by Damon Knight
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
“I can do it,” the kid said. “I want to do it.”
“All right,” Hook said. “Might as well take him.” I looked at Hook in surprise and saw that he was grinning again; clearly there was something about the kid, the intensity of those black-hole eyes perhaps, that had him convinced. He slapped the kid on the shoulder and nearly knocked him down. “Come on!” he shouted. “Time to go!”
“Time to go!” I cried. “What the hell happened to Number Seventeen?”
“They getting off! Let’s go play!”
And the stagehands were already carrying stuff for us, watching the kid and gabbling excitedly.
“Shit,” I exclaimed, and stuck my hand out to the kid. We shook. “Welcome to the Hot Six. Solos all sixteen bars, including yours if you want, choruses and refrains all repeated, don’t worry about the tags; we’ll have to stick to the old songs, do you know St. Louis Blues? That’s a Plenty? Didn’t He Ramble? MilenburgJoys? Mahogany Hall Stomp? Want a Big Butter-and-Egg Man? Ain’t You Coming Back to Dixieland? and, miraculously, he kept yelling “Yes! Yes! Yes!” as he struggled with the tuba, still almost laughing, and then we were in the hall and didn’t have time for any more—
We got out on stage and it was hot as a smelting chamber. The audience was just a blue-black blur outside the lights, which were glaring down exactly like the arc lamps set around a tunnel end. I could tell seats went way up above us (they going to be looking down on you) and then we were all standing there set to go and a big amplified voice said, "From Jupiter Metals Pallas, the Hot Six,” and suddenly we all had our horns to our mouths. I put mine down and said, “In the Alley Blues,” which, amplified, sounded like a single word, then put the horn up and commenced playing.
We sounded horrible. They had indirect mikes on all of us, and just playing normal mezzo-forte we were booming out into the huge cavern of the auditorium, so we could hear very clearly how bad we sounded. Hook was solid, and so was the kid, which was a relief; but my tone was quivering with just the slightest vibrato, and sometimes I couldn’t hear Sidney at all. And his fear was spreading to the rest of us. We knew he had to be petrified to even miss a note.
We brought In the Alley to a quick finish, and the applause was loud. That made me realize how big the audience was (twenty thousand, Tone-bar said) and I was more scared than ever. I could feel their eyes pressing on me, just like I can sometimes feel the vacuum when I look out a view window. I figured we’d better play one of the best songs next, so we’d get as much help from the material as possible. “Weary Blues,” I said, meaning to say it to the band, since we had planned to play Ganymede. But the mikes picked me up anyway and I heard “Weary Blues” bounce back out of the cavern, so I just raised my horn to my lips and started; and it was probably two bars before everyone caught on and joined in. That didn’t help any.
And I myself was having trouble. The more I could hear the vibrato wavering down the middle of my tone, the worse it got, and the more I could hear it … it began to sound like an oscilloscopic saw, and I hoped it wouldn’t get out of control and break the tone completely. We got to the refrain, where Weary usually starts rolling. I could tell that everyone was so scared they couldn’t think about what they were playing, so the notes were coming out right by instinct, but there was no feel in them, it was like they were being played by a music box, every note made by a piece of metal springing loose.
Weary Blues ended and again the applause was triple-forte. I stepped over to Hook and shouted, under my breath, “Let’s do I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plans.” He couldn’t hear me, so I said it louder and the mikes caught me, “I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plans,” I announced. There was a long flurry of laughter from the audience. Hook started the intro to Plans, as calm as though he were playing to a crowded bar. We slid into the song and I realized how much easier it is to play fast when you’re nervous. Hook was doing fine, but his back-up was trembling, barely hitting the chords. With the leisure of playing accompaniment I could look up and see the silver line of boxes that held our judges, hanging high above us; and that didn’t help either.
