too much bother. They knew that Good would be keeping his eyes open, both inside and out, but they hid themselves behind a table of rowdy steam men and they figured they were invisible enough. When Bolden's band took the stage, there was no sign of the great man himself. And the band slipped into some easy ragtime that moved the dancers' feet but left Lick wishing for something more. Suddenly, when they'd been playing half an hour or so, the band were drowned out by a cornet so loud Lick would have sworn it was a steamer's horn but for the tone as clear as light through new glass. And then the great man appeared and the whole honkytonk rose to its feet in silent, deafened awe. Lick couldn't help himself. Despite Naps's tugging arm, he climbed on a chair to get a better view and whooped at the top of his voice to hear the cornet played so.
Next thing Lick knew, an enormous paw grabbed the scruff of his neck and lifted him clean off his feet. With his other hand, Good caught Naps by the throat and dragged the two boys to the door of Toothless Bessie's. Good cracked their heads together until their ears rang and their eyes streamed.
"I see you roun' this 'stablishment again an' I cut you so full of holes they be usin' you to strain beans!" Good shouted. And Lick and Naps would surely have taken a further beating but for a fight inside that took the doorman's attention.
They sat in the street for a moment or two until their heads cleared and they looked at one another sheepishly and they dabbed gingerly at the sore spots with fingers that came away bloody. Lick slowly lifted himself to his feet and said, "I's goin' home, Naps. 'Cos my head feel like a choppin' block an' no mistake." But Naps and his wicked streak had no intention of letting Good Evans get away with such treatment. "Lick boy!" he said. "You be runnin' from that big ol' mulatto and you be runnin' every night."
Naps had a plan to humiliate Good and, though Lick was uncertain about its merits, he went along with it anyhow. Because Naps had a way with words. With Good momentarily distracted inside the honkytonk (pulling two steam men from a pimp after they'd set upon him for what might be termed a breach of trade description), Lick and Naps quickly located the ice cart. They pulled it from the alley and rested it at the foot of the stairs to the balcony that circled Toothless Bessie's. Next they tried to carry the whole cart up the steps. But, though it was now only a third full of ice water and slush, it was still too heavy to lift.
At this point Lick was of a mind to give up but Naps unbolted the top basin from the cart and they just about managed to lug that up to the balcony as the freezing, viscous liquid sloshed over their bare feet and ankles. Naps giggled softly at the brilliance of his plan (though he'd given no thought to escape) while Lick pressed his face to the first-floor window, transfixed by the sight of the heaving dance floor and the blowing of the great Buddy Bolden and wishing he was still inside.
"Lick!" Naps hissed and Lick knew it was time. The two boys crept across the balcony and peered down at the top of Good's head as he ejected the two steam men with strong arms and stronger language. Naps could barely suppress his laughter as he and Lick dragged the heavy basin to the edge. They exchanged a silent nod and upturned the basin as best they could until the liquid splashed down on the unsuspecting Good.
The doorman's reaction was comical. At first he seemed not to notice the freezing slush that hailed on to the top of his head and down the back of his shirt and vest. Then his body suddenly jolted as if struck by lightning and he let rip a loud, snorting sound like a riled bull. Good covered his head with his arms and bent himself double so that the liquid pounded the middle of his back. He could surely have jumped out of the way. But it was as though he had resigned himself to the collapse of the sky itself or the ice had actually frozen him to the spot. And still he kept snorting, loud and long.
Up on the balcony, Naps was laughing uncontrollably as he raised one end of the basin high, determined not to waste a drop. Lick was laughing too. Until he heard the sound of metal scraping metal and he looked into the basin just in time to see the heavy doohickey fly off the edge of the balcony and down into the street. The sharpened implement dropped with the precision of a balanced sword and embedded itself neatly between Good's shoulder blades. Good's snorting suddenly stopped and he dropped to his knees as the last of the liquid rained down on him. Naps was laughing so hard that he couldn't see, so he kept right on laughing. But Lick saw the doohickey find its target, he saw the huge doorman fall and it was as though time stopped for a moment. Lick's eyes were suddenly blind and his limbs were numb and his ears were deaf to anything but the sound of Buddy Bolden's horn. And Lick seemed to hear that horn like it could be an escape route, a climbing, uneven path that led to some place else. Because the band's swung rhythms, driven by Bolden's soaring horn, hid what was behind the sounds of what was not.
Lucky for Lick and Naps that Good Evans didn't die (though he never walked no more after the surgeon botched the removal of the doohickey). Because they'd never have seen Cooltown again. Lucky that they landed in law trouble rather than the random retribution of Toothless Bessie's other doormen. Lucky too that they came up before Judge Augustus Pinckney in the Sinclair Juvenile Court. Because Pinckney was a liberal reformer and the two boys escaped with four years apiece at the Mount Marter Correctional School for Negro Boys (or the "Double M", as it was known) on the outskirts of town. Lucky for Lick that he'd heard Buddy Bolden play on the night he was arrested and he'd found his calling at the age of eight. Because Naps had no such purpose and no such luck and his way with words led him to nothing but good pimping. And there was no such luck for Bolden neither. It can't have been more than a month after that night in Cooltown that Bolden was incarcerated in the insane asylum at Jackson, Louisiana, for beating on his mother-in-law. And, while Lick was released from the Double M four years later with a cornet in his hand, Bolden was locked up for a quarter of a century to his death in 1931. Because even the third kind of trouble was enough to finish the original jazzman. And there was no luck about it.