[APPLAUSE]
I wrote down all my smart remarks
so I wouldn't forget any of them.
OK.
Oh, let's see what's smart we want to begin with.
It all looks so smart when you get up here.
Yeah.
It was smarter at home.
Oh, one thing for all the graduate students,
hopefully tonight we'll get the answer
to the big question, "What does Vance Bourjaily do
when he's not correcting all those student
essays he assigns."
[INAUDIBLE]
OK.
And those of you that know me know
I'm going to be reading seven stories tonight and--
[LAUGHTER]
--for those of you that don't know
me don't panic because it's only 8 pages.
And this was a conspiracy between Vance
and myself that to have a short reading so that we can
have a long party afterwards.
Unless, of course, Vance decides to play his cornet and then
it may go on forever.
And one last request for all of you to come to the party
so that I can tell my mother that everyone ate the hors
d'oeuvres so she'll understand what I'm doing in college.
And one of the poets began his reading
in the undergraduate poetry by saying, "This reading means
a great deal to me."
And I started thinking about that
and this reading means a great deal to me
because now I don't have to feel guilty for not taking workshop.
[LAUGHTER]
Because I'm here and some of them aren't.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm going to be reading from a novel in progress
and it's titled Eleanor.
And that's the feature character.
It's really a collection of short stories.
But because we're living in the '90s
I get to call it the novel.
And I don't have to write a novel in order
to get out of here.
I can just write stories which are a lot more fun.
And also what you need to know about Eleanor probably
is that she's a second grade teacher and amazingly enough,
she's a young woman about my age having a similar life.
And there's no physical description
of Eleanor in the story but I decided that she probably
looks a lot like this T-shirt.
So this is probably Eleanor.
And the other thing-- my friend Dan
asked me if Eleanor was autobiographical
and I guess the real answer is no
because Eleanor has a lot better imagination than I do.
And as the last remark because they're getting boring.
In pursuit of giving a fictional quality to life
I'd like to dedicate Tony Hoagland's portion
of this reading to Lester Fender.
OK, the stories.
Hopefully, these are from somewhere within the novel.
The first one is titled "Dating Instructions."
And it's a very short story.
Goes like this, "The thing you have to do is date,"
Mark said to Eleanor.
"That's what I do.
I date.
I play softball and date.
You either have to play softball or go paddling in a canoe
and you have to date."
Okay, and the next story--
[LAUGHTER]
--is called "A Good Time."
And this is one of the longer stories
because it's a couple of pages.
It goes like this, "Eleanor went for a good time,
then later she was told she made a mistake in thinking they
were there for a good time.
Still, intermittently, a good time was had.
Placing hands in men's hip pockets,
stroking the cords of their jeans,
mingling tongues, laughing at difficult jokes.
It's fun to have a secret that no one knows
and to laugh about it when the time comes.
Someone said, "I have a secret."
Eleanor said, "In about a week I will be laughing at it."
She laughed but, of course, she could not tell the secret
so no one else laughed.
At the party it was fun when they each understood what
the other was talking about.
People at the party enjoyed watching the police helicopter
beam its lights on another party.
That was the kind of party it was, where people were
vicariously at other parties.
At least she thought that was the kind of slice of party
that she saw as she watched other slices
and mounds of the party on their separate plates scattered
on the dirt yard.
Eleanor assumed certain things by the way
the pieces of the party lay quietly on their plates
with only small killer movements.
She assumed boredom.
She equated activity with not boredom.
At a party music could stand for activity,
but there was no music.
She shredded plastic cups and drew men
in under her shoulder as an activity.
Her blue stretched top and right hip became a point of interest
at the party, at least for some.
She realized that for others the party
was quite a different thing.
Though what it was for them she knew she could not know.
She realized that someone at the party
was forming his slice of the party
by making a story about her.
A story with many male characters and long hands.
She tried to create--
tried to step into his creation of his story of the party
as he watched her create a shape in her own party image
with her slice.
His story would be twisted, she could see, probably cliched.
He would think the slice was the whole story.
And the story would have to pass through his pockmarked face
and thinning graying hair before it could revolve in his brain,
gather pieces to itself along the wall of its own centrifuge.
Before the story could be peeled off
the inside of his mind like so much pressed paper.
She didn't want to read that story, see that paper.
It was probably dull and clichéd.
It would be the old story about.
Motivation, so important to the story,
could only be fragmented and clichéd,
could only seem to be insightful and complete.
But like streamers of newsprint stuck in her hair,
his story followed her outside of the party to the front
walk and goodbye.
His story opened with the repugnance
of the smell of patchouli and a clichéd smell from the '60s.
He said, "A bad beginning.
She who wore patchouli should have realized right away."
But Eleanor was busy leaving, heading towards activity,
going dancing, swimming, a blond boy was waiting.
The man making the story was willing to give her a chance
though.
He said what the chance would be for, confused her.
She left her thoughts unpictured thinking only in white light.
She allowed her thoughts to disperse,
to squirm off in threads of color.
He asked her about the men, the pockets,
the tongue, and how she perceived them.
She did not perceive them.
She told him she did not perceive well at parties.
He though, was an amasser of perceptions.
A root ball of perceptions.
He perceived her as frantic, useless, groping,
not of his needs, he told her as she explained
about the party, the dancing, the boy awaiting,
the quest for a good time."
The next one is called "The Stone Father."
And it begins with the song from children's camp
which I won't sing to you because I can't
sing but I'll read it to you.
And as a footnote to that, the title is "I'm a Ranger Bob."
And Ranger Bob is a real forest ranger from California.
At least as real as any forest ranger from California
could be.
And this song is about what he would really say.
And it goes like this, "I'm a Ranger Bob.
