by David Klass
Let me repeat that, because it is an important message for the whole world to hear: I AM NOT TO BLAME.
The frog seems to have gone to sleep in my arms, and no sound at all is coming out of the tuba that is not a tuba. I will continue to puff my cheeks and move my fingers, but this is a good chance for me to clear the air with you about why I am here, Mr. Steenwilly.
The only reason why I am here is because in our anti-school there is a rule that everyone must participate in one extracurricular activity. Now, I couldn’t play football, or any other sport, because I’m too strong and fast and well coordinated and I would embarrass all the other athletes, and impress too many girls, and then everyone would hate me for being such a success.
I couldn’t join the Student Council because it’s really not a student council in that it has never provided counsel to any students or accomplished anything positive for anybody. It’s really a group of students nobody likes, who try to get elected to completely meaningless but impressive-sounding positions so that they can put “leadership skills” down on their college applications. Billy Beezer is on the Student Council. He and I ran against each other in our homeroom and everyone felt sorry for him on account of his long beezer, so he won and I lost. Of course, I am glad that I lost because I did not really want to be on the stupid Student Council anyway.
I couldn’t be in the Glee Club because I have no glee. There is nothing resembling glee that I know of in any way connected to myself. Even if I had glee, I would not join the Glee Club, because glee is like money—if you have it you should hide it, you should stash it in the bank, you should not wave it around.
But I don’t have any glee. I don’t have any money either, by the way.
I couldn’t be in the French or Spanish Club because I am having a hard enough time mastering English.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture, Mr. Steenwilly. The reason I am in your band room, holding on to a giant frog that is pretending to be a tuba, is because the process of elimination has brought me here. There is nothing I am better at than not being able to play this tuba that is not a tuba.
Pathetic? Perhaps. But truthful.
You, on the other hand, have many other places to go. I know all about you, Mr. Steenwilly. I read an article about you in the paper. You have an advanced degree from a famous conservatory. You were a brilliant pianist. You won prizes. So what are you doing in our anti-school, teaching students like me and like Violet Hayes, who sits in front of me trying to play the saxophone? I have nicknamed her Violent Hayes because she appears to be trying to strangle her saxophone before it kills her. This is perhaps justifiable, because I believe her saxophone is not a saxophone at all. I say this because it has never produced a sound like a saxophone. I believe it is a monitor lizard pretending to be a saxophone.
So there you stand, poor Mr. Steenwilly, tapping your foot and waving your baton while sweat runs through your thinning hair, and in your mind you are hearing lovely John Philip Sousa. But in your ears you are hearing car crashes and hungry frog croaks and monitor lizard shrieks. And my point is this. I believe you are on a crusade here, and you are doomed to failure.
You will spread no light at our anti-school. You will be engulfed by darkness. Get out while you can.
We are done with John Philip Sousa. We have moved on to a piece written by Arthur Flemingham Steenwilly. Your parents must have really hated you to give you such a name.
The piece you have written for us is called “The Gambol of the Caribou.” Now, Mr. Steenwilly, I don’t mean to be critical. What I know about music could be squeezed into a peanut shell, and there would still be room for the peanut. But I looked up “gambol” in the dictionary, and it means to “skip or jump about playfully.” It also means to “caper or frolic.” Caribou are large, ponderous, woolly reindeer.
They do not gambol. They do not caper. They do not frolic. And they certainly do not skip. It would be an interesting sight to see a herd of caribou skipping down the tundra, but, Mr. Steenwilly, it would never happen. You could write a piece called “The Caribou Standing Still and Freezing Their Butts Off.” Or “The March of the Caribou.” Or even “The Stampede of the Caribou.” But “The Gambol of the Caribou” is not such a great image to build a piece of music around.
I hope I haven’t offended you, Mr. Steenwilly. But I think you may have a problem in this area. Because several months ago you gave us another one of your original compositions to play, and it was called “The War Cry of the Ostrich.”
