by M. O. Walsh
It sounded like “In the Mood” or “Sing Sing Sing” or maybe something by Basie or Miller. Some steady and low percussion, a jazzy guitar riff, a horn keeping the flavor on simmer. The sound already, Douglas knew, within the first few seconds, had a chance of turning his day completely around. Such is the power of ears.
Yet it was not a record or even the radio. The sound was too hairy and live. Douglas checked his watch to see that he was on time and wondered if maybe Geoffrey had taken on some new students. This was better than the nightmare scenario Douglas worried about the night before, in which Geoffrey would move off to Las Vegas to pull rabbits out of hats, his fear that there wouldn’t be anybody at his apartment at all when he showed up today. He looked back over the railing and watched Pete pull off in Cherilyn’s Outback. He then straightened his beret and knocked on the door.
The music didn’t stop. Douglas knocked again.
Before he could reach the handle and try it himself, the door opened on its own.
Geoffrey stood in the middle of the room, on top of his coffee table. He wore the top hat from yesterday and a T-shirt and jeans. He danced in small perfect steps to the beat all around him, much clearer now through the open door, just one foot forward, one foot back. He looked to be living completely within the pocket of the song and smiled. He then took off his hat and twirled it in his hands. He opened his arms as if to say, Welcome home, Hubs.
Douglas entered the room to see four other musicians in a circle around him. Geoffrey hopped down from the table and shook Douglas’s hand. He turned to the band as they continued to play and said, “What did I tell y’all? This man is always on time.”
Geoffrey then held up Douglas’s watch, which he had somehow slipped off his wrist without Douglas noticing. He dangled it in the air like evidence.
“Hey,” Douglas said. “How’d you do that?”
“Some magic,” Geoffrey told him, “is born out of necessity.” He tossed him back the watch and said, “Come on in, man.”
Douglas closed the door behind him and put his trombone case down on the floor. The beat stayed in its low holding pattern and the musicians said nothing to him. “Hubs, meet the Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” Geoffrey told him. “This is my old set. They’re playing center stage tomorrow at the bicentennial. I invited them over.”
Douglas nodded at each of them, but they didn’t stop playing. It was a low beat, three-quarter time, Douglas figured, and the group looked more as if they were merely practicing their instruments together in the same room rather than playing any rehearsed song. It felt as though they were waiting, maybe, or hoping, for a signal to come back together.
“Bedknobs and Broomsticks?” Douglas said. “Like the kids’ movie?”
The drummer looked up. He had a deep raspy voice, from somewhere south even of Deerfield, and said, “We started out as the Isle of Na-Boom-Boom. It just kind of evolved from there.”
Douglas scanned the place. The best he could figure, some beneficent creature had replaced the small apartment he was in yesterday with a version of heaven. The music kept its low net and the drummer, now that Douglas studied him, appeared to be blind. He held the snare between his legs and worked it over with brushes. He twitched his head to the side as if trying to shake some water out of his ear and it was, undoubtedly, one of the coolest things Douglas had ever seen.
To his left, the upright bass player stood at least six feet four. She was skinny as a light pole and wore a flannel shirt with no sleeves. Her arms were covered in tattoos of Asian peacocks, and in her breast pocket, Douglas noticed, she had a fancy boxlike vaporizer, similar to one he had once confiscated from a student. She kept plucking around a bouncy walking beat, looking down at her fingers as if to see what they might do next.
The guitarist sat across the room in an armchair, sixty years old if a day, and wore a weathered fedora that Douglas felt immediately jealous of. He slid his hand up and down the neck of a big hollow-bodied Gretsch, the guitar plugged into an amp no bigger than a coffeepot at his feet. It was all barre chords, his movements as light and graceful as if he wasn’t touching the strings at all. He looked up at Douglas and nodded.
