“Let’s take ‘Elk’s Parade,’” Tony said. He said it offhandedly, nonchalantly, preoccupied with hooking his sax to the strap around his neck. He said it innocently, as if he didn’t know it was the band’s best number, and as if the band didn’t know he was showing off for the benefit of the kid who was warming up on the other side of the room. The boys fished out their music, Tony counted off, and then they went into the number, playing it as well as they always did, maybe giving it a little more get-up-and-go for the benefit of the newcomer.
The kid didn’t seem to pay much attention, though. He just stood back there near the table, his horn pointed at the floor, those long low notes oozing out of the bell. When they finished the number Tony looked at him expectantly, but the kid went right on warming up, not paying any attention to what was going on near the piano. Tony stared at him for a second, and when he called the kid over he used his Angry Voice, the voice he used whenever the sax section was blowing particularly sour.
“You want to come over now?” he said. “Bring a chair, will you?” He worded both sentences as questions, but there was no mistaking they were delivered as orders.
Andy stopped blowing and then picked up a chair from one of the tables where it was stacked upside down. He brought the chair over to where Vic was sitting, and Vic looked up at him from his big solemn eyes, studying first the ring of muscle on his lip and then looking down to the well-kept horn and the fingers holding it. Andy put down the chair, and it was plain to see he was annoying the hell out of Tony, though Bud couldn’t understand quite why. Maybe Tony had expected some hearty applause after “Elk’s Parade,” instead of the indifference Andy had exhibited. Or maybe Tony was annoyed because the kid automatically sat down beside Vic, without waiting to be told where to sit. It seemed to Bud, though, that a trumpet player would automatically sit next to another trumpet player, and he couldn’t see any reason for Tony’s getting angry about that. He was certainly angry, no question about it, and he began sniffing through his nostrils, the way he always did when he got angry.
“Give him the first-trumpet sheet, Vic,” he said, and he sniffed and then dug into the extra sheets he had near his stand, handing Vic the second-trumpet part. He looked at the kid and asked in his Angry Voice, “You ever play lead trumpet?”
“In school,” Andy said.
“Well, you may find this a little different from school,” Tony snapped, and Frank was smirking all over again. “We want to find out how you read, and I’ll be listening to your tone, too, so play the best you can.”
“All right,” Andy said. He looked at the sheet and said, “Oh, ‘Trumpet Blues.’”
“You ever play it before?” Tony asked, sniffing.
“No, but I heard the James record.”
Vic moved over a little, placing his music on the stand so that Andy could share a part of the metal rack. Andy spread his music, reading it as he put it down. Bud gave the kid his A, and Tony looked at him hostilely for a moment and then said, “Take it slow, Frank. We don’t want to confuse the kid.”
“Okay,” Frank said, smile-smirking.
“One, two, three, four,” Tony said, “one, two, three, four...”
Bud and Frank went into the intro, a nice stepladder boogie. They played it slowly, expecting the kid to miss the pickup, the way Vic had done. But he didn’t miss it. He came in right when he was supposed to, and Vic surprisingly came in with him, and Bud heard the sound of the two trumpets and turned momentarily to look at them. Vic was hunched in his chair, studying the sheet intently, painfully, the way he always did — like a Swiss watchmaker with an intricate clock to repair. He had the bell of his horn turned toward Andy’s, and he blew with the mouthpiece on the left side of his lip, off-center.
Andy seemed completely relaxed. He leaned back in the chair, and his feet were spread wide, like Charlie Chaplin’s, a stance which, coupled with the orange-and-black socks, made Bud want to laugh. He seemed to blow effortlessly, playing slowly because the beat was very slow, the way Tony had wanted it. He hit the notes hard and solid, and he got a big round tone from his horn, and Bud got the feeling that he was holding back, so he nodded to Frank, and Frank began speeding up the tempo a little.
The kid picked up the quicker beat right away, and Vic followed him, and the saxes followed the trumpet. Andy just kept following his music, but he began to play a little louder now, as if the increased tempo was what he’d been waiting for. Bud listened to the big notes flowing from the bell of his horn, and he unconsciously began hitting the piano a little harder, and he heard Frank’s footbeat on the bass drum get a little stronger, with more of a drive behind it.
The kid put a solid rock behind that horn of his, and he began riding that rock, tipping the horn up toward the ceiling. The tune began to jump a little because he was like a man behind a pneumatic drill, pushing on those valves, his cheeks only puffed a little, but the pressure flowing from his mouth and through the horn, the notes blasting up at the ceiling, but not blasting with a hard flat trumpet sound. There was a brassy sound, but it was clean brass, brass you could almost taste in your mouth, brass you could almost see glistening. Brass that was almost like gold.
The music was a part of him, and it started with the jiggle of his toes inside those ludicrous orange-and-black socks, and it spread up the length of his leg and into the pit of his diaphragm, and up through his lungs, and out through his lips, and down through the horn, around the brass bend, channeled by the valves, and then floating out of that bell, blooming out of that bell like a big spring flower, bursting into the room big and round, always with that solid rocking beat behind it, always with that full big brass tone. He cut through the tricky business like a scythe in a hay field, and Vic threw in the towel, the going too rough for him now. His solemn eyes watched the kid’s fingering and the kid’s lipwork, and Bud could feel him listening to the sound that came from that horn, and his eyes got even more solemn than they usually were. The saxes hung on, blowing together, catching some of the spirit that the horn created. Andy pointed his bell up at the ceiling, and the Christmas decorations in the hall began to sway a little when he really cut loose.
It was something like a fever. The band heard him blowing back there, and the fire spread to them. Bud felt chords coming to life under his fingers, and he felt warm all at once, a strange warmth that spread through his body, that flamed up around him until there was only the sound they were making, the sound of the band, and being a part of the band, beating the piano like the heart pump of the band, and then listening to that horn take the blood away roaring through the veins. There was no Club Stardust any more, no four walls hemming them in, no world outside anywhere, no universe, no anything but the music they were making. It was like being with a girl, Bud felt, only better somehow because there was a bigger sense of fulfillment, but the same reaching quality, the same straining for something that was always just out of reach.