You're a Ranger Bob.
We are Ranger Bobs all.
And when we get together, we give a Ranger Bob call.
The trees are your friends."
[LAUGHTER]
So "Stone Father."
"The stone father salutes goodbye
from the distance of his high carpeted platform.
From her pathway, she returns his salute.
"Goodbye, stone father."
How does it feel to be the child of this hard, sand-surfaced
father?
The feeling is pinned to the back of her
like a large waving kite on a short string
and follows her wherever she goes, as again tonight she
leaves the stone father's house for her own.
She moves about her room unpacking.
"Stone father, I'm home," Eleanor says out loud.
The walls of her house are empty and white.
There is nothing to fill them.
They slam into each other.
Their many corners enclose their loud noise
in a space that is empty and white.
She stands near a piling of corners, lost.
She can't have the stone father, she knows now.
She has the corners and the walls.
She is nowhere now.
In dead space, the stone father has left only his indifferent
salute to her.
She begins to giggle.
She hides it with her hand.
Standing in the corner facing it,
she sings, "I'm a Ranger Bob" and hopes the stone
father is not listening.
This song is not for the children of the stone father.
Their songs have been taken away.
The songs are in the trees now away
from the stone father and his children that remain.
"I'm a Ranger Bob" is a song about another father,
a different father.
One with trees.
The stone father never listens to the trees
so the verses are safe.
Eleanor slack across time to the stone father's house
again where he never listens at all
it seems until she is on the phone accidentally humming,
"You are a Ranger Bob."
And then he comes on the other line.
She puts down the receiver, ashamed.
This father built her first house--
a stone house-- and kept at the dead
the night with his knowledge of smooth, hard stones.
When she goes, she wants to take away
these stones, this knowledge, and not just songs of trees.
She wants her smooth white corners to be built of stones.
She wants to hum this on the line for him,
but there are no songs for stones.
"Where have you gone, stone father?"
she asked the white-wood corner of her new house.
She invents gladness over soft things
and tucks herself into bed singing.
She hopes not to find the stone father
but, of course, he is there.
She has his image in the palm of her right hand.
She crushes it.
She lies in bed spread eagle, crushing her right hand.
In the morning she turns the pages of the newspaper
with her crushed hand and reads about the death of the stone
father.
But she cannot find peace.
That only the stone father can give, and he is dead stone.
If his death would make any difference, she would be glad.
But it won't.
Maybe when her hand heals it will make a difference.
But it is too early to tell.
The past though, goes on.
And in it, the stone father laughs.
He is outside his house talking to the neighbor and he laughs.
Eleanor steps outside to be near him.
"Ha-- ha," he says looking briefly at her.
But she is not the joke.
She is only the child of the stone father.
She goes back inside but does not laugh.
It has been so long since the stone father
has made her laugh that neither of them
planned for it any more."
Break time.
And the next one is called "Biting The Glass,"
and this one is for Terry.
And it begins with the epigraph from a Dick Shelton poem.
It goes like this, "It has never been easy fighting the desire
to eat glass."
OK.
"When something is too hard for me to do,
I set it up so that I do more and more of it.
That way it seems less hard at first.
And I know there is so much more to go.
So at least at first it seems less hard.
Last week there were some hard times so
this week I'm going over and over them again.
Now last week seems much easier though this week
has been very hard."
Eleanor explains and crosses her legs in the seat of her chair.
It began with a boy--
26, dark, hairy, culturally good looking--
going through the motions of biting a glass.
"Can you see his twisted grin as he crunches it?"
Eleanor asks.
"Most people look through the glass,"
he told me, putting it to his eyes.
"I want someday someone to bite the glass raw,"
he said as he pretended to crush it beneath his teeth.
At first he said, "I'd like to talk to you for about 100 hours
and then we'd be finished with each other
and go on to other things."
I said, "So after talking about 100 hours,
but mostly in silences, we've moved on to other things."
Eleanor lifts her brown hair from her neck
with both arms lifting against space which is collapsing
on her from the walls.
"But love," Eleanor thought, dragging broken baggage, trash,
rags, the chair into the waiting room.
"But love," she thought as these were heaped upon her,
handed to her, exchange, replaced.
"But love," she said to each note not left upon the door.
"Watching movies, why do we believe that certain foreigners
are more honest than we?"
the woman asked herself.
"I've never talked to anyone like this before,"
the Soviet comrade said.
The college football player said.
The boy with dark hair said.
But Eleanor believes them all.
She believes that it is all true.
That it has never been said before.
That everything is new and unique and temporary and gone.
"All the boys have honest eyes," Eleanor
says, looking at her wallet photo collection.
"I tell them all that they have wonderful green eyes, that
is what they say about mine.
They all tell stories so well.
They all hold up the glass.
They all leave notes.
There is a stack of notes always outside on the chair.
When I leave even for a moment, I know I will return to a note
that one of them has left.
The notes are written on the backs of old poems, flyers,
postcards, whatever they can find left over from the mail."
"You said you were shy, uncomfortable in the light you
turned on.
You sat cross-legged on the bed naked.
You pulled the curtains open and waited until morning
when it was light again and you stood naked at the window,"
the woman says to Eleanor.
"I smell like heaven," Eleanoe says.
"It is because I smell like someone else.
It is the heaven of having someone else break through
into this world of blank papers and neat tabletops.
I turn on the radio for voice and put on this shirt
that he has touched for smell and have only
thought left to myself and the papers and the tabletops."
Eleanor is silent then and shows she is finished.
"Do not be impressed," Eleanor later writes in her journal.
"We are dying in unimportant ways here.
A case of light brown hair, send payment
for kicking, stabbing for specifics
like the smell of clothes, curly dark arm hair, glass.