To Douglas’s right, a saxophonist stood without playing a note. He had his eyes closed and a long black ponytail down his back and fingered the pearl buttons of his horn. Douglas could hear the light clacking of the valves and knew the man was soloing in his head. The look of concentration on his face, his lips on the mouthpiece without air, the way his eyebrows shot up as if he was somehow surprising himself. Douglas could tell that this man was tearing it up in his mind.
Douglas looked back at Geoffrey and imagined this is what doing hard drugs must feel like on your first go-round. It was an unexpected bliss.
“Should I not be here?” Douglas said.
“Are you kidding?” Geoffrey said. “This is for you, Hubs. I told them what you were up to. Now put together that horn and let’s jam.”
Douglas opened his case and nervously put together his trombone as the music seemed to get a tick louder, grow a notch tighter in the room. “Now, listen,” Geoffrey said. “You remember what I taught you yesterday?”
“This is ‘Seventy-six Trombones’?” Douglas said.
“You can call it whatever you want to,” Geoffrey said. “I’m talking about that first note I showed you. Down low. Lips together, hard blow from your stomach.”
Douglas set the trombone on his shoulder and blew. The note was off, he could tell, but nobody even looked at him. They just kept playing.
“Harder now,” Geoffrey said, and picked up his wand off the table. He tapped it against his own belly. “It’s got to come from here. You ain’t no church mouse. This ain’t no faculty meeting.”
Douglas took in a deep breath and blew it again and there it was.
“That’s it!” Geoffrey said. “That’s the only thing you need to play, okay?” He twirled the wand in his hands. “Every time I point at you, hit that note. You’re going to slide right in.”
Douglas took a deep breath and put the horn to his mouth. He could feel the band coming back together now, returning from all their private journeys. The drummer looked up at the ceiling as Geoffrey went back to his simple dancing, as if conducting them all with his feet. He turned in a little circle, giving Douglas time to feel the beat, and he did feel it. It was coming around to him. He tightened his grip on the horn and, sure enough, right when he anticipated it, Geoffrey spun and pointed his wand and Douglas blew.
By God, it sounded good.
Geoffrey made no comment and did no further coaching but simply let it come around again. He pointed his wand and bomp, there was Douglas, ready and waiting for it. Douglas could feel it now, the whole design. He would be the low note. All he had to do was be steady and dependable and his horn would become the tree the rest of them could branch out from. Douglas felt he had this under control, that he could play this note on this beat into a song that never ends.
He began to bounce on his heels and his dress shoes thumped the linoleum floor of the apartment to become just another aspect of their obvious rhythm. Bomp. He hit it again. And once he had established that he was reliable, Geoffrey stopped pointing at him. He instead leaned over a deck of cards on the coffee table and waved his hands over them in time with the music. Bomp to tat-tat, bomp to tat-tat, and the beat became more like fact than a sound. As it did this, Douglas watched the top card of the deck begin to move. The rhythm picked up as Geoffrey danced and the card lifted invisibly off the top of the deck as if pulled by a string. It hovered in the air beneath Geoffrey’s hand and Douglas hit the note again. He felt as though he wanted to cry.
Geoffrey then clapped on the downbeat, the card fell back to the table, and the saxophone leapt into its solo like a sound they’d all been waiting on.
Douglas could not describe the joy that broke over him upon h
earing his partnered horn, as it is a joy reserved for musicians. The sound of the sax filled the room like foreign bells and each musician looked up from their instrument, even if they could not see, to watch him play the very thing he had been dreaming of.
Geoffrey tapped his wand on the table and pointed at Douglas, “Okay, now,” he said. “Your turn.”
Douglas bugged out his eyes as if to say Please, no, and hit his low note again.
“Not with that,” Geoffrey said, and pointed to his own lips. “With that.”
Douglas looked disappointed. He lowered the trombone.
“Whistle?” he said. “I don’t know.”
“I told them about you,” Geoffrey said, as the band kept on. “That’s what they want to hear. But not Charlie Parker’s ‘Summertime.’ Do your own thing. Just let it go where it goes.”
