Part 13 (1/2)
Again the door slammed and silence reigned. I tottered into the kitchen, weak and shuddering with relief. I peeked out of the back window and I could see my mother and father angrily stalking back and forth around the rear fender. They came up the back porch, with my mother saying: ”That's terrible. Isn't there something you can do with the Better Business Bureau? Why don't you call the Better Business Bureau? Don't let them get away with it. You're just too easy on people.”
”WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'EASY'!? I HOLLERED FOR TWENTY MINUTES! The guy says that car wasn't touched! The lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d!!”
”Well, I'm going to call them myself. I'm going to call them.”
She sweeps past me into the dining room, to the phone. My father plumps down at the kitchen table, white with rage. Off in the living room, the sound of my kid brother crying could be heard. He always did this when there was trouble.
I did nothing, just looked innocent. My mother slammed back into the kitchen.
”You're going to get satisfaction now. I really told them. It's that lot across from the Real Estate office, right? Across from the Real Estate office?”
”Yeah.”
Never in my life, before or since, have I enjoyed meat loaf so much. Mashed potatoes and peas and carrots-a magnificent repast!
The next day my father came home from work beaming, radiating victory from every pore.
”They paid off, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Ten bucks for a repaint job! The guy said he'd paint it himself. I said 'No.' In a pig's ear. I want the dough. I'll get it fixed myself. I've got to admit you were right. They called up that phony and really burned his ear. He paid up!”
Once again I felt at home at the kitchen table. I belonged in this well-ordered, virtuous environment. Justice had been done, and I could proceed again along the great highway of Life, sun s.h.i.+ning, birds singing, with a clean winds.h.i.+eld and a full tank of Phillips 66.
XXIII
FLICK BAITS THE HOOK FLICK BAITS THE HOOK ”You remember the time I stripped the second gear in my Old Man's Pontiac? He kicked me three times around Harding School without stopping.”
”Yep, we've all been through it, Flick.”
He reached behind him and flipped a switch. An orange-red neon sign hanging in the window flickered and sputtered into life: BEER.
Flick was baiting his trap for the Swing-s.h.i.+ft crowd who probably already were nursing a fierce thirst. A pair of the vanguard had just clumped in, their safety shoes thumping the floor loudly. They had settled into one of the booths. Life in Flick's Tavern was picking up.
Flick took a couple of schooners over to them. They laughed together for a few moments, and he returned, wiping his hands on his clean ap.r.o.n. The phone behind the bar rang. He picked up the receiver.
”h.e.l.lo, Jake? You'll handle the bar yourself tonight. Yeah. I'm going to the game tonight. Okay, Jake. I'll see you later.”
He hung up. He explained to me: ”That was Jake.”
”So I heard.”
”Going to the game tonight.”
The Game, of course, meant Basketball, which in Indiana is far more a mystique than an athletic contest. Basketball has been responsible for suicides, divorces, and even a few near-lynchings. I well remember one coach who left the county heavily disguised in dark gla.s.ses, beard, and the trappings of a Talmudic scholar after a disaster in a Sectional tournament. In recent years I had not kept up with the Basketball fortunes of our mutual high school.
”Who are they playing?”
”La Porte Slicers. It's a breather.”
”La Porte? Do you remember the time we went to the Marching-Band contest at La Porte? And we took First Place in the Cla.s.s A Division?”
”Your spit valve stuck halfway through the ”National Emblem” and you d.a.m.n near drowned when your sousaphone backed up on you.”
I chuckled: ”And Duckworth told you what you could do with your trombone after you screwed up on a countermarch and knocked over three clarinet players. He d.a.m.n near did it for for you!” you!”
”It wasn't my fault. Schwartz swung left. He faked me out.”
”You know, Flick, some nights even in New York, when I wake up at three in the morning, I can still hear Duckworth's whistle. It scares me.”
”You're not the only one!”
”Flick, there's no doubt about it. Duckworth was a genuine, absolute, gold-plated Ga.s.ser!”
”In spades!” Flick capped me.
XXIV
WILBUR DUCKWORTH AND HIS MAGIC BATON WILBUR DUCKWORTH AND HIS MAGIC BATON When the bitter winds of dead winter howl out of the frozen North, making the ice-coated telephone wires creak and sigh like suffering live things, many an ex-Bb sousaphone player feels an old familiar dull ache in his muscle-bound left shoulder, a pain never quite lost as the years spin on. Old aching numbnesses of the lips, permanently implanted by frozen German silver mouthpieces of the past. An instinctive hunching forward into the wind, tacking obliquely the better to keep that giant burnished Conn bell heading always into the waves. A lonely man, carrying unsharable wounds and memories to his grave. The b.u.t.t of low, ribald humor; gaucheries beyond description, unapplauded by music lovers, the sousaphone player is among the loneliest of men. His dedication is almost monk-like in its fanaticism and solitude.