We moved quickly into That’s a Plenty, and I could tell we’d calmed down enough to think about the music; after your body pumps full of adrenalin, soaks you in sweat, and shakes you like the ague, there’s not much more it can do, you’ve got to calm down some; but that maybe wasn’t helping us, since now we had to make the music ourselves, rather than leave it to instinct. I was still shaky enough that when I got to the triple-tonguing in the trumpet break, it actually seemed slow to me, and next time around I fitted in another note, hammering them with two double-tongues. This seemed to perk up the band (“Put chills down my spine,” the kid said later), but we still sounded ragged; I knew if we continued like this we were in trouble. And Sidney was still missing phrases. I don’t think I’d ever heard him miss more than a note or two in my whole life, and here he was squeaking through bars at a time, playing like he had a crimp in his throat.
When we finished the kid waved me over to him. He raised a hand in the air and lowered it, which was apparently the signal needed to get the mike men off us. The kid was completely relaxed. He looked like he was having a good time.
“Your clarinet player is dying,” he said. “Does he know Burgundy Street Blues?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Maybe you should have him play that. If he had to play a song by himself he’d be sure to calm down some.”
I turned around. “Sidney, you ready to play Burgundy Street?”
He shook his head vehemently.
“Come on, Sidney,” Hook said from beside him. “That’s your song.” He turned to the audience, and the kid quickly lifted a hand. “The Burgundy Street Blues,” Hook announced.
Now Burgundy Street, like Just a Closer Walk with Thee or Bucket's Got a Hole in It, is a single-strain tune, just an eight-bar melody; and it’s the variations that a clarinet player works in as he repeats it, again and again, that make the song something special. The first couple of times Sidney went through it, I could barely hear him. He was playing the melody, as simple as possible, and the sound he was making was more breath than tone. I didn’t think he’d finish. He shifted toward us as if he wanted to turn his back on the audience, but Hook threw in a couple bars of harmony to bolster him, and when he started the strain a third time he took hold of himself and bore down; and that time, though the notes quivered and never got over pianissimo, he could be heard.
The kid was hopping up and down beside me as if he couldn’t wait to start playing again. “Damn that man plays fine clarinet,” he whispered to me. Suddenly I realized that if you didn’t know Sidney you might think he was playing warbly on purpose, in which case it sounded all right. Apparently this occurred to Sidney too. Each time around he played a little louder, tried a few more variations, gathered a little more confidence. The fifth time around he usually played a variation filled with chromatic runs; he went ahead and tried them, and they came out sharp and well articulated. Amplified like he was he could hear as clearly as anyone how good he sounded—he was learning what I’d already discovered, that even though you’re scared, the notes come out. He began to take advantage of the new acoustics, building up till he filled the auditorium with sound, then dropping back so fast the mike men were lost, and he was as silent as piano keys pushed down.
And as he went on, I could see him begin to forget his surroundings and become what he was, a musician working on the song, putting together phrases, playing with the sounds he could make. His forehead wrinkled and smoothed as he carved an especially difficult passage; he closed his eyes, and the notes took on a life that hadn’t been there before. He was lost in it now, completely lost in it, and the last time around he bent the notes like only a fine clarinet player can bend them, soaring them out into the cavern; a sound human and inhuman, music.
When he was done everyone was clapping, even me, and I realized that I had only tho
ught the earlier applause was loud because I’d never heard that many people clap at once before. Now it was louder than when a ship takes off over a tunnel you’re in. . . .
We played Panama next, and the difference was hard to believe. Sidney was back in form, winding about the upper registers with quick-fingered ingenuity, and as he pulled together so did the band. And the kid, as if he’d only been waiting for Sidney, began to let loose. He’d abandoned his steady oomph-oomph-oomph-oomph and was sliding up and down the bass clef, playing like a fourth member of the front line, and leading the tempo. Normally I set the tempo, and Crazy and Washboard listen to me and pick it up. But the kid wasn’t paying any attention to me, his notes were hitting just a touch ahead of mine, and if there’s anyone who can take the tempo away from the trumpet it’s the tuba. I tried to play as fast as him but he kept ahead; by the time he let Washboard and me catch up with him we were playing Panama faster than we’d ever played it, and excited as we were, we were equal to it.
When we finished the applause seemed to push us to the back of the stage.