It too short.
One is left.
There're three short.
This one's called "A Story With Horses In It."
"One day while Eleanor was swimming laps--
when they were-- she was swimming laps,
Eleanor remembered that she knew how to swing onto a horse.
She started thinking of the house
in the country she was going to visit.
And that maybe there would be chickens and cows
and horses there.
And she saw herself grabbing the horse's mane
with a right hand--
her strong side-- and being able to swing her left leg over
and up onto the horse.
She wondered why she pictured herself doing that.
And then she remembered that she used to know how to do it
and did it all the time.
She remembered that she could ride backwards and ride
hanging off the side and that she could reach down
the rein off the ground even if the horse was galloping.
And she remembered that she could ride with no bridle
at all, just swing on and go.
And she wondered what the people at the party
would think if they saw her just swing on and go.
And then she remembered that there probably
wouldn't be any horses at the party and that her own horse--
the Palomino-- that she was swinging on to was dead.
Last Eleanor story is called "The Happy Student."
"One day Eleanor saw her happy student.
She had known him for a year and no matter what
he was doing he was happy.
"Why are you always so happy?"
Eleanor finally asked him.
"There's so much for me to do here,"
he said looking up and smiling, lifting a yellow shovel out
of the sand.
"On Thursday [AUDIO OUT] friend at the teacher's
lunch table at school.
I was worried about what we would do for free period today.
We only have one free period a week
so it's special for all of us.
But then I figured out what we could do and now I'm happy.
It seems these days that if one little thing goes right
it's enough to make me happy for a long while."
And the last piece is not an Eleanor piece.
And it's dedicated to my fellow MFAs--
the MFA people and my teacher, and our next reader, Vance.
And it's titled "The Critical Session."
It's another short one.
"The critical session."
"You bring in the stories of your life neatly typed
on white paper and stack them on the floor for him to read.
You lay down on your side and you
look at them in profile noticing that there are 7/8 of an inch
high and that the edges feather into dark and white spaces.
He stands and looks at them from above.
When he discusses them, you have no idea
what he is talking about."
[APPLAUSE]
Well, I'm not going to sing "Ranger Bob" here.
I might play the cornet, but not immediately.
And I might not.
If it's not a threat.
It's here if you get inattentive.
It's kind of a prop for what I need
for what I'm going to read, which
is a piece of a novel I'm working on.
It isn't-- it almost isn't even the first draft.
It's some trial stuff.
I suspect that a good deal of what you hear tonight
will never be printed.
It's told in the voice of a young man named
Mike Mizzourin who will start explaining himself right away.
Mike allows himself just to write playful things
with language.
Things that I wouldn't commit myself to do which
is probably why I'm writing it in his person rather than
my own.
And let's see the name.
The title of the book is The Great Fake Book.
That will be explained in context.
And one of the things that I will probably discard
is the following passage which is actually a conversation
I had with my son last summer.
He's 22 years old and a great rock expert.
And he wonder what I was writing about.
He said, "Dad, what's it about there?"
"I don't know," I said helpfully.
"You never want to tell me what it's about."
"Youth and music, I guess."
"Well, does that make it more my kind of thing
to write than yours?"
"Sure, it would."
"Unless you mean."
"Yes," I said it years ago, a long time music.
And as I said, that may or may not actually precede the book.
There are some-- there are some other matter that
goes before this.
But we now start with the date December 29, 1945.
And every once in a while I'll throw in a song title
and eventually you may understand why.
After December 29 1945 it says, "Begin the Beguine."
"Today on my bittersweet way out of the army discharge
center in Ferriday, North Carolina,
I stole that goofy looking horn.
There it lies coyly.
Shouting up at me from the other double bed
in room 300B, the Grand Commerce Hotel, I don't know what it is.
I do not know.
A group of nine of us new hatched sweet veteran bitter
birds were scratching and pecking out
of step toward the Ferriday carrying
duffel bags and green musettes.
We passed a fine pink panted First Lieutenant bird,
peered at him twittering, and jointly failed to raise
our wings, save for a curly crusted tall Tech Three named
Lon who hollered "tent-hut," dropped his gear,
and leapt into a salute that went over the line
into catatonic.
We applauded, hoping it was irony.
The Lieutenant hurried on.
Then we started past a double decker
wooden barracks building with an open door at Third Street
level.
Me, Mike, I always look in open doors.
And inside this one was a room where
I could see a tuba lying on its side looking quite drunk.
And there were music stands, and then
a row of snare drums on the seats of chairs, flutes,
clarinets, garrison caps, and full dress jackets,
the jackets hanging over the chair backs.
I slowed down, fell back from the group
that I was pecking with, stuck my head in the door,
and there was no one in the room.
There were a lot more instruments, saxophones,
glockenspiels.
You can probably bet your ass that there were glockenspiels,
if that's the kind of bet you like to make.
I set my duffel down and slid in fast wanting to clip a trumpet.
When I got in, I could hear talking and fighting
in the other room, so I grabbed the first hand-sized brass
instrument with valves I saw and got back out again.
It did seem to me that this thing I had stuffed down
the front of my [? Eisen ?] weasel jacket against my chest
might just be comical and oversized,
but I didn't quite dare take look.
There's was a trash can just outside the door, its
cover off, and a big brown empty paper sack
crumpled on top of it.
I lifted the sapsucker hunched over
and looked away, whistling to prove I wasn't up to anything
unusual, and bagged my fat horn, picked up the devil
and swung it, showing the folks my young exuberance,
and double peckered up to catch my group.
In charge, but not much, was a buck sergeant.
His name is Fetlock, an agreeable, plump buck
sergeant in the best of Fetlock luck and pots of beer.