He is never asked to perform at parties. His fame is minute, even among fellow band members, being limited almost exclusively to fellow carriers of the Great Horn. Hence, his devotion is pure. When pressed for an explanation as to why he took up the difficult study and discipline of sousaphone playing, few can give a rational answer, usually mumbling something very much like the famed retort of the climbers of Mount Everest.
There is no Sousaphone category in the renowned jazz polls. It would be inconceivable to imagine an LP ent.i.tled: HARRY SCHWARTZ AND HIS GOLDEN SOUSAPHONE BLOW.
COLE PORTER.
IN STEREO.
And yet every sousaphone player, in his heart, knows that no instrument is more suited to Cole Porter than his beloved four-valver. Its rich, verdant mellowness, its loving, somber blues and grays in tonality are among the most sensual and thrilling of sounds to be heard in a man's time.
But it will never be. Forever and by definition those brave marchers under the flas.h.i.+ng bells are irrevocably a.s.signed to the rear rank.
Few men know the Facts of Life more truly than a player of this n.o.ble instrument. Twenty minutes in a good marching band teaches a kid more about How Things Really Are than five years at Mother's granite knee.
There are many misconceptions which at the outset must be cleared up before we proceed much further. Great confusion exists among the unwashed as to just what a sousaphone is. Few things are more continually irritating to a genuine sousaphone man than to have his instrument constantly called a ”tuba.” A tuba is a weak, puny thing fit only for mewling, puking babes and Guy Lombardo-the better to hara.s.s balding, middle-aged dancers. An upright instrument of startling ugliness and mooing, flatulent tone, the tuba has none of the grandeur, the scope or sweep of its ma.s.sive, gentle, distant relation.
The sousaphone is worn proudly curled about the body, over the left shoulder, and mounting above the head is that brilliant, golden, gleaming disk-rivaling the sun in its glory. Its graceful curves clasp the body in a warm and crus.h.i.+ng embrace, the right hand in position over its four ma.s.sive mother-of-pearl capped valves. It is an instrument a man can literally get his teeth into, and often does. A sudden collision with another bell has, in many instances, produced interesting dental malformations which have provided oral surgeons with some of their happier moments.
A sousaphone is a worthy adversary which must be watched like a hawk and truly mastered 'ere it master you you. Dangerous, unpredictable, difficult to play, it yet offers rich rewards. Each sousaphone individually, since it is such a ma.s.sive creation, a.s.sumes a character of its own. There are bad-tempered instruments and there are friendly sousaphones; sousaphones that literally lead their players back and forth through beautiful countermarches on countless football fields. Then there are the treacherous, which buck and fight and must be held in tight rein 'ere disaster strike. Like horses or women, no two sousaphones are alike. Nor, like horses or women, will Man ever fully understand them.
Among other imponderables, a player must have as profound a knowledge of winds and weather as the skipper of a racing yawl. A cleanly aligned sousaphone section marching into the teeth of a spanking crosswind with mounting gusts, booming out the second chorus of ”Semper Fidelis” ”Semper Fidelis” is a study of courage and control under difficult conditions. I myself once, in my Rookie days, got caught in a counter-clockwise wind with a clockwise instrument and spun violently for five minutes before I regained control, all the while playing one of the finest obbligatos that I ever blew on the ”National Emblem March.” is a study of courage and control under difficult conditions. I myself once, in my Rookie days, got caught in a counter-clockwise wind with a clockwise instrument and spun violently for five minutes before I regained control, all the while playing one of the finest obbligatos that I ever blew on the ”National Emblem March.”
Sometimes, in a high wind a sousaphone will start playing you you. It literally blows back, developing enough back pressure to produce a thin chorus of ”Dixie” out of both ears of the unwary sousaphonist.
The high school marching band that I performed in was led by a maniacal zealot who had whipped us into a fine state of tune rivaling a crack unit of the Prussian Guards. We won prizes, cups, ribbons, and huzzahs wherever we performed; wheeling, countermarching, spinning; knees high, and all the while we played. ”On the Mall,” ”The Double Eagle,” ”El Capitan,” ”The NC-4 March,” ”Semper Fidelis”-we had mastered all the cla.s.sics.
Our 180-beat-to-the-minute cadence snapped and cracked and rolled on like the steady beating of an incessant surf. Sharp in itchy uniforms and high-peaked caps, we learned the bitter facts of life while working our spit valves and bringing pageantry and pomp into the world of the Blast Furnace and the Open Hearth, under the leaden wintry skies of the Indiana prairie land.
The central figure of the scene was our Drum Major. Ours was a Spartan organization. We had no Majorettes, Pom-Pom girls, or other such decadent signposts on the roadway of a declining civilization. In fact, it was an all-Male band that had no room for such grotesqueries as thin, flat-chested, broad-bottomed female trombone players and billowy-bosomed clarinetists. A compact sixty-six man company of flat-stomached, hard-jawed Nehi drinkers, led by a solitary, heroic, high-kneed, arrogant baton twirler.