We played the St. Louis Blues, and then the Milenburg Joys, and the Sweet Georgia Brown, and each time the kid took over, pumping wildly away at the tuba, and pushed us to our limit. Sidney responded like that was the way he’d always wanted to play, arching high wails between phrases and helping the kid to drive us on. And the audience was with us! Maybe the earlier groups had been too modern, maybe too many of them had been playing to the judges; whatever the reason, the audience was with us now. An hour ago none of them had even heard of Dixieland, and now they were cheering after the solos and clapping in the choruses; and we had to start Sweet Georgia Brown by playing through the applause.
Then we were set for the finale. “For all of you music lovers in the house,” I said, knowing they wouldn’t get the reference to Satchmo but saying it anyway, “we going to do The Muskrat Ramble.”
The Muskrat Ramble. Our best song, maybe the best song. We started up the Ramble and the band fell together and meshed like parts of a beautiful machine. All those years of playing in those bars: all the years of getting off work and going down and playing tired, playing with nobody listening but us, playing with nothing to keep us going but the music; all that came from inside us now, in a magic combination of fear, and anger, and wild exhilaration of knowing we were the best there was at what we were doing. Hook was looping his part below me, Sidney leaping about above, the kid pushing us every note; and to keep us with the weave we were making I had to play hard and fast right down the middle of the song, lifting and growling and breaking my notes off, showing them all that there was a man working behind that horn, blowing as dear and sharp and excited as old Dipper-mouth Satchel-mouth Satchmo Louie Louis Armstrong himself. When we played the final round of the refrain everyone played their solo at once, only Fingers and Washboard held us down at all, and the old Muskrat Ramble lifted up and played itself, carrying us along as if it made us and not the other way around. Hook played the trombone coda and we tagged it; then the kid surprised us and repeated the coda, and we barely got our horns back up to tag it again; then we all played the coda and popped it solid, the end.
I motioned the band off. We were done; there was no way we could top that. We started for the wings and the roar of the audience soared up to a gooseflesh howl. We hurried off, waving our arms and shouting as loud as anyone there, jumping up and down and slapping each other on the back, chased by a wall of sound that shook the building.
We waited; tired, happy, tense, we waited:
And God damn me if we didn’t win one of those grants, a four-year tour of the Solar System; oh, we leaped about that waiting room and shouted and hit each other, Fingers and Washboard marched about singing and smashing out rhythms on the walls and furniture, Hook stood on a table and sprayed champagne on us; the kid rolled on the floor and laughed and laughed, “Now you’re in for it,” he choked out, “you’re in for it now!” but we didn’t know what he meant then, we just poured champagne on his head and laughed at him, even old Sidney was jumping up and down, wisps of hair flying over his ears, singing (I’d never heard him sing) a scat solo he was making up as he went along, shouting it out while tears and champagne ran down his face:
bo bo de zed,
we leaving the tunnels!
woppity bip,
we going to see Earth!
yes we (la da de dip)
going (ze be de be dop) home!
A MODULAR STORY
In the hothouse warmth and intimacy of the closed car, she was almost naked beside him under the sheepskin coat. And she was his wife, and her name was Jenny … or was it Nancy?
Raylyn Moore
(a)
In the suburban dawn, fleece-lined with the soft first snow of autumn, she drove him to the station, arriving with a few minutes to spare before train time. The heater was full on in the car and in the blood-warmth he kissed her, not hurrying. He said, “Goodbye, darling. Don’t forget to phone up for an appointment to have that clutch fixed. I felt it slipping when we were driving home from the Jensons’ party last night.”
“Bensons’,” she corrected him. “Their name is Benson and they’re our best friends. I’ll get the appointment for later in the week. I have to pick Kimmie up after ballet today, and I’m car-pool mother for the co-op nursery tomorrow.”
“Just don’t let it go too long. I don’t want you and the kids riding around in a car with a dangerous mechanical defect. We should have traded the Rover in-this fall, I suppose, gone to Jim Hastings at Overseas Motors and looked at the new ones he has on his floor.”
“The foreign car dealer’s name is Henry Salter, dear, and his place is called Salter’s Imports. Not that it matters.”
“No. Not any more.”
“You think then that today’s the day?”
