“Shut up, you!” Vic snarled, turning and snapping his trumpet case shut. “I don’t have to take anything from you any more.”
“If you’re going, why the hell don’t you go?” Frank said. “You’re stinking up the joint.”
“I’m going, all right. I’m—” He started to walk around Ox, who was sitting at the end of the sax section, and then he stopped when the door opened and Andy walked in. He looked at Andy coldly for a second and then said, “Here’s your goddamn star now. You can start your rehearsal.”
“What’s the matter?” Andy asked innocently, walking over toward the piano.
“Ask your pals what’s the matter,” Vic shouted. “Ask them what it’s all about. Go ahead, ask them.”
Andy looked at the boys, bewildered, and Frank said, “Blowhard is quitting the band.”
“Yeah?” Andy asked. “Gee, what’s the matter, Vi—”
“Damn right I’m quitting,” Vic yelled. “And don’t look so damn surprised, wise guy. Don’t think you’re kidding me any. You can have the limelight all to yourself now. You can play all the solos, all the parts. You can do it all by yourself.”
“What—”
“What are you kicking about?” Frank asked. “You know Andy’s better than you are.”
“Sure I know it,” Vic said, on the verge of wild tears now. “So what? So what am I supposed to do? Are all the trumpet players in the world supposed to drop dead because Andy Silvera picks up his horn? Is that what’s supposed to happen?”
“Oh, knock it off,” Bud said suddenly. “If you’re going, get the hell out.” His eyes held Vic’s steadily, coldly.
“You don’t like to hear it, do you?” Vic said, womanishly. “Why not? Does the truth hurt? So what if he’s good? So what? Answer me that — so what?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Vic,” Bud said. “You’re out of your head.”
“Am I? Why don’t you answer me then? If I’m so out of my head, why can’t you give me an answer? So what if he’s good? Is it worth breaking up a band over? Is it worth—”
“Nobody’s breaking up any band,” Bud said.
“No? I’m leaving, ain’t I? Who’s gonna be next? You think you’ll get a trumpet man to sit alongside him? So he can make a fool out of him? You think you’ll get a trumpet man who’ll be happy to blow background while this bastard shines? You think you’ll get one?”
“Andy never—”
“No, he never, huh? Wait until he finds out how you guys sounded before he came along. Wait until then, and then you’ll see how much of a bargain you’ve got. Boy, I’m glad I’m getting out now, while the getting’s—”
“All right, so get out,” Bud said menacingly, “before I kick you out!”
“Sure,” Vic said tersely, his face white. “Sure.” He picked up his case and started for the door, passing Andy, who still stood bewildered. He stopped about three paces beyond Andy, turned, and looked at him squarely, contempt unveiled in his eyes as he put on his coat.
“Good luck, Golden Boy,” he said, and he made it sound like a curse. He walked to the door, fumbled angrily with the knob, and then slammed out of the room, leaving a deep silence behind him.
Andy stared at the closed door, his back to the band. The band sat at the nucleus of the silence, like a group of people who’d just seen a baseball crashing through a plate-glass window. The shopkeeper may have been concerned solely with his window, and the policeman may have been concerned with examining the baseball, but the psychology of the group turned toward the cause of the broken window, the one who’d hit the ball. Andy had hit this ball, all right. Andy had hit it the day he’d sat in for a tryout. It had taken the ball a long time to smash into the store front, but the window was shattered now, and the boys turned their attention to the batter, wondering what his reaction would be.
There was nothing on Andy Silvera’s face when he turned toward the band. His mouth was expressionless, and his eyes were hooded. Bud tried to read those eyes, but they weren’t telling any secrets. Maybe he was proud of the ball he’d hit, or maybe he was sorry he’d broken the window, or maybe he just didn’t give a damn one way or the other. His face wasn’t telling, and no one in the band was asking.
The silence persisted. It was a thoughtful silence, a silence in which every member of the band relived Vic’s recent explosion. They’d been too involved in experiencing it while it was happening to pay any real attention to it, but they reflected upon it now, and they came to the unanimous, unspoken conclusion that Vic had behaved like a Grade-A bastard. Even if he’d had a legitimate beef, he shouldn’t have attacked it in just that way. He deserved everything he’d gotten, the stupid jerk, and it’s a wonder Andy hadn’t hit him in the mouth.
So went their reasoning, separately calculated in separate minds, separately following separate logical channels to reach a united, sympathetic conclusion: Andy had been wronged. They turned the full power of their collective sympathy on Andy as he walked toward the band, his face still unreadable.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said. “I missed the bus.”
“That’s okay, kid,” Tony said consolingly.
“About Vic. Gee, I’m sony—”
“Good riddance,” Frank said.
“Don’t worry about him, kid,” Mike said.
“I feel like some kind of heel,” Andy completed. He turned from the band again, looking over at the closed door, over near where Reen was sitting. Reen, his eyes squinched up tight, a frown on his forehead, watched Andy’s face. He kept watching him until Andy finally turned and went back to the band again.
“Forget about Vic,” Tony said. “Tune up, will you? We’re late as it is.”
“Sure,” Andy said, nodding solemnly. He began warming up, and when he went to the piano for his A, Bud said, “Look, don’t let Vic bother you. He was hysterical.”
Andy nodded, and Bud hit the A and kept hitting it while Andy adjusted the slide until he was in tune. He went to sit beside Frank then, at the stand Vic had deserted.
Tony made a big show of looking through the arrangements. Then he cleared his throat and offhandedly said, “All right, ‘Elk’s Parade.’”
6
first chorus iii
FEBRUARY, 1944
They rehearsed for close to two hours, knocking off at about nine-thirty. They didn’t stop for a break all that time, and when Tony finally called a halt they all lighted up cigarettes and just relaxed. It had been a good rehearsal. Vic’s desertion had somehow knitted them together more solidly, as if they’d had to play better to show they really didn’t need him at all. And the sad truth was they didn’t need him at all. Andy was a trumpet section all by himself. It had been a damned fine rehearsal.
They finished their cigarettes and began packing Frank’s drums. Bud unscrewed the cow bell and cymbals and then put the snare drum into its case and fitted the circular piece of linoleum over the skin. He put the cymbals down on top of the linoleum and then began dropping the spare parts into the compartments on either side of the drum space. Reen handed him the high-hat cymbals and then folded the pedaled mechanism itself. Frank had already cleared the bass drum of the foot pedal and wooden block, and he was pulling on its cover.