He'd been dreaming a lot of beer all morning
as we processed through.
"Mike, my boy, what's in the paper bag?"
He asked when I caught up.
"Budweiser," I said.
"You want a can?"
"Don't you wish," said Sergeant Fetlock.
What I wished when I looked at the good pink sweating
Sergeant, who'd had mortar teams at Leyte and at Guam
and been twice wounded was that my eye didn't keep running him
into bloody chicken parts.
These nine freed bipeds were, like many others,
being let out early because we'd met the weasel.
I kept chickens as a kid from year to year,
had them killed some years, but never dreamed I'd be one.
Now comes the weasel chewing into the coop,
and then his mad little twitchy nose pokes in,
and his squirrelly cartoon eyes, and he snickers and gets
his tiny hard on for the killing,
the same tincy hard on that the admirals and generals get.
Probably the president and kings as well,
worshiping the weasel God.
Then the cute rascal kills, or nutsy and indifferent about it,
half kills every fucking chicken he can catch,
and may or may not trouble to eat one
before he realizes that the yard arm's up there buggering
the sun again.
Time to slurry over to the weasel club
to slosh some bourbon or some vodka,
some sake, cognac, schnapps, or say an ounce
or two of pissy half-warm scotch.
And what's left behind in the caves and on the beaches
is piles of half animate blood and shit and feathers.
That will do for the better.
I suppose the sweet is remembering
the extra shot of morph your friend, the medic,
gave you when he found you hurting in the pile,
little [? Balfour ?] popping himself a shot for company
and to keep from crying, that and the long dream of something
called love that people seem to think
was out here for us past the gates of Ferriday.
Lovely to look at.
[INAUDIBLE] the entrance to the army camp
and could see the town out behind it.
I moved into the middle of our [INAUDIBLE] little [INAUDIBLE]
where the sentries paid no attention to my ridgeback paper
sack.
The sentries were two privates with no ribbons
on their bright dress khakis, so they hadn't
been cooped up for very long.
You never had it so good, my buddies serenaded them.
And oh, my ass doth bleed for you.
Me, Mike, I kept quiet.
In the still of the night, even with the weasel
caught in a cage, their downy balls would drear regret it,
but I didn't say so.
I'm 23.
I've been Sam's flightless caged bird for four years.
I had no burning in my dodo heart to hassle the draftees.
The sentries, they could have asked to see our papers,
check our gear, they didn't.
My sack and I were free and clear.
We nigh came to stop beyond the gate, and unskilled at freedom,
took our first shy look around.
Every store facing the army camp gate
with an improvised civilian clothing store.
The merchant [INAUDIBLE] doorways beckoning
like whores in sailor town.
No one in our group had known any of the other eight
before we processed out today, but now we
turn toward one another and moved close.
"Anyone want to find a tavern?"
Sergeant Fetlock asked.
A couple of the guys said, "Sure."
The curly haired salutatorian said, "Hey, no kidding, man.
We ought to come with him to the Baptist church,
and there give thanks for safe deliverance."
Fetlock, milder than I could have been said, "Well, he
thought he'd just give thanks his own way, Lonnie."
A slim black corporal of engineers with fingers missing
said, "Bye bye, new clothes for him, but not the junk they
sell here by the gate."
Buck Sergeant Fetlock looked at me: Tavern, Mike?
I smiled, wanting nothing more than to see
what I might have hidden in my paper bag,
and said, "No, thank you, Sergeant."
"Did you get the mouthpiece?"
Fetlock asked.
"Good question.
Good, my Sergeant."
I don't have much blush left in me.
I did a graceless Suzie Q to say farewell
and took on [INAUDIBLE],, horn underarm.
The sack was getting pretty nubbly.
I held it tight, duffel in the other hand,
used that bag grinding on my shoulders like a canvas kid.
In my four years, this was the only chance
I'd got for any decent looting.
The raping and pillage openings out there
hadn't been so hot either.
So I stopped in the alley, sat on the duffel
away from prying eyes, and withdrew the instrument
to have a happy little float.
It sorely puzzled me.
Still does, there on its own sweet bed.
It's too long and too plumpet to be a nice trumpet.
Tubes are too straight, and it's got a really big and silly
looking mouth.
I looked down its bell there in the alley
and pushed its valves in and out.
It sort of simpered back.
I tried grimacing at it, sneering, shook my head
and frowned.
Finally, I felt myself smile, and I said to the horn,
"You goof," and put it back in the sack,
where at it tucked itself under my arm
like an ugly confident pet.
And Sergeant Fetlock was quite right, by the way,
I haven't got the mouthpiece.
Maybe if they'd had a band waiting for me, and Fetlock,
and Lonnie the Baptist, and the disfigured slim, black corporal
of engineers, waiting at the end of the four year,
20,000 mile round bumpy trip, waiting when we finally
slouched off the unheated bus from Nashville
after the overheated train from Seattle,
after the wallowing slow troop ship from Japan,
maybe if smiling, standing straight, the army
band from Ferriday had just been waiting
there to start in playing "Welcome Home Guys" as we stood
dead souled, dry eyed, to ourselves ever having said
"this is our own, own native land, for Christ's sake," maybe
then I would have left the man his horn.
Now as it is, I quite enjoyed the image of him
with that mouthpiece, nothing left to use it in,
coming back from break to start back up
rehearsing for some sweetheart little officer [INAUDIBLE]..
Bet they're right now pulling on their nice pink pants
to have a nice [AUDIO OUT].
"Hey, baby, [INAUDIBLE]."
I don't think I actually called this out
loud to the imaginary horn blower from my duffel
in the alley, but maybe I did.