“Bound to be. We’re winding down. Would you like me to phone you, though, when the time comes?”
“Better not. It only makes the adjustment—more difficult. Instead I’ll wish you luck now.”
“Thanks. I’ll need a lot of it to do as well as this time.”
“Thank you,” she said, smiling at him.
He luxuriated for a moment in the benign radiation of that smile, then flicked a nervous glance at the car clock and reluctantly cracked the door. A thrust of bleak morning air split their tiny, private atmosphere and he quickly pulled the door to again, but without letting it click shut. He looked at her with a fine-drawn intensity, as if to fix on the retina of his mind’s eye the shape of her oval face still slightly ablush with recent sleep, the sight of the almost-gold filaments of fine hair spilling out of her hasty french knot.
Behind the wheel she moved restlessly. “Don’t,” she said. “It doesn’t help.”
But he persisted, riveted, in examining her, as if he could see beneath the sheepskin greatcoat he’d got her for her twenty-seventh birthday (or had it been her twenty-eighth?) the nightgown he knew for a fact was the only other garment she wore, an abridged tricot tunic pale and thin as light from a distant star. For a perilously balanced moment he felt himself cauterized by the deadly notion that he might insert a hand under the sheepskin and lose the world.
But of course the moment passed, and instead he said, “Jenny, you’ve been wonderful. I mean it. It’s been great.” He took up his briefcase from the floor.
She nodded, this time not taking his words as a personal compliment so much as a statement of mutual opinion. “A great three months,” she agreed. Then she added softly, “My name is Nancy.”
“I’m so very sorry that happened. It was beastly clumsy of me.”
“It’s all right. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
But he was really off balance now, and altogether too impulsively he added, “I guess you know that statistically there’re considerably more than thirty-thousand-to-one odds we’ll ever—that is, the company is strictly against reassignments in the same—”
“I know,” she said.
> He opened the door all the way, put a single shoe sole into the light dusting of snow over frozen asphalt. And once more hesitated. “I forgot to tell you: all the stuff I’ve been collecting as chairman of the school board is in the green looseleaf notebook in the den—all the figures on the new tax override proposal, annual budgets for five years back, meeting notes, everything.”
“All right.”
“Kiss the children for me.”
“Hurry,” she said. “The train’s coming.”
(b)
His name was Ken Vanselous and he was a project coordinator. A Wharton graduate, thirty-four years old, he had worked in Cleveland, Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Livermore, Pittsburgh, New York again, Fort Lauderdale, Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Pittsburgh again, Palo Alto, Chicago again, New York again, and some other places. So in the ten-year course of his career he had moved steadily, not so much upward (he was already up, trusted by his firm, accepted by his colleagues) as laterally, with a steady driving force, as relentlessly as live water through stratified rock. (If a man’s career can be compared to a phenomenon of physical nature without an element of dehumanization creeping in somehow.)
In his spare time Van had been a scoutmaster, Y swimming instructor, PTA president, an alderman, Episcopal vestryman, a Little League daddy, baritone in the choir, Heart Fund volunteer, blood donor, and a member of the museum board, Madrigal Society, Citizens Concerned about Ecology, Save the Redwoods League, Movement to Preserve New England’s Indigenous Fauna, the Bitterbush Valley Racquet Club, Dirty Devils Volleyball Squad, Ravenwood Drive Joggers, Sadsack Rockhounds, Royal Bengali Cycling Society (Colonial Branch), and some other things.
(c)
Or he was Bryan Mello, thirty-six, senior systems analyst, who had worked in Minneapolis, Rochester, Van Nuys, Port Arthur, Murfreesboro, Washington, D. C., Providence, San Diego, New York, Indianapolis, Toledo, New York again, Washington again, and some other places. And had been a town councilman, cub-master, flautist in the amateur symphony, blood donor, chairman of the church board (Unitarian), and member of the Concerned Citizens for Democratic Action, National Geographic Society, New Old Red Barn Players, Sierra Club, Peachtree Numismatists, Dartmouth Alumni Association, Stanford Alumni Association, Rotten Gulch Chess Club . . .