Trombones Can Laugh

by Lorraine Ray

  “No, it were a Studebaker.”

  “He’s right. Studebaker.”

  “Whatever it is underneath, the top is hideous.”

  “I agree.”

  “That is the crappiest looking parade float I have ever had the misfortune to have to look at. And be in a parade with,” said the flute player.

  “The people in this town pretend to like it.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  By this time, I was feeling very drunk. I wasn’t interested in the Patriot-mobile, or what truck bed it was built on, or whether it was unattractive. I can’t even tell you who said all those bad things about the Patriot-mobile. I just wanted the world to stay still and my heart to stop pounding its way toward my throat.

  “Moses,” I said when we were seated on the float for ten minutes, “I feel real funny. I’m so drunk that I’m not sure I can play or stay on the float.”

  “Oh, god. Let’s try to get you back to the bus...” Moses stood up and looked helplessly around.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Shriner Band!” shouted the announcer.

  Just then the truck pulling our float lurched forward and the flat bed followed. I almost fainted from the jerking motion. The sky whirled above and the sun seemed to set in the east. Very rapidly. Moses told me later my head flopped on my shoulder and I slumped down in the chair.

  “Don’t worry,” whispered Moses, “I’ll cover for you. The guys know you drank and they won't hold it against you. Just don’t vomit or something. Lean back in your chair or lie down.”

  The mention of vomiting made me think I might.

  “Oh, I feel like vomiting!”

  “What’s wrong,” asked Gluey.

  “James is sick. Light headed?” Moses asked me.

  “Very,” I cried.

  “Go down flat.”

  He didn't have to say it twice. I fell off the chair and lay on the plywood panels of the float as it started its journey down Quibovari Street to cheering crowds. Moses thought quickly, whipped off his vest and threw it over me so that I was partially covered and the crowd might not notice that I had passed out.

  The route picked by the organizers of Quibovari Days followed Roosevelt Street, which was also the natural gully of Big Flood Gulch as it meandered through the town. It was one of the worst parades for the Shriner float because of the uneven and downward sweep of the parade route.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Copper State Conquistadores from Hell Canyon, Arizona!”

  And then a minute later: “The Patriot-mobile from Rancho El Quibovari,” said the proud voice of the announcer from the loudspeakers located throughout the parade route. The strange contraption known as The Patriot-mobile had only just crossed the parade start line. People thronged to the curb with bags of rock candy and toffee while saloons with names like Lucky Cuss and Sweet Tomorrow crowded over their shoulders like large uncles without a sense of humor.

  “We welcome to our parade this year the very unique Patriot-mobile. We see this for the fifteenth time this year and it...amaze us here in the parade booth. A splendid sight to see on this great American day in Quibovari…”

  The Patriot-mobile rolled down the crowded streets and its driver stared at the dusty steep route ahead, barely glancing left or right. Driving in parades was a huge responsibility and this parade had narrow streets and dangerous turns that he could hardly negotiate with this large ungainly machine.

  Ranch troglodytes, hung off the float in various crazy attitudes, shouted things like “Wahoo!” and “Yee-ha!” Their shouting was distracting enough without the crowds and the animals as well. There were donkeys in front of this float and the driver had to keep his eyes on them at all times. In front of the donkeys were a bunch of conquistador guys and further ahead still, us, the Shriners.

  “I don’t think he knows how to turn the thing,” said Moses, talking to me about the Patriot-mobile driver. “The whole crazy machine might just peel off into the crowd when he turns the wheel.”

  The driver kept the Patriot-mobile aimed for the center of the street and gave it lots of gas. He didn’t want to stall the thing as he had done in that parade in New Mexico, and then create a horrible situation.

  I rested for a while under Moses’ vest as our float navigated the steep street and the band played without me. But when we neared the bottom of one sharp turn of the gulch, an over-whelming urge told me to stand up with the trombone in my hands.