"Hey, now, I got you a good idea for the officers
entertainment."
"OK."
"How about you drop your khakis, bend over,
ram that homeless mouthpiece halfway up and squeeze?
And have your friend, the tuba player,
blow some real high notes through it.
[INAUDIBLE] open up your mouth to let them out,
like bursts of joyous song."
Oh, clean and smooth, this Michael mind of mine,
exactly like a fine steel trap that's
been left underwater for four years, sprung, rusted out,
and [INAUDIBLE] it over.
"Mourn, horn," I said there in the alley.
I guess that part must have been out loud.
"Let's find us a hotel and spend some of this mustardy ouch
pay."
And I strolled all along singing the well-known joyous song,
"Mustardy ouch, custody couch, piss and douche,
and over the river."
Maybe it was the weasel who sprung my trap and left it,
but I got a little snip of toenail
off him here under my arm.
So that made the horn more than a pet, it was my [AUDIO OUT],,
my affianced, my too long, too fat, straight tubed, comical,
and only girl.
I smoothed her brown paper party hat in case
the millinery police were out and looking.
Now, I'll skip a little scene and pick up
Mike again the next day with his horn at Merrill's Music Mart
in Ferriday.
He hasn't left North Carolina.
And the song title here is "The best things in life are free."
Standing behind the counter at Merrill's Music Mart
when I walked in today with my no name horn back in its sack
again was an amazing young clerk, the only male human
I've ever seen who could be called
China doll pretty, antique China doll.
His hair was ash blonde, and he wears it in the first duck ass
haircut I've seen outside of pictures
in the Japanese edition of the Stars and Stripes.
He has huge, dark lavender eyes, brows considerably darker
than his hair, and [AUDIO OUT] the coral pigment is so bright,
and the cleft in the upper lip so distinctly
outlined that I thought for a moment
he might be using makeup.
His skin is creamy and almost transparent.
You feel as if any moment you might
start seeing X-ray shadows of his cheekbones through it.
He's not a very big kid.
He's probably 17.
It was suddenly so spooky thinking
he might be drafted soon that I came close to blurting out,
"God, damn, don't ever let them draft you."
But I didn't say that.
Instead, I took Little Bighorn out of the bag,
put her on the counter, keeping a hand behind the belt,
and said, just like it happened all the time,
"I say, I lost my mouthpiece."
"Well, I don't wonder," said the clerk.
"You always keep your horn in a paper sack."
"Sure," I said, in a kind of doesn't everybody tone.
"You'd ought to keep it in a case."
"You got a case?"
He shook his head.
"I'm not even sure we got a mouthpiece for that," he said.
"What is it anyhow?"
It isn't exactly delicate looking,
just a touch unearthly.
Wouldn't they find Earth enough for this one in the chicken
yard?
It was a hateful vision, that boy in green fatigues
with [AUDIO OUT] leering at him, and it still
stuck right in the middle of my head
between and behind the eyes.
I said, "Mind seeing if you've got one?"
"Case?"
"Mouthpiece."
"Mouthpiece for what?
I mean, well, what in the world is that?"
I leaned back casually and muttered
a word of which he was meant only
to hear the last syllable, "My duck ass horn."
"Why, sure," he said.
"I just never did see one before."
He smiled and fetched.
"Well, I know we got cornet, trumpet, and euphonium, got
sousaphone.
Well see, for the high school band here.
We got quite a band."
His effusive voice was pretty phoney.
So was mine.
"I could imagine.
Are you in it?"
No, he wasn't.
And I didn't raise my lavender-eyed boy
to be a soldier, either.
I watched him mess around with his hand in a deep drawer that
opened out of the counter.
I leaned over so that I could see into it.
It looked like the place where mouthpieces go to die.
There were some new one in boxes.
Mostly it was all tarnished pieces, and nicked and scarred,
silver and chrome, and nickel and bronze.
Washes and plating were on the way to what base metal?
I do not know.
"Trade-ins," my sideburned blonde boy said.
"Well, [INAUDIBLE] can I find one.
I can get you a dollar off if you got a trade-in."
"Well, now, I swear to God, I just don't got one."
It made him laugh.
He started trying various with the second hand mouthpieces,
one by one, to see if they'd go into the tube of the playing
end of my horn.
The cornet ones were tapered wrong,
and the trumpet ones would just go in it a little way.
"Just put it in a little way," said a smirky voice behind me.
And I looked back to see a big pale, flaccid, jolly man
around 40 in a green check jacket who'd
come out of the back room of the store and paused.
He was wearing black rimmed glasses.
"E B Binky Jones," He said, addressing the clerk
and raising his voice to falsetto on Binky
"Can I just put it in a little way?
It won't hurt, I promise."
Then the green checked flaccid man went into an office
off the sales floor laughing and closed the door.
My side boy squeezed his mouth up tight
and was trembling in a way that made the flesh of his cheek.
The big dark, deep set lavender eyes teared up.
I said "He'd be the boss, huh?"
"Should matter.
It doesn't matter."
EB Jones turned loose his tightly held together mouth
just long enough to say I'll kill him.
Then he pulled the big showcase drawer all the way out,
heaved it onto the counter in front of me, and ran.
He went, obviously, to the washroom, in which dank sanctum
I could tell from the briny smell of food and stomach acids
when he got back he'd had to throw up.
It's a sweet, true world I'm learning to drive myself around
in, after the sweetness and truth into which I got myself
towed away four years ago.
By the time EB Jones emerged, purged of the urge to regurg,
I'd sorted through some few of those mouthpieces
and found one that by God merged.
Stamped into the metal is the formula [INAUDIBLE]
10 and 1/2 CFL, which didn't mean a thing to me.
