by David Klass
Kachooski sits back in his folding chair and smiles at us. He does not realize that “the Man with the Golden Ear” is about to meet “the Boy with the Frog for a Tuba,” and that that is likely to be a pairing similar to “Shirley Temple Meets the Bride of Dracula.”
“And now,” Mr. Steenwilly says, with one last nervous glance back at Kachooski, “ ‘The Love Song of the Bullfrog.’ ”
Down sweeps the arm that holds the baton. Violent Hayes begins to play the opening interlude. The monitor lizard that is pretending to be her saxophone must be intimidated by Kachooski’s presence, because it gives off no reptilian screeches. On the contrary, it lies quietly in her arms and does a very good imitation of a saxophone being well played by a serious high school music student who has practiced long and hard and is concentrating with every brain cell at her command. Violent Hayes is nailing the opening interlude.
On his podium, Mr. Steenwilly smiles at her, and the ends of his mustache appear to be tap-dancing on the points of his cheekbones with joy and pride. On his folding chair, Professor Kachooski is all smiles, his head cocked slightly to one side so that his golden ear can suck up every sharp and flat in the Steenwilly opus.
As the saxophone interlude comes to an end, Andy Pearce lets loose with a percussive riff on the old drums. Now, normally when Andy Pearce plays the drums, it sounds like a traffic accident between several large vehicles traveling at high speeds in opposite directions. But on this day there must be a good traffic cop at the intersection, because Andy Pearce plays smoothly and flawlessly.
Mr. Steenwilly’s black eyes pop out of his head triumphantly, like corks out of a champagne bottle. Kachooski is nodding and pursing his lips thoughtfully, as if to say, “Well done, Steenwilly. You took on a crusade and you have spread light to this anti-school. Well done.”
I myself have no time to enjoy the music. My tuba solo is crawling toward me through the musical bars like a saltwater crocodile with its giant razor-toothed mouth agape.
I consider faking a heart attack. I attempt to levitate myself out the band room door, but I do not manage to raise myself even a half inch above the well-worn band shell floor. I consider the odds that lightning will strike my anti-school out of a clear sky in the next twelve seconds, or that an alien invasion launched light-years ago in some dark corner of the universe may reach the planet Earth before my tuba solo arrives. Neither of these seems like a strong possibility.
Meanwhile, the frog that pretends to be my tuba evinces no signs of life whatsoever. I believe a fossilized frog, its bones preserved in shale or limestone in some Paleozoic creek bed for untold millions of years, would be more alive than the cold tuba in my hands. I recall that the frog who pretends to be my tuba was hibernating in my closet that is not a closet all weekend, and, in a final desperate attempt to avert disaster, I try to rouse him with a brief story.
“Once upon a time there was a handsome bullfrog who lived at the bottom of a pond,” I tell him. “One day a beautiful princess came to the pond, and when he kissed her she morphed into a lovely frog babe. He thought he had found happiness and his one true love, but, whether princess or frog babe, she turned out to have a personality like a disease. This did not, however, mean that the bullfrog would never be happy. There are millions of other frog babes out there, in thousands upon thousands of other ponds. In fact,” I tell my tuba, “the experience of having been disappointed once can actually be seen as a positive step, since important lessons have been learned, and the bullfrog will be much wiser the next time around.”
The frog who pretends to be my tuba is not at all impressed by my story. He does not rouse himself from his torpor, whatever that means, but he does answer my story with a story of his own. “Once upon a time there was a boy who had a life that was not a life,” he tells me. “He lived in a house that was not a house with a father who was not his father. His friends were not true friends, and basically he had nothing at all going for him. On the number line of boys, he was a zero, neither positive nor negative, neither whole nor fractional.
