Trumpet

"How you play this thing?" The colored kid peered into the bell of the trumpet. "This look too fat to blow into, but the other end too skinny. You show me?"

The kid ignored the offer, turning the horn this way and that, fiddling with the keys, working each spit valve a few times. The case lay open behind him on the wet grass, straight mute crushed like a soup can on the sidewalk, cup mute in pieces by the curb, bottles of slide lube and brass polish and valve oil kicked into the gutter. Ed reached for the horn, and the kid pulled it back. "Naw, that's not how it go."

The kid held the trumpet like a baseball bat, mimed rapping home plate, set up in a coiled stance and let go a slow-motion swing. His face betrayed no emotion, his voice no inflection. "You think I'm a dipshit?"

The kid looked at the hand, then brought the trumpet close to his face and resumed his examination. Ed wiped the hand on his trouser leg and folded his arms. If he stayed cool, things would start to go his way. After all, his father said colored kids got an early start making life miserable for everybody, so they made it look easy. It's all in how you're trained. Monkey see, monkey do. You just have to stand your ground and wait them out.

Ed said nothing. He was rock and this creep was scissors.

"No, come on, what do you want?" Ed felt a sob quivering up from his belly, then realized his whole body was trembling. He took a few deep breaths, slow and easy, hoping it looked as if he were barely controlling himself, the dumb-ass not thrown in the street with his arms ripped off only because Ed was better than that, a boxer, not a fighter, was that how it went? Did it matter how it went? None of the advice he carted around had worked so far, had it? His father wasn't there to help, his mother and grandmother weren't there, and why wasn't anybody on the street? Couldn't somebody driving by see he was in trouble? All he wanted was to get to Big Charlie's, have a Coke, maybe spread cheese on a pizza or two, then go home—no, that wasn't all. He wanted his horn, and not just because he was late or because his father would kill him if he found out he'd let it out of his sight, never mind letting somebody steal it. The trumpet was his, and he wanted it back.

"Come on, give it here. I have to go." Ed took a step forward and the kid stepped back. Maybe he could make like he was giving up, then spin, go for the knees and bash the creep's stupid head on the cement.

"Come on. I need it." Ed took another step, then two more, the kid impassive, his backward steps timed perfectly, the dance reminding Ed of the clowns that summer on the Steel Pier. Even when the one clown got so mad he chased the mirror-clown off the stage and up the aisle, he may as well have been running after himself.

"You keep saying ‘come on,' but we never go nowhere. You want to go someplace with me?"

"OK," the kid said, and dropped the horn on the sidewalk. Bent toward his aching wrist, Ed lifted his head to look the kid in the face, pain jetting up his arm the second their eyes met. He curled on his left side, torqued so hard he could almost lean back on the kid's legs. He begged him to stop, which he did, stopped turning the wrist any further, at least, Ed panting and drenched with sweat, smack down on the sidewalk with his arm straight up as if he were champion of something, cars whooshing by, the trumpet half on the grass, dented, dull gleam off the bell, business end kinked halfway to the valves.

"Ow! What do you want me to say? Please, come on, take the trumpet! Take it!"

For now, he didn't care who saw him or what they thought, not that he ever saw anyone walking down Park this time of day, which seemed more strange the more he thought about it—not the absence of people, but his parents letting him be anywhere help would be hard to find, especially here, the neighborhood his father referred to as The Bad Part or The Colored Section or Niggerville, depending mostly on how things had gone at work. If a packer called off and he had to spend the graveyard shift at the end of a conveyor shoving glassware in cartons instead of being the best damned foreman in the plant, The Bad Part was Niggerville, where somehow all injustice got born and got worse by the day, so bad the Communist school board sent Ed to school there and Jack and Molly soon enough, so bad their house might as well helicopter over and plop down, the kids and the wife so lazy and spoiled they'd fit right in, hang the laundry out on the porch, yell and scream all day long, at which point his mother would glare at him and say, "Enough, Mike. The children don't have to hear that crap," and they'd end up in the bedroom yelling about right and wrong and making things better or worse and who gives a shit about Martin Luther King and what about the pastor's sermon after the children died in that church fire and you said yourself the maintenance foreman is a good man and what matters are the lessons you've got to learn or the world runs over you like a bulldozer.