  The way Moses explains it, I came to a rigid upright position. Moses claimed he yelled for me to sit down, but I don’t remember this. I staggered back against the poles which were installed along the side of the float and tore through some paper with my one arm flailing. I flipped backwards over the pole as neatly as any kid on a playground, flew out onto the street upside down and landed on my feet with my trombone still in my hands.

  Moses figured what happened was the float did a small jerk and I lost my footing. He swore up and down that I should never worry that the thing happened because I was drunk. He claimed I would have fallen off anyway because of the way the float acted when it hit the turn of the street. In fact, Moses claimed I would have been much more greatly injured had I not been liquored up. He said everybody knew that drunks could take a bad fall and come out fine and I would have broken my neck if I hadn’t been drunk when the float turned and lurched. Well, shit, he might be right. I flew off and landed in the dirt road, completely uninjured.

  I still had my trombone in my hand and he said it appeared I was bringing it to my lips and about to unlock the slide as though I thought I ought to keep playing. Some Conquistadores and their donkeys plodded by on either side of me.

  A family friend heard from some other relatives of mine who live in town and who are gossiping jerks by the way, that I was drunk at the time of the accident. Big deal. And yes, I had had my second taste of alcohol, if I have to announce that to everyone as though I’m confessing and I am not even Catholic, I was confirmed a Congregationalist only a few years ago. (What a ridiculous ceremony that was and I hadn't been baptized so the minister did the baptism hoo-haa and pronounced my middle name wrong in front of the whole congregation! James Ed-witch, he said and Ginny and Gertrude shrieked for hours and said I had been baptized a witch in church! Shit like that happens to me all the time.) It’s not like I got arrested for drinking or for anything. Shit. I wasn't arrested at all for any of it. Possibly the scotch and soda was what made me fall off backwards from the Shriner float—I’ll admit it—when the float turned following the path of the Big Gulch in Quibovari. I’m certainly willing to concede that point, but not much more as far as thinking that I did the whole thing. I don’t remember it too clearly, but the big facts I have right, because the whole thing was written up in some newspapers, including our local paper. A junky rag, by the way. It’s the shock of it all that has made me forget the details. And none of this is saying that I don’t feel bad about what happened, because in a way I probably do feel a little guilty.

  So you need to know an additional fact. In this little town of Quibovari, there stood an adobe that President Teddy Roosevelt had once momentarily strolled into after departing the train, or you could say that he rolled into it. (He was a hefty guy I hear, weighing over 300 pounds.) What happened then was he stubbed his toe on an adobe brick, barreled over to the bar, and used the spittoon for a brief, but historic, moment of important presidential spitting. The whole scene is probably pretty big in the scheme of the world or something, and way more important than me, of course. No kidding! I think he was a groovy guy and if he went into a building in Arizona even to spit once, then that building ought to be preserved for posterity and all that. Now all there is left of the place is the staircase and a bronze historical plaque with the dates and a funny silhouette of President Roosevelt’s face, double chins and all.

  The Roosevelt Adobe, as it was known, was once a historical place but now it's a pile of shitting rubble, broken boards, plaster, and mud. I know it’s a crying shame. Moses
said it was a shame, a crying shame, but I ought not to blame myself, and he was there to see the whole thing that happened. He wouldn’t have let me off if I did something wrong either. He was the type of old geezer who takes right and wrong very seriously. He was a straight and honorable fellow. Not like me.

  Well, the damn driver of the Patriot-mobile float drove that horrible thing cheerfully through the jam packed, narrow streets of Quibovari. He probably loved the old towns like Quibovari with their shabby adobe homes and rotted wood facades lining the main streets. I’ll bet he liked the way the dusty little windows, painted white, showed fancy lace curtains and odd bottle collections of old patent medicines in crazy glass. Most likely, he felt a part of the parade and the festivities and a big smile grew across his face, which he shone out the window like a beacon of happiness at the people watching the Patriot-mobile ride by. He wanted them to enjoy the patriotic sight of so many flags flying together, the Arizona and the American flag, symbols of this great nation, flapping in the Quibovari breeze, and he hoped the people on the float weren’t acting too crazy in the back of the truck and disgracing the flags, though from the ruckus he heard he had every reason to believe they were behaving in their usual outrageous fashion, although he couldn’t see them even if he strained his neck out the window. Besides, that was dangerous when you had to drive in a parade.

