In back of the joint in a dark corridor beyond the splattered toilets scores of men and 
women stood against the wall drinking wine-spodiodi and spitting at the stars -- wine and 
whiskey. The behatted tenorman was blowing at the peak of a wonderfully satisfying free 
idea, a rising and falling riff that went from "EE-yah!" to a crazier "EE-de-lee-yah!" and 
blasted along to a rolling crash of butt-scarred drums hammered by a big brutal Negro with a 
bullneck who didn't give a damn about anything but punishing his busted tubs, crash, 
rattle-ti-boom, crash. Uproars of music and the tenorman _had it_ and everybody knew he had 
it. Dean was clutching his head in the crowd, and it was a mad crowd. They were all urging 
that tenorman to hold it and keep it with cries and wild eyes, and he was raising himself 
from a crouch and going down again with his horn, looping it up in a clear cry above the 
furor. A six-foot skinny Negro woman was rolling her bones at the man's hornbell, and he 
just jabbed it at her, "Ee! ee! ee!" 

Everybody was rocking and roaring. Galatea and Marie with beer in their hands were standing 
on their chairs, shaking and jumping. Groups of colored guys stumbled in from the street, 
falling over one another to get there. "Stay with it, man!" roared a man with a foghorn 
voice, and let out a big groan that must have been heard clear out in Sacramento, ah-haa! 
"Whoo!" said Dean. He was rubbing his chest, his belly; the sweat splashed from his face. 
Boom, kick, that drummer was kicking his drums down the cellar and rolling the beats 
upstairs with his murderous sticks, rattlety-boom! A big fat man was jumping on the 
platform, making it sag and creak. "Yoo!" The pianist was only pounding the keys with 
spread-eagle fingers chords, at intervals when the great tenorman was drawing breath for 
another blast -- Chinese chords, shuddering the piano in every timber, chink, and wire, 
boing! The tenorman jumped down from the platform and stood in the crowd, blowing around; 
his hat was over his eyes; somebody pushed it back for him. He just hauled back and stamped 
his foot and blew down a hoarse, baughing blast, and drew breath, and raised the horn and 
blew high, wide, and screaming in the air. Dean was directly in front of him with his face 
lowered to the bell of the horn, clapping his hands, pouring sweat on the man's keys, and 
the man noticed and laughed in his horn a long quivering crazy laugh, and everybody else 
laughed and they rocked and rocked; and finally the tenorman decided to blow his top and 
crouched down and held a note in high C for a long time as everything else crashed along and 
the cried increased and I thought the cops would come swarming from the nearest precinct. 
Dean was in a trance. The tenorman's eyes were fixed stratight on him; he had a madman who 
not only understood but cared and wanted to understand more and much more than there was, 
and they began dueling for this; everything came out of the horn, no more phrases, just 
cried, cries, "Baugh!" and down to "Beep!" and up to "EEEEE!" and down to clinkers and over 
to sideways-echoing horn-sounds. He tried everything up, down, sideways, upside, down, 
horizontal, thirty degrees, forty degrees, and finally he fell back in somebody's arms and 
gave up and everybody pushed around and yelled, "Yes! Yes! He blowed that one!" Dean wiped 
himself with his handkerchief.