Page 14 - The Jazzsipper Novel

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THE JAZZ SIPPER

were playing football with him were shot by stray bullets in all the commotion
that ensued from them running and screaming.

Vance played the incident in his mind again and realized someone told him
to be still, he thought was it God, was it one of his angels that he read about
in his mother’s Bible, or was it his mother’s spirit watching over him. There
were many instances he felt he was being watched over. It was those times
he missed his mother the most, but as his Aunt Jessie would say, ‘strap them
booths up and get too stepping, self-pity is not an option.’ She had a lot of
sayings like his mother. She was a short, very stout woman in stature. But she
ruled her household and everywhere else with brute force. Vance had heard
that on one occasion before she got saved and turned her life over to God,
she knocked her husband out with one punch. They were arguing over money
and his staying out all night when all of sudden, Bam! He was out cold on the
kitchen floor. Afterwards, Uncle Frank seemed much more reserved and
subdued; no all niters and the money situation always seemed to be straight.

Aunt Jessie was very street smart. In her younger years she had left New
Orleans and went to New Jersey in her teen’s and was very active (gotten
hooked up) in the numbers racket. She told him that she had served time in
jail for running an illegal gambling operation and after she got out she made
her way back to New Orleans; where she met her husband Frank who was a
local truck driver. They could never have kids of their own. She told Vance
that his mother had promised her that she would share him with her, so when
Vance mother died it was only natural for Vance to live with Aunt Jessie and
Uncle Frank. Vance father had never been in his life, he moved to California
even before Vance was born. When his mother passed his father petitioned
for custody thinking he would get Vance and the government check that came