A box that size can hold a lot of Mexican jumping beans, by the way.
I got to work shoving the beans inside their containers. Louise came home and said, “I hope this works,” but she was skeptical.
I wrote the main people at 7-Eleven, The Pantry, E-Z Mart, Stuckeys, Kum ’n Go, and all of the convenience stores attached to BP, Texaco, Citgo, Shell, Sunoco, Hess, and Exxon. I wrote to everyone. And talk about being politically incorrect and xenophobic: Every response I got back, somewhere between the lines, pointed out how Mexican jumping beans would either A) cause white people to think that the convenience store didn’t care about border patrols, immigration laws, and so on, and then they’d boycott the store, or B) cause Hispanics to think that the convenience store made fun of them, and then they’d boycott the store. One vice president wrote to me personally and said his company learned a lesson when they chose to sell “rattlesnake eggs,” some idiot kid choked on the paperclip and rubber band housed inside the envelope, and the company lost a lawsuit that made any too-hot-coffee-from-McDonald’s settlement look like a parking ticket violation.
I should’ve written the stores first, as it ends up, before ordering the jumping beans.
So. I had stacks and stacks of jumping beans in the house. Every time I turned on the heat, or opened up the blinds, or turned on the lights, those things went off clicking and clacking. Louise couldn’t take it, she left the marriage, and I moved my belongings.
Worm said, “Maybe I do remember you, then. I can’t remember everyone who comes into the bar who thinks they should be remembered for being famous.”
Adazee started laughing. “My brother Bernard could’ve dropped you down to second place.” She looked up at Worm. “You remember? Tell Buzz here about my brother.”
Worm stared hard at Adazee. From the speakers, Reverend Mixon’s voice came out saying, “‘Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me…’” which was straight out of Job. My old college depended on mediocre students brought up in the church, so I needed to be able to recognize and quote scriptural passages on a whim. Worm said, “I don’t know your brother. I have never heard you had a brother.”
Adazee said, “Yes you have. Anyway, Bernard might have been the best trumpet player to have ever lived. He won first place in the state competition, and then got invited to play down in New Orleans for the national competition.”
Worm walked away, and when Adazee didn’t comment on his rudeness I understood that he already knew the story and that Adazee knew she’d told him the trumpet story at some point. I said, “How old is Bernard? Back when I went to Calloustown High we didn’t even have a trumpet section in the marching band. Two of those Munson boys played bugle, which kind of limited the band’s repertoire.”
“Larry and Terry Munson,” Adazee said. “They’re probably third and fourth on the list of famous-from-here, seeing they got that award at a big Civil War reenactment competition up in Franklin, Tennessee. Don’t quote me on that. There’s Barry Harrell, who published his own book called What I’ve Thought about Duct Tape. He might be third.”
Reverend Mixon said, “‘Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth,’” which, too, was straight out of Job.
“Bernard’s between you and me, age-wise. He’s my big brother. Anyway, he got down to compete in New Orleans, and this band director from somewhere up north had the second-best trumpet player for a student. Bernard didn’t even have a formal teacher, unless you include Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass albums he used to listen to nonstop.” Ada-zee got up off her stool, walked around the bar, seemed to be aware that her boobs might brush up against things, and made another drink. To me she whispered, “You want anything while I’m back here?”
I wanted everything, and maybe a little cocaine. I said, “I better be on my way soon,” though I knew I wouldn’t be able to go and hear that clack-clack-clacking. I pretty much believed that those jumping beans spelled out “This is why your wife left” in Morse code.
Adazee came back and shifted her stool closer to mine. “My brother’s main competition, the number-two guy? He somehow got Bernard to play a drinking game. He told my brother it was a game called Instinct, and real musicians were best at it. In the game, a guy closes his eyes and puts his hands on a table palms down. I’m not sure what is supposed to happen next.”
I said, “I know that game, except you keep your eyes open. We used to call it Slaps.” Adazee’s tits belonged in the Guinness World Records, I thought. I needed to find a way to bring that up, how I — as a regular contributor in the annual anthology — could be some kind of witness if she took off her Alcatraz shirt and brassiere, and let me band a measuring tape around her torso.
“I’m not talking rock-paper-scissors, or rock-paper-scissors-dynamite,” Adazee said. She drank from her glass and grimaced. “I’m not talking rock-paper-scissors-dynamite-stapler-pee.”
I think it was at this point where I said to myself, “You have made a mistake, Luther.”
“Anyway, Bernard closed his eyes to play the game — he was the best brother in the world and didn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable — and the next thing he remembered was regaining consciousness with his right hand nailed to the table. And I mean it wasn’t attached to the rest of his arm. That fellow nailed his hand to the table, then took out an ax and chopped it right off. My brother couldn’t play the trumpet in the competition, or ever again, really. So that’s why you’re still number one in Calloustown.”
I looked across to the bottles of good bourbon — there’s only good bourbon, even the ones that end in “Gentleman.” I don’t know if I opened my mouth and stuck my tongue out, over and over. I thought of Louise, and wondered what she thought, dealing with sick, damaged, and forlorn animals that once lived on a different continent. Did she talk to them? Did she try to convince these brutes I was a fool for working a decade and a half trying to recruit bootless scholars to an “institution of higher learning,” then falling for entrepreneurial scams that I invented myself?
Adazee said, “Maybe it’s for the best. You’re probably the kind of man who understands ‘maybe for the best,’ right? I mean, Jesus, you’d have to, Buzz. Bernard quit playing the trumpet, and he took up singing, and the next thing you know he’s appeared on Broadway in a couple musicals. He’s been a pirate, seeing as he can wear a hook easier than anyone else! Bernard says he’s planning to come back here someday to re-open the florist shop, seeing as it’s been closed for a while and people shouldn’t have to drive out of town to buy a bouquet. And he says that if someone beats him to it, he wants to come back and open an ice skating rink and teach the youth how to perform triple Axels.”
I hate to admit, and I am not proud, that the first two things I thought were A) a florist shop might be the perfect place to sell Mexican jumping beans, and B) your ex-trumpet-playing, Broadway-singing, florist-aspiring, ice-skating brother who might’ve one day been in the Guinness World Record anthology as the trumpeter who can play “Flight of the Bumblebees” faster than anyone, is perhaps a gay man who would be ostracized more than I, and perhaps killed, in Calloustown.