The harmonica fits easily into my hand. A tap or two against my leg clears it out, and I try a few notes. They sound good. They always do.
I know how I’ll answer. She probably knows it too. But in the meantime, let her sing a little of those Saturn Ring Blues.
HOW MUSIC BEGINS
Hands raised, ready for the downbeat, Cowdrey brought the band to attention. He took a good inhalation for them to see, thinking, “The band that breathes together, plays together.” Players watched over their music stands as he tapped out a barely perceptible four beats, then, he dropped into the opening notes of “The King’s Feast,” a simple piece a 9th grade band might play at the season’s first concert, but Elise Morgan, his best student, had composed variations for flutes and clarinets, added an oboe solo, and changed the arrangement for the cornets and trombones, so now new tonal qualities arose. Her neatly handwritten revisions crowded his score, a black and white representation of the opening chords, the musical lines blending effortlessly. Everyone on beat. Everyone on tune. At the state competition, they would sweep the awards, but this wasn’t state, and they weren’t really a junior high band anymore.
Eyes closed, he counted through the bars. “The King’s Feast” recreated a night at Henry VIII’s court. Suitably serious. A heavy drum background carrying the load. Not quite a march, but upbeat in a dignified way. Someone in the French horn section sounded a bit pitchy. Was it Thomas? Cowdrey cocked his head to isolate it, but the individual sound faded, lost in the transition to the second movement.
He lived for this moment, when the sections threaded together, when the percussion didn’t overwhelm or the brass blow out the woodwinds. He smiled as he directed them through the tricky exit from the solo. His eyes open now, their eyes on him, young faces, raggedy-cut hair, shirts and blouses too small, everyone’s pants inches short above their bare feet, he led them to the conclusion, slowing the saxophones down—they wanted to rush to the end—then he brought the flutes up.
Rhythm and harmony tumbled over the pomp and circumstance in Henry’s court. The ladies’ elegant dress. The courtiers waiting in the wings. The king himself, presiding from the throne, all painted in music. Cowdrey imagined brocade, heavy skirts, royal colors, swirling in the dance.
The last notes trembled, and he held them in hand, not letting them end until his fist’s final clasp cut them off. He was the director.
Aching silence. Someone in the drum section coughed. Cowdrey waited for the lights to flicker. They had flickered after the band’s first performance here, and they’d flickered again after a near perfect “Prelude and Fugue in B Flat” six months ago. Tonight though, the lights stayed steady. Behind the band, the long curved wall and the window that circled the room holding back the brown smoke on the other side were the only audience. “The King’s Feast” concluded the night’s performance. Cowdrey signaled the players to their feet. Instruments clanked. Sheet music rustled. He turned from the band to face the other side’s enigmatic window and impenetrable haze. Playing here was like playing within a fish bowl, and not just the shape either. He bowed, and the band bowed behind him. Whatever watched, if anything, remained hidden in the roiling cloud.
“Good performance, Cougars. Leave your music on the stands for the section leaders to pick up, then you may go to dinner. Don’t forget, breathing practice before breakfast with your ensembles.”
Chatting, the kids headed toward the storage lockers to replace their instruments.
A clarinet player waved as she left the room. “Good night, Mr. Cowdrey.”
He nodded in her direction.
“’Night, sir,” said a percussionist. “See you in the morning. Good performance.”
The room cleared until Elise Morgan remained, jotting post-concert notes on her clipboard. Her straight black hair reached the bottom of her ears, and her glasses, missing one ear piece, sat crookedly on her nose. As always, dark smudges sagged under her eyes. She slept little. More often than not, late at night, she’d still be working on the music. “One of the French horns came in late again. I think it’s Thomas. He’s waiting until the trombones start, and it throws him a half beat off.”
“I didn’t notice.” Cowdrey sat beside her. The light metal chair creaked under his weight. Several chairs had broken in the last few months. Just two spares remained. He wondered what would happen when players had to stand for their performances. “The band sounded smooth tonight. Very confident.”
Elise nodded toward the window. “They’re tuning the room. Maybe they’re getting it ready for Friday’s concert.”