  Suddenly the Patriot-mobile saw me standing in the middle of the steep street.

  Moses said when I flew off the Shriner float the old guy who played percussion with an open mouth had his mouth drop further open. He stared at what he saw, which, shit, was me doing a flip in the air and landing in the parade route on my feet. As the Shriner float drove forward, Moses and most of the band swung their heads around to check their impressions again. Yeah, sure enough James Sauerbaugh had flown off the float and landed in the street and James was going on with his music as though nothing had happened. A couple of scotch on the rocks will do that.

  For my part, I was just as stunned to see the Patriot-mobile. The awful machine loomed above me like some hideous monster, closing in for the kill. I was about to be run over by an insane-looking float.

  When I saw the awful Patriot-mobile my mind was filled with fear. Immediately I began searching for a way back onto the Shriner float. I blundered forward two steps toward the disappearing Shriners, hearing Moses shouting: “Watch out! James? My little lost one!”

  But there was it, the pride of the ranching community, that old Patriot-mobile rolling down on me, and all I could see was a mass of flags, and sticks and hay bale benches, manned by the freakish ranch hands in what was probably their only day off the ranch in six months, whooping and hollering for all it was worth, as this crazy machine bore down in its highly twisty and dangerously downhill wind. I do remember Moses hollering, “James, James, get to the side!”

  Later Moses laughed about saying that. He knew I was so drunk there was absolutely no way that I was going to be able to move.

  The driver, seeing me in the street, swerved to avoid killing me. He plowed into the Roosevelt Adobe.

  Almost in slow motion, the Patriot-mobile collided full force with the old building which once had entertained Teddy Roosevelt, and was the state’s tallest adobe building, a massive old mud structure.

  The collision was at fairly slow speed, but had the force of a higher speed impact due to the decrepit state of the building. I suppose that truck hit at just the right spot to cause a total collapse. It was unlucky the way the thing exploded.

  Shoot, the impact that resulted between the two objects was pretty sad to watch, but it was undoubtedly theatrical, of the nature of a good mine cave-in or an avalanche or a train wreck. A great deal of noise resulted first. Shopkeepers dashed out their doors at the boom. The sound was huge with greater volume than had been heard in the town of Quibovari since they were mining in the old Turkey Vulture Mine, which had closed in 1938. The bang sent a flock of pigeons soaring out over the desert. A flock of migratory Sandhill cranes, wintering on the stinky sewage pond to the west of Quibovari, took flight and began their migration back to Kansas or Siberia or wherever they came from like good Arizona snow birds. Several old men crossed themselves and looked to the sky for balls of fire falling. Everyone else tried to see where the sound had come from and what they saw astounded them.

  Splintering wood flew skyward in an explosive display of a collision’s ability to pulverize objects. It looked as though a stick of dynamite had been planted in the roof. The boards shot into the air, flipping in a way that made the crowd fear for their lives, but thank goodness every bit of that lumber landed harmlessly on the roofs of adjacent buildings.

  The old truck buried itself into the tall adobe brick side of the old building like an ugly terrier after a rat. The Patriot-mobile shoved itself in as though it really meant business. And it met little resistance.

  Then the famous old building caved in. Shoot, I have heard many people talk about the wonder of Niagara Falls, but they had nothing on the privileged people who got to see the Roosevelt Adobe, the tallest mud structure in Arizona, collapse. A rain of mud, a wall of mud came down. I might have been pretty drunk, but I could appreciate what I was seeing. It was dramatic. Many in the crowd groaned and gasped at the sight of the tallest adobe structure in Arizona reducing itself to a loose brown dusty rubble. Its monumental history went down with it in a rapid descent to nothingness, the collapse being quick and therefore somewhat painless, but very definite. It was as though the whole edifice was built of dust particles coaxed together temporarily and returning to a more sustainable position flat on the ground.