“Then one day a princess agreed to go to a basketball game with him. Fool that he was, he had a fleeting moment of glee. He thought he could become a musician, a scholar, a romantic figure. But something cannot be made out of nothing. Dust rose in the air, caught the rays of the sun for a brief moment and sparkled, and then returned to the earth as mere dust. The princess saw him for what he was and despised him. His father who was not his father trumped him at every turn. His friends who were not friends likened him to carrion. He was cruel to his teachers, who were sensitive, fragile people like himself, deserving kindness and respect. Ultimately, even his tuba could no longer stand to be played by him, so it committed brass instrument suicide in front of the entire band family—something that Professor Kachooski over there will no doubt confirm has never happened before in all the centuries of recorded music history.”
I am not very cheered by my tuba’s story to me, with its implied threat at the end. “Now listen up,” I say to my tuba, shaking it slightly, “nobody’s talking about committing suicide here. You and I are old comrades-in-arms. We’ve gotten through tough moments before. We marched, arm in arm, through ‘The Gambol of the Caribou.’ Suck it up, old friend. The tuba solo is only twenty bars long. We will make it through together. And here it comes!”
My tuba solo has arrived. In front of the band room, Mr. Steenwilly’s head rotates completely around his neck several times, until it clicks to a stop facing in my direction. His eyes dart backward in his head, across the forest of curly black hairs on his scalp, down the Panama and Suez canals behind his ears, to meet again in back of his head for a quick check of old Professor Kachooski.
On his folding chair, the eminent musicologist is leaning forward, his right hand touching his golden right ear, as if to open that world-renowned receptacle a little wider so that my tuba solo can spill into it.
Mr. Steenwilly’s eyes pop back into their sockets like two excited weasels into their holes, and they focus on me. Up goes the Steenwilly right arm. Down comes his baton, signaling the moment of my entrance. “Come on,” he is announcing, “this is your moment, O my chosen one. Blast forth on your tuba the notes that will confirm my place in the pantheon of modern composers, and win me the undying respect of my dear old professor and mentor.”
The frog who is my tuba has other ideas. He sucks in a long, seemingly endless breath of pond air. His amphibious lungs swell, and swell further, until one more particle of oxygen will push even his capacity beyond the bursting point.
“Please,” I plead, “do not do this to yourself, and to me.”
“Goodbye, cruel world,” I hear my tuba faintly gurgle . . . and then I believe the frog takes one final, fatal gulp of pond air. BAAAAA-BLAAAAMMMM! The air is rent by a shattering burst of sound so angry and forlorn and powerful that our basement band room quivers and nearly implodes, pushed to the very edge of what walls and ceilings in the physical universe can sustain. It is a sound that has never been heard in a band room before, since the dawn of time. It does not actually fall within the range of sounds that a tuba can make. It is actually the concussive blast of a giant frog intentionally blowing itself to bits.
Mr. Steenwilly’s mustache is blown clear off his face. It flaps helplessly around the room and comes to rest on a roof beam. His baton snaps in half, and his loafers disengage from his feet and sprint for cover toward the instrument-case closet.
Several feet behind him, close enough to ground zero to feel the direct effects of the explosion, Professor Kachooski is knocked out of his folding chair. He flies backward till he smashes into the front wall of the band room, and slides to the floor. The folding chair lands heavily on top of him, still standing upright, like a gravestone appropriately marking the final resting place of one of the great musicologists of the modern era.
I sit there, unmoving, unbreathing.
Several brave members of my band family play on without me for a few bars. Notes swirl arou
nd me like horseflies on a battlefield littered with blood and body parts.
“Play on,” Mr. Steenwilly insists bravely, waving his broken baton, trying to rally his troops. “The show must go on. It is the one unalterable, essential rule of show business. Here I stand, mustacheless, dishonored, yet willing to conduct you still! Play on, John.”
I cannot, Mr. Steenwilly. It is all over.
One by one the instruments fall silent. A trombone is the last sad voice to falter and fail.
“John?” Mr. Steenwilly asks, stepping down from his conductor’s podium. “Are you all right?”