That this was the easiest request Douglas could imagine fulfilling surprised even him. Ever since he had stepped foot on the stairs outside and first heard the beat, as soon as he’d entered the room, he’d had whistled scales of possibility running up and down his mind. He did not know the names for these scales nor where they even sprung from in his imagination, but he had them. He could do this with his eyes closed. And so that is what he did.
Douglas shut his eyes and whistled a note, low and punctual like he had done on the trombone, just to let them know he was there. The sax wound down its solo and Douglas hit that low note again, but this time he added two quick taps a bit higher, a little something on top, like he was knocking on the door.
The sax went up a scale to lay out the red carpet and Geoffrey reached over and took the trombone from Douglas’s hand. Douglas opened his eyes and smiled. He hit that low note again and wet his lips. He heard the guitar player add a quick double hitch to his strumming, as if keying everyone into what was about to happen, and watched Geoffrey lift the trombone to his own shoulder. He gave Douglas a wink, readied himself to blow, and said, “Let’s do this,” and, all together, they did.
Douglas came in high and wailing and picked up that same dream the sax was unspooling. The band jumped a chord to match him and Geoffrey took over that backbone, playing with skill that the moment afforded. Douglas hit all his notes on command, contorting his face and bobbing up and down on his toes, and when he went down low, so low as to blat like a baritone sax, his tongue trilling inside of his mouth as he whistled, the drummer, who was not even looking his direction, yelled, “Yeah!”
Douglas dipped in and out of standards. He called up little pieces of “Basin Street Blues” and “Swing Time” and then finished with a flurry of his own, until, just at the moment he was nearly out of breath, Geoffrey lifted his trombone and took his own turn playing lead.
The song went another three minutes, a graceful eternity, as Douglas snapped his fingers and played the backbone again with his whistle. He danced in place, the music all over him, until his phone went off in his pocket.
Douglas pulled it out and, just like that, the song ended in a final rim shot.
“Well, holy shit,” the bassist said. “The man can blow.”
Douglas smiled as they congratulated him and saw that the call was from Cherilyn’s mother’s house. This also delighted him. He could not remember the last time he felt so good and, like any person in love, wanted to share this feeling with Cherilyn. He held up his phone and said, “One second,” and stepped out of the door onto the walkway.
Douglas grinned as he heard the bassist start up a new beat inside and whistled a little accompaniment while he accepted the call on his phone.
“Is this my lovely lady calling?” he said. “My cat’s meow? My butternut squash?”
“Douglas?” she said. It was Cherilyn.
“What’s happening on the flip side?” Douglas said. “What’s jiving out there in the crazy old world?”
“Why are you talking like that?” she said.
“I’m at Geoffrey’s,” he said. “There’s musicians here. I’ve been jamming. You wouldn’t believe it.”
“With Geoffrey?” she said. “Well, maybe I shouldn’t believe it.”
Douglas was barely listening. He felt pulled back to the beat and began whistling into the phone, a little melody over the bass player on the other side of the door. He hoped Cherilyn could hear it with him, could join in this fun.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“I’m whistling,” he said.
“Well,” Cherilyn said. “Can you please stop?”
So, Douglas did.
With that simple phrase, it was as if his worried world had doubled. Had she ever asked him that question before?
“Look,” she said. “I know we were supposed to talk tonight, but I might be a little late.”
Douglas didn’t say anything in return.
“I’m at my mom’s,” she said.
“Okay,” he said. “Is everything all right? You need me to come over?”
“No,” she said. “You have fun. I just didn’t want you to wait on me.”
“Will you be home for supper?” he said. “I’ve got the strangest craving for eggplant.”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“Everything okay?” he said. “You sound weird.”
“Well, maybe I am weird, Douglas,” she said. “Maybe you could consider that.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Just don’t wait on me,” she said. “I’ll heat something up when I get there.”
Cherilyn hung up the phone and Douglas put it back in his pocket. Whatever was happening, he knew, was not good.
