Waxman knew better than to tell us this news in advance. He let it sink in while we stood there watching Columbus finish their show. He didn’t look worried. He lifted his little boy to his shoulders and waved us to our starting position, behind the end-zone line.
Lionel Wooten pranced down the line with sharp chirps of his whistle. Lionel was lanky, skinny, black, a bit of a priss, with a shiny gold tooth and pneumatic pistons for legs. He danced, cavorted, bounded to his starting position. In his big bearskin hat Lionel looked twelve feet tall. He swung his tasseled gold-headed mace around his shoulder, tossing it high in the air, then hurled it like a thunderbolt so the sharp end stuck sproinnng in the mud of the field.
“Band!” Lionel boomed. “Atteennn-hut!”
We snapped to attention. The drummers clicked sticks on the rims, marching us forward at Parade Walk.
We were alone in the stadium except for a little crowd of Band Booster parents and the judges peering down from the press box. “Ladeeees and gentlemen . . . please welcome, under the direction of Bernard Waxman and the field leadership of Drum Major Lionel Wooten, the Mighty Marching Titans of Minor High!”
At football games this raised a gratifying roar from the stands.
“Band!” Lionel screamed into the silence. “Haaaaaaaawns up!”
The trumpeters opened up on the fanfare. When the piercing high C broke into a chord, we picked up our feet and marched.
We opened up into “Hands Across the Sea,” and things got complicated in a hurry. We spread into trapezoids and triangles, a three-masted schooner sailing across the field, an eagle with its wings spread. We marched the eagle downfield while the drummers banged a beat for the twirlers’ routine. I had a moment to think, Hey, we’re doing great!
The march dissolved into “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” In quick succession we formed a steam engine, a Star of David, a pair of dice, old King Kong, and a junkyard dog. This called for a frenetic series of pivots and turns, our curving lines anchored on constantly shifting targets.
Then the thump of “Go Titans,” our fight song, a quickstep to the sideline, where we formed lines like rays radiating from the frolicking sun of Lionel Wooten.
We aimed our instruments at the judges and gave them a last shot of noise. Snapping down our instruments we shouted in cadence: “We are the Mighty Marching Titans — of Mi-i-nor High!” A rim click took us off the field.
I felt a thrill rising. This is how it feels to do something better than you’ve ever done! Once we reached open air we hollered and hugged and pounded on each other. Jon Crisler said, “If that ain’t a One, the goddamn judges are blind!”
“Jon!” cried Janice Lipscomb. “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, you’ll jinx us!” She hugged me. “Daniel, you were great! I always get scared when we have to make that pivot, but there you were, like the Rock of Gibraltar.”
Waxman wore a big smile. “Excellent marching. Find some shade, eat your lunch, focus on concert. It’s make-or-break time.”
We retrieved our sack lunches. Mine was a baloney sandwich and an apple with a note Scotch-taped to the stem: Daniel, Best of luck today. Dad and I are proud of you! Love, Mom.
I struck my mallets in thin air, working through the memorized motions. My gravest fear was that my arms would seize up on that xylophone run in the Stephen Foster. I could blow the band’s chance for a One, all by myself.
All around me were band members thinking the same — eyes scrunched shut, lips brushing mouthpieces, fingers twiddling keys.
Waxman dandled his baby on a blanket under a tree.
Dianne Frillinger came up to me. “You okay, Daniel? You look so serious.”
“I’m fine. I’m just thinking about my part.” I had managed to mostly avoid her since Prom Night.
“It’s nerve-wracking, isn’t it?” she said. “Contest is so important.”
“Yeah, it is.”
She peered up through thick oval lenses. “Daniel, can I ask you something? Are you still mad at me?”
Uh-oh. Here we go. “When was I mad at you?”
“Well — I don’t know, ever since the prom, you pretty much stopped talking to me.”
“No I didn’t.” I examined my shoes. “I’ve been busy, that’s all.”
“Because I thought when you kissed me that night, it meant — something! But we were better friends before the prom than we are now.”
