Against the Day (81 page)

Other Units of the Chums of Chance
meanwhile chose lateral solutions, sidestepping the crisis by passing into
metaphorical identities, as lawenforcement squads, strolling theatrical
companies, governmentsinexile of imaginary countries they could nonetheless
describe in exhaustive, some would say obsessive, detail, including entire
languages with rules for syntax and usage—or, in the case of the crew of
Inconvenience
,
immersed at Candlebrow in
the mysteries of Time, drift into the brief aberration in their history known
as the Marching Academy Harmonica Band.

As if in a dream, they would come to
recall attending Candlebrow U. not as visitors to a summer Conference but as
fulltime music students, waiting at a railway platform with their belongings
and instruments piled nearby, for an interurban that would never come. What did
finally glide to a stop beside them was a gleaming, spiffedup Special with
Harmonica Band Marching Academy insignia on it, filled with kids just their age
in traveling uniforms of Chinese red and indigo.

“Sure,
come on in, plenty of room.”

   
“You’ll
take us?”

   
“Anybody.
Room and board, long as you play harmonica.”

So, without any fuss, they climbed
aboard and before reaching Decatur had learned the rhythm parts to “El Capitán”
and “Whistling Rufus,” and rode on down the rails to join the student
performers at the worldfamous Marching Harmonica Band Academy, where soon they
were fitted for uniforms, assigned quarters, and being reprimanded like
everybody else for improvising during the more tightly arranged pieces like “My
Country ’Tis of Thee.”

The institution had its origins, like
Candlebrow, in the intricacies of greed as then being practiced under global
capitalism. German harmonica manufacturers, who led the world in production of
the instrument, had for some years been dumping their surplus inventory on the
American market, with the result that soon every community in the land had some
kind of harmonicabased marching society, often numbering in the hundreds, who
turned out for every national holiday parade as well as school graduation
ceremonies, annual picnics, dedications of local improvements such as
streetlighting or sewer lines. It was only a matter of time before this
unforeseen outcome of the Law of Supply and Demand was consecrated as the
Harmonica Marching Band Academy, a handsome set of Richardsonian Romanesque
buildings located in “The Heart of the Mississippi Watershed,” as the
advertisements would put it. Each year youths from all over the Republic came
to study here, emerging after four years as Master Harmonicists who more often
than not would go on to eminence in the profession, some even founding schools
of their own.

One evening early in their first
spring semester, Randolph, Lindsay, Darby, Miles, and Chick were in the
dormitory with some classmates, taking a break from studying for an examination
in modal theory the next day.

 
“Never thought it’d be like this,” declared one of the
ThirdYear Harpmen, eyeglass lenses reflecting the gaslight. “Rather be seeing
some real action, get out there into the hullaballoo, just let the durn music
go for a while, don’t ya know.”

A classmate, hands behind his head,
lay puffing on an illicit cigarette whose fragrance, not to everyone’s taste,
filled the room. “Put in a chit, hoss, they’ll be happy to have you.”

“Dang perilous times, boys, got to
forget about the soft duty, go where we can make ourselves useful—”
interrupted by the precipitate entrance of young Mouthorganman Apprentice Bing
Spooninger, the Band Mascotte, yelling, “Anybody seen that ’Zo Meatman? He’s
not in his rack, and it’s after curfew and darn near lightsout!”

Uproar. Heads appearing over the
edges of upper bunks. Jumping up and down, running around colliding with each
other, looking under furniture, in closets, everywhere for the vanished
harpman. The Chums by now understood that this was the “intro” to a musical
number, as students broke out and started to play scales on every harmonica
within reach, and heavens but there were, well, bellmetal bass harmonicas six
feet long—great whopping
tubas
of harmonicas—ranging down to
the tiniest possible twohole silver and pearl Microharmonicas, with every note
in the Universe in between, as at some allbutimperceptible nod the fellows
began sucking and singing—

That ’Zo Meatman’s gone AWOL.

Yippy dippy dippy, doo!

Faster than you can say “Wall”—

What a nutty thing, to do!

[Comical bass]

Now, it ain’t that I wouldn’t, ’cause
I can but I won’t,

And I would if I wasn’t, but I am so
I don’t!

[All] Aaand,

That ’Zo Meatman’s gone AWOL.