With luck, she'd be late today. He sat up, cradling the bad hand on his lap. He flexed the fingers and slowly bent and straightened the wrist, wincing at the pain that knifed up his arm. Everything worked, it looked all right, and it would have to hurt a whole lot more for him to tell anyone. He'd gotten his horn back, and there was no way he was going to risk giving up lesson day, his day, no school bus to ride, no Jack to look out for, on his own a little while to take in everything he could without brother or sister or parents there to interfere. The creep was another story, but Ed hadn't seen him before, so maybe he'd never see him again. Maybe he'd already gotten what he wanted. Maybe he was sitting in his slum living room right now telling his eight brothers and sisters he'd found a white sucker they could torture the next time he was stupid enough to show up in their neighborhood. Ed took a deep breath and blew it out. Whatever the truth, he had a week to figure something out.

By the time he'd brushed himself off, tucked his shirt back in, wedged the trumpet in its case and started walking toward Big Charlie's, the 4:00 horn at the glass plant had gone off, his mother frantic somewhere, maybe screaming at Big Charlie, the customers giving one another looks, his uncle throwing his arms out, saying "Jeezoo Pete, Francine, keep it down. I got a business to run." She'd done things like that more than once. He walked fast, passing groups of men carrying lunch buckets, their jackets thrown over their shoulders. One stopped, bent to light a cigarette, and glanced at him as he sped by, almost trotting now.

Putting an expression on his face he hoped looked puzzled yet happy-go-lucky, he waved to Molly and strolled to the car, bending down to smile at his mother. "Hi, Ma. Sorry I'm late." He climbed in, arranged the trumpet between the two of them and yanked the door shut with his injured hand, wincing and grunting as he did so.

"Nothing's the matter, Ma. Mr. Perchaska kept me late, that's all, and I guess I walked a little slow."

"No homework. The teachers have a training day tomorrow."

He was in luck. Some days she would have ground through him the way she ground through the gears, but today, not finding him where he was supposed to be had loosed the horde of enemies all decent people had to fight just to stay even. By sitting there and nodding at the right times, mouthing the yes's and no's and uh-huh's required, he slipped to safety like a spy, keeping his hurt hand limp on his lap, planning repairs to the battered horn, the old car rumbling and rattling them home.

Two days later, a rainy Saturday morning, Ed sat on the edge of his bed, the trumpet braced between his legs. The tools he'd smuggled from his father's workbench lay to his left on the rumpled sheet. Chin cupped in his hands, Jack lay on his own bed across the attic room. "They'll find out," he said. "They always find out."

"I won't tell. I won't have to. All they have to do is look at it."

Ed squeezed the pliers and exerted gentle pressure. Nothing. Both parents reminded him constantly not to drop the instrument because brass was a soft metal, a long way from steel. To show him, his father had once grabbed a piece of scrap tubing from his workbench and kinked it with a tug of his wrists.

Ed sighted down the tubing, took up the pliers, and applied more leverage until everything lined up. He picked up the screwdriver and slid the blade down the tubing, twisting and levering until only a couple of small dents remained. Satisfied he'd done what he could, he set the mouthpiece, raised the horn to his lips and blatted his way up the C-scale and down again. "Good job, huh, twit?"

Not only had Ed practiced every day that week, he'd tried "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and every other song in their book, had spent so much time playing the horn his father slapped him on the shoulder as they ate dessert one night, saying, "You sound like a regular Harry James, son," his mother nodding and smiling as she poured herself a cup of coffee. Though the noises he made bore little resemblance to what Perchaska could make the horn do, though he drove Jack and Molly outside for however long he practiced, he'd not only fooled his parents, he'd pleased them.

Now, as he and Jinx trudged through their first try at the song the teacher had promised, Ed felt eager to have the music done, to get outside and teach the creep who was boss. Perchaska tapped the beat on the music stand with a pencil, marking the end of each measure by stomping his foot on the packed earth. Ed tapped his foot in time, wincing at the racket he made and hoping he made less of it than Jinx, whose brand-new horn seemed no help at all. Every so often, Ed glanced toward the teacher's face, but he couldn't see much above the mouth because the ceiling was so low Perchaska had to fit himself between floor joists in order to stand upright. Several times in their weeks together he'd gotten so excited by something in the sounds they made he banged his head, spending the rest of the half-hour wedged into an old desk, tapping, stomping, and sighing.

Out in the parking lot, Mrs. Gianelli sat idling her huge, green station wagon. "Eddie!" she called, waving. "Such a warm day for November! Tell your mother I asked for her!"

"Need a ride?" she asked, pointing to the back door.

"Stay on your toes!"

As he opened the passenger door, Jinx said, "Randall, I'm so excited we're moving up to eighth notes next week, aren't you? ‘Three Blind Mice' is history."