  Suddenly, the dry mud which had shot down, ricocheted and filled the turquoise sky. The huge plume of rust colored dust rose into the turquoise sky above Quibovari.

  My drunken eyes scanned the old adobe building in astonishment. Another thunderous clap sounded. The air filled with muddy dust which fell in every direction on the screaming crowd. The dust-covered people nearby shouted and cursed and tasted the dust on their faces. Kids had dusty faces, old folks had dusty faces. The parade participants, many of whom were already strangely dressed, were now coated with a thin layer of dirt.

  And the Patriot-mobile driving into the side of the wall did not kill a single individual, thank goodness, but mostly filled their faces and hair with a soft powder of ruddy dirt. The poor occupants of the building, two local historians, stumbled out, dusty but unharmed. Scrambling one-by-one out of the wrecked float which was embedded in the adobe debris, the driver and the troglodytes escaped the torrent of adobe, old boards and tin ceiling tiles. And these covered victims came coughing out, bursting out of the rubble. Policemen ran to the aid of the poor people on the Patriot-mobile and anyone else who had not escaped the collapsing landmark. In a few seconds a fire alarm sounded. A fire engine began racing to the scene along with the town’s only paramedic van. People ran toward the building but stopped when they saw the rubble.

  Those on the Patriot-mobile fell about the sidewalk joining the other victims of the accident, all of whom were covered with the same coating of brown mud. Combined with several old conquistadors—guard with pikes, flower-laden donkeys, hysterical parade officials, and tuba players, the general disorder and piquancy of the scene made a fabulous wreck.

  It was toward this crazy scene that Moses ran pell-mell through the startled and screaming crowd, running with his heart in his mouth, he told me later, craning his neck above the crowd in order to catch a glimpse of the victims and figure out which of the dust covered figures might be me.

  As Moses drew closer the coughing figures were clearer. It was like talking to cocoa covered people, whose eyes looked out, but whose features were hidden in the thick layer of pulverized adobe. I stood near the middle of the awe-struck crowd. It was puzzling to him, he said, to find me. The dust clearly covered most of the people on the street, but I was only lightly dusted.

  One of the cocoa powder covered men took the lens off his camera. Before Moses co
uld slip me off into the crowd, my photograph was taken.

  And the accompanying newspaper article read “boy in street with trombone causes float to swerve into historic structure, Roosevelt Adobe, Quibovari, Arizona.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  My parents went ape over what happened. Ah, shit, man, at first I thought it was nothing important, funny and pretty cool, until my mother called a halt to me being in the Shriner band. When I came home drunk that day, and my face was in the newspapers the next day as the boy who’d nearly been hit by a float, she and my old man asked me a lot of questions about what happened and when it was clear that I had gotten drinks directly from the Shriners, they decided they didn’t want me playing with the band any more. Being with so many adult men was the problem, Mom figured. I guess when my old man was talking about all the fun he’d had in bands when he had snuck into bars, he wasn’t exactly being straight with himself about under-age drinking. He wasn’t so happy when he faced me being drunk. So I didn’t go with the Shriners to finish out the year of parades and circuses. My old man stopped my lessons with Gluey, too.

  Several nosy family friends phoned Mom about it, although I never heard any of these calls myself, but Mom yakked about how awful it was when I got home from school. I like to imagine the calls, in my head, and I think they went something like this: “Hello, Barbara? This is Flo for the four hundredth time this week, wanting to phone you casually, oh, just to bug all of you out of your tiny little minds, and find out for sure what you're going to do about James Eldritch. No one, I mean absolutely no one, can believe that it really was your boy, James Eldritch, who caused the destruction of that historic building.”

  “Oh yes, Florence. That was our good little boy, our wonderful little Jimmie Wimmie,” says my mother.

  “We want to make sure you’re doing something to James. How about a torture session or something, huh?”

  “Sure, we plan that for tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Well, I hope you are going to stretch him on the rack?”