[Bing as treble soloist] A. . .W. .
.O. . .L. . . [Everybody looking on as if totally fascinated with the difficult
vocal feat whose successful conclusion would allow them at last, chucklingly,
to relax. Singin’,]

Yippy dippy dippy,

Flippy zippy zippy,

Smippy gdippy gdippy, too!

segueing into a spirited cakewalk
allowing ~opportunites for brief novelty effects, locomotive noises, barnyard
animals—the mysteriously missing Alonzo Meatman, for example, having
specialized in playing harmonica through his nose, typically getting mucus in
number three and four holes and usually a “booger” substantial enough to block
number two completely, presenting, and not for the first time either, a
drawnote problem to anyone incautious enough to borrow the instrument, the
resulting illwill, in fact, contributing to Alonzo’s longseething resentment of
and lowered tolerance for any
unorthodox behavior,
leading him more than
once, at first furtively but then with growing confidence, to the office of the
Harmonica Band Marching Academy Commandant.

   
The
practice of boys informing on other boys, regarded with horror at

more traditional institutions, had at the Marching Harmonica
Band Academy come to command a curious respect even from those who were apt to
suffer from it most. For a “squealer” such as young Meatman to go missing did
not therefore immediately raise the suspicions of foul play it might have at
another school. In fact, commonly the “squealer,” being well paid for his
spying efforts, enjoyed a considerable popularity with the other boys,
especially on furlough weekends. With less pressure on him to create and
maintain a
second or cover identity,
the little weasel had more energy
to devote to normal Marching Harmonica Band activities. Exempt as well from the
unannounced punishments it was the lot of the squealedupon to undergo literally
at any moment on the old Commandant’s whim, squealers, suffering less anxiety,
slept better and led generally healthier lives than their more vulnerable
classmates.

Earlier that day Alonzo had paid his
weekly visit to the “Old Man.” Out the window breathed a spring afternoon, a
sunny verdigris campus, dipping away to a windbreak of Lombardy poplars all at
that distance in a green mist of budding, while before the windowframe bobbed
the kindly seamed face of the Commandant, with its closely maintained white mustache
and gold teeth which flashed when he smiled—to appearance the slow and
amiable smile of the drug habitué, but in fact an all but nihilistic dismissal
of whatever the world might present him—opiatedly explaining meanwhile to
the young informant, as he had dozens of times previous, everything,
everything— Chromatic Harp Safety, and the particular need to keep those
nasal hairs closely trimmed lest one or two be caught between cover and plate
and get pulled out, which beyond the pain and humiliation carried as well the
risk of brain infection, and where and when the units slept and who stood the
different kinds of watches such as Pitch Integrity Guard, protecting through
the hours of darkness the famous DFlat Reverberating Harmonica from the Phantom
Filer, known to sneak in with a full set of professional harmonicareed files to
alter notes and create difficulties for soloists upon the instrument, obliging
them at times to shift over to sucking the tonic chords and blowing the
subdominant ones, producing a vaguely Negroid sound—though the intruder
must take care to avoid as well the Provisional AntiUrination Watch, set up
against latenight visits to the latrine, peculiar, indeed peeculiar, goingson
in there having been recently reported
. . .
.
Out the window behind the Commandant on the Activity Fields could now
and then be made out elements of the Harmonica Band engaged in “Physical
Education,” though not the usual Rugby Union or Lacrosse, no it was rather some
horrible
. . .
nonregulation
CombatInsideTenMeters, as the musicians, tiny figures in red sweatshirts
bearing the golden crest of the Academy, attempted