Cowdrey raised his eyebrows.
Elise pointed to the domed ceiling. “See there and there. New baffles. We’ve lost the echo-chamber effect you mentioned last week, and check out my flute.” She handed it to him. “At first, they just repadded them. Normal maintenance, but they’ve done other stuff too. It’s a better instrument.”
He held the flute, then tried a few fingerings. The keys sank smoothly. No stickiness, and the flute weighed heavy.
“Play a note,” she said.
He brought the instrument to his lip, but even before he blew, he knew it was extraordinary.
“During the sixth grade, after I won state solos the second time, my parents took me to the New York Philharmonic. I met their first chair, and he let me play his flute. Custom made. Insured for $50,000.” She took the instrument back from Cowdrey and rested it on her lap. “It wasn’t as good as this one is now. Maybe the Perfectionists are right.”
Cowdrey frowned. Misguided students with wacky theories about how they could get home shouldn’t be taken seriously.
“How’s that?” Cowdrey shook the irritation from his head. He thought he would check the lockers after he finished with Elise. Were the other instruments being upgraded too?
“Maybe what they want is a perfect performance, then they’ll let us go. Maybe Friday will be it.” She looked up at the nearest window. A brown smokey wave swirled behind it, cutting sight to no more than a yard or so beyond the glass.
Cowdrey felt fatherly. She sounded so wistful when she said, “they’ll let us go.” He almost reached out to touch her arm, to offer comfort, but he held himself still. No sense in sending mixed signals. “I don’t know why we’re here. No one knows. They shouldn’t get their hopes up. After all, what’s a perfect performance?”
“Any sunset is perfect. Any pebble is perfect.” She scuffed her bare foot on the immaculate floor. “Weeds are perfect, and so is a parking lot at the mall when the cars are gone and you can ride your bike in all directions without hitting anything.” She sighed. “And open meadows where the grass is never cut.”
Cowdrey nodded, not sure how to respond. She often reminisced about meadows.
Elise closed her eyes dreamily. “I found a pebble in my band jacket. Sometimes I hold it and think about playgrounds.”
“Really?”
She looked up at him, then dug into her pocket. On her open palm, a bit of shiny feldspar the size of a pencil eraser caught the ceiling light. As quick as it came out, it vanished back in her pocket. She made another note on her clipboard. “The Perfectionists are getting pretty fanatical. Others heard Thomas come in late.”
“The band will maintain discipline. If anyone has a problem, they’ll talk to me. That’s why I’m here.”
Elise looked uncomfortable. “Are you sure? With Ms. Rhodes gone…”
Cowdrey glanced away from her to the empty chairs and music stands. “Ms. Rhodes will be missed, but the band can continue without an assistant director.”
“I’m just saying… it’s a lot for a single adult to handle.”
He composed his face to meet her eyes. “The less we think of Ms. Rhodes, the better.”
Elise shrugged. “If you want it that way.”
“We have the section leaders. They have taken the responsibility.” He smiled. “Half the time I think the band doesn’t even need me. You all have become such strong musicians.”
She wrote a last comment on her clipboard, then slipped it under her arm. “Not strong enough. Nowhere near. Today is Monday. If we don’t clean things up by Friday, the Perfectionists could get scary.”
“It’s late.” Without the rest of the band in the room, his voice sounded too loud and harsh. Truly, he could hear a pin drop with these acoustics. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Elise.”
“Have you thought any more about the wedding?”
“No. We’re not discussing it.”
Her lips pursed, as if she wanted to say something, but she put her finger to the bridge of her glasses to hold them in place, then stood. “I’ll direct breathing practice for the woodwinds in the morning, if you’ll take the brass. At least I can help that much.”
Cowdrey nodded. In the beginning, after the first week’s chaos settled down, Ms. Rhodes had led the woodwinds through their exercises. Rhodes, a somber thirty-year-old who wore padded-shoulder jackets and seldom smiled, would meet Cowdrey outside the practice rooms. He’d hand her the routine he’d written up the night before. She’d study it briefly, then follow the players. In the last few months, she’d spoken about band-related issues, but nothing else. Conversation stopped. He didn’t know how to broach another subject. The last time he’d tried, he had said, “How are you holding up?” She’d looked about like a wild bird for a second, as if she heard something frightful, but her face smoothed over and she said, “To improve rhythms, hone intonation, and create dynamic phrasing, we must improve breathing. All music begins with a good breath.” Red circled her exhausted eyes.