Now, the ostrich is a fascinating bird, but it’s not exactly known for its battle prowess. When an ostrich is threatened by an enemy it feels such terror that it can’t bear even to watch whatever bad thing is happening, so it sticks its head in a hole in the ground and awaits its fate, blind, deaf, and trembling.
Now, I grant you, Mr. Steenwilly, it’s possible that the ostrich is yelling down there in that hole, but I think it far more likely that it’s bellowing its bird lungs out in terror than uttering a battle cry. If you had called your piece “The Panic Attack of the Ostrich” I wouldn’t have had a problem. Or “The Last Hysterical Screech of the Ostrich.”
Now you are waving your arms for the final crescendo of “The Gambol of the Caribou.” The caribou must be gamboling pretty intensely in your mind. But in the real world of the band room, it sounds like a disaster movie. In front of me, Violent Hayes and her saxophone that is really a monitor lizard are trying to get at each other’s throats. Behind me, Andy Pearce is banging on the drums that are not drums. They sound like a car crash. I can hear fenders collide and iron rip.
Meanwhile, the frog in my arms has awakened. He lets loose with a sound that has never appeared in the Western musical canon. In fact, it sounds like something has just been shot out of a cannon. Is that why you spin around so fast your mustache trails your chin, Mr. Steenwilly? Are you afraid you will be blasted by cannon shot? The good news is that you have nothing to fear from military projectiles.
The bad news is that the final few bars of your musical composition do not sound like any animal capering and frolicking. They sound like an avalanche in a war zone.
And even though some of the most horrible sounds the human ear is capable of registering are coming from my direction, I am not making these sounds. They are being made by the frog pretending to be my tuba. I used to wonder what he was doing hiding in a band room, but I have developed a theory that may explain everything.
The giant frog may believe that he is in a band, and that I am a tuba. Sometimes I can feel him blowing back through the mouthpiece, and even moving my fingers on the keys. Which is why I say that I do not play the tuba—my tuba plays me.
Band practice is over. Please go into your band office and have a nice cup of tea, Mr. Steenwilly. Please do not stand there glaring at me. Please do not walk over to me as you are now doing. I will focus on putting my tuba that is not a tuba into its case, thereby deflecting your anger. Why don’t you glare at Violent Hayes, who has just barely survived another encounter with her saxophone.
You have stopped in front of me. “John, I would like to speak to you in my office.”
“Yes, I would like to speak to you too, Mr. Steenwilly, but I have chemistry next period, and it’s on the other side of the school, so . . .”
“I let everyone go five minutes early. There’s plenty of time. Let’s talk. Now. In my office.”
4
Get Me Out of here
I have called chapter 4 “Get Me Out of Here” because that is precisely what I am thinking as Mr. Steenwilly ushers me into his band office and closes the door behind us.
He is smiling, which I take to be a bad sign. “Please, sit, John,” he says.
So I sit.
“You have unusual technique when it comes to your tuba,” he says with a grin.
I nod.
“Highly unusual.”
I nod. “Thank you.”
“This is going to sound crazy, but sometimes I swear it almost lo
oks like you’re talking to it, and treating it as if it’s alive.”
I manage to smile back at him. I even manufacture a little laugh. Mr. Steenwilly, you are far too smart to be teaching at our anti-school, and you are far too smart for me to handle one-on-one in your office like this. This would be a very good time for a fire drill—or a flash flood.
“You don’t practice much at home, do you?”
“I guess not as much as I should.”
“John, it’s none of my business, but is everything all right at home?”
“Sure.” “Sure” is a very good word for situations like this. It’s like a little shovel you can use to dig yourself out of a hole.
“Because you were wearing a T-shirt the other day and I could have sworn I saw some red marks on your arm and shoulder. They looked like someone had been grabbing you. And I wondered . . . I mean, are you positive that everything is okay?”
“Sure.”