Unless he counted the previous week, he'd never been in a fight, let alone started one. The kid was quick and smart, and he knew the territory. He probably had fifty hiding places in the hedges along Park alone. Ed had to stay alert and act fast, according to plan. If he did, at least the kid would have to deal with a different Ed than he had the first time, a guy who meant business, a guy who defended what was his and didn't waste time talking.

Then he spotted the creep coming up Third, not half a block away, smiling no less, smiling and walking that I-don't-have-to-hurry walk. This was it. Ed slid the trumpet case under the mailbox by the curb, snatched two fat books from the satchel and started running, the kid stopped now, arms spread as if he were ready to give Ed a hug.

Tire-squeal and door-slam and screaming and someone was pulling at him, jerking him upright, shouting his name again and again, his mother wedging herself between him and the kid, screaming for them to stop, holding them apart like a referee, hair wild, dress askew, the kid up, panting, beckoning at Ed, his shirt ripped half open, mouth and chin so bloody he sprayed scarlet droplets as he gasped out curses, Ed nodding yes, oh yes, come and get it, pain in his right eye and both hands and knees, pain all over, but he could zip into the air and dive-bomb the creep if he wanted to, jam him into the cement with one big hand.

Ed shook his head, still panting. "OK. It's OK, Ma. He knows what's mine now." He started giggling, pointing toward the hidden horn, a few tears sliding down his cheeks.

"Fuck you, lady."

The kid jerked his arm free. "Clarence my name, and I ain't your son. This fool, this dead fool your son."

They roared deep into The Bad Part, Francine hunched over the steering wheel, Molly facing backwards in the passenger's seat, training her astonished gaze first on one boy and then the other, till Ed said, "Quit staring, Molly," and their mother, concentration broken, barked at her to sit like a human being. Clarence slouched against one back door giving sullen directions, and Ed slouched against the other, weary, oddly calm, amazed at his battered clothes and aching body, proud of the unforeseen ferocity that had kept the trumpet safe. His father would be proud, too, once he heard the story. This Clarence creep knew Ed Randall was one white kid who couldn't be messed with.

Before they could knock, a tall woman in a dark blue apron appeared behind the screen and glared at each of them in turn, resting her gaze at last on Francine. "Why in the hell does my Clarence look like he's been run over by a truck?" She punched the air with a wooden spoon as she spoke.

The woman stepped onto the porch, slammed the screen door behind her, and bent so close to Francine their foreheads almost touched. "Talk it over? Clean himself up? I've got half a mind to clean you up, lady."

The woman folded her arms and gazed over their heads, the wooden spoon moving in little circles as she thought. "Well, you did bring him home," she said at last. "I guess you'd better come in so we can find out what's what." She held the door open, and they walked into the cleanest, brightest, most fragrant living room Ed had ever experienced, his pain and weariness gone, all thoughts of escape become pangs of hunger. The moist air smelled like baking pies, onions, a tangy spice unknown to him, a roasting hunk of some kind of meat. Framed photographs impeccably arranged on its lid, a gleaming, dark brown piano dominated one wall, two overstuffed armchairs and an immense sofa the others. Matching end tables and lamps, a huge, black coffee table holding neat stacks of books, and two paintings of summer beaches completed the perfection. Ed stood transfixed, ravenous. Why couldn't their house smell this incredibly good?

"Mama, I'm hungry," said Molly, hands folded in her lap.

"Ma, look, he—"

Just then, Clarence and his mother reappeared, Mrs. Johnson pushing her son toward one of the chairs and lowering herself into the other. Washed and changed, his upper lip swelled to twice normal size, Clarence otherwise looked as he had the first day Ed saw him—impassive, loose-limbed, dressed like a playground hood.

"He stole my trumpet."

"No, not today. It's under the mailbox on Park."

"No, last week he stole it."

"No, he stole it, but I got it back and fixed it."

"Speak like a civilized person, Clarence," said Mrs. Johnson. Turning to Francine, she said, "I am sorry. I swear, they turn thirteen, you give them a little slack, let them have clothes everybody's supposedly wearing, and they turn into strangers."਀ऀ㰀瀀㸀 ∀䠀攀✀猀 氀礀椀渀最Ⰰ 䴀愀Ⰰ∀ 猀愀椀搀 䌀氀愀爀攀渀挀攀⸀ ∀䤀✀洀 眀愀氀欀椀渀最 漀瘀攀爀 琀漀 栀攀氀瀀 唀渀挀氀攀 䨀漀栀渀渀礀 氀椀欀攀 礀漀甀 琀漀氀搀 洀攀Ⰰ 愀渀搀 琀栀椀猀 昀漀漀氀 挀漀洀攀猀 甀瀀 愀渀搀 猀琀愀爀琀猀 琀愀氀欀椀渀最 愀氀氀 戀椀最 愀戀漀甀琀 栀椀猀 栀漀爀渀 琀栀椀猀Ⰰ 栀椀猀 栀漀爀渀 琀栀愀琀Ⰰ 猀漀 䤀 氀攀琀 栀椀洀 猀栀漀眀 椀琀 琀漀 洀攀Ⰰ 愀渀搀 栀攀✀猀 猀漀 猀瀀愀猀琀椀挀 栀攀 搀爀漀瀀猀 椀琀⸀∀ 㰀⼀瀀㸀