Before he could think too much about it, he looked down to see a kid standing on the walkway beside him. She was maybe ten years old. She held out a blue slip of paper.
“I live downstairs,” she said. “My mom told me maybe I should come up here.”
The paper read SCOUT.
25
Got the Windows Rolled Up, but My Mind’s Rolled Down
Pete had to admit, the Outback could handle.
He’d not gotten it over twenty-five miles per hour since he left the Scenic Wetlands Apartments and Balconies but he’d taken a few sharp turns. Well, three sharp turns, if he were to be honest, and one dicey maneuver.
The maneuver was a quick zigzag right out of the gate. As soon as he left Geoffrey’s place he had to cut left to avoid hitting a squirrel and then cut back right when he saw the squirrel was being chased by a dog. Pete didn’t particularly want to annihilate any of God’s creatures with an automobile but he might have lost his heart completely, such was its current state, if he’d hit a dog. So, he went for a sort of Jesus take the wheel moment and closed his eyes and grimaced, inexplicably hit the gas instead of the brake, and felt the car react as if it, too, were a type of animal. It pounced ahead as soon as he goosed it, the tires gripping the road and handling the quick turns as if they had claws. When Pete opened his eyes, he crossed himself and said a quick prayer. He’d not heard or felt anything hit the car and when he looked in the rearview mirror saw the squirrel on one side of the road, skittering up a chain-link fence and into a pine tree and the dog on the other side, scratching at his ear as if unable to remember what he was doing there by the road anyway.
Pete’s first sharp turn in the Outback came shortly after this, when he saw how backed up Maycomb Street was and cut a quick left to try out a shortcut. The tension in the steering column was a small revelation in how tightly bound it seemed, how intentional, as if you could drive this thing through the different rooms of a house, it was so nimble. He’d not driven anything but his truck for the last twenty years, he’d realized, and the steering in it was so loose you had to make a couple revolutions of the wheel before the front end changed its mind. In it, he felt more like a riverboat captain than a driver.
He’d had that truck
since Anna, had held on to it since Anna, or because of Anna, you could probably say, and Pete couldn’t deny that she was still all over his mind since he’d mentioned her to Douglas. He was grateful to be reminded of her. When was the last time he had spoken her name to someone else? It had been too long, he realized, as bringing her up to Douglas felt to Pete like Confession. And what was his reason for telling?
Douglas hadn’t asked him directly about her or even his past, really, but had merely brought up the idea of children, and Anna came spilling out of him. More than just her but the sense of what could have been with her, potentially with the three of them, of what should have been, Pete often felt. Yet the way he kept this feeling of injustice inside of him and bent it to the shape of his faith assured Pete that it was something that had to be and, in many ways, had always been, so that he could be the person he now was. The idea that she had perhaps died so that he could help others remember how lucky they were through God, through even the idea of God, and how lucky he had been to once know Anna and to touch her, to feel the love of a physical person, to feel their hands, their tight and grateful hugs. He had to remember this, he felt, in order to get back to her.
Plus he was glad Douglas was the person he’d shared this with. Pete had the sneaking suspicion that he had made, in the last twenty-four hours, a new friend. This was not as common an occurrence as he would like it to be, as it does not take any priest long to find out they are not first on the guest list to the best parties in town. He had other things he wanted to say to Douglas, as well, he now realized, about how much he admired him. How much he admired his marriage, his honesty in Confession, and the way he sort of wore his love. What was it about this obvious affection? Pete did not exactly know but wanted only to tell Douglas that he admired him. Men did not often tell one another such things, Pete thought, and this was one of the dumbest habits of men.
The second sharp turn in the Outback was genius, if a bit sneaky. Pete thought of a way to cut through a back alley behind a row of houses to avoid the traffic and he wasn’t normally one to disobey the law in this way. The alley wasn’t paved, was not really meant for cars, but Pete knew he didn’t have much time. Douglas had given him an hour and it was twenty minutes each way to Lanny’s on a normal day.