to strangle, kick, or, if suitable
rocks happened to be to hand, beat each other, apparently, into unconsciousness
if not further
. . .
bodies had begun,
actually, to fall, and screams delayed by distance to float at last up from the
green fields and through the Commandant’s window to accompany his long
recitation, punctuated with tuneful quotations on his personal goldplated I.G.
Mundharfwerke “Little Giant,” from behind a desktop chaotically littered with
books, papers, and (embarrassingly) outright refuse, such as orange peels,
peach pits, and cigar stubs, drifted in places to depths of two feet and more,
somewhat repelling Meatman, who had after all only come hereto “rat” on his
classmates, who would soon, bearing their playingfield casualties, come
marching back between the magnolia trees, to the sprightly Offenbach air “Halls
of MontezooHOOma!” the tranquil Old Man with syrupslow ease continuing his
digression, fading through the afternoon, into obsessively detailed allegations
of odd latrine behavior, evoking in short flashes white porcelain fittings
voluptuous of form, not necessarily toilets, though in some way vehicles for
the mysterious but as yet unspecified “peeculiar goingson,” presently allowing
the whole picture to be viewed, a rapid swoop down between the ranks of white
fixtures, blurring moistly violet at the edges, into the Latrine itself, into
dark proximities including—unavoidably— corruption and death, the
rows of mirrors facing each other through a haze of secular use, the breath,
atomized dentifrice and shaving preparations, ascents of tapwater vapor bearing
traces of local minerals, each set of images chaining away for uncounted leagues,
everything reflected, headed for the Point at Infinity along a great slow curve
. . . .

After that meeting, curiously, Alonzo
was heard from no more. The Commandant’s A.D.C, signed him out, handed him his
weekly voucher for services rendered, watched him saunter away between the
symmetric lines of trees before turning back to his own deskwork
. . . .

Meantime, now and then in the
interstices of what was after all not a perpetual midwestern holiday, the
former crew of the
Inconvenience
became aware of doubts creeping in.
What if they
weren’t
harmonica players? really? If it was all just some
elaborate hoax they’d chosen to play on themselves, to keep distracted from a
reality too frightening to receive the vast undiscriminating light of the Sky,
perhaps the nottobespokenof betrayal now firmly installed at the heart of the
. . .
the Organization whose name
curiously had begun to escape them
. . .
some
secret deal, of an unspecified nature, with an ancient enemy
. . .
but they could find no entries in
any of the daily Logs to help them remember
.
. . .

Had they gone, themselves, through
some mutation into imperfect replicas of who they once were? meant to revisit
the scenes of unresolved con

flicts, the way ghosts are said to
revisit places where destinies took a wrong turn, or revisit in dreams the
dreaming body of one loved more than either might have known, as if whatever
happened between them could in that way be put right again? Were they now but
torn and trailing afterimages of clandestine identities needed on some mission
long ended, forgotten, but unwilling or unable to be released from it? Perhaps
even surrogates recruited to stay behind on the ground, allowing the “real”
Chums to take to the Sky and so escape some unbearable situation? None of them
may really ever have been up in a skyship, ever walked the exotic streets or
been charmed by the natives of any faroff duty station. They may only have once
been readers of the Chums of Chance Series of boys’ books, authorized somehow
to serve as volunteer decoys. Once, long ago, from soft hills, from creekside
towns, from libraries that let kids lie on the floor where it’s cool and read
the summer afternoons away, the Chums had needed them
. . .
they came.

WANTED
Boys for challenging assignments, must be fit, dutiful,
ready, able to play the harmonica (“At a Georgia Camp Meeting” in all keys,
modest fines for wrong notes), and be willing to put in long hours of rehearsal
time on the Instrument. . . Adventure guaranteed!

So that when the “real” Chums flew away,
the boys were left to the uncertain sanctuary of the Harmonica Marching Band
Training Academy
. . . .
But life on
the surface kept on taking its usual fees, year by year, while the other Chums
remained merrily aloft, kiting off taxfree to assignments all over the world,
perhaps not even remembering their “deps” that well anymore, for there was so
much to occupy the adventurous spirit, and the others— “groundhogs” in
Chums parlance—had known, surely, of the risks and the costs of their
surrogacy. And some would drift away from here as once, already long ago, from
their wholesome heartland towns, into the smoke and confusion of urban
densities unimagined when they began, to join other ensembles playing music of
the newer races, arrangements of Negro blues, Polish polkas, Jewish klezmer,
though others, unable to find any clear route out of the past, would return
again and again to the old performance sites, to Venice, Italy, and Paris,
France, and the luxury resorts of old Mexico, to play the same medleys of
cakewalks and rags and patriotic airs, to sit at the same café tables, haunt
the same skeins of narrow streets, gaze unhappily on Saturday evenings at the
local youngsters circulating and flirting through the little plazas, unsure
whether their own youth was behind them or yet to come. Waiting as always for
the “true” Chums to return, longing to hear, “You were splendid, fellows. We
wish we could tell you about everything that’s