"No! You—"

Eyes half-closed, Clarence jerked his head toward the hallway, lip sticking out like an extra tongue. "Down that way, angel food cake."

Ed wiggled his toes in the dense blue carpet. Who'd have thought there'd be carpet in the bathroom? And not just any carpet, but a luxurious substance that made you want to lie down and take a nap on it. Were these people rich? Probably not, or they'd have a house five times as large, like the ones along the river where the doctors and lawyers and the people who owned the glass factory and the canning plants lived. No, they weren't rich, but everything in the house seemed solid in a way new to Ed.

When Ed emerged from the hallway, he saw it was Clarence at the piano, his head nodding to the tempo of the gorgeous music. Molly sat at a card table near the kitchen doorway spooning ice cream into her mouth, and the women sat next to one another on the sofa, his mother with a hand on her cheek and Mrs. Johnson with her eyes closed, the hint of a smile on her lips. "Hi, Eddie!" Molly chirped. "I'm eating ice cream!"

"Let me take a look at that," said his mother, motioning to the space next to her.

"Clarence," said Mrs. Johnson.

"Right now."

"Shake this young man's hand, Eddie," said his mother. "You don't have to be friends, but you don't have to be enemies, either."

Clarence shot his mother a hard stare, the hand still extended. Ed felt an urge to grab it and bring the creep to his knees, but he reached out and gave it a quick shake instead. Clarence said, "OK, Ma?"

"Dorothy, I'll get Molly cleaned up and then we have to be going," said Francine. "I appreciate everything."

"I get off work at three most days. Can I bring Molly?"

Then they were on the porch, a slight chill in the late fall air, his mother and Mrs. Johnson shaking hands. A man in the next yard stopped raking leaves and stared. An elderly woman passed on the sidewalk, the wheels of her shopping cart squeaking.

John Repp's work has appeared recently in the Redwood Coast Review and Slab (nonfiction); Clare, ਀吀栀攀 䬀椀渀最✀猀 䔀渀最氀椀猀栀Ⰰ 吀栀攀 䜀椀栀漀渀 刀椀瘀攀爀 刀攀瘀椀攀眀Ⰰ㰀⼀攀洀㸀 愀渀搀 㰀攀洀㸀䤀渀 倀漀猀猀攀㰀⼀攀洀㸀 一漀⸀ ㄀㠀 ⠀昀椀挀琀椀漀渀⤀㬀 㰀攀洀㸀倀甀攀爀琀漀 搀攀氀 匀漀氀Ⰰ 吀栀攀 䨀漀甀爀渀愀氀Ⰰ 䌀漀甀爀琀 䜀爀攀攀渀㰀⼀攀洀㸀 ⠀瀀漀攀琀爀礀⤀⸀ 刀攀挀攀渀琀 挀漀氀氀攀挀琀椀漀渀猀 椀渀挀氀甀搀攀 㰀攀洀㸀吀栀攀 䘀攀爀琀椀氀攀 䌀爀攀猀挀攀渀琀㰀⼀攀洀㸀 ⠀䰀礀爀攀 倀爀椀稀攀 椀渀 倀漀攀琀爀礀Ⰰ 䌀栀攀爀爀礀 䜀爀漀瘀攀 䌀漀氀氀攀挀琀椀漀渀猀Ⰰ ㈀　　㐀⤀Ⰰ 㰀攀洀㸀䜀爀愀琀椀琀甀搀攀㰀⼀攀洀㸀 ⠀䌀栀攀爀爀礀 䜀爀漀瘀攀 䌀漀氀氀攀挀琀椀漀渀猀Ⰰ ㈀　　㔀⤀Ⰰ  White Doe (limited-edition chapbook, Mayapple Press, 2004), and Time to Get Some Things Straight ਀⠀䴀愀爀挀栀 匀琀爀攀攀琀 倀爀攀猀猀Ⰰ ㈀　　㔀⤀⸀ 㰀⼀瀀㸀 ਀㰀戀爀 ⼀㸀
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