Lockers lined the hallway outside the performance hall. A cornet rested in its shaped space in the first one. Cowdrey took it out. It, too, had been improved. No longer an inexpensive junior high band instrument, the keys sank with ease; the horn glowed under the hallway’s indirect lighting, the metal as warm as flesh beneath his fingers.
He returned the horn to its place before closing the door. Thoughtfully, he walked to the T-intersection. To his left, the student’s rooms, their doors shut. To his right, the practice rooms, the cafeteria, and his own room. He trailed his knuckle against the wall, but as he turned to enter he noticed Ms. Rhodes’s door across the hall was gone as if it had never existed in the unmarked wall. When did that happen? he thought.
As always, dinner and a water bottle waited in a box on his bed. For weeks after the band had arrived, the students had tried to catch the deliveries, but they never did. If students stayed in the room, the meals wouldn’t come, so if they wanted to eat, they had to leave to practice or to perform.
Passable bread. Something that looked like bologna in the middle, but it tasted more like cheese. He washed it down with a couple of swallows. Only the water from the bottles was potable. The stuff from the showers smelled like vinegar and tasted bitter. He wondered about the pets he’d kept as a child, a lizard and two hamsters. Did the food ever taste right to them? Had he ever fed them what they needed or wanted? He rested the sandwich on his lap. Later, he looked down. His fingers had sunk into the bread, and the edges had grown crispy. He glanced at his watch. An hour had passed. Room check! He walked the long hall past the kids’ doors. At first he’d insisted on making sure the right students went to the right rooms, as if they were on an overnight for weekend competition, as if they stayed at a Holiday Inn, but so often he woke kids who had already gone to sleep that now he just listened at each door. Were they quiet or crying? The first week there had been a lot of crying, and they had come close to not making it. Being a band saved them.
That week was his toughest trial. Fright. Fighting. Despair. To end it, he took the only step he knew: he called for a practice, and they became a band again.
Cowdrey trod softly from door to door, pausing, listening, and moving on.
He stopped for an extra long time outside Taylor Beau’s room. Was Liz Waters in there with him? Were they in Liz’s room? Cowdrey rested his hand on the doorknob. No way they could be serious about a marriage. They were children, junior high students, not adults; under astonishing circumstances, to be sure, but band standards and school regulations glued them together. For all his years as director, Cowdrey lived by one rule: would he be comfortable with the band’s activities if parents or school board members watched? This marriage talk did not fit.
No sound beyond the closed door. His hand tightened on the knob; he didn’t turn it. Did he want to know?
Next he paused outside Elise’s door. She wouldn’t be asleep. She’d be looking over the day’s notes, rewriting. Cowdrey shivered thinking about her brilliance. What must it have been like for Mozart’s father when a three-year-old Amadeus picked out thirds and sixths on the harpsichord, when the father realized the son had surpassed him and would continue to grow beyond his comprehension and hope? But did Mozart eat and breathe music like Elise? Did he ever believe that music would take him home? Cowdrey didn’t think so. Maybe at the end of Mozart’s life, when the brain fevers wracked him, and he could feel death’s hand on his neck. Maybe then he wrote with equal intensity.
Not many teachers ever had the chance to work with an Elise. If they did, they prayed they wouldn’t ruin her vision, that they wouldn’t poison her ear.
When he reached the hall’s end, he turned and repeated the process back to his door. At first, he and Ms. Rhodes had done the room check together, then stood guard in the hall until the children quieted. After a few weeks, they had traded nights. Now, he patrolled alone. Perhaps Elise was right. Maybe it was too much for him to handle.