This is why I stayed away from girls. “Aw come on, Dianne —”
“It’s true.” Her eyes flashed. “You never call me.”
“I never called you before.”
“I know, but you never kissed me, either. Then after you did, and you didn’t even call — oh, this sounds so stupid. Stupid! Would you please tell me to shut up?”
“Look,” I said, “it’s just that I help Arnita after school. Then I have to ride my bike all the way home, and I’ve got all this grass to cut . . .”
She frowned. “What do you mean, help her?”
“With her homework. So she can keep up with her classes.”
“That’s so admirable it makes me want to throw up,” said Dianne. “But what does it have to do with us?”
“Us?”
“Just tell me if you like me even a little, okay?” she pleaded. “Or if you don’t. Either way, would you please just tell me and get it over with?”
“Look, Dianne, you heard Waxman. Today is important. We don’t need to get distracted.”
She blinked, took a step back. “You’re right. I’m selfish and stupid. I apologize.”
“That’s not what I said.”
She backed away. I saw tears in her eyes. I didn’t stop her from going.
WE MARCHED SINGLE file across a dazzling white concrete plaza, up wide steps to a covered portico. The Clinton High band burst through the far doors, racing one another down the steps. They were done, their fate sealed. I envied their freedom and their joyful commotion.
I couldn’t wait to tell Tim that we had played Weener Auditorium. Except for its name, the building was unremarkable, plain as a Bible. Gloomy light fell through the tall narrow windows, onto simple wooden pews and a proscenium stage. We entered quietly, with solemn purpose.
I walked past the woodwinds to the table where my toys were laid out — concert bells, xylophone, vibraphone, chimes, crotales, triangle, tambourine, wood block, ratchet, slapstick. In the concert band, I was Incidental Percussion. My job was to bring a sparkle to the edges of our sound.
I squinted past the lights to the judges in midbalcony. I thought I saw them frowning at us.
Waxman spread his score on the stand. “All right, band. Let’s tune.”
Cecilia Karn rose to play a vibrato-free E. Cecilia was first-chair clarinet, a serious student and musician who would probably go on to become secretary-general of the UN someday. She took invisible breaths and kept playing E until her face turned as crimson as her uniform jacket.
Waxman studied us for a long minute over his half-glasses, then lifted his baton.
“King Cotton” started off like a circus parade, jaunty and cheerful until a few minor notes introduced a shadow. Then came sounds of war, resolving in the steady rising crunch of soldiers marching and firing, every cymbal going clash! The “King Cotton” march is a delicate thing for its size. We played it well enough to raise Waxman’s left eyebrow in pleasure. He even smiled.
We plunged into “Incantation and Dance,” a moody modern piece with frequent rhythm shifts, tons of Incidental Percussion. The opening was as somber as the leper music in Ben-Hur. Then a noisy jumping chaos got me scurrying among the timbales, wood blocks, and chimes, bong! chok-chok-chok, and ka-ching! Luckily the piece was so disorderly that no one could tell when I missed.
Everything in “Incantation” came down to one crucial duet between oboe and bassoon. Deirdre Adams and Jimmye Brashier performed this beautiful exchange of phrases, ladling the melody back and forth. Amazement rippled through the band — did we really sound that good?
/> A great shiny gold-plated One appeared in the air above our heads, floating, sparkling. All we had to do was reach up and grab it.
Waxman raised his baton. Cecilia played the opening solo of the Stephen Foster, the melody of “Camptown Races” in plaintive A minor, to a counterpoint from Tommy Wilson on cornet with a hat mute.
The full band came in for the first big wash of sound —
But something was missing. The sound was thin, lacking a bottom. Big brass.
I glanced across the stage to see Brian Fairchild and the other tuba boys placing their horns, bell down, gently on the stage beside them.
Shanice James did the same with her French horn. All the other horns followed their lead.
Every black member of the band stopped playing, placed his instrument on the floor beside him, and sat quietly with folded hands.
They were one-third of our band. Almost all the brass. Their silence ripped a great ragged hole in our sound.
