They’d been playing all morning, the usual Skoag set. They did “Happy Trails to You,” and “Horiko Cries,” and “When You Were Mine,” and then “America the Beautiful.” That was the weirdest thing about Skoags, how they’d pick up any music they fancied, and then play it back in any order. They’d started “Moon over Bourbon Street” when I saw my mom coming.

She and Teddy had gone to pick up her aid check that morning. But Teddy wasn’t with her, and I knew from her face that another musician had moved out. I was glad in a selfish way, because for the next few days there’d be regular meals on the table, and more food, because the check would only be feeding us two, and Mom would talk to me twice as much as usual. Of course, she’d make sure I actually got up and went to school, too, but that wasn’t much price to pay. And it wouldn’t last long before she’d hold another party and reel in a new musician.

So I was determined to enjoy it while it lasted. So I ran up to her, saying, “Wow, Mom, you should hear this purple-crested one play, he’s really something.” I said that for about four reasons. First, so she wouldn’t have the chance to ask me why I wasn’t in school, and, second, to show that I wasn’t going to notice that jerk Teddy was gone because he wasn’t worth her time. Third, it cheered her up when I acted like I was interested in music. I think she always hoped I really would be like my father, would grow up to be a singer and redeem her, or justify her life or something. And fourth, because the purple-crested one really was something, though I couldn’t have said why.

“You playing tourist, Billy Boy?” my mom asked me in her teasing way that she used when it was only she and I together again. And I laughed, because it was dumb the way the tourists from inland came down to our part of Seattle to spy on the Skoags and listen to them jam. Anybody who’d lived here ignored them the way you ignored supermarket music or a TV in a store window. All you ever heard from a Skoag was the same thing you’d heard a hundred times before anyway. So what I said was sort of a joke, too, to make her laugh and take the flatness out of her eyes.