But it slipped into my looted beauty
like the ass piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
When I saw EB brighter and tighter lipped than ever,
it occurred to me to take this fitting mouthpiece out
again and lay it aside mixed in with some others.
"You find anything?" he asked?
Not yet.
"I sure am sorry."
"It's OK.
You'd be forgiven."
"He makes me throw up pretty near every day,"
the young clerk said.
The accent had lost class.
It was hill pure billy now, and I liked it a lot.
"Maybe one in that pile will fit," I said.
"Pretty near every day talking or grabbing at me."
Odd, it hadn't occurred to me to suppose
they'd be effeminate before he said, just young and southern.
Now I've begun to wonder.
Meanwhile, he was picking up mouthpieces
from the pile I'd made, trying them, sorting through.
Sometimes what he likes to do is knock just
with his knuckles like on the washroom door when I'm pissing,
and he'll knock and stand out there breathing,
and I just can't help but puke, and then he laughs.
"Hey.
Hey, look.
Hey, look at this."
Suddenly, he was grinning.
"Hey, Soldier, look."
He had it.
[INAUDIBLE] 10 and 1/2 CFL snug into the horn.
I grinned back and said, "Swell, goody, how much?"
EB looked over at the office door,
gave it a vicious corkscrew finger,
and handed me the mouthpiece.
I shrugged, smiled, and put it in my pocket, barely any time
but still in motion when the office door opened.
I looked over, and there was the man in black glasses
and the green checked jacket looking back at me.
Why do I know every detail of this clothing?
I can't say.
The pants were brown and baggy, the shoes brown and dull
shined, and he wore a white sports shirt
with a Peter Pan collar outside the lapel of the jacket.
His face looked ripply now, as if I
could see black close-shaved beard undulating,
trying to grow up through the power of his flesh.
He held my eyes for good long beat before he said, "Well,
getting what you crave, soldier?"
"You haven't got it."
He came over to look.
"Hey, [INAUDIBLE], flugelhorn.
You need a mouthpiece, do you?"
He reached.
Flugelhorn?
I didn't like it to be him who told me what it was I'd stolen.
I said, "No, Nothing."
The horn away.
I didn't want him to touch it either.
He didn't.
Instead, he changed directions of grab
and touched the young clerk's hand.
EB snatched it off the blow torch.
Green Beard shriggled and said in his soft, suggestive voice,
"Where'd you get that flugel, soldier?"
"Pawn shop," I said, "And I'm not a soldier."
"What pawn shop was that?"
"The one your mother runs to Friday nights,"
I said, "to sell her ass from Muscatel."
It was my fear reaction.
It's about all you learn in the army.
When you're scared, hit.
He was reaching again for the instrument,
and I said, "Leave it the hell alone."
His voice got really soft, which was really scary.
"I can get you a mouthpiece," he said.
And it sounded about the same to me as if he said,
"I can call us a policeman."
"The high school band ran out.
He's got some extra.
Got 'em from me.
I know he does.
So you come back now in the morning, hear?"
Yes, I heard, we heard.
Me and my fluted lugelhorn.
There were no sirens in the street, but we wanted to run.
We still do and can, and even got a mouthpiece, too.
I've huffed it hard.
I can't get a piff of sound out of it, but will.
Oh, little horn of Ferriday, I want to leave here now.
I want to go look for New Year's Eve tomorrow,
any place but Carolina.
So why not?
Because when Green Beard [? flaccid ?]
back into his awful orifice, a pale, coral-lipped kid
with lavender eyes, who'd given me
a fresh stole mouthpiece for my fresh stole flugelhorn,
grabbed onto my wrist.
EB Binky Jones grabbed it tight and asked me
urgently, "What's your name?"
it was a goddamn plea.
"Mike," I said, "Mike Mizurin.
And couldn't get my wrist back out of the vice
unless I'd want to fight him for it.
"You've got to come back tomorrow, Mike," he said.
"That's what he wants."
"Why?"
"He's got some reason.
Listen, if you don't, he'll know I'd
give you that mouthpiece for your duck ass horn."
"Let me pay for it," I said to EB.
"Tell him you found it after he went back in to his office."
EB Jones just clung.
"Anyway, it's a flugelhorn," I said.
He clung tigher.
"All right," I said, and got my wrist back.
"I'll be here."
Make believe ballroom.
This morning, in my letter box at the hotel,
was a note on the back of a black sales
slip from Merrill's Music Mart.
Can't get your mouthpiece till after dinner.
Come about 4:30 PM.
Seems strange.
I'd understood they were going to close the store at noon
for the holiday, but when I went in an hour ago,
EB Jones was right where he'd been behind the counter
when I left the day before.
He tried for a smile, but I could hear him sigh
as I went by, horn in sack.
First mouthpiece left behind.
Into the office where the green cheeked man was sitting.
Only today his green jacket was a different shade.
I'm sorry, the green checked man.
Only today his green jacket was a different shade, kelly green,
maybe, with darker green and flecks, not checks.
His shirt was unbelievable, orange with bone buckles.
The cheeks were still loose and flaccid,
the shaved area still dark and shifty,
the glasses' rims black and somehow wet
looking like reboiled coffee.
"Hey, come on in," he said.
He brung it.
His office is small, with a little window about head level
that opens into the same alley I traveled yesterday.
There's a desk of golden oak, a chair behind
and one in front, a pretty well filled room.
"Give it here a minute."
I stood there looking at him and shook my head no.
He reached in one of the desk drawers
and took out a small box.
"Looky here."
He opened the box and took out a silvery mouthpiece
like the one I'd left behind but much shinier.
He pointed it at me, leaned forward,
and his voice went very, very soft.