In Contest there was no starting over, nothing to do but flounder on through the piece as the melody tailed off in embarrassing gaps, off-balance and wrong.
It took a long time to be over. The black students stared grimly at the floor. The rest of us strained, wild-eyed, playing louder, trying to make up for what was missing.
Waxman’s eyes burned. His hands measured a beat in the air, but his hands seemed disconnected from the fire in his eyes.
Who cared that I hit my xylophone run perfectly? We struggled on, begging, Please God let it end.
Eventually we stopped. Not all at once. A sickening silence descended.
Waxman’s mouth twitched. He appeared calm except for that twitch. I couldn’t bear to look at him. “Band dismissed,” he said.
We filed off the stage, too stunned to make a sound. The black kids coalesced in a mass toward the back. Their normal voices sounded like shouting. “We tried to tell y’all,” Shanice was saying. “Nobody would listen.”
“Ain’t gonna play no slave songs,” said Brian Fairchild. “There’s a million other songs we coulda played, and he knows it.”
“Shut the hell up, Fairchild,” said Jeff Lehorn, big red-haired baritone sax, “unless you want me to come over there and kick your black ass.”
Several white guys made a move to help Lehorn do that. The groups drew apart, everybody slapping at pants pockets. I edged away, thinking, Uh-oh, here comes the knife fight at last!
Waxman charged into the middle. “Stop it! Keep walking. Move your butts!” He actually swatted Jeff Lehorn to get him moving.
Jeff hurled his mouthpiece. It bounced off the pavement with a ching! and rolled into the gutter.
We split into two bands, facing off across the courtyard. We muttered at each other and paced back and forth, awaiting the judgment of the loudspeaker on the wall.
The Frillingers sobbed as if someone had died. Most of the girls on the white side of the plaza were crying, the boys cussing. The boys on the black side were having their own loud discussion with some of the girls. Everyone knew we had been on the verge of winning Ones, possibly the first straight Ones in Minor history, when they put down their horns.
I stood with the angry white kids — hell, I was one of them, wasn’t I? Admit it! I was trembling mad. What gave them the right to do that — just to prove their stupid point? Okay, maybe not a totally stupid point about Stephen Foster and his minstrel music being demeaning, if you happen to be black. Maybe Waxman did brush off their objections too lightly. We all did. Did that give them the right to plot against us? To lie in wait, and ambush us at Contest? It was their sneakiness that shocked me — they caught us off guard, they betrayed us at the moment when we were all trying so hard, for once in our lives, to be excellent.
Couldn’t they have made the same point at the final rehearsal?
No. Because that wouldn’t have hurt us. They wanted to hurt us.
We glared at them like they were traitors. They glared back at us like we were oppressors.
Just for that moment, I hated them. Not because they were black, oh no — I was a Yankee, remember, I couldn’t be prejudiced. I hated them for blowing our big chance. And for splitting our one big happy band into two bands that stood hating each other across this plaza.
I saw Brian Fairchild standing over there with that other band. This morning he had teased me when we were getting off the bus.
Now our eyes met. He gave a tiny shrug. Apology? Not really. More like: I’m over here. You’re over there. Different sides, nothing personal. Just the way things divide up in Mississippi.
The speaker squealed. A woman’s voice said, “Following are the results of competition for Minor High School. The judges’ decisions are final. Performance, four. Musicality, four. Presentation, four. Marching band, one. Thank you, and travel home safely.”
A shout went up from the black side of the band. They hugged and hammered on each other and did little dances of joy.
The scores proved their point perfectly. Without their participation, we were nothing. Straight Fours. With them, in marching band, we had scored the near-impossible One.
Suddenly I didn’t hate them. They had simply stopped being good sports who went to the back of the bus without being asked. No matter how cruel it seemed for them to spoil our big day — just to prove their point! — they had taught me a lesson I would not have learned otherwise.
Waxman stepped onto the stretch of concrete between us.
Shanice James said, “Mr. Waxman? Excuse me?”
He turned. “What?”
“Are you gonna tell us again how we need to be like the Confederate Army? Cause we heard enough about that on the way over here.”