“Because if something is going on, and you need help, I want you to feel that I’m someone you can come to.”
“Sure. Thank you, sir. Right now I should get to chemistry lab . . .” I stand up.
“John, to hell with chemistry lab.”
I sit down. We look at each other.
“You have sad eyes, John,” Mr. Steenwilly finally says. “You remind me a lot of myself at your age, which is probably not a good thing for you.”
Nor for you, Mr. Steenwilly.
“Let me tell you about myself at your age. My father wanted me to be a doctor. I wouldn’t have made a very good doctor, John. I hated the sight of blood. Frankly, I was a little lost. I didn’t have many close friends. I spent a lot of time inside my own head.”
This is fascinating, Mr. Steenwilly, but perhaps you should keep it to yourself. I do not wish to hear about your childhood. You think I am some kind of kindred spirit, but I am not. You don’t know me at all.
“Those were good years, John. Frankly, I muddled through them, but I didn’t enjoy them. Childhood is golden. I don’t mean to say that you are a child, but I do think that, as the ancient Greek playwright said, every day in the light is precious. They’re especially precious when you’re young. It’s a special time.”
Mr. Steenwilly, among the Lashasa Palulu, childhood, as you call it, is seen as one long obstacle course to be survived. There are wars with other tribes during which children’s heads are prized trophies. There are the cold winters. There are the blistering summers. There are the leopards that live in the forest and feed on young men and women who cannot run fast enough. When a Lashasa Palulu reaches adulthood, they never think or talk about their early years. It is like their childhood was a void, a big zero. What is important is that they survived.
“John, are you listening to me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You looked like you were far away. You don’t have to call me sir. We’re not in the army, here, are we?”
“No, Mr. Steenwilly. I’m listening.”
“John, I don’t believe it’s a healthy thing for a young person to spend so much time inside his own head. It’s a trap. One I know all too well. Now, one way out of that trap is to find a magic portal to the outside. For me, John, music was that magic portal. Does this make any sense?”
Mr. Steenwilly, to be honest with you, all I want is to get out of here. I am nodding and listening and saying “sure” but the only magic portal I am interested in is the one out of your band office.
“When I found music, John, all kinds of things opened up for me. The world became a more beautiful place, a warmer place. I became more confident. I made friends more easily. Even girlfriends.” Did you just wink at me, Mr. Steenwilly, or is there something in your eye? “But the reason all these good things were happening was because I was enjoying my life. Do you see what I’m getting at?”
Mr. Steenwilly, I see you sitting there beneath two large posters—one of Beethoven and one of Brahms—and I must tell you, you still don’t look very happy to me. You still have sad eyes. And neither of them looks very happy either. “Sure, Mr. Steenwilly. I really need to get going now.”
“I didn’t know you were so fond of chemistry.”
“I just don’t want to be late. I’ll get detention.”
“You still have plenty of time. Before you go, John—do you have anything to say to me?”
I am searching for a good answer. Nothing in my pockets. Nothing up my sleeve. Seconds tick away. “I’m glad you found music, Mr. Steenwilly. I’m not sure I’ll ever be really good at it, the way you are.”
“Let me make a suggestion to you. The next time you play a piece of music, don’t think of it as a jumble of notes. Try to think of it as a story. Put it into words, in your mind, if that helps. Or put it into pictures, like a movie. Or even think of it as series of colors or emotions. Will you try that?”
“Sure.” I am standing. I have almost dug myself out of the hole.
“Good. Because we’re going to start playing a new piece soon, and you’re going to have a solo.”
Mr. Steenwilly, are you nuts?
“I know you can handle it.”
So you are nuts. Next question: Why must I pay for your insanity?
“Now, go enjoy the rest of your day. And if there are ever any problems at home, you know who you can talk to.”
“Sure.”
