A Good Night for Ghosts

The story follows siblings Jack and Annie, who travel through time using a magical tree house near their home in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania. The wizard Merlin has tasked them with helping creative people share their gifts with the world.

One rainy morning, Annie wakes Jack, insisting she dreamed that their friends Teddy and Kathleen, two young sorcerers from the legendary realm of Camelot, are waiting in the magic tree house. They find the tree house has returned. Teddy and Kathleen give them a research book titled A History of New Orleans Music and transform a magic flute into a magic trumpet. The trumpet's magic will make whoever plays it a brilliant performer, but the magic can be used only once, when the children face their greatest danger. While one plays, the other must sing, and whatever is sung will come true. The children must find Louis Armstrong, "the King of Jazz," and put him on the right path to sharing his musical gifts.

They land near the Mississippi River, their clothes changed to white shirts, dark trousers, and bare feet. Jack reads that Armstrong, born in 1901, became one of the greatest jazz musicians who ever lived. The book defines jazz as a style of music originating in early-1900s New Orleans, played by African Americans, with a strong beat and melodies often improvised on the spot. It traces Armstrong's career from performing with kid bands on the streets to playing on riverboats and eventually moving to Chicago. A newsboy tells them the date is October 31, 1915. They calculate Armstrong is 14 and would still be performing with kid bands.

A buttermilk vendor directs them to the French Quarter. On the streetcar, Jack reads that the eve of All Saints' Day is the spookiest night of the year, "a good time for ghost sightings." The book notes a blacksmith shop on Bourbon Street said to be haunted by the ghost of the pirate Jean Lafitte. At Jackson Square, a girl tells them "Dipper" Armstrong is at the River Café. A rude waiter throws them out, but outside they find a teenager loading a coal cart. He is Armstrong himself, nicknamed Dipper. He cannot stay because he must finish his coal rounds.

Jack and Annie chase the cart and offer to help. They shovel coal in the heat. Three boys from Dipper's former singing quartet, Little Mack, Happy, and Big Nose Sidney, urge him to join a parade gig. Dipper declines, explaining he has earned 75 cents for his family: His mother Mayann, grandmother Mama Lucy, and baby brother Clarence all depend on him. Jack and Annie urge him to share his musical gifts, but Dipper takes the phrase literally, joking about singing to Lady the mule.

As Lady pulls the cart along the river, Dipper reveals his natural musicianship. He scat-sings nonsense syllables like "Skid-dat-de-dat," explaining that when you cannot think of words, you sing sounds and put your heart into them. He points out music everywhere: a pie vendor's voice, women calling out berry names in singsong, even Lady's rhythmic hoofbeats.

At the riverfront, they haul bananas until near dark. When a rat leaps from the cargo hold, Dipper bolts. All three collapse laughing. Dipper admits rats give him "the heebie-jeebies," Annie confesses spiders scare her, and Jack admits the same about ghosts. Dipper treats them to gumbo stew at a run-down restaurant, then slips away to wash dishes to pay for their dinner. Jack and Annie join him. Annie asks how he stays so cheerful. Dipper explains he may not get to have everything, but he gets to feel everything. He tells Annie he would like to hear her play the trumpet when the time is right.

A violent storm drives them into the abandoned Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop on Bourbon Street, where Little Mack, Happy, and Big Nose Sidney wave them inside before fleeing. The door jams shut. Eerie sounds fill the darkness. Jack tells Annie to play the magic trumpet. She plays while Jack scat-sings with all his heart, ordering the ghost to leave. The sounds turn out to be the three boys pranking them from the attic. But then a cold wind extinguishes the lanterns, an eerie green light fills the shop, and the transparent ghost of Jean Lafitte descends, followed by 10 more ghost pirates gliding through the walls.

Annie realizes the trumpet's magic has been used up. Dipper asks for the trumpet and, without any magic, produces warm, joyful, swinging music. Lafitte stops laughing. The pirates smile. Annie and Jack beat broken chair rungs on a bucket while Little Mack, Happy, and Big Nose Sidney improvise lyrics. Lafitte begins dancing, his crew joining in. He shouts "SWING THAT MUSIC!" and leads his crew out into the night. Dipper immediately returns the trumpet to Annie, thanking her.

Happy asks how Dipper got so good. Dipper explains he practiced for two years at the Waif's Home, a juvenile detention facility where he was sentenced after firing a gun into the air on New Year's Eve at age 12. Having just been released, he feels responsible for the hardship he caused his family. Big Nose Sidney urges him to join a riverboat gig, but Dipper declines, saying he has his own cornet at home but plans to bring it out only "someday when I'm grown." Jack argues that great musicians can support their families, but Dipper counters that he has never met anyone making a living playing the music he wants to play.

Annie decides they must show Dipper the research book. Jack reads aloud about Armstrong's future: performing on riverboats, joining a well-known band in Chicago, becoming world-famous, and having a park and an international airport named after him. Dipper laughs, thinking they are joking. Jack shows him a photograph of the adult Armstrong playing before a huge crowd. Dipper grows quiet and says he has seen that picture before, not in any book, but in his heart, like a dream. He resolves to keep his jobs but also start making room for his music.

Annie suggests Dipper ride the streetcar with them, but Dipper explains that segregation laws require Black people to sit in the back while white people sit in the front. Annie is outraged. Jack tells Dipper that one day things will change. Annie adds that one day an African American man will run for president and win. They hug Dipper goodbye and board the streetcar.

Jack and Annie return to the tree house. Before wishing themselves home, Annie tells Jack to listen. From a brightly lit showboat on the river, they hear the trio singing and, above it all, the bright sound of a horn: Dipper has caught the riverboat and is playing with his friends. Walking through the rainy Frog Creek woods, they share their pride in their mission, anger about segregation, and sadness that they will never see Dipper again. Annie observes that the music around them, the rain tapping and their feet crunching over leaves, will always remind them of Dipper. Together they begin scat-singing and run home through the woods.