There is now silence in the band room. I believe I see Violent Hayes watching me from one row in front, with very worried eyes.
Tears are beginning to stream down my face. I feel quite dizzy. “The frog is dead,” I hear myself say in a very strange voice. I cannot look at Mr. Steenwilly, but I also cannot look away from him.
The members of my band family do not know what to make of my meltdown. I hear their whispered comments clearly, although they all seem far away.
“Why is he crying?”
“He said something about a frog being dead.”
“No, a fog. He said there’s a fog in his head.”
“Must be a thick one.”
There is some laughter. I hear it but I do not care. I believe I am trembling. I drop my tuba and it clatters to the floor.
Mr. Steenwilly raises the broken half of his baton and brings it down with a slam on the metal platform that holds his sheet music. “Silence,” he commands, and the laughter stops. “Band practice is over. You are dismissed for the day. Go! All of you.” And then, more softly, “John, come, let’s talk in my office.”
But before anyone can move, an interloper of high status and stern demeanor suddenly invades our band room, entering purposefully through the door, striding resolutely up onto the band platform, and grabbing me around my shirt collar. It is Mr. Kessler, the assistant principal and chief disciplinarian of our anti-school, who, to my knowledge, has never displayed sufficient interest in music to honor us with his presence at one of our rehearsals before. But here he is now—a stocky man with a protruding jaw and thick white hair that he cuts so short it looks like a layer of permafrost which his scalp can never quite melt.
He yanks me up by the collar. “I hope you’re proud of yourself,” he grunts. “I hope you’re very proud.” And he begins dragging me toward the door.
“No, wait,” Mr. Steenwilly cries out, bravely trying to blunt the anger of this officer from the high command. “You don’t understand. We have a situation here—”
“Out of the way, Steenwilly,” Mr. Kessler snaps.
“But this boy doesn’t need to be punished,” Mr. Steenwilly protests. “He may, in fact, need our help—”
“Back off. I’m handling this,” Mr. Kessler barks at him. “And in case I need to remind you, I’m the assistant principal of this school, while you are just a junior faculty member, without tenure, who sometimes involves himself in situations he should stay out of. Don’t push this any further. Back off.”
Mr. Steenwilly backs off. It is not that he is a coward. He is outranked and outgunned.
Mr. Kessler has me in one of those strangulation-by-the-back-of-your-shirt-collar holds they teach assistant principals at the Special Forces training grounds. He continues dragging me toward the door. A small shape suddenly looms up in front of him and interposes itself directly in his path. Someone in our band room is not afraid of Mr. Kessler! Someone yet dares to resist!
“Stop!” a bold voice orders our assistant principal. “This is a talented young musician who needs assistance, you barbarian!”
Mr. Kessler squints at this apparition who dares to order him around, and even to insult him, in his own domain. He sees in his path a small, old, bald man in a black suit. “Who the hell are you?”
“I am Kachooski!”
“Gesundheit,” Mr. Kessler says. “And get out of my way.”
“No, I am not a sneeze,” Kachooski says, drawing himself up with great dignity. “And this talented young tuba player needs compassion. Trust me, I am a musicologist. I am, in fact, none other than Gustav Slavodan Kachooski!”
“Gesundheit,” Mr. Kessler says again. “You might want to have that throat looked at,” and then he shoulders Kachooski out of the way and drags me out the band room door.
I get one final glimpse into the band room before the door swings shut. Mr. Steenwilly stands there helplessly, his head bowed in defeat. As I watch, his hand opens, and the remaining half of his conducting baton drops out of his palm onto the band room floor.
21
The High Command
As Mr. Kessler half leads and half drags me down the long main hallway, he gives me a little speech from his perspective as an educator who has seen many classes of students come and go at our anti-school. “I despise your entire generation,” he begins. “I wish I could lift you off the ground and shake you by your puny shoulders like a pillow till the stuffing comes out the seams. I cannot, because in these dark days I would no doubt be sued for child abuse. But I wish I could do it. You need such a shaking, young man, and I’m just the assistant principal to give it to you!