He sighed. The silent hall stretched before him. He felt his pulse in his arm where he leaned against the wall. Soon, his chin headed for his chest. Cowdrey jerked himself awake, walked the hallway’s length two more times before admitting he had to go to bed. In wakefulness’ last few seconds, head resting on the pillow, he imagined he heard doors opening, the stealthy pad of bare feet, and the hush of doors gently closing on clandestine liaisons. Could Taylor and Liz be a single case, or had he lost control? A tear crept down his cheek as consciousness flitted away.
In the morning, Elise met him in the hallway. “Here are the variations I told you about for the Beatles medley. Mostly I need the saxophones’ sheets, but I also syncopated the drums for ‘Eleanor Rigby,’ and reworked the trombone bridge into ‘Yellow Submarine,’ so I’ll need their music too.”
Cowdrey nodded as he took the scores. “Did you sleep?”
Elise made a checkmark on her clipboard. She moved to her next item. “I thought if we told the sections to treat their breathing exercises this morning like they were all preparing for a solo, we might get better sound from them. Remember, you told us once we should breathe from the diaphragm, and if we missed it, to miss big. I think about that a lot.” She smiled, made another check, then frowned. “Also, you need to drop in on Thomas. I heard a rumor.” Her pencil scratched paper firmly. “Look, Mr. Cowdrey, the band is on edge. All they think about is music and getting out. To some, Thomas is a handicap. They need something else. A distraction.” She made another check on her list, then, without waiting for an answer, snapped the clipboard under her arm, before striding toward the practice rooms, a girl on a mission.
“Good morning to you, too, Elise.”
Soon the hallway filled with sleepy kids. Cowdrey greeted them each in turn as they passed. Most smiled. He glanced at their eyes. The red-rimmed ones would be a worry, but they had been fewer and fewer as the weeks since their arrival turned into months. At first there had been nightmares, a reliving of the night they’d been taken. He’d had a few himself: the bus’s wheels humming through the night, Junior High Band Management open on his lap, and then the growing brightness out the bus windows, the high screech that seemed to emanate in the middle of his head before the short soft shock of waking on the fishbowl auditorium’s floor with their equipment and everything else from the bus scattered about. (No bus driver, though!) Those dreams had tapered off through the months. He thought, kids are resilient. If they have a structure
, that is.
Thomas came by last. A short boy who played in the band because his parents told him it would look good on a college application, he’d never been an inspired musician, but he was competent enough. Thomas kept his head down as he passed. “Good morning,” he mumbled.
“Can I speak to you a moment?” Cowdrey moved away from the wall to block his path.
“Sir.” The boy didn’t meet Cowdrey’s gaze, but even his head held low couldn’t hide the bruise that glowered on his cheek.
“How’d that happen?”
Thomas glanced up, frightened for an instant, then his expression went bland and unassuming. “I fell in the shower. Slipped.”
The instruments tuning up in the practice rooms filled the silence between them.
Finally, Thomas said, “Look, I want to get away from here as much as the next person. If playing on pitch, on tune and to the beat is what it’s going to take, then I’ll do that.”
Cowdrey heard the Perfectionists echo in Thomas’s speech. “There is no such thing as a perfect performance, Thomas.” He thought about Elise’s perfect pebble. Perfect because there were no pebbles here, nor weeds or malls or bicycles. No families. Nothing but each other and that day’s playing.
Thomas shrugged. “Yeah, well maybe not, but I can be better. I don’t want it to be my fault the lights don’t flicker.”
“We don’t even know what that means, son. Flickering lights may not be their applause.”
The boy’s eyes revealed nothing, and for a moment he didn’t appear seventeen at all. He looked adult and tired and cursed with a terrible burden.
“Thomas, if someone is threatening you or hurting you, I need to know about it. That’s my job. You don’t have to play solo.”
Thomas studied the hallway beyond Cowdrey’s shoulder. A few steps past them, the hallway branched to the auditorium with its enigmatic windows. “My mom told me once that the world is a big place, and I could become anything I wanted to, but it’s not. It’s no bigger than the people you know and the places you go. It’s a small world here, Mr. Cowdrey, and I don’t have any place to hide in it, so I’m going to go the practice room to see if I can’t get my act together a little better.” He pushed past the director.
The Radio Magician and Other Stories Page 32