"Now, if you've got one of these already,
it's going to be one you and little Binky found yesterday.
Right?
All right.
I think there was one, but it's not there now.
You've got your sales slip [INAUDIBLE] off him.
Got your sales slip from that pawn shop
you were telling about?
There's only one in town.
He don't think he sold no flugel, not yesterday, not
ever."
Then there was a nutty sort of shift into pathos.
"Hey, pal, I couldn't buy me a flugelhorn this war.
Things got so hard.
Metal things, hard to get.
See, look, now I got this one part, you got that other."
"My parts not for sale," I said.
"What do you want for yours?"
I figured it was going to be a stickup.
He could point that thing at me and make me
pay whatever price he wanted.
"Got a different notion.
What did you trade?
What did you trade it, though?
Would you listen?
What you want?"
Bastard was practically singing.
As he reached behind himself, down to a shelf,
swung a case onto the desktop, and opened it,
lovely and shining, nestling in blue green felt,
was a perfect little horn, the petite and darling kid
and shimmering sister of my fat and tarnished flame.
"This is sure a nice cornet [INAUDIBLE]..
The finest line there is, the best they make.
Look here, she got the trigger, got the slide,
got the quick round change to eight.
Would you try it?
Would you want it?"
Oh yes I want it.
Its bell caps and mother of pearl, more than a trumpet,
more than anything else I've ever seen.
"No thanks," I said.
But green beard smiles.
He put the cornet to his lips, he
looked away toward his little window
and played a short meditative phrase of blues,
paused, and added another twice as long, slow and soft
with quick hard edges.
Then he repeated the pair with the hard and soft reverse,
added a new phrase, medium speed,
and prayed, resolved the whole thing
in an unexpected burst of double time.
But then the bastard retarded his resolution
for a final repetition, and God was coming out
so sad and gold like a gauzy girl and sun
glow putting flowers on a soldier's grave,
and I never, never wanted him to stop.
Yes, I yearned for an instrument with sounds like those in it.
Green [INAUDIBLE] smiled his flaccid smile
and slightly did extend the gleaming cornet toward me.
I sat down then, but I hugged big silly tighter.
Green took off his blacks and showed dark, hurt naked eyes.
I think he felt he almost had me.
"Hey," he crooned.
"Hey, pal, you know anything at all about that psychology?"
It could have been the start of the book with what
he'd been playing.
"Huh?"
"Psychology.
I thought maybe you'd been to college."
"Sure."
"Psychology.
I thought maybe junior college just before the war," I said.
"Long time, and let me tell you, I wish I had a look.
I bet you thought I shouldn't say that thing I said
too little Binky yesterday.
You thinking that way, pal?"
"Your business," I said.
"Jones did mention the possibility of killing you."
Green Beardie smiled a smile.
"Sensitive, ain't he?"
I kept my smile to myself.
"Now that's a little old country boy, E Binky Jones, from way
back up the hill.
Takes guitar country good and sing those country
high sweet songs.
Got him a girl now.
That surprise you?"
"Why should it?"
I asked.
"Well, it seems like sometimes he's about half girl hisself.
You didn't notice?"
I stood up again.
"Now, wait right there, horn.
You studying up that junior psychology there in college?
You might set me straight."
"Maybe you'll say I'm doing wrong, but listen first.
When EB was a little fella, his big brother Marvin,
see these boys are my nephews."
He stood the little cornet on its bell,
turned it slowly so [INAUDIBLE] light caressing
its pearly valence.
"Sister's boys, anyhow.
Big Marvin's kind of bad.
Now see, he'd come home drunk.
They was poor, lived in a little hutch back in the hills.
So then the boys slept in the same bed,
and Marvin would get in there.
Well, and drunk, like I said, with EB, and turn him over."
"What?"
"Turn it over.
Put it to him.
And here's just what I think.
Now, maybe you can help me.
EB, he's just that shy, I have to push
and push to get him to play and sing in public.
But he does, a place called Rombo's.
He's getting straight, going to be all right.
I'm his uncle.
That's what I'm hoping now.
You think EB ought to pretend that with Marvin never
happened?
Ain't it psychology that EBs got to say, hell yes, that happened
to me, now forget it.
Cause old drunk Marvin that's in jail now.
And anyway, and EB just go on about his guitar
picking business.
Now, that's why I bring up singing.
Ain't I right?"
"No," I said.
"You're wrong.
"The way you do it makes him sick.
I think you ought to let the kid alone."
"Is that right?"
"It's damn right," I said.
He dropped his chin.
He halfway nodded.
Then he smiled a new beard shadowed
pale green smile, hand dog and winning,
laid the cornet in its case where it kept gleaning at me
and said, "Need a fake book, don't you?
Say, tell me your name now.
Willie, please sit down."
"Willie, please," I said.
"Come on, now."
"Mike, I told you," and sat.
He nodded.
He got up and went to the office door,
opened it, as if to make sure no one was listening, closed it,
and locked it.
"Fake book," he whispered.
"Got one to go with your horn."
I didn't have the slightest notion what he was talking
about, and I'm sure it showed.
Everything I feel shows on my idiot face.
But the green slick man managed to ignore it.
"Bet you don't.
Bet you've been in the army all this time
and lost it, kind of forgot it.
You sure remember how goddamn illegal it is, won't you?"
Well, he proved-- he was in a drawer in his desk
getting out a fat book, 8 and 1/2 by 11
with a brown, light cardboard cover in a spiral binding.
He slid up toward me, "Touch it, you go to jail."
I didn't touch it, but I read the title,
Volume 1 of Over 1,000 Songs.
"If you say so," I muttered.
I wanted to touch it.
"Mike, you're not some kind of cop," he said.