“Back in the fifties, when I went to high school, we had respect. We believed in God and we knew he was watching us. We had a real enemy in Communist Russia, whose missiles were pointed right at the welcome mats in front of our neatly kept houses. And even if we danced to Elvis and disobeyed curfews now and then, we knew our parents were really right all along, so we listened and obeyed.”
We are nearing the principal’s office on the first floor. The bell to change classes has rung and teachers and students are crowding into the hallway, but they divide to either side at the sight of us, to give Mr. Kessler a clear path. They gawk at me as he drags me along by the collar, as one stares at an animal being led to the slaughter.
“Then the sixties came along with all their energy and madness,” Mr. Kessler goes on. “I didn’t like those hippies and yippies, but I respected them. At least they believed in something. I had a lot less respect for the disco heads of the seventies with their flared pants and vests, not to mention the shallow, materialistic yuppie wanna-bes of the eighties, but I could stomach them.
“But you and your whole generation I absolutely despise. Maybe it’s because I am an old man now, nearing retirement age, but it seems clear to me that there has been a definite downward spiral within my lifetime, of morals and values and all the things I hold dear. And you and yours represent the bottom of that spiral. You are as low as I care to watch the youth of America sink. You stand for nothing. You respect nobody. The music you dance to is devoid of beauty, its lyrics empty of humor or cleverness. Your teen icons are pathetic. You have no love of parents, country, or God. You are the very worst kids that our great nation can produce, and I despise you one and all, you especially.”
Of course, Mr. Kessler does not actually deliver this speech out loud. But I believe he is thinking it as his heels click off the polished floor of our anti-school. All that he actually says to me as we near the principal’s office is “I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
He yanks open the door that leads to the main administrative offices of our anti-school and ushers me in. The principal’s secretary, Mrs. Friendly, is filing her nails with what looks like a marlinspike. She puts the large file down at the sight of me. “So that’s him?” she asks.
“That’s him,” Mr. Kessler agrees. “And not a word of apology or regret. He’s actually proud of what he did.”
“Well, I think it’s disgusting,” she says. “Just revolting. Stomach-turning. The principal is ready to see him.” She gives me one final look. ‘And I’m glad I’m not in his shoes.” And then she goes back to filing her nails.
Mr. Kessler drags me over to the slightly ornate door that leads to the principal’s office. He knocks twice.
“Yes?” comes a voice from inside.
Mr
. Kessler opens the door. “Dr. Whitefield? I have the boy here.”
“Let him come in, and leave us.”
Mr. Kessler pushes me into the principal’s office and pulls the door closed behind me. I find myself standing in a large office, bathed in afternoon sunlight, its walls lined with bookshelves on which ponderous tomes about the philosophy and methodology of education strut back and forth like an extended family of pompous and ungainly penguins. The office is dominated by an oak desk of such size and polished to such a high sheen that I believe a regulation hockey game could be played atop it.
Sitting behind that desk is a man I have up till now only seen at a distance, when he has deigned to walk down our hallways, or to address us as an entire school body. But today I am facing him one-on-one. Dr. Whitefield at first glance appears to be a rather unremarkable man, except for bushy eyebrows that sprout out above his eyes as if they have been expertly nurtured and manured and watered three times a day, season after season, till they have reached an unheard-of length and thickness, and he plans to enter them in a state fair.
The great shaggy eyebrows give him a peculiar look that is at once thoughtfully optimistic and deeply pensive, as if he, too, has been brooding about the direction of America’s youth but, unlike Mr. Kessler, his angry assistant, Dr. Whitefield is trying desperately to think of creative ways to rescue us from the abyss.
“Be seated,” he says. I sit down on a wooden chair, facing him. “I don’t believe we’ve met before. What’s your name?”
My vocal cords have gotten tangled up. “John,” I somehow manage to croak out.