5
Losing by a Snout
We are hanging out at the Bay View Mall, and Billy Beezer, my friend who is not a friend, is talking about food. “I’m so hungry I could eat a whole horse,” he says, “from snout to tail.” This is another reason why Glory Hallelujah would never go out with him. Billy Beezer talks about food all the time. When he is eating a piece of chicken, he is already eyeing another piece of chicken on his plate. While he eats lunch, he talks about what he will eat for dinner. I have seen him eat a large pepperoni pizza, and then a plate of spaghetti with meatballs, and also a loaf of garlic bread, and get up from the table looking hungry. He is a bottomless pit.
Despite the fact that Billy Beezer eats all the time, he remains as thin as a pencil. This defies several of the basic laws of physics. If every action has a reaction, then every mouthful should produce weight. My theory is that all the food he eats gets sucked into the vacuum tube of his long Beezer and from thence hurled into an alternate universe.
Billy Beezer is in a hungry state as he, Andy Pearce, and I ride down the escalator at the Bay View Mall. His stomach is growling like a wolf cub in a snow cave.
It is called the Bay View Mall even though it does not look out at any bay. In fact, it does not look out at anything. Inside the Bay View Mall are two department stores, a dozen or so specialty shops, a pet store, a movie theater, and a food court.
The escalator drops us off in front of the food court, and Billy Beezer’s tongue starts licking his upper lip, and his eyes start to glow. We pass Hot Dog Man. We pass The Pizza Barn. We pass Wong Chong Panda Express, where a cook is stacking egg rolls in a steamer tray on the counter.
Billy Beezer is flat broke. I can see his fingers checking the corners of his pockets, but there is nothing there. Not even a penny. Only lint.
“You think I’m kidding, but if you left me alone with a dead horse, a knife, and a hot plate, I swear I could finish it off,” Billy Beezer says, his eyes on the egg rolls. “Horse steaks probably taste like beef. Just give me some A.l. sauce and hide the saddle scars. I could eat the hooves like pig’s feet—pickle ’em and suck out the juicy bits. I could eat horse eyes—fry ’em in oil like pumpkin seeds and crunch them between my teeth. I could even eat the snout.”
“Horses don’t have snouts,” Andy Pearce says. Andy is the drummer in our band, with the unique musical talent of making the end of every musical composition sound like a car crash. I have not given him a nickname because there is nothing about Andy that is at all remarkable. He always wears the same clothes—blue jeans and a faded T-shirt. He takes everything he hears literally, and everything he says has exact
ly one very obvious meaning. He is not stupid, but he has only one gear, which can get tiresome.
The only reason I am hanging out with him and Billy Beezer is—as you have probably guessed—because I take pity on the two of them.
“If horses don’t have snouts, what do you think they smell with?” Billy Beezer wants to know.
“Noses. Horses have noses,” Andy Pearce informs him. “Pigs have snouts.”
Billy thinks about this while his eyes fix on a giant pretzel in Salt Heaven. “What do you know about horse noses, Nerf brain?”
Andy Pearce shrugs. “When they’re calling a horse race they say ‘He won by a nose.’ They never say ‘He won by a snout.’ ”
“When have you ever been to a horse race?”
“I have heard them on the radio and watched them on TV, and they never say ‘Won by a snout.’ They say ‘Won by a nose’ because horses have noses.”
It is impossible to win an argument against someone like Andy Pearce. He will destroy you with obvious statements.
Billy Beezer can’t stand the temptations of the food court any longer. With a last look at the egg rolls in Wong Chong Panda Express, he leads us to the down escalator, which deposits us on the ground floor, opposite Pete’s Pets.
There are three kittens in the window of Pete’s Pets, and there are three girls about our age looking in at the kittens. The three of us get off the down escalator and look at the girls.
We do not know these girls and they do not know us. They must be from another town and another school system. Therefore, they do not realize that they should run for the hills at the sight of us. They do realize that we are looking at them from a distance of about fifty feet. They whisper to each other and pretend to focus on the kittens.