“You shut up, Shanice.” Waxman’s voice was soft, deadly. “You’re out of the band, okay? We don’t need you or your attitude. You haven’t got any Pride. Go get on the bus.”
“But Mr. Waxman —”
“I said shut up! You’ve lost your right of free speech, okay? This is my band. I’m the one who says who can be in this band. Now you go!”
Her eyes flashed, but she went.
Waxman expelled a chestful of air. “Now, the rest of you on this side, listen good, cause I’m only gonna say this once. What you did to me today — hell, I guess I had it coming, didn’t I? Didn’t pay enough attention to your extremely important objections, isn’t that right? I plead guilty to that.”
“Mr. Waxman,” tried Lionel Wooten.
“Be quiet,” Waxman said. “So yeah, maybe I had it coming. But your friends over there, on that side, what did they do to you? What kind of spite would lead you to throw away a whole year of their hard work? Just because I didn’t pay enough lip service to your ideas of what music we should or shouldn’t play? Why not come to me and try to talk to me seriously, instead of —”
Lionel tried to answer.
“Don’t!” Waxman cried. “I’m talking now. Y’all think I’m some kind of bigot? You are so wrong. I’m a Jew, for God’s sake, I’m the best friend you will ever have in this town. And you tricked me. But I’m older than you, and I happen to have the power here. And I’m sure as hell not afraid to use it just because I’m white!”
Blacks would ride on one bus, he declared, whites on the other. “I always thought color-blind was the way to go. Obviously I was wrong. You want separate but equal? You got it. Move out!”
We moved unwillingly, both sides still aching to fight. The only thing that kept us apart was the hot righteous glow of Waxman’s anger. I had a dull toothache sensation that I should do something to stop this happening — but let’s face it, I was not that kind of boy.
We crept onto the buses. Waxman rode in the car with his wife. The silence on our bus came as a relief. I can’t imagine any words that would have made that trip better.
12
WHEN I TOLD ARNITA what happened in Vicksburg, she laughed. “Wow, a revolution! That sounds like fun.”
“Fun? It was terrible, don’t you get it? We got Fours. We should have had Ones.
And now everybody hates each other.” Evening was descending on the river bend. Lightning bugs winked in the trees. We sat in our favorite spot, propped in the crook of the log.
“It’s just a contest,” she said. “Not the end of the world.”
“Not to Waxman. You should have seen his face. The black kids said, ‘Either you let Shanice back in the band or we all quit.’ He said, ‘Okay fine, you just quit.’”
“All of them?”
“Yup. Suddenly we’re the All-Whitey Mighty Marching Titans.”
“Can he do that?”
“He didn’t do anything,” I said. “They’re the ones who quit.”
“But he said, ‘Okay, fine.’”
“They hit his sore spot. He has this idea that he can’t be prejudiced because he’s Jewish.”
“Everybody’s prejudiced,” Arnita said. “Everybody looks down on somebody else.”
“Who do you look down on?”
“Everybody,” she said. “That’s why it’s so great to be white. We have so many different kinds of people to look down on.”
“Aw come on, stop fooling. You’re not white, and you know it.” Wrapping my arms around her, I nudged her forward until we were leaning out over the water. “Look there. Who do you see?”
She squinted at the reflection. “Linda and Daniel.”
“No. Your face.” I nudged her with my head. “Tell me what you see.”
She tried to wiggle free. “I hate this game. Let me go!”
“Not till you tell. And you have to be honest.” I mashed my face into her shoulder, breathing her sweet pink sweater.
“A blonde,” she said softly. “See? I’m a honey blonde. My eyes are set a little too far apart. But I have good skin, and I like my new nose. Don’t you? Little turned-up Barbie nose . . .”
Her nose was not new, of course, nor was it little, or turned up. Her skin was a lovely dusky chocolate milk. Her smile was spectacular. She’d kept her hair cropped short since the hospital.
“Okay if I kiss you?” I said.
“Sure.”
“You like the way I kiss you,” I said.