Limited editions of the cover.
Professional use only.
Price, $50.
I touched it.
I flipped it, and it opened to page 63.
There were choruses of three songs there,
"A Little Bit of Heaven," "Pretty Baby," "Prisoner
of Love."
The melody for each was written on one staff of treble clef
with the lyric below it.
"Alone from night to night, you'll
find me too weak to break the chains that bind me."
And above the staff, rendered in abbreviations for chords
like a flat seventh and F minor, the series of chords
for harmonizing which are called the changes.
I might never have heard of the fake book,
but I'd heard of the copyright law,
and I understood Green Beard.
Still, it wasn't fear.
I turned to page 176 and saw "Cherry,"
"Chicago," "China White."
Not fear that made my pores pump cool and body hairs stand up,
it was pure thrill, as if he'd handed me
a working book of magic spells.
These are the songs, shallow and sentimental every one,
but absolutely profound in the depths
to which they can stir memory, revive hope, promise beauty.
And they are the songs even more important for nut like me
of jazz.
The canon of jazz, like Homer, the Greek tragedy,
or the nut who wrote the chronicles to Shakespeare's
history plays.
"Mike, Mike, name a song," the man said.
"Ja-Da."
"Turn to 190."
He said this in a tone so close to reverence
that he could have added "Let us pray,"
and maybe I would have landed on my knees.
190, yes.
"I Would Do Anything For You," "Jazz Me Blues," and "Ja-Da"
in the middle.
"Ja-Da."
Oh, didn't that green flecked shit play "Ja-Da"
on his little [INAUDIBLE] cornet?
It is not [INAUDIBLE] "Ja-Da" fast, nor did he.
It is played as if it were a ballad in such a way that
the nonsense words "Ja-da, ja-da, jing, jing, jing"
sounding in one's head become poignant.
If oh, "Didn't He Ramble" is "Taps"
for the funeral of a Black jazz musician, maybe "Ja-Da"
would be "Taps" for the funeral of a white man.
But the green and flaccid bastard
didn't give me time to think of anything like that.
"You name a song," [INAUDIBLE] said urgently.
"You name one."
"Ghost Of A Chance."
"You turn to 21, bald Mike.
You turn there."
He was playing that sweet strange song
already before I reached the page, vaporizing it
into a cascade of rending sounds like perfect paper tearing
perfectly as he came out of the release.
And he had barely finished before the cased cornet was
in one of my hands, the fake book in a paper
sack in the other, the flugelhorn in Green Beard's
lap, and me, Mike, on my way out of the office,
the door to which I heard him close and lock behind me.
I stared at EB Jones still standing behind his counter.
I was too dazed by the music, who he was, at first.
EB looked a little dazed himself.
"He didn't ever," EB said.
"What?"
"That there.
It's his cornet you got."
I nodded.
"God almighty, he'd given me his cornet?
I guess we swapped."
"Swapped?
Oh, my.
God damn, he must have wanted that some kind of horn
of yours."
I started coming to them and said, "He might quit riding.
EB, he's your uncle, [INAUDIBLE]..
He told me about your brother."
"My what?"
"Your brother Marvin that's in jail."
"God, all mighty.
You've got a brother?"
"Got one sister is all."
"Hey, he's been-- you don't come from a little hutch way
back up in the hills?"
"Lived here in Ferriday my whole dang life."
"Don't you play guitar and sing?"
"He'd been telling you his lies."
"You don't sing at a place called Rombos?"
"He sure can mix 'em.
Yes, sir, I play at Rombos.
No, sir, don't sing at all.
Sister sings.
We twins.
And me, and there's a trio, we come in, we play some."
I shook my head.
"EB, sir, do you know anything at all about that psychology?"
That was it, pretty much, though he
did say that Rombos was just down the street.
They'd be playing New Year's Eve tonight.
"Why didn't I come, get me free drinks," he said.
"And hey, bring that horn, that cornet there, sit in.
There'd be sure to be some drinks then."
I said "Thanks.
I wasn't hurting for money."
"You should bring that horn there, give us more sound."
I smiled.
"See you later," I said, backing away.
"You're going to sit in now?"
I waved.
Glad to have some place to go later.
I faded out the door like the ghost of a chance,
like "Ja-Da," like a prisoner of war.
I turned toward the hotel.
As I went by the entrance to my familiar alley
onto which Green's office window opened, music stopped me,
music pulled me up the alley, under the window.
It was "Georgia On My Mind."
Nobody had to tell me it was being played on a flugelhorn.
Nobody had to tell me what horn or who was playing it.
Trombone mellow, and the trumpet range by a flugelhorn.
All was fair, and the lover she deserved had won it from me.
"Georgia, Georgia, the thought of you."
There was no blare to it, no edge, yet the notes were round.
Just an old sweet song, round on the ends
and high in the middle.
As I listened, I thought it was a soldier after all
who held pale flowers, and that he'd searched forever
for the lost grave grown wild of the gauzy sun globe
girl, another course started in [INAUDIBLE]..
It was as if the notes were thoughts
and the players surrounding them with music,
sliding and tumbling them to clarity and purification
to their horn.
I opened the cornet case, took the little beauty out,
put in its small mouthpiece.
I closed the case, set it onto the bridge of the alley,
and sat down on it, leaning against the stucco wall
under the high window.
I opened the fake book to the index, found my number,
turned to page 182, and there it was at the top, "Georgia On My
Mind."
I put the little horn to my lips,
and then pressing down on one valve, now two,
now three at random, I blew sound asleep,
a small puff for each note of his, pretending I could play.
[CLAPPING]
[JAZZ HORN MUSIC PLAYING]
[INAUDIBLE]
Woo!
[CLAPPING]